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A joke. That’s what this was probably was.
Because that was the only way he could rationalise to himself why the hell, after literally kidnapping his stalker slash responsibility slash replacement slash pseudo-brother, he was now out here in the cold, watching said weirdo enter the manor.
Not like a normal person, which must be said.
And Jason watched, had watched since Tim had left his apartment in the uber, following him back to the Wayne property. It wasn’t weird. This was a totally normal thing to do.
Tim turned around once more, checking for whatever over his shoulder, before hefting himself through the open window on the second story. It would open to a less-used hallway, where he could probably go to his room without being noticed.
Not like the Manor had countless secret or actual entryways that nobody would be monitoring, through which Jason himself had literally broken in and kidnapped a child. A child that was not much younger than him, but fuck.
He cringed at himself.
Admittedly, he had been rationalising most things he did with ‘a bad couple of weeks’. Months. Maybe years, if you counted dying.
That wasn’t to say that he was being negative or looking on the bad side of things, it was a fact, like things around him were completely fucked up. If you took a step back to look at the utter fuck that was his everyday life, you would feel the same way.
A screaming man in your living room?
The worst is that he isn’t actually screaming, since there is no perceivable sound coming from him. He’s giving his everything, eyes glassy, deep inhales for haunting screeches. And you can’t fault him for trying, because not being corporeal sucks like a bitch and makes you want to tear your hair out in frustration.
So all you’re left to do is look disdainfully at the silent screaming man in your living room, which also happens to be your kitchen, your library and your entrance hall. You know it might be labelled ‘modern’ or ‘industrial’ but deep down you know the most fitting word is ‘dump’, and now there is a silently screaming man right there, and there is nothing you can do, except stare at him as you drink your coffee.
Ghosts. Fucking ghosts.
The first time he had seen one of them, he had nearly had a heart attack, or whatever equivalent was out there for 19-year- old newly undead. She had just appeared. Staring at him from a lamp post, the woman would have been just another sex-worker, if it hadn’t been for the gaping wound on her forehead, blood sticking to matted hair. And he had done nothing.
He couldn’t.
To be honest, he had hoped that Tim would have some sort of Encyclopaedia lying around. Whatever gothic voodoo thing might have been at the manor’s library, he had searched every inch for it. Nooks and crannies he’d gotten to know back when he was still Robin, when he was still alive the first time around.
But instead of thinking that there was just nothing on the subject, he had explained to himself that Tim had thrown away every evidence as soon as he’d passed the ghosts to him. Like that makes sense.
It had served to fuel his temporary frustration, his mind going back to the woman, the other people that were now haunting him without him knowing what to do.
Because the horrors of dying hadn’t been enough, not only had he stuck around, but then been somehow resurrected who-knows-how by who-knows-whom. The cherry on the cake truly being that those uncanny, shiver-inducing strangers turned out to be dead people.
But because four months ago, he hadn’t known that what had happened post- death had actually been real, he had been focused on showing B.
He had had a plan. More or less.
He’d taken up where Batman let the people down, made a name for himself. The fact that the Joker never paid for it, that Tim had been taken into the family, that there was another full-ass child nobody had known about who now also pranced around in his old colours, when there was no doubt to him that the Bat had never thought twice about how to protect them properly.
But him? He was better than Batman. Because his morale didn’t end at weapons or Crime Alley.
Whatever had come over him at the Titans Tower, he had just meant to scare the man. If someone was able to take out a meta-human, break through security and hurt a Robin, maybe, maybe it would make the man think. No more dead Robins.
That had been his plan.
And yet he had had signalled for help in horror at what he had done, the blood on his hands, because as always, he took it too far.
When he had arranged to meet Batman in the warehouse, he had been careful, dropping hints and paying the right people to do the right things. He wanted to see. He wanted to know that Batman cared that someone had hurt his Robin, even though he knew that no matter what the man said or did, he wouldn’t be satisfied, because it hadn’t been the case for him.
But it had never come to that, because his plan had been completely destroyed by one. Single. Miscalculation.
Tim.
Tim, whom he was now watching as he walked into his bedroom, carefully taking off the hoodie that Jason had given him, because he wasn’t a monster. Winter was coming, and he had already kidnapped him, brought him to tears, only because he made stupid split- second decisions.
Tim, who was now looking at the piece of fabric as if it could give him answers.
He fought off the urge to groan in frustration.
He should have known. One would think that after discovering the random kid following Batman and Robin through the night, shadowing them in turn for nearly two years, and watching them as they proceeded to throw themselves into anything they did just to prove themselves somehow, he would have anticipated that that person would want to get answers first.
Of course Tim would do that. Because he was a self- sacrificial idiot who still believed that Batman was a saint who would do no wrong.
A self- sacrificial idiot who had come to an obvious trap to talk.
And of course that same kid wouldn’t throw away valuable information on ghosts, when he was just going to give the curse to someone else. There wasn’t a curse he’d given him. There was no reason for anything to have happened, if Jason had just come in to talk like a normal person, like Tim had tried.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” The more he kept repeating the word, the more he took on a sing-song voice, as if that would somehow make it better. A cacophony of fucks, that managed to help nobody at all.
He had messed up.
Thanks to his own errors, Batman now knew who he was. Or rather, he would by now have run a million other possibilities first before settling on the bizarre truth that had been Jason’s reality for long enough now. If he hadn’t believed Tim after what had happened in the Tower, when he had used his own fingerprint to get himself inside, then there was no way he’d see Red Hood and Jason and buy it.
But Tim? Tim was now sitting on his bed, staring into space. After being kidnapped by the guy who previously tried to kill him, he doesn’t call or inform anyone. He just sits there. Not knowing anything about ghosts either, too blinded to see Batman for the man he was, and not knowing what to do about Jason.
He had his number. Whatever move Tim made next, Jason would simply let him.