Chapter Nine: Plato's Cave
"We should do this again sometime. I could use the company." The vigilante scratched the back of his head in thought. "I have something to look into first, but how does two days from now sound? Meet on the roof here at one?"
Nightwing beamed when the teenager accepted. "Alright. Don't forget: Two days!"
Tim forced his eyes to remain open.
The exhaustion was slowly starting to eat at him, and for a moment, he thought he had slipped into a dream, the space surrounding him disturbingly quiet and dark. But when he shifted his legs, he recalled the familiar floor tiling beneath him and let the panic subside.
The teenager rearranged himself once more for good measure and drowsily glanced around the inside of the room. He was pleased that the store was still as deserted as it had been when he had found it, the only thing of note the musty smell of aged paper and old ink cartridges.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and took a peek out of a boarded-up window with his binoculars.
It seemed he hadn't missed much; everything looked the same as it had thirty-six hours ago when he'd started.
The teenager scratched at his head, trying to focus through his aggravating headache.
"Don't forget: Two days!"
He had been mulling over the statement endlessly from his temporary hideout, a place he'd guessed must have been a printing shop at one point—although it was impossible to tell for sure with the barren look of the place.
Tim returned his attention to a building a few roads down.
He really hoped his intuition was wrong, but he couldn't keep himself from checking it out all the same. The vigilante was a stranger, after all, and after giving Nightwing more thought, he had seemed too nice—too genuine—to be someone who led a double-life fighting the worst of Gotham's underbelly. The man had to have an ulterior motive, had to be using him somehow.
Tim directed the binocular lenses up to the rooftops before looking back to the abandoned street.
Nightwing had something he had wanted to look into before they met again. Tim couldn't free himself from the idea that maybe that "something" had been him.
He hated himself for thinking it. He really did.
But as soon as the communicator had been passed to him, that was the only thing that came to mind, plaguing him like a disease. Naturally, Tim had studied it already for some kind of tracer, but his search came up dry, leaving him only one option: to wait for someone to come investigate.
And that was how he found himself in a closed-down shop on a corner in Little Odessa, watching another store down the road where he had hid the device.
The more he sat there, the more hope grew in his chest. He wanted it to be true more than anything else, that he'd found some kind of ally in this crazy, untrustworthy world, but he also knew the world and everyone in it was just that: untrustworthy. The cynicism was recognizably harsh, but it hadn't failed him yet.
Just twenty more minutes, he promised himself. That would take him to sunrise, a time at which he figured the vigilante would call it a night and go back to living his other normal life as whoever he was.
Twenty more minutes, and he'd believe him.
He started counting out the seconds, timing it to his breathing.
Gradually, the sun began emerging over the unsteady buildings, highlighting their sun-bleached walls, grey and forgotten.
Tim sighed and lowered his binoculars.
The man had passed his test for now, and Tim had to admit that pulling an all-nighter twice in a row had sucked him dry. He hardly had it in him to exit the printing store (The bold title "Dzerchenko" the only colorful thing remaining on the outside of the building.*) and meander toward the other shop, reclaiming the communicator from its place with a tired exhale.
He'd go see the man later that night, he decided, pulling the grapnel from his pocket as he stifled a yawn. Nightwing had earned a bit of his trust. He gripped the communicator tightly in his hand, forcing himself to believe the words.
But until nightfall, all he could do was wait.
The stairs seemed like they were never going to end, stretching on and on like the crawling seconds. He skidded across the landing, his brain denying what his heart already knew. That sinking feeling was pulling him down, but still, he insisted it was wrong.
He was alive. They'd been talking not moments earlier. He couldn't be…
Tim ducked and slammed a palm into an unexpecting jaw.
A trail of red eked out from the open apartment door, the crimson shining darkly in the light. He chose to ignore it, pushing it back like everything else. He's alive. He's alive. He's—
Even when he saw the body, he wouldn't admit it. He couldn't.
"Dad!"
The teenager dodged a fist.
He was next to the man now, hands grabbing at something, trying to pull it out as if the action would heal the gaping chest wound and bring him back. He only had eyes for the glistening weapon, refusing to meet the lifeless face beneath him that would never utter another word.
Someone was behind him.
He whirled around in time to brush off a right cross.
"Tim, it's okay."
No! No, it wasn't okay! They needed to get his dad to a hospital—before it was too late. He still had a chance. He couldn't give up on him now.
"It's okay."
The person was pulling him back.
No! Why weren't they helping?
He needed help!
Tim tried to blink the memory away as he slammed a knee into someone's gut.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in a metal hall. The insides of a factory were coming into view around him, what looked like a pool of glowing, red liquid spreading thinly across the floor and walls. A gunshot echoed around the chamber distantly as he did his best to hold off a horde of enemies.
Tim knocked the gun out of a hand, sending the enemy toppling to the ground with a quick kick.
He only barely spotted the flicker of a yellow cape and red laces as a figure was falling. He'd managed to toss a smoke pellet to the ground, distracting the assailants and buying him enough time to dart to the precarious railing of a platform and shoot a line to catch the person.
But as soon as the line went taught, his whole body jolting forward from the sudden weight, he knew he'd left himself wide open.
The group would have recovered from the smoke by now.
But no one was coming.
An uneasy feeling was twisting his gut into knots, but he didn't have time to hesitate, forcing himself to tug a length of the line back in.
That was when he realized the feeling wasn't to warn him of the assailants— but someone else.
Someone had tossed a smoke bomb, the world dissolving in the gas.
He whirled around as another shot resounded, but everything was dark now, too dark to see. He took a tentative step forward, searching for the boy he'd been trying to save or the person who'd fired the gun.
"I know what you did, Tim."
His eyes flashed to the new presence, a statuesque shadow standing against the black backdrop. He could barely make out the sheen of the cape and the glowing eyes.
"You saved him tonight, Tim," the man growled. "But what about tomorrow?"
The words echoed around in his head, pushing him to close the gap between them. The figure didn't struggle as the teenager made to rip the mask from his face, force him to look at him with his own eyes.
"This is me, for good and bad!" he defended, the words tumbling out automatically. "This is me now!"
Locks of greasy emerald hair sprouted from where the mask used to be, a crazed laugh bubbling up as the figure stared him down. He could feel rivers of blood rushing down his own spine.
"…I know."
"Hey!"
Tim's eyes snapped to the person behind him.
Nightwing removed the gas mask from his face, taking in the unconscious forms on the ground with a raised eyebrow.
"You know," he started. "The more we're out here, the more I wish I got a better chance to see you fight. You're not bad." The vigilante stepped over a torso with a curious expression. "Not bad at all."
Tim didn't reply, still struggling to catch his breath and shake the visions from his head.
"You okay?"
Tim forced himself to nod, not sure how true his answer really was.
"Alright." Nightwing didn't sound convinced, but he didn't pry. Tim watched silently as the man bent over each figure, checking their pockets for hints as to who they were.
The dreams were getting worse. If they would only appear in his sleep, he wouldn't have minded as much, but even in his waking hours, he'd find himself in a factory or an apartment or a graveyard, reliving scenes that touched eerily on the familiar. But the worst was always that shadowy room at the end. Everything before then was fluid, sensical. And then it all shattered.
He had to keep it under control. If he was going to keep changing up his fighting style, he needed to be conscious enough to memorize the way his opponents moved, to erase anything that linked him to whoever Timothy Wayne had been.
Swallowing another gulp of air, he pushed the thoughts down and walked over to where Nightwing was. The man glanced up at him, shaking his head.
"These guys are clean. The runners were too." He sighed, coming to his feet. "Just a couple of Ghost Dragons pushing their luck. They've been getting antsy lately." He looked up to the sky. "Everyone has."
Nightwing paused for a long time before returning his eyes to his partner, tapping off his earwig with a somber expression. "Got another call. You ever been to the East Side?"
Tim nodded. He'd passed through there before, although he tried his best to avoid the area. If there was anything he'd learned from reading all of those newspapers, it was that the East Side was hot for human trafficking, drive-bys, robbery—anything; it was only good if you liked living in the No Man's Land that was Gotham's gang wars.
"Someone decided to light the East Side Clinic on fire." Nightwing frowned pointedly, pulling out his grapnel. "Wouldn't be surprised if these guys had something to do with it."*
Tim stepped closer to follow, reminding himself to keep a grip on the part of his mind that was pulling him back to the visions.
It was promising to be a long night.
Finding the clinic wasn't a difficult task. The Victorian-style building was visible from miles away, the smoke mushrooming in the twilight sky. Flames shot out of windows for hours, despite the efforts of the fire department.
Luckily, it was producing no casualties. The success was largely in part to the three vigilantes who had shown up to help.
"Could use a hand here!"
Tim rushed over to help Nightwing with the unconscious couple he was supporting, handing them off to a medic when they made it a safe distance from the building.
"This is the last of 'em," the vigilante explained breathily, ash coating his face and costume.
The medic rested one of the victims on a stretcher and placed a non-rebreather mask over the person's face. "Don't forget to keep hydrated," the medic reminded as she waved over another EMT. "Last thing we need is one of you guys going down."
"Will do." Nightwing flashed her a confident grin, wiping the ashen sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "So, don't worry about us."
"Yeah." All attention was brought to a battered-looking blonde walking toward them, a smooth metal staff held in her hand. The purple insides of her cape reflected the firelight. "That's my job—although I don't remember having any owls on the family Christmas card this year." She shot Tim a skeptical glare, same as she'd done for the past few hours.
It sounded like she'd been working on the quip all night.
"Don't worry, Batgirl. He's with me," Nightwing defused, taking a step in front of his masked friend. It didn't seem to do anything but add to the tension.
Tim couldn't shake the feeling that Nightwing and this new girl weren't on the best of terms either, so he took the chance to excuse himself, slipping back toward a nearby ambulance, keeping close enough that he could overhear their conversation.
Meanwhile, the purple-clad Bat hadn't taken her eyes off the teenager when she continued brusquely. "Figured. The gremlin won't like that you've got a new friend, you know?"
"Eh, he doesn't need to know right now."
"Probably kill him if he did."
"I don't think Robin would be that hurt."
"I wasn't talking about Robin."
Nightwing relented a moment to let the girl pick the next topic of their strained dialogue.
"Speaking of, I haven't seen him around lately." She rested the end of the staff on the cement before deciding to clarify. "Robin, I mean."
"He's been with the Titans."
"Got it." She finally took her gaze off Tim and decided to pin down Nightwing with it instead. "The kid still feeling guilty about it?"
"Something like that."
"Probably best for him to spend some time away. The space'll do him good."
"Yeah." Nightwing returned the woman's look with a somber expression. "What about you?"
"Been busy."
"Still looking?"
"Of course." The answer had come out a little too fast.
"…Find anything?"
Batgirl paused, her face tightening. The two watched each other for what felt like an eternity, staring each other down like they were on the verge of declaring war.
"Batgirl," Nightwing finally relented. "He was family to me too. You know I want him to be alive as much as the next person—" Tim flinched. "—But Robin's already said that… Maybe you need to consider that he's—"
"No," the girl snapped tersely. "No, in answer to your question, I haven't found anything yet." She turned on her heel, a line already fired to leave. "Have fun with your new friend."
Nightwing dipped his head defeatedly while the girl flew off, smoothing a hand over his hair. Tim left the vigilante to his thoughts for another minute before reappearing, observing him quietly. All Nightwing could offer him was a drained smile.
"We should probably be going too. We've done all we can here."
Tim didn't argue as the man led them back to the rooftops. Everything was surprisingly silent, only a few car horns sounding in the distance.
After it became apparent that Nightwing wasn't in the mood for talking, Tim resigned himself to fiddling with the communicator the vigilante had given him a few days ago. With it, he still carried a bit of doubt and curiosity as to how their absurd partnership would work out. But in this moment, though, both of those feelings vanished in the unspoken frustration that surrounded the person in front of him.
Tim shifted his attention up toward the vigilante. It didn't seem like they were going anywhere in particular, just walking to walk.
Until suddenly, Nightwing stopped.
Tim stopped too, eyes unwavering as the vigilante sat down right where he had been standing.
"Do you…you think we could take a break for a minute?" He looked over his shoulder at Tim before he offered lamely, "That fire took a lot out of me, you know?"
Tim didn't press him for the real reason.
The way man's forehead fell tiredly into his hand said it all; the waves of exhaustion that radiated off him—that had been since they'd left the fire—were gradually washing him away.
Tim could put two and two together.
"He was family."
Past-tense.
"Just be careful. No one else needs to get hurt."
Dead.
It was obvious whatever had happened was recent, that it was creating divides that were pulling Nightwing in fifty different directions at once.
Tim let his sight escape to his feet, not knowing how to offer any sympathy.
Sure, the teenager kept reliving nightmarish moments: the time his father had died, standing at funeral after funeral, and desperately trying to save a flicker of yellow as someone fell.
But at the end of it all, Tim didn't know them. They were people who were gone, faceless specters from the life he had left behind; as much as he mourned them in the moment, whenever he came to, he always felt eerily empty, apathetic.
And now, in front of him was a man who had lost someone, someone he had known a life with—and now would know a life without.
The teenager bit back a pang of jealousy. He wanted to be able to remember too, to grieve the ghosts of those he'd known just like the person in front of him could.
The more Tim stood there watching Nightwing, the more he became painfully aware of the abyss growing between them. He knew he couldn't understand the vigilante, didn't know the right words to say—the right things to do—when someone had died. It felt like he was frozen in place, unable to bridge the gap.
And that was what heroes—what partners—did, wasn't it? Bridge gaps.
Meanwhile, Nightwing hadn't moved, surveying the skyline indifferently as dawn licked at the buildings. From where Tim was standing, the inevitable morning rays were eating at the vigilante too.
It occurred to him then that any sympathetic words he could offer were meaningless: They wouldn't help bring back whoever Nightwing had lost. The vigilante would see the new day dawn and still find himself without that person. That cold reality was unchangeable.
But…that didn't mean the man had to find himself alone.
Tim took steps to close the distance between Nightwing and himself, silently sitting down on the ground next to him. The man didn't acknowledge him, eyes trained steadfastly ahead, but Tim felt he appreciated the gesture nonetheless, that it meant something somehow.
A comfortable quiet grew up around them.
Neither moved for a long time, both observing the coming morning as they grieved the things they had lost: one who had lost himself. And one who had lost it all.
AN: Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is a famous argument about humanity's search for knowledge, asking us how much we would pursue truth—even if it would be less painful to remain oblivious. It seemed a fitting title considering that last scene.
I'm trying to tie in a few Easter eggs from Tim's past throughout this story. This chapter had a lot:
*Dzerchenko Custom Printing was Ariana's (Tim's first girlfriend) father's business during Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #1. It was in Gotham's Russian district, Little Odessa.
The first flashback scene where Tim's dad died was from Identity Crisis #6. The other two scenes were ones I made up, although part of the dialogue at the end was taken from Red Robin #26.
*The Ghost Dragons once tried to take over the East Side Clinic in Batgirl #56.
