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Tim stares at his phone. An hour? He’s thinking of actively killing himself in his stupid fucking bathtub and the wait time at the suicide-prevention hotline is an hour. Distantly, he wonders if WE sponsers this hotline. They sponser a lot of mental health institutes, he knows that much. He takes a deep breath. This is fine. Already his head is buzzing with plans of action. What if he actually killed himself? How many had suffered unduly because they couldn’t reach out to help when they tried?
Another tear rolls down his cheek. He groans until the sound turns into the sickest laugh he’s ever heard. Objectively, this is hilarious. He’s sure someone else would see the humor, maybe it’s even the setup to a bad joke: A desperate CEO calls the suicide hotline, but they don’t pick up. How funny— right? Right?? Except it’s not and Tim still feels like he wants to slit his wrists. He clenches his jaw and bites his tongue until he can taste blood.
His body aches all over form a mission gone wrong three days ago. A drug bust had turned into a human trafficking sort of affair and it had gotten ugly quickly. His right side was one giant bruise and his ribs were broken in three different places. Still, he ached for more. He stared at his razor and took a shaky breath.
Death had been a part of his life for as long as Tim can remember.
He was introduced to the concept at three, when he found his mom -ironically also in a bathtub, just like this one- without a pulse.
She’d taken too many pills and not the ones she was supposed to. The image of her head resting against the ceramic white was seared into his mind. He doesn’t think he could ever forget how her hair had curled feverishly around her slack face, how her mouth had been half open in a way she never allowed herself to relax. He’d just stood there, staring at her. It was only when a maid came to search for him that someone had called 9-1-1. He can still hear the shrill scream of the maid ring in his ears, when he really tries.
Janet got taken to a hospital and the doctors were paid a fair bit so everyone could forget about the incident. Tim didn’t forget. He’s not even sure if his mom knew it was him who found her, if she’d cared at all. All that he knows is that they started traveling after that. Sometimes, he thinks bitterly, Janet hadn’t just been traveling to escape the Gotham weather, but her life.
His dad had never said much about it either, even after she’d finally died though he must’ve been wondering if she’d just given up. Tim certainly did. But that wasn’t fair and she was already dead so it shouldn’t count for much anyway.
Bruce is suicidal. Tim knows the signs, and he can clock him from a mile away. It’s easy. Like recognizes like and all. It still catches him off guard when he walks into the batcave to find Bruce holding a gun to his head. A gun? Where’d he even get that?
“I sure hope that’s not Alfred’s” he announced cheerfully, and ignored the pissed look Bruce sends his way.
“It’s mine” Batman grunts but lowers it anyway. Likely because of a misplaced sense of duty to the child-protege in front of him.
Tim hums. “Don’t you think you’re more use for Jason alive and helping the children in Gotham?” he pokes and prods and doesn’t stop until he can see Bruce lock the gun away.
Nobody points out just how unhealthy it is for a grown man’s mental health to rely solely on a just-turned teen boy. They are all to grateful that it stops his downward spiral.
Tim doesn’t ever address it heads on, he doesn’t see a reason too. He makes plans, makes sure that Bruce knows he depends on him to make it to the next week. He gives him statistics on crime rates just to convince him to continue to be Batman.
Bruce is no kind man in those days and Tim doesn’t expect anything different. He’s cruel even. A mean drunk for one. Knows just where to dig for all of Tim’s insecurities. That’s the curse of a detective, probably.
Tim clings onto it as his destiny anyway. He needs to anyway, because without Robin as his goalpost, there’s no reason for him to continue. He’d kill himself and Bruce is just as aware of that as Tim is of the gun in the top drawer of the left-most desk.
Tim lets the insults pelt of his back like an actual duck the water, ignores it all and weathers on. Every mean word is refuted in his mind by one more person saved and every push and shove makes him a better fighter. It has to be worth it in the end.
He thinks maybe all vigilantes are somewhat suicidal, even just passively. He watches as Dick throws himself of every building he can, the higher the better, how he fights his villains, with banter and never quite as serious as he should be in the face of his very possible demise. Death is part of the job and everyone is well aware of that.
Thankfully nobody will miss Tim if he’s gone.
Jason almost manages for a hot second. Tim returns only because he knows this is gonna be hard on Batman.
He holds a gun to his head fully intent of shooting just to stop his future. It cements the fact that he’s not supposed to continue existing in a few short years. He can’t imagine what would make his moral code do a 180 and he doesn’t want to. Tim can feel the cold metal in his hand, his finger twitching on the trigger and he knows that the Batman-him knows just how serious he is.
They resolve the fight without it in the end, but he still feels the heavy weight in his hand some nights, the phantom sensation of a heavy recoil.
Damian wouldn’t have succeed even if he tried more earnestly—mostly because Tim refuses to die via eight year old.
He seriously considers it though, when Dick takes Robin and gives it away. Without the costume is he truly needed? Steph is gone, so is Bart and Kon, so really wouldn’t it just fit if the entire generation of teens found their early demise?
He finds the painting.
Shit. He can’t die. He wants to though, wants to so badly it hurts.
Ra’s is the opposite of him in the way the head is the opposite of the tail on a coin. He’s so afraid of dying, refuses the very thought. But he’s just as unhappy. He hates this world just as much as Tim does and yet, he wants to change it instead of giving up. It’s admirable. It’s not.
His hands wander, his eyes linger and Tim wants to cover up. He’s thin, has always been thin, he doesn’t want any more weight than he absolutely needs to survive. Everything on his body is there because of necessity. He doesn’t hate how he looks, but he doesn’t like it either. He’s entirely ambivalent to his shell.
He’s still ambivalent as he faces death through fall, makes his peace with the fact that he’s about to be a pancake on concrete and he’s earnestly disappointed when he wakes up. It would’ve made a good end. A fitting one. Instead he persists. He gets to witness the return of Bruce, just as haggard as he was when they first met.
It’s a throwback and Tim isn’t even surprised when he finds the man breaking down post-patrol, all alone in the cave. He just sighs and grabs a blanket to drape over broad shoulders, now sunken in. Batman looks pathetic.
(Irrationally, Tim is pissed. What does Bruce even have to break down over? He’s back with his family, he still has his job and his friends and all together a perfect live. Tim has nothing but a company he didn’t want in the first place.)
He doesn’t say any of that though, just sits as a grown man sobs right next to him and hums a melody he learned form Alfred.
All lines are currently busy, the estimated wait time is *45 minutes* . The automated voice on the phone tells him and Tim still doesn’t know how to react.
It just goes to show how little the world around him gives a fuck. Tim just wants this to end. He closes his eyes and sighs.
He wonders if his mom felt like this, before she took all those meds. His hands itch for the cabinet stocked to the brim with everything a vigilante might need.
The song that keeps replaying isn’t even good, it sounds like a phone company, like he’s waiting for Verizon. The clock reads 2:13 am and he has a meeting at 8. Fuck.
His skin itches and he feels so fucking useless. He’s a suit of all things, he never wanted to be like his father and he’d loathed his mother up until she died. Now he’s a caricature of both of them and he doesn’t know what to do.
The city is packed with heroes, nobody would miss one less. Bruce has a support network and anyway, they don’t talk much anymore. His friends are all across the continent and he doesn’t have the energy to ever text them back. He doesn’t have a diploma, no ambitions in life and he hasn’t taken a photo in ages. He feels useless.
*38 minutes*
He lets the phone glide out of his hand and sobs. He’s too chicken-shit to kill himself. He knows that and everyone around him knows that which is why nobody comes around to check on him.
He can’t even die right.
He closes his eyes, just for a second.
Ten minute later the phone goes black and the song stops. He cracks open an eye. Did they- did they kick him off the hotline?? Slightly hysterical, he checks his recent calls. They did.
Oh.
Oh.
He sits in the bathtub for another few hours until he has to get up to go to the meeting. It’s raining, he looks like he’ll, there are bruises on his chest and his body aches. His face looks gaunt, eyes deep set and he wonders what he’s doing all this for.
The razor stays on the ledge of his bathtub like a promise. He grits his teeth and smiles.