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Around hour four, Jason puts his fist through the wall.
It’s not really a wall, of course, just like it’s not really four hours, because Tim knows as well as anyone that time doesn’t work normally in dreams, but his watch has ticked on, diligent as the rest of his gear, and the wall is still solid enough to crumble.
It’s not real, but it is the spitting replica of his own childhood bedroom, and he can’t help but feel a pang of annoyance at the property damage. His parents wouldn't have been happy about that one.
They’d tried the door first, both of them, Jason slamming against it with his shoulder and Tim jiggling around with his lockpicks, but even when they managed to push it off one of the hinges in a combined feat of strength, it had simply smoothed itself over, a moment later. A perfectly constructed locked room of a fortress. The very stuff of nightmares, as it turned out.
“Do you mind?” Tim asks now, and as much as he tries his best to be scathing, the words come out somewhere closer to tired.
God, Tim’s already so tired of this, and it’s only been four hours - relatively speaking.
“Fucking thing has it out for me,” Jason growls.
Since the failed escape attempt, he’s been pacing, back and forth by the door, his steps getting slower with each minute that ticks by, precise movements growing sluggish, the hard line of his shoulders climbing higher and higher. He hasn’t taken his helmet off, but if Tim could see his eyes, he’s certain there would be a haze of green around them.
Tim gets it. Really, he does. It hits a lot harder all at once than it used to over the course of a week or so, when his body had time to accommodate itself, the slow slide into lack.
It has the same outcome though: the dizziness, the darkening at the corners of his eyes when he looks too sharply in one direction, the cramping in his stomach. Oh, and he’s cold. Tim had forgotten about that one. Did he always used to get this cold?
He pulls his cape a little tighter around his shoulders and does his best to ignore the way his fingers are already shaking from the movement.
He tips his head back against the wall by his bed, studies Jason vaguely as he slumps against the newly made hole. Tim can’t see much through it, when he squints, besides a vague dark blue substance that probably has more symbolic value than anything.
They are stuck in a dream, after all.
“What do you mean?” He asks. Distracting Jason is probably the best course of action right now, and Tim’s working with a significant lack of resources on that front. So, conversation it is. “I’m pretty sure Insomnia has it out for both of us. That’s why we’re, you know." He attempts a weak gesture. "Here.”
It’s not very helpful, in the way of distractions, but Tim isn’t the world’s greatest conversationalist at the best of times, and right now he feels kind of like his brain might be leaking out of any number of orifices. The first hints of a headache throb at his temples.
“Oh are we?” Jason’s saying now, his voice still low enough for growl territory, but it lacks something of its previous edge. “I can see why they call you a detective. Observational prowess…” he breaks off for a moment, like he can’t quite track the immediate end of the sentence. It comes to him a beat later, “off the charts.”
“Look,” Tim says. And, fuck, Dick would be so much better at this. “I think we just have to wait this one out. Unless you want to go out there and fight some nightmare version of the Joker without being able to see straight.”
He doesn’t miss the way Jason’s head jerks up, or the way he shoves a shoulder against the hole a bit more roughly, just after, like he needs to steady himself.
“Yeah, well, maybe I should,” Jason, says, after a moment of would-be awkward silence. “The asshole’s clearly getting off on something in my head. Probably a fucking gift to the guy, finding someone this fucked up.”
Tim goes to roll his eyes, then pauses.
“Hold on, what do you mean in your head?” Jason stares at him, helmet eyes blank. “We’ve run into plenty of shit from both of us.”
As if to punctuate Tim’s point, a sound comes from somewhere beyond the door, reminiscent of Tim’s own name. Maybe it’s his dad again, calling weakly from the pool of his slowly cooling blood. Or maybe it’s a thing of anger, a why didn’t you save me? Or why were you never good enough or something else pointed enough to hurt in a dull way, like a bruise he’d long since gotten used to pressing.
Jason slumps a bit further.
“My dad?” Tim prompts. Then amends, “Well, his corpse.”
“Oh, yeah. One guy. Real scary, Replacement.”
“What are you -”
Jason starts counting on one hand. “Lazarus pit at the entrance, Joker bullshit, those weird Red Hood clones, this shit. That not enough for you?”
Tim spends a moment blinking.
“This - Hood, wait, this one isn’t -”
Jason cuts him off again. It seems like he’s trying to argue, but lacks the energy.
“I’m not really in the mood for a heart-to-heart about my childhood, but starving on the streets was kind of a staple for me, before Robin. Let's just say I’m glad my parents haven’t made an appearance yet.”
Tim does know this, in the vague way he knows about all of the Bats and the assortment of heartbreaks that led them to the manor and the avenging balm of darkness. He knows that Jason’s mom was an addict; he knows that he spent time on his own in Crime Alley, presumably doing what all kids alone on the streets of Crime Alley did to survive. He knows the story with the Batmobile tires too, of course, and he also knows that he can never and will never talk to Jason about any of it.
“I know,” is what Tim says, finally, and it comes out softer than he intends. “It’s just that, well, we’re in my bedroom and I think I only started feeling…like this when we got here.”
Ran in, being the operative word, propelled by the shifting hallways of horrible dreamscape. It had been the only place to go, in the space between one turn and another.
“So what? Everyone dreams about their childhood.” Jason sighs. “Probably something to do with the whole daddy issues guilt complex from before.”
“I -”
“Will you shut up? I’m trying to say sorry.”
That pulls Tim up short.
“Sorry?” he repeats, stupidly. “For what?”
“For this! Idiot. For dragging you through all my East End shit. I’m getting fucking sick of the soul searching and I just…I really hate being hungry.”
“Me too,” Tim says, quiet.
There’s a beat of silence, broken only by Jason’s unimpressed Hm. Which Tim kind of appreciates, because he doesn’t have the energy for a fight right now, verbal or otherwise.
And the thing is, Jason has done a lot of shit since he’s been back in their lives, a lot of it to Tim personally, but he’s getting worked up over nothing and this, at least, is something Tim can relieve him of.
“Hey, look,” Tim says. “This one is definitely me. From my head. You know. Nightmare shit.
There’s another hm, this time along with a slight tilt of the helmet. The light from the lamp at Tim's bedside glints weirdly off the angle and it makes his head swim. He squeezes his eyes closed; speaks the rest to his closed eyelids, “We’re locked in my bedroom, and we’re hungry. It’s probably my nightmare.”
“What?” And that’s at least three times more emotion than Jason has displayed since they crossed the threshold of the stupid room to begin with. It should put Tim on his guard, he thinks, but can't find it in him to feel much besides that horrible, bone-deep exhaustion.
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
Jason ignores him. “You grew up in the literal lap of luxury. Your house was, like, a brisk walk away from the Manor.”
Tim shrugs and the movement feels torn out of him. It sort of hurts to move at all. It always had, when he went long enough like this.
He remembers once when he was young enough not to think a plan all the way through, when he was already on day-something without dinners, and he’d managed to escalate the situation to make his mom his mom angry enough to lock him away - from the outside, of course, Tim had taught himself to pick locks for fun at the age of six - and then, Tim assumed, she’d gotten so caught up in the hectic push before an important trip that she forgot to let him out again. He’d tried calling after their car from the window, but it was far enough from the driveway that the sound didn’t carry.
He’d sat for a little over a day, before deciding to brave the climb. This was before he’d even started his nighttime Bat-watching hobby, so he wasn’t entirely practiced with the whole scaling rooftops gig. He’d made it down the side of the house, eventually, scraping his palms against the siding and the drainpipe, and around to find the front door locked. The effort of moving each of his individual limbs felt like dragging them through led, like the signals of his brain weren’t connecting to their physical counterparts the way they were supposed to.
It had gone on from there, a stupid saga born of his own poor decision making, faded and muzzy in the back of his head now, partially from the aforementioned days without adequate caloric intake, and partially because it wasn’t the kind of memory that Tim bothered to keep up with.
There wasn’t much worth remembering about it, besides the sharp pain of his own failures, and he had plenty more important things knocking around in his head with the same acidic taste. Like swallowing blood.
Case in point, Tim startles, embarrassingly off guard, at the feeling of another body beside him, and when he looks over he finds Jason maneuvering himself to the floor in a series of slurred movements that Tim understands more than he’d ever admit.
“Hole’s gone,” Jason says.
And when Tim looks over again, he can see it too. The wall beside the door has smoothed over, looking immaculate as it always did when he lived here, a white expanse of nothing.
A few beats pass, and for lack of anything better to focus on, Tim counts his own breaths. He makes himself watch the door, instead of the ceiling, which he’s already spent far too many of his waking hours memorizing. If he looks up, he knows, there will be a small patch of darkness in the corner above the bed, a trick of angled light filtering through curtains, that always seemed like something sinister to him as a kid, watching the spot blur in and out in his increasingly fuzzy periphery.
“I’m sure there’s a way through this one,” Tim says, finally, once he manages to pull his thoughts back from the shadows. “Just like the rest of them. There must be.” It’s how Insomnia’s whole game has worked so far.
It’s just a case of puzzling his way to a solution, which Tim usually loves more than anything. When he can think in a straight enough line to get to one.
Beside him, Jason shrugs. He’s nearly close enough for Tim to feel the movement.
“What did you used to do?” Jason asks, then is quick to tack on, “Since this is apparently your memory.”
“Right,” Tim volleys it back, weakly. “Not like you’re trying to bond or anything.”
“Never.”
Jason’s not arguing, though, he’s just tired. Probably as tired as Tim feels.
He’s also right. They’ve trekked their way through a whole host of psychological bullshit by doing what seemed initially like the opposite of instinct. Jason asking for backup, Tim sitting back and listening to Jason’s stilted praise rather than the ravings of his half-dead father on the floor.
In fact, when he thinks back, it seems like Jason’s been the one doing most of the heavy lifting so far. That tracks too, as these things go.
“Usually I climbed out the window,” Tim says, finally, and he pointedly ignores the snort Jason gives him in response, not quite amused. “But if we’re thinking about the underlying psychological lesson here…I’m not sure our current approach will be helpful.”
“What would the opposite of that be?” Jason asks.
“Uh.” Tim lets his head thump back against the wall. “Sitting here. I guess.”
“Fuck.”
Tim watches another few minutes tick by on his watch, sluggish as the rest of him feels. He pointedly does not let his mind wander towards food, to the Manor or Alfred, or the scent of something savory wafting down the hall from the kitchen. The promise of light and company, once just as tantalizing as a full meal.
It makes Tim feel just as pathetic as he did back then, desperate for something he could only imagine; something he hadn’t cobbled together alone, in secret, with the light of his parent’s huge, empty fridge for company.
This too is a hole, Tim knows. One he can’t afford to fall back into.
“What did you used to do?” He asks, finally. His voice is just a little thin, he’s pleased to note, steady enough given the circumstance.
Jason’s helmet tips towards him, inquiring.
“When you were…hungry,” Tim says. “What did you do?”
He’s is quiet for long enough that Tim thinks he won’t answer. There’s a good thirty seconds of empty space.
Then, “Stole, usually. Sometimes begged.” There’s a sound like a breath. “Tracked down my dad once, when he was away, to ask for help, and then spent a while hiding from him afterwards.”
Tim schools his face into a careful sort of non-reaction. Like Jason said, this is very much not the time for a conversation, especially not one like this, that neither of them would ever have signed up for.
“I’m not sure that applies here,” Tim says, finally. And it’s true, in a sense. He certainly never had to hide from his parents. In fact, he spent most of his time in their presence doing the opposite: craving attention, clawing his way up for discarded scraps of it.
“Hasn’t applied for a long time,” Jason says. “And then I died. I’m not sure anything that happened back then really counts anymore.”
And that, well…sure, it makes no sense, starvation or otherwise, but Tim understands the sentiment better than he probably should.
“I get it,” he says. “Not the dying part, but so much has happened since this was relevant.” In the past year. Hell, in the past six. “There are a lot of other things to be hung up over. This one doesn’t matter.” A beat. “It shouldn’t.”
Jason favors him with another hm, all too Bruce-like for either of them to fully appreciate, Tim imagines.
Then, he says, “How often?”
And it’s Tim’s turn for the hm?
“How often did it happen? The food thing.”
“Oh, um. I don’t know. Every so often. Like I said, I didn’t die or anything.”
It’s a lame attempt at humor and it lands just as flat as Tim expects. Jason doesn’t even pick up the bait about the dead joke. He just watches Tim through the dark slits of his helmet.
Then, “Did it happen while I was Robin?”
Oh.
“Yeah,” Tim says, quietly. “Sometimes.”
“We were neighbors,” Jason says, and Tim must be imagining that the words sound tighter than before.
“Yeah,” Tim agrees. “We were. But there’s no way you could have known. I usually wasn’t stuck in here, by then. I got better at escaping.”
Which only gave his parents more to complain about, of course, but he doesn’t need to say that bit out loud.
Jason turns away, the helmet clunking softly as he looks up to the ceiling. Tim wonders if he’s spotted the dark patch too. Jason’s always had an eye for that kind of metaphor.
“I should have noticed.”
“How could you have noticed, Hood?”
“It was my fucking job.”
“No, it wasn’t - “
“It’s Robin’s job!”
Jason’s breathing is heavier now, Tim can hear it beneath the helmet, harsh, like he’s spent the past hour running on rooftops, or wrestling a gang of traffickers into submission.
He hasn’t though. He’s been right here on the floor, beside Tim. Asleep, in every technical sense of the word.
“You saved the city approximately twice a week. The world too, a few times.”
This time, when Jason shrugs it’s right against Tim’s arm, the elbow of a leather jacket rubbing the kevlar of Tim’s suit.
“Maybe. But this shit? It sucks.” It’s such a ridiculous statement that Tim can’t help the snort that follows. “I’m serious. This was fucking illegal. You know that right?”
It’s Tim’s turn to shrug. “My parents are dead. It’s kind of water under the bridge.”
Jason laughs then, a strangled sound that doesn’t sound quite as humorous as it should.
“They should be glad about that. I might pay them a visit, otherwise.”
Tim lets himself lean to the side a bit, and when he isn’t met with resistance, slides until his head rests against the bulk of Jason’s shoulder. It’s not as cold as before, probably due to the shared body heat. And Jason’s clearly thinking along the same lines, because he doesn’t shrug Tim off or move away. After a moment, he even shifts a little, so Tim can feel the light pressure of something smooth and metallic against his forehead.
If it were anyone else, Tim might have fumbled his way through a reassurance in exchange, might say something about how Jason’s thing was even more illegal than his, or how Batman and Robin were flying around the city just as frequently as they had been during Tim’s would-be childhood.
It’s not anyone else though; it’s Jason, who Tim has spent the past four-plus hours learning has two lifetimes worth of evidence that vulnerability is always met with violence, a green-tinged, echoing thing.
That, and Tim doesn’t want to shatter whatever this is now, the tenuous sort of peace. His stomach isn’t really cramping anymore either, and when he opens his eyes again, the darkness at the corners has receded.
Instead of any of that, he says, “Maybe we can have breakfast. When we wake up.”
It’s the normal thing to do after you sleep.
“Sure, kid.” Jason’s voice filters down to him, softer than he’s probably ever heard it. “I’ll cook you some fuckin’ breakfast.”
His watch ticks on, somewhere on the floor between them, and Tim lets himself float in the feeling, barely lifting his head from Jason’s shoulder until a sound across the room draws him back: the soft click of a lock.
The door swings open.