Fic: Buried Low | Tim Drake, Jason Todd | pg
Title: Buried Low Beneath Your Guilt
Fandom: DCU, Tim Drake, Jason Todd
Notes: An AU that examines what would happen if Jason had come back to Bruce to be his Robin again. I’m playing fast and loose with the nebulous preboot timeline, here.
Rating: pg-13, blood, violence in this chapter.
Words: Not a lot.
Tim’s faster than that. He’s faster then this.
But he doesn’t hear the movement until it’s too late. Until there’s nothing he can do but be carried by the momentum of the force behind his back, on his muscles. Whatever is it, whoever it is that made it in to the Bat Cave - with capital letters - is larger than him, heavier than him.
Better then him because his arms get pinned with knees and the blood is cut right off from his fingers and they start to tingle and ache and burn. And Tim’s legs try to kick out because he knows a move that *Shiva* taught him, but it’s no use because this bulk, this weight is better than him. And he has no momentum. Hasn’t had any since Steph died, since his dad was murdered and he really still isn’t sleeping through his so short - blink your eyes and it’s over - nights.
So this mass of muscle and pale skin and Tim can make out a flash of dark black hair out of the corner of his eyes but that’s all he can do because the hand, the strong fingers have their tight grip on the hair that’s gotten too long at the base of his neck and yanks. Hard.
Tim’s neck snaps back, feels a vertebrae crack. The sound of hollow fluid.
“Replacement.” The hand tightens, pulls Tim taught like the draw of a bow and everything burns and Tim can’t even take a breath, can’t even swallow down the saliva that hangs in his throat, choking him.
All he do is gurgle helplessly.
“You *replaced* me!”
And Tim knows that voice. He knows it with everything in his self, his body, his soul. Every part of him that’s Robin tell hims. Scream at him that it’s Jason. Jason Todd. Robin. Robin. Robin.
But he’s Robin? It’s all he has. Is Robin.
And Jason is dead.
But Jason. It’s his voice. And his brutality and anger anchoring him down to the sea that is the damp cave floor.
But Tim feels like he’s been drowning for a few months now. What would it be like to sink? But how can he? It’s Jason Todd on his back, hand at his neck and how is this even possible-
Then pushes his face to the ground and his nose break on contact with the hard ground.
Warm blood pours out of his nose and Tim hears himself take shallow wet sips of air before his vision which had just gone from white to red starts to materialize before him.
Because Jason releases his arms and legs from the pin and flips him over so he stares into Jason’s teal eyes. Red rimmed and dilated, but they were Jason’s eyes. The ones he watched through lenses and the ones he saw bloom in trays of developer and fixer and the smell of chemicals races back to Tim before he even knows it. It covers up the copper tang of his own blood that hangs in the air.
“You took Robin from me! You took everything from me!”
Jason’s mouth had been moving before but these words are the ones that catch up to him now.
Jason has a grip on Tim by his shirt now. His neck and the collar of his t-shirt. It stretches under the iron grip of the once-dead boy.
He’s shaking Tim. Shaking him so that his necks flops back and forth.
“God. Please. Give it back to me. I need it. I *need* it and it was mine and you took it!” Jason is crazed. He sounds desperate and angry and scared and Tim can see himself in the black pupils of the boy’s eyes. “Give it to me!”
Tim doesn’t know what to say. His nose is gushing blood still. Flowing down his face. And Jason shakes Tim again. And again until he’s cracking the back of Tim’s skull to the ground with each shake.
All Tim sees are stars. Because he’s choking. The blood is pooling in the back of his mouth and he swallows as the world around him curtains off. Darkens like when his mom would pull the drapes shut when she was home from one her trips and she just needed to sleep for a week before she had the energy to do it again - the trips.
Tim sees her golden hair as he slowly starts to drown on his own blood.