Chapter Text
Tim knows that the moment the building started to lean, he wasn’t getting out of it. It sways above him, the sound of creaking metal all around him. A chorus of angels screaming his demise. The shadow chases him down the street, inescapable. He sprints, grapple launching in hope to pull him to freedom. It doesn’t.
He feels the slam of the building finally meeting the ground behind him, the cacophony of sound disorienting him, and the top of the building slams into the one next to it. Even more rubble begins to fall, and Tim flings himself sideways to dodge a particular piece of steel beam. He only registers the following concrete when it meets his temple. The world darkens.
Agony greets him when he wakes. The dust swirls in his throat, filling his lungs. His ears ring, and something wet is running down his temple. He was- something is on his chest, pinning him and his arms. It isn’t just dust, but a pressure and weight that takes his breath. He needs to open his eyes and assess.
Seconds pass as Tim wills his eyes open. He needs to see the damage. He needs to see. He’d like to say he wretches them open, but it was a slow battle. He gasps and coughs with effort.
Pitch black. There isn’t a light source anywhere. Not a beam of light, or a reflection. Just pure. Black. It finally hits him exactly where he is. Under the building. Under the skyscraper in the middle of the fashion district. Have both buildings fallen, or just the original? Were both buildings above him? He can’t see, and the ringing in his ears is still going strong. He needs to get out of here, but he can’t breathe. The weight on his chest feels like it's getting heavier, sharper.
But he isn’t trapped under here alone. He has a team again. It has been a few months since Bruce came back, but he is back. He can alert the team and get help, considering he can’t see, hear, or move. He also can’t really breathe. As much as he loathes it, he needs help.
He licks his lips and prays that his comm is still active. He opens his mouth to croak out the words, to beg for assistance, when a coughing fit overtakes him. It wracks his entire body, shifting the layer of dust that has begun to settle on him, and sends waves of pain through his chest. He tastes blood.
‘Okay, definitely some type of trauma to the chest, maybe my throat. Talking won’t be fun, but I gotta get B’s attention.’/ He takes a breath, maybe two, and tries again.
“B?” Tim croaks. Not loud enough, the comm won’t pick it up. Again. “...B, I need- need help.” Another cough, and more blood. “Tr-trapped under a building. Can’t -cough- can’t move.” He waits, and is met with only the ringing of silence and damaged ear drums.
A minute. “Batman?” He tries to lift his arm to check his comm, but pain dances in his chest and down to his fingers. He stifles a groan. “...Oracle?”
Nothing. He isn’t on the general channel, but he had made sure his line with Bruce was open in case of instructions changing. He should be able to speak directly into Bruce's comm if the line was on, but if his comm was damaged, neither end would receive anything. He has 2 different backups in his belt, but he can’t even move to get them. Okay, plan change.
His emergency beacon activation is on his comm, but his arms are trapped. He needs to figure out how to press the button. The beacon itself doesn’t need the comm to be active and in proper condition to work; Bruce had found that out the hard way when Jason had broken his comm in his early days. He can turn his head and try to pin the button to the ground.
Coughing a few more times, he takes a moment to try and take stock of himself and his surroundings. The blood on his head has spread enough to feel it on his neck and pooling around his head (head wounds always bleed a lot, so he shouldn’t let it concern him yet), his lungs are slowly getting worse, and his mouth constantly tastes like blood now. Not the best, but he’s not actively dying that he knows of, and that gives him time to attempt without panic.
He turns his head, and- oh. That was a bad idea. Even in the dark the world swims around him. Nausea takes him and holds tight for a minute, and bile mixes with the blood in his mouth. So the head wound might be more pressing than he originally ranked it. Phenomenal. He breathes through his mouth and waits for it to pass.
What he assumes is 30 seconds pass, and he tries again. Slower this time. The world still spins, but he manages to turn his head to the side instead of facing up. His comm is against the ground. Assuming the emergency button is where he thinks it is compared to the ground, he presses down. He regrets it.
The world whites out in hot agony, the head wound shooting to the top of his concerns list, breathing be damned. It feels like an ice-pick was shoved into where the ground presses against him. It takes a few seconds for him to come back to himself, but there is a distinct smell of vomit in the air now. Great.
There's a sound underneath the ringing in his ears. Someone is crying? Oh. He’s crying. It’s breathless and short, but there are sobs coming from him. Whatever is on his chest is keeping him from truly sobbing, but he feels like if it wasn’t there, he would be.
He has to try again, has to get the beacon to activate. His head swims, but he presses down to the cement. Slower this time, the world still screams and the air sours, but a flash of red light joins it. The symbol on his chest is flashing with a red light. His beacon is active. His family is going to come. He closes his eyes and lets himself cry.
It takes a few minutes to pull himself together, but Tim eventually slows in his tears and develops a plan. He has light now, albeit intermittent, but it’s there. He can get a look and his surroundings, and at himself. He just needs to open his eyes and look.
Even with a plan in place, it takes a few minutes before he can force his eyes open. It’s dark, but after a few seconds a flash of red fills the pocket of rubble. He gags.
What he assumed was a steel bar laying across his chest was actually two steel bars. One laying across his chest as assumed, and a steel bar plunged into his lower abdomen. Through him. Like a kebab. A Tim-kebab. If it was taken out or moved, he would most likely bleed to death. As it is, he might bleed to death. Another flash of light shows that the beam may have killed him, but it was also the only reason he wasn’t dead already.
Two giant slabs of what he’s assuming is concrete surround him, only held up by the beam through Tim’s chest. One seems to be crushing his foot, but he can’t feel it. The second steel beam across his chest keeps the slabs from crushing inwards and onto Tim, but refuses to let him take an actual deep breath. Combined with the sobbing and dust, it’s not ideal. Although, neither is the beam in his intestines.
It’s okay. Bruce is on his way, his beacon is active and Bruce isn’t going to ignore that. Even if they haven’t spoken since he pulled him out of the time stream, even if he’s not Robin anymore, Bruce won’t let him die. He just needs to wait him out. He waited years for his parents to come home, he can wait a few hours for Bruce to come save him.
As it turns out, Tim is much better at waiting when his only light source isn’t the flashing light of his emergency beacon. The air has finally settled and Tim isn’t actively causing himself pain to contact his team, so he should be feeling better, but the ache in his lungs is only worsening and he can feel himself losing blood faster than his body can scab over the wounds. It’s a losing battle, but Tim has won against worse odds before. It’s probably been long enough to find the building he’s trapped under, so he should be getting out within an hour or two.
Tim counts himself as a patient man. He’s waited in a house too big for him for literal years, he’s waited for Batman to come around to him as a Robin, He’s been patient as he researched and schemed and bled to get Bruce back home, but right now he could kill someone to speed things up.
The second building has to have come down, that’s the only way this could be taking so long. Bruce has the emergency beacons down to a science, and there’s no way he would ever let one of his team stay somewhere without contact and with an active emergency beacon this long without >some type of problem blocking him. He might not be the most important or active member of the team, but Batman is Batman. He has Tim’s location and knowledge that he’s in trouble, he has to have at least sent someone to come get him and made the proper plans to get him out. Yet he hears no movement, no voices, not even the ping of his emergency beacon signaling to someone that he’s over here and that they don’t need to keep searching.
He can feel the blood on his head staunching over time. His gut must have either stopped bleeding beyond the steel beam or never had access to bleed beyond it in the first place. It’s a blessing right now, but when they finally move it it will end up hurting him even more. He’s fighting off sleep and blood loss is making it a losing battle. His head hurts. He just wants to go home.
He wants Bruce.
It’s been over 10 hours. He can tell because his emergency beacon light died. The pocket-sized battery isn’t meant to last more than a few hours while he’s rescued, there’s no need to waste precious space taking up something that would never be necessary. He actively made it a point to downsize the battery life in his new suit since Bruce never took over 5 hours pulling someone out of rubble if he knew where they were. Apparently he’s the exception.
He’s always the exception.
His parents had to make sure they had everything in their house taken care of. Cleaners, inspectors, and general upkeep was always taken care of, but Tim had no nanny past the age of 8. Batman keeps people safe, but Tim was essentially beaten during his Robin training, no matter what Bruce says. Bruce adopts kids like they’re candy, but Tim’s parents have to die and Robin be threatened to even consider taking him in. Jason keeps kids safe and protects them from abusers, but 15-year-old Tim deserves to die because he tried to save Batman. Damian will never see him as family, even if everyone else has finally qualified. And Dick was the one who was supposed to protect Tim. He promised to protect him, and he gave Robin away. He- he promised!
Tim doesn’t realize he’s crying until he can’t catch his breath again. He’s hitching and sobbing and snotty, all because he thought about things he already knew. Tim Drake is a replacement, a pretender, and a fraud. He’s a little rich kid who thought he could play hero and now he’s dying under a building he couldn’t stop from collapsing. Some random thug hides bombs throughout the city and Red Robin fails to find and disarm them. Timothy Drake isn’t going to be rescued by Batman because Timothy Drake never qualified as family. His stupid little heart got ahead of him and now he’s dying because of it.
Maybe if he hadn’t depended on Bruce to come save him he would’ve been able to get out. But 10 hours later his body is cold and his lungs are empty, and he doesn’t even know if he should bother getting out at all. His mind is already fading in and out, and he knows if he goes to sleep he won’t wake up. He will drift away and never come home. Bruce will never bother to bring him home the way Tim brought him home.
They’ll probably bury him next to his mom and dad. Or leave him buried where he is, discovered weeks after while the city recovers and repairs. They’ll flood the papers with “Red Robin fails to save even himself,” and even Red Robin will be a disappointment. And Tim Drake won’t fade away, because he’s never been anything more than a placeholder. Bruce won’t need to go out and find another kid because Tim was never his.
Tim Drake closes his eyes underneath the rubble of a fallen building and sleeps.