Chapter Text
._. FALLEN DOWN ._.
Tim doesn’t remember how he got down here.
Well—he remembers a few things. A mission. Bruce wanted to investigate the disappearances of children around this mountain, Mount Ebbot, out in Pennsylvania. The cases have long since run cold and dried up, of almost six different children over twenty years having disappeared near the peak. Of course, it could be just that—nature taking the children back. Kids don’t have the survival skills that someone like Tim would have. They couldn’t make a fire with two sticks and a rock like he could. They wouldn’t know how to build a temporary shelter, or to wait in place until help arrives.
Sure, Tim might be considered a child in some areas, too—he’s only 17, as Damian. Jason, Dick, Bruce, Barbara, and Alfred so love to remind him. But he’s trained for this since before he was even ten years old. He knows what he’s doing, as opposed to the other children who disappeared by Mount Ebbot.
But by now, at least one body should have been found, right? Some sort of clue, or hint, as to the children’s fates?
He’d gone up the mountain to do a basic recon mission. He hadn’t even gotten into his full Red Robin suit— just a bag of hiking supplies, his collapsible bo staff, and his phone. It wasn’t meant to be anything more than a hike, really, to familiarize himself with the grounds.
But then—
Crack!
He’d poked his head into a cave in the mountain. He’d expected a bear, or wildlife, or nothing. Not to see the edge of a sinkhole. Not for the ground to give in under him and for him to fall down, down, down—
He groans, finally pushing himself off the ground. His hiking bag and a flower bed full of golden flowers—buttercups, by the look of it—had cushioned his fall, but barely. Nothing felt broken, but everything was definitely bruised. But his phone, which was snugly in the pocket of his jacket, laid beside him, shattered into pieces. Fuck.
Tim glanced up, blinking the spots out of his eyes. There’s the smallest bit of light from above—really? He’d fallen that far? A fall from that far should’ve, well—it should’ve killed him, realistically. Especially in his civvies. He takes stock of what’s left on him, pushing himself up to a sitting position. His bo staff is still in one piece. A bit of the metal is chipped, but it still expands as it should. He’s got a few granola bars, freeze-dried meals, a water bottle, and a sleeping bag rolled up in his hiking bag. The rest of his things were out where he parked his bike.
Fuck, his bike. And everything else above him. Tim pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming in his legs from the fall, and looks back up again. There’s scratch marks on the wall, like something had once fallen down and tried to climb back up. Stepping closer, he runs his hands along the marks and realizes they’re small, but human-like. The kids.
Is this where those kids fell? All of them? And was Tim destined for the same fate?
No. No. Tim isn’t going to die down here. Someone will find him. When he won’t check in with Bruce in—oh, an hour or so, he thinks?—the rest of them will descend on Mt. Ebbot like flies. They’ll find the hole, and rescue Tim. He just needs to… stay put. Like he’s taught.
But… The bed of buttercups. Tim turns around, facing the flowers again. They’re not grown randomly—they look like they were purposefully planted, and covered in a fine layer of mist, like they’d recently been cared for. But the question is—by who? Who would be down here?
He glances around the sinkhole. Most of it is dark dirt and stone, but there’s an… opening on one end. No. Not an opening. Tim takes a few steps closer, slinging his bag over his shoulder, ignoring the pain. There are a few torches lighting the pathway. A stone pathway, almost like a hallway of sorts. No, it is a hallway, one that Tim hadn’t noticed before.
Well. On the one hand, Tim should stay put. Wait for the others. Survival 101.
But, if he wants to find out the reason these kids keep disappearing by Mt. Ebbot, then… Well, then, maybe he should see where the hallway leads? And it’s not like Tim will get lost going down a hallway. The idea of old ruins being hidden under the mountain, away from human sight, it’s intriguing to him. His parents were archaeologists when they were alive, and Tim likes to think that some of that was passed down to him, too.
So, he steps out of the area with the buttercups and follows the hallway down. A large arch stands to his left at the end of the hallway, adorned with strange runes that he can’t read, a symbol etched into the top. A circle, with three triangles underneath it. Two triangles point down, while the lower one points upwards. Out of the circle are two wings, bursting to life. Strange. Tim’s phone might be dead, but reaching into one of the pockets of his hiking bag, he finds a small notebook and pencil, scribbling the symbol onto the paper.
There’s another ray of light shining through the archway. Tim glances back to the bed of buttercups. I should wait…
But he doesn’t. He presses on.
Tim walks slowly, keeping his ears open for any and all sounds around him. There’s a small drip-drip-drip in the cave, but other than that, nothing else but his quiet footsteps as he walks under the archway. And then, he spots it—another flower. This one is larger than the buttercups he’d seen, standing solitary and alone in the passageway.
And then it moves. On its own. It turns, and the flower has a face.
A face. Two eyes and a mouth, and the two beady eyes are looking directly at Tim.
A small memory comes to mind—a legend the people around Mt. Ebbot told of a long time ago.
Long ago, two races ruled over the Earth. HUMANS and MONSTERS.
One day, war broke out between the two races.
After a long battle, the humans were victorious.
They sealed the monsters underground with a magic spell.
Legends say that those who climb the mountain never return.
Something flashes across the face of the flower. Not quite recognition, but something else. Confusion, intrigue. Tim stiffens, his hand reaching for the bo staff hidden in his hoodie pocket, ready for action, but the flower doesn’t react.
Instead, it smiles.
“Well, howdy!” The flower greets. The voice is too high-pitched and chipper for something without vocal chords. “I’m Flowey! Flowey the Flower!”
Tim blinks, and feels himself relax a bit. Something doesn’t feel right about a flower literally named Flowey. It feels too innocent and pure to be true, but—well, Tim won’t be the one that attacks first. He never has been—he just needs to know things first. A skill Bruce taught him well. “You… talk.” He says, stating the obvious.
“Yep!” Flowey tilts his head, in a way that was mischievous and playful for a being without a neck. But Tim has seen worse—literal aliens. So nothing about Flowey’s appearance is particularly unsettling. “You must be new to the Underground, huh?”
“Underground? Is that…” Tim pauses as the final details click together. “You’re a monster. The legend is real. There really are monsters sealed underground.” Is this what happened to all the lost children? They fell down here, and ran into these… monsters?
Flowey seems nice. Too nice.
“Aww, you say it like it’s a bad thing!” Flowey cheerfully replies. “Ain’t nothing wrong with being a monster. Just means you got magic and a lot of love to share.” He winks.
Tim swallows the unease at the flower winking. Magic and love, yeah right. He tries not to look too distrusting of the flower, but the vibes? As Jason would say—the vibes are fucking weird down here.
“You must be really confused!” Flowey continues. “Someone should teach you how things work around here?”
“Um, no thank you, I can manage.” Tim replies, taking a step back, glancing at the room. There’s another archway with the same symbols above it, but Flowey is blocking the way.
Flowey notices Tim’s hesitance right away, and Tim can tell. “Well, hey, buddy—it’s a bit different down here than it is up on the Surface! Don’t worry, it’ll only take a few seconds!”
Tim tenses, as the air pressure in the room feels like it drops around him. The air gets colder, and then—something tugs at his chest. It’s not painful, but it is an odd sensation, pulling at something deep before it finally drags out the air in his lungs.
And then it flickers to life in front of him. A heart—not anatomical, not real, but glowing a bright crimson color. It floats in air, about half a foot away from his chest, and follows him as he takes a step back from it, like it’s attached and tethered to his chest.
He stares at it for a moment, blinking. He reaches out, and his fingers brush up on it. When he does, he feels the strangest tickle deep in his chest. “What the…?”
“That’s your SOUL!” Flowey explains. “It’s the very culmination of your being! Isn’t it adorable?”
Adorable? It’s a little heart, shaped like something that would be carved between initials in a tree or doodled in a notebook. It’s cute, sure, but knowing it’s his soul… It’s a bit strange. Tim is used to magic, but this feels incredibly different. He slowly slides his hand into his pocket, wrapping around his bo staff, still in its compacted form. “Sure.” Tim eventually comments, noting how the heart follows him back and forth when he moves.
“Down here, your soul will start off pretty weak. But it’ll grow stronger if it gains a lot of LV.”
“LV?”
“LOVE, of course!” Flowey grins. “And down here, LOVE is shared through little… white… friendliness pellets!” The flower smiles a little wider, trying to save his delivery. From the ground beneath the two of them, small white seeds float up into the air.
Tim doesn’t trust this already. Friendliness pellets? Yeah, right. This totally wasn’t suspicious.
“You want some LOVE, don’t ya?”
Tim pauses. And then shakes his head. “No thanks, I’m good.”
And then, he spots it—the briefest of flickers in Flowey’s eyes. Something else, buried deep inside. He slides his hand out of his pocket, holding tight to his collapsed bo staff. It doesn’t look any stranger than a little cylinder, though, and Flowey’s attention is fully on Tim’s face.
“Well, that’s just silly! Everybody needs a little bit of LOVE!” Flowey chirps again, recovering quickly. “But don’t you worry, I’ll share some with you! Here, catch as many as you can!”
The seeds floating around Flowey spin, before shooting out towards Tim and his soul. They’re fast, but Tim is trained, and he’s faster. His bo staff extends in barely a few seconds, and he deflects a few with it, before dropping to an evasive roll and missing the last three. The other seeds explode harmlessly into the stone behind him.
Flowey blinks. “Huh—what are you doing?” He asks, his eyes narrowing.
“Those were projectiles.” Tim states coldly, standing up, keeping his bo staff held out in front of him defensively. “I’m not stupid. I’ve seen magic before. And you weren’t aiming for me, you were aiming for—” His eyes flicker to the heart floating in front of his chest. “--my soul.”
There’s a moment of silence.
Flowey’s face falls for a second, before it morphs, melting and swirling into a new expression. His eyes narrow, and rows of large teeth form in his mouth. “I see. You’re not as dumb as you look.” Flowey snarls.
“Did you do this to the other children?” Tim asks, pointing one end of his staff at Flowey. “Did you kill them, too?”
Flowey looks at Tim-- and then laughs. Loud and dissonant, echoing off the stone around them. “Oh, I like you!” The demonic flower hisses, grin stretched far too wide. “A little detective, huh? Trying to solve the big mystery.” His face changes, again, to be some sort of gross imitation of Tim’s own. “Oh, look at me! I’m just a kid playing detective! Bah!” It morphs back to Flowey’s own grotesque grin. “Real noble, huh.”
Tim’s grip on his bo staff tightens. Bruce’s no kill rule exists for a reason in Gotham, but technically, Tim isn’t in Gotham, and he’s sure he could argue stomping the flower in front of him into the ground was done in only self-defense and self-preservation. It’s like how he’d talked about blowing up the League of Assassin’s bases. Technically, anyone who died was killed by the debris. Not by Tim’s own hand. Even if it was the one that set the bombs.
(Not that Bruce knows that Tim set those bombs off, anyway.)
“Well, guess what, detective?” Flowey sneers. “There’s no clues left! No evidence left. Just dust.” Tendril-like vines, covered in sharp red thorns, begin to grow out of the ground from under Flowey, the ends of the vines covered in claws.
He’s escalating, Tim notes. Trying to provoke a response from me. Tim’s grip stays tight, even as the vines approach him. He stays still, tight, disciplined, just like he’s been trained to do. His soul, outstretched in front of him, flickers slightly with trepidation as Tim drops back defensively.
“You think you’re gonna save anyone? You think you’re the hero of this story? Well, guess what, detective—” More seeds shoot out from the ground, surrounding Tim in a circle, as the vines trap him in. “You’ll die just like the rest of them! In this world, it’s kill or be killed—”
A small light flickers in the distance. A small burst of flame shoots out, and hits Flowey directly in the step. It sends him flying out of the ground and into the darkness of the walls beyond them. Tim stays braced, even as his soul disappears back into his chest, as more footsteps approach. He turns, keeping the bo staff pointed defensively, as a larger monster steps into the light.
A large, goat-like monster approaches, covered in a soft layer of white fur. They’re about the same height as Jason is, tall and broadly built. They’re dressed in a tunic and gown, with the same strange symbol of circles and triangles stitched into the purple fabric. They approach cautiously, and their eyes—a warm maroon—are full of something else.
Concern.
“Oh, what a horrible monster, torturing an innocent youth.” The monster says quietly, before stopping, noting Tim’s stance and bo staff. Her eyes widen, taking a step backwards. “Be at ease, child. I will bring you no harm.”
Tim stays still; his bo staff pointed at the new monster. “Oh yeah? That’s what the last guy said.” He replies, the snark sharp on his tone.
“Please, do not be afraid.” The monster says again, her voice dropping to a softer tone. “I can promise you I will not harm you. I am Toriel, caretaker of these ruins.”
Tim reads her body language, up and down. Nothing stands out to him as obviously harmful; not as obvious as Flowey’s was. Her eyes are warm, and full of that concern still. His soul wasn’t out, either, and she wasn’t attacking him. It could be a ploy, but… She seems honest enough. And her body language shows as such, too. And she’d saved him from Flowey.
Maybe… It wouldn’t be impossible… to trust her?
He slowly lowers his bo staff, his eyes trained on the symbol across her tunic. “You… Saved me from Flowey.” He eventually says, keeping his voice still guarded. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Toriel smiles softly. “I protect all those who come to the Ruins. I visit here often, checking to see if any more have fallen down. You are not injured, are you?”
Tim shakes his head. His body still aches a bit from the fall, but nothing he can’t push through. “No, I’m, um, I’m okay.” He presses the button on the side of his bo staff, collapsing it back into its small form.
“Come, child. I will lead you through the Ruins to my home, where you may rest.”
Not a kid, Tim wants to reply, but doesn’t. He stays quiet as Toriel stands back up taller, and motions for him to follow her through the second archway. He glances back to the hallway behind him, where he should head back to, to wait for a rescue.
But the children… The six children before him, who went missing, no doubt fell into this strange Underground world. And, well, Tim was here. He should continue the investigation, as planned.
❣❤️❣
>> RED ROBIN HAS GONE OFFLINE.
>> SIGNAL LOST.
>> LAST LOCATION: MT. EBBOT, PA.