Chapter Text
It felt like everything was just blowing up in front of his face.
Maybe it was, he couldn’t really tell with all the flashing lights.
For about, actually, he doesn’t know, a few weeks? Months? It couldn’t possibly have been a year… well, whatever it was, they had been fending for their Earth due to some disruption in the universe.
Battleships had arrived from far off universes filled with war-hungry aliens, all of which are quite used to winning their battles.
Everything had been difficult from there on, but Tim refused to complain about any of it. He signed up for this job, and he guesses that has to come with the unexpected.
Although he had fought hard for everyone no one seemed to notice when he suddenly lost the front of his abdomen. Maybe he didn’t yell loud enough? That must’ve been what it was.
He had been surrounded in a warehouse by the aliens, he fought them off as hard as he could -keeping the no killing rule in mind the whole time- but it was all futile as they just got right back up.
Eventually, the thirty surrounding him had managed to grab their spears and put them through his stomach. They then blew off the whole front of his abdomen. After they had practically dismembered him, they just left. Tim thinks they did that because they knew he wasn’t getting up after that.
In the state he was he realized how gooey everything felt. His nose started bleeding at some point and he thought that it was unfair that would start right as he was literally falling apart. With his open stomach to the world, Tim managed a look at it. It was pretty ugly.
His flesh was torn at the sides and he could see his muscles. It wasn’t really the way he wanted to go out, watching his pulsing organs work towards their death as they were exposed to the outside air. It truly was uncomfortable, but he wouldn’t complain.
Tim eventually just let his head fall back and he stared up from the rubble he was under to the small spot in the warehouse roof where a hole showed the night sky.
From here he couldn’t see the stars… Actually, he could never see the stars in Gotham.
He wanted to see them before he died, but he guesses he won’t be getting that anytime soon.
He sighed and a puff of dust rose from the floor as he did so.
His sight was starting to get blurry, it was either that he was dying a little faster than he expected, or that he had begun to cry.
He couldn’t tell due to the amount of fresh blood on his face, but he hopes he wasn’t, that’d be embarrassing.
It got colder and colder and suddenly he realized that no one had heard him at all. Superman, Conner, Kara, or Jon. None of them heard him… or maybe they just didn’t care enough to come see him die under scraps of metal in an abandoned warehouse.
He sighed again and let himself be consumed by the dark. He didn’t want to think about what Bruce would say about him failing to keep those creatures at bay and instead letting himself get blown to shreds.
He shook his head and gave it one last glance down at his shredded torso, but suddenly everything became too much and his head fell back hitting the floor hard, he could feel his skin lying on the side of his body and his guts which had begun to pop out of his abdomen.
His heart was beating considerably fast as everything began to disappear before his eyes.
All he could think about as his body tensed and blood poured from his mouth, was how much of a failure he had been. All that work Bruce had put into training him had gone to waste. All of the hard work lying dead on the floor.
He was nothing.
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He was awake.
Tim was awake after being torn into.
Tim Drake was awake after having his abdomen literally blown off.
…
Wow.
Wait… Hold on a second, that's impossible.
Tim shot up with a loud gasp.
There was no way he was alive right now.
This must be the afterlife then? Right?
He swiveled his head and noticed he was inside the Batcave. Actually, now that he’s taking a closer look at it all, an absolutely ransacked version of the Batcave.
He definitely didn’t expect to find this version of the cave in his afterlife… he actually was expecting a more lit and clean space, but it would do.
After a moment of acquainting himself with being alive, he stood and ventured over to the batcomputer.
The poor thing had multiple different punctures in the screen and refused to turn on when he tried. The keyboard was missing a couple of letters and was covered in dust.
Eventually deciding that the device was a lost cause he left to explore the rest of the cave.
Some things seemed completely out of place, like the showers were in the wrong direction, and the storage area was filled to the brim when it usually was empty, the training mats that usually were across the sparring arena were pushed up against a wall in what almost resembled a bed, then the-
Wait. Double-take that. The mats are made to be like a bed… was someone sleeping in here?
Tim began to run around suddenly becoming horrifically aware that he was in a black dirt covered suit.
He held up for a second.
He was in a suit… if he remembers correctly the last thing he was wearing before he ‘died’ -in quotes because now he’s not so sure- was his Red Robin suit.
The one he had designed with wings and a holographic keyboard, the one that he spent a few good months on. If he wasn’t about to say he was disappointed that he wasn’t wearing it, he would have been lying.
The odder thing than the suit he was wearing was the dirt that was on the damn thing. It was like, super weird.
Like he wasn’t Jason crawling out of his grave. Was he?!
He crouched down and held his head in his hands. There was no way he was a zombie right? He didn’t want that like he really didn’t want to be thrown in some glowing pit like his brother had. And if he had he didn’t get the whole anger thing Jason got, if anything he just had more anxiety.
He counted to ten and breathed as slowly as he could before he noticed some muffled noise.
It sounded like someone was groaning…
Huh… Tim raised from the floor and calmly read calmly began to search the rest of the cave. Soon he found the staircase, again in the wrong place, and began to walk up towards the manor.
When he got to the door which lead to the grandfather clock in Bruce’s study, he noticed two things:
- The door was barricaded.
- The groaning was coming from the study.
Oh and:
- He didn’t want to find out what any of it was, or meant.
Tim jumped when something started to bang against the door. The sound was uncoordinated, like whoever it was didn’t know what they were doing, and that they did know that Tim was in here.
He quickly stepped away from the clock and then bolted down the stairs, suddenly he noticed that when he did that, whoever it was stopped their banging.
That sent shivers up his spine.
This was in no way the fucking afterlife. This was hell taking shape in front of him.
Once he got back down to the batcomputer he notice something stashed in the small space beneath the keyboard.
He got down on his hands and knees and spotted what looked to be a small crate. Tim pulled the thing towards him and inside found a rifle and ammo.
Something was definitely wrong here.
He quietly stepped back from the crate and walked away dazed.
He needed to get out of this suit and he 100% needed a shower. He wandered back to where the misplaced showers were and while testing to see if the water would run noticed a pile of broken glass.
He padded over and noticed that whoever had been here before him was trying to place the pieces back together and that this was mirror glass, they were trying to see themselves he guessed.
After a second of staring at it he noticed the blood covering the corner pieces. He looked around for a trail and he upsettingly found it.
The blood continued to drip and lead towards the chair sitting before the computer and suddenly Tim realized that he might not be alone in here.
He needed to inspect everything closer from now on. Sure, he just ‘died’ and came back, and that might be messing with his detective skills a little, but this was important now.
Tim decided to double-take the whole cave this time. He checked the arena where he found a few things.
- A burn mark on the floor
- The end of the trail of blood
- Two small red buttons on the floor
The button being the more interesting of the two.
He eyed the button then decided to press on it with his foot. Unexpectedly a wave of dust lifted off the floor as big pillar-looking things came out of the floor.
Almost instantaneously Tim recognized what they were.
The suit displays!
He excitedly watched them latch into their standing position and ran over to check them all.
Tim was able to spot of few costumes he recognized. The small one he assumed to be Damian’s, had low-rise combat boots and a holder for a katana -both things that Damian’s suit previously did not have-, he then saw Dick’s Nightwing suit but noted that the thing was covered in armor. He remembered a conversation he had with Dick about the suit he wore and if padding was enough to protect him from big falls and such, he guesses that his older brother finally took his advice on it.
He then noticed three things;
- The Batman suit was missing
- He didn’t see his own
- There was one he didn’t recognize in one of the cases.
Tim inspected them all a little closer, there were name tags on the outside of every case he passed.
Robin, Nightwing, Batman. And finally, he checked the one he didn’t recognize.
The tag read as Red Robin.
That was his name though? His hero alias at least, but he never remembered making a suit that looked this ugly…
The suit looked like it could be confused for Dr. Midnight…
The top was completely covered which he assumes could be useful during something like a fire (but he hated it regardless), it had these ammo like belts across its chest as he had in his suit, and the Red Robin symbol was proudly displayed in the middle of the chest with yellow and black as the colors.
His own suit back home had been similar in a few ways and at the same time vastly different from this iteration he was staring at.
His was red and black, there was an absence of yellow save for his ‘ammo belts’ that resided on his chest like this suit here. He also had his symbol in the middle of his chest, however, the middle had been red and black, and other times grey and black. He also made note of the hood-like feature this suit presented as he had just a domino to cover his eyes.
He struggled to understand that this was supposed to be his, but he didn’t say much about it.
He figured that the best course of action would be to figure out how to open these cases.
He searched the front and the sides of them for perhaps a small button, but to no avail. He then tried to pry them open which just proved to hurt his fingers. Just as he was about to give up he looked at the small ledge on top of the cases and noticed a small blue button.
He sighed and facepalmed, he really was stupid. He reached up and pressed it releasing the sides to all the cases. Once fully open he delicately inspected the Red Robin suit, he trailed his fingers over the texture finding that it was kevlar, looked in all the utility belt pockets, and then tried it on.
The suit fit surprisingly well. The full head cowl thing was uncomfortable, so maybe if he could he’d make an adjustment. The gloves were interesting but lacked the holographic keyboard he’d installed in his own suit, he also noticed that they had these sharp fin-like apparatuses on the outward sides.
After trying the suit on he rushed to the showers to look into the broken mirror to see what he looked like in it.
He had to look down the whole time, but he didn’t mind whatsoever. The suit was good looking and felt like it really was made for him.
The broken look at the suit that he got from the shattered pieces of mirror made him smile. He liked the configuration, save for the headpiece.
After this, he returned to the computer where the crate sat.
Tim eyed the gun once more and after debating it, looked for the ammo in the crate. He was expecting that this was just Jason’s and was being stored here for safe keeping although Jason doesn't use big guns like these.
When he finally came across the ammo he realized something horrible. These were real bullets, they weren't rubber or ‘non-fatal’ ammunition that they insist Jason uses now.
Had he suddenly changed back? Then Tim came to a second more terrifying realization… did he just wake up from a coma?
Had he just been in a coma this whole time and the family just, changed some things while he was out?
That must’ve been it, other than the fact that he didn’t wake up in the med bay or the hospital. He awoke on the floor earlier, the very hard stone floor.
As he continued to go down that rabbit hole he became aware of the absence of the groaning that had come from upstairs.
And then he became aware of how dreadful the cave really looked, and the fact that the lights were almost all broken in here, and of the makeshift bed in the corner, and the gun he had found, and the destroyed computer… and the missing batsuit.
Eventually, he curled up on the floor suddenly aware of how alone he was, and began to weep. He would never say that he had cried on the floor of the Batcave after realizing that he was trapped and alone, and he would never tell anyone that he suddenly missed his family and that he wished to go home.