Fic: "The Lazarus Pit - Tim's side" ¤DCU/Batman ¤Jason/Tim ¤R ¤violence, romance, drama, sexiness
*twiddles thumb* Here it is, for better or worse. I honestly think the previous one was better, in terms of plot and realization. But this companion piece offers you Tim's side of things, and it's an excuse for much...err... cuddling. Okay, it's a shameless piece of sexy angst. I hope you'll like it. ♥
To heartslogos, with many hugs. ♥
Title: The Lazarus Pit - Tim's side
Fandom: DCU- Batman.
Rating: heavy R.
Genre: Romance, angst.
Wordcount: Quasi 2500.
Characters/Pairings: Jason/Tim.
Warnings: Un-betaed. Stream-of-consciousness. Not-graphic mentions of blood, war, slavery, violence, sin and sex (I went all out with this one *shameface*).
Summary: The Lazarus Pit doesn't drive you crazy, as some say. It does worse. Much worse. It makes you dream.
* * * * *
The thing with the Lazarus Pit, is that its effect are unpredictable.
Its curse should not affect people who are young and whole and in no immediate danger of death. So your dip, a calculated risk in its own right, does not worry you. Given your current odds, getting wet is much preferable than a close encounter with the whole of Ra's League, even if the water clogging your nostrils and filling your mouth has an unnatural glow to it, and the chalky taste of decaying centuries.
You emerge from the waters, and at first, you feel no change within you.
The Lazarus Pit doesn't drive you crazy, as some say; and it doesn't rip a piece of a demon's soul to stitch it crudely upon yours, chasing you away from the fleshy vessel of your own body. No. It does worse. Much worse.
It makes you dream.
A long, never ending dream.
Layers upon layers of truths that are memories and memories that are hopes, forgotten shades of desire that have all colours of the spectrum, and then some.
A dream that is an expanse with no boundaries, a glittering nebula equivalent to the memory of your soul, from the dawn of time to the chaotic end.
You dream a dream of yourself.
Wrapped in the scented shade of a white temple, slipping from a slant of dusty light to the next, chased by the sound of your own laughter, and also by a shadow that ripples with muscles and smells like sun-warmed earth and ocean's breeze and cracked leather. You let the shadow catch you, press back in the circle of his arms, nuzzle in the warm hollow of his neck, tasting the salt of his sweat on your lips.
You dream of seducing him, then and there, coaxing him and teasing him until the air rings with the sound of your mingled cries, it hangs moist and heavy with the scent of your perspiration. The light reverberates against the marble, ricochets off the golden braziers, tinkles oddly in the shadows, as though they were black veils sprinkled with golden powder.
You think the Goddess, the Parthenos, might be blessing your union, you believe so with every fibre of your being, at least until the bitter morning when your loved one leaves to battle the Spartans and never comes back.
You let the blame for his death fall upon your shoulders, you wear it like a shroud and find comfort in its weight. Three-hundred-and-sixty days into your mourning, you walk up to Her altar and take a blade to your chest. You swear to never again believe in someone other than yourself, be it a deity or a cursed spirit from Hades, and your anger flares higher that the fires of Ephestus when, one breath away from your last, someone picks you up and whispers your name and it is him, scarred and ruined but returned from war.
Your dreamself dies with warm tears on his face that are not his own and slips into a dream - or perhaps you do. The dream of a dream, a dream of vaulted halls and creaking doors and the moist smell of snow and mildew.
You are wading through shadows as thick as deep waters and just as icy, when the first screams rips through the night air. Your servant starts back, one hand curling around the hilt of his stiletto. The kind monk who offered you leave to research their vast library cringes back and crosses himself. You do neither. You sprint forth, following the second scream and then the third and the fourth, and chance upon the cell as the fifth, heart-rendering scream tears trough the halls.
One of the novices, you are explained in rushed whispers. He was ensnared by the Devil, the poor soul. The monks are bleeding the evil spirit out of him with the aid of sharp blades, but only the soul might be salvageable - for the body, there's little to no hope.
You rage. You pull your power your position your money and your sword. You scare the monks out the reeking cell and barricade yourself in, deaf to the pleads and threats rising from the other side.
You know the signs. The fever, the shivers, the unclean sweat, dark and dense like oil. You read of them all in a book, you saw them take away your eldest brother, and your father's heart with him. It is no evil spirit, plaguing this young man, but a mortal malady. You slip a pouch of herbs from your belt (oh, the blasphemy! Lord Timofey turned to the way of the Witches in his grief!), you poke the bed of coals in the corner until you have a fire going, and on that fire you boil water, and with that water you make a church-forbidden concoction for the novice.
You coax his mouth open and force the bitter drink down his throat, wiping the moisture from his brow and the hollow of his neck, hushing and whispering at him like a much beloved child. As his lids flutter up, you discover that he was gifted with blue eyes, and the colour pierces you deep. It's a blue like the shade of jewels, like the sapphires encrusted on you father's sword, and the fever lends this man's eyes a shine to rival the most precious of stones.
His teeth are clattering, and you spare no thought to modesty as you rid you both of your clothes. You press yourself to his chest, heart to heart, bare skin slipping wetly against bare skin, your ashen white to his scarred tan, and the most peculiar, the most precious of shivers chases its way down your back as you mould yourself to him, clutching onto his arms. His hands are big as they come around you, they are warm and rough, but pleasantly so, thickly and nice like a cat's tongue. His eyes are wide and gleaming as he watches up from the depths of his feverish stupor, but there is no confusion in there, just the barest glint of recognition that makes you curl tighter around him, makes him press you closer into his chest. You bite your bottom lip, push yourself against him, slide against him, cheekcheststomachgrointhighs, gasping at the feeling it evokes, and tell yourself this is just healing, and nothing else, no matter what.
His hand are gentle upon you, his arms strong, his scent overwhelming and familiar, and his mouth looks inviting, like something you might need to have in order to understand some ancient riddle.
But you do not kiss him.
Not now; not in in the morning, when he wakes up confused and grateful and angry and aroused. Not in the months to come, as you stay in the Monastery to study the leather-bound tomes in German and Latin, and he works the day away in the orchard, bare chested and bronzed by the sun. Not a year later, when War comes bursting at the monastery's doors and sweeps everything away like the tide. Not even as you die, cradled in his arms and with blood in your mouth, are you brave enough to give into this sin, this temptation, this desire that, you know, has nothing of the earthy.
The dream of your dreamself dies, and as the snow blankets his and the novice's bodies, their entwined hands and their mouths that never touched, you fall into another dream, the dream of a dream of a dream, a dream of scented vapours, of gauzes fluttering in the desert wind, of plush cushions and golden trinkets, of the rare perfume of oils and flowers wrapping around you like a garland.
You are in his arms - the shadow, the novice, it is the same presence, him and always Him - and he moves against you, feathering kissed down your neck, where he left his mark on you with a kriss knife.
You are prince and he is slave, but he is the master of your heart, the master of your body, and you would break every rule for him, even those that will condemn you. You push back against him, seek his mouth with yours, and regret nothing of this amour that brought you to your knees and stripped you of your titles and your riches, regret not the hideous end it will lead you to. The only thing you regret is the bit of pain you inflict as you mark him the same way he marked you: a cut on the side of his neck that you kiss and soothe as he pulls you to his chest, chanting your name, whispering Tim, Tim, Tim, like a prayer. You steal a taste of his mouth, coax him closer and call his name, which is not Jason, but tastes like it.
You start and flail and sink deeper into the dream, and dream within the dream within the dream where the light is soft and green and the earth is moist underneath you naked toes.
Hidden away in the shady bowels of a Spanish forest, the ferns rear up thick and high around you, and the clear sound of rippling waterfalls rings in the air like laughter. You shiver as you dip into the water, and then the shivers deepen when he sinks into the water behind you.
His body is like one of the boulders surrounding you: massive and hard and lean and impossibly smooth, under the scars criss-crossing his tanned muscles. His hands are a contradiction, like everything about him: big and rough and so gentle, as though everything around him was precious. His voice is the best contradiction of all: low and rumbling and gruff, but smoother than silk.
He is wounded, weakened by fever. You were appointed to help him bathe, help him bathe and nothing more, this renegade who is a hero who was a stranger but has become the most important part of your life, so you drop the cloth you are holding, dip a shivery hand below the water, and watch his face shift into the first embers of desire. You tilt your head and offer your mouth for the first of many kisses, but the dream is shifting, sparkling, falling, and you're standing on the bridge of a pirate ship, wobbly and insecure even with your cane, and you crooked leg throbs with phantom pains and never-forgotten nightmares.
Your Captain is due to return from his latest foray at any second, and you laugh out loud when the first thing he does upon boarding is make a beeline for you, pick you up and spin you round and curse out loud to the heavens how the damn much he missed you. He brought you jewels, he says, and odd contraptions of metal and wood that you might delight to take apart and back together. He brought you the map of a cursed treasure and an enchanted locket from a siren's cave and a ring with a ruby on it, which he slips onto your finger, as he gruffly declares that he is Captain and damn if he can't make what in the blazes he wants, and you have the Ocean as your witness and the Sun for blessing, so will you do him the honour of marrying him?
And you want to laugh want to say yes want to chastise him for his silly dreams and sob because you are damaged good and kiss him so that he may know you never want him to change, but the dream scatters around you, it splinters and falls like broken glass, and you find yourself on your knees, with your lover your novice your shadow your renegade your pirate your master and your slave kneeling before you, a Jason who is but also is not Jason cupping your face in his bloodied hands, and crying and whispering and cursing because he was prince, and now he's slave, and you were amongst the enemies that took his family apart, you are next of kin to those beasts who brutalized his little brother, and he loves you, but he can't let you live, because you let it happen, and the blade trust in your heart doesn't hurt half as much as the words in his mouth, but you are good at shouldering blame that it is not yours and you were unable to save him or his brother the heir, and he promises he'll follow you in a little while, he just needs to bring his brother back home and then he'll be with you, he promises, forever and ever with you, so you lean against him and let him kiss and kill you, and in that kiss and that death you come back to yourself, surrounded by the glittering shards of countless more dreams, countless more Tims, each with their cursed love who looks like Jason and tastes like him and is as red as blood and as blue as sapphires and as shiny and controversial as a midnight's sun.
The Lazarus Pit, it is unpredictable.
It shouldn't have had any effect on you. You emerged from the waters, and at first, you felt no change within you.
The Lazarus Pit didn't drive you crazy, as some say; and it didn't rip a piece of a demon's soul to stitch it crudely upon yours, chasing you away from the fleshy vessel of your own body. No. It did worse. Much worse.
It woke you up.
So that when you emerged from the eerie waters and took that first gasp of air, you were neither demon nor human.
You were yourself.
You were everything you've ever been.
Mingled voices like a chorus echo insistently inside your empty chest; they spiral trough you heart with the strength of a knife, calling out in one million and one voice - some whispering, some crying, some demanding, some pleading - his name, all his names, that are all different but all taste the same, somehow: sharp and spicy against your tongue, sweet as blood down your throat, bitter like tears behind your closed eyelids.
Those dreams, dreams that are memories that are wishes from a distant past to an unseen future, they should become hazy in your waking hours, but they stay with you, instead; they haunt you as much as they heal you.
For the first time in your life, you can see everything - who you are, who you were, who you have the potential to be - and it doesn't scare you.
For the first time, you are aware of everything - what you have done to him, what he did to you, for you, and what needs to be done.
Those dreams, dreams that are memories that are wishes from a distant past to a unseen future, they stay with you and fill you with resolve.
You know what you have to do, now.
To heartslogos, with many hugs. ♥
Title: The Lazarus Pit - Tim's side
Fandom: DCU- Batman.
Rating: heavy R.
Genre: Romance, angst.
Wordcount: Quasi 2500.
Characters/Pairings: Jason/Tim.
Warnings: Un-betaed. Stream-of-consciousness. Not-graphic mentions of blood, war, slavery, violence, sin and sex (I went all out with this one *shameface*).
Summary: The Lazarus Pit doesn't drive you crazy, as some say. It does worse. Much worse. It makes you dream.
* * * * *
The thing with the Lazarus Pit, is that its effect are unpredictable.
Its curse should not affect people who are young and whole and in no immediate danger of death. So your dip, a calculated risk in its own right, does not worry you. Given your current odds, getting wet is much preferable than a close encounter with the whole of Ra's League, even if the water clogging your nostrils and filling your mouth has an unnatural glow to it, and the chalky taste of decaying centuries.
You emerge from the waters, and at first, you feel no change within you.
The Lazarus Pit doesn't drive you crazy, as some say; and it doesn't rip a piece of a demon's soul to stitch it crudely upon yours, chasing you away from the fleshy vessel of your own body. No. It does worse. Much worse.
It makes you dream.
A long, never ending dream.
Layers upon layers of truths that are memories and memories that are hopes, forgotten shades of desire that have all colours of the spectrum, and then some.
A dream that is an expanse with no boundaries, a glittering nebula equivalent to the memory of your soul, from the dawn of time to the chaotic end.
You dream a dream of yourself.
Wrapped in the scented shade of a white temple, slipping from a slant of dusty light to the next, chased by the sound of your own laughter, and also by a shadow that ripples with muscles and smells like sun-warmed earth and ocean's breeze and cracked leather. You let the shadow catch you, press back in the circle of his arms, nuzzle in the warm hollow of his neck, tasting the salt of his sweat on your lips.
You dream of seducing him, then and there, coaxing him and teasing him until the air rings with the sound of your mingled cries, it hangs moist and heavy with the scent of your perspiration. The light reverberates against the marble, ricochets off the golden braziers, tinkles oddly in the shadows, as though they were black veils sprinkled with golden powder.
You think the Goddess, the Parthenos, might be blessing your union, you believe so with every fibre of your being, at least until the bitter morning when your loved one leaves to battle the Spartans and never comes back.
You let the blame for his death fall upon your shoulders, you wear it like a shroud and find comfort in its weight. Three-hundred-and-sixty days into your mourning, you walk up to Her altar and take a blade to your chest. You swear to never again believe in someone other than yourself, be it a deity or a cursed spirit from Hades, and your anger flares higher that the fires of Ephestus when, one breath away from your last, someone picks you up and whispers your name and it is him, scarred and ruined but returned from war.
Your dreamself dies with warm tears on his face that are not his own and slips into a dream - or perhaps you do. The dream of a dream, a dream of vaulted halls and creaking doors and the moist smell of snow and mildew.
You are wading through shadows as thick as deep waters and just as icy, when the first screams rips through the night air. Your servant starts back, one hand curling around the hilt of his stiletto. The kind monk who offered you leave to research their vast library cringes back and crosses himself. You do neither. You sprint forth, following the second scream and then the third and the fourth, and chance upon the cell as the fifth, heart-rendering scream tears trough the halls.
One of the novices, you are explained in rushed whispers. He was ensnared by the Devil, the poor soul. The monks are bleeding the evil spirit out of him with the aid of sharp blades, but only the soul might be salvageable - for the body, there's little to no hope.
You rage. You pull your power your position your money and your sword. You scare the monks out the reeking cell and barricade yourself in, deaf to the pleads and threats rising from the other side.
You know the signs. The fever, the shivers, the unclean sweat, dark and dense like oil. You read of them all in a book, you saw them take away your eldest brother, and your father's heart with him. It is no evil spirit, plaguing this young man, but a mortal malady. You slip a pouch of herbs from your belt (oh, the blasphemy! Lord Timofey turned to the way of the Witches in his grief!), you poke the bed of coals in the corner until you have a fire going, and on that fire you boil water, and with that water you make a church-forbidden concoction for the novice.
You coax his mouth open and force the bitter drink down his throat, wiping the moisture from his brow and the hollow of his neck, hushing and whispering at him like a much beloved child. As his lids flutter up, you discover that he was gifted with blue eyes, and the colour pierces you deep. It's a blue like the shade of jewels, like the sapphires encrusted on you father's sword, and the fever lends this man's eyes a shine to rival the most precious of stones.
His teeth are clattering, and you spare no thought to modesty as you rid you both of your clothes. You press yourself to his chest, heart to heart, bare skin slipping wetly against bare skin, your ashen white to his scarred tan, and the most peculiar, the most precious of shivers chases its way down your back as you mould yourself to him, clutching onto his arms. His hands are big as they come around you, they are warm and rough, but pleasantly so, thickly and nice like a cat's tongue. His eyes are wide and gleaming as he watches up from the depths of his feverish stupor, but there is no confusion in there, just the barest glint of recognition that makes you curl tighter around him, makes him press you closer into his chest. You bite your bottom lip, push yourself against him, slide against him, cheekcheststomachgrointhighs, gasping at the feeling it evokes, and tell yourself this is just healing, and nothing else, no matter what.
His hand are gentle upon you, his arms strong, his scent overwhelming and familiar, and his mouth looks inviting, like something you might need to have in order to understand some ancient riddle.
But you do not kiss him.
Not now; not in in the morning, when he wakes up confused and grateful and angry and aroused. Not in the months to come, as you stay in the Monastery to study the leather-bound tomes in German and Latin, and he works the day away in the orchard, bare chested and bronzed by the sun. Not a year later, when War comes bursting at the monastery's doors and sweeps everything away like the tide. Not even as you die, cradled in his arms and with blood in your mouth, are you brave enough to give into this sin, this temptation, this desire that, you know, has nothing of the earthy.
The dream of your dreamself dies, and as the snow blankets his and the novice's bodies, their entwined hands and their mouths that never touched, you fall into another dream, the dream of a dream of a dream, a dream of scented vapours, of gauzes fluttering in the desert wind, of plush cushions and golden trinkets, of the rare perfume of oils and flowers wrapping around you like a garland.
You are in his arms - the shadow, the novice, it is the same presence, him and always Him - and he moves against you, feathering kissed down your neck, where he left his mark on you with a kriss knife.
You are prince and he is slave, but he is the master of your heart, the master of your body, and you would break every rule for him, even those that will condemn you. You push back against him, seek his mouth with yours, and regret nothing of this amour that brought you to your knees and stripped you of your titles and your riches, regret not the hideous end it will lead you to. The only thing you regret is the bit of pain you inflict as you mark him the same way he marked you: a cut on the side of his neck that you kiss and soothe as he pulls you to his chest, chanting your name, whispering Tim, Tim, Tim, like a prayer. You steal a taste of his mouth, coax him closer and call his name, which is not Jason, but tastes like it.
You start and flail and sink deeper into the dream, and dream within the dream within the dream where the light is soft and green and the earth is moist underneath you naked toes.
Hidden away in the shady bowels of a Spanish forest, the ferns rear up thick and high around you, and the clear sound of rippling waterfalls rings in the air like laughter. You shiver as you dip into the water, and then the shivers deepen when he sinks into the water behind you.
His body is like one of the boulders surrounding you: massive and hard and lean and impossibly smooth, under the scars criss-crossing his tanned muscles. His hands are a contradiction, like everything about him: big and rough and so gentle, as though everything around him was precious. His voice is the best contradiction of all: low and rumbling and gruff, but smoother than silk.
He is wounded, weakened by fever. You were appointed to help him bathe, help him bathe and nothing more, this renegade who is a hero who was a stranger but has become the most important part of your life, so you drop the cloth you are holding, dip a shivery hand below the water, and watch his face shift into the first embers of desire. You tilt your head and offer your mouth for the first of many kisses, but the dream is shifting, sparkling, falling, and you're standing on the bridge of a pirate ship, wobbly and insecure even with your cane, and you crooked leg throbs with phantom pains and never-forgotten nightmares.
Your Captain is due to return from his latest foray at any second, and you laugh out loud when the first thing he does upon boarding is make a beeline for you, pick you up and spin you round and curse out loud to the heavens how the damn much he missed you. He brought you jewels, he says, and odd contraptions of metal and wood that you might delight to take apart and back together. He brought you the map of a cursed treasure and an enchanted locket from a siren's cave and a ring with a ruby on it, which he slips onto your finger, as he gruffly declares that he is Captain and damn if he can't make what in the blazes he wants, and you have the Ocean as your witness and the Sun for blessing, so will you do him the honour of marrying him?
And you want to laugh want to say yes want to chastise him for his silly dreams and sob because you are damaged good and kiss him so that he may know you never want him to change, but the dream scatters around you, it splinters and falls like broken glass, and you find yourself on your knees, with your lover your novice your shadow your renegade your pirate your master and your slave kneeling before you, a Jason who is but also is not Jason cupping your face in his bloodied hands, and crying and whispering and cursing because he was prince, and now he's slave, and you were amongst the enemies that took his family apart, you are next of kin to those beasts who brutalized his little brother, and he loves you, but he can't let you live, because you let it happen, and the blade trust in your heart doesn't hurt half as much as the words in his mouth, but you are good at shouldering blame that it is not yours and you were unable to save him or his brother the heir, and he promises he'll follow you in a little while, he just needs to bring his brother back home and then he'll be with you, he promises, forever and ever with you, so you lean against him and let him kiss and kill you, and in that kiss and that death you come back to yourself, surrounded by the glittering shards of countless more dreams, countless more Tims, each with their cursed love who looks like Jason and tastes like him and is as red as blood and as blue as sapphires and as shiny and controversial as a midnight's sun.
The Lazarus Pit, it is unpredictable.
It shouldn't have had any effect on you. You emerged from the waters, and at first, you felt no change within you.
The Lazarus Pit didn't drive you crazy, as some say; and it didn't rip a piece of a demon's soul to stitch it crudely upon yours, chasing you away from the fleshy vessel of your own body. No. It did worse. Much worse.
It woke you up.
So that when you emerged from the eerie waters and took that first gasp of air, you were neither demon nor human.
You were yourself.
You were everything you've ever been.
Mingled voices like a chorus echo insistently inside your empty chest; they spiral trough you heart with the strength of a knife, calling out in one million and one voice - some whispering, some crying, some demanding, some pleading - his name, all his names, that are all different but all taste the same, somehow: sharp and spicy against your tongue, sweet as blood down your throat, bitter like tears behind your closed eyelids.
Those dreams, dreams that are memories that are wishes from a distant past to an unseen future, they should become hazy in your waking hours, but they stay with you, instead; they haunt you as much as they heal you.
For the first time in your life, you can see everything - who you are, who you were, who you have the potential to be - and it doesn't scare you.
For the first time, you are aware of everything - what you have done to him, what he did to you, for you, and what needs to be done.
Those dreams, dreams that are memories that are wishes from a distant past to a unseen future, they stay with you and fill you with resolve.
You know what you have to do, now.