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Jason hears about Robin in the warehouse at 9:33.
He doesn’t actually get there until 11:12.
They’re trained to take care of themselves— all of them. Dick— Jason— Now, Tim. Trained to disarm, to incapacitate, to execute the perfect takedown. Trained in self-defense. Trained to withstand torture. Trained to mask their emotions.
There isn’t a training manual for this.
Jason hadn’t intended to come at all, because they’re trained to take care of themselves. Robin hadn’t called for help. Tim hadn’t called for help. Despite the familial ties, Jason and Tim aren’t friends; they’ve just become acquaintances at this point, and they generally steer clear of each other with alacrity. Tim rarely asks for help, and he especially doesn’t ask Jason, and Jason is fine with that. He wouldn’t ask himself for help, either, if he were Tim.
Tim doesn’t ask for help tonight, either. If it hadn’t been for one of Jason’s guys, Jason wouldn’t have known Tim had been there at all.
And when he does learn Tim’s there, he shrugs . Kid’s better off without him, he figures; they all solo, all the time, and Tim has rarely ever wanted help from Jason, of all people. Jason Todd, Red Hood, Former Robin, Not-Tim’s-Friend, not much of a hero (anymore), not much of a teammate (anymore). If Jason’s being honest, he skulks around the place for an hour, almost two hours, and then— and then, there’s a buzz over the comms.
Tim’s not back yet, Batman intones, and Bruce frets underneath like a pulse.
Jason’s a stone throw away from the warehouse, still. It’s 11:12 when he gets there, almost two hours after he’d learned Tim was there.
And by then, it’s well past too late.
Jason’s conditioned to believe a downed bird is a dead bird.
The floor blurs, the moonlight weaves back and forth like pulsating strobe lights. There’s a body curled up on the floor, back to the door. The cape spreads like an oil slick around Tim’s body. He’s dead, Jason thinks, and the floor tilts, hungry to meet him. Tim Drake is dead. He’s dead. He’s—
breathing.
Tim is breathing. Shallow rise of his chest from what Jason can tell at this distance, but that’s enough. The world rights itself, and whatever enormous black shadow of a thing that temporarily swallowed Jason’s heart up spits it back out. Sorry for the freak out, it says, and melts away.
Jason smiles, and it’s a little too wide. He speaks, and it’s a little too loud. He’s just peachy; nothing awry here. Just Hood and a downed Robin, in a warehouse.
(they call this irony.)
“Come on, Robin, you can’t stay down forever,” he says, and does something flippy and cute with one of his guns as he takes a look around, just for theatrics. Maybe Tim will appreciate it, if he gets up. More than likely he’ll call Jason fucking annoying, though, which is what Jason’s aiming for. “Bat’s going out of his mind with worry. More gravelly than usual, y’know?”
There’s a long, viscous silence that feels like it trickles down the walls. Jason listens for the drip of blood as he approaches Tim. It’s still too dark for him to see too well; it’s still too dark for him to know. All he sees is the cape and the rise and fall of Tim’s body. Signs of life. But that’s it.
“Robin,” Jason says quietly, cheer falling away from his tone. “Come on.”
“....Give me a minute,” Tim rasps finally, and Jason sees him lift himself up onto his elbows, now. The kid’s shadow twists and extends behind him like an animal in its death throes, sharp-edged and weak.
Jason’s relieved to see Tim move for all of seven seconds, because he still doesn’t see it. He still doesn’t know what’s wrong. He doesn’t see it, not until one of Tim’s legs stretches sluggishly into the light, and it’s—
bare.
His leg is bare. Last Jason had checked, the bare-legged Robin period had long since ended. So why the fuck—
Why the fuck,
Why.
T HE.
FU C K.
Blood trickles down the inside of Tim’s leg, and the first droplet peels away from the crook of Tim’s knee and splatters on the ground. Tim stares down at it blankly. Jason also stares at it, and only just manages to look up at Tim. There’s nothing at all in Tim’s expression. No chord of familiarity.
Jason’s insides are rattling like the way a door rattles on its hinges after being slammed right through the frame.
“Just give me a minute,” Tim says again like that hadn’t just fucking happened, and then his arms give out and he meets the ground with a hollow little thud. Jason takes five strides in one step, he thinks, but Tim wheezes out through his teeth and Jason comes to an almost cartoonish stop only an inch away from him.
“I can do it,” Tim says, mostly to the ground. Jason isn’t sure if Tim’s fully registered his presence. Jason hasn’t actually fully registered what the fuck is going on, either. This can’t be happening, some voice in his head gibbers.
This can’t be happening.
THISCAN'TBEHAPPENING—
“Tim.”
“I c—”
“ Tim,” Jason says, and the name seizes and splinters apart on his tongue. “You—”
“I can do it,” Tim repeats, because he keeps repeating everything he’s saying, because he’s in shock, because he’s been—
“It’s easy,” Tim says, more to himself than to Jason. “One arm. Two arms. Feet. It’s easy. Come on, Tim. Fuck, Tim, come on, you useless fucking— ”
—raped.
“Stop, Tim, please— stop .” Jason says, hands raised, but he isn’t sure if he’s trying to stop the kid from hurting himself in an endeavor to stand up or to just— stop him from—
“—It’s easy,” Tim says again, flatly. “I just have to get up. I’ll be good to go.” One of his boots is missing. The tights are half-torn off of him; the mangled piece is still attached to him, but shoved far back. There’s more blood splattered over his thighs, so dark it’s almost black, but if Jason looks any longer he’s going to fucking lose his mind . Mechanically, he reaches out to drape Tim’s cape over his bare leg, and Tim sputters out a little laugh. “Probably for the best,” the kid says, finally managing to sit up and looking down at the shape of his spread legs under the cape. “I look like a mess. Total mess. Like I’m gonna sneak back in after, uh. After.” Tim stares down at the cape.
“Tim,” Jason says, because he needs to fucking do something and not freak out. Because what the fuck good is it if he freaks out. He reaches down, down past all the other everything and tries to find whatever of Robin is left. Robin to Robin. “You need to— uh.” He’s forgetting everything all of a sudden, everything he’s ever known. What to Do if You’ve been Raped, the pamphlet. He’s seen it on the nightstands of some of the working ladies he’s escorted home, too many nightstands. He’s seen it crumpled up in cars. He’s seen it on the floors of nightclubs, stamped all over with footprints. And now he sees it behind his eyelids.
“—a night out,” Tim finishes, and smiles, thin-lipped. “I’m a total mess, I’m a total. Total. Total,” he says, getting quieter and quieter. Like a broken record, catching on the same note.
“I’ll help you, Tim,” Jason promises immediately, and it comes out almost like a plea.
“That’s funny.” Tim says, and laughs again. It’s a little too high-pitched, left of an actual laugh, and the mask doesn’t crinkle. Only his mouth moves. “You’re going to help me. Like, uh, last time? Maybe you can help me. Just.” Tim slices his hand along his throat and tilts his head. Laughs again, and terror opens up underneath Jason like a black hole and threatens to swallow him in. “Is that too morbid, Tim, shut up,” Tim says, or kind of mutters, his laughter stopping as abruptly as it had started.
Jason’s voice catches. His chest stings— his face stings— everything stings, like fire ants underneath his skin. He doesn’t know if he wants to scream— cry— kill— all, at the same time.
“I won’t— wouldn’t do that again,” Jason says, stilted. He wants to… He needs to get Tim away from this fucking place. He needs to get Tim home, to. To… “I just want to get you somewhere safe, so we can…”
“Treat me like a victim?” Tim asks plainly, and presses his thumbnail against his swollen lower lip so hard that Jason can see the skin split slightly. “Right.”
“Help you,” Jason finishes, his heart stuttering in his chest so loudly that he can barely speak over the sound. “So we can help you.”
“I don’t need help,” Tim says, and Jason’s expecting flat so when Tim’s mouth opens and some sort of mangled mess of false cheer and indignance comes spilling out, Jason doesn’t know what the fuck to do with it. “I don’t— need— it. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Robin’s supposed to.”
Jason tenses.
“Robin needs to be pure,” Tim says, and peels off his mask with an air of finality that aims itself right at Jason’s stomach, nocks, and fires. “So. This is it. I guess.”
“What,” Jason says numbly, so faint he almost isn’t sure if he actually said it, if the word made it past his lips.
Tim looks down at the mask, and then up at Jason. “I just got raped, Jason,” Tim says blandly, and pinches the mask between his thumb and index finger. Jason flinches, and then hates that he did. “Not exactly a great message for the kids when Robin’s, when Robin’s.” His breath hitches. “Fucked up.” He gestures to himself. To the missing boot, to the cape. “Picture of heroism right here, am I right. That’s rhetorical, by the way.”
“You— are also a kid,” Jason says— or really rasps —a little desperately. Tim just cocks his head at him incredulously, but the black of his eyes bleeds the blue dark.
"Never mattered before." Tim says, and that— that—
The comm crackles and scares the fuck out of Jason, and Jason swears and claps his hand against the side of his head. Tim doesn’t move but for his dark gaze, which snaps hauntingly from Jason’s face to his ear.
“Does anyone have eyes on Tim—”
“Yeah,” Jason says in response, his voice breaking. “I—”
Tim tilts his head. Jason tries to see him as Robin, but all he sees is a fucking traumatized little kid. He’d nearly killed Tim only recently, and now the kid’s folded up the way a dead spider folds up, staring down at the remains of his costume, at the remains of what’s left of him, and Jason doesn’t fucking know what to tell him. He’s so furious he isn’t even furious anymore, like it’s hit some plateau that can’t be any more. He doesn’t feel anything. All he wants to do is go back, go back, go back.
“I’m taking care of him because he’s hurt. I’ll bring him back later.” Jason says, to silent comms. There’s a long pause, and then—
“Hood, you...” Bruce starts skeptically, and Jason knows. Jason fucking knows. Re: bloody track record, re: almost killing Tim, re: fucking messing up over and over, yeah, he knows. But. Tim’s still staring vacantly at him, giving him nothing, but if it were Jason he’d need a minute— or a day, or a week —before being able to take this to Bruce. Until Tim says otherwise, Jason’s not going to fucking let him go.
“Tim,” Jason says. “Say something. Please.”
“Something,” Tim parrots robotically, dull expression fixed on the floor now.
“See? Alive. I won’t hurt him. He’s overwhelmed, so don’t come swooping in, for fuck’s sake. I’ll deal with it. Fuck. Please, just listen to me,” Jason says.
“Jason,” Bruce says again, and underneath the terseness, there’s something deeply affected. As if Bruce already knows it’s so much worse than what Jason’s letting on. He hasn’t been Batman for at least a couple minutes now; that’s burned away, leaving only Bruce, only a father.
“Just this once, please,” Jason begs , and hopes Bruce can hear it in his voice. “Listen to me, just this once.” And then he just turns it off, because he needs to focus on Tim, because Tim is making that face people make when they’re trying their absolute damnedest to keep it together and not at all succeeding.
“I don’t have to go back,” Tim says pointedly, trying to sound bored. His voice fractures and ruins the facade, not that he was fooling Jason anyway. “I can’t work with him anyway.”
“Tim,” Jason says, and his voice cracks. He doesn’t know how to look at Tim when he looks like this. That day, at the Tower, he had looked at the body of his almost-dead, kind-of brother and had felt nothing but a sort of sick, mephitic satisfaction, like poison. It hadn’t lasted very long; all he’d felt for weeks after that was a hollow, aching sort of regret that riddled away at his bones. Now, he looks at the body of his kind-of brother— no, just his brother — again, and he isn’t sure how he’d ever found any sort of satisfaction in the sight of Tim’s distress. He takes a deep breath. “Can I move you?”
“I can move me,” Tim says immediately, like a reflex. Stubborn to a fault, just like the rest of them, even though he’s been frozen in the same position for about two minutes now. “I can, I can. I can. I.” Tim presses his lips together tightly, and Jason sees his throat bob. “Jason.”
“I’m here,” Jason says, splaying his fingers over Tim’s cape. “I’m right here, Tim.”
“Maybe you should,” Tim says through chattering teeth, his words stretching like the trickle of honey. “Maybe…”
“Maybe I should— what?” Jason echoes, even though he already knows what Tim’s going to say. He knows what Tim is going to say. He knows it as sure as he knows the gleam of an executioner’s ax, or the glitter of a guillotine, or the click of a bullet in the chamber. He knows, and it still guts him clean through when Tim says,
“Finish the job. That is.”
Jason pulls back and stares up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to gather himself. His eyes well up— not sadness, he doesn’t think, but something else, something that overwhelms him so completely; the emotion has nowhere else to go. He can’t even speak, for a long moment, because his mouth feels like it’s full of blood and feathers.
“Tim, you’re not fucking… Damaged goods,” he says after a second, and the prickle scrapes along his throat like wildfire and sears away his flesh. He nearly chokes. “You don’t deserve to be fucking put down for what— ” Something hysterical bleeds into his words as he grips the silk of the cape tight into his fist. “And I’m sure as hell not going to— to.”
Tim’s expression flickers slightly and cracks at the edges. Jason can see the catharsis bubbling underneath, threatening to spill loose like floodwater. The dam is only just hanging on, but it’s cracked to all hell. “I don’t deserve—”
“Bull-fucking-shit,” Jason says, and he says it unwaveringly— this, at least, makes it through the haze. Because he fucking believes it, that’s why, and he’s going to make sure this goddamn kid gets it in his head. “Bullshit, Tim. Robin means a lot of things, and—” He stops, because his tongue feels a little too big in his mouth. “Robin’s hope and light. He’s fierce and joyful and terrifying. And,” he says, his voice splintering slightly. “He’s a survivor, too. Robin’s whatever you are, Tim.” He reaches out, resting his thumb against Tim’s bruised knuckles. “Robin’s whatever we are.”
“Mm.” Tim kind of hums, and then presses both palms against his face as if he’s trying to hide behind them. It’s hard, though, because his gloves are ripped up along the sides; Jason can see the pale of finger-bruised wrists just underneath like a flash of white. He can see prints burned into the column of Tim’s white throat. And before he’d covered Tim with the cape, he’d seen the rounds of cigarette burns in a spotty patch along Tim’s leg like tiny brands.
Jason hasn’t killed in a while. Let anyone try to stop him tonight.
Tim’s still half-shrouded by the shadows, but when his face angles toward Jason— toward the moonlight that spears through the warehouse —he sees that Tim’s cheek is split, as if he’d gotten it in the side of the face with a ring. While this had been going on, Jason had been there, only a few minutes out. He’d been out there, and Tim had been in here, fucking—
Wrong choice of words. Rewind.
Rewind.
—Tim had been in here, at the mercy of.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Tim,” Jason says, wrecked, and it’s inadequate, like everything regarding Tim seems like it is. “I should’ve come earlier. I thought it was just— a run of the mill, fucking. I should’ve.”
Tim sags down slightly, pulling the cape tighter around himself, and Jason immediately shrugs out of his jacket to give Tim some sort of— warmth? Protection? Barrier? He doesn’t even know. He just does it, like he would for any— for any—
— victim.
Tim, Robin. Jason’s replacement— Jason’s next-in-line—
Victim, survivor, and Jason’s brother.
So help him god, he’s Jason’s brother.
“It’s alright,” Tim says, so nonchalant, even though his hands rattle like the clatter of bones. He’s starting to go glassy-eyed, his lips an almost bloodless line, and Jason takes one of the kid’s hands. Tim’s fingers all but vanish into Jason’s as he tries to get some warmth into them, because fuck, he can feel the cold sink right through his gloves. He ends up sliding the tattered remains of Tim’s gloves off and replacing them with his own, anyway, and even if Tim’s hands all but vanish into them, it’s better than having to look down and see the pieces of the devastated Robin costume. Jason would know a thing or two about that.
“Tim,” he says again, as soft as he can, and he somehow manages despite the absolute howl of fury, despite the war drum call of his heartbeat, despite his blood calling for blood. “Can I move you? I promise I’ll be—” His breath hitches. “I promise I’ll be gentle this time, Tim.”
The kid’s about half present now, by Jason’s estimate. He still manages to nod, sluggishly; any hint of the false cheer and the pitchy babbling from earlier is all but lost. The second wave of shock arrives not with a bang, but with a whimper.
“It looks bad,” Tim says vaguely, and his words come out less like he says them and more like they’re drifting away from him like ice caps. “I d— The tights, they’re…. Fucked. Like me, I guess.” he adds, and every working gear in Jason grinds to a screeching halt.
“I’m sorry. That was morbid,” Tim murmurs— apologizes.
He apologizes. To Jason.
—And Jason makes himself fucking gentle, because he goddamn has to be.
“Don’t apologize. We can keep the cape wrapped around your legs,” Jason says quietly, moving his thumb in a sweeping, soothing circle over Tim’s cloaked knee in the only grounding motion he can possibly think of at the moment. He isn’t sure if it even does anything, because Tim barely even reacts to it, but at least he doesn’t recoil. “I’ll carry you. We’re only a couple minutes from my place.”
Tim finally looks up at Jason, his hands splayed palms-up at his side. “You not coming… was an accident, right?” he asks, and even though he manages to say it evenly, his voice wobbles tellingly at the end.
Jason closes his eyes for a moment, because something’s screaming in the back of his head and he doesn’t know if he can speak over the sound. This is own doing, this is his own doing, and he finally knows how hot hell can burn.
“It— It was,” he says, or kind of blubbers, and he’s going to actually break down right here, maybe. Maybe he actually will. Maybe he already is, and this is the world’s worst nightmare. The warehouse is positively swimming around him, blurry, almost a mirage. “It was, Tim. I swear it was an accident. I would never— I thought.” Fuck, and he can’t tell Tim he thought Tim would be able to handle it, that’d fucking break the kid. “I thought it was just your usual bust. I didn’t— If I had known, I—”
I could never hate someone enough to do that to them, he thinks. I could never hate you enough to do that to you.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Tim,” he says again, and when his hand moves up from Tim’s knee to his upper arm, the kid’s dam finally cracks.
The first water that comes through is a trickle—
“It’s okay,” Tim says, and Jason’s not sure if the kid knows he’s crying at this point. Jason doesn’t even know what’s going on himself— is he crying, too? Maybe. “You’re here now. Right?”
—And then it’s a torrent.
“You’re goddamn right I’m here now,” Jason says, and when he reaches out to gather Tim into his arms— when he cups the back of the blood-matted, black-haired head in one palm —Tim lets him. Tim curls the fingers of Jason’s gloves into Jason’s arms and holds on like roof shingles fighting a hurricane, and he’s absolutely losing it now. He’s screaming, howling out cries that shake the rafters and tear the house out of the foundation, but he’s still holding on, and there’s no fucking chance Jason’s gonna let him go now. The storm wails around them, through them.
“It’ll pass, it’ll pass,” Jason says, or sort of burbles as the two of them just quail against each other. He doesn’t know who’s holding onto who, at this point. “The worst will pass, Tim, I promise. I’m here now, Tim, and I won’t fucking go anywhere,” he keeps saying, and he doesn’t fucking care how many times he has to say it, because god-fucking-dammit, he doesn’t care what demons he’s gotta fight with his bare fucking hands, he’ll do it. Not out of guilt— not out of duty, not out of regret, not out of obligation.
“What if I n-never,” Tim says, and his voice is hoarse like he’d been screaming, long before Jason came. Jason holds onto him like he’s afraid Tim will dissolve into feathers and ash underneath his fingers, like he’s afraid Tim will burn right out of his hold into dust. “What if I never. Ever. Come back from this.”
“You will,” Jason promises, and maybe it’s a fucking mistake. Maybe he shouldn’t promise this kind of shit. Maybe on page three of that pamphlet it says “don’t make promises” but he doesn’t care what he has to say to bring Tim back. He doesn’t fucking care what he has to do, even if he has to hold Tim together with his bare fucking hands. “You will. You always come back. I’ll make sure you come back, Tim.”
Tim trembles. The tails of his cape spread like–
(— like the pitch-black wings of a bird, spread open in death —
— like a hole opening in the fabric of the world to swallow the two of them down —
— like twin trails of blood, pooling out from behind him.)
“I know you’re scared,” Jason says, and presses his forehead against Tim’s. Tim only just manages to nod— only just manages to breathe. “But I’m here now.”
Watch me, Tim, he thinks as Tim’s arching wails taper off into soft, hitching little sobs in the dark quiet of the warehouse, as his fingers burrow themselves beneath Jason’s armor, beneath his skin and blood and bones.
I’m going to make it better, just fucking watch me.