Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Quite breathing whispers through the shadowed apartment.

The dim light of streetlamps is obscured by a silhouette crouched in the windowsill; silent, ghostly.

A car rumbles by on the dingy street below. The silhouette slips inside, landing deftly on the hardwood floor. It hesitates by the window for a moment, as if waiting for a signal to move forward. With a small shake of the head, the intruder slinks deeper into the darkened abode. As it passes by another window, a glimmer of light falls over the intruder’s face.

Raven hair, pale skin, sheathed in black, and a domino mask.

The intruder hovers near the kitchen counter, silently observing the apartment before him. With one quick movement, he reaches up and peels the domino off, to reveal a pair of ice blue eyes.
Those ice eyes belong to a boy, hardly an adult, with a long jagged scar trailing down the left side of his face.

He stands by the counter for a few moments longer, studying the domino resting in his hand. With a scowl he casts the mask aside and absently rubs his eyes. The domino skids soundlessly across the marble countertop.
Quietly, the boy glides toward the living room.

The soft breathing grows vaguely louder.

Cocking his head slightly, the boy pauses next to the couch and peers over the side. A flicker of emotion dances across his features when he sees the person, quietly slumbering on the blood-stained couch. He remains a moment longer, fingers lightly grazing the tops of the cushions, watching the person’s chest rise and fall with an expression similar to one of jealousy. With a quiet sigh, he turns away, venturing into the bathroom.

The faint glow of a wall light casts long shadows through the small room. The boy tugs his gloves off, setting them aside, pausing only for a moment to inspect his bloody knuckles. He runs his hands through his dark locks before letting them drop. His pale, scarred fingers curl themselves over the edge of the counter while he stares into the sink.

Minutes tick by, but he remains hunched over the bathroom sink, unmoving. Eventually, his eyes raise to the cracked mirror in front of him, and a shudder rips through his slender frame.
A trembling hand is raised to the mirror, resting on the cool glass where a black haired and blue eyed boy should be staring back. But the mirror remains empty, silently reminding the boy of his tragic fate…

Ghosts dont have reflections.

Chapter Text

Sleet splattered on the window while the TV played quietly in the living room.

Patrol had been uneventful, in Jason’s opinion. Aside from a collection of muggers causing a ruckus near Bowery and a few warning shots fired at an idiot who assumed it was safe to mess with a kid. (He quickly discovered he was very wrong.)

None of the Rogues had done anything in the last few weeks. (Unless, of course, one counted Ivy’s fur tree incident from the previous Wednesday.) and their silence had Jason very concerned. More concerned than the blizzard that was said to hit in a few days and was roomered to be one of the worst in several years. He was concerned because Christmas was less than two weeks away, and the Rogues just love to give the citizens of Gotham 'gifts’ on that particular day.

Last Christmas, Scarecrow had unleashed a scheme that had covered huge swaths of the city in a new version of fear gas. It had been a nightmare of a holiday as it took weeks to clear, with no help from the heavy blizzards that had descended. (Jason had suspected Mr. Freeze, but had no solid evidence to back it up.)

With those concerns circulating through his mind, Jason resumed his task of cleaning the dismembered firearms cluttering the table in front of him. It was nice, he decided, to have something to do with his hands while he was considering such topics. There is something soothing about the cleaning process that helped him keep his mind clear.

For awhile, he worked, ignoring the TV and sleet, completely transfixed on the project at hand. He let his thoughts wander, only vaguely noticing how heavy his eyes were getting.
Distantly he considered laying down, but that took too much energy so he decided to just let his tired eyes rest for a minute or two...

...Gasping, Jason jolted awake, sucking in air like he had been drowning in acidic green water. It took him a second to realize that he wasn't drowning in green, and he was only at his kitchen table doing gun maintenance. He hadn't even realized he had drifted off until...

Until what?

Immediately his guard flew up, as he cast a suspicious glance around the apartment, searching for what had awoken him. But it was as empty and quiet as it had been before, save for the TV's soft chatter.

Then he hears it.

A soft tap tap, coming from the window on the far wall.

Curious, but wary, Jason pads over to the window. Placing a hand on the knife holstered to his back, he peers through the curtains. He immediately jerks back, startled by the pair of glassy eyes staring back at him from the other side of the pane.

It takes a little longer than Jason would have liked to admit for him to realize there was a person crouched on his windowsill. (It was nearing 4am, cut him some slack. It wasn't his fault that his brain wasn't functioning properly.)

The person tapped again, hands flitting about irritably, clearly trying to communicate something to Jason.

Suddenly realization hit him like a frying pan to the head. Internally he cursed himself, before disengaging the window's security system, and sliding it open. He steps back just in time to narrowly miss a collision with the slender, wet teenager that tumbled gracelessly onto his floor

Chapter Text

Tim hadn’t meant to crash into Jason’s apartment. It was just... closer than any other place he could go. At least that’s what he told himself when he was sluggishly stumbling across rooftops.

But now he was lying on his back, on the cold hardwood floor, forcing his body to breath. Somewhere in the distant fragments of his conscience, he heard footsteps, the slam of a window, and a sigh. But that didn’t matter. He just needed to keep his body breathing, like a normal human.

(He wasn’t normal. Nor was he human. He knew that. But he had to pretend...)

Hopefully Jason wouldn’t mind if Tim took a nap for a minute. After all, the floor was cold and uncomfortable. It dug into his skin, wielding pain like a tether to ground his sanity. It was a chilly reminder that he was real.

And Tim... Tim liked that.

~

There were very few occasions in which Jason would be concerned about his little brother. Tim could handle himself; he had proven that time and time again.

But unease was gnawing at Jason’s stomach as he stared at Tim's still form, sprawled on his floor.

The teen was lying on his back, his chest hitching in a sporadic pattern, stilling for several seconds at a time. Glassy lifeless eyes stared into space. Shards of a broken domino were embedded into his skin, leaving trails of blood rolling down his sickly face.

Breathing out a sigh through his teeth, Jason crouched down next to Tim just before his ice-blue eyes slipped shut. Jason runs a hand over Tim’s ebony suit, analyzing each tear and scratch, fingers searching for injures. The left shoulder of the suit was gone, leaving blackened, bloody skin exposed. The rest of the sleeve was scorched and peeling all the way down to the glove. Flakes of dark grey were splattered all over the right side of Tim’s body, clinging to his dark locks like vile snowflakes. A distinct burn trailed from the cheekbone to the collar of Tim’s turtleneck suit. The unmistakable scent of smoke, ash, and charred flesh mingled in the air.

The kevlar protecting Tim’s torso was mostly intact, aside from a deep gouge just below his left rib that shredded both suit and skin. It was either that Tim ran full speed into a sharp object, or he had been stabbed with some sort of jagged dagger.

Jason would bet his helmet on the latter.

He completed his analysis, finding only a few more tears, burns, and minor cuts, before looping his arms underneath Tim’s limp body. With a heave, Jason raised him from the floor and carried him to the saggy blood-stained couch.

The injuries would be a pain to deal with, but he knew if he didn’t treat them properly and immediately, it would only make things worse.

(although, how things could possibly get worse for Tim, he wasn’t sure...)

After retrieving the med-kit from under the kitchen sink, Jason set to work. Methodically treating Tim’s wounds wasn’t the same calm as cleaning his guns. It made him unnaturally queasy.

(And wasn’t that something. He hadn’t felt like that in a long time, definitely not after digging himself out of his own grave or training with the League of Assassins. Why was this causing that sticky feeling to grip him? For goodness sake, he had mutilated people beyond recognition before, a stab wound should not be unnerving.)

A moment of dilatation passed, while Jason gauged the two most pressing injuries: abdomen, or shoulder? He wouldn’t be able to remove Tim’s suit normally with him in such a state, which would make treating the stab wound more difficult. But it was the more pressing of the two. Then again, Tim’s suit was already in shambles; cutting it up wouldn’t change much in the long run. Not when Tim had at least two spares. Biting down on a sigh, he unsheathed his knife and started slicing through the thick black cloth.

Time slipped away as Jason worked, cleaning the stab wound, checking and double checking that it wasn’t infected, stitching it up, and then wrapping up Tim’s torso in gauze. It wasn’t the proper treatment, but there was no way he could take him to a proper hospital, and Leslie’s was too far. Tim would be fine; it wasn’t like he hadn’t dealt with this before.

(It was just... he didn’t want Tim to have to be in so much pain when they couldn’t treat it at all. Once Tim faded, who knew how long it’d be when he would be solid enough to operate on again?)

Jason turns his attention to Tim’s shoulder and resists the urge to rub his eyes. It was easily a third degree burn, if the blackened skin was anything to go by. Treating that burn was way beyond Jason’s pay grade. Peeling off the surgical gloves he had slipped on, Jason stood with another sigh, his joints protesting the movement from being still for so long. He vaguely recalled Talia mentioning something about manuka honey being good for burns. There was a chance she could have given him some the last time she visited. She had been pretty irritated with Jason about not treating the burns that already covered Tim’s battered body.

It was worth investigating, Jason decided, wadding up the bloody plastic gloves.

But as he turned away from Tim, his gaze fell on the TV, particularly on the clock in the corner of the screen.

When had it become 6 a.m.?

His eyes flicked over to the flashing headline.

His stomach lurched.

What?

Jason read the sentence twice to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

Breaking News: Drake Manor Burned Nearly To The Ground Due To Electrical Fire

Snatching the remote off the arm of the couch, Jason turned the volume up a few clicks.

“...the manor had been burned, in spite of the storms ravaging through the city. Firefighters say there was no one home when the blaze started, but hundreds of priceless artifacts had been destroyed.” The reporter’s voice held a hint of remorse. “It is suspected the fire was the cause of an electrical malfunction. However, one witness insisted upon seeing a person standing in the window of a second story room.”

Jason frowned, eyes drifting back over to the motionless body lying on his couch.

“Whatever the cause, yet another tragedy has befallen the Drake household, exactly four years after the death of Timothy Drake...” The reporter continued, but Jason stopped listening. He knew what yesterday had been.

Nausea twisted his stomach, acutely aware of the stench of ash and smoke filling his apartment as he stars at Tim with growing horror.

Oh Tim, what have you done?