Chapter Text
The chase was hardly a chase.
It was a hunt.
Tim ran through his house, desperate to use his familiarity with it as an asset, but he kept running into blocks.
His parents’ hallway.
A warning screamed that he wasn’t allowed in there and he was forced to sharply change directions.
His father’s study.
He had only been in there once and then was promptly banned from it.
He scrambled up the stairs and Jason laughed behind him.
“Where are you going, Replacement?” he taunted after Tim, his grin was so wide it almost split his face. His footfalls stomped up the stairs, each one loud and menacing as he closed onto Tim.
Tim’s panicking breath was making his pulse-pound roar in his ears.
“Don’t you want to meet the Robin that came before you?”
He did or at least he had thought he did before the Robin came back from the dead to murder him.
Tim turned, searching for an exit, but he knew that this wing went into a dead end. He was running out of places to run.
Then, suddenly a shot burst through the house, and Tim jolted to the side, jerking away and collapsing onto the ground.
There was a bullet hole where his foot had been moments ago. His broken shoulder screamed and he could hardly think through the warning signals blaring in his head. They were a cacophony of sounds, disorienting him and forcing him to scramble to get his bearings.
He dismissed them, but not quickly enough to stop Jason from stalking forward.
“The little birdie has a hurt wing, huh?” Jason sneered, his unnaturally green eyes flashing in the darkness. He raised a leg and put it on Tim’s hurt shoulder.
And then he pushed down.
Tim screamed as Jason dug into his hurt shoulder, making agony flare through all of his nervous wires and scream warnings through his head. He could feel the metal of his skeleton scraping against each other and the sick crunch as it warped under Jason’s foot.
“Sing, little birdie,” Jason purred, his eyes flashing like green lightning. They were still too bright than Tim thought was humanly possible. He put more pressure on Tim’s shoulder and forced a wet whimper from Tim’s throat. “Sing.”
Warning signals flashed behind Tim’s eyes again bringing the jarring racket return to his head. Alarms screamed through him, rattling his brain and shaking his metal skeleton. He had a little indicator that his shoulder’s skeletal metal was close to snapping. If it snapped the entire joint would be useless and he would need hardware replacements.
Hardware replacements that Tim didn’t have the money or ability to obtain. But the thought of losing control of his arm terrified him.
Tim gritted his teeth and writhed in Jason’s grip, desperate to release some of the pressure on his shoulder.
The larger man was like a boulder though, a constant, suffocating weight that Tim couldn’t dislodge. He didn’t need breath, but for some reason the feeling of something heavy pressing him down and pushing his head under made him panic.
It reminded him of the dark.
It reminded him of sensory deprivation washing over him and writhing uselessly against it.
He could move his limbs now and at least be able to fight a little bit, but fighting against Jason seemed just as futile as fighting against the dark.
With every struggle, Jason just seemed to grin more, his smile as sharp as a knife.
“Poor little broken bird,” Jason hummed, and he released his foot.
Within a second, though, he crouched down and dug into it with his hand. Tim whimpered again and tears prickled at the corners of his eyes from the new agony.
“Don’t worry. I’m almost done,” Jason whispered with fake care. He traced a finger along Tim’s jaw in sinister affection, and the touch burned across Tim’s face.
Jason pulled his hand away and Tim felt relief build, only to shatter when he realised Jason was drawing a knife from his hip holster. “But I bet I can get a few more songs out of you.”
He brought the knife forward and pressed it to Tim’s skin. The sensors embedded into it flared up at the whisper of the blade, the cool feeling of metal against artificially warmed carbon-fiber knit. The knife wouldn’t cut through Tim the same way that it would cut through flesh, but it could still sever cords, wires, and his fluid tubing.
Tim some part of him wondered if would hurt more or less than a knife going through organic muscles.
He stared down the blade of the knife as an ice-cold terror washed through his organs.
He had already been sentenced to be shut down. He already knew that he was supposed to… to… die, but he thought he would have more time.
The two weeks he had been given were already so little time; he couldn’t imagine it shortened further.
He desperately wanted to have more time.
The thought was almost as shocking as the knife being brought to his throat.
He didn’t want to die.
“Let’s get started, Tim,” Jason whispered, and his fingers tensed around the hilt, knuckles white as bone.
Tim sucked in a breath, and jerked as much as he could, flailing and writhing like a wild thing.
He felt the older boy dislodge and he heard Jason’s curse. He felt the swish of air as the knife came down.
Then, a thump and metallic screech of metal digging into metal.
It was quiet but also so loud that it echoed through Tim’s head.
There was no pain though. No warning signs that told him that he had a hole through his electronic systems. No indication of a flaw in his integrity.
“Fuck,” Jason growled and Tim watched as the man lifted a hand, knife still stuck into it. He pulled it out with a hiss and instead of ragged, wet flesh, there was an unnaturally clean hole.
It was too perfect for an organic wound.
“Shit. Fuck.” Jason hissed, prodding at the hole and making blue fluid drip sluggishly from it. Tim could see a slight spark as torn wires tried to make an electrical connection. Three of Jason’s fingers just hung, limp and dead.
“Well, that’s fucking perfect,” Jason grumbled, shaking the hand. Only his pinkie finger and thumb seemed to be responding.
“You’re a Copy,” Tim whispered from under him, still in shock and coming down from the high of almost being shot.
Jason gave him a venomous look.
“I am Jason Todd,” he snapped, his eyes looking slightly less green and more startled. “It doesn’t matter what my body is made of.”
“But you’re not Jason Todd,” Tim said, relief flooding through him. His worldview, which had all been rocked and tipped on its head, slotted back into place. Finally, something made sense.
Jason froze over him, his gaze suddenly deadlier.
“Yes, I am,” the Copy insisted, its face skewing.
Tim smiled and the other Copy’s frown deepened. “Nope,” Tim chirped. “You’re just a Copy of him. You’re not a real human.”
“Yes, I am,” Jason snarled, the sound wild and desperate. “I am Jason Todd. You will not reduce me to a hunk of metal.”
Tim shook his head because Jason had it all wrong. “But that’s what we are. Just metal. Just Copies. Not real.” Tim sighed, falling back on his familiar programming. It felt like coming home (a laughable metaphor considering his home had decided he was going to die). “We are Copies of real people. Nothing more.”
Jason was still over Tim, his gaze scathing and calculating.
“What do you mean ‘we’?” He asked, and Tim shrugged. He pulled up the bottom of his shirt, exposed the barcode on his hip. The Copymark was starkly black against his pale faux flesh.
“I’m a Copy too.”
Jason blinked.
There was silence between them.
And then, Jason’s face broke, shattering to pieces. Tim hadn’t even known that a Copy’s face was capable of such an expression.
“He… he killed another Robin?” Jason whispered and Tim tilted his head in confusion. Jason wasn’t looking at him exactly… more like he was looking through him and seeing something unseen. The older boy finally got off of him, sitting heavily beside Tim.
It was like his entire demeanor had changed like some invisible switch had been flipped.
Tim slowly sat up, wary about the sudden change of attitude.
Jason looked lost and deflated, only a shadow of the man that had been in Tim’s kitchen.
No, a shadow wasn’t the right word.
The Copy seemed more haunted.
Tim watched as the other Copy mumbled something and carded a hand through its hair. It was an anxious gesture and made it look so much younger than it had moments ago.
“He let another one die?”
Tim cocked his head to the side. “What?”
“He… he… he killed you too?”
Jason met his eyes and Tim didn’t speak. The other Copy was crumbling in front of him.
“I wasn’t the last. I was supposed to be the last one.”
Tim slowly leaned forward and in an act of both stupidity and bravery, awkwardly touched Jason’s knee.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he said, and Jason gave a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“I was supposed to be the last one,” it repeated, voice starting to lose its integrity. It giggled and the sound wasn’t happy at all.
Then, suddenly, it laughed, wild, sad, and ragged-edged. The noise was both wicked and desolate and made Tim flinch back, drawing his hand like Jason had burned him through the sound alone.
“I was supposed to be the last one!” Jason yelled and the words echoed through Drake Manor. It became warped into something more strange and discomfiting.
Tim drew away more but couldn’t tear his eyes off of the Copy breaking down in front of him.
As suddenly as the laugh, Jason collapsed, heading falling into his hands.
“Why wasn’t I the last one?”
Tim didn’t know if he was crying. He was as still and silent as a grave.
Abruptly, his head snapped up and eyes locked onto Tim.
“I’m sorry,” the Copy whispered, his expression was unreadable. “There weren’t supposed to be any more dead Robins.”
He stood, and his knife clattered to the floor. He kicked it away with a growl.
“There weren’t supposed to be any more dead Robins,” he yelled. “You hear that Bruce!”
He screamed like he was in the Wayne Manor instead of the Drake Manor.
“There wasn’t supposed to be anymore!”
Tim blinked.
“There wasn’t anymore, though,” Tim said, his voice almost too quiet to hear. The words made Jason’s attention snap onto him suddenly, though.
Tim cursed himself for speaking up and drawing Jason’s focus back onto it instead of taking the opportunity to escape. He felt like an injured mouse that had just bopped a distracted cat on the nose.
Jason’s poisonous gaze burned into him and fixed him to the spot.
“Speak,” he commanded and Tim’s words fell out of his mouth like water.
“Dead Robins. You said that there wasn’t supposed to be any more dead Robins, and there hasn’t been! No one else has died after you.”
Jason tilted his head slightly and it abruptly reminded Tim of Dick.
“Explain.”
“Explain what? I’m a Copy. I’m not real. What’s there to explain?”
Jason shook his head and the white streak in his hair bobbed.
“Copies don’t just pop into existence, kid,” Jason said through a huff. “They are made when a kid dies. So tell me… what killed you? What didn’t Bruce save you from?”
Tim mirrored Jason’s tilted head.
He didn’t remember what killed Timothy because he had never died. Timothy died. Tim was made after. He had no reason to remember Timothy’s death.
Tim was made with Timothy’s neural network. Not his memories. That was how Copies were made.
“I don’t know,” Tim said, because that was obvious wasn’t it.
“How do you not know?” Jason questioned, for once sounding like a teenager. He would only be nineteen, appearing three years old than Tim. “You can’t be telling me you forgot your own death? That shit’s kinda important you know.”
Tim frowned, narrowing his eyes. “I’m a Copy. You’re a Copy. We don’t have deaths.”
Jason blinked and looked at him like Tim had just told him that the sky was yellow.
“Yes, you do. We all do. Copies are made from–”
“Tim!” Miss Mac’s voice suddenly startled them both and filtered through the Manor. It sounded like it came from the front hall. “Tim! I brought you those cookies you like! The vanilla ones!”
Tim shared a look with Jason and slowly turned towards the door. He stumbled to his feet and wavered for a second before finding his footing.
“Okay, Miss Mac. I’ll be down in a minute,” he called, trying desperately to make himself sound normal.
He listened to Miss Mac go into the kitchen and crossed his arms in front of his thin chest. He had just managed to get his pulse-pound down to a normal rate.
“Jason… I don’t under–” he said as he turned back to the other Copy. He cut himself off, though.
Jason wasn’t there anymore.