Hi! I hope you guys liked my last chapter. Also, thank you everyone who reviewed. I never thought I would make it to a 100 reviews, but it happened!
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice.
Dick POV (three days later)
I stared at the hospital building, tension filling the entire car I was parking. "You guys ready to go in?" I asked Bart, Jaime, Roy (the younger), Barbara, and Kon.
"As ready as we'll ever be, I guess." Roy said, getting out of the back seat.
We all got out of the car, each of us walking towards the hospital with grim faces. "So, they let in friends, right?" Jaime asked.
"Usually, no. But since the Reach nearly destroyed the world, the hospital has made an exception. Let's go inside." I said, walking into the hospital with the others behind my back.
Each of us knew that in our line of work, it was always possible for us to nearly die on the job. But, this was their first time of that ever happening. In other words, they were all taking it pretty hard.
"Hello cutie. Who are you here to see?" The desk woman asked me with a smile.
Barbara growled at her, close to attacking her. Ever since me and Babs started dating, she's always hated the women that flirted with me, in fact, she nearly strangled one person who was hitting on me even after I told her I was taken.
I plastered on smile #7, let me distract you with my shiny teeth, and held back Barbara by her shoulders. "Tim Drake. We're friends of his." I said, Barbara's nails clawing at my hand.
"Alright. 3rd floor, room 55." She said, giggling as Roy and Kon helped me drag Barbara away from the desk woman.
"I'm going to kill her for flirting with you." Barbara muttered.
"Babs, you can't kill every person who tries to flirt with him. And besides, we're supposed to be visiting Tim." Kon said, looking back at the 3 teenagers who haven't talked at all on the car ride. That meant a lot considering one of them were Bart.
"You know, it's not your fault, Bart." I said, frowning when he looked up at me sadly.
"Yeah right. If I listened quicker, Tim could have thrown out that comm before it exploded, and he wouldn't have been feeling the mode like now." Bart muttered, making Jaime put an arm around Bart's shoulders.
"Actually, it wouldn't have." I said, rubbing my eyes as I remembered Tim's ribs bleeding out in the Antarctic.
"What do you mean? The comm exploded the ice below him." Roy asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
"I mean, Tim lied. His ribs didn't actually heal all the way like he said they did, and that's the reason he was bleeding. If he had healed all the way, we would have just been able to warm him up and he would have been fine." I said, leaning against the elevator wall.
Everyone else looked shocked, each of us thinking about how Tim hid his injury. Wondering why Tim did it was stupid, the answer was obvious. He wanted to go on that mission so badly, that he hid his injuries. But it was my fault I let Tim go out with the injuries. Tim almost dying had been my fault.
The elevator dinged when we made it to the 3rd floor. "Let's go. Tim might be awake by now." Jaime said, walking out with his hands in his pockets.
When we walked into the white room, the smell of medicine hit us full force, making us wrinkle our noses in disgust. Tim was laying on the bed, his skin pale. Paler than before. Which was bad considering he was already as pale as a ghost before.
He had an IV in his arm, pumping blood into his arm, and his cloths had been replaced with a hospital gown. Scars showed on his legs and arms where his medical gown didn't cover them. A heart monitor had been connected to him, beeping slowly in a steady beep.
"Looks like he still hasn't woken up. It's been three days, shouldn't he be awake by now?" Kon asked with a frown.
"Considering how much blood he lost and that he almost died, no." A doctor said, walking in.
"How long do you think until he does wake up?" Roy asked.
"Should be some time tomorrow. You're friends of his right?" The doctor asked. I looked at his name tag, biting my lip to muffle my laugh when I saw it say Dr. Sheepbutt.
"Yeah, why?" Barbara asked.
"When we fixed his rib and got him changed into his medical gown, we just noticed his scars. Do you know how he got them?" Dr. Sheepbutt asked.
We looked at each other, not sure how to answer. "Yes, we know. But….. Tim wouldn't want us to tell. When he wakes up, we'll convince him to tell you." Jaime said, pleading the doctor with her eyes.
"Fine. You should all come by tomorrow, when he's awake." Dr. Sheepbutt said, making us frown.
"Dude, I came all the way from Central City to see my friend, no way am I leaving now." Bart said suddenly, glaring at Dr. Sheepbutt.
"Alright, alright, you can stay. No need to get defensive." Dr. Sheepbutt said, walking out.
"Nice one, hermano." Jaime said, fist bumping Bart.
"Yeah well, I saw a vending machine down the hall. If we're going to be down here with a sleeping Tim, I might as well have something to eat." Bart said, walking out of the room.
"Well, he has a point. I'm going to get coffee." I said, walking out. Everyone else followed, all of us going to get something to eat while we watched Tim sleep. The sad fact is, Tim sleeping is probably the most peaceful I've seen him since the circus.
Tim POV (same day)
"Mommy, Daddy." I whispered as I stared at their dead bodies.
I was in the circus, only, no one else was here. Pop Haley, the clowns, the other performers, and even Dickie were all gone.
"How could you even think to call us that?" A harsh voice asked behind me, familiar, yet different at the same time.
I turned around, everything changing. I grew taller than how I was when I was 4, all the way to being 12 years old. Mom and Dad were standing in front of me, but everything was wrong. 1) because they were glaring at me. They never glared at me. 2) they were ghost.
"You've killed people, murdered them. You've stolen things, and you think trying to fix everything will make us forgive you?" Mom asked, making me cringe. This Mom was acting a lot like Janet, cold, hard, and deadly.
"It was my only choice-" I said, cutting off when Dad's hand grabbed me by the throat. It shouldn't have felt solid, but it did. And I hated it.
"Don't start talking about that bullshit. You should have been more like your brother. He was always better than you. You shouldn't have even been born. It would have saved your mother the pain." He said, squeezing the life out of me as his image flickered.
Just like the dream coming quickly, it ended just as fast, and I sat up in my bed. Wait, bed? Shouldn't I be dying in the Antarctic?
I looked around, confused when I saw the white walls and smelled the medicine. It felt like I was in a hospital, and if it was anything that I didn't like more than the Drake's, it was a hospital. "I need to stretch my legs." I muttered, dragging the heart monitor connected to a blood bag with me so I could walk off the adrenaline rush from the nightmare.
I walked out of the room, wondering around the hallway. Nobody stopped me, though I did get a few looks when they saw my scars. I hated hospital gowns, another reason why I hated hospitals.
I looked down, closing my eyes as I remembered my nightmare. Would Mom and Dad really do that if they found out what I did? I never thought about it before because I was so wrapped up in my revenge, but now, now I wasn't sure.
I guess I was too wrapped up in my thoughts, because my pole ran into someone else's, the metal clanging loudly together. "Oh, sorry." I said, moving my pole out of the way of the girl in front of me.
She looked Asian, her black hair cut just above her chin. The girl was only a few centimeters smaller than me, but looked just as old as me. She was also in a medical gown like me, and surprisingly, she had scars peaking out from her gown. Only... her scars were less noticable.
"I'm going to guess you don't want to talk about those. Want to sit?" I asked, nodding to a bench.
She hesitated, looking me over and staring at my scars before nodding. We sat next to each other, ignoring everyone else's looks at our scars. "How did you get in here?" I asked.
She tapped her hand on her thigh, almost in a pattern….. morse code. H-I-T-B-Y-L-I-G-H-T-E-N-I-N-G-I-N-T-H-E-S-T-O-R-M.
"Oh. Must have hurt. How long have you been here?" I asked, smiling a little when she smiled herself when she saw I understood.
Y-E-S-I-T-D-I-D. V-E-R-Y-M-U-C-H. B-E-E-N-H-E-R-E-S-I-N-C-E-Y-E-S-T-E-R-D-A-Y. Y-O-U?
"I think I've been here for three days. My stiff legs feel like it." I said, remembering the date I saw on newspaper as I walked around.
"So, do you want to go to the coffee machine around the corner? I just woke up, and coffee is something I really need right now." I asked, biting my lip nervously.
She smiled a little wider, nodding. "Great. I'm Tim. You?" I asked, expecting her to tap her finger on her pole with the blood bag hanging from it.
"Cass." She said, her voice coming out slightly scratchy.
"So you can talk. Um, what kind of coffee do you want?" I asked, gesturing to the coffee machine.
"Get it myself." She said, grabbing the cup and filling it with coffee.
I nodded, looking down at her scars on her feet. "So, do you live in Gotham or did you just come here because of an emergency?" I asked.
"Live here with Dad. Hate him." She muttered, glaring at her scars.
"I know the feeling. I didn't exactly do this to myself, you know? Want whip cream and cocoa? You'd be surprised how good it tastes with coffee." I asked as I put whip cream on my coffee.
"Cinnamon. Still hurt you?" Cass asked, putting whip cream on hers, but put cinnamon on instead of cocoa.
"Yeah. So, is cinnamon with your coffee goo? I was going to try it, but I haven't really liked cinnamon since I took the test for it. Have you done it?" I asked, sipping some of my coffee.
"Yes. I swallowed it all." Cass said with an amused smile as I stared at her shocked.
"You actually passed the cinnamon test? That's hard. Swallowing a whole spoon of cinnamon dries your mouth out easy. I thought it was impossible." I said, staring at with awe. When I tried it when I was 7, I nearly choked. So, yeah, passing the cinnamon test is pretty big for me.
I looked at the scars on her legs, blushing slightly when she caught me looking. It wasn't too bad, though. I caught her looking at my chest.
I looked down the hallway, watching a doctor chase down a patient. It would have been hilarious if we hadn't been out of our rooms, and the doctor wasn't chasing the patient with a scalpel.
"Well, I think we better be going back to our rooms before that happens to us." I said, and she nodded in agreement.
"Oh, wait." I said, just as she started to leave.
I grabbed a pen out of a passing doctor without him noticing, and wrote on the napkin that I picked up from the table. "Um, this is my number. If you want, text me later?" I asked, handing it to her.
She nodded before taking my hand and scribbling a number into my palm. "Look forward to it." She said with a smile before leaving.
"Dick will never stop teasing me about this." I muttered, walking back to my room with my coffee.
When I walked in, I grabbed my phone that was on the food tray next to my bed and put in her number. "Huh, would have thought a doctor would have come in by now." I mumbled as I walked to the rest room. Trust me, after being asleep for three days, at least I think it was two days, you would have really had to go, too.
When I was finished, I looked at my hand. I already had Cass's number in my phone, no need for Dick to have a reason to tease me.
I washed the ink off my hand, then walked out of the restroom and sat down on my bed. "I told you, Tim will not be awake til- he's awake." A doctor said, staring at me like I was on drugs while Bart grinned behind him. Why was Bart here? How did he even get in?
"Guys, he's awake!" Bart said before running to me, in a normal human pace, and hugged me.
"We thought you were gonna die, Tim!" he said, hugging me so tightly I thought I was going to puke.
"Well, I'm not, so can you let me go?" I asked, shoving him off of me.
Apparently the 'guys' that Bart talked to was Jaime, Roy, Barbara, and… Dick. "Hey, it's good to see you alive, little bro." Dick said, making me blush slightly.
Dick's started calling me 'little brother' for a few weeks, but it was taking me awhile to get used to it. "Yeah. Thanks." I said, pulling the hospital blanket over my leg scars.
"Seriously dude, you can't die. Your the reason Cassie's dating me, I need you to stick around." Roy said, fist bumping me.
"Agreed, Roy won't have a chance with her if you aren't around for her to complain about." Kon said as everyone laughed.
"Tim, I'm Dr. Sheepbutt. And your friends are going to have to leave. Your parents just came and they want to talk to you alone." Dr. Sheepbutt said, ruining everything thing.
The name made me want to laugh at the beginning, but the atmosphere in the room changed when my 'parents' were mentioned. The room became tense, and I looked down at the blanket in my lap. "Tim, if you want we can stay." Roy said as I gulped.
"I…I'll be fine. Just… go." I said, rubbing a scar on my forearm.
"Are you sure, hermano?" Jaime asked as Kon sat in a chair, crossing his arms like an angry body guard.
"He's sure, kid. Get out." Jack said from the door way with Dana pushing him with a scowl as she glared at him for being rude.
"Tim, my father is on the other side of the street, I can get him and arrest Jack if he pulls anything." Barbara said into my ear quietly.
"I'm fine, I'll deal with it. I promise." I said, giving her a look to just go away.
"Alright, if you say so." Barbara said, walking out with the others, while glaring at Jack on the way out.
Everyone left, and I gulped when Jack asked Dana to go get him some coffee. She looked like she didn't want to, but went to get it anyways. And that's when he did it.
He slapped me, the hit stinging my skin."I can't believe you! The company is going down, and your making me pay for your stupid injury?!" He yelled, slapping me again.
"You stupid piece of shit! Do you know how much this trip to the hospital will cost me?" Jack snarled as I turned my head away and shut my eyes so I didn't have to see him slap me.
"It might just cost you more than you think if you try to hit my little brother again." Dick said, his hand tightly gripping his wrist when I looked up after not feeling the slap.
The door behind Dick was opened, and everyone else was glaring at Jack like he was the worst person in the whole world. Roy's mechanical arm was twitching, Bart was vibrating where he was standing, Blue armor was peaking out of Jaime's sleeve, and Kon looked like he would kill Jack if Barbara hadn't been holding him back.
"Let go of me, Circus trash. I can have you locked up for assult." Jack snarled.
"Not when there's more than one witness who saw you hit a child." A deep voice said, as Bruce Wayne walked in with Dana.
"Jack, I'll handle this." Dana said, gesturing for Jack to leave.
Dick let him roll out of the room, and I stared at everyone in the room, including Barbara who just walked in. "Where are the others?" I asked as Dick sat next to me on my bed and looked over my cheek.
"I told them me and Bruce were going to handle this, and told them to go home so they wouldn't barge in the room and murder Jack." Dick said as I pushed away his hand. I swear, he was acting like an overprotective mother hen.
"I don't see how this involves Dana." I said, frowning at her.
"Tim, I'm not stupid. I've seen the effect of what Jack does to you. But… I was too scared to do anything about it. I was scared he was going to hurt me too. I hope you can forgive me for that." Dana said with guilty eyes.
"It's fine Dana, he acts different when he's around me, I get it." I said, shaking my head.
"But, that doesn't mean I can't do anything." Dana said, handing something to Dick.
"What's that?" I asked as Dick smiled happily.
"Well, I think it might be better to show you this first. I was going to show you before the summit meeting… for our group, but I didn't get the chance. But... I guess you could consider it a surprise birthday gift." Dick said, looking at Dana while handing me a paper.
I flipped through the papers, my eyes widening with each page. Dick….. Dick wanted to become my legal guardian. "You want to become my legal guardian. But… aren't you still living with Bruce? And... is it really my birthday?" I asked, finally looking up from the papers.
"Yes, but the court won't care if I give him my signature. Seeing as he has it, it won't be hard to persuade the court for you to live with Dick. And you've been in here for three days, meaning it's July 19th, your birthday." Bruce said, shocking me. Who else was in on this plan? And how did he know it was my birthday? Never mind the last question, stupid it was stupid.
"So, what do you say, Timmy?" Dick asked with a smile.
I swallowed hard, looking down at the papers then at Dick. It was weird, everything was. I had day dreamed about this stuff all the time when I was 4, but... I never thought it would happen.
"I'm pretty sure I need a pen to sign the paper." I said, smiling with everyone else in the room as Dick hugged me. And for once, I didn't mind.
"Jack won't like this." I muttered as I signed the paper.
"I'll deal with him. Dana agreed to give my father evidence of him hurting you, and doing other illegal things to help his business. Jack probably won't see the outside of a prison cell for at least 20 years. If he survives that long." Barbara said, smirking when I stared at Dana shocked.
"Your selling out your husband?" I asked, my voice full of disbelief.
"Yes. I can't stand by when Jack tries to hurt other people, especially as much as he's hurt you, Tim. In fact, if Mr. Gordon got here on time, Jack should be in the middle of being handcuffed right now." Dana said with a smile.
"... This is a dream. This has to be a dream. A really nice dream, but it has to be a dream." I muttered, punching Dick when he pinched me.
"Not a dream, Timmy." Dick said with a grin.
"I thought I told you not to call me that, Dickie." I said, smirking when the others snickered and Dick pouted.
All of a sudden, I felt weird. Kind of like I did in the Arctic when I was bleeding...
I looked down at my ribs, watching as blood soaked onto Dick's shirt. "Dick... I think you might need to get the doctor." I said, biting my lip when everyone saw me bleeding out.
"I'll go get him." Barbara said, running out of the room just as my vision started getting fuzzy and blacken.
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