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"He's dead."
That's the thing Tim's stuck on, really. His hand is glued to Joker's neck, his fingers—stiff, still cold from his dunk in the sewers—fumbling to find a pulse, a stray heartbeat, anything. There's a pool of blood slowly beginning to grow on the floor, dark and thick and wrong, and the taste of iron fills Tim's mouth.
Joker's dead, because when Tim puts his fingers under a bloody, broken nose, there's no telltale rush of air.
For one brief half-second, all he can feel is relief. Finally, finally. It almost bowls him over, the force of it. And then—
"I killed him," Dick mutters behind him, and Tim's very abruptly reminded of the who and why and oh, no.
When he looks back, Nightwing is leaning against one of the pews, his head in bloody hands. Tim wants to go over there, but he's still got a hand on the Joker's neck, another on his wrist, desperately feeling for a pulse he knows won't be there. If it were anyone else, Tim would already be doing chest compressions, already calling for an ambulance. Anyone else—
Batman takes the decision out of his hands, and Tim's never been happier to see him in his life.
He's also suddenly aware of how much everything hurts. He's been running on fumes for too long, now, and it's starting to catch up to him. And thank god for Huntress, because while Batman cycles through CPR—gross—she takes Tim by the shoulders and leads him next to where Dick is standing, trembling, silent.
No one says anything. No one offers to relieve Batman from chest compressions. No one goes running to fetch an EMT. All eyes are on Batman, all ears tuned to his faint counting, and Tim doesn't know what anyone else is thinking the same way he doesn't even know what he's thinking.
On the one hand, no one should die. If they can save one life, save one person, then the world is a better place for it. And Dick—Tim cuts a glance at him, watches him stare at nothing with some awful, unplaceable expression on his face—doesn't deserve that, doesn't deserve to be the one to carry that weight on his shoulders like he carries so much.
But on the other hand… it's the Joker. He's the one who caused this whole mess in the first place. Everyone is, objectively, safer with him gone, but do they have any right to act as judge, jury, and executioner? Batman seems to think that the Joker can get better, seems to think that some amount of medication or therapy or whatever it is they do in Arkham will fix him, but Tim disagrees. Does that still mean he should die?
The Joker lets out a terrible, wheezing cough, and it's like a spell is broken.
Tim really only remembers the next parts in snippets, because his lungs hurt and his chest hurts and his everything hurts and really, it's admirable he's still up and running after all that.
Joker's arrested, handcuffed by a pissed off Huntress. Nightwing walks out with bloody knuckles and hunched shoulders, and Batman just watches.
This sucks, Tim thinks, and he lets himself be guided out of the church.
He wakes up in the middle of the night.
It takes Tim a second to remember where he is and what happened and why he's so sore, but only a second. He's at the Manor, because his dad isn't expecting him home anytime soon and it would be incredibly odd if he arrived back at Brentwood in the middle of the night, cold and wet and injured, from a "family emergency."
(It was an emergency, to be fair, but he doubts Dean Nederlander would believe him even if Tim told him about the whole Robin thing, so he'll just have to pretend some great-great-aunt or someone passed away.
He's running out of fictional family members to excuse his absences. It gets to a point.)
Still, lying there in his bed that's a little too big and a little too soft, staring up at the ceiling that's shrouded by the late night, he doesn't know what woke him up. It could be any number of things, really, but the world is as quiet as two in the morning always is. Was it a nightmare? He's awfully sweaty, which is gross, but he doesn't have that weird feeling in his chest when he can't remember a bad dream.
Like it or not, though, he's awake now. It's something both his dad and Bruce have gotten on his ass about, because he wakes up in the middle of the night and instead of falling back asleep—lord knows he needs it, but his brain refuses to quiet down once it's up—he'll make breakfast, or run down to the cave, or any number of things that wakes someone up to lecture him.
Briefly, he considers going down to the computer, reading the reports for everything that's happened with the Joker lately, but then he dismisses it; it's chilly, and he's pretty content under his blanket. Besides, he hasn't even written his yet, partially because he'd all but collapsed as soon as he was within five feet of the Batmobile, and partially because Bruce had focused his attention on Dick as soon as they'd returned to the cave.
Speaking of…
"You're such a creep," Tim whispers as he sits up. At some point during the night, Dick had dragged a chair in and sat himself down at the end of the bed. He's also been staring at Tim for at least as long as Tim's been awake, so the creep comment feels pretty on the nose.
"You're shaking," Dick says. He doesn't bother lowering his voice and doesn't have the decency to look embarrassed at being caught. "Are you okay? Nightmare?"
"I feel like I should be asking you that," Tim bites out, probably a little harsher than warranted. His memories of the previous day are a little foggy, a little hard to grasp, but Dick's blank face and bloody knuckles are clear enough. Then he pauses, because he hadn't noticed the goosebumps running up his arms or the way his teeth chattered. "I'm good. Just cold, I guess."
Wrong answer, apparently, because Dick leans forward and frowns. "You're sweating like a pig, Tim."
It hits him so hard that Tim has to flop back down onto his pillows.
Because of course the minute they're done with the Joker, the minute that whole fiasco is wrapped up and Tim gets one singular moment to rest, he gets sick. He really should've expected it, to be honest, because Alfred had said the Clench probably made his immune system all shot, and taking a dip in the sewers does not a healthy person make.
Still, it's frustrating. Tim hates being sick—hated it before the Clench and hates it even more afterwards. He's not exactly sedentary, and he's bad enough at doing the basic stuff like drinking water and eating real food half the time already. Getting sick just compounds it all into one achy, congested mess, and—
He definitely misjudged how keyed up Dick is, because suddenly he's leaning over Tim, panic sharp across his face and looking like he's about to call an ambulance. So maybe collapsing all dramatically back into bed wasn't Tim's smartest idea, but it felt warranted.
"I'm good," he repeats, and has he sounded this stuffed up the whole time? "I think I'm sick."
"You think?" Dick doesn't move, but his face softens into something almost sad for one second before he's got an eyebrow quirked up. "I could've told you that, Timbo."
"Why didn't you?" Tim mumbles. He sits up again—and almost knocks foreheads—and immediately wraps his blanket around his shoulders. He's freezing, but he's also burning up, and he knows enough about fevers to both know that he's got one and that he should've known about it since he woke up. "I'm going downstairs."
Dick frowns. "Why?"
"You can't be sick in your own bed. That's a couch activity."
It's an unofficial rule in the Drake house: when you're sick, you're on the couch. It's equal parts quarantine, proximity to the bathroom, and making sure someone can check on you easily. Tim always loved it despite how much he hates getting sick, because before they moved, the couch in the sitting room was unfathomably comfortable, and it's an easy excuse to nap all day that he doesn't otherwise get.
(Plus, he's got his sights set on this one couch in one of Bruce's sitting rooms, the one next to the kitchen. He's napped on it a time or two, and once spent an early morning sweating out something of Scarecrow's, but being sick on a couch is a rite of passage.)
"I've always preferred the bathroom floor," Dick says, watching Tim get ready to stand with a critical eye. "Nice and cold, so it's good for a fever."
"Are you—are you being serious?" Tim's not putting off standing. Not at all. He just has opinions about Dick's sickbed of choice, that's all. The fact he knows he'll get lightheaded as soon as he puts his weight on his feet is entirely unrelated. "That's insane person behaviour, for the record. The bathroom floor? Bruce just lets that happen?"
"Bruce lets anything happen when I'm sick. Come on, slowpoke, what are you waiting for?" There's humor there, fondness, but it's buried underneath layers of worry and concern and fear. It's what sobers Tim up a bit, makes him more aware of the rock in his stomach and the way his head is swimming and the dual shivering and sweating currently wracking his body.
Tim died today. Not really, not truly, but everyone—Bruce, Barbara, Helena and Stephanie and especially Dick—thought he had, and they'd reacted accordingly, rashly, impulsively. He almost feels like he'd died, too; everything hurts, and his arms feel all weak, and his head is cloudy. He's sick, and he's injured, and he really should've died.
But Dick doesn't need to be worried or concerned or afraid. Tim's fine. He's sick and he's injured but he's fine, because they've got bigger problems to worry about, so Tim takes a deep breath, plants his feet on the floor, and stands.
And promptly falls back on his ass when the room starts to spin.
"Woah, Tim." Dick's dropped all pretenses of whispering, moving quickly to grab Tim by the shoulder—which hurts, because that's the shoulder that Croc grabbed, but the wince is lost in the nausea—to steady him. "Alright, no, you're staying up here. Back to bed, come on."
"Dick, Dick, Dick," Tim chants, his speech only a little slurred, "I'm fine, please, I can walk, I promise—"
"You should've never gone to Arkham, Timmy, I don't know what—"
"To be fair, it wasn't really Arkham, it was the sewer—"
"I'll wake up Alfred, he'll know what to do, and with the Clench—how stupid, god—"
"I think I'm gonna throw up."
Dick freezes, then practically scoops Tim up and all but sprints to the nearest bathroom. It only jostles Tim's stomach more, so by the time that they've practically kicked the door down and flipped the light on—ow, that's really bright—he's falling out of Dick's arms to throw open the toilet lid and gag.
Nothing comes out, because he'd thrown up a couple times immediately after his little swim, but he still hangs over the toilet for a few minutes, knuckles white with the force of his grip, bruised knees digging into the tile painfully.
Awful, he thinks groggily, squinting his eyes against the light and trying desperately to either stop trying to throw up or just commit to it. This sucks. I hate being sick.
Behind him, puttering around and doing really nothing, Dick is very obviously panicking. The last time Tim had gotten this sick—or sick at all, really—was the Clench, when he'd been dying, and there was nothing anyone could do about it except wait for a cure or for him to die. He'd been out of it, at the time, shivering and writhing in fever-induced dreams, but between Dick, Bruce and Alfred he'd certainly felt the fear, the desperation, secondhand.
It's how he's pretty sure the fear, desperation that Dick is feeling now is the exact same as back then.
"I'm fine," he spits out (with a bit of bile that did manage to come up). It's quiet, shaky, but Dick stops pacing as soon as he speaks. "I'm fine, I—fine. Good. I'll survive."
"Jesus, Tim," Dick whispers, kneeling down and running a hand down his back. "What on earth am I gonna do with you?"
Tim doesn't respond, because he doesn't really know the answer either. He just reaches up to flush the toilet and close the lid and rest his forehead on the cold porcelain. He's sore and achy and freezing and hot and really just wants to sleep, and he might be able to at this rate.
Dick must be able to read minds now, apparently, because gently moves Tim to lay down, adjusting his head to rest on Dick's chest. He hums, and Tim relaxes just a little bit more. It's hard to be miserable like this, he finds.
"It's not your fault," he doesn't mean to say. Oops.
There's no immediate reaction. The humming continues, and he even starts rocking the two of them a little bit, but eventually Dick says, absentmindedly curious, "What?"
Well. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Joker. It's not your fault."
Immediately, Dick tenses. His hand stutters to a stop on Tim's back, his breath catching in his chest, and his face isn't visible from how they're situated, but Tim knows it's carefully blank. One moment passes, two, three before he doesn't relax, not quite, but softens, just a little bit.
"You like to talk about things you know nothing about," he says lowly, but it doesn't feel condescending. "You—God, Tim, you're so smart, you know that? A real genius. But there's a lot of things you don't know yet. That's not your fault. I'm glad you don't know a lot of this, to be honest."
Tim frowns, lifts his head up a bit. "Dick—"
"No, just listen to me for a moment, okay?" A deep, faltering inhale. "I killed the Joker, and I wasn't upset about it. I am now, but I wasn't. And, Tim, I don't regret it. If you died—"
There is a choked sound that Tim is out of it enough to not think too hard about, and the bathroom falls silent.
"I don't regret it. But it is my fault. I'm responsible for this. If he had died, if Bruce hadn't revived him, that's on me."
"Okay," Tim says, because he doesn't know how to argue this on a good day. "Sorry you thought I died."
Dick huffs out a half-hearted laugh.
It's not all well and good, and they're sitting leaning on the side of a bathtub with too-bright lights shining overhead, and there's still nausea rolling in Tim's stomach and probably something like grief in Dick's, but no one is dead or dying and really, with their job, what more can they ask for?
"You were right," Tim mutters, curling up against Dick's chest. He's fading, now, but it's pleasant. He's safe. "The bathroom floor feels kinda nice."
He falls asleep to a hand in his hair and the mutual pretending that no tears have been shed.
He wakes up in the middle of the night.
Or—no, it's later. A reasonable time of day, if the window he blinks his eyes open to means anything: bright, sunny, a clear blue sky visible beyond half-open curtains. Mid-morning, maybe, but Tim always loses track of time when he gets sick.
Wait a minute, he thinks, his brain still foggy and struggling to catch up, my bed doesn't face the windows.
He's in the sitting room next to the kitchen, half-buried in the large, plush couch he's been eyeing for months now. There's a blanket tucked in around him and a cloth on his forehead, one that probably used to be soaked in cold water before it dried out. It's still miserable, and he's far from comfortable, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat and every inch of his being feels like it's bruised, but there's a certain comfort in being surrounded by the warmth of the Manor and having Dick stand—or, sit, really—guard, a small scowl trained on a tablet in front of him.
Wait, he thinks, again, because he's really awfully slow on the uptake apparently, and he has to blink the blurriness out of his eyes. That's not Dick.
"Bruce?"
It comes out all weird and scratchy, and maybe half of the letters are actually intelligible, but Bruce gets the hint, because he looks up from the tablet. His expression flattens, relaxes, and he greets Tim with a small smile.
"Good morning," he greets, like there isn't a kid collapsed, half-dead, on his couch. "How are you feeling?"
"Like ass," Tim admits, because he can tell Dick he's fine all he likes, but Bruce is the one who will give him shit for it. And then, because his brain isn't exactly operating right now, "I fell asleep in the bathroom."
"You did." Bruce nods, and Tim is reminded that two kids have grown up in this house, so he's probably used to all of the nonsense that comes with a sick teenager. Then, wry, "Dick brought you in here. Something about how being sick is a "couch activity," if I remember correctly."
That could not have been easy. Tim's not exactly the heaviest guy around, and Dick can lift some serious weight, but they weren't in a very optimal getting up position, not to mention that he'd had to go through half the Manor and down the world's longest flight of stairs to even get to the sitting room, the one Tim hadn't even brought up to anyone.
(He'd thought it, last night, in some half-conscious fever-induced delirium, but maybe Dick could actually read minds. Or, and probably more likely now that he's waking up a little more every minute, this was the couch Tim tended to gravitate to whenever he spent time here. He'll stick with the mind reading, though.)
There's a pretty big elephant in the room, now that Bruce's said his name. Dick is nowhere to be seen, the only remnant of him being his hoodie tucked around Tim's shoulders under the blanket, and there's a brief flash of panic that goes away as soon as it comes.
"Is he okay?" He'd killed the Joker, even if it didn't keep, and it was obviously on his brain from the little bit Tim remembers of the bathroom last night. "You didn't yell at him, did you?"
Silence.
"Bruce," Tim says, exasperated.
"I didn't yell at him," Bruce says quickly. "We… talked. He's asleep, right now. He'll be fine, I think, and he's mostly worried about you." Tim can smell that lie from a mile away, but he doesn't call Bruce out on it, mostly because he doesn't really know how to help Dick. How do you convince someone that beating the worst guy in the world to death after they thought you'd died doesn't make them a bad person? You don't. Tim doesn't, at least, because that headache he'd forgotten about is pounding at his temples with a renewed vigor.
It must show on his face, because Bruce suddenly frowns and stands slowly, joints creaking and cracking. He makes his way over to the couch and takes the dry cloth from Tim's forehead and, almost absentmindedly, replaces it with his own hand. It only takes a second for Bruce to remove his hand with a quiet tut, but Tim all but melts into the couch at the touch.
"You're still burning up," Bruce mutters, more to himself. "Try to go back to sleep. We'll have a talk when you're better."
This, of course, means Tim is gonna get reamed out as soon as he can walk without fainting, so he takes the chance to pull his blanket up to his chin and blink up at Bruce in what he hopes is a way that'll convince him to maybe not do that, but Bruce just keeps frowning down at him.
"Soon, I think," he says when no one moves for a moment. "I might need a lift to the bathroom coming up, though. Or a bucket. Whatever works."
Bruce's eyes widen with so much fear that Tim bursts out laughing, which naturally means the nausea rolling in his stomach ramps up tenfold.
Damn sewers. He hates being sick.