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Tim was not dumb. He knew he wasn’t doing well, knew he probably needed an intervention. He knew he wasn’t healthy, that forgetting to eat or interact with people was not a sign of a well adjusted person. It’s not like he didn’t care either, he didn’t particularly want his life to go to shit, but he didn’t know how to make himself okay again.
He went through the motions of his routines, barely remembering what he did the day before, everything blending into a haze of numbness when it wasn’t at the front of his mind. It scared him when he had enough energy to be afraid.
The only time he felt partially like a real person was when he patrolled as Red Robin. He talked to the other bats, although seemingly more briefly with each passing day he refused an invitation to the manor, and taunted rogues like he did in his Robin days. His heart wasn’t in it, but that wasn’t important, not really.
He helped people, and that made him feel not quite okay, but satisfied. Helping people was his purpose, it was the sole reason he left his apartment on his bad days.
Somehow, patrol allowed his mind to quiet in ways it never seemed capable of otherwise. He felt like his chest finally had enough room for air, that his limbs were no burdened with the weight of the world. It was nice. Or it usually was.
It was half past one when things took a turn for the worse. Tim heard screaming as soon as he landed on the roof of the apartments. In his time as a vigilante, he’d heard plenty of screams, but this one was definitely up there in terms of devastation. It was loud and guttural, torn out of the lungs violently from whomever was its source.
Tim forced his way into the building through the roof access hatch and rushed towards the sound. Two flights of stairs later, he located the unit in question and kicked down the door before making his way through its splintered frame. The small apartment had an open layout, meaning the tragedy that lay within was visible almost immediately.
A boy sat crumbled on the floor, likely about Dick’s age or even a little younger, clinging desperately to the bloody limp form of a teenage girl. His body shook, his shoulder pulling ever closer into himself with his cries. Tim stalked cautiously forward, but the boy didn’t notice his presence in the slightest. The screams were dying down, replaced with inaudible mutters into the ears of the dead body. It was clearly a dead body, gone for a good few hours. Suicide, and a horrific one at that.
As gently as he could, Tim grabbed the shoulder of the grieving boy. “Do you think you could let me look at her?” He asked calmly.
There was a wobbly nod.
“While I look her over I need you to grab me a big blanket or a sheet,” he ordered, knowing that phrasing it as a question wouldn’t work with the amount of shock the poor boy was in.
As he took a step towards the linen closet, Tim returned his attention to the body. Upon closer inspection, cause of death seemed to be blood loss from self inflicted wounds. No foul play, as he’d suspected. Her skin was blue and cold and waxy. Some said the dead looked peaceful, but she didn’t, not at all. She looked pained and alone and so unfairly fucking young. It was one of those sights you knew would haunt you for years. The one that replayed behind unsuspecting eyelids just when you finally stopped thinking about it, lurching you awake violently.
Tim called GCPD, and when the boy got back, covered her with a sheet.
“She’s really gone,” the boy said as Tim watched reality hit him yet again. He fell to the ground miserably and hysterically.
“I’m so sorry,” Tim comforted, knowing it meant nothing, knowing there was nothing he could begin to do to fix any of this.
“We hadn’t talked in a while. She was doing her whole independence thing, didn’t want her brother nagging her. I thought she was okay, thought I needed to give her space to grow and all that. I- I” the boy began before breathing in sharply “We fought last time we were together. The last time I talked to her we screamed at each other. Sometimes siblings know just where to hit to make the other one hurt. I didn’t think it would be my last chance, how can I live with that?”
Tim opened his mouth, then closed it. “It’s not your fault,” is what he settled on. “She was hurting and in pain and she wanted a way out. When people are severely depressed, when they’re suicidal, they lash out hoping people stop looking.”
“I should’ve noticed. I’m her older brother, I’m supposed to look out for her.”
Tim felt his eyes burn and was grateful, not for the first time, that his cowl obscured his eyes. He took a step closer to the boy, to the brother living his worst nightmare and did what he could to help him until he heard the footsteps of officers in the hallway outside. Then, he fled.
————————————
The only things Tim remembered from making his way back home were stopping to throw up bile into a waste bin in an alley and ripping off his domino and armor feeling like he was about to suffocate.
Now, he found himself starfished out on his cold bathroom tiles, letting the chill run through him and down his spine. It was uncomfortable, painfully so, but he couldn’t move. The body seemed like a projection in front of his eyes, he couldn’t escape it. Cold. Dead. Bloody.
It hit too close to home. Instead of the boy, it was his brother holding the body, it was Bruce or even Alfred. It was them screaming and wailing thrown to the ground in despair. In all his recent musings about death, he hadn’t considered that. At his lowest, the days where he stared down the pill bottles in his medicine cabinet or thought of pulling a pistol out of the safe, he’d failed to think that through. That someone would find him.
If he had anything left in his stomach, he might have thrown up again. He was tired and gross and decidedly very much not okay. He needed help. He couldn’t let himself do that to his family. He couldn’t. He wanted to.
He had his phone in his hand somehow. He unconsciously tightened his grip as he shifted his gaze to the screen. Dick’s contact was pulled up. There were at least a dozen unanswered messages. He felt badly about that, or at least he thought he did. Mostly he was too tired to think much of anything.
He was almost too tired to press the call button, but he had to, he needed to.
He held his breath as he waited for the call to connect.
”Hey Tim what’s up?” a voice on the other end asked.
“I think I need help.”
There was a flurry of questions in response that Tim couldn’t bring himself to answer. He knew he was worrying his brother but he couldn’t force anything else out of his mouth. He just laid there, curling himself in a ball, wondering if Dick would find him before the floor swallowed him whole.
He wanted it all to be over. He wanted to be himself again. Didn’t know if that was even possible anymore. If he was too far gone.
Time skipped around like it so often did and suddenly there was a pounding at his door. He didn’t move. He thinks that maybe Dick will have to break in to get to him. Thinks of how pathetic that is. That he was too tired to even sit up much less get the door.
————-
Sometimes, Dick thought about his future. He wondered if, maybe, in some universe where he wasn’t in danger night after night, having close calls once a month if not once a week, he’d have children. If he did have a child in this lifetime, he knew one thing for certain, they would never be a vigilante. He didn’t think he could bear it in all honesty.
For years he’s watched as his siblings risked their lives alongside him and Bruce. All of it, the near misses, the ones that did hit, the horrors they saw and everything else that could go wrong played in his mind when he was feeling extra paranoid. It was almost too much, he could never willingly let his children go through that. It hurt too much even to let his siblings patrol, even knowing he couldn’t stop them if he tried.
He woke up some nights in a cold sweat, images of his dying siblings burned in his brain. Jason was proof that it wasn’t an unfounded fear, that any moment he could lose them.
So, when his phone rang at a little past three as he made his way back to Bludhaven, he picked up immediately. While the fear was familiar, Dick didn’t think he’d ever gotten a call that sent more unease through his body than his little brother shakily asking for help before immediately going silent. If he hadn’t heard the labored breathing on the other end, he would have thought he hung up. His mind raced frantically, asking where he was and what was wrong, but it was clear the other boy wasn’t listening. That really wasn’t a good sign.
Dick first thought that maybe he was still on patrol, but then dismissed it immediately. If he’d been on patrol he’d have used the comms, not his personal phone. Tim was, more than maybe anyone else save Bruce, very careful with what communication devices he used for each of his identities and tasks. So, he had to be at his apartment or at least acting as a civilian. The knowledge was not as comforting as he wished it was.
Dick was incredibly grateful he hadn’t crossed out of the city yet. He changed his course, made a highly illegal U-turn, and started off towards Tim’s apartment. He’d never been invited in, but he knew where it was.
He thought that he should be concerned about that actually, that it’s not good that none of them had ever stepped foot inside. Tim was self sufficient, to say the least, but they should have pushed. Should have checked in more. Made sure he was truly okay.
He threw his car in park as he pulled up in front of the building, his phone still connected on the call. He looked down on it, the screen displaying 13:28. He should have been faster, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. He jogged into the building and up the flights of stairs, finding Tim’s door.
He knocked, no response. He asked Tim to let him in over the phone, no response. He told him he’d have to kick in the door if he didn’t come since he didn’t have a key, no response. The line was eerily quiet, fueling his sense of dread.
He doesn’t even remember getting through the front door or the one to the bathroom, but he does and suddenly he’d been brought face to face with the sight of his brother sprawled out on the floor of his bathroom.
“Fuck,” he breathed out, “shit Tim what did you take.” He looked around for the source, but came up empty. He was about to start yanking things out of the cabinet when his brother made a small noise to get his attention.
Bright blue eyes rimmed with red met his worried gaze. Tim opened his mouth to speak, the words coming out weak and mumbled, “S’not that. I called you so it wouldn’t get to that point.”
Oh.
Dick slid down to the ground so he could be on the same level as his brother, grabbing his wrist half to comfort and half to confirm he had a normal pulse. It was smaller and bonier than he’d tempered, in fact most of Tim seemed smaller, emaciated. How had no one noticed, how had he not noticed?
“That’s very brave of you. I’m happy you called me Timmers,” Dick said, running his unoccupied hand through disheveled hair as he continued, “can we talk about it?”
“Tired,” Tim said, seeming so utterly miserable Dick didn’t quite know what to do. It broke his heart to see someone he loved so miserable.
“That’s okay bud, we can just chill out for now and talk in the morning. I’ll make some breakfast and we can figure it all out. I need to get you off the floor though, you’ll be sore tomorrow if we get ya to a bed,” Dick said attempting a smile that was no where near believable.
Tim grunted something that could be vaguely deciphered as affirmation, so he grabbed the boy up from the floor and carried him toward his room. He plopped him down in his bed and covered him in an excessive amount of blankets after he complained of how cold it was. Being that it was mid August, that was a bit concerning, but that was not his biggest worry. His biggest worry was that Tim wanted to kill himself, had maybe been very close to doing so tonight. He itched to ask more about it, but held back. Specifics could wait until the morning, but he needed to know something before he felt comfortable handling this in his own until the next day.
“Did you have a plan?”
Tim hesitated, seeming to think the question through. “Not really I- when I get bad I’m usually too exhausted to think through anything beyond my next few minutes. I mean I wasn’t not thinking about dying but it wasn’t a method so much as an understanding of what I could do so that I wasn’t here anymore,” he replied sheepishly. His eye wetted with tears again and Dick reached out to wrap him in a hug.
When the cries turned to hacking sobs, Dick whispered reassurances that everything would be alright, promised that he wasn’t mad, that they’d get Tim help so he wouldn’t feel like this anymore. He didn’t ask anymore questions, didn’t want to overwhelm him. He tried his best to stop the What Ifs plaguing his thoughts and watched as the boy cried himself to sleep. He would do anything to take the pain away, but for now all he could do was wait for the next day.
Because he sure as hell wasn’t sleeping after all this, he made a plan. He would try to get Tim to open up on his own for a day, try to get some food in him and calm him down. He would give Bruce some excuse for a while, until Tim was ready, then they’d tell him together. They’d get him help, make sure he knew he wasn’t alone. They’d support him as best as they could, he’d be okay.
Tim had done the hard part already, he’d made the call, and now he needed to heal.