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He should feel hot, Tim thinks. The sun is bearing down on summer scorched sand, practically blinding him even with the adaptive lenses of his cowl, but he'd shiver if he could move. There's warmth beneath him, a slow spreading pool that would be more concerning if his thoughts would follow a single path, but any thoughts he might have are already flying off the track of his brain's own rainbow road. He's so cold.
There was heat before, a joyous sunny elation because he'd done it, he'd found the last piece, that final perfect tracing in a cave. He'd dared to call it excitement after so many months of empty yet heavy desperation. All he had to do was run the numbers and they could pull Bruce out of time.
The heat in his chest had become an all consuming fire, pain and panic and 'please, please no, not now I’m so close' as the blade passed through him. Forward, then back with a sickening squelch that would haunt his dreams if there were any more to be had. He was dying, bleeding out in the desert if the suffocation of punctured lungs didn't kill him first, his companions dead around him.
Words, something about a game and footsteps with the cadence of wanting to be heard but capable of silence walking away. Tim almost calls out, some desperate part of him that never grew up from that lonely little kid doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to die alone, even if it's an enemy staring him down, but there's no way to call when no air can reach his lungs, flooded with blood and tattered as they are.
He should be pulling pressure bandages from his pouch, should be checking on the others or doing something, anything other than laying there as the wind piles the sand up around him like an apologetic coffin. Like the universe is trying to say “I'm so sorry little one, we'll bury you when you're gone. We'll mourn you, our child.”
Tim tries to laugh, a broken, gurgling thing, and while he's mostly gone numb he can feel the blood he's choking on run down the side of his face. He's not ready to die. His eyes sting, and he doesn't bother holding in the tears, he won't need the water anymore anyways. He's not ready, he's only sixteen and god, he knew he'd die young as a vigilante but he can't die just yet, his mission isn't over. ‘Please, please if anyone out there is listening,’ he prays into the empty halls in his mind ‘please,’ he begs the universe, ‘You can have me when he's home, just let me bring him home, I just want to save my dad. I already let one father die, I can’t fail the other.’
The desert doesn't answer as the cold takes the last of his breath, and the fear begins losing to the sense of peace dragging him away from body. Maybe it won't be so bad.
The world has gone silent.
Maybe he'll see Kon and Bart and Steph and his parents and there won't be any more pain.
His eyes are open, but the edges of the sky have turned dark and the sun has lost its light.
Maybe Bruce would forgive him for failing.
‘I’m so sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't save you. I'd give anything just to get you home.’
Timothy Jackson Drake, Robin III, Red Robin, son of Jack and Janet Drake, Son of the Batman, bleeds to death in an Iraq desert, half buried under whirling sands with no mortal to hear his gasping go quiet.
The universe however, must have been feeling generous, because the dark and the quiet are lost in a roar of sensation and mere moments after silence, the world is screaming again.
Tim wakes up with a heaving breath and rolls out of his own corpse, and it can't be anything but his. He's frozen on all fours, eyes locked onto what should be his final resting place.
The blood has long since dried beneath him, body stiff in rigor mortis, face slack with dried tear stains. When he presses an unsteady hand to the hole in his unmoving chest, his fingers phase right through. His green gloved fingers.
A once over almost brings him to hysterics. He's dead, and his afterlife is apparently going to be spent in his Robin suit. He couldn't even die correctly. A second loop on those thoughts does bring him to hysterics, and he screams at the bodies because nobody alive is there to hear him.”How could you leave me here? We’re supposed to be a team, you’re not supposed to leave me alone!” Pru, Z, and Owens are just as dead as him, but they aren't ghosts, they got lucky enough to just die.
His hands ball into fists as he screams at the sky. “AM I JUST A FUCKING JOKE TO YOU? I CAN'T EVEN SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD‽”
In a rage, he kicks at the useless husk of a body that failed him, and his foot connects. It's not a large movement, and clearly didn't carry the same force as if he'd truly kicked it, but the body had moved, a small lift and drop.
Tim brings his hands to his face, runs them up over his eyes and into his hair, yanking harshly to center himself. He begged the universe to let him save Bruce, and the universe answered in its own unique way. It's shockingly easy to accept.
He's seen gods, ghosts, zombies, magic and aliens. He wouldn't even be the first Robin that death didn't quite stick to. If he's being given a second chance to get Bruce home he's going to take it.
A deep breath, not that he thinks he needs to any more but old habits die hard, (and isn't that fun, Jason isn't the only one that can make dead jokes now) and he gets ready to start walking back to the shitty hotel room they'd been operating out of. It was a dirty, disheveled thing but it blended well. When he opens his eyes he's back in the dingy hotel room, his computer exactly where he left it.
It's a relief to know he won't have to walk, and though it takes some effort, with enough focus (and many, many dropped things), he's able to consistently touch the things around him. For the first time his rage is a useful tool.
A few lines of data and time to let the computer run the numbers and his job is basically done. He has an hour to wait to confirm the results.
It should take time. Instead, the world seems to fade out again, and that panic returns. He's not done, he can't be done until Bruce is home, and though it feels like he's only blinked, the data is done. The clock says time has passed, but it felt like an instant.
If he can teleport and pass time instantly, there's no reason he can't change other things. He's a Robin, was a Robin, he corrects himself. Curiosity is part of the job description, and he doesn't want to be in this uniform anymore. Maybe once it felt like home, but now it's just a reminder of what he's lost.
Loose, tattered jeans and a too big hoodie with the ends of the strings chewed off are what he wishes for, and in time, with a few false starts of flickering lights they're granted. He should get back on track to the data.
For all the trouble it took to gather it, it's depressingly simple to send it to the Justice League servers. This was all he had left to do, why couldn't he have died just a day later?
When the data is safely sent, he destroys the laptop. Destroys the evidence of them being there as best he can with flickering tangibility to leave no evidence. Dead or not, he was still a Bat, and policy was to leave nothing behind.
Air in, air out. Remember the cold of the windows, the echoes of the floors and the wonder the first time he'd arrived. He opens his eyes to the stars outside the watchtower.
A short walk down the hall brings him to Superman on watch duty, and Tim won’t admit it, but he takes a little joy in the way the super jumps at his voice.
“Superman.”
The kryptonian spins around, choking on his drink. “Tim? How, who, when? Nobody but me is up here, how did you avoid the zeta logs? And where have you been? Nightwing said you'd gone radio silent.”
Tim brushes off his questions, and settles himself at the other seat, taking over the computer and bringing up the results of his investigation. “Irrelevant. I found Bruce. Gather whatever members of Justice League Dark we can spare and bring them in. Give them this.” He gestures to the screen and Clark's eyes go from wide to wider as he takes in the information.
The man turns back to Tim, clearly about to start questioning him again.
“I’m not going to repeat myself, Clark.” Maybe it’s cruel, but he’d died for the mission, and he wasn’t going to stop now, especially not for someone that hadn’t believed him.
The man stands, and the shaking in his hands must be emotional because nothing else could make the Man of Steel quiver. When he sees the beginings of the call go out, Tim lets himself drift again.
Tim knows time must be passing, because between blinks the rooms are changing. People are coming and going, and most damingly the clocks have advanced again every time he thinks to look. Nobody asks how he’s appearing in the corners when no doors have opened as he watches their progress. Nobody asks why he’s in the same clothes, why he doesn’t eat, drink, or sleep, and he’s left to assume it’s because he’s a Bat, as inhuman as a human could be. How could they expect anything different?
He can feel when he's needed for a question, or another set of hands. Something in his core pulls him to open his eyes and exist for a while until he needs to wait again. If only they knew where he went in those gaps, but even he has no clue. Constantine and Zatanna might know, if the subtle looks they give him are to be believed, but they don't mention it. There's nothing they can do.
The second to last step takes hours of prep and less than five minutes of actual work. Runes and blood and candles on the floor, but with a flash of light, Bruce is in the middle of the circle, unconscious, haggard, and dirty, but alive.
It takes three days in the infirmary to get him stable enough to go home. He should've called the others, but spite decides against it and fills him with rage. Why should they know? They don't deserve to see him, and the anger makes it easier to slip a solid arm around his father's back and help him onto the platform. That fleeting moment of joy he'd felt before comes back. The feeling of a job almost done, the final steps in a plan gone right.
Bruce had tried to speak to him, to ask questions, for missions reports, to ask how he was of all things, but Tim could only give him a grim smile and ask him to wait til they were home. Hopefully the little cruelties wouldn't be held against him.
Together with Clark's help, they port him to a backup Gotham zeta, buried under so much security even Oracle would struggle to find it, and from there Tim has Clark fly Bruce home. The batcave would have Bruce deactivated, a lesson learned hard after Jason in Titans Tower. They don't ask him why the zeta never says his name, though it's clear Bruce wants to.
He waves away Clark's offer to ride with them, promises he's going straight to the cave, and that he'll meet them out front. It's a partial truth, he thinks, which isn't a total lie as his feet meet familiar concrete, and he opens his eyes to the place he once called home. He knows later the cameras will show him materializing, but he's so close he can't bring himself to care.
Moments later, Clark is touching down with Bruce, ringing the doorbell with a glance over his shoulder at Tim. He wants to take the next step, God, does Tim want to walk up those stairs and see the people he once called family, but something is anchoring his feet to the ground.
The door swings open, and though his vision is beginning to go hazy, Tim hears the cries of his siblings, rising voices overlapping. They're all there, and what a surprise that is, that Dick, Jason, and Damian were all home. To the other side of his father, Cass and Steph have piled into the hug.
“Tim?”
His family are all staring at him in shock, understandable after months of radio silence. Bruce continues to speak. “Tim, we're home, aren't you going to come inside?”
“I'm sorry, Dad. I can’t come home anymore” Bruce seems surprised, first at the title, then at the statement. He may be weary, but he was still a detective, and Tim can feel the love he holds for the man nearly rend him to pieces at the familiar gaze he gives to a good problem, but there's panic coloring it.
“What do you mean, why can’t you-”
His siblings have started yelling, and Bruce's face has gone sickly pale, frozen mid word. Tim knows what he looks like. There was no point in focusing on maintaining his appearance anymore, but its different this time. He's back in the Red Robin suit, blood dripping from his lips just like it had before. The hole in his chest leaks red, but the drops fade into nothing when they leave his form. It's painless this time around.
“I'm so sorry. I failed, but I got a second chance. I made a deal and now it's done.” His fingertips are beginning to fade. He'd be crying if he could anymore, but his mission was complete. Gotham had her Batman once again, and now he could rest.
Dick and Jason are already down the stairs, but when they try to grab him, their hands slip right through. He can't look at them, though in his peripherals he knows their faces are horrified.
His legs are fading from view, and his time is almost up. “Find me at the cave in Iraq. I don't want to be lost in the desert.”
“Tim, wait, please! What deal? Where are you going?” Bruce is halfway down the stairs, arm out towards him, but he won't make it in time.
“Goodbye, I love you all.”
It's so much easier this time. Instead of cold sinking though him, it's the feeling of warm grass rising up to meet his back. It smells like the farm in Kansas, and there's gentle sun soaking his skin.
When Tim opens his senses again, it's to Kon's laughter in his ear, Bart's hands around his own, pulling him along. It's his parents at the table, smiling and happy. It's peaceful and joyous and everything he's ever wanted. Too bad it took dying to get there, but it's okay.
He takes an easy breath, pain free for the first time in years, and turns his face to a gentle sun. He'll see them again someday when it's their time. For now though, his mission is complete, and it was time to live for himself.
With coordinates located and a plane in the sand, a family cries for another lost child. Buried among three others outside the cave that had saved him, his son's body lies preserved in the sun. The remains of his baby are loose in a stolen, bloody suit, barely decayed in the arid environment. He could almost be sleeping if the hole in his chest could be ignored.
In time, they'll gather and bring him home. His ashes will be spread between two graves. Publicly, in the lot beside his parents, the ashes of Timothy Jackson Drake, Beloved Son, Trusted Friend, Gone too Soon are scattered. Privately, in a case deep below the ground, a plaque before a tattered uniform reads, “Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, The Best of Us.”