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Jason steps into the Titan’s Tower with a blinding rage and a green tinged revenge plot ready to be enacted.
But he isn’t ready when he slips into his replacement’s room to find him limp and lifeless, foaming from the mouth, with a collection of pill bottles tipped over beside him.
.-~*~-.
Tim was a difficult child.
He was a needy, ungrateful nuisance and financial burden who didn’t understand his place.
At just a few years old, he was already making his parents have to deal with him and his issues.
A night at the circus gone wrong. An unexpected warm hug overshadowed by an even more unexpected fall. A lesson cemented in his mind that nothing good comes without a price.
His parents quickly tired of Tim’s nightmares and whining — Trauma, he’ll learn it’s called later. Trauma that he’ll brush aside and bury just like he was taught to do — and get him a prescription cocktail of Zoloft for the depression, Ativan for the anxiety, and Ambien to make him sleep through the night.
And at just a few years old, his mind is no longer his.
Tim floats through life like a robot waiting for its next command. He finishes tasks, completes assignments, and follows whatever it is his parents want for him to do.
But as the years progress, the medications’ hold begins to wane.
The dosages no longer proportional and his body growing more and more resilient to their effects.
And so the anxiety begins to creep in, along with the paranoia, and the depression, and the mood swings that he never got to truly have as a growing child. Nights become restless until he’s got complete insomnia.
He doesn’t dare to double up on pills, not because he knows it’s dangerous, but because he would never be greedy enough to waste something paid by his parents’ well earned money for something as asinine as him feeling better.
It isn’t until his parents have come back from their months long absence that they see what a wreck Tim is.
They’re at a gala and Tim is nearly crawling out of his skin from how overstimulated and exhausted he is.
And so, his mother slips him a Xanax and suddenly the fog that he had almost forgotten — not quite missing, instead just unaware of its absence from his slow decline — and the comfort of the blanket of blur returns.
He doesn’t know who, his mother or father, gets him stronger pills. His body doesn’t react well to the change.
Where his emotions were once unstable, they are now tumultuous, an uncontrollable storm that he can’t get a reign over. His body aches, his head throbs, and his appetite disappears, stomach churning at whatever he can force feed down his throat.
But the side effects begin to fade and he continues life as he once had.
Years go by. Tim’s life progresses.
And then, in a moment of scarce clarity, his life is changed irrevocably.
Dick Grayson is Robin.
Bruce Wayne is Batman.
And for the first time in his foggy, unfocused life, he had something to care about something. Something that made living matter.
Tim stops taking his sleeping pills cold turkey and his body retaliates immediately.
But, Tim has something to stay awake for, so he pushes through the nausea and the migraines.
His body eventually learns to cope without the thing it had become desperately dependent on, and Tim’s insomnia is finally useful.
And so, TIm spends his evenings trailing his heroes and he spends his day pushing through the haze of sleep deprivation and the usual unrelenting fog.
Dick Grayson is no longer Robin.
Jason Todd becomes Tim’s new hero.
As Tim continues to grow, the medication wears off once again, and while the world becomes clearer, his inner battle quickly becomes an unwinnable war.
Tim’s parents are rarely home and when they are, Tim can’t and won’t ask for another update to his medications.
So, the anxiety, paranoia, depression, paranoia, and everything else that had been hidden and stored away comes forward tenfold.
He pops a Xanax when he needs to tamp it down, which is near daily, and he pushes through the best he can.
Jason Todd is no longer Robin.
Robin is gone.
And Batman isn’t okay.
And so Tim has a new purpose.
Before Tim even thinks about approaching Batman, he detoxes completely.
He can only imagine the sort of tests that Batman would do to consider a new Robin and Tim can’t let him see the proof of his weakness.
His body screams in protest as he quits all of his pills all at once.
And he suffers through it because he has to. He has to be Robin.
The rot in his brain grows and clings to his mind and heart like tendrils of poison.
He hasn’t been left alone with his mind, free of the buffer of medication, since before he could remember. But now, unfiltered, uncensored, unprotected, he’s shown what his mind truly is.
But he buries it, knows that his duty to Batman is more imperative, knows that his job as his Robin, his mission, Gotham, it all matters more than him and his whininess and pitiful pity.
Things get better.
For Batman, not for his Robin.
Bruce is able to heal from Jason’s death, even if the growth is infinitesimal at first. He’s able to accept his son’s death and, if not move on, keep living and carry on his memory.
Batman’s wrath dissipates to fury and then vengeance once again.
And Tim…
Tim’s fine.
He is.
Really.
He… he has to be.
So he is.
Dick makes an effort to check in with Tim, but Tim knows that it’s just Dick making up for his absence in Jason’s life when he was alive.
So, Tim resigns to his role as a fill-in, someone to fulfill a role and absolve guilt.
Tim gets his own team. His own friends.
Cassie is spitfire and passion. Bart is hope and tenacity. Kon is resilience and perseverance.
And with Tim, they all balance each other out.
Tim had friends in school, but he’d never had friends who could understand him so bone deep and completely.
Tim opens up about things he’s never admitted out loud to them.
But not enough that they can see how truly weak Tim really is.
And then Robin is no longer his and so they aren’t his anymore.
His dad who had become aware of his escapades as Robin was not happy with his deception.
He finds out that Tim had stopped taking his pills and blames his rebellion on unmedicated hysteria.
And so, Tim is put back on his old and the fog he hadn’t missed — he had missed it, he’d missed the blanket of security, of quiet, of nothing, of reprieve from the mad storm his mind was without it — returns as Tim’s anger disappears into apathy.
His father is dead.
And Tim
Doesn’t
Feel
A
Thing.
Steph had been fired from Robin and Tim has a place waiting for him.
And so he drops the pills cold turkey once again and is hit with the onslaught of grief that he hadn’t allowed himself to feel.
He waits.
He waits until he’s been Robin long enough, Bruce trusting him enough to become complacent in his strict watchful eye of Tim. Waits until Tim is far from his constant surveillance as he spends his time at the Titan’s Tower. Waits for a moment of solitude to make his brain go quiet again.
Tim pulls out the pill bottles and looks at them with silent pondering.
He hadn’t been on this dosage since he was a kid. Surely, now that he’s older and grown, he would have to be on something stronger.
That’s what they had done once before.
So that’s what he needs now.
Tim takes two of each of his pills, the Zoloft, the Ativan, and a few extra Ambien and Xanax, and he waits for the fog to return.
And he gets the fog. And he also gets… heavier.
It’s bliss.
It’s peace.
And as consciousness slips away, Tim lets himself succumb to the quiet.
.-~*~-.
It takes Jason a moment to process what he’s seeing.
But when it finally clicks in his mind, he is no longer a dead boy hellbent on revenge.
He’s a little boy, seeing his mother, just as limp and lifeless, gone before he could even think to say goodbye.
He’s helpless. He’s confused. He’s… scared.
He shouldn’t be. He came here to take out the brat himself.
But he… he wasn’t expecting… he would never…
And the scared little boy, the boy who is always too late, the boy who feels helpless and confused and scared does the only thing that can comfort his panicked mind.
He calls his dad.
Him and Bruce, they haven’t been on good terms in a while. That’s putting it lightly.
Jason, betrayed and raged, hurt and broken, just wants Bruce to pay his penance.
His penance of…
It doesn’t matter now.
Because no matter how mad he is at Bruce. No matter how much shit Jason’s put him through and that Bruce has put him right back through, it doesn’t matter as much as Jason needing his dad.
And the new Robin too.
When Bruce answers the phone, probably already triangulated to show that it’s from the Red Hood, answers in a hostile bark, but when he hears Jason choke on a sob, it turns to concern.
Jason never thought he’d hear Bruce like that again. Soft, placating murmurs. His warm, rumbling voice talking him through his breaths and telling him everything he needs to hear.
“Robin,” Jason finally manages to get out between his hiccuping gasps.
“Did you—”
“No,” Jason says, another sob escaping his throat. “I was gonna— oh, God, I was gonna— but he already—” Jason’s breath catches again.
“He already, what, Jay?”
The nickname pierces in Jason’s chest. Jason tries to tell him, but the words are stammered, incomprehensible.
“I’m on my way, Jaylad. I’m gonna be right there real soon, alright? Just breathe.”
“Can’t.”
“Yes you can.”
“Oh, f-fuck,” Jason whispers. “Breathing.” Jason stumbles to the new Robin’s bedside and presses trembling fingers to his neck. Weak. Barely there. But there. “Hurry.”
The door slams open and Bruce pushes past Jason, rushing to Tim, and for a moment, it stings. It hurts more than anything else. The little boy who is screaming for the comfort his dad is falling apart at the dismissal that feels more like a rejection. But he remembers that there is something more pertinent, more important than him and his distress.
Bruce scoops Tim up in his arms and kneels in front of Jason. Jason hadn’t even realized he had gotten to the floor.
“C’mon, Jay,” Bruce says, reaching out a hand and squeezes Jason’s shoulder. “You did it. You saved him.” His knuckles brush Jason’s cheek, wet with tears. “Let’s go home.”
.-~*~-.
When Tim wakes up, it takes him a few moments to realize where he is.
But the distinct artificial lights of the cave are unmistakable.
He’s hooked up to quite a lot of the machines and a mask over his mouth.
He tries to speak but only a groan escapes his throat.
“He’s awake!” A voice calls out. An unfamiliar voice.
Tim blinks blearily and stills at the sight before him.
Jason Todd, disheveled and eyes red-rimmed, stares at him with apprehension.
“You’re awake,” Jason says, words a near whisper, like he can’t believe it.
“What—” Tim starts, the words muffled behind the mask. But before he can continue, Bruce runs in.
“Tim,” Bruce breathes, looking just as disheveled and eyes as red-rimmed as Jason. With gentle hands, Bruce removes the mask from Tim’s face and pours him a cup of water, sticking a bendy straw in it before holding it to Tim’s mouth.
Tim takes a few sips but his stomach begins to churn. Bruce gets the hint and pulls the cup away, setting it on the bedside table. His hands hover in the air, like he wants to reach out but is stopping himself.
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asks.
“Tired,” Tim says. Which makes no sense. He had just gone to sleep. So why is he tired?
“Gone to sleep,” Bruce repeats hollowly, and Tim realizes that he had said that out loud. “You were going to sleep.” An odd sound pushes from Bruce’s throat and Tim realizes with horror that it was a sob.
“What’s wrong?” Tim says.
“Tim…” Bruce says. “When you… were you trying to take your life?”
The words don’t comprehend in Tim’s brain for a moment. “What?”
A tear rolls down Bruce’s cheek and it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”
“Of course not,” Tim says immediately.
Bruce looks at him with doubt. “Then why—”
“I just… I just wanted it to be quiet.”
“Tim—”
“Not like that,” Tim says quickly. “I just… I wanted the bad in my brain to go away. And the meds, they do that.”
“The tox screens showed that you had overdosed on several medications, Tim. You have to see why I would think otherwise.”
“I just… just the one, that was my dose before. So I just thought, if I had more, it would… it would work for what I have now.”
“What you have now?”
“I’ve grown. And when you grow you need more. And I just… I needed more.”
“Tim,” Bruce says. “Your dose before… those pills, that was the dose you were on before?”
“Before I became your Robin, yeah,” Tim confirms.
Bruce’s hand covers his mouth as a soft gasp escapes his lips. Tim sneaks a glance at Jason and he has a matching expression of horror.
“Tim, that’s… that was too much,” Bruce says. “You were just a child, and you… you never should have been taking that much.”
“It made it go away,” Tim whispers. “I was a difficult child. The nerves never went away. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t functioning. So they put me on the pills to make it go away.”
“How old?” Jason asks, his voice steely. “How old were you when they put you on all those pills?”
“I don’t know,” Tim says. “Four?”
Both Jason and Bruce’s breath hitches.
“Tim,” Bruce says, his voice wavering but kind. “I think… I think that you’ve been overmedicated for a long time. Since you were far too young.”
“No,” Tim says, shaking his head, dread pooling in his gut. “The anxiety, the depression, the insomnia, the… it all had to be treated. And this treated it.”
Bruce’s lips twist sadly. “There are other ways to help those things. Especially when you’re so young.”
“I’m not a kid,” Tim snaps.
But he is, isn’t he? And he has been, for a long time.
These trivial issues, these things that have bothered him since he was a child, they’re… they’re more severe than they were made out to be, weren’t they?
And instead of getting help. Instead of being able to talk through why he was feeling this way, he had dampened them with chemicals he’d grown dependent on.
Tim has never learned how to ask for help. Tim never realized he needed help.
But he meets Bruce’s eyes, teary and terrified, and he asks for the first time in his life,
“Help.”