Chapter Text
One more step, Tim told himself.
He leaned heavily on his bo staff and used the leverage to almost vault forward.
He landed on his good foot, but the force of the impact still jarred his injured leg just enough to send flaming spears of pain shooting through his whole body. He couldn’t waste a second to do more than catch his breath before he planted the end of his bo staff against the tile two feet in front of him.
One more step.
He didn’t know where he was going or how many more steps he’d be able to manage, but he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to fight Red Hood—fight Jason, or whatever freak had decided to steal his face—any longer.
His spill over the balcony had cost him a broken leg, snapped in half at the shin and angled like a second knee, and a dislocated shoulder that ached fiercely even though he’d managed to push it back into place. Putting any pressure on either injury felt like the devil.
“Come here, Robin,” Red Hood jeered, and dammit, he was maybe thirty feet from the corner.
Tim took as silent and deep a breath as he could and pressed his back to the wall, using his good leg to hold him up just beside the corner were the hallways met. With shaking hands, he readied his bo staff. A knee shot would hopefully incapacitate Hood long enough for…for what? It was a long hallway any way he turned, and a knee shot wouldn’t take out Hood’s guns, and if Tim tried to bend down to get them, even if Hood somehow passed out and didn’t turn the hunt into a fist fight, he wasn’t going to be able to get back up.
A stomach shot would be even less effective, especially with all the armor Hood was wearing—a fact proved by every failed blow Tim had managed to land before Hood had grabbed his arm and thrown him over the balcony. A headshot would have normally been enough, even though Tim didn’t usually like headshots for how easily they could be fatal, but since he’d replaced his helmet, the blow would just be a mild annoyance.
Hood was going to come around the corner guns ablazing. He’d have one shot to take him down, and it had to be quicker than Hood could aim.
The neck. It was the only unarmored part of his body that could take him down with one shot. He normally wouldn’t have risked it, because he could easily crush Hood’s throat, but he was not going to be another dead Robin.
He couldn’t do that to Bruce.
He couldn’t do that to Gotham.
Steeling his courage and resolve, Tim took another deep breath and tightened his fingers on his staff and pictured the blow, the angle and strength he’d need to drop Hood with the greatest chance of his attacker living.
And then everything went white.
—————
The dull hum of an engine loudened to a roar as someone barreled down the tunnel toward the cave. Not Dick. His nightcycle was quieter, built for stealth. Damian’s bike was the same, and Tim’s was right where he left it, so it wasn’t Steph either.
Jason’s motorcycle, Tim was pretty sure, had been customized to be either almost completely silent if he needed stealth, or louder than a bag of rock in a blender when he wanted to strike the fear of God and Red Hood into the criminal population of Gotham.
Or if he wanted to keep Tim from being able to focus on his work because apparently, people who ran around getting shot at nightly had some kind of vision problem that kept them from seeing their glass houses before they started throwing stones.
And Bruce had been existing off of almost no sleep for years before Tim was even taking pictures on the streets. Did anyone ever fuss at him?
Well, actually, yes they did, but they would back off him eventually, and it wasn’t fair.
We’re trying to save you from his mistakes, Dick would plead.
It’s Tuesday, Steph would say.
It’s Sunday, he would say back. Or he’d mean to. He’d actually just stare at his screen while the words loaded until it was too late and she’d gone away.
Good work, Bruce would tell him with a slight twitch of his lips and a hand on Tim’s shoulder.
Jason didn’t usually bother trying to get him to stop, at least not directly, but Tim was certain that the way he’d come barging into Tim’s work space and distract Tim until he’d completely lost all train of thought and had to give up because his brain had too little caffeine to start the engine again any time he’d gotten wind that Tim had been awake 30+ hours was deliberate.
Well, not today. Tim was trying to figure out how to file the artifact he’d picked up while on patrol. He could tell it was something unusual just based on then energy it was giving off, and it was probably dangerous, but he didn’t have any idea what it did. Was it magical? Was it extra-terrestrial? Or maybe some ancient cult based on Earth had cracked some kind of scientific mystery, and the artifact just brewed a mean cup of coffee.
Jason stopped with an ungodly screech of tires that set Tim’s teeth on edge. Just for good measure, Jason throttled the engine three times before shutting it off. I never should have told him about the misophonia.
Tim pointedly ignored Jason as he crossed the cave to the computer, but he did keep an eye on him in a monitor reflection in case Jason had rubber snakes again.
Luckily, that disaster didn’t look like it was about to be repeated.
No, they were forging new paths of irritation.
Jason grabbed a chair and dropped down in it with more force than was necessary, which was always a harbinger of Jason on a mission.
Tim kept ignoring him, but the war was on.
“What’s the box?” Jason drawled, his tone smug.
He knew that Tim knew, then, and was going to draw it out, wasn’t he? Bastard.
Tim didn’t answer. Because he was working.
Jason, surprising, did not resort to poking Tim or those attempts at tickling that were the reason Tim’s suit now had so much more padding under the arms and on the chest. No, Jason reached into his pocket.
Tim made a show of continuing with his examination, but he watched Jason very carefully in the monitor to see what dastardly weapon Jason had managed to procure. Sedatives? Jason hated needles, though. It could be a rag with chloroform, but that took a few minutes to work even if it was held directly over the face, and Tim was sure that Jason knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep Tim pinned long enough for that to work. Maybe he did have rubber snakes again. Or rubber crabs.
Or real crabs.
Those things were terrifying.
Jason pulled his hand out of his pocket, and it was even worse than he’d feared.
It was gum.
Tim spun around and smacked a hand over Jason’s, glaring at the fiend who was his brother with the rage of a thousand suns. “No.”
Jason smirked and tried to pull his hand back, but Tim kept his hand tight over Jason’s.
People chewing gum was the worst. It felt like Killer Croc dragging his claws down a thousand chalkboards in Tim’s eardrums.
And Jason knew that.
It was a smart play. Tim could withstand the poking and prodding, he could deal with the drugged coffee, he could—he shuddered internally—even live with the rubber snakes on occasion, and he hadn’t even noticed the aerosol cheese and cheerios crown Jason had given him seventy-two hours into an investigation until he’d gone upstairs and Dick had started taking pictures.
He could not deal with the noises. He would not deal with the noises. If Jason wanted to smack his gum, he was going to have to do it over Tim’s cold dead body, and if Jason killed Tim, then Alfred wouldn’t give him any crepes. It was in Jason’s best fucking interest to hand over the gum immediately.
“What, baby bird? It’s just gum,” Jason said, blinking in exaggerated innocence. “I need to look something up. Maybe if you don’t like it, you should leave.”
The and go to bed was left unstated, but it was very heavily implied.
“I’m. Working,” Tim growled.
Jason did not look in the least bit apologetic or cowed. “Are you? Hm, maybe I can wait a few minutes for you to finish up before I open this.” Jason flexed his fingers under Tim’s steely grip to indicate what he meant. “A few.”
Tim considered the offer. It was better than Dick trying to drag him off to bed without letting Tim wrap up, but it was a significant downgrade from Steph’s fussing at him until she finally gave up and let him be. Worse still, it would show a weakness, a weakness which Jason would no doubt share with the rest of the batfamily, and then he would never be free from the gum-threatening ultimatums.
On the other hand, if he did not accept, Jason was going to chew that gum as insufferably loudly as he possibly could, and Tim was going to have to stab him.
Tim narrowed his eyes. “Half an hour.”
Jason snorted. “Three minutes.”
Tim scoffed in indignation. “Twenty, at least.”
“I might do four,” Jason allowed with a cocky shrug.
“Fifteen,” Tim countered. “Be reasonable.”
“Five,” Jason decided. “Final offer.”
“Ten,” Tim growled.
Jason smirked.
“Five,” Jason repeated.
Tim wanted to smack him upside the head with a crowbar. Repeatedly. He’d never understood the Joker more than that moment.
But if he argued too much, gum.
“Fine,” Tim snapped, “but if anyone finds out about this, I’m going to tell the demon that you’re the one who shave his cat’s backend.”
Jason frowned. “Someone shave Alfred’s backside?”
Tim glared. “Not yet.”
“I’ll just tell him it was you,” Jason said with a dismissive eyeroll.
It was Tim’s turn to smirk. “I can make sure he thinks it’s you. You know I can. And even if he does eventually turn on me, I’ll have taken you down with me.”
Jason regarded Tim calculatingly, but he knew that Tim would do it.
“Fine. This stays between us,” Jason agreed. “But don’t think this is the last time I’ll resort to dirty tactics.”
“I won’t.”
Tim was already mentally drawing up the specs for earplugs that could filter out all noise but still alert him if there was a call or emergency on the batchannels. The design would have to be almost invisible, or at least hard enough to dig out of Tim’s ear that Jason couldn’t just hold Tim down and remove them. There was also the concern that Jason might use one of the EMP grenades to disable the earplugs…
Jason pulled out his phone and Tim turned back to the box.
“Tim-er starting now,” Jason teased. “Better hurry. I start chewing as soon as it goes off.”
“Sh,” Tim snapped.
If Jason was giving him five minutes, he was going to get five minutes, not two minutes and lots of interruptions.
“Fine,” Jason said, which wasn’t hushing at all. “What is that?”
Tim heaved a dramatic sigh, hoping that that would be enough to indicate that he did not want to talk, but apparently being raised by the world’s greatest detective hadn’t trained Jason at all on how to take a clue.
“Well?” Jason prodded, pointing at the artifact sitting on the desk like Tim might have thought he meant anything else.
“I don’t know yet,” Tim sighed, less dramatic and more sincerely resigned to wasting the rest of his time satiating Jason’s curiosity. “I found someone trying to mug a couple with a magical ladle—don’t ask, I already put it into storage, and I’m taking it to the Justice League tomorrow—but I noticed this energy coming off of him and found this.”
The box itself looked old and dangerous. It was smaller than a bread box, forged in what looked like bronze. It could have been something else; Tim was waiting on the sample analysis. Tim couldn’t find any visible seems, but the box was clearly mostly hollow, maybe a centimeter thick judging by the weight. There were words etched deep into the metal on one side, but it wasn’t any language that the Batcomputer knew, and a dim mirror ringed in gold—which didn’t really look that great with the bronze, but oh well—pointing on the side opposite it.
Still, none of that narrowed down anything.
“I’m trying to figure out what it is so I can contain it correctly,” Tim said, turning the words…runes…markings side toward the scanner and setting the computer to read scan the markings and send them to all JLA experts on magical runes. He glanced in the mirror now facing him to check Jason’s reaction, but Jason didn’t seem more than passingly curious. Hopefully, that meant no more questions.
His main problem was that if the sealing agents used to deactivate magic sometimes interacted with unknown agents in extraterrestrial or ancient scientific artifacts and caused them to go off, and vice versa. With no way of telling even what it did, risking setting it off was a bad idea, which made the fact that it was suddenly glowing a lot more concerning.
Jason leaned in. “Did you mean to do that?”
Tim frowned and leaned over the box to check the runes, but they were unchanged. Had the computer’s scanner triggered something? That would be indicative of science, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, it didn’t matter as much.
“Jason, I’m going to try to stop it,” Tim said firmly. “Get a radiation-faraday container, now!”
Jason was gone before Tim could even finish the sentence. Hopefully, he’d actually heard the end of it, because they might not have enough time for a mistake.
Tim stepped back, examining the box. He really had no idea what he was doing, but he usually didn’t, and he’d managed to live so far, which was actually quite the accomplishment as a Robin.
The ring of gold surround the mirror was moving, spinning faster and faster, and the mirror, dim to the point of being almost indiscernible, was now clearly reflecting Tim’s startled face.
And then it…that wasn’t his face.
But it was.
It was Tim’s face, only much younger. That was the mask he’d worn as Robin.
What?
It didn’t matter. He had to stop whatever was going on. Maybe if he grabbed the ring and forced it to stop, then—
And everything went white.
—————
Tim barely had time to blink back to awareness and duck the blow coming toward his head before a fist slammed into the wall hard enough to break the drywall.
Tim tucked into a roll and pulled his cowl up in the same movement. He switched the roll quickly to the side when he realized they were at a corner, putting a wall between him and the person attacking him and giving him the time to grab his bo staff and flick it out.
His brain whirred on high gear. Where was he? Clearly, that device had sent him somewhere, but nothing about the bland walls and tile gave anything away. Seemingly Earth, or at least one of them, or a planet that had an atmosphere similar to Earth. Who was attacking him? Had he just been teleported into someone’s house? He’d freak out and attack someone who’d done that too, so he couldn’t really hit someone that hard if he was the trespasser. That made the “other planet” or even “other country” option much more worrying because if he couldn’t hit them or explain why he’d appeared, then he was in for a pounding based on how hard that man had hit the wall. Or was he just being attacked because he was Red Robin? That would actually probably be the ideal situation, because then he could hit as hard as he could, and anyone who had enough of a grudge to set up the events to teleport him to the building in the first place was probably someone who had a grudge, aka someone he’d fought and beaten before.
There was a pause before clumping footsteps stomped toward the corner.
Tim relaxed when he saw the man in the red helmet step past the wall, and even the guns. He wasn’t a super huge fan of guns, but at least Jason could put them to good use and didn’t kill people much anymore. He could defend Tim while Tim tried to figure out what the hell was going on, or, if they were in a non-hostile environment, just stand there and look pretty. Actually, he’d probably have trouble with that. If there was nothing actively trying to kill them, Jason could carry stuff and get things off of high shelves if Tim needed them.
“Jason,” Tim said, lowering his staff. “…when did you change?”
And…why had Jason attacked Tim? They’d really gotten past—
Then it clicked.
Tim recognized that outfit.
He recognized the walls.
He knew where he was.
He knew when he was.
Oh, shit.