[DC] Delusions
Title: Delusions
Fandom: DC
Rating: PG
Summary: Bruce and Tim never saw the same thing in the Case.
Notes: Terrific Table of Robins, Tim to Jason. Title from the Black & White story in Gotham Knights #34, the Delusions of Alfred Pennyworth.
For a long while, when Batman was training him as Robin, Tim considered Jason his best friend.
The Case was an object of dread and stomach-clenching guilt, an unavoidable presence whenever Bruce was there. It was the altar of a religion which Bruce served as a priest, raised to a dead boy that wasn't, in spite of the costume in the glass case, Robin.
Sometimes when both Bruce and Tim were in the Cave, Tim would look up from whatever exercise he was doing, as if - as if a sense he'd never known he had had picked up on something, and there would be Bruce, perhaps at the computer reading on some files, or perhaps looking at Tim, or perhaps with a bottle of water in his hand as he took a brief pause from his own training; looking distant like he was an ocean away, Batman's shadows on his face.
Bruce would be there, and the Case would be over there, and Tim would feel his eyes widening for - the light falling only on the two of them, Bruce and the Case, the Case and Bruce, how they were linked - as if there was a chain of mystical energy Tim could almost see running from one to the other. Tim couldn't have said if it happened because Bruce was thinking - brooding - at the Case, or because the Case- The Case was always meant for Bruce.
Jason, though... Tim never knew if Bruce saw Jason when he thought of the Case; if he imagined Jason cursing him, blaming him, telling him Bruce had failed him. If he saw Jason in his Robin outfit, smirk widening into something more (Tim's pictures of Jason told him that the boy was fond of the provocation). If he pictured Jason's body after... Any would be enough to justify the expression on Bruce's face, on Bruce's entire being, when the Case seemed to expand.
Tim's Jason never does that. He never reproaches him, never lets him talks himself down. He's blunt and sort of street-rough, like Tim remembers from the evenings he's seen him on the streets as opposed to bored out of his skull at charity events, and he looks at Tim with narrowed eyes when Tim is giving up too fast and dresses him down to pull him up.
Every time Bruce tells him to up the weights he's benching, Tim fancies he can see Jason grin.
Fandom: DC
Rating: PG
Summary: Bruce and Tim never saw the same thing in the Case.
Notes: Terrific Table of Robins, Tim to Jason. Title from the Black & White story in Gotham Knights #34, the Delusions of Alfred Pennyworth.
For a long while, when Batman was training him as Robin, Tim considered Jason his best friend.
The Case was an object of dread and stomach-clenching guilt, an unavoidable presence whenever Bruce was there. It was the altar of a religion which Bruce served as a priest, raised to a dead boy that wasn't, in spite of the costume in the glass case, Robin.
Sometimes when both Bruce and Tim were in the Cave, Tim would look up from whatever exercise he was doing, as if - as if a sense he'd never known he had had picked up on something, and there would be Bruce, perhaps at the computer reading on some files, or perhaps looking at Tim, or perhaps with a bottle of water in his hand as he took a brief pause from his own training; looking distant like he was an ocean away, Batman's shadows on his face.
Bruce would be there, and the Case would be over there, and Tim would feel his eyes widening for - the light falling only on the two of them, Bruce and the Case, the Case and Bruce, how they were linked - as if there was a chain of mystical energy Tim could almost see running from one to the other. Tim couldn't have said if it happened because Bruce was thinking - brooding - at the Case, or because the Case- The Case was always meant for Bruce.
Jason, though... Tim never knew if Bruce saw Jason when he thought of the Case; if he imagined Jason cursing him, blaming him, telling him Bruce had failed him. If he saw Jason in his Robin outfit, smirk widening into something more (Tim's pictures of Jason told him that the boy was fond of the provocation). If he pictured Jason's body after... Any would be enough to justify the expression on Bruce's face, on Bruce's entire being, when the Case seemed to expand.
Tim's Jason never does that. He never reproaches him, never lets him talks himself down. He's blunt and sort of street-rough, like Tim remembers from the evenings he's seen him on the streets as opposed to bored out of his skull at charity events, and he looks at Tim with narrowed eyes when Tim is giving up too fast and dresses him down to pull him up.
Every time Bruce tells him to up the weights he's benching, Tim fancies he can see Jason grin.