The old fireplace mantle was buried under dust and ash that might have found better salvation in the broken cave beneath the proud manor. Damian decided that it would be the first thing to tackle. Sweeping ashes and debris into a three-fourths broken dustpan that had been left in a corner of the library; he simply tried not to breath.
Sweep a bit, breathe a bit, and repeat.
He kept the pattern up, simply because a pattern meant order.
This place needed order.
True, the long line of cleaning supplies he had pulled together and set down beside the fireplace were all soldiers from when war was outside the home, but they didn't leave anything for him to grasp at. A wisp of fading detergent he couldn't remember. So, he took the moldy water from a never-drained bathtub and tore an old jacket of his father's apart for a hand full of rags before having the moth-eaten cloth dance over the dirt and grime. It was a crude musical in his mind as he attempted to get his mind to communicate to the bones in his hand to apply pressure to accomplish the act of actually removing the mess.
He failed and he was strangely OK with it as he let the mold, shades of the sickest yellow, the bloodiest brown, the richest green, the filthiest white and even the innocent black hue of a chalkboard somewhere in the back of his mind, dance over sediment that didn't have an clue to its own existence.
The teen's eyes were weighed down by the afterglow ghost of sleep. He forgot the last time he had slept.
In a tree somewhere he believed.
He suddenly had to breathe deeply and the boy rocked back to fall among ruffled newspaper and magazines that told him of a world he regretted not seeing when he had been able to see it. Now he was blind to all of it. The continual smiles and beautiful tarnished photos were outside of the war they fought.
A war so painstakingly beautiful that everything was a blackboard of an average child's elementary days.
He had dropped the rag he had held for no purpose and raised his hand over his head as he tried not to stare past it at the ceiling: the same occasional patches of mold from the water. He shook most of them off and didn't protest three drops of the water exploding against his forehead.
The smell was horrible but he hesitated breathing again-so it was fine.
He lay there, trying to think-because trying NOT to think was just too much.
He had to help here…he COULD help here. Help…him.
Emotions long held had been buried under garbage of events, false-faces and lies so unorthodox that human emotion and/or nature could not alone be applied to them.
He had Tim left.
Frustrated-Damian got to his feet, tossed the bucket of moldy water, the rags and most of the cleaning supplies out the nearest window, which was already broken, before pulling back the bleach (three years past expiration) and scrubbing down the fireplace with a torn and long abandoned pillowcase that had escaped the moths' years of feasting.
The fireplace gleamed a shade he would confuse with ebony marble much later.
Damian pulled a small paper bag from the top of the mantle above the fire place, held it over his face and breathed in the unfamiliar scent of sandalwood and the wisps of burning African grass.
He thought it might be in someone's memory.
The boy found himself lost in something an hour later as he tested the weakness of the floorboards while he walked along hallways that longed for old times as much as the newspapers on the den's floor did.
He wasn't lost in memory, not in the sights, not in the loud sounds, not the odors of decay or even the taste of the air that could only be vented into the pits of the underworld and be welcome. Damian decided it was his displeasure of getting lost in a sixth sense that made him stop and catch sight of the distant movement of the door he wasn't too familiar with.
"Tim."
He didn't need to speak any louder, though the loud silence of the black halls begged for a little conversation, or just a little breath to blow away chalky ash dust. Perhaps then it could pretend to be draped in golden curtains of wealth much too large for humanity.
"Why did you come back?"
The younger didn't enjoy talking to a door, but he understood the comfort of having something between you and a threat. For him, a blade resting along his knuckles and fingernails was more than enough, but Tim needed the door between them to communicate openly. He understood-not that he liked it.
"You need my help."
The words he wouldn't have spoken so many years ago were now so soaked with him that the boy could near feel his own name with every sentence his lips dropped onto the protesting floorboards below his green booted feet.
"I'm Batman."
"Was it not you that told my father that Batman needs a Robin?"
A whimper.
"What do you want from me?"
What he wanted? He wanted the man to wave some ridiculous magic wand and take everything back to any moment they could influence to change the world.
But Damian didn't have an answer to give his older brother. No comments. No complaints. No remarks that were so sideways that the earth itself would shift orbit.
He swallowed something in the air-the extreme warmth of a dry bone perhaps, though he could be mistaking it for the taste of bleach and a chilled fire because this was not the time to draw up a memory an aged man would leave in a childhood little red wagon in response to Alzheimer's or what he was beginning to believe was simply selective amnesia. A defense response he wanted to research further.
Despite his sympathy-Damian reached out and shoved the door open. The man inside was sitting on the edge of a bed long run down from use but it was covered with clean sheets and blankets. There was no debate that his father's bedroom was the cleanest in the entire mansion that used to be home. Tim didn't bother to look up at him; his blue eyes were shooting transparent daggers into the floorboards at his black booted feet. No one came to the Manor anymore; the city council thought it was abandoned.
In a way-they were right.
Though the cowl was down, it was the most awkward scene to put the Bat-suit in.
Tim Drake hadn't changed. Not at all. Even in the Bat-suit he was still the same…all broken.
The bird hadn't removed his mask earlier, but did now as he crossed the floorboards to reach the man's side. He didn't sit though.
"I want you to be alive."
He was gifted with the silence of a mute.
"THIS!" he suddenly yelled, turning and motioning to the hole-filled walls, "-Drake! Is not living!"
"I'm living," the man meekly protested, his blue eyes finally snapping up and then narrowing into a harsh glare for a moment before draining empty again.
"You're surviving! And only surviving!"
Damian closed his eyes and imagined chewing on a stick of gum. It didn't help move anything. So, he reached out and slipped his green gloved hand into Tim's. For a moment, the teen was just imagining it was Dick's hand, or even his father's. But no-this was Tim Drake. He got the widest eyed look for his action but he needed to do something, now!
The younger searched his memories. What to do now?
"Damian you-"
"Quiet!"
The bird let his mind simmer for just a moment before he let go of his brother's hand to replace the green mask on his face. Tim just stared at him, half in confusion and three-fourths in fear before the boy reached out and around his head to grab the cowl.
"What are you-?"
"Silence, Drake. Be still."
Tim strangely obeyed and closed his eyes as the black cowl was pulled back to hide the visage of a man lost in a war. Then his hand was taken again, and before he could breathe out a question Damian was already pulling him out the door and into the ash-laden hallways that still called for a wealth that wasn't worthy of hourly struggle.
"Where are we going?"
Took a break this morning and typed this up.
~Moonsetta