Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tim shouldn’t be here.

He’s acutely aware of this fact, as he skirts along the edge of Gotham Cemetery, one hand wrapped around the small pocket knife his father gave him for his last birthday. His camera swings where it’s hanging around his neck, and nearly smacks into the wrought iron gate when Tim jumps for the fifth time when the wind makes the trees creak a little too ominously. He considers going back the way he came, but he’s fairly certain he’s about halfway through the cemetery, so he might as well just continue cutting through it. 

Because that’s exactly what any sane person would do.

Actually, a sane person probably wouldn’t venture through Gotham Cemetery in the middle of the night in the first place. 

A sane person would also probably not be out and about chasing Batman, who’d developed a knack for beating most of his bad guys nearly to death. 

Tim tries to not think about that too much. He takes a deep breath and keeps going, gripping the small pocket knife so tightly that his fingers start to ache. He saw Batman jump over the side of the cemetery, silent as a shadow, and he followed. Of course, it was a bit harder for him, scaling the fence and tearing his jeans when he lost his balance and toppled over the side. 

Tim’s only been inside Gotham Cemetery once before, months ago back when Jason’s death was still the only thing the media wanted to talk about. He’d gone after school to lay down a small bouquet of flowers on his grave. It had been creepy, but that was nothing compared to how completely terrifying the cemetery was at night. 

Tim shivers when another cold wind blows through his jacket and he regrets not wearing more layers. Or at least wearing a scarf. 

Another gust of wind howls through the trees and Tim freezes, hoping his eyes are playing tricks on him and that he didn’t just see something move. 

He breathes heavily and realizes with dread that he’s standing on a path, leaving him open to attacks from pretty much all sides. 

He quickly decides his best bet is to just walk quicker. He can see the gate, a bit further away, and exhales in relief. Honestly, he considers just heading straight home after this, maybe make himself hot chocolate and watch a movie until he forgets about this whole thing. 

His skin crawls and he feels far too exposed. The wind dies down and Tim’s heart stops when he hears rustling behind him. He pulls out his knife but doesn’t get to use it before a shape jumps at him from behind a crumbling stone statue. Tim shrieks and stumbles back, tripping over his own feet and going down hard. 

The person, still on top of Tim, wrestles him to the ground, trying to pin his arms down. Gravel crunches under him, biting into his skin. Tim bucks, trying to get free. He can’t believe he’s about to be murdered in a Gotham cemetery. 

Tim is about to be murdered.

He shouts, hitting the person, trying desperately to push them off. The person on top of him makes a low, guttural sound that does absolutely nothing for the terror fueling Tim’s desperation and adrenaline.

He blinks up and sees startling blue eyes staring wildly at him, blown wide. They’re so familiar. Tim’s breath stutters and his struggling slows a bit. The person above him is covered in mud and dirt, his hair matted and dark, though Tim can’t tell if it’s the natural color or because of the mud. 

But those eyes. Tim’s seen them in interviews on the internet. He’s seen them at Gotham Academy those few times he managed to catch a glimpse of him in the hallways. 

His eyes flicker down. Despite the mud and what looks alarmingly like blood, it’s still unmistakably a suit. 

He inhales hoarsely, confusion mixing with the terror. “Jason?” he asks.

The person above him stops moving entirely and Tim pushes him off easily. On shaking arms, he immediately scoots as far away as he can manage without collapsing. A strange noise crawls up his throat and he presses a hand to his mouth and tries to regain control. He will not cry.

“Jason… Todd?” he tries again, eyes fixed on the hunched shape a few yards from him. 

The person looks up, eyes wide. There’s no alarm, just the faintest spark of recognition in them, like he recognizes his name. 

“Okay,” Tim says, voice a bit reedy. “Okay, this is fine. I can handle this. Absolutely.”

He wraps his arms around his middle and takes a few deep breaths before he starts hyperventilating and panicking. When he’s calmed down-- as calm as he can manage to be in this situation, anyway-- he gets up on shaking legs and stumbles over to Jason.

Jason freaking Todd. 

Who is crouched in the middle of the gravel path, staring blankly ahead. 

Tim approaches, still cautious. 

“H-hey, Jason?” he asks again, not daring to touch him. “Um. If it’s you, d’you-- like, know--"

Tim pauses, licking his dry lips, the cold momentarily forgotten. How does he go about asking Jason how the hell he’s here, clearly alive, when he’s been dead for six months? Maybe he'll wait to ask that question. It’s clear he probably won’t answer, and the last thing Tim wants is to make him spiral into a panic attack.

“Let’s get you home, Jason,” Tim says instead.

Tentatively, he reaches for Jason’s arm. When he doesn’t get socked in the face for the touch, he grips his arm tighter and tries to haul him to his feet. Jason is much lighter and more compliant than Tim expected, and he stumbles a few steps. 

He links their arms together and leads Jason out of the cemetery and towards the nearest bus stop.

The bus driver stares at them when the doors hiss open. Tim laughs, and it sounds hysteric to his own ears. 

“He slipped and fell,” Tim tells the man. 

Maybe it’s the barely concealed panic that convinces the bus driver, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s currently pushing two in the morning and the man just can’t bring himself to care. Either way, he shrugs and lets them get on. 

Tim decides that he doesn’t want to get kicked off and have to walk all the way back home, so he doesn’t allow Jason to sit down and mess up the seats. He feels bad, but also Jason doesn’t seem to be aware of anything, so it should be fine.

The bus is thankfully mostly empty at this hour, and the only two passengers-- a young woman in work clothes and an elderly man dozing in the back-- barely look up at them. They get off long before the bus heads for Bristol and no one else gets on. Tim doesn’t let go of Jason’s arm and keeps them close to the doors until they reach their stop.

Jason follows Tim without a sound and it’s honestly freaking him out even more than being attacked by him. 

At least this time Tim is much less jumpy when the wind rustles the trees. 

“First things first,” Tim says as he flips on the hallway lights when they enter the manor. “We have got to clean you up. Mom and Dad will be so mad if you get mud on their Persian rugs.”

Jason makes zero noises of acknowledgment. That’s to be expected, so Tim just leads Jason through the halls, turning on the lights as he goes. He tries to deny the fact that he’s still a bit spooked about the whole cemetery thing. He’s never going back there if he can avoid it.

Tim’s bathroom isn’t as big as his parents’ but the shower should still be big enough for them both to fit. Plus, it means that if Tim ruins one of his towels, his parents will never find out. 

He turns on the shower and holds his hand under the stream until the water runs warm and then turns his attention back to Jason.

Who is staring at Tim, looking completely zoned out. In the light, his clothes look even worse. They’re torn and they seem a size or two too large on him. For the first time, Tim notices how Jason’s fingertips are crusted with dried blood and his stomach turns to lead as he thinks about the fact that Jason probably had to claw his way out of his coffin. 

Undressing Jason is probably the most embarrassing thing Tim’s ever had to do. His face is flushed the entire time and he doesn’t even look where he’s throwing the suit jacket and the grayish dress shirt-- that must’ve been white at some point-- to the side. 

Tim leaves Jason in his underwear to save both of them the embarrassment-- that Jason probably won’t remember anyway-- and shoves Jason under the warm stream.

It’s past four in the morning when Tim collapses on his bed, body exhausted, but mind buzzing with adrenaline. Jason is standing in the middle of his bedroom, now free of mud and blood, hair still dripping with water, wearing an oversized Queen shirt and sleet-gray sweatpants that belong to Tim’s dad. 

They’re both too big on Jason, but Tim’s own clothes are too small and he can’t let him go around wearing his funeral clothes. Besides, Tim found them in the very back of his dad’s closet and doubts the man will miss them.

Afterward, he took the time to root through his bathroom cabinet for the Justice League-themed bandaids he keeps and applied them to the bleeding cuts on Jason’s fingers. Mostly for Tim’s own entertainment, because he does find it very amusing to see the colorful bandaids wrapped on each of his fingers. 

Tim allows himself a few minutes of relaxing before sitting up and stretching his aching back. His arm is bruised from where he fell on it entering the graveyard and in the bathroom mirror he saw several scratches and small bruises from rolling around on the gravel. All in all, Tim just wants to sleep, but the panic still threatening to swallow him whole and the adrenaline of Robin literally standing in his bedroom makes that impossible. 

He looks over and is unsurprised to note that Jason hasn’t moved. He’s still doing that thing, the staring. Unblinking, unseeing, like his mind isn’t even there. It’s so unlike Jason, unlike Robin.

Dying and then coming back to life probably does that to a person. 

“So--” Tim starts, aware of how awkward it is to hold a conversation with a person who looks like he’s not even hearing him. 

He flushes, aware that he’s been making a complete fool of himself in front of Robin. Tim hopes he won’t remember this when he’s okay again. 

There’s a sudden pang in his chest at that. Will Robin even be okay? Nevermind that, it’s Jason who’s standing in front of Tim, thin and pale, looking anything but okay. And Tim’s scared. Because Jason is dead. It was on the news for weeks. It was everywhere. Batman is still out terrorizing Gotham in his grief. And here he is, standing in Tim’s bedroom wearing his dad’s Queen shirt, face gaunt, very much alive. And Tim’s not fully convinced he isn’t a zombie.

 So yes, Tim is lost and feels a little bit like crying, and has no idea how to even start trying to help Jason. 

He sniffs, quickly pressing his palms against his eyes, trying to force back the sting of tears. He’s fine, everything is perfectly okay and he has absolutely everything under control.

“Okay, uh--” Tim says, looking up again. 

He wracks his brain, entirely unsure how to actually deal with this. “Oh! You’re probably hungry!” 

Jason blinks, expression scarily vacant. It’s extremely off-putting. 

“I’m not used to cooking a lot, but I know how to make crepes! My mom showed me last year!”

More like she made some on the morning of Tim’s birthday and Tim tried to recreate it until he finally managed to make crepes that were somewhat edible. He burned two pans so badly that he had to throw them away. But it’s basically the same thing, anyway. 

Without preamble, he grabs Jason’s limp hand again and guides him down the hall, rambling as he goes. If he talks and fills the silence, then he can’t focus on how much he wants to break down into tears. 

Jason is silent as Tim recounts his attempts, tells him about the recipes he’s been trying to make from old cookbooks he found, tells him about falling asleep while he was making cookies and waking up to a house full of smoke and the fire alarm going off.

All the while, he roots through the cabinets, pulling out the ingredients he needs for the crepes. 

“Mom spent a year abroad in France,” he tells Jason, setting a bowl down on the counter. “During college, I think. She talks about it sometimes. She always says that’s where she learned to make crepes. She even bought some cookbooks there, but I don’t know French so I can’t really use them.”

He sat Jason down on one of the kitchen stools and placed a cup of orange juice in front of him. It remains untouched.

Tim works in silence for a few minutes before deciding he really doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. 

“I was kind of hoping we could, uh, be friends,” he says, heat rising up his neck. “Like, once you’re better of course. I wanted to be your friend at school, too, but I didn’t get to talk to you before--”

He trails off. Before last April. Tim graduated, Jason did not. He’d have started his junior year this September.

Batman had been particularly violent on patrol the day school started. 

“I skipped a grade, so I’m starting ninth grade instead of eighth this year. Maybe when you’re better, we could do homework together. I always sucked at English.” He looks up at Jason, unsure if he should keep going. He won’t remember this, right? “I always saw you in the cafeteria reading a book, so you must be at least a little good in the class, right?”

Silence. A blank stare. Tim swallows thickly. 

“Anyway!” he says a little bit too loudly. “My mom made crepes for my thirteenth birthday this year, and she added beer to the batter. They were really good, so I’ve been doing it, too. When I was trying to recreate her recipe. I think I should’ve just asked her, but it’s fine, I figured it out, anyway. Well, with the help of Google, too.”

That’s how the night goes. Tim talks endlessly, jumping on anything and everything while Jason sits silently. Tim even starts talking about his photography and about Robin and Batman and chasing after them when he runs out of interesting things to talk about. He lets the batter rest and makes himself and Jason hot chocolate. 

It’s a bit too sweet, but he doesn’t mind. He tries to help Jason figure out how to drink it, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world, and it ends with him spilling the drink all over Jason. Tim finds another shirt for him, this one covered in bleach stains, and then they end up on the couch, while Tim tries to find something for them to watch. He settles on an old sitcom and leans against the edge of the couch to watch, Jason sitting stiffly on the other end.

Sunlight is streaming in through the blinds when Tim blinks awake, neck and shoulders aching from the bad position he fell asleep in. the TV is still playing the show and Tim turns it off quickly. 

It takes him a second to realize what’s wrong. 

Jason isn’t here. 

At first, Tim isn’t all that alarmed, thinking that maybe he dreamed the entire thing. He gets up and makes his way into the kitchen and stops short when he sees the half-empty bowl of batter, a stack of burnt crepes, and the horrible stench of burnt batter filling the room. Tim coughs and then panics.

“Jason?” he asks, turning around and bolting out of the kitchen.

He can feel his heartbeat in his throat as he runs around the house, calling out Jason’s name. Tim searches the entire house, and then searches a second time. Jason was here. Jason was here. And now he’s no longer here. Tim lost him. 

Nausea rolls around his stomach and he’s starting to feel lightheaded from how fast he’s breathing. He stumbles, collapsing to his knees in the middle of the entryway, and fumbles for his phone. His vision is blurry, but he knows his neighbor’s number by heart. 

His hand shakes so bad he drops the phone twice before someone picks up.

“Wayne Residence, who is this?” Alfred Pennyworth’s voice asks.

Tim’s hyperventilating worsens. Oh God, Bruce is gonna know Tim found Jason and kept him in his home and didn’t bring him to Wayne Manor, and now he lost Jason.  

“H-hi,” Tim says, hating how much his voice shakes. “T-this is Tim. Y-your neighbor. Uh. Drake. T-Tim Drake. I’m--”

He bites his fist, trying to keep the sobs in. he inhales shakily. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts, tears dribbling down his cheeks. “I--I can’t find-- I was just tr-trying to help. I’m--”

 He takes a gasping breath and drops the phone again. His hands shake too badly and he can’t pick it up again. He curls in on himself, trying to steady his breathing. He’s had panic attacks before. Usually, he can calm himself, but right now his mind is empty except for the raw guilt about losing Bruce’s previously dead son.

Tim wanted to help. He was gonna go up to Bruce, try to convince him to stop hurting people. He went to Dick in Blüdhaven and the man just practically slammed the door in his face when he suggested he talk to Bruce. Tim stumbled upon Jason and instead of bringing him straight to Bruce, he let him wander, and now he’s just gone.

Tim doesn’t help, he just makes things worse. And now Bruce won’t believe him. Tim wouldn’t blame him if he got a restraining order against him, because how horrible do you have to be to tell someone you found their dead son wandering around and then you lost him?

And then they’ll call his parents.  

Tim’s worked himself into such a panic that he almost jumps out of his skin when someone touches his shoulder. 

He blinks and finds himself staring at Jason. 

Jason with his vacant blue eyes, who isn’t even fully aware of what’s happening.

Tim lets out a sob and latches onto him. He wants to shout at him, yell in anger, but the words get stuck in his throat. 

It takes several long minutes for his breathing to go from hyperventilating to something more measured. 

“I hate you,” he mumbles into Jason’s shoulder. “I couldn’t find you.”

And then he hears the front door open. His head snaps up and he stares at Bruce, body locked up in-- in terror.  

Bruce is also frozen, the worry on his face shifting quickly to confusion, then recognition, then grief, before settling on anger. 

“What is this?” he asks, tone cold. 

“Mr. Wayne,” Tim says, his breathing still too fast, his chest tight. He tries to stand, using Jason as support, but his legs are boneless underneath him and won’t support his weight. “I-I’m… I’m sorry. I was chasing after you last night and I followed you into the cemetery, and then I found Jason there, and he was all dirty, like he’d just-- like he’d just crawled out of his grave, and I really didn’t know what to do so I just brought him home. I was gonna bring him to you but I fell asleep and then I couldn’t find him and so I called you and--”

His breath catches in his throat and he tries his best not to shrink back under Mr. Wayne’s imposing form looming over him. 

He expects yelling. He doesn’t expect Mr. Wayne to just kneel in front of them and reach for Jason, his own hands shaking. 

“Jason?” he asks, and there’s an almost imperceptible shake in his voice. 

Tim wipes his face and tries to scoot away, but Jason doesn’t let him go. He looks down and realizes that Jason’s holding his hand tight enough that his knuckles are white. 

“I-I think he’s catatonic,” Tim says. “He hasn’t spoken at all.”

Mr. Wayne shifts his gaze to look at Tim and studies him. The wet shine in his eyes replaced by something more cautious. Tim actually does shrink back a little, but can’t move away because Jason’s still holding his hand.

“I’m sorry for not taking him to you earlier,” he mumbles again, feeling a lump form in his throat. 

The man’s face softens by a fraction. “It’s alright, Tim,” he says, offering him a reassuring smile. “I’ll take you both back to the manor and we’ll figure it out there, okay? That sound good?”

Tim thinks that if he tries to speak, he’ll just end up crying again, so he just nods numbly, feeling some of the tension ease from his shoulders, some of the panic that’s been holding on tight finally releasing him.