Chapter Text
Title: A Simple Question
Verse: My Brother's Keeper.
Fandom: DCU- Batman.
Rating: R.
Genre: Overall: action, romance, angst, introspection, slice of life.
Wordcount: 1540 circa.
Characters/Pairings: Jason Todd and Tim Drake. Possible cameos by Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Roy Harper. Has a 99,9% to stray off the gen path and become a shippy JayTim verse towards the end.
Warnings: Self-betaed. Mostly old-canon. Violence, blood.
Summary: All in all, it was a really simple question. “Who are you?”.
Nemenote: Okay. This. This has been in the back-burner for, literally, years. I kid you not. It hasn't been written years ago, though. I just had the basic idea for this verse very, very early in my fandom venture. I never quite knew how to start this, and besides, I've got so many plotnotes for so many different verses, that this was... put away. Not forgotten, but... gave up upon, if you know what I mean. Then the other night I dreamed this. I feel so lame, but I that's what happened. *sheepish shrug* I saw this story unfold, from beginning to end. And while I forgot most details – the hell were you doing in Gotham, Roy? - I suddenly had the urge to write the prologue. It's a bit confusing, but that's its charm, I guess. XD
Also: in the original plan, this was supposed to be six chapter top, all medium-lenght. I... don't know if that still stands. I may write short ficlets for it instead. We'll see. /babbling.
* * * * *
He wakes up, and everything around him is dark.
It's as though he hasn't opened his eyes at all – the back of his eyelids and the world around him are the same shade of teeming, cruel black, closing in on him on all sides like surging waters.
He blinks quickly, but no image appears, not even those gaseous shapes of light that swim in front of one's eyes when they squeeze them shut too tightly.
There are other sensations, though dim.
He can feel dust coating his nostrils, the roof of his mouth. He can smell it. His head pounds, his heartbeat is an incessant tide inside his ears. His forehead burns. Something warm and sticky coats the side of his temple, it trails down slowly, like questing fingers, reaching towards his nose, his mouth.
He blinks again.
What he registers next is a sensation of warmth, of pressure. The weight of a body laying against his own, above his own, pinning him down, covering him – protecting him?, from all that darkness. It's an heavy body. It's hot, like metal that's been exposed too long to sunlight or flame. It's hard. It's armoured. Its scent is that of leather, of gunpowder and graveyard dust. Of sooth and blood and something plastic, something rubbery; an earthy, chalky smell that should be anything but comforting, but comforting it is – it pulls his eyelids down; like an old lullaby, it permeates the inside of his brain and tells him: “rest now. You're safe.”
He sighs.
He lets go.
He goes down under.
He falls asleep.
When he wakes a second time, the scent is still there. It lingers like a garland around him, presses down against his face like a gentle glove. The cold night air is nipping at his cheeks, a malevolent puppy with needle-like teeth. He's not floating, but he's being carried, he realizes. Glancing up he sees darkness still, but sprinkled with stars. Pale and distant through the heavy fumes of the city, but there they are: like small pinpricks in the black cardboard expanse of the night, needle-thin holes letting through a dribble of dusty light. The stickiness from his forehead has trickled down, glued his right eye close, coated his cheeks, a revolting weight. It has reached the side of his mouth, and without thinking, he licks at the side of it, tasting salt and copper, sweat and blood. Somewhere above him, he can hear muttered expletives, low-voiced and constant. A litany that is like a flood, a tide, ebbing and flowing, rising and falling, and there's another sound, a heart pounding, steady and angry, right under his ear. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth, like hot sand and the dregs of bitter coffee. He settles deeper into that strange embrace, his cheek pressed against that heart that pounds like a war-drum, that chest that smells like leather and potassium nitrate and charcoal and sulphur. Blackness embraces him. He embraces it back.
The third time, he wakes up in pain.
A howl rips out of his throat, a high, keening noise not unlike a maddened beast's. He pants and thrashes and reaches out, hands twisted into claws, teeth gnashing, legs kicking feebly, conscious of nothing but the white-hot brand of pain. His head throb, it burns, it burst with an excess of pain. His legs hurt, his chest feels tight, and so does his throat.
Hands – big hands, gloved hands, dark with sooth, reeking of smoke – these big hands catch his own, squeeze tight – much too tight, renewing the pain; and he yowls again, lower this time, feeling the burn and blur of tears in his eyes.
He blinks quickly, and his vision clears, sharpens, focuses. A strange man is pinning him down to a smelly mattress in a run-down apartment – behind his broad shoulders, the world is nothing but shadows and spotted wallpaper peeling off cracked-through walls, it's broken furniture and mildew stains and scurrying rats and debris and swirls of dust moving around like evil ghosts. The pain comes back when he tries to move, to free himself. Low and long, he whimpers, trying to release some pressure, sagging back against a bed that is as hard and humid as driftwood and exuding just the same sort of smell.
The man holding him down moves away, looking mad, so mad, his green-blue eyes flashing, like sunlight glinting off crystalline waters. His hair is black as coal and white as snow, both at once. There is blood under his nose, on his lip, the side of his neck. His lips are pulled back, showing the glint of teeth. When he talks, his voice is a low rumble that rattles through the bones, like the voice of thunder.
“The FUCK did you think you were doing?!” He yells, and when his yell is met with nothing but a flinch, he throws his hands in the air, growling deep in his chest. “Were you trying to kill us both, Tim? Were you?” he snarls, and his hands – those big hands, sturdy and soft, like iron encased in leather – come down and dig into his flesh – Tim's flesh – haul Tim by the forearms and shake, making his teeth clatter, and his eyes widen and his breathing stop, getting stuck, right there, in the middle of his chest, an icy-cold weight and his head hurts, everything hurts, and he's lost and confused and in pain, but this man has saved him, so he has to ask, Tim has to ask, he ask to know, and he so he blurts--
“Who are you?”
The man with the Caribbean eyes and the snow-white streak in his hair goes as still as stone.
“Don't – don't you fuckin' play games with me, you shitty little--”
“Who are you?” Tim asks again, licking his lips. They taste of blood and sweat, still.
He shifts closer, reaches up, uses one hand to cup a bruised cheek, while the other curls against the thrumming beat of the man's heart. He leans in – to the beat and the warmth and the scent – smell – scent of death and ashes that clings to his powerful frame because it's comforting, and comfort is all he needs right now, really, something to hold his weight, to stop the world from spinning, something to curl against and underneath, a support, a blanket, a firm spot in the eye of the hurricane, a shield and sword to keep the bursting pain at bay, but the man doesn't let Tim curl against him, he starts away instead, like a wild stallion, eyes wide, so wide, too wide, palms held up, and the wash basin he had balanced next to his thigh clatters to the ground, bloody water spilling in a widening puddle on the floor.
“I saved you,” the man cries out angrily, disbelief clear across his face. “You almost got us both killed with that fucking stunt, but I saved you all the same and now you give me this shit? Seriously, what the hell? What do you want, distract me, nervestrike me and then take me to the Bat? I'm the one who saved you, you asshole, I thought you had a bit more honour than that Tim, I swear--”
“Tim?” he asks back, trying out the name. He licks his lips again, a nervous gesture. “Is... Is that my name?”
The man's breath hitches.
“I—what?”
“Tim. Is that my name? I don't – I don't remember.”
He reaches up, drags himself closer, close enough to touch, and puts his palm, flat, on the man's wrist. Feeling the pulse drumming underneath the skin is oddly comforting, as though he weren't expecting to feel a pulse of life in that big, armoured body.
“Is my name Tim?”
The man swallows.
“You don't-- you really don't know?”
Tim shakes his head, flinches when pains explodes between his ears, sending white-hot flowers bursting in front of his eyes. He hisses out in pain, clutches to the man's hand, and wheezes out:
“N-no. No I – I have no--” he glances up.
Presently, he looks a mess – a lovely mess, dishevelled and bleeding, blue eyes heavy-lidded and hazy, cheeks as white as chalk under the sheen of long-dried blood. His pupils flutter, his pulse throbs at the base of his neck, poundpoundpound, as fast as a rabbit's.
He licks his lips. The taste of blood is gone. He misses it?
“Who are you?” he asks, and the man sags down on the side of the bed, his eyes moving restlessly across Tim's features.
“Jason. I'm Jason.”
Tim nods again, slowly this time, taking it in. The names feel right somehow, not familiar, neither or them; but fitting in a way he couldn't explain.
“And who am I?”
The man – Jason hesitates a moment. Then something like delight – madcap and cruel – flashes by his eyes, and he grinds out, his voice choked with what feels like extreme, extreme pleasure:
“You're Tim. Tim Drake. And you are my Robin.”