"I think I might be immortal anyways," Tim jokes, a flippant remark flung like a dart to pop the bubble of tension. Because he is in a dead boy's clothes and the air reeks with grief and concern and fear, suffocating as cigarette smoke. Not for him, exactly, but for the idea of him, a boy who can die like any other.
He doesn't tell them about the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck at birth, or the car accident when he was three, or the unwatched pool he had dragged himself out of when he was six. Because those were good fortune, surely, but not relevant, and his only point is to needle Dick until he huffs a laugh and his shoulders ease.
"I'm practically immortal," Tim says, and it's a joke again, but one that's less effective when pushed by a slurred tongue and swollen lips from a hospital bed. It's meant to comfort, to dull the sharp edge of fear that keeps slicing at them again and again. It's meant to minimize, to make the attack less than it was. To crush him less than it did.
After all, if he were immortal, it didn't matter what Jason had intended.
"I'm baaaaaasically immortal," Tim drawls, laziness masking deadened apathy. He is fatherless, familyless, friendless, backupless, Robinless, and now spleenless. He is too mono-focused to care, or so he tells himself. Not that it matters. He is alive, for whatever reason, which means he can continue his mission.
He misses the way Ra's eyes glitter.
"I think I'm immortal," Tim whispers, and for the first time, it's not a joke. He is sitting in the rubble of catastrophe, his skin coated with ash, and he lives. He doesn't know how he feels, other than grateful to be alive. He thinks he might be relieved, but the disbelief and shock is as thick on his tongue as the ash.
But maybe he feels happy, to be lucky for once. Because what is immortality but the ultimate good fortune?
"I'm immortal!" Tim crows, throwing himself after the villain of the week.
"I'm immortal," Tim taunts, toe to toe with rage and hate, knowing that though they can hurt him, they cannot best him, and he so loves to win.
"I'm immortal, I'm going to live forever," Tim sighs, at ease, unbothered by deadlines or due dates or time itself.
Tim is kneeling in the dirt, mud and grass staining his dress pants. His eyes are as empty as his voice, echoing with all they do not have. He doesn't look at the others, only at the grave. It is not the first grave they've gathered around. It is the first one to stick. He knows this, feels it in his bones. That is a grave that will not be unearthed.
The grave is full and his heart is empty and he knows it is only the first.
He has spent his life fearing being forgotten, being left behind. Even the warmth and security of true family, this crazy, wonderful group of people he managed to collect around himself, wasn't enough to dismiss the fear, only to muffle it.
But now he looks from the grave to those gathered around him, tears still wet on their cheeks, and sees them as the dead walking that they are.
And he knows his curse for what it is.
"I'm going to live forever."
