Chapter Text
Dick is looking over his subjects with a bored expression on his face when his attention is caught by a flicker of black out of the corner of his eye. His head turns and he’s left with a rare feeling of shock as he stares at the man standing several feet to his left, beside one of the large hotel windows. Dick watches as he peers down at something on his wrist; the pale blue light of the screen there casts shadows across a face that should no longer exist. One older, with a nasty looking scar that hooks one side of his mouth up towards where it ends at his temple.
There’s a small voice coming from an earpiece that he only catches due to his advanced hearing.
“How’s it lookin’?”
“Well, there’s either an eclipse happening or there’s no sun, which raises so many questions about how this planet is even surviving. No sign of our guy’s signature, but I’ll keep looking. Could take a while going off of how saturated this place is.”
“Lemme know if ya need t’ be pulled out.”
“Don’t I always?”
“I’m not answerin’ that.”
Dick is fully turned now, arms leaned back against the railing as he observes this strange intruder not only bearing one of his baby brother’s faces, but carrying around the voice of another. He’s still as a statue as he puts you don’t see me out into the air around him. Strangely enough, he finds himself meeting gazes with a pair of nearly violet eyes. They go wide.
“Hello,” Dick drawls.
The stranger lifts a hand to point back at himself. He steps to the side and makes a strangled sound when Dick’s eyes follow. “Are you talking to me?”
“Is there anyone else in this hall?”
His head swings back behind himself to double check. “Well, no.”
“Then you’re lucky I don’t have your head for intruding.” Dick’s smile is all fangs and yet, there’s no reaction: interesting. This is not the brother whose life he stomped out with a single foot. “What’s your name?”
“Tim,” he says cautiously. “and you are?”
“Dick,” he purrs. “but you already knew that didn’t you?”
Tim’s eyes narrow. His lips press together into a thin line as the air becomes further saturated in Dick’s influence. He waves at the air as if swatting away a fly. “Knock it off. You’re making me feel like I need to sneeze and now I have to figure out why you can even see me.”
His head bends to mess with the computer at his wrist. Dick is unsure if he’s charmed or insulted at how little of a threat he seems to register. He’s gone from the balcony and at Tim’s side in an instant, breath hot at the back of his neck. He’s frustrated when it doesn’t earn him so much as a twitch.
“You - “
“Everything is working within normal parameters,” Tim mutters. “so why am I visible to you?”
Dick growls lowly. “It’s rude to ignore others.”
“Is the death presence causing anomalies? This could be bad.”
Trying to grab a hold of Tim’s body is like trying to grasp smoke, or sand. There’s the slightest brush of contact, as if he might have touched something solid, and then he’s slipping through like there’s nothing there in the first place. It baffles him.
“Yeah,” Tim says dryly. “maybe don’t do that? It tickles.”
“What are you?” Dick circles around him, sniffing the air and looking for any signs of hidden tech. “You’re no vampire.”
“Vampire?” He earns a blink for that. “Oh wow, is that why everything is so,” he gives a gesture that encompasses both Dick and the hotel around him. “like that ?”
“Like what?”
“Nothing, just - really embraced the vampire aesthetic, huh?”
Dick fixes him with a narrow eyed look of insult.
Tim disguises his laugh with a cough. He begins walking away from the sound of music and voices in the grand hall, leaving Dick no choice but to follow or lose him. He’s messing with some sort of code on his wrist computer, one that Dick squints at but cannot make sense of without knowing just what it’s for.
“Hey, you haven’t seen a necromancer, have you?” Tim suddenly asks. “There’s a lot of death around here so it’s kind of hard to sort through all the signatures. You’d know him if you saw him. Wears an old fashioned wizard hat and carries around a staff like a wannabe-Gandalf? He’s been raising the dead in different universes to start conflict.”
Dick hadn’t even known that was possible. Other than Jason’s strange second chance at life, he’s never heard of anyone coming back from the dead unless they were turned into a vampire or thrown into a Lazarus Pit. “No, can’t say that I have.”
“Damn.”
“So you’re from another universe?”
There’s a beep from the computer at his wrist; Tim takes a right. “Yup.”
“And you can - sense death?”
“Unfortunately.”
“But you’re not dead?”
There’s what could be a laugh. “Depends who you ask.”
“I can’t touch you,” Dick points out. “you’re like a ghost.”
“My body isn’t really here. This is more of a projection of my spirit that’s been enhanced with tech to allow me to jump between universes. I don’t send the real thing through unless I know for sure where I’m going and what sort of impact I’ll have on the universe if I do.”
That sort of power sounds incredible. Dick can’t help but want it instantly. Unfortunately for him, there’s no way to turn Tim when he can’t so much as grab him.
“See that?” Tim points a finger up at him without looking. “That’s exactly why I don’t come through unless I have to.”
Dick puts on his most innocent of faces, the one that got him close enough to pluck out Batman’s heart. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that.”
Another beep, another turn. The path is starting to seem familiar.
“What is your universe like?”
“It has a sun for one. No vampires that I know of, not like you anyways.” Tim pauses to run his hand along a wall. He curses when a familiar feeling of wrongness coats his skin like sap, sticky and nearly impossible to remove. “Dammit. He’s been here.”
Dick falls into an easy stride as Tim speeds up. His eyes are glowing a brighter violet, Dick notes curiously. The tech on his wrist lets out more beeps as they continue. It’s vibrating like mad when they reach Dick’s inner chambers.
His eyes narrow at the fact. No one is allowed in his rooms but him. He’s killed for less.
Tim strides inside without pause. He’s muttering something under his breath that Dick doesn’t understand, a tongue twisting sort of language that makes his ears hurt. He heads right past the sitting room, through the mostly useless kitchen and into the library where Dick keeps his more priceless mementos. Ones he’d taken from different parts of humanity before it’d fallen.
Tim steps right into the center of the room and turns slowly, looking for something Dick can’t see. There’s a grim look on his face when he pauses in front of a case that had once held a crumbling old book inside. There’s nothing left there now, save for a darkened black mark.
Dick snarls.
“What was in that case?” Tim asks.
“An old spellbook,” he says around his fangs. Reddened eyes search the room but there is nothing to rend and bleed . “one from the old world. No one but myself should’ve had access to it.”
Tim lets his breath out slowly. “Can you unlock it?”
It takes everything in him not to simply tear the top off with his claws. He touches a fingertip to the side instead, where the magic can register him. It swings open to let an acrid stench out into the air.
“Necromancers,” Tim says grimly.
Dick turns away before he’s made to retch. A sleeve pressed to his sensitive nose helps to block out the worst of it as he watches a pale hand reach into the mass inside the case. Tim’s entire body goes stiff for a moment, eyes moving beneath his eyelids before he begins to pull back. The stuff sticks to his hand like glue, fighting to stay attached to both skin and wood. In the end, Tim wins out. It comes free, wiggling and shrieking like a dying thing.
Tim mutters something that makes smoke begin to come off of it. Dick winces when it screams louder.
“You’re no longer welcome here!” Tim snaps as the creature detaches from his hand. It begins to crawl its way toward Dick. Before he can take to it with his claws, a boot comes down hard from above.
There’s one final scream and a flash of light. When Dick next blinks, the creature is gone and Tim is looking at the hand it had touched with disgust.
“ So many cleansings,” he mutters to himself. “should’ve made Jason take this one.”
As much as the familiar name makes Dick perk up, he’s far too curious over what’s occurred to get distracted. “What was that?”
“A magical residue that can function as a nasty trap. I don’t know if you were the intended target but you definitely had something he wanted.” Tim grimaces at the room around him. “I’m going to have to come back to do a more thorough search. I can only exert so much energy through this form before it gets dangerous. In the meantime, lock this room up and don’t go near it.”
“What would it have done to me?”
“If you were lucky? Kill you.”
“And if I was unlucky?”
Tim’s smile has too much teeth for how grim his expression is. “A necromancer gains energy through the passing of one stage to another. Imagine what you would become having already passed through one stage of death. There’s no guarantee that your soul wouldn’t be trapped in limbo forever. No body, no voice. Just endless, silent screaming.”
Dick isn’t afraid of much of anything anymore. The words are still enough to chase a chill down his spine.
The earpiece in Tim’s ear comes to life before he can say anything else. “Your levels dropped for a sec. Everythin’ good?”
“Just took care of a present our guy left behind. I’ll be ready for a pull in twenty.”
“Roger.”
“When will you come back?” Dick presses.
“Probably a few days. Universe travel can get complicated with time differences so hopefully it doesn’t translate into years for you.”
“Years?!”
“Countdown in ten.”
“Just stay away from this room and you’ll be fine. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“And if I die in that time?”
Tim’s smile is wry. “Try really really hard not to.”
“Five.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“I get the feeling you’re a terrible person, so it works out.”
Dick’s mouth opens but before he can come up with a refute, Tim is gone between one blink and the next. He kicks a foot out at the ground in half hearted amusement. “...touché.”
The next time Dick sees him, he’s in the middle of a meeting. He’s got lieutenants from all over the world gathered, some in person and some lit up on holo screens. Diana is detailing how life in the human cities is going, now that they’ve been completely subjugated, when suddenly Tim is in the center of the room.
Dick blinks at him in astonishment.
“Shit,” Tim mutters as he looks around. “this isn’t where I was aiming at all.”
None of the others so much as blink at the added presence. Not even Diana, who is standing directly behind him and who should no longer be able to see Dick through Tim’s body.
“ - due to the lack of sun, we are finding that supplemental lighting is required to keep them functional. Our newest lamps are proving to be adequate, but the long term plan may have to be adjusted.”
“And what of the insurgents?” Dick asks, trying his best not to watch as Tim ducks under Diana’s arm to weave between bodies and holograms.
“Reduced to nearly nothing, my lord,” Clark answers.
“My lord?” Tim says by his shoulder; Dick just barely manages not to twitch. “Okay so, just, completely in the vampire trope. Got it.”
“Good. I want an example made out of the remainder. We’ll parade them through the cities so no one forgets what insubordination earns them.”
There’s a wave of agreement from the rest of the room before Dick waves a hand. “Alright, dismissed. I want the numbers from the cities by the end of the month.”
One by one, the holograms turn off. The handful of vampires left remaining in the room begin to group up and drift out of the room. Dick waits until the door closes behind the last to turn to his new companion.
“It’s been a week,” he tells Tim.
“So there was no reason to worry.” Tim squints at the room around them, nose wrinkled as if he’s smelled something foul. His eyes glow as he looks at something Dick cannot see.
“I thought you might be lying when you said no one else could see you.”
“Yeah? What about now?”
“I’m curious.” Dick leans closer. He can just barely catch the briefest of scents coming off of Tim; there’s something bitter about him, where his own Tim was sweet. He’s a bit like rot, acrid with a sickly sweet undertone that could make the strongest of stomachs heave. “You interest me.”
“Well, there are worse things you could be.” Tim shrugs and gestures towards the door. “Let’s go check out your library. I want to try to track the necromancer.”
It’s been a long time since anyone has tried to order Dick around. He finds himself acquiescing out of simple amusement and newfound curiosity. There is so little he does not control in this world. Having a new factor is a gift he hadn’t known he’d wanted.
Turns out taking over the world gets so boring once you’ve won.
“I couldn’t help but overhear that you’ve subjugated humanity.”
A purr rumbles in Dick’s chest. “They were fools to stand against us. I warned them from the beginning.”
“Wow.” Tim shakes his head slowly. “Hearing that from you is - weird.”
“You know of an alternate me?”
“Yeah. He’s - well. I guess he used to be my mentor. I’m not really sure what we are anymore.”
“He’s human?”
“Mostly. He’s got the Sight and a wanderer’s Spirit but he’s still probably more human than the rest of us. He definitely acts like it, at least.” The smile that crosses his lips is small and sad. “He was my hero once, but he doesn’t approve of what I’m doing. Not anymore.”
A tendril of jealousy wraps around the base of his throat. He itches to erase this other version of himself. To plant himself in the soil he’d been torn from instead.
“What would he think of me?”
“You?” Tim looks up at him, as if seeing him for the first time. There’s humor in his eyes, made morbid by the words that follow. “You would horrify him.”
Dick’s smile is all teeth. “Perhaps he deserves it.”
He earns a laugh for that; a purr rumbles in his chest.
“You might be right. He’s had a hard life but still, sometimes I just - “ he shakes his head. “Nevermind. It’s not important.”
Dick disagrees but there are plenty of other questions to be asked. “It does not bother you, to know what I’ve done to this world?”
“I don’t know enough to have any real opinion and it’s not my job to fix every universe I come across. You learn that when you get into a job like this - sometimes the hard way. I’ve come across plenty of worlds where I’m the villain so I don’t really have any room to judge.”
A wise outlook. Dick wonders what it would have been like if this was the Tim he’d faced all those months ago. Would things have ended differently? Would Tim be ruling at his side, as the only family he has left? Dick doesn’t regret his actions, but he does sometimes wonder if he should have been gentler with his brothers. If he should have coaxed them into this life instead of snuffing them outright. Killing Bruce was a shock, perhaps they would’ve come around in time.
Oh well. Burned bridges and all that.
Dick opens the doors to his quarters to let Tim inside. They close behind them with a pointed click.
“No one has been inside since you were last here.” He pauses to pull the key out of his coat pocket to unlock the library doors. “No vampire, anyways.”
The doors open to reveal a completely normal room - at least to his eyes. Tim has a much different reaction. He loses several shades of color and presses a hand to his head as if he has a sudden headache.
“Angry spirits,” he mutters. “it’s like they’ve been magnified. This is going to suck.”
“Do you need me to do anything?”
“Actually, you can act as an additional grounding fixture.” Tim steps into the room. He gestures down at the floor at the center and folds his legs beneath himself. Dick follows suit to sit across from him, coat fanning out behind him like wings. “Put your hands out. I’m going to attach myself to you - nothing permanent, just enough to give you a bit of a pull if I start to look like I’m fading.”
Dick doesn’t need to breathe anymore but his breath catches in his lungs all the same when Tim’s hands touch his own. Their palms brush as slender fingers curl around his own. There’s that strange sensation of cupping smoke and then something solid. Warmth touches his skin. It pulses faintly, as if with a heartbeat.
“Alright,” Tim says. “I’m going to meditate and see if I can follow the trail. If I start to fade, just pull on my hands and it should be enough.”
He nods.
Tim’s eyes close. His breathing begins to slow and with it, the pulse in his hands. Dick watches him carefully, looking for any signs of something amiss. For a long time, there’s nothing. Then, Tim’s eyebrows furrow. His spine stiffens and his fingertips press that much more into the back of Dick’s hands. His mouth moves but Dick can hear no words. Behind his eyelids, his eyes flicker as if having a dream.
There’s a swell of power filling the room, tickling at the edges of Dick’s senses. Tim’s breathing gets harder and then - the briefest of flickers around his form.
“Tim,” Dick says, giving a gentle tug of his hands.
Nothing happens.
“Tim,” he tries again, this time firmer.
Tim’s face scrunches up as if in pain. He’s shaking faintly, turning almost see through in some places. Alarm rises in Dick’s chest. He is not ready to lose this amusement just yet.
“Tim!” He gives a forceful yank of his hands against the strange weight keeping Tim in place. This time, it seems to be enough. Dick goes sprawling backwards with a sudden weight on his chest. He looks down to see Tim, eyes open and dazed.
There’s no feeling of smoke anymore. He feels real in Dick’s arms, solid and alive. Dick noses at the skin under his ear to press his mouth to the rapid beat of his pulse. He’s tempted to bite down but Tim is already starting to get a little lighter.
“Don’t,” Tim rasps.
Dick squeezes his hands and pulls back to look down at him once more. “You didn’t respond. What happened?”
There’s a shrieking coming from Tim’s wrist. An annoying buzz comes from the ear closest to Dick.
“Cor, come in! If you’ve gotten yerself fuckin’ dead again - “
“Calm down,” Tim mumbles. “I’m fine. Just wasn’t expecting how strong the pull was. The target is definitely here.”
“Oh good, I’ll get another shot at ya m’self.”
Dick can barely feel his huff against his chest.
“Corvid, out.” Tim says pointedly.
“Fuck ya too.”
The hands against his own shift. A soft sigh blows Tim’s hair away from his face. “Sorry, didn’t mean to worry you.”
Dick sits up. It’s been a while since he’s touched anyone like this. Tim looks overly pale, even for his normally pallid complexion. Dick draws his jacket open and wraps him up in the heavy fabric.
“Oh.” He blinks down at it. “Thank you.”
“You said the target is here?”
“Yeah.” Tim muffles a yawn in his hand. The other is still caught in Dick’s grasp and he’s loath to release it. “Do you know anyone with the name Mary?”
Dick goes cold. “No one alive.”
“Oh yeah, sorry, I should have specified. This one is definitely dead and definitely angry.”
“Why?” He manages to ask. “Why does it matter?”
“I’m not one hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure the necromancer I’m chasing wants to try raising her from the dead,” Tim admits. “so if you know anything about her it would be helpful in locating her final resting place.”
“I know where it is,” Dick says.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” His fangs bare in a grimace. “I put her there.”
Tim follows Dick down the stairs of the hotel with his coat draped over his shoulders. As soon as they’d parted, Dick had shrugged out of the heavy garment and draped it over him. He hadn’t taken no for an answer when Tim had tried to give it back - not that he’d tried all that hard. The fabric is soft despite how thick it is and has a distinct scent to it. Iron, like blood, but with a hint of something that might be gravedirt and a sweet hue that makes Tim want to bury his nose in the collar and just breathe . For anyone else it would surely be a turn off but Tim has long since gotten used to having death in his life. The smell no longer makes his stomach turn, not when it’s like this.
They reach the front doors, where a vampire on watch pushes open the heavy glass and gives a dip of his head. “My lord.”
Dick steps through with a short nod.
It’s not an uncommon sight. Tim has seen Dick lead plenty of teams in the past in his own universe, though this is more. There’s something almost regal about it in the set of his shoulders and the way he holds his head high. Tim is used to his universe’s Dick going out of his way to make sure others see him as an equal instead of as a superior. This version has no such qualms. He knows he’s above everyone else and he doesn’t try to fight it.
Tim should really not find that attractive.
He has to hold the jacket up some on his way down the steps, otherwise he risks tripping. The hem is already on the way to being dirty considering their differences in height but if Dick doesn’t mind then Tim isn’t going to worry about it.
This world muddles his senses. There’s so much death, so much pull. He can sense it on every vampire, a lingering darkness not unlike the one he’d once helped Jason defeat. Coming back from the grave always takes a toll. If he focuses hard enough, he can see it on Dick like a beacon. Perhaps that’s why he keeps ending up by his side every time he comes to this place.
Since his awakening and subsequent death, Tim has never had much trouble slipping into places he’s not supposed to be. It’s the reason why he’s the one that goes on these missions, the reason why he takes the risk. If he gets trapped or lost, it’ll be nothing like losing one of the others.
He’s better suited for it and none of them can stop him.
Dick is quiet at his side, a pensive look on his face. He’s been like that ever since Tim mentioned Mary, the name he’d been able to pluck from the madness of the necromancer’s residual magic.
“Who is she?”
“Hm?”
“Who is Mary?”
Dick lets out a slow sigh. “She was Queen of the vampires before I was turned. I killed her and took her place.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He echoes, as if the question is foreign. His lip curls, revealing a flash of long canine. “She wasn’t ready to do what needed to be done. She would have gotten us all killed.”
“And you did what was needed?”
His eyes glow red. “ Yes .”
Tim hums. “Are you afraid of her?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. Because if this necromancer gets his way, you might be meeting her again real soon.”
He picks up speed, moving ahead to follow the increasing pull. He can tell when they arrive, despite the lack of markers. He can feel the body under the earth, rotten and rejected.
“She should have been burned,” he murmurs, kneeling to curl his fingers into the dirt. “it’s much harder to manipulate a spirit if their body is gone.”
There’s an absence of plant life around them. What remains is poisoning the dirt, killing off what might try to grow. Tim looks up at the forever darkened sky and wonders over what this world once was.
“I’m going to leave a seal here. If something disturbs this place I’ll know of it.” He closes his eyes, reaches out for the wrongness coming from the body and imagines a bubble around it. His fingers flex in the dirt as he mumbles a spell under his breath. It would be more effective with blood but in a world of vampires he’s not willing to come through just for that.
When he opens his eyes again, Dick is crouched in front of him, an arm balanced on his knee and a chin in his hand. There’s no shame in him when Tim raises an eyebrow, only curiosity.
“You’re an interesting creature,” he murmurs.
Tim holds still as he lifts his free hand to trace claws over Tim’s cheek. He pauses at the scar that tugs the corner of his mouth upwards, finger bent to run his knuckle over the divot there. Tim’s breath catches in his chest.
“You’re not the first immortal being to tell me that,” he manages to whisper. “Maybe I should add it to my resume.”
The corner of Dick’s mouth curls. His fangs are indenting his bottom lip ever so slightly; Tim can’t help the way his eyes flick down to watch.
“Tim,” Dick practically purrs, voice coming from deep in his chest, where it feels more like a growl than anything else. Tim shivers, can feel himself swaying closer -
His earpiece crackles to life and sends him jumping backwards in fright.
“Levels spiked again. Can ya give a heads up if yer about to die?”
He shakes the dirt from his hands and lifts his wrist to check the readings on his computer. “I’m within margin, Jay. Are you getting worried?”
“Just wonderin’ if I should bother leavin’ ya any of this food.”
“You got me food?”
“What did I jus’ say, asshole? It’s about t’ be mine now.”
“Oh come on, I’ll be back soon. I won’t even tease you for trying to mama bird me.”
“Wow, this‘s delicious. I can’t hear ya over the sound ‘a me eatin’ all this food.”
Tim's eyes roll but there is fondness in the way he smiles. He stands up and begins to slide Dick’s jacket down off his arms to hand it back. He’s stopped before he can get more than half way.
“Take it,” Dick says simply. “I have more.”
He bites back a spiel on how hard it is to carry physical objects back with him when he’s already running on half power because of the projection. He gets the feeling that while interested, Dick wouldn’t fully understand magical theory without hours of explanation and Tim can barely look at him right now, let alone stay around for a lecture.
“I, uh, I’ll see you later?” He grimaces down at his feet. “Won’t be years. Promise.”
A hand hooks under his chin and lifts. Glowing red eyes meet his own, capturing him in a nearly hypnotic gaze. “You’d better.”
Dick’s eyes aren’t quite scarlet, Tim notes. They’re several shades of red with flecks of black and gold around the pupils. He finds himself fixating on them while Dick draws closer, until -
“Wait, are you trying to hypnotize me?”
“I wonder,” Dick says, before their lips meet.
Tim fumbles for his wrist computer, gets the code punched in on autopilot as a tongue traces over the seam of his lips. And fuck, it’s so tempting to lean into it, to open his mouth and let it happen but this is dangerous in all types of ways and Tim is - Tim is in trouble.
He stumbles backwards, makes sure to give himself just enough space to not take Dick along with him.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, wide eyes meeting those brilliant reds as Dick tenses to leap at him. His wrist beeps and he’s gone.