Fic: Heart-shaped Box | Tim Drake & Jason Todd & ensemble | pg-13
Title: Heart Shaped Box
Fandom: DCU, Tim Drake (ensemble cast), Probably will have multiple pairings, but I’m hoping for a Jay/Tim ending.
Warnings: Cancer fic. Slash in future.
Word Count: 4,800 unbeta’d.
*Please review and let me know what you think*
The room is painted an off-white, eggshell color and the desk the doctor was sitting at was stained a dark walnut brown. There are shiny, glass, silver-topped jars containing cotton pads and individually wrapped swaps resting on the clean, disinfected surface. Medical paraphernalia hooks on the walls and along the doctor’s desk. Tim can see a silver framed 4 x 6 photograph of the doctor’s family at a… a picnic, it looks like. There is a lake there, so maybe they are up in the Pine Barrens for it? Tim’s Dad always wanted to take him to the Pine Barrens… It’s hard for Tim to tell though - from the photo - if that’s were the doctor’s family is. The forest looked like it was tertiary growth which suggests that -
It is hard to tell from where he was sitting, and if he moves too much the paper that lines the medical bench pad under him will crunch and crinkle noisily. It’s quiet in the room, though, so quiet with the gentle hum of the incandescent lights and his own light breathing.
The russle of the paper would destroy that.
“-Mr. Drake? Mr. Drake, are you okay?” Tim glances up as the doctor breaks the silence of the room. His voice cuts through it like a warm knife.
Tim blinks twice and his focus shifts back to the doctor with the kind, blue eyes. He has black hair that is liberally streaked with strands of grey. The man has Bruce’s coloring, but that’s where the similarities stop.
“Timothy, I know this is scary, but I really need you to focus for me, alright?” Tim watches as the man glances down at the chart in his hand, the one that holds the results of his blood test, his height and weight and other miscellaneous information.
Creative stories Tim has made up and rehearsed with Bruce about a year and half ago about how he got all of his scars…
“-know when you started having loss of vision?”
The paper crunches under him, and he disrupts the peace of the room, anyway. He looks down, surprised when he sees his hands clenched to the edge of the bench; so tight that his knuckles match the off-white, eggshell colored wall. “About six months ago,” Tim has to clear his throat because the words come out raw and hoarse, “Um, just some light sensitivity at first.”
“Why did it take you so long to come see us, Tim?” The doctor asks, no judgment in his voice, no hostility,not angry - just curious.
‘Because, I’ve only been out in the daylight without a polarized lenses a handful of times the first time I noticed, which was only about three months ago,’ Tim thinks to himself as he shrugs half-heartedly.
He only knows that it was six months ago because, he still has a pair of Rayban sunglasses that Bruce had lent him when he had been squinting in the late afternoon sun at one press conference or another.
The sun had felt like needles in his eyes. Stabbing his frontal lobe with uv rays and bright, hot energy.
Bruce had given him a questioning look as he passed them over, but Tim hadn’t thought much about it, he just gratefully put them on and popped four regular strength Ibuprofen when they had gotten back in the wonderful, comforting darkness of the limosine.
But lately, his vision had been doubling on patrols. And that had been horribly unqualified to blame on the sun.
Tim watches as the pen moves across the doctor’s chart, “Alright, and… how about any dizziness… any, oh. Lack of coordination? More-so than usual, I mean.” Dr. Blue-eyes gestures with his hand casually, pen between two long fingers.
And Tim then went through a mental catalogue of every trip he made, every misjudged step, every jump that was just an inch or two off…
There was the time, most recently, he was patrolling with Cass, and he… his mind couldn’t remember which foot he usually stepped off with, his left or his right, before he took a jump. So he went to make the leap, he fumbled his steps, tripped over his feet and shot a line off about three seconds too late.
The grappling hook glanced off the side of the building it was supposed to connect with. It could have been disastrous, but he lucked out with nothing more than a dislocated shoulder and a bruised rib.
When Cass had jumped down to join him and, aggressively popped his arm back into place, the set of her mouth was troubled, and the tilt of her had asked him, ‘what the fuck is going on with you?’
He’d winced, rubbed his arm and shrugged it off, but now, the memory of it made his mouth go dry.
“Okay, I see you lost a bit of weight. Nothing *too* concerning, but, I take it you haven’t been looking to lose the weight, have you?”
Tim shook his head. He always tried to eat healthful, but he always ate. Always made sure his calorie intake was equal to what he burned. But then he remembered that conversation with Tam when he’d gotten back from Hong Kong, when they had still been friends and ‘maybe-something-more’ and she would come over after his patrol and they would discuss WE and football and…
Tim was in just the spandex suit, the cape and cowl back in its locker, and he’d pulled out the body armor for a much needed steam clean. His bare feet were cold on the tile floor of the kitchen, but that’s where Tam liked to work, close to the chips and other various pantry foods Alfred brought over when Tim wasn’t home.
Tam’s hair was piled on top of her head and she was always in sweats and t-shirt at that time of night/morning. And usually the t-shirt was his. That he’d stolen from someone else. Like Dick’s Van Halen shirt that had holes in *both* armpits. Or the shirt he stole from Bruce when the older man donated blood ten years ago. The one she was wearing that night was his old Superboy t-shirt. Someone had shrunk it in the wash and Kon had thrown it at his head saying that if he ever jacked off while wearing it a kitten would die.
The shirt looked really good on Tam. That shirt looked really good on *everyone*. Not that he’d ever tell that to Kon.
Large brown eyes glanced up from the laptop she had been typing on and her fingers stilled; “*Tim*,” she gasped out, and for a second, he thought something was wrong, that there was an assassin or meta-spider over his shoulder, “-You… are you just… not *eating* anymore? I can see your *ribs*.”
And Tim caught his reflection in the chrome refrigerator and his face looked gaunt, for all he’d usually had what Steph had affectionately called ‘a baby face’. The Lycra body suit clung close to his skin, and the track lighting in the kitchen caught the shadows that the jut of each rib bone cast on his body.
He really had lost weight. Normally Tam would have made a joke, ‘eat a sandwich, boy.’ or ‘gearing up for swimsuit season, Timmy?’, but her face was stricken with concern and his stomach sort of dropped dramatically in his stomach, like an anchor in the sea.
“I’ll-” he stuttered, swallowed down whatever had made his throat tighten, “-I’ll… eat more.” It was all he could say, as dumb as it sounded.
“Mr. Drake? Just a few more questions, alright? Any memory loss? Or any noticeable personality changes?”
He’s been… agitated more easily, lately. Some of his decisions… have been… questionable to say the least. The way he’s been treating people… callous for even him. Tim nodded his head, thinking about his conversations with Damian. With Dick. Hell, even with Cass, who is probably better at everything than him, he’d been overly confident with himself. And that in itself was, well… over-confidence has really never been Tim’s problem.
And even more recently, he’s been… slower. He hasn’t been picking up things as fast as he usually did. He’s had trouble connecting ideas and theories. He thought it might have something to do with the near-constant pressure bubbling in his head and neck. The near-constant throbbing he felt in his temples and the very top of his skull.
“How about any changes in your body. Nausea, problems going to bathroom… vomiting. Anything like that?”
And that had actually been… the latest event that made him realize. How he knew that something wasn’t right.
Tim had been asleep all day. The night before when he’d gotten back to the Theater, he had stripped down to just his boxer-briefs; didn’t even take a shower, just fell into the soft, white linens of his bed.
He vaguely remembered a few things throughout the day, when his mind was only half-conscious. The chirping of three separate calls from his cell phone across the room. The alarm that was supposed to wake him up at two in the afternoon so that he could *try* and be productive. Tim slept through all of them. In the back of his mind he knew that this wasn’t normal for him, that when he got this tired, he recuperated well enough with an extra hour or two of normal sleep.
But this? He felt drunk and sluggish. Or he felt drugged. And he tried to remember if someone could have *slipped* him something…
He vaguely remembered tossing and turning occasionally. He remembered kicking the sheets off at one point, because he was sweating and hot and then he remembered being freezing after some… time.
And then he remembered looking over at the clock, and noting that he’d been asleep for twenty-two hours and that his sheets were soaking wet.
It hurt, lifting his head up from the pillow, but he was confused, because he was in bed, but he was wet and… he didn’t remember actually getting injured the night before.
Slowly he lifted himself into a sitting position at the head of his bed and his head swam with the change of elevation.
When his neck managed to hold his head up and his eyes cleared of any of the haziness that had been there before, he looked down, expecting to see a wound and dark red blood, but instead there were just wet, cold puddles.
Tim sat there in shock, his brain not quite understanding what he’d just done; what had happened to him.
He’d wet the bed.
He’s… urinated in the *bed*.
He hadn’t wet the bed since he was twenty-four months old.
Had he really been so tired? So out of it that he didn’t have the energy to get up and use the restroom? How had he not noticed that he’d pissed the bed? What the fuck was wrong with him? Since when was he that helpless?
With shaking arms he quickly stripped the bed of the sheets, pillows and duvet. Chills covered his body, and a growing sense of panic was welling up in his chest as he dashed into the bathroom to grab some generic cleaner and a bucket from under the sink.
He’d… it… it had leaked through to the *mattress*. Tim started off with warm water, cleanser and a rag, frantically scrubbing at the spots that were sure to stain. He pressed down hard, until his fingers ached, thinking about how he needed the stains to go away. Thinking that cleaning the stains would make everything okay.
Tim scrubbed until his fingers were red and sore. He scrubbed until the fabric on the mattress began to pil and tear. He scrubbed until most of the mattress was sudsy and damp and only then did he stand up and gather the bed linens and stumbled out towards the kitchen and the room off of it that held the laundry facilities. His legs felt like jelly when he finally reached the chrome appliances. Let the hot water run before dumping in two cups of bleach and then pushing in the soiled linens.
The stainless steel was cold against his spine and shoulders as Tim slid down the front of the appliances. His chin hit his chest when he looked down, so the cold metal was pressed against the nape of his neck too. His eyes followed down the center of his pale chest, decorated with puckered pink scars and black and blue bruises, past his sternum, over the bones of his ribcage that he could definitely see. The white cotton of his boxer-briefs were clammy on his thighs.
Emotions piled in, along with exhaustion along with embarrassment and confusion. Grief. Sorrow. Pain. Fear.
He felt disgusting. Juvenile.
And it was only after a minute of sitting and thinking that he noticed that… the lights were on to his “office”. And he smelled popcorn?
It was still dark in his apartment; the neon lights from the digital clock on his coffee maker washed the room in a green glow. He couldn’t hear much over the washing machine’s noise, the whirring and humming, but he knew that in the other room the noise would be from the purifier in the fish tank, the small buzz from the lone incandescent light that he knew would be on.
Tim used shaky arms to push himself back into a standing position, the joints in his knees creaking, the bones of his ankles popping. He was panting and shivering.
Quivering fingers held onto the wall as he stumbled into the hallway. He saw the glow from one of the monitors at his desk glow blue and silhouette a large figure. Someone was in his house… on his computer… and he hadn’t known?
Even more panic swelled up in his stomach, in his head. The left side of his body… it felt numb.
What’s worse was that Tim knew he didn’t have a chance, if the intruder wanted to fight. He was so exhausted.
Tim slowly reached over to the stand near the front of the hall and grabbed the two-tone golf umbrella that was there.
He grasped it tight in his hand, but when he slowly brought it up to his side, the figure in the chair spoke, “None of *that*, Pretender. I’m just here to get some information from this… this really freakin’ boss computer set-up you have.”
Jason’s left hand was still clicking and type-feeling with one hand, while his right hand reached over to a shadow and then up to his mouth and then there was loud crunching.
“You got a pretty sweet setup here, Drake. And this place is way way *way* easier to break into than the cave, or wherever Diet-Batman is working out of.”
And Jason hadn’t looked over yet and the part of Tim’s brain that wasn’t pounding in pain was screaming at him to run to his room. That Jason Todd was a split second away from seeing Tim in his wet, yellow-stained underwear.
But he was frozen in place.
“You normally aren’t home this time of night… and I didn’t hear you come in. Slacking off? You got a lady here? No need to answer- I don’t really care. I’ll be out of here in just a wink, there, Replacement, so no need for *violence*.”
He felt his eyes start to burn with tears of fear and humiliation, his breathing was labored and ragged in his chest. He could feel his stomach turning over and over-
“And dude, this popcorn is disgusting. I mean, it tastes like I’m eating packing-peanuts.” And that was when Jason decided to look up, cold blue eyes flitted over to Tim’s form that was half leaning against the wall, shaking, shivering and covered in urine. “Did you-” Jason paused, smirked coldly, “Aww. Did w’ittle Timmy go wee-wee in his pants?” Jason snickered again, loudly. Grabbed another handful of popcorn and munched on it like an apple.
Now Tim was shaking and sweating and his body was overcome by chills. He felt like he was suddenly hit by a high fever, but it was hard to convince himself that it wasn’t just… the jarring humiliation of Jason was seeing him in such a weak moment.
He opened his mouth to say something, anything, whether it be a half-assed threat or something biting and sarcastic, but he couldn’t…
And then the nausea hit him like a freight train.
He was already dizzy, only the wall keeping him even sort-of vertical, but the force from his stomach’s contractions had knocked him to his knees. His patellas screamed in pain has they hit the ground. Tim tried to catch himself on his hands, but he ended up with his elbows there instead, one side of his face nearly pressed against the cold, hard-wood floor.
Desperate gasps for air filled his ears as his stomach pumped white and yellow bile out of his stomach, up his throat and out of his mouth. He heard the loud slap of it as it hit the floor. Heard himself heaving and retching and… was he crying?
He was.
Tears leaked out of his burning eyes and down his face.
He was still retching and choking for air when he let his cheek hit the floor, let his body slump to the ground in exhaustion and in pain. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, feel the sweat on his face and neck. Feel the damp material of his boxer-briefs.
Tim could make out his name being called out by Jason. Felt wonderfully and horribly cool, tentative hands on him.
Jason was touching him, even though he was disgusting, worthless.
He hadn’t wanted to be touched right then. Tim tried to say that, but the last thing he remembered was a large, cool hand on his forehead.
Tim had woken up in his never before used guest bedroom, clean clothes on his body. The sheets that had been in the washer had been put in the dryer.
There had been no note.
A hand gently touched Tim’s shoulder, startling him out of the memory, “Tim, I want to run some more tests today. We’re going to run a head CT, an MRI and a nurse is going to come in to draw more blood before prepping you for the exams.” The doctor applied a tiny amount of pressure in his hand before letting it drop. “I don’t want you to overly worry, but based on everything you just told me, I feel pretty confident that we’re going to find something.”
*Cancer*. The doctor thought he was going to find cancer. A brain tumor.
“The wait shouldn’t be too long, but you shouldn’t have to wait alone. I know that you’re an emancipated minor and technically an adult by law, but is there anyone we can call for you, Tim? Your dad? Any siblings? A friend?”
*Dick*, he immediately thought. Bruce. Conner.
But, Dick would just… He loved his older brother, but Dick would just stress Tim out. The older man would be up and pacing and ranting and googling stuff on his smart phone. All the while giving Tim a reassuring smile and a fake, can-do attitude.
Tim didn’t think he could handle that.
Bruce would be a good choice, he would just patiently wait with Tim. Listen to the results. There would be no immediate reaction, which Tim could appreciate. He wasn’t sure when he himself was actually going to react. All he felt was a little numb and a little residual nausea that has been his companion for over two weeks now.
Bruce would be strong when Tim didn’t know how to feel but unfortunately, Bruce was away with Selina. Paris, again; something for Batman, Inc. Bruce was important and waiting at the doctor’s office was a waste of his time.
Then there was Kon. He’d be there in a minute. Maybe less than that, if he was closer than Kansas for some reason. But, with Kon also came the knowledge that every time Kon looked at him he would see nothing but a fragile human, now. Tim knew now that every time Kon stared for a second to long at him, Kon was looking for the black spots in his body, the fractures and the breaks.
Tim just didn’t have the energy to keep up a specific frame of mind for the comfort of those who loved him. And he wasn’t proud of that, but that didn’t stop it from being true.
He doesn’t think he’s going to handle any of this… well.
A nurse came into the room just then, gathered the supplies to draw another sample of blood from his arm.
But, Tim didn’t really want to wait alone. Could he still be numb and have a panic attack?
The doctor smiled sadly and excused himself from the room when he didn’t respond and the nurse was disinfecting the crook of his elbow. He focused on the rasp of the alcohol pad against his skin and then the rip of the paper as she unwrapped the needle. The stabbing pain he felt, as she tried to find the vein, “Sorry, hon’. Last time, just take a deep breath.”
But Tim thought the pain was kind of nice… grounding in a way. He’d always thought so. Just the right measure of it could be world-narrowing. Could help you control yourself. He wished she would try to find a vein twelve more times. But true to her word, the needle was in and a second later Tim felt the pull of the blood being sucked from his vein. Like a tree being tapped.
He was going to have to give a lot of people bad news. That’s what the doctor thought. That’s what *he* thought, too. Tim could tell that something wasn’t right weeks ago, but the culmination didn’t happen until that night when Jason broke into the theater.
Jason was the only person who wouldn’t care.
So Tim might have cancer, boo-freakin’-hoo. Jason Todd died, so why should Tim, his replacement, get out of life Scott-free.
There was no emotional component to their relationship, for all Tim knew that they could be civil to one another. They could also try and kill each other, though.
Honestly, Tim probably wouldn’t even tell Jason his diagnosis unless by chance they passed one another on the street. And if Tim did have cancer, there was probably a slim chance of him actually… *being* on the street. Which brought the probability of Jason ever knowing he was sick down even lower.
Tim wouldn’t really be saving himself any time, any emotional debt, by Jason Todd being there.
The man had already seen him at his absolute lowest.
The nurse had finished, capped the sample and started clean up the paper wrappers around her, disposed of the needle in the hazardous waste bin. She pressed one of those cotton-paper gowns in his head and told him to change, to remove anything metal and that she would be back in ten minutes to collect him for the procedure and then she turned to leave.
But he wouldn’t be *alone*.
“Wait. There’s someone-” Tim paused, bit his lip hard to get himself to *focus*, “Would you still try and call someone for me?” Tim fumbled over his words, “He might not… we’re not very close-”, the last time he saw me I had pissed on myself and then vomited… everywhere, “-And he might not actually answer-”, He changes his number a lot, no real need to keep a permanent line. “And he… he might not answer,” He heard himself repeat dumbly. But what Tim meant with that one was, ‘he might not care, so he might not come.’
The nurse smiled kindly and jotted down the number that he rattled off and gently reminded him that it would be about ten minutes.
The whole procedure took no more than a half an hour. Tim thought that it was funny how quick and easy it was - how painless. Just lie down on a cool medical bench, stay still and hold your breath for fifteen seconds. Stare into white, hot flashes of light. Try to ignore the sound of the magnetic field and the energy there.
It was quick and it was easy and it was painless. Which is good because, after a good percentage of these tests, Tim thinks the patient’s life is going to be a lot of pain for a good, long time.
There was a lot of time to think and nothing good or positive to think about, so Tim just mentally went over the notes in his head about the case Bruce had sent him. He shot a business text to Tam to a let her know that he’d be in tomorrow and that they can discuss the contracting budget at the meeting together, as planned.
A different nurse tells him to put the phone away - no cell phones in the hospital - hands him his clothes and a container and leads him to a bathroom for a urine sample.
Tim carefully avoids looking at his reflection in the mirror as he scrubs his hands. Hands that he is not allowing to shake. Because he has control over that. He takes his time, counts to 120 in his head as he scrubs from fingers to wrist. He uses the brown paper towels to pat them dry.
Numb.
Tim sort of feels numb. The water was too hot and the paper towels are to rough on his hands, the pulp in institutional paper products has always been to harsh on his skin. But he doesn’t even feel it. Any of it.
It’s hard not to think about anything but the sounds the MRI made when he had been in the scanner. It’s hard not to think about what could be wrong - the things they could find. It’s hard to feel anything when his mind, the one thing he relies on more than anything, is getting sick, turning black.
He still has the white spots in his eyes from the flashes of x-ray. They float in his vision like the butterflies that have taken nest in his stomach.
He’s… he won’t be able to patrol tonight, if his blinding headache and white-spotted vision don’t clear up.
He might not be able to ever patrol again.
The nurse leads him to the Doctor’s office, to discuss the results of the tests that were run. As they approach the door, Tim can hear Jason’s drawl from inside and the lighter laugh of a feminine chuckle - he hears the sound of ringing metal.
It is Jason. He came.
And he’s in the room - more specifically Jason is spinning around on the doctors stool. Around and around.
His broad lips are wrapped around the orange candy sucker, the white stick, swing to the corner of his mouth as he smiles at a middle aged nurse, who titters at him when he says, “I think nurses are just the greatest, Beth. Can I call you Beth? I think nurses are some of the most underpaid professionals out there. Very under appreciated.”
“Thank you, I agree. And… Beth is fine, do you know - Oh. Timothy Drake?” The nurse cuts off, she’s serious and her eyes are tired and kind and Tim can see why Jason would want to tease something out of them. “Your brother is here. Do you need anything while you wait for the doctor? It shouldn’t be long.”
Tim has enough presence to answer in the negative and the nurse leaves and he sits down in the patient seat across from the doctor’s desk.
It’s silent in the room, save for the candy that Jason is sucking on rather loudly.
Tim doesn’t mind the noise though. It’s a distraction. From the numbness. From the desire to run out of the room.
Because that what Tim usually does when he’s scared. He runs. He’s a runner.
But Jason is here now and he can’t run.
And there is something wrong with him.
And he just realizes now that his knee is bouncing up and down and up and down, quickly and repetitively. He realizes it because Jason had rolled over next to him in the stool and placed his hand on Tim’s denim-clad knee, pressing it down, effectively stilling it under calloused pressure.
Tim swallows, chokes out the hallow words, “Thanks for coming, Jason.”
Jay doesn’t say anything, just swallows and sucks on the candy again. A strong hand gently squeezes his knee, right about the knee cap and then lets go.
Jason continues to work his mouth around the sucker, his mouth, Tim notices, is turning a little orange.
He notices it when Jason opens his mouth to say, “Everything will be fine, Replacement.”
-fin
Fandom: DCU, Tim Drake (ensemble cast), Probably will have multiple pairings, but I’m hoping for a Jay/Tim ending.
Warnings: Cancer fic. Slash in future.
Word Count: 4,800 unbeta’d.
*Please review and let me know what you think*
The room is painted an off-white, eggshell color and the desk the doctor was sitting at was stained a dark walnut brown. There are shiny, glass, silver-topped jars containing cotton pads and individually wrapped swaps resting on the clean, disinfected surface. Medical paraphernalia hooks on the walls and along the doctor’s desk. Tim can see a silver framed 4 x 6 photograph of the doctor’s family at a… a picnic, it looks like. There is a lake there, so maybe they are up in the Pine Barrens for it? Tim’s Dad always wanted to take him to the Pine Barrens… It’s hard for Tim to tell though - from the photo - if that’s were the doctor’s family is. The forest looked like it was tertiary growth which suggests that -
It is hard to tell from where he was sitting, and if he moves too much the paper that lines the medical bench pad under him will crunch and crinkle noisily. It’s quiet in the room, though, so quiet with the gentle hum of the incandescent lights and his own light breathing.
The russle of the paper would destroy that.
“-Mr. Drake? Mr. Drake, are you okay?” Tim glances up as the doctor breaks the silence of the room. His voice cuts through it like a warm knife.
Tim blinks twice and his focus shifts back to the doctor with the kind, blue eyes. He has black hair that is liberally streaked with strands of grey. The man has Bruce’s coloring, but that’s where the similarities stop.
“Timothy, I know this is scary, but I really need you to focus for me, alright?” Tim watches as the man glances down at the chart in his hand, the one that holds the results of his blood test, his height and weight and other miscellaneous information.
Creative stories Tim has made up and rehearsed with Bruce about a year and half ago about how he got all of his scars…
“-know when you started having loss of vision?”
The paper crunches under him, and he disrupts the peace of the room, anyway. He looks down, surprised when he sees his hands clenched to the edge of the bench; so tight that his knuckles match the off-white, eggshell colored wall. “About six months ago,” Tim has to clear his throat because the words come out raw and hoarse, “Um, just some light sensitivity at first.”
“Why did it take you so long to come see us, Tim?” The doctor asks, no judgment in his voice, no hostility,not angry - just curious.
‘Because, I’ve only been out in the daylight without a polarized lenses a handful of times the first time I noticed, which was only about three months ago,’ Tim thinks to himself as he shrugs half-heartedly.
He only knows that it was six months ago because, he still has a pair of Rayban sunglasses that Bruce had lent him when he had been squinting in the late afternoon sun at one press conference or another.
The sun had felt like needles in his eyes. Stabbing his frontal lobe with uv rays and bright, hot energy.
Bruce had given him a questioning look as he passed them over, but Tim hadn’t thought much about it, he just gratefully put them on and popped four regular strength Ibuprofen when they had gotten back in the wonderful, comforting darkness of the limosine.
But lately, his vision had been doubling on patrols. And that had been horribly unqualified to blame on the sun.
Tim watches as the pen moves across the doctor’s chart, “Alright, and… how about any dizziness… any, oh. Lack of coordination? More-so than usual, I mean.” Dr. Blue-eyes gestures with his hand casually, pen between two long fingers.
And Tim then went through a mental catalogue of every trip he made, every misjudged step, every jump that was just an inch or two off…
There was the time, most recently, he was patrolling with Cass, and he… his mind couldn’t remember which foot he usually stepped off with, his left or his right, before he took a jump. So he went to make the leap, he fumbled his steps, tripped over his feet and shot a line off about three seconds too late.
The grappling hook glanced off the side of the building it was supposed to connect with. It could have been disastrous, but he lucked out with nothing more than a dislocated shoulder and a bruised rib.
When Cass had jumped down to join him and, aggressively popped his arm back into place, the set of her mouth was troubled, and the tilt of her had asked him, ‘what the fuck is going on with you?’
He’d winced, rubbed his arm and shrugged it off, but now, the memory of it made his mouth go dry.
“Okay, I see you lost a bit of weight. Nothing *too* concerning, but, I take it you haven’t been looking to lose the weight, have you?”
Tim shook his head. He always tried to eat healthful, but he always ate. Always made sure his calorie intake was equal to what he burned. But then he remembered that conversation with Tam when he’d gotten back from Hong Kong, when they had still been friends and ‘maybe-something-more’ and she would come over after his patrol and they would discuss WE and football and…
Tim was in just the spandex suit, the cape and cowl back in its locker, and he’d pulled out the body armor for a much needed steam clean. His bare feet were cold on the tile floor of the kitchen, but that’s where Tam liked to work, close to the chips and other various pantry foods Alfred brought over when Tim wasn’t home.
Tam’s hair was piled on top of her head and she was always in sweats and t-shirt at that time of night/morning. And usually the t-shirt was his. That he’d stolen from someone else. Like Dick’s Van Halen shirt that had holes in *both* armpits. Or the shirt he stole from Bruce when the older man donated blood ten years ago. The one she was wearing that night was his old Superboy t-shirt. Someone had shrunk it in the wash and Kon had thrown it at his head saying that if he ever jacked off while wearing it a kitten would die.
The shirt looked really good on Tam. That shirt looked really good on *everyone*. Not that he’d ever tell that to Kon.
Large brown eyes glanced up from the laptop she had been typing on and her fingers stilled; “*Tim*,” she gasped out, and for a second, he thought something was wrong, that there was an assassin or meta-spider over his shoulder, “-You… are you just… not *eating* anymore? I can see your *ribs*.”
And Tim caught his reflection in the chrome refrigerator and his face looked gaunt, for all he’d usually had what Steph had affectionately called ‘a baby face’. The Lycra body suit clung close to his skin, and the track lighting in the kitchen caught the shadows that the jut of each rib bone cast on his body.
He really had lost weight. Normally Tam would have made a joke, ‘eat a sandwich, boy.’ or ‘gearing up for swimsuit season, Timmy?’, but her face was stricken with concern and his stomach sort of dropped dramatically in his stomach, like an anchor in the sea.
“I’ll-” he stuttered, swallowed down whatever had made his throat tighten, “-I’ll… eat more.” It was all he could say, as dumb as it sounded.
“Mr. Drake? Just a few more questions, alright? Any memory loss? Or any noticeable personality changes?”
He’s been… agitated more easily, lately. Some of his decisions… have been… questionable to say the least. The way he’s been treating people… callous for even him. Tim nodded his head, thinking about his conversations with Damian. With Dick. Hell, even with Cass, who is probably better at everything than him, he’d been overly confident with himself. And that in itself was, well… over-confidence has really never been Tim’s problem.
And even more recently, he’s been… slower. He hasn’t been picking up things as fast as he usually did. He’s had trouble connecting ideas and theories. He thought it might have something to do with the near-constant pressure bubbling in his head and neck. The near-constant throbbing he felt in his temples and the very top of his skull.
“How about any changes in your body. Nausea, problems going to bathroom… vomiting. Anything like that?”
And that had actually been… the latest event that made him realize. How he knew that something wasn’t right.
Tim had been asleep all day. The night before when he’d gotten back to the Theater, he had stripped down to just his boxer-briefs; didn’t even take a shower, just fell into the soft, white linens of his bed.
He vaguely remembered a few things throughout the day, when his mind was only half-conscious. The chirping of three separate calls from his cell phone across the room. The alarm that was supposed to wake him up at two in the afternoon so that he could *try* and be productive. Tim slept through all of them. In the back of his mind he knew that this wasn’t normal for him, that when he got this tired, he recuperated well enough with an extra hour or two of normal sleep.
But this? He felt drunk and sluggish. Or he felt drugged. And he tried to remember if someone could have *slipped* him something…
He vaguely remembered tossing and turning occasionally. He remembered kicking the sheets off at one point, because he was sweating and hot and then he remembered being freezing after some… time.
And then he remembered looking over at the clock, and noting that he’d been asleep for twenty-two hours and that his sheets were soaking wet.
It hurt, lifting his head up from the pillow, but he was confused, because he was in bed, but he was wet and… he didn’t remember actually getting injured the night before.
Slowly he lifted himself into a sitting position at the head of his bed and his head swam with the change of elevation.
When his neck managed to hold his head up and his eyes cleared of any of the haziness that had been there before, he looked down, expecting to see a wound and dark red blood, but instead there were just wet, cold puddles.
Tim sat there in shock, his brain not quite understanding what he’d just done; what had happened to him.
He’d wet the bed.
He’s… urinated in the *bed*.
He hadn’t wet the bed since he was twenty-four months old.
Had he really been so tired? So out of it that he didn’t have the energy to get up and use the restroom? How had he not noticed that he’d pissed the bed? What the fuck was wrong with him? Since when was he that helpless?
With shaking arms he quickly stripped the bed of the sheets, pillows and duvet. Chills covered his body, and a growing sense of panic was welling up in his chest as he dashed into the bathroom to grab some generic cleaner and a bucket from under the sink.
He’d… it… it had leaked through to the *mattress*. Tim started off with warm water, cleanser and a rag, frantically scrubbing at the spots that were sure to stain. He pressed down hard, until his fingers ached, thinking about how he needed the stains to go away. Thinking that cleaning the stains would make everything okay.
Tim scrubbed until his fingers were red and sore. He scrubbed until the fabric on the mattress began to pil and tear. He scrubbed until most of the mattress was sudsy and damp and only then did he stand up and gather the bed linens and stumbled out towards the kitchen and the room off of it that held the laundry facilities. His legs felt like jelly when he finally reached the chrome appliances. Let the hot water run before dumping in two cups of bleach and then pushing in the soiled linens.
The stainless steel was cold against his spine and shoulders as Tim slid down the front of the appliances. His chin hit his chest when he looked down, so the cold metal was pressed against the nape of his neck too. His eyes followed down the center of his pale chest, decorated with puckered pink scars and black and blue bruises, past his sternum, over the bones of his ribcage that he could definitely see. The white cotton of his boxer-briefs were clammy on his thighs.
Emotions piled in, along with exhaustion along with embarrassment and confusion. Grief. Sorrow. Pain. Fear.
He felt disgusting. Juvenile.
And it was only after a minute of sitting and thinking that he noticed that… the lights were on to his “office”. And he smelled popcorn?
It was still dark in his apartment; the neon lights from the digital clock on his coffee maker washed the room in a green glow. He couldn’t hear much over the washing machine’s noise, the whirring and humming, but he knew that in the other room the noise would be from the purifier in the fish tank, the small buzz from the lone incandescent light that he knew would be on.
Tim used shaky arms to push himself back into a standing position, the joints in his knees creaking, the bones of his ankles popping. He was panting and shivering.
Quivering fingers held onto the wall as he stumbled into the hallway. He saw the glow from one of the monitors at his desk glow blue and silhouette a large figure. Someone was in his house… on his computer… and he hadn’t known?
Even more panic swelled up in his stomach, in his head. The left side of his body… it felt numb.
What’s worse was that Tim knew he didn’t have a chance, if the intruder wanted to fight. He was so exhausted.
Tim slowly reached over to the stand near the front of the hall and grabbed the two-tone golf umbrella that was there.
He grasped it tight in his hand, but when he slowly brought it up to his side, the figure in the chair spoke, “None of *that*, Pretender. I’m just here to get some information from this… this really freakin’ boss computer set-up you have.”
Jason’s left hand was still clicking and type-feeling with one hand, while his right hand reached over to a shadow and then up to his mouth and then there was loud crunching.
“You got a pretty sweet setup here, Drake. And this place is way way *way* easier to break into than the cave, or wherever Diet-Batman is working out of.”
And Jason hadn’t looked over yet and the part of Tim’s brain that wasn’t pounding in pain was screaming at him to run to his room. That Jason Todd was a split second away from seeing Tim in his wet, yellow-stained underwear.
But he was frozen in place.
“You normally aren’t home this time of night… and I didn’t hear you come in. Slacking off? You got a lady here? No need to answer- I don’t really care. I’ll be out of here in just a wink, there, Replacement, so no need for *violence*.”
He felt his eyes start to burn with tears of fear and humiliation, his breathing was labored and ragged in his chest. He could feel his stomach turning over and over-
“And dude, this popcorn is disgusting. I mean, it tastes like I’m eating packing-peanuts.” And that was when Jason decided to look up, cold blue eyes flitted over to Tim’s form that was half leaning against the wall, shaking, shivering and covered in urine. “Did you-” Jason paused, smirked coldly, “Aww. Did w’ittle Timmy go wee-wee in his pants?” Jason snickered again, loudly. Grabbed another handful of popcorn and munched on it like an apple.
Now Tim was shaking and sweating and his body was overcome by chills. He felt like he was suddenly hit by a high fever, but it was hard to convince himself that it wasn’t just… the jarring humiliation of Jason was seeing him in such a weak moment.
He opened his mouth to say something, anything, whether it be a half-assed threat or something biting and sarcastic, but he couldn’t…
And then the nausea hit him like a freight train.
He was already dizzy, only the wall keeping him even sort-of vertical, but the force from his stomach’s contractions had knocked him to his knees. His patellas screamed in pain has they hit the ground. Tim tried to catch himself on his hands, but he ended up with his elbows there instead, one side of his face nearly pressed against the cold, hard-wood floor.
Desperate gasps for air filled his ears as his stomach pumped white and yellow bile out of his stomach, up his throat and out of his mouth. He heard the loud slap of it as it hit the floor. Heard himself heaving and retching and… was he crying?
He was.
Tears leaked out of his burning eyes and down his face.
He was still retching and choking for air when he let his cheek hit the floor, let his body slump to the ground in exhaustion and in pain. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, feel the sweat on his face and neck. Feel the damp material of his boxer-briefs.
Tim could make out his name being called out by Jason. Felt wonderfully and horribly cool, tentative hands on him.
Jason was touching him, even though he was disgusting, worthless.
He hadn’t wanted to be touched right then. Tim tried to say that, but the last thing he remembered was a large, cool hand on his forehead.
Tim had woken up in his never before used guest bedroom, clean clothes on his body. The sheets that had been in the washer had been put in the dryer.
There had been no note.
A hand gently touched Tim’s shoulder, startling him out of the memory, “Tim, I want to run some more tests today. We’re going to run a head CT, an MRI and a nurse is going to come in to draw more blood before prepping you for the exams.” The doctor applied a tiny amount of pressure in his hand before letting it drop. “I don’t want you to overly worry, but based on everything you just told me, I feel pretty confident that we’re going to find something.”
*Cancer*. The doctor thought he was going to find cancer. A brain tumor.
“The wait shouldn’t be too long, but you shouldn’t have to wait alone. I know that you’re an emancipated minor and technically an adult by law, but is there anyone we can call for you, Tim? Your dad? Any siblings? A friend?”
*Dick*, he immediately thought. Bruce. Conner.
But, Dick would just… He loved his older brother, but Dick would just stress Tim out. The older man would be up and pacing and ranting and googling stuff on his smart phone. All the while giving Tim a reassuring smile and a fake, can-do attitude.
Tim didn’t think he could handle that.
Bruce would be a good choice, he would just patiently wait with Tim. Listen to the results. There would be no immediate reaction, which Tim could appreciate. He wasn’t sure when he himself was actually going to react. All he felt was a little numb and a little residual nausea that has been his companion for over two weeks now.
Bruce would be strong when Tim didn’t know how to feel but unfortunately, Bruce was away with Selina. Paris, again; something for Batman, Inc. Bruce was important and waiting at the doctor’s office was a waste of his time.
Then there was Kon. He’d be there in a minute. Maybe less than that, if he was closer than Kansas for some reason. But, with Kon also came the knowledge that every time Kon looked at him he would see nothing but a fragile human, now. Tim knew now that every time Kon stared for a second to long at him, Kon was looking for the black spots in his body, the fractures and the breaks.
Tim just didn’t have the energy to keep up a specific frame of mind for the comfort of those who loved him. And he wasn’t proud of that, but that didn’t stop it from being true.
He doesn’t think he’s going to handle any of this… well.
A nurse came into the room just then, gathered the supplies to draw another sample of blood from his arm.
But, Tim didn’t really want to wait alone. Could he still be numb and have a panic attack?
The doctor smiled sadly and excused himself from the room when he didn’t respond and the nurse was disinfecting the crook of his elbow. He focused on the rasp of the alcohol pad against his skin and then the rip of the paper as she unwrapped the needle. The stabbing pain he felt, as she tried to find the vein, “Sorry, hon’. Last time, just take a deep breath.”
But Tim thought the pain was kind of nice… grounding in a way. He’d always thought so. Just the right measure of it could be world-narrowing. Could help you control yourself. He wished she would try to find a vein twelve more times. But true to her word, the needle was in and a second later Tim felt the pull of the blood being sucked from his vein. Like a tree being tapped.
He was going to have to give a lot of people bad news. That’s what the doctor thought. That’s what *he* thought, too. Tim could tell that something wasn’t right weeks ago, but the culmination didn’t happen until that night when Jason broke into the theater.
Jason was the only person who wouldn’t care.
So Tim might have cancer, boo-freakin’-hoo. Jason Todd died, so why should Tim, his replacement, get out of life Scott-free.
There was no emotional component to their relationship, for all Tim knew that they could be civil to one another. They could also try and kill each other, though.
Honestly, Tim probably wouldn’t even tell Jason his diagnosis unless by chance they passed one another on the street. And if Tim did have cancer, there was probably a slim chance of him actually… *being* on the street. Which brought the probability of Jason ever knowing he was sick down even lower.
Tim wouldn’t really be saving himself any time, any emotional debt, by Jason Todd being there.
The man had already seen him at his absolute lowest.
The nurse had finished, capped the sample and started clean up the paper wrappers around her, disposed of the needle in the hazardous waste bin. She pressed one of those cotton-paper gowns in his head and told him to change, to remove anything metal and that she would be back in ten minutes to collect him for the procedure and then she turned to leave.
But he wouldn’t be *alone*.
“Wait. There’s someone-” Tim paused, bit his lip hard to get himself to *focus*, “Would you still try and call someone for me?” Tim fumbled over his words, “He might not… we’re not very close-”, the last time he saw me I had pissed on myself and then vomited… everywhere, “-And he might not actually answer-”, He changes his number a lot, no real need to keep a permanent line. “And he… he might not answer,” He heard himself repeat dumbly. But what Tim meant with that one was, ‘he might not care, so he might not come.’
The nurse smiled kindly and jotted down the number that he rattled off and gently reminded him that it would be about ten minutes.
The whole procedure took no more than a half an hour. Tim thought that it was funny how quick and easy it was - how painless. Just lie down on a cool medical bench, stay still and hold your breath for fifteen seconds. Stare into white, hot flashes of light. Try to ignore the sound of the magnetic field and the energy there.
It was quick and it was easy and it was painless. Which is good because, after a good percentage of these tests, Tim thinks the patient’s life is going to be a lot of pain for a good, long time.
There was a lot of time to think and nothing good or positive to think about, so Tim just mentally went over the notes in his head about the case Bruce had sent him. He shot a business text to Tam to a let her know that he’d be in tomorrow and that they can discuss the contracting budget at the meeting together, as planned.
A different nurse tells him to put the phone away - no cell phones in the hospital - hands him his clothes and a container and leads him to a bathroom for a urine sample.
Tim carefully avoids looking at his reflection in the mirror as he scrubs his hands. Hands that he is not allowing to shake. Because he has control over that. He takes his time, counts to 120 in his head as he scrubs from fingers to wrist. He uses the brown paper towels to pat them dry.
Numb.
Tim sort of feels numb. The water was too hot and the paper towels are to rough on his hands, the pulp in institutional paper products has always been to harsh on his skin. But he doesn’t even feel it. Any of it.
It’s hard not to think about anything but the sounds the MRI made when he had been in the scanner. It’s hard not to think about what could be wrong - the things they could find. It’s hard to feel anything when his mind, the one thing he relies on more than anything, is getting sick, turning black.
He still has the white spots in his eyes from the flashes of x-ray. They float in his vision like the butterflies that have taken nest in his stomach.
He’s… he won’t be able to patrol tonight, if his blinding headache and white-spotted vision don’t clear up.
He might not be able to ever patrol again.
The nurse leads him to the Doctor’s office, to discuss the results of the tests that were run. As they approach the door, Tim can hear Jason’s drawl from inside and the lighter laugh of a feminine chuckle - he hears the sound of ringing metal.
It is Jason. He came.
And he’s in the room - more specifically Jason is spinning around on the doctors stool. Around and around.
His broad lips are wrapped around the orange candy sucker, the white stick, swing to the corner of his mouth as he smiles at a middle aged nurse, who titters at him when he says, “I think nurses are just the greatest, Beth. Can I call you Beth? I think nurses are some of the most underpaid professionals out there. Very under appreciated.”
“Thank you, I agree. And… Beth is fine, do you know - Oh. Timothy Drake?” The nurse cuts off, she’s serious and her eyes are tired and kind and Tim can see why Jason would want to tease something out of them. “Your brother is here. Do you need anything while you wait for the doctor? It shouldn’t be long.”
Tim has enough presence to answer in the negative and the nurse leaves and he sits down in the patient seat across from the doctor’s desk.
It’s silent in the room, save for the candy that Jason is sucking on rather loudly.
Tim doesn’t mind the noise though. It’s a distraction. From the numbness. From the desire to run out of the room.
Because that what Tim usually does when he’s scared. He runs. He’s a runner.
But Jason is here now and he can’t run.
And there is something wrong with him.
And he just realizes now that his knee is bouncing up and down and up and down, quickly and repetitively. He realizes it because Jason had rolled over next to him in the stool and placed his hand on Tim’s denim-clad knee, pressing it down, effectively stilling it under calloused pressure.
Tim swallows, chokes out the hallow words, “Thanks for coming, Jason.”
Jay doesn’t say anything, just swallows and sucks on the candy again. A strong hand gently squeezes his knee, right about the knee cap and then lets go.
Jason continues to work his mouth around the sucker, his mouth, Tim notices, is turning a little orange.
He notices it when Jason opens his mouth to say, “Everything will be fine, Replacement.”
-fin