Iconfic for taraljc
Iconfic: The Silence Game
Spoilers for Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. Inspired a bit by Contending With Shadows, which is a much better story than this.
***
I know a doctor. I know a doctor. Inside his head, the words chased each other, chattering. Tim shuddered and shivered in his arms, a horrible grin plastered on his face. Barbara led the way out of the ruin, already talking to Alfred to tell him, to warn him.
I know a doctor.
This wasn’t Leslie’s field, not in a thousand years, but she would know someone. She had to know someone who could be trusted. Tim would need so much, would need to talk and talk, and everything would come out in drabs and spurts, and maybe he could be sane again.
Tim giggled, and Bruce moved faster.
Maybe.
***
He was young, Leslie’s friend. Dr. Nichols. Bruce knew the dates of his various graduations, the titles of his papers, the names for his anonymous case studies. Bruce was always thorough. The young doctor had just left a group practice, had not set up his own, was open to a position on the Wayne Enterprises Human Resources payroll. Could be trusted. Leslie said so. He had interned briefly at the clinic with her.
“He won’t understand,” she’d warned. “Not at first. But he’ll be quiet. He’s worked with children before.” Her eyes held secrets that were not hers, and were not only those she kept for Bruce’s family.
Not as young as Dick, Bruce thought, watching him as he waited in the front hall. But not more than a small handful of years older. Tim might trust him, and he might not. He’d left his room twice since they’d brought him home. By his request, one of them had stayed in the room with him, even when he slept. Barbara talked with him about nothing much. Dick played him on his X-Box. Alfred read out loud. Leslie took samples and made notes, and worked on a crochet pattern while Tim dozed with the help of the drugs she administered. Bruce watched in silence from his chair, because he hated Tim’s games, and he couldn’t imagine speaking.
And now a stranger had come.
“Dr. Nichols.”
“Mr Wayne.” He extended a hand. Bruce reminded himself to be normal, and took it.
“Dr. Thompkins spoke highly of you.”
“She told me there was a special case.”
“Yes.”
He led him away from the stairs, into the study. The doctor seemed surprised that no one else was waiting. Bruce closed the door.
“Mr. Wayne, if the patient is you, I should warn you ... “
“It’s not me.” Nichols didn’t reply, but there was a carefully-concealed disbelief apparent in the slouch of his shoulders. “Sit down.”
“Dr. Thompkins said you could be trusted.” Again, no reply. Bruce knew the silence game, knew better than to try to fill it with clumsy words. Especially with another who was trained to read into those words. “The patient is my ward. Tim Drake. He was ...” How to say it? How to explain without explaining, to gauge the man before committing to telling him everything? Bruce had run conversation after conversation in his head for two days. “He was abducted. For three weeks. We found him. He’s home now.” Safe, he tried to think.
“I didn’t read anything about that in the paper.”
“You won’t.”
“Do you know who abducted him?”
“Yes.” Dead and gone and buried.
“Mr. Wayne, if I’m going to help, you’re going to have to tell me more.”
And now it was time. “Doctor, if you’re going to help, you will be told everything. You’re going to become privy to information that fewer than ten people in the world know. Important information. And once you know, you’re going to have to decide what to do. You can go to the press. You can go to the police. I won’t stop you. The only thing that matters right now is Tim. If you decide you don’t want to know, you can leave now, and again, I won’t stop you.”
“Everyone has secrets, Mr. Wayne. I can assure you that I will be sworn to confidentiality with my patient, unless a crime has been committed.”
“It wasn’t his fault. If it all comes out, you’ll know, you’ll need to tell them, it wasn’t his fault. It was mine.” He watched the expressions play across the doctor’s face. A cowl helped hide surprise and curiosity, made the silence a living thing to be filled. Nichols hadn’t yet learned the stillness of expression needed to properly convince someone to keep talking. But he needed to know. “Are you going to stay?”
“I shouldn’t, should I?” Bruce didn’t always need the cowl, and he’d been playing since Nichols had been a child. The doctor broke first. “Let me talk to him. And then I’ll give you my answer.”
***
Tim was in the study for over an hour. Bruce stayed away from the door, practically had to order Dick and Barbara away. To the other office. Ostensibly they were to go monitor things, but for once, he knew the exercise was pointless. He’d called Clark, told him to put the word out, knew he would be discreet. Gotham, and Bludhaven, would have a bounty of protectors for the next few weeks.
When the door opened, it was Nichols who exited the room. Just inside, Tim stared at the globe without seeing it. The doctor didn’t shake, didn’t stammer, did look at Bruce with that same almost-fear Bruce knew from other faces.
“I’d like to start with an hour each day. We’ll see how he does after a few weeks. I’ll need to confer with Dr. Thompkins regarding the dosage of the sedatives she’s prescribed.”
“She’s due back this evening after seven.”
“I’ll call then.”
“Doctor?”
“Don’t.” Alfred appeared with a coat, which Nichols took gratefully. “I need to research some things tonight.”
“If you decide to tell what you’ve just learned, I only ask that the second call be to me. I’ll need to warn the others.”
Nichols took his hat. “Mr. Wayne, if I tell anyone what I’ve just learned, I’ll be the one sent for psychological evaluation.” He paused. “Tomorrow, we’ll also set up a schedule for you.”
“I told you, I’m not your patient.”
“You told me the only thing that matters is Tim. And I think you’re right.”
***
The sessions went slowly. Nichols wouldn’t discuss what was said between them, and Bruce could still only just talk to Tim about the weather. But he had watched the home movies. All of them. He knew.
Dick had returned to his own city, called every other day. Barbara had taken over the main patrol of Gotham, with some help from Supergirl. On odd nights, Bruce asked her to stay over while he prowled his city. He knew it was dangerous to be out when his thoughts were squarely at home, but he also knew how much of the criminal element of Gotham stayed out of sight and towards the straight and narrow simply out of fear. The Batman had to be seen from time to time, or at least his handiwork did. Besides, he’d heard a breath of a rumor that Ivy had an old friend at her side again, and although he knew Joker was dead, he needed to know his legacy was ended, too. So he watched, and waited in the shadows, wondering what the next strike would be.
He refused to meet with Nichols on his own.
***
After three weeks, they increased the sessions to two and a half hours per day. The hollows under Tim’s eyes faded, but Bruce suspected that was more due to the sedatives allowing him to sleep.
***
It had been two months, and Tim could join him at dinner downstairs, could sit in front of the tv for a few hours per day, could do (with some protests) the make-up homework his teachers had sent. Could not go outside after dusk. Had not, would not ever return to school. Or to the rooftops.
When Bruce had told him, another place in Tim had shuttered fast, another avenue of conversations was closed. Inane chatter from the television, empty-headed music from the radio, these filled the silent spaces. Bruce entertained thoughts of getting a dog, just for something to talk with and about and over.
Alfred left them alone, to not talk. Bruce wavered between resentment and gratitude.
Barbara filled the silences when she could, maybe too much so. She spent more time than she should have, time she could have spent patrolling, or working, or trying to find a life separate from this tight circle they’d drawn around themselves. Dick still called, though less and less often. He’d found his own way out, and while Bruce thought perhaps Barbara might have gone with him, it seemed she would not, and Bruce couldn’t find the words to tell her that she should. Instead, she rattled around the Manor with them, trying to knot words from separate conversations to tie the two of them together, in the process tying herself tighter to them both.
***
At six months, the sessions were reduced to two hours for three days per week. Leslie took Tim off the sedatives. Nichols said he would have to learn to deal with the nightmares.
For over a month, he screamed his way awake every night.
***
Tim drew.
He wasn’t an artist, could put a picture together reasonably well, was better with CAD programs. But now he drew. Terrible things.
If Joker hadn’t already been dead, Bruce would have killed him barehanded.
***
Without the sedatives, Tim was restless at night. Coming back from patrol at three am, Bruce found him standing alone in the library, in the front hall, sitting on the stairs.
Once, just once, he found him in the Cave. He’d taken out the costume, had curled around it, was heaving tearless sobs. When Bruce leaned over him, Tim looked up, and Bruce saw that he wasn’t sobbing but laughing, and that was much worse.
***
The sessions with Dr. Nichols returned to five days per week.
***
“I’m not reaching him anymore.” The door to the study was closed. Nichols was preparing to leave, and Bruce wondered if this was a prelude to his leaving for good. “He’s always had defenses up, but it’s as if he doesn’t want to be reached now. Has he shown you his latest pictures?”
“Yes.” The pictures had given him nightmares, and he already had enough of those on his own.
“I’m not sure I can help him further. He doesn’t need to be institutionalized, but I don’t think he can manage on his own, either. I know you want to keep him here, but I’m beginning to think a group setting might be better, somewhere away from all the associations he has with this place.”
“You’re sending me away?” The door had opened silently. Tim looked small and tired in his t-shirt and jeans, and while he wasn’t out of shape exactly, the hard line of his muscles was gone. For the first time, Bruce tried to superimpose the image of the Robin he’d known over the sight of this boy, and could not quite make them fit.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you will.” He looked at Nichols. “You’re telling him to get rid of me.”
“The doctor only wants to help you. If you won’t work with him, we need to find you someone else.” It was the longest conversation they’d had in weeks.
“You don’t talk to him.”
Bruce bit back his “I’m talking to him right now.” He sighed, which brought a scowl to Tim’s face.
“You don’t trust him, and you want me to.” Tim brushed past them, went upstairs.
Alfred brought Nichols’s coat and hat.
Bruce watched the stairway, heard Tim’s door slam, wondered how many conversations that had just ended before they began. Wondered if it was too late.
“Doctor?”
“The group home was only a suggestion. I’ll see if I can come up with something else.”
“I think I know what the something else has to be. Do you have any other appointments for this evening?”
“No.”
Bruce indicated the open study. Alfred nodded to himself, and took the coat and hat away again, as Nichols sat back down in the chair he favored.
Bruce closed the door, and went for another chair, instead sat down at his desk. Random paperwork, things needing his attention that Lucius couldn’t sign, stared up at him. His name was printed at the bottom of each document, and as he often did, he mused that while it was his legal name that he signed on each one, it wasn’t his real name.
Maybe it was time for that to change.
“My parents. When I was eight, they were murdered. I watched it happen.”
The doctor stayed silent, and let him talk.
***