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Tim is shuddering- shaking. He doesn't really know where- where is he? This- this isn't home. It's too wet to be home.
He was- he was hit with something, he thinks. Drugged, maybe. Nothing good ever happens when Tim's drugged, and worse, he'd be in the way if he let himself crumple and faint like he wants to.
He can't be in the way. He can't let himself distract from what's important- he can't. Tim doesn't think he could stand his Dad's disappointed look.
Except he wasn't with his Dad, was he? No. Not his Dad. Then why did it feel like he was with Dad? Not his Dad. Tim isn't allowed to think like that.
The thought pops up viciously in his head, automatic and loud. Tim grabs at his hair and tugs at it whining in confusion, but he continues on his stumbling, aimless path.
He just needed to get out. Keep himself moving, keep himself awake. Then the drugs will be wearing off, by the time he finishes his walk and he'd be able to find someplace to curl up and recover.
He'd slipped by the grasping hands trying to restrain him, using every trick in his book to gain the leverage needed to escape while he was incapacitated. He ignored the voices in his ear gradually getting more frantic, until they gave him more of a headache and he wrestled with his ear until they went away.
Maybe he's going crazy. Maybe this is a Rouge's fatal-or-near-to-it concoction, and this is his brain giving out before death. It's fine. He just- he needs to get away. He needs to run, run, runrunrun- like he never has before, his entire body being pulled and pulled and pulled.
He can't stop. He can't. He was in the way, and he's drugged, and nothing good ever happens when Tim's drugged, and he was in the way, and this place is much too wet to be anywhere near home.
Tim almost slips in a puddle, and has to skid to a stop, breathing hard, to regain his balance in the rain. When he looks up, he recognizes where he is, and without a second thought he grapples to his roof.
It's his, of course it's his, of course his body would take him to a place with one of his safest hiding spots from his photography era. He lands, and when he looks up from where he'd caught his balance, he catches a breath.
No.
No.
Another fast grapple to the building across that leaves his head spinning and his body off balance, but Tim doesn't care. He doesn't care because someone is sitting on this roof, contemplating the way down.
This isn't going to happen. It can't. Not on Tim's watch. Not on- not on Jason's roof.
Tim approaches the figure quietly, so as not to startle them, and catalogs them, mind spinning but too much cotton keeps it tangled and lagging in a scary way. They're soaked, rain pouring down on them.
They aren't even wearing a jacket. Tim can almost hear Alfred clucking his tongue and fretting over them in his head, worried that they'll get sick. The thought amuses Tim. Kind of makes him want to smile.
He isn't worried. Not anymore. In fact, his entire body relaxes.
The teen's black, inky hair stubbornly curls in places, bouncy. His left ear is scared from where it'd been torn then sewn back together in a fight Tim had witnessed. His frame is still somehow bigger than Tims, when logically Tim had outgrown the dead boy a couple months ago.
That thought made him sad. He swayed on his feet, watching the young man that his brain had conjured up, soaking him in, even though Tim knows that he isn't real. He can't be. He's dead.
This- this is surprisingly kind, for his mind to give him an attempt at safety and comfort- in the form of a hallucination (halluciJason whispers the Robin wit in the back of his brain)- while it's obviously buckling under the strain of whatever new heavy-weight toxin that Tim's been dosed with.
His brain had always been his best asset and worst setback. Maybe it won't ever work as an asset to him again, and this is it's way of apologizing.
To bring him here- god, Tim isn't ever supposed to be in this part of the city, B is going to have a heart attack when he sees the exact address of the building Tim's having a psychotic break on; the address of the building that supports Jason's favorite gargoyle- and give him something good to hold on to. Because the thing is-
Tim misses Jason, too. It's not fair to Bruce or Alfred or Babs or Dick, who actually knew him. But Tim misses Jason. He misses the hero he was and the person he could have become. He misses the Robin that Gotham itself cared for so deeply that the very streets colored themselves more vibrantly as he flew past. He misses the kid who stood up to Tim's bullies, once, because it was the right thing to do.
It's parasocial. It's selfish and childish. It's not anything compared to Jason's family's loss. But it's his. An ugly, stupid part of himself. And Tim- Tim will indulge it. Just this once. Just for the chance to purge it from his system with prejudice without hurting anyone.
It's his brain making up the halluciJason, afterall. And Tim can't hurt anyone from inside his head.
He stops his swaying and stumbles over to Jason, sitting more like gracelessly plopping down next to him with less regard for the edge than he should have had, given how slippery it is. Maybe, he thinks, Dick and B are rubbing off on him in that regard. They would not like that.
Jason doesn't startle or notice him. He's older than he was when Tim last saw him. Maybe this hallucination got the chance to grow up. There are boots on the other side of him, neatly lined up, and when Tim looks down at his feet, he sees them bare.
Tim decides that feeling the air on his feet sounds wonderful, and his subconscious had a good idea. He takes off the Robin boots, and sits them on the side of him that isn't next to Jason. He kicks his feet where they're dangling over the ledge.
Tim has always liked heights. There's comfort in the certainty of gravity. If you fall, you fall. If you fall from a large enough height, you die.
Tim saw what that death looked like when he was 4. It was quick, and you got to experience the weightlessness of flight on your way down. It leaves a mark where you go. It's not the worst way to die by any means.
This whole scene reminds him of a song that he heard a couple of times. It has a nice tune, and the words filled him with melancholy. He hums, swaying a little with the tune.
Tim is used to sitting up on rooftops and humming to fill the time. That's how he got his best shots of Batman and Robin. Waiting on the rooftops along their patrol, ready to take the shot when they swing by. Always waiting.
They're waiting now too, Tim thinks. It's nice to have company to wait with, even if he isn't sure what they're waiting for. It makes him feel less alone. It makes his heart ache at the loneliness that he carries with him even now.
Because this isn't real. Tim knows it isn't. No matter what, at his core, he'll always be this sad, lonely boy on a rooftop. This time he doesn't even have his camera.
Oh.
Tim thinks- he thinks that the rain isn't the only thing leaving tracks of water chasing down his face.
Jason is still beside him, sitting, staring off in the distance. His eyes are glossy. Maybe they're glossy with death. Maybe Jason was lonely when he died. He looks alone right now, even though Tim is with him.
That isn't right. Jason Todd-Wayne shouldn't have to feel alone. Never. (“But-” whispers his brain, “-he isn't real.”)
Tim scoots closer to Jason because even if he isn't real, Tim would never want him to feel alone. If Jason were real, he'd be able to feel Tim's body heat from how close he was sitting. He switches the song that he was humming to something more like a lullaby. The melody is sweet.
He doesn't remember where he first heard the tune. But he's known it for as long as he remembers. Has it engraved in his very bones. Tim gently rocks himself, side to side, barely a sway, as he's done by himself on rooftops hundreds of times before.
It's Gotham's song, sung in every corner of the city, hummed in a desperate plea for their anxiety's to be taken by Gotham. A broken plea for small comforts. For protection. For guidance. For a home to return to, no matter how far they travel. Begging for peace. Begging for place, even after being laid to rest.
(Tim's parents don't know the song. They seem to forget it every time Tim stops reminding them of the tune.)
Tim doesn't know what he's asking for, beyond offering up his feelings for Gotham to take. But he does know that she listens. She's the only one who always listens.
Jason finally looks at him, eyes still glassy and unfocused. Tim looks out at the city, still humming, and watches the way the rain falls. He's grateful for the hood on the robin cape now. And pulls it up so that he doesn’t have to look at one of his idols watching him cry.
Tim hears Jason hum along. That's nice. It's nice to have harmony to his melody. He leans sways a little too hard and bumps into Jason. But he can't bump into Jason. Because Jason isn't real.
Apparently, that doesn't matter to his brain, because his brain says that Jason is real. It says that he's solid. And it's not like Tim has anything to lose if he tries to lay his head on Jason's shoulder. At most, his dignity from falling straight through an illusion.
(Maybe he'd fall all the way off the edge? The chance is low but not impossible. He wonders if that fall would break his neck.)
Well- Tim's brain decided that it didn't matter, so Tim decides it doesn't matter to him either. He slowly sways forward, and then leans his head on Jason's shoulder. It's solid. The skin is cold. (Is it cold like a corpse?) But it feels so very human.
Tim relaxes further, and finally- finally feels safe, as his brain intended. He slumps into Jason's body. He can feel Jason humming. This is good. This feels good.
Tim closes his eyes and lets the thoughts be fully drowned out by the fog and the sound of the rain. He'll worry about the hallucination being tactile, visual and auditory, along with what that says about the state of his mind later.
For now, he sinks into it, and lets it settle him in a way he hasn't settled in years.
He and Jason sit like that, side by side, for a long time. At some point, Jason puts a sluggish arm around Tim. At some point, the rain stops. At some point, Jason warms up enough to begin producing his own body heat.
At some point, Nightwing will find them and cry. At some point, they'll be taken home.
Home, where they are fully returned to the place they belong, in body and soul, for the first time in years. Home, where they can finally come to roost. Home, where their family will welcome them with open arms.
But not right now. Right now, they sit, leaning against one another. Right now, they're together. Right now, they weather the storm and wait for something unknown.
=
Gotham feels her birds settle together to wait out her great, heaving sobs of relief, and cannot help but cry a little harder. They just lean against each other, humming to her, and let themselves be still. They let themselves wait for her to show their older brother to them.
Gotham's sobs of relief don't dry- an echo, a murky reflection of the day that Superboy Prime's actions had released enough energy to allow her to find her magic robin and pull with all her might. To reach for him, and feel him reaching back to her. The rain hadn't stopped for days back then either.
She'd fought so hard since then, to guide him through every pitfall, to keep his body alive while his mind recovers, while he gathers himself from the way his injuries hurt him with each step.
She moves him in the path of a medical worker who would actually care about an unresponsive boy with broken bones on her streets. She seethes when she has to put him back where he'd begun to avoid the meddling Al Ghul.
She meets Gotham's most vicious labyrinth of crime yet for her troubles. The only reason she isn't spat back out at Gotham's borders is the littlest bird she hides.
Each path opened to him is a desperate grab for ways she might be able to guide him back home, and each time she's thwarted.
She doesn't think when the newest path is opened to her. She grabs it with both hands. This has failed with others before, with her Robin's own Father, her very own knight, and it will probably fail again, but she must try.
She must.
Gotham sees Timothy Drake go down, be set down to his panicked instincts because of another horrid concoction of her filth, and yanks on him. Her child- her beautiful, trusting child- listens.
He listens, and lets Gotham move him where she needs. He lets her bring. Them. Home.
She cradles them both, her precious, precious children, and allows the downfall of her tears.
The rain water is fresh, and clean. The old and despaired sewer systems work, and work well when they normally struggle not to add flooding to the streets. The buildings hold together against the rain in ways they hadn't before. Gotham breathes.
And when her cries dry up, they leave her feeling relieved, the built up grit of her anger and grief and stress knocked loose from streets and buildings, and draining away. In its wake, everything is left clearer than it has been in-
A long time.
She looks around, and she knows.
She'll be okay.