Effar prompted: TIM LOSES HIS HEARING
Okay so I didn't force Cass into this one because I… I just fail at life. But Cas is in practically every other fic I have planned for the Angst War, promise. And for those who don't know the story, I asked Effar to throw me a prompt for the War when I first signed up and before I even got the question out she threw this at me. I feel like she's either fantastic at giving me the prompt inspiration I need… or she had this one in wait for a while now. THE DEVIOUS FIEND.
Batman and related properties © DC Comics
story © RenaRoo
Every Idle Silence
He's nearly breathless as he slides into the next room. The floor creeks with the weight, but he's under cover which counts for more than most of the chase since he allowed himself to be cornered inside of the abandoned house.
The Hill isn't his normal territory. Red Robin sticks to the main boroughs for most of his patrols.
But his hunch about the series of high profile break-ins involving bursting through stainless steel ended up paying off.
The police were right about the metahuman involvement, wrong about the type. This isn't a musclebound ogre barreling through town, it's a ghost with a sonic cry.
Silver Banshee appears in the doorway, haunting white brightly shining through the darkness. It no longer matters to Tim whether she's the original Banshee, that Secret Six cohort, or someone new altogether.
She's out of his league and that's all that ends up mattering in the end.
When he darts out, he already counts his mistakes just as the waves catch him. His own cries are drowned out by the shear magnitude of the Silver Banshee's wail. He's thrown through the wooden walls, tumbling in the force of her cries.
It's too much pressure, he feels his skull splitting even as he vainly attempts to reach up to support the cowl. So much pressure - his ears aren't ringing so much as they're screaming and the pain becomes too much.
There is a gut wrenching POP and then nothing.
Tim thinks just before the world begins to fade around him that it might, in fact, be the most blissful noise on the planet after such torture.
Silence.
The vertigo hits almost the second his eyes open.
Tim swallows down air, arms flailing without destination. His eyes swim and he feels pressure just building behind his sockets. He almost forgets to breathe again and chokes down the next gulp like a greedy fish.
There is no sound.
When he stumbles a second time, weight gives beneath his feet and he feels the floor buckle before a momentary weightlessness. Then nothing.
He falls to the next floor, like a blinded kitten, and flops onto the wood beneath, his cape yanking and choking as he's caught. Something behind him falls over and crashes onto the back of what's left of the cape. He feels the pull and it takes him backward.
The air is cold as he gasps and reaches out with his arms again. Something falls not far from his head.
There is a crash, he feels it by him, but there is nothing to account for it.
There's hardly a moment to gather himself, to think on the situation. He knows he's not alone.
Leaping to his feet, Tim reaches to his back for his staff only to feel the disorientation slip up again and take his sense of balance.
If he can get to his staff in time to steady himself, he might stay off his knees. But it doesn't happen.
Tim collapses, gasping down air before retching.
Pain is searing through his skull and the base of his neck. What little vision he has in this hellhole is blurring out from the sensation. He can't stop straining to hear.
A part of his mind notions that there's nothing to hear with.
By the time he balances himself on his two arms, Tim realizes that dust is falling from above. He looks up to see the hole he created and the haunting face of the Silver Banshee above him. His harbinger of death.
It occurs to Tim that, despite the fact that he can hear nothing… she could probably hear all of his noise.
When she opens her mouth, Tim automatically tenses, but the noise does not come. Only pain - pressure on his bleeding ears like he couldn't believe.
He must be screaming because he can feel the rawness of his throat just before the floor buckles beneath him again. He's sent falling, gasping and reaching and (perhaps) screaming into complete darkness below the first floor.
Tim feels every muscle, every hair, and wonders if it's possible to ache in every cell. His eyes are open, but they may as well not be. There is nothing to be seen.
He can't hear a thing.
When he finally shifts, the surface beneath him crumbles further - the wood, rubble of his fall - and it feels like a stretch to reach out for the nearest ground he can find.
Even through his gloves, he can sense the textures shift as he brushes against cold concrete. Every nerve is on end - desperately trying to collect as much information about the world around him as they can in the absence of everything else.
When he spreads his second hand out over the concrete, the rubble gives beneath his knees and he tumbles onto his side, the cold air of the cellar washing over his exposed cheeks and chin.
He lays in the darkness for a moment longer, collecting his scattered thoughts through the searing pain in his head and the constant ache of his joints.
It occurs to him what a senseless and stupid idea it was for him to begin this venture on his own at all. He wonders how he ever thought he would not require assistance against a beast as dark and nefarious as this supernatural threat.
She's playing with him. And he's let her pull him right into her trap.
His eyes uselessly squeeze shut. There's the dank smell of mildew around him. That faint stench of rust.
That overbearing feeling of the disappointment Bruce will have in him. The snide remarks about his demise from Damian.
It occurs to Tim he hasn't thought about Dick and Cass' reactions to him in a while. His closest siblings, and in the past year and a half since Bruce's "death" they all seem to be emotional voids.
That's not true, Tim whispers.
He doesn't hear himself at all. He can't remember the last time he heard Bruce hum My Old Kentucky Home… or listened to Cass practice reading… or if he ever heard Damian laugh… Jason snort… When was the last time he heard Dick say "li'l brother"?
Time is wasting and the Silver Banshee may still be out there. Probably is still out there. Tim decides to block it out - to focus.
If he can't move he'll think his way out.
Drawing a breath through the splitting headache, Tim thinks of what observations he has made can be useful. It's an old house. He's in the basement. The feeling of concrete. The floors are mostly rotted with mildew. That irony rust is light on his tongue.
His focus drops when he recalls with a great chill, the hoarse sound of the kaddish… the one from his mother's funeral. He can hear it so vividly.
It has been the last prayer he's said since. He didn't muster one for Dad or Steph or Kon or Bart…
The words are on his lips when he feels the air around him whisk by. There's a metallic ting behind him as the Banshee is on the move, searching through the cellar.
Tim reaches for his staff and extends it. He wonders how much noise it made.
The winds wash over him as the Silver Banshee nears. Tim opens his eyes, sees the haunting white glow, and then uses all of his might to chuck the staff into the ceiling. Dust and putrid water burst and the weight of the shift from the building jars his otherwise immobile body.
He watches as the piping falls onto the ghost and she screams, lighting into a green fire.
Iron pipes, he whispers, feeling his eyes swim back into the darkness as the world collapses around him.
There is digging nearby, and screaming of his name.
They will find him. But Tim can't hear them.
All he can hear is that whispering prayer.