the artist formerly known as oneangrykate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riseupwithfists) wrote2009-05-01 04:45 pm
riseupwithfists) wrote2009-05-01 04:45 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Who by Brave Assent, Who by Accident
It has always seemed too gothic to call their home, both above and below, a tomb. It was too morbid to call it a coffin that held the remains of several childhoods now, the ashes of denied hopes. But there isn't a room in the manor that hasn't been touched by grief and despair and futility, and Tim feels as if he's constantly encroaching, no matter that the property belongs to him now. So he stays in the Cave as much as he can, and wonders if the first to feel that grief had lost his mind before his body had finally failed him.
"No," Dick said the night before, his voice rasping like a poorly recorded and re-recorded version of itself. "If this was his choice, then I trust his judgment. He said that this... this may be the only thing that works." He drooped against the wall then like a discarded puppet, no grace left in the slump of his shoulders.
“It's going to be all right." Tim was too tired to put any effort into sounding like he believed in the words. The kindest thing to do was to lie.
It isn't Dick's decline in and of itself that's frightening so much as the severity. Tim has only gotten him to eat for the past two days by pressing the sandwich into his hand and asking, “Please, Dick, for me?” He doesn't want to consider their options if... when... this stops working, but someone has to now.
All the light has left Dick's face, and Tim has found no contingency plan on the computer that could comfort him.
There's the clunk of Jason taking the stairs three at a time, his momentum carrying him to rest, eerily, in the spot where the case used to be. "Nothing's gonna be there that wasn't there the first sixteen times, Timmy." He sidles up to Tim, jostling his chair. "Are you really that put out that I'm the one who gets to go to the ball?"
From time to time, Tim gets the uncharacteristic urge to punch Jason when he's around, to reject him in the only language Jason seems to take to heart. Jason, for his part, probably wants Tim to take a swing, which is why he's managed to restrain himself for now. Jason's crowding of Tim, his leg and side wedged up between the console and Tim's thigh, is annoyingly deliberate. Everything with Jason is.
"The choice baffles me, yes." It's been five days and Tim hasn't found a single sign of anything to refute the letter and the files. A snapped blade and a few mea culpas and suddenly they were expected to slay the fatted calf and let Jason sleep down the hall, let him pop cornflakes into his mouth at breakfast while he tapped endearments in Morse across the wide polished table. And now this.
He would say that maybe Jason wasn't reacting appropriately to the situation, but Tim knows he isn't a desirable model when it comes to proper reactions to loss. He also knows that the muffled sobbing in the east wing the night before wasn't coming from Dick's room.
Jason's grin is wide and sharp. "Come on, now, I haven't killed anyone in at least twelve hours. That's gotta earn me some Brownie points." Seventeen months, three weeks and six days, Tim silently corrects. Jason was unrepentant enough to be truthful about that.
“Excuse me if I don't break out the confetti." Tim is turning twenty next week and nobody will mark the occasion. The few friends he managed to cultivate at school are all at college now, too busy to keep up with the standoffish boy who didn't answer any of his acceptance letters. The boy he dated for a time in senior year (awkwardly, abortively) sent a letter achingly sincere in its sympathy, but Tim knows he won't call the number scrawled across the bottom.
His wide-eyed fantasies about Robin had never anticipated how unrelentingly spare his life has become. Tim has his brothers, the beloved and the tolerated, and Alfred, and now nothing else. He has systematically molded himself into something unfit for human consumption, and all he can see stretching out before him is more of the same.
Seventeen months, three weeks and six days. He may never stop counting.
"The suit's in my size, bitch." Which is true; Jason had tried it on this morning while Tim kept Dick from going downstairs. "And face it, you're relieved because it isn't you. Though you're probably even more relieved that it isn't him.”
In the messy hours immediately after, Tim had thought of shielding Dick from that possibility, throwing himself on any evidence like an infantryman on a grenade. He was never the laughing golden boy, and he was never the punk with a tilt to his hips and a chip on his shoulder. Tim had always been willing to be collateral damage, had always steeled himself for it. The relief that Dick wouldn't be sacrificed was even greater than the realization, like a sickle in Tim's gut, that it wouldn't be asked of him, either.
"So." Jason nudges Tim's side. “I think we all know the answer here, but I'm going to go through the formalities of asking you anyway.”
“Yes.”
Jason waggles a finger in Tim's line of sight. “Ah, ah. Wait until I ask, duckling. I'd give you this song and dance about what Batman needs, but one can only wallow in so much cliché down here.” He grows quieter, almost looking serious. “Whaddaya say, little bro? Be my wingman?”
Batman does need, and it isn't in Tim anymore to deny that. It's all he has.
Jason doesn't need to wait for an answer; he smiles almost affectionately, tweaks Tim's ear and wisely sidesteps away, jamming his hands in his pockets as he heads for the lockers. It's only the first time that Tim will follow in his wake.
no subject
All the light has left Dick's face, and Tim has found no contingency plan on the computer that could comfort him.
See, in between when you're knocking me over with the big stuff, the emotional nuances (THEY MAY BE NUANCES BUT THEY COUNT AS "BIG" since they're what I read fic for and the first things I notice and think to comment on, always) and the awesomely funny absurdities and the killer dialogue, you slip in smaller presents like this and I just lose it. LOL CONTINGENCY PLAN TO FIX MOURNING!DICK, YOU WOULD SINCERELY SCOUR THE COMPUTER FOR THAT, WOULDN'T YOU HONEY. :'(
And speaking of the big stuff I read fic for, I get to this part:
From time to time, Tim gets the uncharacteristic urge to punch Jason when he's around, to reject him in the only language Jason seems to take to heart. Jason, for his part, probably wants Tim to take a swing, which is why he's managed to restrain himself for now. Jason's crowding of Tim, his leg and side wedged up between the console and Tim's thigh, is annoyingly deliberate. Everything with Jason is.
"The choice baffles me, yes." It's been five days and Tim hasn't found a single sign of anything to refute the letter and the files. A snapped blade and a few mea culpas and suddenly they were expected to slay the fatted calf and let Jason sleep down the hall, let him pop cornflakes into his mouth at breakfast while he tapped endearments in Morse across the wide polished table. And now this.
He would say that maybe Jason wasn't reacting appropriately to the situation, but Tim knows he isn't a desirable model when it comes to proper reactions to loss. He also knows that the muffled sobbing in the east wing the night before wasn't coming from Dick's room.
and I'm fluctuating from initial DELIGHT, oh I LOVE the way you write Tim-Jason, love love love it!, to just, pow, gutclenching heartbreak all in one simple sentence. Oh, Jason. ;__; So filled with bravado and Bruce-love and pain and :(((((((((((((
And then! Other amazing concepts and details are still to follow!
The repetition of "seventeen months, three weeks and six days" was brilliant, realizing what the significance of that time frame was, what it means to Tim and what it indicates about Jason, Jason and his mourning and his priorities and who and what his dramatic "killing criminals to save Gotham" methods were ever really about.
Then there's this:
"And face it, you're relieved because it isn't you. Though you're probably even more relieved that it isn't him.”
In the messy hours immediately after, Tim had thought of shielding Dick from that possibility, throwing himself on any evidence like an infantryman on a grenade. He was never the laughing golden boy, and he was never the punk with a tilt to his hips and a chip on his shoulder. Tim had always been willing to be collateral damage, had always steeled himself for it.
AHHHHHHH TIM ;___; This is my favorite kind of Tim -> Dick? All unhealthily self-sacrificing and singlemindedly devoted and *___* :(.
But instead of giving himself for Dick, he gets to give himself to Jason, which is...just a concept I love more than words can say? Seriously. You've already demonstrated what an awesomely fun dynamic they could have together, and the promise of more to come that that ending brings, of more DEVELOPING, oh god it's so satisfying. (even with the death and misery in the backdrop, haha) I would read novels upon novels upon 100-issue-runs set in this universe, I truly would.