Archive of Our Own ^beta

It wasn't until it was all over that the nightmares started. Once he'd had time to breathe, when he wasn't able to run away from them anymore. When Bruce was back, and Dick was Nightwing again, and...Damian was Robin for good and Tim was Red Robin for good.

It wasn't just reruns playing in his head. That would be easier, it wouldn't be any different from his waking thoughts. They replayed in his head already, those moments. Over and over and over.

No, the dream always started, for some odd reason, with Jason. Robin Jason, not the Red Hood—Robin the way Tim remembered from when he was just a little boy with a camera, chasing his heroes through the night.

Tim has a camera, in the dream. He's standing on a roof, and Robin is perched on an A/C unit, leaning back on his hands and kicking his legs. "Hiya, little bird," he says with a bright grin. "You gotta be careful running around up here, you know. You don't have your wings yet."

Tim looks down at his camera in his hands, clutching it tightly. "I did," he says without looking up. "But they're gone."

Robin hums, and Tim looks up to see his grin replaced with a tilted head and a thoughtful expression. "Do you want them back?"

"More than anything." It comes out as a whisper, but Jason hears it anyway.

"C'mon, then," he says, hopping off his perch and landing with a bounce in his step. "I can show you how."

Robin reaches out and snatches one of Tim's hands from where they're white-knuckled on his camera. A little thrill shivers through Tim as Robin grips his hand. Robin, his hero, is holding his hand.

Maybe the touch will give Tim some of Robin's magic. He'd never really felt like he'd had it, when he wore the costume. He thinks it died with Jason. Tim had only ever been a pale imitation.

Jason pulls Tim along with him and suddenly they aren't on the rooftop anymore. They're in the desert. Z and Owens are dead on the ground, Pru is bleeding out, gasping her last bloody, gurgling breaths. Tim slips his hand from Robin's and turns to him, but it isn't Robin standing next to him anymore. He wears the same suit, the same face, but his eyes are different. They're teal now, and there's a familiar malevolent glint to them. He may still look like Robin, but this is the Red Hood, standing before him. The Red Hood as he was before he was just Jason, back when he hadn’t yet found his own mind again. And he's led Tim here, straight to the Widower.

Before he can even move, the Widower is blocking Tim's view of Jason and he's sliding his blade into Tim's belly. Right into his spleen. The pain doesn't register at first—all he feels is that there's something foreign and wrong inside of him. Cold, hard metal splitting warm, soft flesh. He should leave the blade in. He knows he should leave the blade in, if he takes it out he'll bleed to death. Never take the blade out.

But it's reflex. There's something inside of him where something shouldn't be, and he takes hold of the hilt and yanks it out.

That's when the pain hits. He's been hurt before, plenty of times, but this... this was the most painful thing he'd ever felt.

They say your brain doesn't remember pain, not really. You might remember the words to describe the pain—burning, throbbing, pulsing, aching—but you don't remember it. You can't re-experience it. It's your brain’s defense mechanism.

But Tim remembers how it felt. He can feel it in his dreams, exactly the same as he had in reality. And it hurts. It hurts so much he almost blacks out. He's not sure how he doesn't. Pure resolve, maybe. Z and Owens are dead, their bodies cooling in the sand, but Pru's heart still beats, she's still gasping, her eyes are still wide and alive…

Except it's different, here. Her eyes are wide, but there's no life in them. They're glassy, unseeing. Her chest is still.

So he has no reason to fight this time, not really. Bruce is gone and only Tim can save him, but that's not enough to keep his heart beating. Because in the dream, he didn't find the cave drawings. Bruce had left no signs here. Tim hasn’t been able to find any proof that he’s really still alive.

And he's tired. Everyone thinks he's gone insane, and maybe he has. 

He misses Bruce. He misses his mom. His dad. Bart.

He misses Kon. Misses him so much it hurts more than the sword in his gut.

As his blood runs out of him and into the sand, he hears the echo of shattering glass and then he’s falling. The windows of a Gotham skyscraper are rushing past him and it’s Ra’s’ sword in his gut now.

Dick doesn’t catch him.

When he wakes from the dream, it's never with a scream, or a gasp. He wakes slowly, like with any other dream. But he's sweating, and he's cold, his blankets kicked off of his bed.

But the worst part is when the pain finally hits—he can feel the sword inside of him. It hurts just as much as it had then. Whatever mechanism it is that protects the mind from feeling that remembered pain is broken inside of him.

And there's always a keen in his throat and it comes out strangled, bitten off. His gut churns and bile climbs up his throat. He's taken to leaving a small trash can next to his bed. He got tired of cleaning vomit out of the carpet every single night. He worries for his esophageal lining.

But tonight there's no trash can. He's not at home, he's in a safe house. He and Dick and Jason have crashed here for the night. The city is being ripped apart by a gang war and they were all too exhausted to bother trying to make it all the way back to Bristol.

It's a studio apartment. One bed in the corner and a pullout couch. Tim had gone to sleep first—he was always tired, now. He doesn’t get much sleep, after all. So that means that tonight, Dick and Jason are sitting at the small dining table across the apartment when Tim wakes. They hear the sounds trying to come out of him. They see him thrashing in his bed.

They see the vomit splatter on the hardwood.

They both jump up from their chairs and Dick rushes over while Jason stays where he is, concern pinching his features.

He should have known not to fall asleep with them here. He just hadn't been able to keep himself awake—he'd hoped the exhaustion would make him sleep too heavily to dream. He didn't want them to see this, to see the damage he'd done to himself on his self-destructive odyssey.

So when Dick comes rushing over, Tim panics. He doesn't mean to—he's still half asleep, still half in the dream, still feeling the sword on his gut, and all he can think is no one is supposed to see this.

He tumbles out of the bed and stumbles away from Dick's distressed reach, almost tripping over the blankets they must have seen him kicking off of himself while he slept. He runs to the bathroom and slams and locks the door behind him. He crawls into the empty bathtub and just curls up at the bottom of it, trying to slow his frantic breaths.

They saw him. Saw him cracked open and bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.

They're knocking on the door, gently at first, soft, concerned words filtering through the door that make it to his ears, but don't get any further than that. Then the words become more insistant, the knocking louder. He focuses on the louder words.

"—coming in if you don't answer!"

He doesn't want them to come in, but he can't answer. Answering would require breathing, and he can't figure out how to do that properly.

The door is kicked open and then Jason is crouching next to him, grabbing his shoulder and flipping him over to face him, the force of it giving Tim no choice but to uncurl, to let his arms be pulled from where they were wrapped around his knees.

Jason's grabbing Tim's face between both of his large, callused hands, and his teal eyes have lost that glint from before and it’s been replaced with sharp anxiety. This Jason wouldn't lead Tim to the desert. This Jason is worried. He doesn’t think this Jason’s touch will give him any of Robin’s magic. Not because Jason doesn’t still have it, but because Tim doesn’t deserve it.

"Breathe, baby bird."

And for some reason, that's all it takes, and Tim is taking in huge gasping breaths instead of the tiny, frantic ones he was desperately trying to pull in before.

"Good. You're okay. You're safe. Just keep breathing."

His face is wet. The dream doesn't usually make him cry, but he feels like he's been split in half down the center and Jason can see everything inside of him and the tears are the last of his secrets leaking out and dripping away.

They know, now, what he's done to himself.

He realizes too late that he's babbling. He's been split open already, but he's tugging at the edges of the cut and he's prying it open even wider with his words. He doesn't even know what he's saying, but whatever it is makes Jason's face twist.

Dick is standing in the door behind Jason, and Tim's words have made him slap his hand over his mouth and his eyes glisten, wet with shock.

Jason yanks him up and pulls him out of the tub. He's in a heap on the bathroom floor until Jason pulls him into his lap and wraps him up in a rare, crushing hug.

"Stop. Stop talking. You don't want us to hear this, I know you don't." Jason's voice rumbles against Tim's face, buried in his chest.

Tim manages to close his mouth and the words, whatever they were, choke off.

"Jason—" Dick starts, but Jason cuts him off.

"No, Dick. He's hysterical, and he's just come out of a night terror, it's not fair to him. He wouldn't be saying these things in his right mind, he wouldn't want us to hear."

Dick comes over to stoop next to them. Tim can see his form out of the corner of his eye, but Jason doesn't let up the pressure he's exerting to keep Tim's face hidden against him.

"It's not your fault, Tim," Dick says softly. "You were all alone. We let that happen, we abandoned you. You did so well, Timmy. If I'd known you felt this way I would have made sure to tell you that a hundred times over. I should have told you that."

"Dick,” he croaks. “I don't—It's okay, you don't have to say anything, I don't even…"

"Kid, you don't have to say any of that right now,” Jason interrupts. “Just let yourself come down from this and get some rest before we talk, okay? Just relax."

He doesn't know how to do that. He never has.

He can still feel the sword in his gut, but the remembered pain has already faded.

He pushes himself away from Jason, sitting up and scooting out of Jason's lap, backing up against the side of the tub.

"I'm okay," he breathes. "I didn't... you're right, I didn't want—I need to go. I can’t be here.”

“No,” Dick says sternly, and the way he says it, Tim knows he doesn’t have the energy to fight against such fervent determination right now. “You don’t need to be alone right now.”

“Tim,” Jason says. Tim’s not sure he’s ever heard Jason speak so gently. “How often do you have nightmares?”

Tim shakes his head. He doesn’t understand what the point of the question is, so the answer doesn’t matter.

“Every night?” Jason probes.

Tim pauses for a minute, then concedes and nods.

“How long?”

“Since I came back,” he says hoarsely. “Since Bruce came back.”

Jason nods. “Have you told anyone about them?”

Tim shakes his head.

Jason pauses for a moment, choosing his next words.

“You need to talk to someone about them. They won’t get any better until you do. Mine didn’t get better until Kory found me and I had her and Roy. They forced me to talk to them after finding me sitting on the beach one night holding a gun like a teddy bear.”

“He’s right,” Dick agrees. “It doesn’t have to be us, it doesn’t have to be right now. Just talk to someone.”

Kon. He misses Kon so much it hurts. And Kon is here, he’s not dead anymore and Tim hasn’t...they haven’t talked. Kon tried a few times, but Tim just...he’s not the same person anymore. He doesn’t think Kon will like who he is now.

But, god, he wants to talk to Kon. So badly.

He can’t find the right words to agree, so he just nods again. “Okay.”

“You need to sleep,” Dick says. “Exhaustion just makes it worse. We can stay with you. We’ll wake you if you start having a nightmare.”

“I don’t think I can fall asleep again, Dick.”

“You can,” Jason says, standing up. He holds out a hand out to help Tim. “C’mon. I can show you how.”

Tim hesitates, then takes Jason’s hand. He hopes this time Jason will lead him out of the desert instead.