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“Bruce must be desperate if he’s sending you to play interrogation with me.”
Tim immediately regrets the words as soon as they exit his mouth.
They’re in the Batcave. Though it’s more accurate to say Dick is in the Batcave—Tim’s in one of the containment cells. It’s padded with a creamy pearl color material that lines every inch except the door, clear and reinforced with ballistic glass. The padding is soft, overly so, and it feels like he’s trapped inside a pillow.
He hates it here. He loathes the sterile smell of unscented cleaner on his bare bed, the placid lighting overhead basking the cell in muted yellow, and the sheer inoffensiveness. Bruce was “kind” enough to not put him in a straight jacket, but the sentiment is clearly there. They act as if he’s a deranged maniac. Pathetic, poor, pitiful Timothy Drake must be placated lest he have an “Pit episode”. What a fragile little thing, Timothy Drake is. Bless his soul.
It cannot be denied Tim may have had a slight edge to him during their confrontation—emotions were certainly running high—but he wasn’t unwell. Not at all. If anything, Tim was a driving force of rationality.
How shamelessly this “family” flaunts their instability, lets hasty deductions calcify to hubris and crucifies those who dare oppose. They harbored a mass murderer in the Manor—the honorable rebel made war-torn refugee—but Tim was made the villain for seeking a justice long delayed.
So it was on them. The beatings, the decay, the destruction, they were an avoidable conclusion. Had punishments been swift, answers been forthcoming, no such end would come to pass. Tim stabbed Jason’s throat—non-fatally, might he add—as a reaction to their persistence. They turned callousness into compassion, and Red Hood became its patron saint.
This situation is only a reflection of their failures. They cannot be trusted to protect. Bruce and his hypocritical band of moral crusaders should go bother some jaywalker instead. Crime doesn’t sleep, after all.
“Tim.” Pure, unimpeded anguish; Dick is aches and bruises, viscerally painful to hear. Tim’s train of spite stops dead. Only now has it occurred to him—this is the first time they’ve properly talked to each other in over five years.
“Are…are you doing alright? Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?”
This is agonizing, and indifference is not a feasible defense. The fight leaves Tim swiftly, pathetically, and now the one thing he’s left is grief and love he wished not to touch upon, rotted like a flower withered and wilted in the depths of winter. He prefers the anger, the indignation; it’s far easier to deal with flames than tender warmth.
“I’m fine. Are…are you doing okay? The past few weeks must have been…stressful for you.”
Oh, how Tim hates the sound of his voice. Where is the force, the conviction, it had then—when it mattered?
The yellow hues coating him—almost otherworldly, angelic in nature—smooth out the weight of rage, of determination, of loss, draping over his body. Another way to sweeten what they want to hide. It makes him appear younger, like a kid; one feeble Robin spreading its wings over the Gotham skyline and gliding across the rooftops. But Tim is not a child. He hasn’t been one for a long time.
“I’ve been better. I’m glad you’re alright, Tim.”
Walls close in on him. His cell, his cage, shrinks as if he is lowly vermin to be gawked at. Dick’s eyes have wandered towards the bed in the top right corner of the cell. It’s bare of blankets or pillows and the plain sheet covering it is paper-thin. The mattress is equally utilitarian. Bleached white cotton and lacking springs or a frame because those are “dangerous”, apparently; a suicide risk.
What does Dick think of him now, especially after seeing him here? Certainly, this isn’t what Dick considers “alright”. Perhaps Tim is no different from any other contemptible fool—he could not control his urge for violence.
When one thinks it over, Tim was resurrected in a Lazarus Pit, and anyone who dare bathe in its unnatural glow turns irrevocably insane, diminished to a simpleton cursed with madness in their veins, and therefore cannot be blamed for anything they do under any circumstances. Tim simply couldn’t help himself, his vision was awash in green and it murmured honeyed words of bloodshed and carnage, enthralled by the seductive whispers wanton savagery only provides.
No way in hell can Tim let Dick think that. He refuses to let Dick think that. He’d rather have his hatred, his loathing, than his whimpering pity. It is better to be remembered as a monster than to be remembered as a lie.
Staring down a desolate path without a rope, that is how it feels right now. This will burn Tim’s only bridge left, the last bastion of good in his life. Those little moments between patrols, the stupid jokes, the jeers and jabs, it shall be reduced to cooling soot and its ashes left to scatter away in the wind. But that is okay, Tim made his decisions. He’s ready for due consequence.
“I did every action because I wanted to, just so you know. Every single thing. I didn’t do it because of whatever you think Ra’s told me or because you failed me or because the Pit did anything to me. It was me the whole time. The ‘green’ doesn’t exist.”
“I know, Tim.”
What.
“…What do you mean ‘you knew’?” Tim must have heard things wrong. He must have. There’s no way. None at all.
Dick looks to the side, embarrassed, “I know you chose to do everything and I know the same applies for Jason. I always knew Bruce was lying.”
Due to their line of work, they are all intimately familiar with how it feels to break a bone, how it feels to be stabbed, how it feels to be shot, how it feels to be hurt. But this is different. It’s full-bodied shock, when you receive a fatal blow yet fail to register any pain. Tim is bleeding out yet nothing matters. Death comes in many forms, and perhaps he now dies in a way unexplored.
“So…so you knew Jason killed all those people by choice? You knew what he did and what—just let him get away with it? I knew Bruce was full of shit but I never thought you would willingly go along. I thought—I thought Jason tricked you,” Tim’s becoming frantic, this wasn’t a possibility, “Was it out of pity? Did he tell you the story about his mom? Is his life just so tragic and heartbreaking that you let it slide? If you knew he did everything, if you knew he murdered me, how could you let it go? How could you do that?”
The shock gives way to a faint burning sensation in his chest and behind his eyes; its flames licking and hissing until his skin is left seared and insides blistered.
There is no offense or penance in Dick’s eyes; what appears is only dreary acceptance.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
An apology? That’s…that’s unexpected. An admission, no less. When was the last time Tim heard one before this? A genuine one, that is.
“I never agreed with Bruce on how everything was handled and I tried to make him see sense. I told him it wasn’t right, I told him it wasn’t fair to you, but it was just me and a few others versus him and the entire Justice League. Things were never the same afterwards.” Dick is jaded and bitter, exasperated and gray with weariness, “He and I don’t really talk anymore unless it’s for emergencies. Jason and I aren’t on speaking terms, either. A few years ago there was an argument and everything fell apart, I guess. It would probably be easier to list the people I still talk to, there’s not many. Mainly the Titans and Bab’s friends.” Dick huffs out a laugh, though it’s dry and carries a cadence more reminiscent of a sob.
When Tim was still with the League, and in his foulest, most irritable moods, Ra’s liked to parade the latest tabloid covers with Bruce, Dick, and Jason in a half-hearted attempt to rile him up. “The Undead Son of Bruce Wayne: Jason Todd’s Miraculous Return”, “‘My Brother Doesn’t Have a Girlfriend!’ Dick Grayson Shuts Down Rumors of Jason’s Dating Life”, “‘He’s a Peculiar Kid.’ Jason Todd Spills All in an Interview about Damian Wayne!”. All of them spent these years acting as some jolly, sitcom-esque family to the public while, in actuality, they weren’t on speaking terms with one another?
They reach an awkward, ungainly hesitation, and Tim observes his surroundings beyond the glass. The monitors flash from the computer, the cyan and crimson and verdant lights blinking rhythmically. Something stands in the corner of the cave, though. It’s a costume behind glass, displaying the passionate reds, yellows, and greens of Robin marred with a gritty rust of dried blood.
It is not Jason’s; Jason’s Robin suit is right next to it. And Tim doesn’t want to acknowledge who it belongs to. The sentiment makes him squirm—it’s another desecration, another insult.
He’ll be attached to him forever, won’t he? As part of an unbreakable bond that connects two slain bodies, forged from a dark knight and seamed together by fate in green twine, bound to clash and inspire tragedy. Tim may die unknown and unseen, but such is the sacrifice of redemption.
The sizzling coals inside are riled up once more; the desire to thrash and scream grows stronger.
Something else rests there, however. Silent in slumber, but noticeable under the hush. Quietly hiding behind the hatred and the vitriol, there’s something…tranquil. Reassuring, a soothing balm to his hurt, or an ointment applied to his scars. Hope—wavering hope.
Does it make Tim a bad person that he’s glad? That some infinitesimal, shameful part of him is glad Dick remembered him, the real him, after he died? That Bruce and the others aren’t the warm, tender family they claim to be? That they aren’t happy?
He’s awful for thinking such a thing. Dick wallows in his own misery, and he lost the friendships, the familial connections, of those he once believed his companions, but he did it for Tim. Because Tim was worth honoring.
“What happened between you and Jason? Why don’t you talk anymore?”
A touch of hesitance lays in this query, because the answer may be prodding at a sore. It could weep blood-streaked tears and inflame choleric humors.
Dick shunned Jason’s very name, far more than mere avoidance, when Tim was Robin. There was always an ache, a leaking wound, that stained the air whenever the name came up; the smell of copper and burnt skin suffocating the atmosphere—hogging up oxygen in greedy gulps.
It didn’t take prodigious detective skills to realize Dick blamed himself for what happened in Ethiopia, even though the only person at fault was the aberrant, perverse man who killed Jason. And also his scumbag birth mother. Their conflict must have been catastrophic if Dick outright abandoned reconciliation, shattered the charade of normalcy in favor of an empty peace.
Grief swallows a man whole, and the mellow colors from the cell stain Dick in stark black shadows. Tim decides to step away, his back against the pale wall of his enclosure. An ominous silence ripples through turbulent air.
The faint, whispering buzz of the lights and the distant shrieks of bats produce a dreary foreboding. Like an elegy in encore—a performance for those who’ve fallen—the mood has become uncomfortably dour. Tim’s buried coffin risen up from the ground to be grieved anew.
“…It happened during Damian’s eleventh birthday, about a year after your death. We made plans for a few of us to go out somewhere nice. It was going to be me, Bruce, Babs, Cass, and Damian. Just the people Damian felt comfortable around.” He lets out a long sigh, “It was originally going to be me and Bruce with Damian but Damian had insisted Cass and Babs come. He liked sparring with Cass and doing computer stuff with Babs, and he's close with them but he’d never admit it.” Dick chuckles; it doesn't have any light to it, weak and fragile, “I have an apartment with Babs so we were going to go together, but there was an emergency with the Birds of Prey so she had to stay and do Oracle stuff. I got there last because of traffic and told them the situation, but Bruce said it’s okay because he got someone else to come instead.”
His speech becomes sodden and strained; a vulnerability shines where it shouldn’t. Dick got angry, he got sad, but this is different. It’s upfront and personal. It makes Tim feel wrong—he would rarely allows himself this kind of expression; it would affirm his perceived weakness. For Tim, sadness must be paired with rage to remain valid.
He didn’t always think that way.
But Dick holds no restraint or compartmentalization. He is naked in his emotion. The bare skin of his heart beats with the fervent strength of a sun. Anger and passion and longing coalesce under a pyre flaring with the totality of a life lived and lost.
“It’s Jason that shows up, dressed up and apologizing for the sudden intrusion. I felt like I was going to die. But Damian—Damian didn’t seem bothered, only a little annoyed…and then I realized why. We never told him what really happened. We never said anything.” Tear streams glare on Dick’s cheeks, lines of rain against ashen skin; he can barely hold himself together as he chokes, “The worst part was that we were at a table for six and there were only the five of us. There was—there was an empty fucking chair right next to Jason the entire time, and I couldn’t help but think it should’ve been you sitting there.”
A rift opens in his grief; it churns up a conflagration, “You should’ve been there, and it wasn’t fair. He killed you, he made us mourn you, and he’s sitting right there. Why does he get to be here after taking you away from us!?
“So I left. I couldn’t stay there anymore. Jason and Bruce tried to stop me in the parking lot and I said every vile, awful thing I could come up with. I hated him, I hated them both so much. After your death, I felt empty, dead to the world. I couldn’t cope. It wasn’t until then that the grief really set in.” He sniffs and wipes his bloodshot eyes, “So that’s what happened. That’s why I don’t talk to them anymore. I apologized to Damian afterwards for ruining his birthday and told him how you died the next morning.” He forces out a laugh. “I think I heard Cass ended up punching Jason in the face but you’ll have to ask when you see her. I don’t have all the details.”
“…I’ll thank her when I do. I know she has a mean right hook. I bet it hurt.”
Tim’s desperate to alleviate this atrocious feeling, melancholy that lingers under every syllable, distant but never unseen. He is no waning apparition, he will not be entombed.
It works. Dick lets out a laugh, a little one. It’s frail like splintered glass, the cracks and wounds still embedded deep, but it is something. And only then does Tim really notice his appearance. A worn gray jacket littered with pink and white splotches of bleach and small ragged holes that reveal a white tank top underneath, also spotted with grimy yellow stains of grease and sweat. His pants are baggy, overly so; the sweatpants have creased and the color has dulled with age into a murky blue. He’s not wearing any shoes, only faded socks.
Dick looks like a bum.
“When was the last time you took a shower? Or changed your clothes?”
“Not since we brought you back to the Manor. I’ve been busy trying to retrace your movements after you arrived back in Gotham. We’re trying to figure out where Talia and your friend went.”
It's uncomfortable again. Can’t they talk about Alfred’s cucumber sandwiches, instead? Change the subject to something unrelated with death?
“Oh. Are you…mad at me? I assumed you were. I won’t hold it against you if you resent me.”
An immediate response, “No, I don’t think I could ever resent you, Tim. I was angry, I was sad, but I never resented you. I won’t lie—you did something pretty awful, and I can’t defend that—but you were desperate and needed help. What you did and what Jason did are worlds apart. I’m not going to condemn you.”
Slivers of a ferocious temper come to life at the word “help”. What does Dick mean by “help”? Is Tim someone to be looked down upon? Is that why he needs to be locked up in this padded cell? He did it because he just was so crazy and there wasn’t any logic involved, only the ravings of a man consumed by insanity?
“Oh, so you wanted to send me to Arkham? Lock me away to get help with the others? I’m dangerously unstable.”
Dick rolls his eyes at him, as if Tim is the one being irrational. The audacity.
“Tim, I meant help as in therapy and a therapist. How could you think that I ever wanted to send you to Arkham? That’s ridiculous. You were unwell when we found you and Jason. You weren’t in your right mind. You were making all sorts of threats to kill yourself, kill Jason, and kill us together by blowing us up with a bomb. You even threatened to go after Damian. It was terrifying, I thought someone was going to die and I was scared.
“I was scared of what you were doing—of what you were becoming. I was so angry at you, I thought what you said was absolutely despicable. And yet, even still…I hate seeing you like this. I know how—why—it happened, and I’ve only ever wanted to help.”
“I didn’t mean any of it. I was saying that so you would back off. I’m not ‘sick’.”
It’s unconvincing, and he can tell Dick is certainly aware. Maybe Tim meant a smidge of the “I am willing to kill myself” bit, a truly insignificant crumb of it at that moment in time, but he doesn’t anymore. There’s nothing wrong with him. He is the picture of mental health. The bomb in his hand was a fake, anyway.
Another awkward pause, and Dick beholds Tim with watery eyes and an earnestness that petrifies. The dread is overwhelming. He hates the vulnerability, the openness that seems to have infected this dying brood and afflicted them with bleeding hearts and outstretched hands.
Dick shouldn’t be forgiving him so easily. Dick shouldn’t be forgiving him at all. There is no brighter tomorrow, there is no ray of oncoming dawn, there is no salvation. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
“I know…I know I’m not always the greatest at expressing myself or putting what I feel into words. Bruce rubbed off on me a little too much, I guess, but…you know I love you, right? I love you and I want you to be happy. You’re more than just the Robin I chose, you’re…you’re the brother I chose too.”
Tim can’t do this anymore. The past five years have been one hell after another. He misses the way things used to be. He'd rather endure that earthquake or that awful time with Bane and Jean-Paul or even his parents’ deaths over this. Everything is wrong and awful, ruined beyond recognition. Why did things have to be this way?
He turns his back and leans his face into the padding on the wall; the sterile smell of cleaner is the only thing that distracts from the taste of salt in his mouth and burning in his eyes. Despite the gasps and heaves, it feels like he can’t breathe. None of this has meant anything.
The cell door opens, and Dick’s arms wrap around him. He buries himself into Tim’s shoulder—they’re nearly the same height. Tim hadn’t realized until just now. The embrace is solid, grounding, familial, bringing a reprieve—however muted and ephemeral it may be—from the nightmare where he, where they all, reside.
After a moment, he turns around to put his arms around Dick, too. Tim doesn’t know how long they stay like this, it could have been minutes or it could have been hours, but he can pretend things are the way they used to be—when they were Nightwing and Robin—while it lasts. There ways always someone answering his unheard calls. He was always there.
Dick Grayson is his brother, and death can’t change that. Nothing can change that.
Tim’s the first to break the silence, “You smell like shit.”
With a wet snort, Dick ruffles his hair; they’re both drenched in tears and viscous snot is running down their noses. It’s disgusting, and Tim’s kind of nauseous, but it’s a feeling magnitudes better than before; dusty, glowing embers embracing him in heat. The burns, the scars, they are not healed, but they are abated—at least for now. He missed this. Connection.
“Yeah? Well, you don’t look too great yourself, kiddo. Also, I wouldn’t smell so bad if you weren’t keeping me so busy.” Dick pauses for a moment, “I have to go check in with Babs on something, she’s been tracking a drug ring in Blüdhaven and I told her I would call after I was done here. Maybe I could leave the door unlocked and keep you company, as long as you don’t go telling anyone? It must be pretty miserable here all alone. I could bring some games and stuff to spruce this place up too, if that’s okay with you.”
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
A gentle smile, a small wave, and then Dick turns to leave. But Tim needs to say one more thing before he goes. Dick has to hear it said back.
“Dick?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you, too.”