A.N: Trigger warning for psychological horror and mild gore.

Hermetic

Tim wakes up and it was all a dream.

It's nighttime now. Maybe early morning. Shadows blanket every surface like a passing cloud, and each inhale is tainted with the acrid tang of rust and urochrome and warm beer. There are empty cans hugging the alley concrete near Tim's feet—the likely culprit, Tim thinks—only Tim's having trouble doing that at all: thinking.

How did he get here?

The sides of the alley are closing in on him, dumpsters and fire escapes layering over him like in Guernica, and there's the sheen of a black twist-tie—

—bag is zipped. Fine night shade that's poisoned by primary lights. Wheels rattle in sad imitation of a hearse.

"Mr. Drake? Can you hear me?"

Tim's gaze drifts from the window. A woman is kneeled in front of him, face crystalline. Blue and red leap across the divots of her bones with every flash of light from outside. She's nice.

Tim blinks at her from his place on the couch, hands pinned under his own armpits like he's afraid of what he might do if they were loose.

He wants to answer her. He wants to—

—know where he is. Tim doesn't think he recognizes this street. He stumbles around a corner, hand sliding along the brick walls for balance. It's slippery against his palm, like it's rained recently or something.

He takes in the street signs, but he quickly finds he's been reading them without absorbing the information. It's hard to focus. Getting harder and harder to with the loud noise coming from nearby, a deafening roar like a tornado's ripping through the streets. It can't be that, though. Tim watches papers skid along the concrete, blown by a soft summer's breeze, and feels the chill of the air through his undershirt.

It only then occurs to him that he's not wearing shoes.

He looks down and—

—doesn't even think he can raise his eyes anymore. The woman from before has been shoved away ("Le'mme talk to 'im, Montoya."), and someone else thunders in to fill the space.

"Hey, kid," the man barks, snapping his fingers under Tim's nose. It rips his attention. "You mind tellin' us what happened here?"

Tim opens and closes his mouth. Tries to find the words. "…What…happened…?"

The detective—a big, brawly guy—frowns and takes a swig out of a paper coffee cup. The smell is suddenly overwhelming, burnt and cheap and clawing at Tim's nostrils; he thinks he might throw up. "Come on, kid," the detective continues. "Get with the program. We don't got all night."

"Program…?" Tim repeats. Was there something on TV he was supposed to remember? Something important, maybe. He moves his hands from his armpits to wring them together, grapples with his brain, and—

"Jesus!" the detective yells, yanking Tim's hands apart in panic. Tim reads his face and tries to figure out what's wrong. "Hey, you!" he's shouting at someone outside of Tim's sight. "Get some bandages, will ya? …How am I supposed to know where they're at!? Just get some!"

The teen continues sitting while the detective starts cussing out everyone under the sun. It feels like Tim's somehow slept without laying down. Like he still hasn't woken up.

"Fer cryin' out loud," the detective's voice sears. He slams his coffee cup on the end table next to Tim, his knees creaking as he pushes himself up, and then, he's vanished out of sight. Tim should turn his head to see, but he still feels nauseous. The smells are so strong here: a faint whiff of lady's perfume, the detective's coffee, and something else that smells sharp, like salt and plasma and bleach.

Tim wants to leave.

Needs to.

Something is telling him that much, puncturing his insides like dozens of daggers.

It's the only thought that isn't elusive, concrete and giving him the connectedness to stumble to a stand, down the stairs, out the door, and—

—into the street. Tim doesn't bother to look both ways, standing there on the white traffic line that splits the road. He still doesn't know where he is, what time it is.

"What happened here?"

Tim's dizzy, and now his feet hurt. He glances down again at his toes to find they're sliced up from alley-walking, green bottle glass and metal chunks. Tim just stares at the way the blood pools in the porous concrete beneath him. Like small little oceans, all detached from one another.

Tim tilts his head.

It's like the pools are glowing all of a sudden, like the fire residue off Fourth of July sparklers, and the rest of the pavement lights with them. The glow keeps growing, consuming. It's lighting him up too, and part of Tim wonders if he isn't on fire, if that doesn't explain the ashen taste in his mouth and the way his mind is dissipating like smoke, just enough semblance to be there but not enough to take shape.

Tim only flinches when a car squeals to a stop, shattering the noise that's still fracturing the atmosphere (police sirens, blue and red, glinting badges).

"Tim!" someone yells in tandem with a door opening.

It only then registers that Tim could've been hit, right here in the road.

He analyzes the thought.

Realizes he doesn't know how he feels about it.

The door slams.

"Tim!" the figure's still shouting, framed by the car headlights so bright that Tim can't make him out until the man's stopped a short distance away.

"Bruce…?" Tim asks, too tired to shield his eyes.

"Yes…" Bruce Wayne confirms, talking over that perpetual noise. That whir and buzz that sounds like it's all in Tim's head. Bruce stands in the thick of it, looking too clean and put together in a white-collared shirt and slacks. "Where… Where are you going, Tim?"

Tim blinks, brain processing.

"I don't know."

Slowly, Bruce inches closer, his silhouette wavering until the lights from the car break enough for Tim to see his face. There's fear and worry in the pinch of his mouth, and that's odd. Tim's trying to think of why that'd be the case, but then, Bruce gently takes his shoulders in his hands. "What are you doing out here?" he asks. "Why didn't you stay with the police?"

Tim's brows crease. "Police…?"

Had there…been police?

There must've been, if Bruce is asking about them.

The man gingerly cups Tim's jaw, guiding his focus back, and looks deep into Tim's eyes like he can see into his soul. It's uncomfortable. Tim wants to look away.

A moment later, Bruce exhales unsteadily, a puff of air in the abyss between them. He still looks nervous as he thumbs Tim's cheek. "Let's get back to the cave, okay?"

The man moves to slip an arm around him, but suddenly, Tim sidesteps, nearly a stumble. "Wait, I… I should tell my dad first. He'll be worried."

Bruce's eyes widen incrementally. Just the smallest fraction. But it's enough for Tim to tell the man's alarmed.

Tim's heart clenches at that.

Bruce isn't acting right. Is looking at him like Tim's a sad little animal in a cage, only that's not the case. Isn't it?

Tim takes another step back, followed by another and another. He feels like he's being pulled into quicksand, can feel the grains falling into his bronchial tubes like his lungs are the shattered halves of an hourglass. "I should..." he starts saying, not knowing how to finish. "I…I…"

I need to go.

I need to leave.

"Tim," Bruce says, a warning and a placation all at once. He mirrors each step, a little slower. A little more careful. Tim's never been afraid of him before, but he thinks he is now.

"Something's wrong," Tim breathes, trying to put words to the darkness that's been creeping up on him. (Go away. Don't come closer.) His back hits a wall, and he panics, because there's nowhere left to go. The car headlights are splicing his view of the world, sliding over Bruce from the side as he steps closer, trying to make himself harmless and benign. "What's going on?" Tim finds himself asking, asking without really wanting a reply.

"It's gonna be okay," Bruce evades. It's condemning, and suddenly, the man's too close. Tim doesn't want commiseration, doesn't want comfort or anything like that. Comfort means he's right, means the world's as messed up as he fears it is, and Tim moves to shove Bruce away.

Instead, his hands…

Slip

Paint red over the white of Bruce's shirt. Tim thinks he would scream—if he had the air for it. All that comes out is a strangled gasp. His mind skips reason and thinks he's killed Bruce somehow. Just by the act of touching. Of existing.

Shakily, Tim pulls his hands back, staring at them in horror. He turns them over to look at his palms, and it's wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong

There are deep gashes there, cut into his palms like he's been grappling with a knife. Crimson's glistening up to his fingertips, now running down to his elbows and sparkling in the headlights.

It's his.

But that was a dream. Just a bad dream that needed to be locked up, tied tight, hermetic.

It wasn't supposed to be real.

Shushing him softly, Bruce tries to console, to pull him close, and Tim fights him on it as much as he can, because NOTHING'S WRONG. The neon signs of it are blinking in his brain, the lights cracked and spluttering and falling to pieces. Nothing's wrong, and he's fine, and he doesn't want someone to come and try to convince him of that. Tim manages to wrench a hand free. He hisses when it agitates the cuts, and Bruce barks his name with a sharp anguish until—

"Robin!"

The world falls still.

Tim stares at Bruce vacantly, all emotion shot from him like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Robin.

Bruce is panting faintly from the struggle, looking torn up and spit out and desperate, clearly wanting to say something but not having the mind to. Instead, Tim is pulled close. The teen's gaze shifts to become the view over the man's shoulder, strong arms wrapped around him, the soft summer air still on his face. He doesn't feel them so much as log them, record the sensations because he's certain they'll haunt him in a way he can't place.

That and the sirens.

Way off in the distance.

Bruce shifts, moves a hand to cradle his head and whispers bromides that Tim doesn't hear. The teen's arms continue to dangle loosely by his sides as if the concept of an embrace were foreign.

Robin, he thinks.

It's the answer to everything he's feeling, because Tim could stop. Stop being Tim Drake. Right now. Just turn it off and retreat to the comfort of a hero's identity. It's an easy choice. So easy that Robin's shocked he didn't think of it sooner.

"I'm okay now," Robin says, limp but still standing, water that's filled the space of its container. Bruce pulls him even closer, shaking his head ("You don't have to be."), but Robin is. Feels better than he has in a long time, even. Like all the leaves weighing him down have been sloughed off leaving only the tree skeleton.

Bruce isn't letting go, though, so Robin waits. He can feel the pulse of blood in his feet from the forming bruises and scabs, and the darkness shakes from the still-running car.

It's an oddly simple setting.

Himself and Bruce and the night.

Normal.

And that's the truth. Robin watches the headlights glitter with the knowledge that this is the reality of his every day, that nothing's skewed or awry or wrong, and that the events of the past hour are as predictable as if they'd been written in the stars. He can make peace with that.

Because Robin's never had a father.

(And after tonight, neither does Tim Drake.)

A.N. I always wondered what happened immediately after Jack Drake's death. I imagine Bruce wouldn't have stayed there in his Batman persona (as tempted as he probably was to for Tim's sake) and came back in his civilian identity, although that's just my personal headcanon. How do you think it went down?