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His arms are strapped down when he wakes up, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to lift them anyway. He feels heavy all over, too disconnected from himself to put in any real effort. The culprit is probably the IV line that’s been taped to the inside of his arm to hold it in place. Tim starts mechanically trying to loosen his arms and dislodge the IV, because that’s what he’s supposed to do if he wakes up in restraints. Get out of them, remove whatever’s feeding him drugs, and figure out where he is and what happened.
“No, Tim – Tim. You’re okay, you’re safe.” Dick – was he there all along? – grabs hold of Tim’s shoulders and holds him down, firmly enough that it’s hard to move at all. Tim should stop, stop struggling because it’s Dick, but he feels phantom claws on his arms and panics. “C’mon, little brother, it’s me. You can stop fighting.”
“It’s not, it’s not real,” Tim says, because this may seem nice but there was poison underneath and he had to escape before it was too late. “You’re not real.”
Dick’s smile is bright and horrible and so, so fake. “Of course I’m real, Timmy. I’m your big brother and I love you and I need you to stop fighting me now, okay? Because you hurt yourself earlier, and I’m worried you’re gonna hurt yourself worse if you keep struggling like that.”
They’re in the Cave. It’s stupid that Tim didn’t notice earlier, because he was trained by Batman and it’s one of the first things he should have been looking for, but he’s in a section of the Cave reserved for medical treatment and Dick is staring at him, trying so hard to look calm and comforting that it looks almost as fake as – as the other Dick. “You’re lying,” Tim says, except – if this was other Dick, his eyes would be different so this has to be the real Dick (right?), and – God, he just doesn’t know. He remembers last night, tearing out the door in his room, but did it work?
“Not even a little bit. I’m – ” Dick lets out a noise that’s not quite a laugh, his forced cheer cracking open and falling apart. “God, Tim, what happened? You scared the shit out of me.”
How does he explain? How does he look at Dick and tell him? He can barely hold onto the thoughts himself. “I had to, I had to close it. Dick. They can’t come through.”
“What can’t, Timmy?” It’s so obvious that Dick thinks he’s lost his mind, and maybe he has. If he was in Dick’s position, Tim would definitely think the same thing.
“There was…” God. Just. He can’t. There is no way to explain what happened that Dick is going to believe, and even if there was, Tim’s head is a complete mess right now. “Nevermind.”
“Tim…”
Tim starts tugging at the restraints holding his arms in place again. “Dick, just… just let me go, okay?”
“No,” Dick says with a grimace, like it is actually physically painful to say the word. “I can’t do that.”
“Dick, come on. I know it looked like I freaked out but I’m fine now.”
“No. You’re not. You are, still, acting weird and not making sense, and – ” Tim wrenches his arm again, even though he knows he can’t break the restraints just with brute force, and Dick just… snaps. “Stop it! You’re not okay, and I’m not going to let you go until I’m convinced you’re not going to run off and try to rip your hands apart again. Jesus Christ, Tim, do you have any idea how much you terrified us last night?”
There’s… there’s really nothing he can say. Tim stares at him helplessly for a long moment before he can’t take it anymore, looks away.
Dick sighs heavily before breaking the uneasy silence. “I’m gonna go get Alfred to take a look at your hands again. Just.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Talk to me, okay? Or think about it. Whatever happened, whatever – I promise I’ll listen to you.”
It’s so much like a promise other Dick would have made that when Tim shuts his eyes and opens them again, he half-expects to see black button eyes looking back at him instead of Dick’s blue ones. But there they are, human as anything. “I’ll…” he says, and whatever he was about to say drifts into nothing. Because there’s nothing he can promise right now.
“Okay,” Dick says slowly before squeezing Tim’s shoulder. “Just. Think about it, okay? I’ll be right back.”