Chapter Text
It’s dark. It’s been dark now for, Tim estimates, three weeks. It’s not clear why he’s being held. They don’t seem to want information from him, or to use his brain, or to use his body. The goal seems simply to be for him to suffer. Sleep deprivation, beatings, mind games, electrocution. No questions about Batman or Nightwing or the Titans — no suggestions or hypnosis or anything else that might mean that they’re playing a long game and trying to brainwash him — not much talking at all, just slaps and punches and kicks and cold water thrown over him at night and cigarette burns on his arms and legs.
This would make sense if he was being held by a lone sadist or group of sadists but the people holding him are obviously professionals. He can hear it in their voices, feel it in how disinterested and passionless the beatings are. They’re just doing a job. So. Someone’s hired these people to hurt Robin. It’s possible that the goal is to destabilize Batman but three weeks is a really long time to hold him without killing him if that’s the aim. Unless they think that Batman would struggle more with a missing Robin than with a dead Robin. But that doesn’t make sense either. They must know that Batman is a detective and that he won’t go crazy while there’s still a mystery to unravel — and they must know that, the last time Batman was driven crazy by the fate of a Robin, it didn’t exactly work to the advantage of Gotham’s crime gangs.
Tim puzzles away at the mystery when his fragmented mind can do anything at all, but he never expects to actually solve it before he’s killed or rescued. It’s just something to pass the time and calm his mind, something that makes him feel like he’s still himself, Tim Drake, Robin, not just a punching bag made of torn flesh and burning nerve endings.
When the mystery is suddenly solved — when he hears that familiar modulated voice above him and sees a flash of gleaming red before the light blinds him and forces him to squeeze his stinging eyes shut — he almost can’t believe how simple it is. Who wants Tim to suffer, just for the sake of Tim’s suffering? After Titans Tower, there’s only one likely answer. The only reason he hasn’t thought of it before is that the Red Hood is also Jason Todd and Tim is still a moron when it comes to Jason Todd. It would never have occurred to him that Jason would pay some goons to just lock Tim in a dungeon and beat him all day, every day, for no reason, just because he wants that. Jason would never, the idiot thirteen-year-old in his brain shrieks, even as he’s hoisted into the Red Hood’s arms and his bruised ribs scream agony and he remembers the delighted malice in Jason’s green eyes at the Tower.
“Look at me,” Hood orders and Tim forces his eyes open for another agonizing split-second before he has to slam them shut again. His heart is racing.
“How long have you had him in the dark?” Hood demands and he sounds angry. Tim’s brain gives up around then, even as his pulse tries to pick up speed at the sound of Hood’s anger. He passes out before he hears the answer.
When he comes back to himself, he’s — not in the dark any more. His face is cold and his uniform is gone and the light is very very white. He’s lying naked on something hard. Everything is white. For one vertiginous moment, a worse panic than any he’s ever experienced before overtakes him — Jason wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, even the Red Hood wouldn’t — and then he realizes that the hard white place is a bath and there’s warm soapy water covering him and a sponge scrubbing slowly down his left arm. The water is red with his blood. He makes a sound and tilts his head up and it’s not the red helmet he sees, it’s Jason. Green eyes. White streak of hair. Hard set mouth. So much anger.
“Stop that,” Jason snaps and Tim realizes that the high thin noise he can hear is his own voice, whimpering. He strangles the sound down. Some part of him is deeply embarrassed that he’s behaving so pathetically in front of Jason Todd, as if impressing Jason with his daring as Robin is somehow still on the table now that Jason is the Red Hood and hates Robin and hates Tim and hates Tim for being Robin. It’s delusional but indulging the delusion helps him to shut down the whine and that’s almost a victory. He drifts, as Jason works slowly and clinically over his body with the sponge. The touch is very gentle, as if Jason is trying to avoid aggravating any of his injuries. Tim’s mind tries, sluggishly, to understand this but his mind gave up some time ago. It gave up the first moment he heard that voice in his cell and was blinded by the light striking off the red helmet. He’s done being a detective for now. Maybe forever, depending on what Jason’s plan is. It doesn’t matter. He can’t think about it any more.
Jason pulls the plug. Red and black and filth swirl down the drain. A huge towel is suddenly swathed around him. He’s being lifted. His head is on Jason’s shoulder. He has the disconnected thought that Jason will be furious at Tim for putting his head on Jason’s shoulder but that drifts away too. Everything drifts away.
When he wakes up again, he’s in a bed. He’s wearing pyjamas that are too big for him and he’s covered in bandages and there’s a stent in his arm and an IV drip. Jason is sitting next to the bed, scowling down at his hands. He’s holding a gun in his right hand, loosely gripped and resting on his left thigh. He’s still bare-faced — no domino, even — and he’s wearing a navy sweatshirt and jeans like any Gotham U college student. Only the gun is out of place.
Tim’s mouth is too dry to let him speak. He makes a kind of creaking sound and Jason glances up and his eyes go from teal to green. He grabs a glass of water next to the bed and shoves it at Tim. Tim’s hands are too weak to grip it; he almost spills and then Jason curses and the glass is being held to his lips. There are ice chips in the water. They’re the best thing that Tim has ever tasted.
“What,” Tim says when he’s swallowed enough of the water that he has his voice and some of his mind back. “What happens now?”
“I’m not calling them,” Jason says. “You’re gonna have to stay here till you’re fixed.”
He sounds furiously angry, as if Tim has demanded something outrageous from him, spoiled child that he is. It’s a familiar tone — his dad often sounded like that too — but it’s confusing this time because Tim hasn’t asked for anything and it’s unclear why Jason thinks that Tim wanting something might matter. I’m not calling them. If Tim was still a detective, he’d figure it out, but —
“Who?”
Jason frowns at him, angrier than ever.
“What?”
“Them,” Tim says and Jason’s irritated glare intensifies. Tim blinks and makes himself produce a full sentence. “Who are you not calling?”
“Batman,” Jason says. “Nightwing. Agent A. Who else?”
“I,” Tim says and then realizes, to his horror, that his eyes have filled with tears. It was a mistake to picture Bruce’s face, looking at him, to imagine Dick’s arms gathering him in. He’s too weak to stop the tears spilling over, the next time he blinks. Hood is going to kill him. He can’t even move his hands to wipe his face.
“Sorry,” he gasps out and Jason reaches over and for a second Tim thinks he’s about to be smothered and then he realizes that Jason has a tissue in his hands and he’s — wiping Tim’s face. Roughly, briskly, but not. Not unkindly.
“Blow,” he says and Tim blows his nose, too bewildered to do anything but obey. Jason grimaces and then drops the snotty tissue in the garbage can next to the bed. He picks up the gun again and holds onto it, a little aimlessly. He’s not pointing it at Tim anyway.
“It’s not going to be long,” he says roughly. “They,” he pauses, draws a deep breath, goes on, “those assholes didn’t break anything. It’s all tissue damage.”
Is that — bad? Did Jason ask for broken bones and is that why he’s so mad? He wanted more damage done before he got to work himself? Tim hates the fact that he can’t stop himself from asking questions even when he can’t bear to imagine the answers.
“This is my place,” Jason says curtly. “You’ll be fine here. I’ll take you home once you’re all healed up.”
What.
“What?” Tim says weakly and Jason’s frown deepens.
“You’re dehydrated,” he says. “And malnourished. You’re not going to be able to make it home by yourself. And I’m not calling them.”
Nothing makes sense. Tim does a quick breathing exercise and forces the rest of his tired brain online, makes himself listen again to every word Jason has said since the first moment he came into Tim’s cell.
“I thought,” he says, once he’s reached a conclusion, too weak to stop himself from saying it out loud. “Those weren’t your guys?”
The gun slips from Hood’s hand with a ringing clatter. His face has gone dead white and his eyes are neon green. Tim’s heart almost stops with terror.
“What the fuck did you say to me?”
“Sorry,” Tim says breathlessly. He wants to raise his hands placatingly — to shield his face — but he’s still too weak. “Sorry, I didn’t mean, I didn’t know, I’m sorry, please don’t —”
“Shut up,” Jason almost shouts and Tim shuts up and then there’s the loudest silence Tim has ever heard in his life. Jason is breathing so fast that it’s scary and his hands are clenched into fists and Tim is trying really hard to be quiet but he can hear himself making that stupid whine again, thrumming in the back of his throat. He wants to put his hand over his mouth but he still can’t move his hands.
Jason stares at him, white-faced, furious, but he does nothing. He just sits there and stares. After some time, his breathing slows.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says coldly. Tim tries to believe this and fails. Jason still looks so angry.
“Replacement,” Jason says, in a gentler voice. “Hey hey. Tim. Breathe. Follow me, okay? Just breathe.”
He’s doing a very simple box pattern, four in, hold for eight, four out. Tim falls into the rhythm with him and some time goes by, he doesn’t know how long. Jason looks pale and exhausted but not that angry any more.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says again. “Those weren’t my guys. They’re Mask’s guys. I found you when I was tracking him.”
Oh. Tim frowns. That’s weird.
“Why,” he asks and Jason scowls again.
“Business,” he snaps and it takes Tim another moment to make sense of the misunderstanding.
“No,” he says. “Why did he — why did he keep me?”
“Hell if I know,” Jason says but he’s frowning too, his head tilted a little to one side, achingly familiar. Robin is always a detective. Jason can’t ignore a puzzle any more than Tim can.
“He killed,” Tim says thickly. “He killed Steph.”
“Who?”
“Robin,” Tim says dumbly and flinches at the look on Jason’s face. “She was Robin when my dad was — when I couldn’t be.”
“Mask killed her?” Jason’s eyes are terrifying again. “How old was she?”
“Fifteen,” Tim says. His voice breaks. Jason shuts his eyes.
“Shit,” he says softly. “I’m so sick of this shit.”
Tim almost laughs. It’s so strange to find himself agreeing with Jason.
“But he didn’t kill me,” he says. His brain won’t let it go. “He took me and he didn’t — use me. Or kill me. He just told them to hurt me. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“But it makes sense for me?” Jason demands and Tim’s brain is still not really firing on all cylinders, he’s so distracted by the problem, and so he answers the question before he can think about it.
“You hate me,” he points out. “Like. Me personally. Mask doesn’t hate me personally.”
Jason’s face is that frightening dead white again. Tim does the breathing exercise without help this time, watching Jason’s knuckles whiten on the gun in his hand. The safety is on, he points out to himself. Jason said he wasn’t going to hurt Tim. Tim’s never known Jason to lie.
“I don’t hate you,” Jason says, neatly disproving the hypothesis. His eyes are glowing with hatred as he says it. “It’s not — it wasn’t about you.”
“Oh,” Tim says. He doesn’t know what that means but he doesn’t want to ask. His brain is starting to flicker like a spent light bulb, staticky and jagged.
He shuts his eyes. A hand lands on his forehead, warm, callused, gentle. He thinks he hears words but they’re muffled and distant. For the first time in three weeks, he feels safe enough to drop into a proper sleep. The hand on his forehead follows him as he dissolves into sleep, warm and strong and kind, like the best dreams he’s ever had. He hopes he doesn’t wake up for a long long time.