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Being pushed out of a second-story window didn't hurt, but hitting the ground did.
Tim lay there for a moment, gasping for breath that refused to come in. Distantly, he heard Batman yelling something from above him, he assumed to himself, but everything sounded like he'd been submerged in water, distant and dreamy. It was very tempting to just lay there and let whatever happened happen.
He felt something like hands land on his shoulders, a presence behind his back other than concrete.
"Get up," a familiar voice whispered. "Before he does something he'll regret."
Jason was right. Tim rolled over so he could push himself up on his hands and knees, and eventually shakily got both feet beneath him, clinging to the wall with both hands to keep his balance.
"You're running out of time," Jason hissed.
He was. The sounds from above were getting worse. Tim was pretty sure he could feel broken glass from the window digging through his suit and into his skin, but he tried to compartmentalize.
"I-I'm fi-ine," he stammered.
"You'll have to be louder than that," Jason said.
"I'm fine," Tim repeated, slightly louder, then shouted, "Batman, I'm fine!"
There was a brief pause in the action. When it resumed, it was much less frantic. Tim slumped his back against the wall, panting, but Jason remained there in front of him, head tilted and hands on his hips.
"What if he looks down?" he asked. "Then you'll be in for it when he finds out how much trouble you're in."
"Not s'posed to hide things from Batman," Tim reminded himself dutifully.
"He's such a pain about injuries, though," Jason said. "Always has been."
Tim tried to push himself forward off of the wall, but found himself nearly falling on his face instead as the whole world tilted. He turned around as quickly as he could to hold onto the wall again until the world stopped moving. He slowly turned back around and leaned his back against the wall once more.
"Signs of a concussion," Jason mused. "You're in even more trouble than we thought."
Tim sighed. It felt like it was always him who got injured, especially lately. Not that he'd prefer Bruce to be injured, of course not. He'd prefer if neither of them got injured.
"He'll probably bench you for a week, at least," Jason commented.
"At least," Tim agreed.
"Who are you talking to?" Batman asked, landing beside him.
Tim merely smiled.
Tim was in, it had to be said, quite a bit of pain. Which wasn't new, per se, but the blow to his worldview was.
The black eye would go away, and the bleeding, which looked a lot worse than it actually was due to most of his injuries being on his face, had already been taken care of. The internal bleeding would solve itself, he figured. He was just lucky the metal bow staff hadn't managed to hit him. His ego was ever so slightly bruised, but that was ignorable. All of it was ignorable, in the face of the devastating truth in front of him.
"What a sight," Jason said, his tone almost cheerful. "You're in a state, aren't you?"
That was the long and short of it. Tim sighed.
"You've met me now," Jason commented blithely. "Don't you think it's about time you quit visualizing me whenever you're down in the dumps?"
That would be the logical course of action, absolutely.
"Do you think of me after beatings because of my death?" Jason wondered. "Is that why you imagine Dick during the emotional moments? Seems a bit unbalanced if you ask me."
Tim had actual memories of Dick helping him when he was feeling particularly down, which made it much easier to visualize him in those cases even when he wasn't present. Tim prided himself on his accuracy of Dick's character throughout.
Tim only knew Jason as Robin. The Robin who was killed violently. It only made sense to associate him with violence. Perhaps even moreso now, having been directly, violently, beaten up by him. Tim sighed again, rubbing his forehead and wincing when he hit a bruise.
"It's unhealthy to imagine people who beat you up in a positive manner," Jason pointed out, absurdly reasonable.
Tim knew that, obviously, but whether Jason beat him up or not didn't matter, because that was the Red Hood Jason, not Robin Jason. And Tim was separating them firmly in his mind. It would only truly be unhealthy if Tim visualized the Red Hood in his time of need.
"I don't think that's how it works," Jason said. "But whatever you say. Does me telling you you look a right mess make you feel better?"
"It does, actually," Tim replied.
And Jason had nothing to say to that. Because Tim was avoiding thinking about it.
Tim woke up with a massive, pounding headache to find Jason standing over him. And not the small, lithe form of Robin, but the large, bulking figure of Red Hood. Tim stared for a long moment, his mind mostly blank.
"I'm self-destructive," he realized.
"That wasn't what I was going to say," Jason said. "But you make a fair point."
"You're real," Tim sighed, relieved.
Jason raised an eyebrow. He looked quite a bit like he was judging him. Tim thought that was a bit rude. Jason didn't even know the context for Tim's comment.
"You don't seem surprised to see me," Jason observed. "Do you remember what happened?"
Tim thought about it. His memory was a little fuzzy. Last he clearly recalled, he'd been talking to Bruce about something, the contents of which were escaping him. Midway through that conversation, things got blurry.
"I'll take your prolonged silence as a no," Jason decided. "You showed up yesterday. You kept purposefully to the corner of my vision, stalking behind me but never there when I turned to face you. You did nothing else beside watch me. You did this all day and well into the night. You then broke into my safehouse, crawled into my bed, and told me that you wanted to haunt me half as much as I've haunted you."
Tim looked down. The bed beneath him definitely wasn't his. The bedsheets were either stolen from Alfred or picked out by someone with similar tastes to Alfred's. This was almost certainly Jason's bed. Meaning he was probably not lying. Tim looked back up to find Jason watching him expectantly.
"Care to explain?" he offered.
"Which part?" Tim asked.
"Any part," Jason replied. "Well, actually. While the comment about me haunting you intrigues me, I guess what I really want to know is why you followed me around all day."
Tim let out the smallest possible breath of relief. Explaining to Jason his self-comfort technique would only serve to make them both uncomfortable.
"I mean, I've always considered following you around on the edge of your vision for a day," Tim admitted, since that was a far easier thing to admit to. "I don't remember why I did it yesterday, but it has been on my to-do list for a while."
"Okay," Jason said. "Now explain the haunting-"
"I was probably drugged," Tim stated, slightly hurriedly. "Things get blurry after a certain point yesterday and I've got a headache. It probably lowered my inhibitions."
"Who would've slipped you something that lowers inhibitions?" Jason asked.
Tim thought about it. The last person he remembered seeing was Bruce. But, Bruce wouldn't do that. Bruce was against the majority of mind-altering substances. He wouldn't use them on himself, much less someone else. Tim thought a bit harder to try and remember if he'd pissed off Barbara or Alfred lately.
"And the haunting?" Jason suggested.
"I imagine you whenever I'm in trouble," Tim answered without thinking, thoughts still focused on who would've drugged him.
"What?" Jason asked.
"What?" Tim repeated.
"You imagine me whenever you're in trouble?" Jason questioned. "Why?"
Tim floundered for a moment.
"Is it some weird sort of me telling you off-" Jason began.
"No!" Tim insisted. "It's nothing weird."
"I think no matter how you explain it, it'll be weird," Jason corrected.
"I'm trying to figure out who drugged me," Tim muttered. "I don't have time for this conversation."
He climbed out of Jason's bed and then clambered out through the window. He paused briefly on the sill.
"Just pretend you didn't hear that," he ordered, face slightly red.
He left. Jason stared after him for a moment, then looked down at his bed. He couldn't speak for how much he haunted Tim, but the sight of Tim in his bed was definitely going to haunt him for at least the rest of his life.