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There’s something wrong with Tim.
Logically he knows he should probably do something about it but he can’t bring himself to do so, he can hardly even make himself think. When he does manage to do so he thinks about his parents and what they would do in such a situation, probably nothing. Definitely nothing. And so that’s what Tim does. Nothing. He sits on his bed unblinking as he stares at his laptop and just lets himself be consumed by the feeling.
Tim has never been great at identifying emotions even when he tries which is rare but this time no matter how much he thinks and no matter how many different ways he googles his symptoms nothing pops up. That’s probably because he can’t bring himself to press “enter” why can’t he bring himself to press it?
He’s frozen, possibly in time. But that can’t be right because a clock is ticking. He can hear it faintly from upstairs; Alfred’s favorite clock chiming to signify the passing of an hour. Is that how long he’s been here? An hour? That can’t be right.
Tim forces himself to blink and he thinks he hears his eyes creak at the motion. He blinks again, and again until he can see straight and then he moves. He shifts slowly, placing his feet above the floor but not quite touching it. The bed isn’t high, but if he sits back enough he can ensure his feet only brush the floor. He stays in this position for a little while, not too long though, just enough for the clock to chime again and for Tim’s eyes to creak again once he blinks.
He forces himself to slide forward and his feet touch the floor. Then like a bus, something hits him *hard* and he falls backward onto the bed. He can’t place this feeling; it’s nearly indescribable but if he had to he would say it's heavy. Like a cloud made out of bricks pressing onto his chest like a cloud–wait he already said that.
Time blinks barely at the ceiling and tries to think. Has he felt like this before? What did he do then? How did he make it stop? Will it ever stop? Does he have to force it to stop?
Okay, so thinking was clearly a bad idea, a very bad idea because by the time Tim blinks again he’s standing in the kitchen with a knife in his hand. It’s not the first time he’s done this, reasonably Tim knows this, and this isn’t the first time he’s felt like this either.
On the occasionally long days or he supposes months his parents were away Tim felt like this often. There were days he couldn’t get out of bed, shower, wash his hair or even bring himself to eat let alone leave his room. Days where the cloud was so thick he could blink and the sun would still be in the same place if not a little bit behind.
He chalked it up to loneliness then or insanity but Tim isn’t alone now. As a matter of fact he can hear Jason and Damian bickering, somewhere close by while Dick desperately tries to ease the tension and Cass, Steph and Duke make bets. So he’s not alone, and yet the thick waves of emotion keep coming at him, threatening to pull him under and Tim has never been a strong swimmer. With his lack of spleen Tim is sure he’s going to become severely ill, probably with hypothermia once he dries off, if he even manages to dry off. Is this metaphor even making any sense? Tim can’t bring it to him to care.
After all, why should he? It runs in his bloodline not to care about things. Tim’s parents didn’t care about him. Tim doesn’t care about himself. He’s sure if he ever had kids, the situation would be similar. The thought of having children of his own that hate him as much as he hates himself sends a stabbing wave of comfort through his body. He can’t exactly figure out why. He doesn’t care enough to try.
A hand taps his shoulder. It’s gentle and whoever does so is smart enough to back up before Tim can slam his or more accurately Jason’s Wonder Woman mug into their face. Since when was he holding a mug? And what happened to his knife?
“Tim?” Cassandra asks lightly.
Tim doesn’t respond, he doesn’t have the energy. He’s wasted it all on something stupid probably, getting out of bed, descending down the steps, making a coffee. Tim looks down slowly at the realization, his eyes settling onto the floor where a puddle of split coffee should be. Tim doesn’t even find water.
He lifts his gaze from the nonexistent puddle to Cassandra’s whose eyebrows are knitted together slightly. To anyone outside of the batfamily –or Batfam as Dick prefers it to be called– wouldn't notice such a small difference. Tim, however is not an outsider, at least he doesn’t think he is. Not all the time.
“I have to go,” Tim mutters or at least he tries to. He thinks the only thing that comes out is a bunch of garbled gibberish.
Cassandra reached out a hand to stop him, but even in his haze Tim is faster, a rare occurrence. It must be all the caffeine in his system, Tim thinks despite not having taken a sip of anything in days. He doesn’t waste time trying to figure it out, instead rushing up the stairs at a pace the Flash would be jealous of.
Life goes on like that for a while. Tim stare at his computer.
Blinks.
Stares at the Bat Computer.
Blinks.
Patrols.
Blinks. Blinks. Blinks.
Okay so maybe Tim isn’t okay, but he never said he was! And nobody ever assumed he was either. After all he was Tim. Timbo, Tim Drake and occasionally Drake-Wayne. He was the guy in the chair and the guy out in the field. He was the guy who poured five packs of powdered caffine into a coffee he’d made with a Monster rather than water. That’s just who he was! That’s just what he was. Not okay, he means, or meant?
Everything is starting to become rather confusing, Tim thinks or at least he tries to. He’s been trying to do that thing for the past couple days. Think. It’s not working. At most he gets a blink and some work done on the Bat Computer. At worst he blinks a million times and never moves.
Tim thinks it's the weather, a strange jump in topic but he’s depressed he thinks he’s allowed to have a non-linear train of thought. And oh. Oh, that’s what this is. Tim is depressed, how well depressing.
He supposes it makes sense. Being depressed. He’s missing a spleen for crying out loud and his parents are dead and it's dark outside. The latter seems a bit stupid in comparison to dead parents and a permanently compromised immune system, but it seems to be the worst of the three. Or at least that's what Tim thinks. Because Tim is used to dead parents and a missing spleen, those are things he can work with. Those are things he can set aside for a later date. But nightfall, that comes like clockwork and is unfortunately something Tim is incapable of avoiding.
There's just something about it, when the sky gets dark that makes Tim get dark too. It makes his already greasy hair feel thicker and stickier and whatever else rhymes with that. And it makes staring at the Bat Computer for seventy-two plus hours a little bit harder to do.
Realistically speaking –because Tim is nothing but not a realist– he knows it shouldn't be having this much of an affect on him. Afterall the sun sets every day not just in the Fall and Winter and Gotham is always full of gloom. There’s just something about the slightly colder chill and the disappearance of the sun not just through poisonous vapor and clouds but gone entirely, replaced by the moon that makes Tim Drake want to fucking die.
Okay, maybe that was a bit too far. Maybe not die exactly but it makes him want to take a nap. A super long, comatose deep, six feet underground, only the Lazarus Pit can wake him up kind of nap. But ya know, not dead. Because that would be bad, and suicidal and Tim despite his self-destructive tendencies is not that type of guy.
He thinks back to the knife from the kitchen and the very faded scars the rest of the Batfam had chalked up to incidents from patrol. Yeah definitely not that type of guy. But he could be.
Tim quickly shakes his head. No, just no! He couldn’t, not again. Bruce would blame himself it something bad happened to Tim; if he cut too deep. He’d seen the way Bruce had handled it before with Jason and Tim couldn’t afford to let that happen again. Afterall Bruce needed a Robin. Although Damian is here noe and Tim hasn’t been Robin for a while so maybe a tiny cut won’t hurt a little bit.
Yes, it’s the perfect solution, a small one barely even deep enough to draw blood. Only Tim has never really been good at portion sizes, he works for too many hours on cases and sleeps too little hours. He blames his parents and his hyper independence. Is that even a thing? Tim decides he’s going to make it a thing. Hyper independence is going to be the thing Tim leaves behind after he dies.
It’s almost laughable. That’s a lie, it is laughable clearly it has to be or else Tim is laughing into an empty good for nothing room for an empty good for nothing person for absolutely no reason. So yes. That is the legacy Tim is going to leave behind, he decides. He gets up from his bed, unsure when exactly he laid down and scrawls down the phrase on a napkin.
He takes said napkin and presses it to the wound Tim doesn’t remember making and dies. Not literally of course but the pain from the pressure is almost enough to make his vision go white for a minute.
It takes longer than that for him to wake up. Tim knows this because he wakes up and the clock is ticking and chiming a little bit differently oh and also he's in the Bat cave. Wait, the Bat cave?
Tim shoots up so fast he gets vertigo and then quickly puts a hand to his head to ease the spinning. The arm he lifts is covered in bandages or the wrist is anyway.
“What were you thinking?” Bruce asks. His voice is steady and low, calculated like Tim is some sort of flighty villain Batman is trying to interrogate.
Tim shrugs and simply says, “I wasn’t,” because it's the truth.
Bruce does not seem to like that answer and grunts or grumbles something under his breath. He stands to his full height and Tim most definitely does not shrink back and away from him. He most definitely does not remember the stark slap across the face he had received from his father a couple hours after his first attempt or his mother’s long and grueling talk about the shame he was bringing to their family after the seventh. Tim doesn’t want to have to go through all of that again so instead he speaks before Bruce can.
“I’m sorry.”
Bruce blinks, clearly confused and then purses his lips. “Is it I who should be sorry, Tim. You were struggling and I did not see that. I should have seen that.” he mutters that last part to himself so Tim does him the favor of pretending not to hear.
“Is it on the news?” Tim asks.
Bruce is once again startled by Tim’s words this time enough so that he does not even respond verbally. A curt shake of his head is the only response Tim gets.
Tim nods and shifts in his bed so his back is against the pillows and he is sitting up straight rather than laying down awkwardly.
“That’s good,” Tim says “Wouldn’t want to ruin the Wayne's reputation.”
Tim half expects to hear his father laugh and the clicking of a newspaper as he shifts in his arm chair, the quip “what reputation?” following quick after but he doesn’t.
“You could never ruin the Wayne reputation." Bruce assures
Tim raised and eyebrow at that so Buce moves on.
“Besides, you deserve privacy. As long as I am your father, that will stay as such and this will never reach the press.”
“Father?” Tim questions.
Bruce stiffens up like a board, but before he can take it back Tim practically launches himself out of the bed and into Bruce’s arms. His father’s arms. The chair Bruce is sitting in spins before tumbling to the floor, but Bruce takes up most of the fall.
“Thank you,” he whispers and for right now, it’s enough.