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Tim Drake could see ghosts ever since he was young. Seen things that looked so close to humans that it took him a while to distinguish between the dead and the living. What identified them was that they gave off the absence of heat– Coldness.
It filled him with an unpleasant feeling to see them drifting by, clueless on where to go, what to do, how to move on from the life they loved so much.. So Tim stepped in where he could. After all, he was living, was he not? He could interact with the world where they could not, only able to view through a spectator’s lens.
The first person he helped pass on shook his hand. It turned his entire palm lighter where they touched, like a mark. He couldn’t really explain it to other people though, but it was with later marks that became more clear that they were handprints.
It was with the understanding that someone could misunderstand something (someone had misunderstood) that he wore long clothing to hide it. He’d hardly noticed it half the time, though. Those prints felt right , like how scars were a sign of strength, these were a sign of his kindness. Proof that he’d helped someone, and they’d left something to remember them by.
Other changes happened as the years passed by, and he grew more into it. More used to being the link between those who were alive and those who were not. Grew used to being The-Boy-Touched-By-Ghosts , grew used to sneaking around, placing flowers, giving anonymous hints to the police, pretending he knew these people and sharing their last wishes for their loved ones.
It wasn’t like he was close enough to anyone to notice if he acted odd. If he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, if he was doing things he shouldn’t be. His parents had been distant for a while. Don’t get him wrong, they left him money, and shelter, and for a while they’d hired a caretaker for him (multiple, but they always got scared off by his lack of reactions), so it wasn’t like they wanted him dead. It was just that there was a lack of care for each other.
They couldn’t get close, because he hadn’t really given them a chance to. His head was too far up in the clouds to see what was on the ground with him until it was too late.
His mind would drift. He didn’t think it helped how his appearance changed, last time he checked in the mirror. His eyes were cloudy. Dazed. Like he wasn’t truly there.
At places where those hands touched his hair it turned white, losing its pigment. Something a little like vitiligo, if those patches were in a specific shape.
What caught his attention however were the birds and the bats. Something that truly grounded him. These people who dressed up and went out to fight crime, these people who had saved so many. Yes, he really only met those they had failed to save, however Tim got to see them act human .
Where those ghosts wished for him to reassure them that it wasn’t their fault, and that they tried their best. When Tim saw these vigilantes mourn every single one of them.
And he was awestruck at the amount of empathy. He wanted that. To be able to fight in a crime-ridden city, doing the best to stop awful things when it seemed like the whole world was turning against them.
To see the good in people in the city with the most crime.
Tim wanted to be that, so he watched them.
He was under no illusion that they’d take him in if he tried. After all, not even his birth parents could love him, so why would they? But he could watch. He could watch and pretend he was there. Pretend that the fondness he saw was for him.
It lasted. Until it didn’t.
The second Robin, (spoken fondly of by an old lady that smelled like a hospital, Catherine Todd) who was just as bright as the first. Who saw the worst of Gotham and knew exactly what he wanted to change– So much ambition in such a small body. The second Robin, who died.
For the first time, Tim cried.
The Robin, no longer able to fly, would then find him. “Please, I– I heard you can help. That.. That you help people like me.” People that are dead. “You have to tell d- ..It wasn’t his fault.. It wasn’t..! I was selfish.. I ran. I thought..”
It wasn’t the first time Tim saw someone he knew become a ghost. But he hadn’t been attached .
Jason’s hands rested on his shoulders, and Tim could almost feel the imprint in the making. “Batman.. He’s..”
The younger rested his hands on top of the ghost’s. “..I know who he is.”
“..Please tell him. It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have known. ..I got tricked.”
“Okay.”
His words reached nobody. The neighbor’s manor was quiet, as if the whole world had held its breath at the loss.
…
..And then Batman turned different . He grew just as hateful as everyone else on the streets, grieving and taking it out on small-time crooks, putting them in the hospital, near killing them.
Not being the kind soul that had enamored Tim in the first place, but being human. At the cost of everyone around him.
“..Robin..” He spoke hesitantly, staring at the figure that shifted between what he wore as Robin, and the clothing that made up Jason Todd. “..I need help.”
His masked friend lent him an ear.
“..Batman.. He can’t keep doing this. It’s not.. good. It.. It could kill him. ..What do I do?”
Jason stared down at the cars passing by, the world continuing to turn even if it felt like it had long ended. “..He needs Robin. Without a constant reminder of how good the world could be, of that childish stubbornness to make everything better and stop the bad.. He spirals. He’s lost. Tim..”
He shook his head, “I can’t. Can’t..?” Nightwing?
The ghost wrapped his arms around his legs, resting his head on top. “They don’t get along. Batman wants control. Nightwing wants independence. It wouldn’t work when Robin is Batman’s sidekick. They’d clash too much.”
“..I’m not like you, Jason. I can’t cheer anyone up.”
Dead azure eyes stared at him, “But you want to help, don’t you? That’s enough.”
“That..”
“Why else have you been helping fulfill people’s wishes? Helping them pass on to what’s after? You could’ve left them to roam forever. You could’ve said nothing. But you did. You spoke up. And that means the world to so many, you have no idea..”
Tim frowned, “..I don’t know.”
Jason bumped shoulders with him, “Just try. Please? For me? ..I’m.. scared to see how they’re doing. ..So if you go and I follow then it’s not as scary.”
“..Okay.” He agreed, “For you.”
“Of course.”
…
(They’d seen his marks. Nightwing was trying to be there more since he had been too late for Jason. They asked where it came from. Tim wanted to say something, but didn’t. He couldn’t. Only the dead knew, and they needed him safe or they’d lose themselves. ..But the living? He couldn’t help but find more comfort in freezing hands than warm holds.)
…
It was when they met again, except alive but wrong that Tim realized that Jason didn’t remember him. He didn’t remember him at all.
Being beaten down in a place where he should’ve been safe, from someone who he was tentatively thinking of as his first ever friend.
It hurt more than he thought it would.
(The shoulder Jason bumped burned with his imprint, the only thing that told him he hadn’t been dreaming it.)
Tim never saw the ghost he once knew again. Instead, it was a living breathing person– Big, bulky, older. The same person yet so very different.
(This was when he learned about the Al Ghuls, and pits. Of a family with long reaching hands, leaving behind many ghosts, yet themselves living after death.)
..He felt guilty for missing the dead one more. When Dick and Bruce weren't able to see him, only Tim . When they hadn’t even known because Tim had never deigned to share.
And- He didn’t know when it happened, but soon barbed words and grudges soon turned into teasing and affection.
Somehow ‘replacement’ turned from bitter to fond.
..It didn’t fix the hole in his heart, the hole that went missing when Robin because Tim struggled to see himself as Robin still, vanished.
Things changed, he grew older. There was a new addition. He was now Red Robin. It still felt.. odd, but Robin was Jason . The Jason he first knew. There was Dick, but Jason was his first friend. A friend who stayed with him for a while. And then he left.
Jason, even if the older one didn’t know it, had left it to him. So he wanted to keep it, even if it was selfish. And he supposed red was also a tribute to the current Jason, Red Hood.
(Did Tim even have anything of his own? Or was it all for other people?)
To be safe, he was Red, and Jason was Hood. (Jason could also be Red if Tim wasn’t there, or Tim could be RR instead.)
..Ra’s was an ever looming threat. Talia would stand back for Damian.
It was roaming around, letting his subconscious tell him where to go, that he found a ghost of a young man. No, multiple iterations of the same person, yet differing in age or appearance.
(Perhaps this used to be someone’s home, now gone to the wind.)
A version of Ra’s. With every ‘death’ of his coming out a shadow of unfulfilled desires. Unsatisfied with the world, unsatisfied with himself.
“..I am not a fan of what the ‘me’ has done. You’ve listened to the restless’ wants, haven’t you?” That includes hoping the people who screwed them over to themselves get karma. Some of them wanted them to be murdered. Some of them Tim wanted to kill himself.
Tim did neither. He turned them in, doing his best in his power to keep them locked in.
He hated being around the current Ra’s, but this version… The part of him that was more in tune with the dead told him to trust him, so he did.
“I want you to take down my ‘self’. Even the organization if you can, since taking away the head doesn’t mean it’s over. But if you can’t.. At least rid the world of ‘that man’. He has been left to his own devices for far too long.”
Tim bowed his head, but paused. “..For all that he has had interest in me.. I cannot even stand on the same footing. I’ve barely been alive for two decades, but he..”
In a blink, the man before him was gone, and hands covered over his eyes.
He stilled.
The ghost’s voice was soft, “I will aid you, child. In return, I ask that you put myself to rest, once and for all.”
Tim felt all of Ra’s accumulated knowledge and experience being shared with him, being soaked up eagerly by his brain.
When he opened his eyes, those hands were gone, yet he felt more prepared than ever.
He clenched his fists as he was combing through it mentally, “..Be careful Ra’s. Your days are numbered.”
If there was any person Tim would hope killing would be excused, he’d hope it’d be Ra’s. ..And well the Joker, but Jason had dibs on that.
…
..It was also only later that he found out that what the ghost did was give him an imprint on his face in the shape of hands covering his eyes (he didn’t even know it could happen without fulfilling it first), and that his eyes had turned a toxic green .
Oh.