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A lot changes in a year.
That's the problem, really. A lot has changed. 12 months is a long time, and is it fair for Tim to demand that everything stays the same?
(He hadn't even known it was a year. Isn't that awful? There's no way to track the days when there's no windows, no lights-out, no food rations. It was just monotony and trying to break out of an impenetrable cell and the eventual knowledge that everyone thought he was dead. There would be no rescue.)
His heart thuds weirdly, an offbeat rhythm that he tries—and fails—to count. His hands twitch when he's not focusing on them. His ears are ringing. There's a gash on his arm that he knows with absolute certainty will scar, but for now it's wrapped up in white bandages that feel rough on his skin.
Bruce had all but dragged him to the Belfry's medbay as soon as the other Batman vanished. He'd done a preliminary checkup at the hospital, had just stared at him for a long moment, but there was no time to linger. Kate was going to die, and Tim was the only one with any sort of information.
It's… weird, to be around people. To talk, to touch, to exist in the proximity of more than his own thoughts and a deranged maybe-alien man. His throat hurts from how much he's talked—he's always been someone who thinks out loud, and that holds true in time jail (as Dick had called it), but there's a difference between talking to yourself and talking to mostly everyone you know all at the same time because you're the only one who knows anything—and his feet hurt from walking so much and his chest burns from being shocked.
(Shocked. By a gun-wielding Batman. By himself. And he'd said level seven, which means there was the tiniest bit of mercy granted, but Tim can't really believe that because he'd been left, gasping and twitching and unable to move, for far too long. It had hurt, still hurts, far too much.)
"Tim!"
He'd hallucinated enough in the prison that it takes a beat too long for him to acknowledge that, no, someone is actually talking to him. When he drags his eyes up from his—twitching, trembling—hands, Stephanie is standing in the door of the medbay, a smile on her face but her eyes sad, red-rimmed and swollen.
She's changed, because a lot changes in a year. Her posture is tighter, tenser, her face sterner, her hands, when she runs up and grabs his tight, have callouses he doesn't remember. She's thinner, too, gaunter, her cheeks sunken and her knuckles more prominent. Has she been eating okay? Taking care of herself? He hopes so.
(For some reason, the concept of being grieved is novel. He'd thought they were looking, for a while, and then… well. He'd sort of given up hope that he would be saved. He knows, objectively, they mourned him, because Jason had mentioned something about a funeral and a gravestone before being shushed by Bruce, but to see it, written plain as day on someone standing right in front of him, is off-putting.
And it is plain, because she was all he had in that cell. He'd memorized her face, her voice, everything about her, because if he didn't have her then what did he have? Nothing. So he notices, adds up the differences a year can make.)
"I'm sorry."
It comes out as a whisper, but it interrupts whatever story Steph was halfway through. She frowns, her eyebrows drawing in tight, and for some reason the expression feels more natural on her face. The smile, entirely for his sake, looked poorly drawn on, cut out of some magazine and pasted straight on her face.
"For what?" she asks, impossibly sad. She runs her thumb over his knuckles and he doesn't have the energy to tell her how much it hurts, because even the slightest touch hurts right now. She'd been crying, before coming, though it's obvious she's trying to hide it. He can't even blame her for treating him like glass right now, because he feels like one strong hit and he'll shatter.
What shouldn't he apologize for, really? He never told Bruce about the acceptance letter—did she have to break the news, after he'd died? And she was the last one he spoke to before the drones hit. And no one's said anything about what he missed yet, but Tim can still see the distance she puts between herself and the others. Is that his fault?
Does she blame him?
(She should. Steph is so smart, so brilliant, but she's stupid enough to stay. She could have anything her heart desires, could be able to go wherever she'd like and do whatever she wants, but Tim's tethered to Gotham and she's tethered to Tim. If he were a braver, stronger person, he'd cut her off himself, but he's never been particularly brave or strong.)
"Everything," he says. It hurts to talk. It hurts to exist, at this point. His heart is still pounding in a jagged staccato, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he's worried about another cardiac arrest.
"Tim," she says. She opens her mouth to talk, but must change her mind because she just shakes her head instead. She's holding onto his hands with a death grip. The pain feels like beating a dead horse, at this point—of course it hurts, everything hurts. He's tired of it. No one will let him sleep. "Tim. You died, I don't…"
He shakes his head. The room swims, and his headache flares with a vengeance, but he ignores it. "But I didn't. Someone saved me, and then threw me in a cell for a year. I didn't die, not like you or Jason."
So far, he's left out the part that his captor may or may not be Superman's father. Bruce knows, because he's told Bruce everything, but otherwise it's a closely guarded secret. He's not convinced that man was who he said he was.
(He's not convinced everything he went through was real, to be honest.)
"Okay. That's worse, though. You know that, right? You know enough about solitary confinement to know that you… well." She sighs, and it's exhausted. "I don't have to tell you."
You should, he doesn't say, because it's hard to admit his memory isn't what it used to be. He knows—firsthand, now—that solitary confinement and isolation and all of the other words for it are bad, awful, but the details are fading faster than he can grab them. They're probably related, his stint outside of time and his fleeting memories. It scares him anyways.
"It's not… the same," is what he does say, letting his eyes fall back to his hands. His fingers are twitching again. His heart pounds oddly in his ringing ears. "Nothing happened to me. I wasn't tortured, or interrogated. I was just alone."
It's hard to grasp the fact that he's not alone anymore. He hasn't been by himself for longer than a moment, and for some reason it's starting to grate on his nerves. He wants to crawl out of his skin the longer he looks over and someone is sitting next to him, a hand on a leg covered by a blanket or an eye trained on the irregularities of the heart monitor he's hooked up to. It's only been a handful of days—time is still a bit of a foreign concept to him, now, so anything exact is lost to him—and yet Tim needs space.
(He'd just had so much space. A year of it. Why is being surrounded by the people he loves so frustrating? Why does being cared for make him feel so trapped? It's almost like he's fighting his own mind, his own instincts, because he knows that he needs medical attention and he knows he just can't be at the Belfry for much longer.)
Stephanie doesn't reply right away; the wrinkle between her eyebrows and the way she's chewing on her lip means she's thinking. The sudden silence is loud, almost unbearable, and Tim needs nothing more than to collapse into his own bed, turn on the TV, and sleep for the next million years.
Though, he can admit to himself it's not the smartest idea. He hadn't had to eat in that awful prison, hadn't had to sustain himself, had barely been required to breathe. Left to his own devices, he'd probably wither away out of sheer habit.
At some point—he can't remember when—Steph had pulled closer, moving from sitting on a chair to the bed, lightly nudging his legs out of the way. He hadn't noticed her move, hadn't noticed her move him to the side so she could slide closer, hadn't noticed the way she grabbed his arm to peer at the cut.
(Time keeps skipping, for some reason. Hours will pass between one blink and the next. Is that because of the shock or the monotony? He didn't need to keep track of anything but his own failing attempts to escape, so he got used to spending hours zoning out and dissociating. It wasn't exactly healthy, he knows, but it was one of the only ways he could keep himself some semblance of sane. He doesn't know how to be present in a conversation anymore.)
Seemingly content that he hasn't bled through his bandages, Steph starts playing with his fingers, folding them this way and that into different positions, humming a song Tim doesn't recognize under her breath. Her hands are cold. He just watches her, takes in the way her hair falls down her back, the way her eyes trace his hand.
(A lot changes in a year.)
"They've been threatening to break the door down," she comments suddenly, an insane non sequitur. She doesn't need to say who they are; Tim's been asking for his family to keep out. There's guilt, pooling in his stomach, when he remembers what the future him had done to them. "Bruce is the only thing holding them back, at this point."
Tim lets out a hum, if only to show that he heard her.
"Damian thinks it's ridiculous," she continues, "that you let me hang out with you and not him. He's demanding to see you, but it's an empty threat. Still, they'd love to say hi to you."
Between Tim's impromptu trip to the ER and everyone subsequently getting their asses handed to them by an insane gun-wielding Batman, there hadn't been much time for hellos. He'd gotten a hug from Cassandra—a hug that made his skin crawl, his breath catch in his throat, and she'd noticed and has been frowning at him ever since—but that was about it. There's only been a handful of people Tim's seen since everything's calmed down: a doctor he doesn't recognize, Bruce, and…
"Steph," he says. His throat is well and truly shot, now—it comes out in a raspy whisper. "Please. I don't… not right now. Not yet. I'm sorry."
She nods, like she'd been expecting this, which makes a red hot pulse of anger shoot through his gut. It's short-lived; he doesn't have the energy for anything beyond bland apathy. "Okay. That's fine. But, Tim, listen to me for just a second."
When he doesn't respond, physically or verbally, she lets out a huff and roughly grabs his chin to make him look her in the eyes. He doesn't react—bland apathy, remember—but it does make his heart jump for a second. She has his attention, now, and the smile that lights up her face is blinding.
(God, he loves her. He loves her with everything he has, and it is never enough.)
"You, Tim Drake," she says, "have one big ass family." Gone is the gentle, quiet concern, replaced with a stern confidence. She's not treating him like glass anymore. It means more than he can really say. "They—we—all care a lot about you. Bruce alone would, and has, moved heaven and earth for you. Don't get all lost in that big ol' brain of yours, okay? You're not allowed to wallow in your own misery."
It's a nice gesture, a lovely sentiment, but Tim knows himself better than anyone. He's fucked up, this time, and he doesn't know what to do to come back from it. Is he supposed to just move on like nothing happened? Or does he play the part of a traumatized teenager who just spent a year in solitary confinement?
There's no answer. It's an impossible question. He's beyond saving now, no matter how much his family tries to help.
Still, he musters up a weak smile.
"Maybe in a little bit."
It's a deflection, and Steph knows this. But she smiles back anyways, moves her hand away from his chin to grab his own trembling one, and grips it tight.
"In a little bit," she says. For now, they're alone.