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Tim nearly runs into Steph when she skids to an abrupt stop.
“What is it?” he pants, resting his hands on his knees.
He heaves a panting breath and one hand snakes around his abdomen to press against a painful stitch in his side.
“Jesus, I envy that guy’s stamina,” he pants.
When Steph doesn’t answer, he looks up only to see that she’s no longer standing in front of him. He looks around, finally taking in the location their guy led them to. It looks to be a run-down restaurant that smells strongly of fish and plaster.
He blinks slowly, grabbing the back of a chair for balance.
“He led us to a restaurant?” Tim asks.
He looks around for Steph and almost misses her entering the kitchen silently. Pursing his lips, Tim follows. He keeps a suspicious eye out, gazing at the dark restaurant, the lumpy shapes of tables and chairs, and the bar-- the perfect place for anyone to hide and get the jump on them.
Upon entering the kitchen, Tim’s eyes immediately land on the door of the walk-in freezer.
It’s slightly ajar-- definitely not enough to be noticeable, but impossible to miss for them.
He meets Steph’s eyes, who is also eyeing the freezer cautiously.
“Are you sure he went here?” Tim whispers.
She shakes her head. “Just saw him enter through the backdoor.”
Tim presses his lips together, his hackles raised. He looks back at the kitchen door.
“Trap?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” Steph confirms, pulling the freezer open just a crack and slipping inside.
Tim doesn’t follow. He stands on the threshold, keeping his eyes carefully on the door. Despite the cool temperature coming from the freezer, he’s still sweating under his suit. He’s still struggling to catch his breath which is annoying. He hates pneumonia even more than having no spleen.
Tim takes a second to tear his eyes from the door to seek out Steph.
He couldn’t have been looking away for more than two, maybe three seconds. It’s all it took. He hears the kitchen door bang open and feels two large hands shove him inside the freezer.
He lands heavily on the cold ground and everything slows to a crawl. He twists around in time to see the murderer they’ve been chasing grin down at him before he slams the freezer door shut. Tim hears the damning sound of the heavy lock turning and footsteps walking away.
A second later, Steph is there and hoisting him to his feet. The world speeds back up again and Tim surges forward, slamming into the heavy door.
The shock reverberates through his body and the door doesn’t budge an inch.
“Dammit!” he yells, slamming his fist into the door.
Beside him, Steph’s expression is carefully neutral, only betrayed by the crease between her eyebrows.
Tim bangs his fist against the door again before giving up and giving one last furious kick at the door. Steph’s silence somehow makes things worse.
Tim clenches his shaking hands into fists and stalks away, mind working furiously.
Tremors shake his body and it takes him far too long to realize it’s because of the chill that’s already settled over him like a wet blanket.
“We need to get out of here,” he says, spinning around to face Steph.
She’s one step ahead of him and already trying to pick the lock with the lockpicks Bruce insists they always carry on them.
She snorts. “What do you think I’m doing? Try comming Oracle.”
Tim presses the earpiece and hears only static. He curses under his breath.
“Nothing. Yours?”
Tim rejoins Steph at the door of the freezer and notices that her body is also wracked with minute tremors. His lips twist along with the guilt. They can’t stay here.
Steph shakes her head. “No, mine broke earlier when the asshole threw me into that brick wall.”
Tim wrinkles his nose. He was planning on poking fun at her for this once they caught the guy and returned to the Batcave. Now though, he doesn’t think he’ll be doing that anytime soon.
Steph goes back to trying to pick the lock and Tim lingers a few moments before shuffling to the side.
“I’ll try to see if I can see what’s wrong with my comm,” he says, frowning. “It shouldn’t be malfunctioning.”
Steph looks over at him, the perturbed expression on her face reflecting Tim’s own feelings about this. They’re missing something.
He scowls. He doesn’t like not being in control of a situation. He doesn’t like how easily control slipped from his grasp. He’s to blame and he knows Steph finds him partially at fault, too. And from her tense silence, it’s clear she’s not inclined towards offering comfort at the moment. Her presence comforts Tim, who knows he would be freaking out if he were stuck here alone.
The comm is completely fine when Tim inspects it. It should be working perfectly well. As far as Tim’s aware, the freezer isn’t below ground and unless there’s something else interfering with electronic devices, he should be able to get through.
But he’s not.
He can’t contact Oracle or Batman or Nightwing using an almost brand new comm capable of transmitting from a goddamn underground bunker.
And if Tim’s comm isn’t working, there’s a good chance that whatever’s interfering with it is also interfering with the trackers in their suits.
Control of the situation is quickly slipping through Tim’s fingers like sand and he’s barely grasping at straws.
It’s the middle of June and neither Tim nor Steph are wearing their winter suits, equipped with insulating materials. Sure their current suits can regulate body temperature-- it turns out that they all do regularly take unwanted dips in the Gotham Harbor, leading to far too many colds. Their suits will help them survive just slightly longer. It would do hardly anything to stop the aching cold from settling in their bones and slowing them down.
Tim gives up on trying to tweak his comm in a pathetic attempt at getting it to work and instead gets up. He’s antsy. He needs to do something.
“Any luck?” he shouts to Steph, walking the perimeter of the freezer, trying to find anything to escape through.
“No,” she snaps back, tools clattering. “Stupid door won’t even fucking budge.”
Tim winces in sympathy and runs his fingers along a vent near the back. It’s too small for him to squeeze through. Still, it occupies his panicking mind, unscrewing it and inspecting the inside.
It’s just slightly too tall for him, so he overturns a crate of frozen vegetables and stands on it.
The vent offers nothing useful and Tim feels just about ready to scream.
This is his fault. He took his eyes off the guy for maybe five seconds and it was still enough for him to get the jump on them and trap them here. The guilt he’s been ignoring is gnawing at his insides alongside the heavy chill.
He coughs harshly into the crook of his elbow and slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the ground.
Steph makes her way over, expression shuttered and stormy, and sits down next to him.
She doesn’t meet Tim’s eyes.
He thinks her silence is better than her wrath.
They sit like this for a while, both of them shivering but neither offering the other to share body heat just yet. The thick silence is only broken by the wheeze of the freezer. Tim’s nose is already numb and his fingers are starting to lose feeling.
“Something’s jamming the comms,” Tim says, breaking the silence. “I’m gonna assume it’s also jamming our tracking signals.”
“Do you think something else is going on here?” Steph asked, voice low, eyes trained firmly on the ground between her outstretched legs.
“Yeah,” Tim says. “Which means we’re definitely screwed.”
They lapse into silence again, both of them ruminating on Tim’s words.
There’s no way this restaurant isn’t a front for something. Any other day, Tim would burn with the curiosity of finding out just what that something is, but he’s tired and cold and numb and he just wants his bed at the Manor and Alfred’s cookies.
“The others know we were chasing a potential murderer,” Steph says quietly, startling Tim nonetheless. “Even if our trackers are jammed, O can track us to our last known location. After that, it’s just a matter of them searching the place until they come upon this--” she waves an irritated hand in the direction of the thick door “--and get us out. We just have to wait.”
Tim knows just as well as her that the chance of them being found dead isn’t a slim one. He doesn’t doubt they’ll be found, he just doubts they’ll be found still breathing.
A sudden thought makes him snort and Steph casts him a bemused if slightly irritated look.
“Schrödinger’s Robins,” he replies.
Steph looks away, but he doesn’t miss the smile she tries to hide.
A harsh shudder shakes her body and Tim takes that as his invitation to slide closer to her until their shoulders are pressing together. He unclasps his cape and wraps it around them like a makeshift blanket. If he tries hard enough, he can even pretend they’re sitting in his room at the Manor watching dumb sitcoms together.
Tim coughs again and rests his head on her shoulder. Loose blond curls tickle his nose and cheeks.
“It’s just so fucking great that I’m stuck in a walk-in freezer that may or may not be a front for some underground operation literally one day after Bruce and Alf let me patrol again,” he grumbles, because his other option is to consider the fact that they might freeze to death before being found.
Steph snorts. “It’s just your shitty luck.”
Tim wrinkles his nose. “I am God’s favorite court jester.”
At this, Steph does laugh and Tim feels a sense of triumph. It doesn’t last long and they’re lapsing right back into silence. It’s broken by the steady humming wheeze of the ventilation system that’s slowly killing them.
The cold is still just barely bearable. Oddly enough, it reminds Tim of that time years ago when a blizzard overtook Gotham in the middle of December and the power got cut in Drake Manor. Tim spent the night wrapped in every single blanket in the house. Despite that and wearing his thickest jacket and four scarves, he still shivered all throughout the night and well into the next afternoon when the power came back on.
He’s shivering now, though not quite as badly as he did then. He’s sure he’s not far from it.
Steph seems to be handling it better than Tim, but that’s probably because he was the one who got dunked into Gotham Harbor and got pneumonia.
“I just know Alfred will take this as an opportunity to bench me for another two weeks,” he gripes.
He knows he’s complaining about the same thing, but his thoughts are slugging through molasses and Steph doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she lets out another huff. Tim can’t see her face unless he angles his head up, but he can hear her smile and counts it as another small victory.
In the silence, they both grow colder, and Tim can feel both of them resigning themselves to their fate like it’s a physical thing, pressing down on their shoulders. Another added weight. When the ventilation cuts off, the silence it leaves behind is deafening. It’s buzzing. It fills Tim’s head with static.
“On the bright side,” Steph says slowly, her tone sounding anything but bright, “we won’t be starving to death.”
Tim wrinkled his nose. “Please don’t remind me of the fish smell.”
Steph didn’t laugh. Instead, she straightened, as if shocked with electricity. She turned a wide-eyed gaze on Tim.
“We could run out of oxygen before we even get to freeze to death,” she says in a strangled voice.
Her words freeze Tim. It’s as if Steph bringing awareness to it made it even more real, because Tim could’ve sworn the air felt a little thinner. His already strenuous hold on the hope of being rescued in time wavers.
“At least that means I won’t have to attend any more conferences,” Tim replies, hoping his voice doesn’t tremble too noticeably. “I am one badly veiled insult away from becoming a supervillain.”
Steph’s smile is brittle, and too fake, but she’s willing to play along with Tim’s charade, which is enough. “No more essays to write or exams to study for, I could get used to that.” Then, she grins. “If I die again, that means I’ll have died more times than Jason. I’ll hold that over his head forever.”
Tim groans and buries his face in his knees and pretends his heart didn’t twist at the sudden reminder of Steph’s death.
His fingertips and toes have gone completely numb and he can hardly bend his stiff digits. His face is also mostly numb, making talking a challenge and a half. He wonders how long it’ll take until he’s too exhausted and cold to even muster the energy to talk.
Beside him, Steph is also shivering harshly and sniffling just as pathetically as him. She wipes her runny nose with the edge of her own cape and gives Tim a dirty look.
“For the record, I am going to fully blame you for this if we make it out alive.”
Tim groans again, wishing for nothing more than to be stuck here with literally anyone else.
“If,” Tim replies, coughing again. “Loving the vote of confidence.”
If she had the strength, he knows she’d punch him in the arm. He knows it would bruise. As it is, she just gives him a half-hearted glare through bleary eyes. Emoting sounds like an impossible mountain to climb over. Even talking tires Tim out and leaves him breathless. This is-- so, so very bad.
The silence drapes over them, stifling and tense. Tim looks at the metal rows stacked with frozen foods. How long would it take to be found, he wondered. How long after they’d frozen to death? Too long. The silence buzzes in his ears until he can’t stand it.
“What if we die here?” he blurts out, smothering the tidal wave of panic clogging up his throat.
Steph looks over at him, startled into a sudden alertness that doesn’t last. Her lips are already turning a faint purple.
“We won’t,” she says.
She dissolves into a harsh rattling coughing fit that shakes her entire frame and leaves her panting harshly. Tim’s brain is slow, and only seems to go slower the more the minutes drag on, and he can do nothing but keep a comforting hand rubbing circles on her back.
“I’m gonna get o-one hell of a cold from this,” she complains, gasping for breath. “I h-hate colds.”
Tim hums, too tired to verbally reply.
When Steph catches her breath and sits upright again, he wastes no time and lets his head drop on her shoulder again.
“We used t-to do this,” he almost whispers, “w-when we watched New Girl.” He lets out a breathless laugh. “I l-love that show.”
It struck him suddenly that he should probably specify that he’s talking about cuddling together under a blanket and not freezing to death in a freezer. He doesn’t have the energy to say anything and closes his eyes instead.
Tim doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he does remember startling upright before his body slides off Steph’s. He blinks the dregs of sleep out of his stinging eyes. He’s still shivering and it takes him far too long to remember where he is. And that he’s there with Steph.
When Tim startled awake, she was also roused.
He meets her glazed blue eyes. “D-don’t f-fall asleep.”
She blinks slowly in response. She’s shivering just as harshly as Tim and her lips are blue, her face white as a sheet. He probably doesn’t look much better. They’re matching, he thinks deliriously.
He almost flinches when he feels Steph’s weak arms pulling him back towards her. The warmth her body offers is almost nonexistent. The capes have long stopped protecting them from the cold. They just snuggle closer to each other and listen to each other breathing.
Steph was right. Tim can feel the oxygen thinning, making him slightly lightheaded. His hand blindly searches for hers and he links their hands together. It brings him more comfort than warmth, but that is enough.
“I-if I die,” Steph grits out through chattering teeth, curling tighter into herself. “M-make sure m-my coffin is hot pink, ‘kay?”
It’s enough to startle a rattling laugh out of Tim. “You’re not gonna die.”
“Look me in the eyes and say that again.”
Tim can’t, so he doesn’t.
“They’ll find us,” he says, hoping he sounds more convinced than he feels.
“No, they won’t.”
Tim feels his heart drop down to his stomach. Since when is he the one who has to be uplifting in dire situations?
“Y-yes they will,” he snaps. It probably loses some of its effects due to the way his voice shakes.
Steph doesn’t reply. Turning his head is a herculean effort. The panic and burst of adrenaline when he sees that Steph’s eyes are closed and her face completely lax gives him the strength to shake her until she blinks awake.
“Hm?” she mumbles. “Lemme s-sleep.”
“No,” Tim snaps, shaking from more than the biting cold. “No. Don’t sleep.”
The edge of panic in his voice is enough to wake her a bit more. “Sorry,” she mumbles, sagging in his grip.
He’s still shaking when he finally allows himself to take his eyes off her and cuddle up to her again. He can’t get her face out of his mind. She looked like a corpse, completely drained of life. It’s an ugly reminder of how close they are to death, and how much closer they’re getting the longer they go unfound.
His chest goes tight and he finds himself blinking back tears.
“If--” Tim lets out a harsh shiver, curls in further into him, pressing against Steph. “If we d-die here. I don’t m-mind dying with you.”
Steph doesn’t reply for a long time. Long enough that Tim starts panicking, thinking she passed out again. Or maybe he never actually spoke the words.
Then, “i-if this is a confession of l-love,” she mumbles-- and the relief is just staggering --, “t-then sorry, but y-you’re like, waaaay too late.”
He thinks the hoarse breath she lets out is a laugh. A frozen sigh slips past his numb lips.
“It’s n-not. At least n-not that way.”
He just needs her to know that he loves her, and hasn’t once stopped. Not the same way he used to. Tim’s eyes droop and his breathing becomes shallower as his lungs consume what little remains of the oxygen.
Steph is the one taking his hand in hers this time. His are so cold he’s surprised he even feels the touch of hers.
“I love you too, idiot,” she murmurs, her breath tickling his skin.
Tim blinks as someone shakes him vigorously. He groans, his body aching and a warm tingling in his fingers and toes.
“Stop,” he mumbles. “Stop. stop--”
“Oh my God, Tim,” a voice speaks. “Oh, thank God.”
He whimpers, the warmth turning to burning. “M’ke it stop,” he whimpers. “Please.”
“Tim, you’re hypothermic,” another voice-- or maybe the same voice?-- speaks.
“We need to keep you warm, okay? You’ll be fine. You’ll be just fine.”
Tim is not fine. He isn’t. He’s in blinding pain. He might be crying. It just hurts so much.
“Please,” he sobs.
It’s pathetic. He’s dying. He’s dead. It hurts. He can’t open his eyes. He is blinded and alone and dead.
“Please, stop. Stop. Stop.”
It doesn’t stop. It’s like broken glass is traveling through his veins, followed by an intense burning pain. It lights every nerve on fire.
“We’re almost there, Tim.” The voice is soft and gentle, but Tim hates it.
“Let me die,” he sobs, his voice hoarse. Is he screaming? No, he’s dying. “Please.”
He hears a choked-off noise and the voice says something, though Tim doesn’t hear it. He’s pulled back under, the pain winking away along with his consciousness.
Tim wakes up, which catches him off-guard.
He blinks and groans when he finds himself staring at the brightest light he’s ever seen. He blinks again and finds that he can’t feel anything. His consciousness is just floating along like a helium balloon, higher and higher, untethered.
Then, hands and a face appear in his field of vision, blocking out the bright light.
The hands are warm and the face kind, and Tim wants to cry because he didn’t get to say goodbye to his family. He never got to apologize.
When Tim blinks (blinks? dead people don’t blink) the blurriness away, the face staring at him is familiar. It’s Bruce. He’s speaking, but Tim can’t hear.
He blinks again and wants to smile (Tim is dead, he has no mouth to smile with, no eyes to blink with).
And suddenly, it’s like someone popped his balloon. He’s falling, the feeling making his stomach swoop. He’s back under before he can feel his non-existent body hit the ground.
When Tim finally wakes up, the first thing he becomes aware of is the weight pressing down on his legs.
He blinks up at a white ceiling, slowly becoming aware of the aches and pains in his body. He groans when he tries to sit up and is immediately hit with a dizzy spell.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, tongue sitting heavy and awkward in his mouth. “I hate this.”
He blinks and looks up. It’s a testament to how tired he must be because seeing one Damian Wayne asleep on Tim’s bed, sketchbook open, only elicits mild surprise.
Not even five seconds later, Damian stirs and sits up. He looks at Tim for a few seconds and his lips twitch like he’s about to smile. Tim wonders if hallucinations are a side effect of hypothermia.
“You’re finally awake.”
Tim’s too tired to snap back and instead leans back on his bed with a groan when his back cracks.
“Where’s Steph?” he asks instead, his voice hoarse, like he screamed himself raw.
Damian’s face remains blank. “Still asleep.”
Tim feels irritated, and can’t place the reason why. He’s just tired and cranky. And hungry. He’d kill for pizza right about now.
“Why are you in my room?”
Damian calmly shuts his sketchbook. “I was worried.”
This catches Tim off-guard. Damian gets up.
“I will get Father and Richard,” he tells him. “They’ll be glad to see you awake.”
Tim can only blink at Damian, who leaves without expecting a reply in return. Damian was worried about Tim. There’s no way he’s in the right reality.
Not even a minute later, Dick comes barreling into the room. Tim’s fairly sure the only thing keeping Dick from tackling him into a crushing hug is the fact that Tim’s recovering from a near-death experience. And maybe also because Dick’s left arm is in a sling, though that’s never stopped him in the past.
“I’m so glad you’re awake,” Dick says, the bed dipping when he sits. “We were all worried.”
Tim frowns. “Pretty sure I’m just as glad as you are that I’m not dead.”
He tries to laugh, but the expression on Dick’s face stops him.
He swallows and changes the subject. “So. Where’s Bruce?”
“With Steph. She woke up half an hour ago.”
Tim perks up at that. “Can I see her?”
Dick snorts. “No. You’re not getting out of bed ‘til Alfred says you can.”
Tim sighs and bangs his head against the headboard. “Goddammit. And I just got cleared to patrol, too,” he laments.
Dick laughs, but it sounds forced. They slip into a tense silence only broken by the door opening to reveal Cass, smiling like Tim and Steph didn’t just very nearly freeze to death. She’s wearing Steph’s Gotham U sweatshirt, a knitted sweater draped over one arm, and a steaming mug in the other hand.
“You worried us,” she says, sauntering up to Tim.
She hands him the sweater.
“Sorry,” Tim says. “My fault.”
Cass shakes her head at the same time Dick says, “no, it’s not.”
Tim scoffs as he slips the sweater over his head slowly to avoid another dizzy spell. “Yeah, it is. I dropped my guard and our guy not only got away, but managed to lock both me and Steph in that freezer. If we’d died, it would’ve been my fault.”
Dick purses his lips and Cass narrows her eyes at him.
Unprompted, she forces the mug into Tim’s hands, then nudges him over and slides into the bed.
“It’s okay to make mistakes,” she says, wrapping herself around Tim.
Her hair was braided into two French braids-- likely by Steph, who liked to braid hair when she was bored. Loose strands tickled his chin.
“Steph doesn’t blame you, Tim,” Dick says softly, his blue eyes just as soft. “And we don’t, either. The guy’s caught, and you’re safe and alive.”
Tim nods, blinks, then processes Dick’s words.
“He was caught?”
“He was,” Bruce’s deep voice says from the doorway, startling Tim. He didn’t hear the man enter. “Turns out the woman he murdered owed him money. The restaurant you chased him to was a front for a drug operation and he was a dealer.”
Tim’s eyebrows creep up higher and higher. “So my theory was right,” he muses. “About the restaurant being a front. There was a signal jamming my comm and Steph and I agreed something wasn’t adding up.”
Cass and Dick exchange a look and Bruce seems lost in thought. Tim didn’t let himself think about it too much. His head hurt and his joints ached, and he could still feel the phantom fingers of icy numbness. Instead, he leans into Cass’s side, fighting off another wave of exhaustion.
She smells like the coconut shampoo she always uses. Wordlessly, he hands her his untouched mug as he feels his eyes drooping and his grip loosening. Dick and Bruce are having a quiet conversation, but Tim, for once, doesn’t pay them any mind. He relaxes against Cass and falls asleep easily.