#dead!reader

“Tim’s been talking to himself lately. Is that normal?” Damian asked one afternoon, his tone flat as ever, though there was a thin ribbon of curiosity curling through the question.

“Tim? Oh, he’s always been like that,” Dick answered with an easy shrug, the kind he gave when something felt too ordinary to bother explaining.

Jason’s head snapped around. “Always? What do you mean always?”

You caught their conversation as you passed through the room, only a fragment, but enough to make you hesitate mid-step. Something about the way they said Tim’s name, the way confusion shadowed their voices, left a faint pressure in your chest. You found him sitting alone in his dimly lit workspace, surrounded by glowing screens and half-finished notes, posture still but mind clearly far away.

“Timmy,” you called gently, stepping closer, “are you okay? Your brothers were talking about you… they said you’ve been talking to yourself. Some of them even joked that you might be going crazy.”

For a moment, Tim didn’t respond. He simply looked at you as if trying to decide whether your outline would blur if he blinked. His eyes lingered on every detail of your presence, sharp and searching, until finally a small, soft smile lifted the corner of his lips.

“They’re just joking,” he said, voice steady, composed. He knew everyone in this house too well to take their teasing seriously. And if anyone was the sane one here, the sanest, everyone agreed it was Tim.

But even Tim had one truth he could never untangle, the constant, unsettling way everyone acted as though you weren’t real.

He’d tried to reason through it. Maybe you were simply being ignored. Maybe everyone was too exhausted and misinterpreting things. Maybe stress was twisting the edges of his perception. But those explanations crumbled the more he observed how people behaved around you.

They never glanced in your direction not even by accident. They never shifted to make space when you walked past; they moved straight through the spot where you stood without breaking stride. No one held a door for you, no one paused when you spoke, no one responded to the subtle shifts in your expression the way people instinctively react to another living presence. As if.. you weren’t a person in the room.

You weren’t anything in the room.

There were nights when a cold thought brushed the back of his mind—hesitant, guilty, unwelcome. 'What if you were a ghost?' But that didn’t fit either. Ghosts didn’t smile in a way that warmed him down to his ribs. Ghosts didn’t leave the faint memory of heat on a chair after standing up. Ghosts didn’t finish their meals so neatly.

And that was the part that clung to him the hardest.

Every dinner, your plate was set among theirs, just as carefully as the rest. He watched you sit, quiet and composed, the soft scrape of your fork, the gentle way you held yourself. Sometimes you’d glance up, meeting his eyes with a small smile that felt so real it tightened something in his chest. Yet by the time he finished eating and looked again, your chair was always empty. Not just empty—untouched by the act of leaving, as if you had never been there.

Still, to Tim, you never felt unreal. Your voice carried weight; your footsteps had rhythm your presence pressed lightly against the world the way any living body would. You leaned on doorframes, tapped your fingers when restless, breathed in the same air he did. You weren’t an illusion. You were part of the house, woven into its noise and warmth as naturally as any of Bruce’s children. And Tim clung to that truth with a quiet, desperate certainty.

“Tim”

“Tim!”

Bruce’s voice broke through the fog deep, steady, grounding. A hand settled on Tim’s shoulder. Dick gave him a gentle shake.

“You’re spacing out,” Bruce murmured. “You should rest. You’ve been working too hard.”

Tim blinked, breath uneven, and instinctively glanced toward your seat. You were gone. The plate was clean.

But from the outside, from where everyone else stood, Tim had simply been staring at an empty chair, silent, distracted, lost in his own head. To them, he looked like he always did when he was overtired: zoning out, murmuring under his breath, maybe even talking to himself again… while his eyes lingered on nothing but a vacant seat.

“Where did Reader go?” Tim asked before the thought even finished forming.

The moment the words left him, he felt a faint jolt of embarrassment. It was a pointless question. You always slipped away quietly after dinner, disappearing into the hall before anyone noticed. He almost brushed it off.

But then he saw the way everyone else reacted.

Your name didn’t land the way it should have. It didn’t spark recognition or annoyance or even mild interest. Instead, it simply fell flat, as if it meant nothing at all. Dick paused mid-sip, his expression tightening around something uncertain. Jason looked at Tim like he’d spoken in a language he didn’t understand. Damian’s eyes narrowed, irritation prickling at the edges.

And Bruce… Bruce looked like someone had said something they weren’t supposed to say out loud.

“Tim,” Bruce began, voice slow and unusually cautious, “what exactly do you mean by ‘Reader’?”

Tim blinked at him, then at the others, confusion tightening around him like a cold hand. 'What did he mean? What kind of question is that?' you had been beside him moments ago. you always had a place at the table. you was part of this house the same way the cracked stairs and flickering hallway light were.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “Reader was just here. We literally just finished dinner together. Don’t look at me like I’m making that up.”

The silence that answered him was the wrong kind of silence, too heavy, too still, as if the room itself was listening.

Tim looked around again, slower this time, searching for something recognition, surprise, even a joke—but he found nothing except expressions that didn’t match anything he knew. Confusion. Wariness. A sort of gentle alarm.

It made something inside him twist.

“You’ve been doing this for years,” Tim said, and his voice was quieter now, more fragile than angry. “Every night they are sit right here with us. Their plate is always the first one set. Their food always comes out first. They sit here, they eat with us, and all of you just… look right past them. Like they’re air. Like they take up no space at all.”

His breath trembled, and he didn’t know if it was anger or fear.

“I don’t understand why you pretend they’re not here.”

Bruce stood up then slowly, carefully, like he was approaching someone who had just stepped too close to an open ledge.

“Tim,” he said again, softer this time.

A beat of silence stretched—long enough for dread to bloom fully in Tim’s chest.

“There’s no one named Reader in this house.”

The floor beneath him seemed to shift, not enough to knock him down but enough to unbalance everything he thought he knew. He stared at Bruce, waiting—half-expecting someone to laugh, to brush it off, to admit it was some awful joke.

But no one did. No one blinked, no one laughed, no one corrected him. The silence that followed was too steady, too intentional, as if the whole room had tightened around the space between them. Tim felt his stomach twist, felt the first cracks forming beneath the certainty he’d been clinging to.

“What?” he managed, the word barely more than a breath. “Bruce… do you hear yourself? That’s—” He swallowed, throat closing around disbelief. “That’s awful. Reader is your kid too. How can you say something like that? How can any of you just forget them? Like they were never here at all?”

Still nothing. No shift in their expressions. No flicker of guilt or confusion.

Only that same quiet, measured stillness—the kind people use when they’re afraid the person in front of them might shatter if they speak too loudly.

Tim’s gaze drifted across their faces, hoping—desperately—for something familiar to hold on to. Dick’s brows were knotted with worry, his mouth tight with unspoken fear. Jason looked painfully tense, like he was bracing for an impact he couldn’t stop. Damian’s stare had sharpened, no longer irritated but cautious, analytical, watching Tim rather than listening to him. And Bruce… Bruce looked at him with a kind of soft, helpless fear, the kind reserved for someone slipping away inch by inch.

A cold wave unfurled inside Tim’s chest, spreading slowly, chilling him from the inside out.

Why are they looking at me like that? Like I’m the one who said something impossible. Like I’ve been talking to someone who wasn’t there. Like I’m… wrong.

His heartbeat stumbled, uncertain.

You had been here. You was here. Their voice, their place at the table, the way their plate was always empty by the end of dinner—Tim could picture it all with painful clarity. He could remember the sound of their fork, the way they leaned slightly to one side when they sat, the small smile they gave him just before leaving the table.

He remembered it. He remembered you.

…didn’t he?

The clarity of those memories only made the room feel more distorted, more unreal. Because if he remembered so vividly—if he could replay every detail—then why did everyone else look at him like he had spoken the name of a ghost?

Why does no one else remember you? Why is he the only one who sees you? And why, suddenly, does he feel the ground beneath his memories begin to shift, as though the things he believed were solid might not be solid at all?

_________________________________________

From the very beginning, back when Tim first arrived at the manor and started helping Bruce, there had always been one presence beside him. Reader. You. You often lingered near him, admitting in a quiet voice that you felt lonely. And Tim, always buried in files or tech or missions, rarely lifted his head long enough to process it; he simply murmured something absent-minded like,

“Then do whatever you want,” without realizing how much those words meant to you.

That was how it started: small exchanges, simple companionship in the quiet spaces between his responsibilities. Tim didn’t think much of it then, not until the meaning of your loneliness began to unfold itself piece by painful piece.

He started to notice the way Bruce would walk past you without a glance, how Dick never responded when you greeted him, how Jason and even Alfred moved around you as though there was nothing standing in their path at all. It wasn’t unkindness. It wasn’t intentional. It was the kind of disregard reserved for things the mind never registers in the first place as if you didn’t take up space, as if you weren’t seen.

And every time Tim’s confusion flickered, you only smiled at him with that small, quiet acceptance and said it didn’t matter. You told him you didn’t mind being overlooked anymore, because now you had him. Someone who heard you, someone who answered you, someone who stayed.

So for years, Tim stayed by your side without question. He filled the silence you lived in, kept you company through long nights and empty rooms, and never once asked why he was the only one who see you.

Looking back, he realized he probably should have questioned it sooner the gaps, the odd moments, the way reality bent around your presence without acknowledging it. The signs had always been there, subtle but constant, whispering that something about you… about all of it… had never been entirely normal.

But when Bruce’s words echoed in his mind, "There’s no one named Reader in this house", something inside Tim slipped, like a gear misaligning. A faint pressure bloomed behind his eyes, dull at first, then tightening with a slow, creeping ache.

He tried to push the feeling away. He tried to steady his breathing. But the harder he clung to the idea of you, the more something in his mind resisted, as though memory itself had grown soft around the edges.

He closed his eyes, grasping for the simplest thing, the shape of your face.

And nothing came.

Not fully. Not clearly. Just a blur of impressions: a smile he couldn’t quite place, a voice that seemed distant and too soft to catch, the warmth of someone sitting beside him but not the details. Not your features. Not your eyes. Not your presence in a way that felt solid.

Panic pricked sharp and sudden along his skin.

That didn’t make sense. He had seen you minutes ago. You’d sat right across from him at dinner, fork tapping lightly against your plate, that familiar way you always tilted your head when you were listening. He had looked directly at you, met your eyes, watched you smile back at him.

So why now, when he tried to picture you—did everything feel like fog slipping through his fingers?

Tim inhaled, shaky. He tried again, reaching for something easier—your voice. But even that began to unravel. The tone he once knew so well wavered, stretching thin, dissolving at the edges like something half-remembered from a dream. He tried to recall the sound of you calling his name. He tried to remember how you laughed. But every time he formed the memory, it bent strangely, warped, as if the memory itself was refusing to stay in place.

A faint dizziness rolled through him.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t normal. This felt wrong in a way that crawled beneath the skin.

You had been with him every single day, talking beside him, leaning against his desk while he worked, sitting with him in quiet companionship that had long since become familiar. There was no one Tim spent more time with. There was no one whose presence felt more constant.

So why… why couldn’t he hold onto the image of you?

“Come on,” he whispered under his breath, fingers curling into the edge of the table as if grounding himself could anchor the memory too. “Come on, I know them.. I remember them.”

But all he found was fog. Fog, and the sickening sense of something slipping further away the harder he tried to hold it.

A cold shiver moved down his spine—slow, deliberate, almost gentle in its cruelty.

'What’s happening to me…?'

He opened his eyes again, seeking your empty chair as though it could pull everything back into place. But it only looked like a chair. Plain. Ordinary. Undisturbed. A chair that, to everyone else, hadn’t been occupied at all.

And the longer he stared at it, the more a horrible question pressed into him:

'Had you ever been there?'

He jerked away from the thought immediately, breath catching—because he knew the answer. He had talked to you. He had eaten with you. He had spent years sitting beside you in quiet corners of this enormous house.

He remembered your loneliness… didn’t he?

But the fog only thickened, closing around the edges of every memory like something eroding them from the outside in. His head throbbed. His vision pulsed faintly. His stomach twisted with something cold and unfamiliar.

Your face refused to sharpen. Your voice refused to settle. Your presence flickered like a light struggling to stay lit.

And Tim felt something he rarely felt—something sharp and instinctive and terrified:

He was forgetting you. And he didn’t know why.

_________________________________________

Tim woke with a sharp inhale, the kind that dragged him out of sleep as though he had been sinking too deep into something he shouldn’t have touched. His room was dim, the only light a faint grey glow slipping past the curtains. His computer screens were dark—powered off, as if someone had shut them down after he’d passed out. He wasn’t even sure when he’d collapsed, only that the last thing he remembered was the fog, the panic, the slipping sensation of thoughts he couldn’t hold onto.

And then he saw you.

You were sitting casually at the edge of his bed, legs crossed, flipping through one of his worn comic books as if it were the most natural place in the world to be. Morning light brushed the side of your face, and you looked… solid. Warm. Real. More real than you had felt in hours.

Tim stared—sharply, intensely—trying to chase down the shape of you with his mind, expecting more fog, more blurring, more slipping. But this time the memories came back with startling clarity. Your voice. Your smile. The years of whispered conversations. The loneliness you confided. The quiet companionship you shared. Every detail returned like a snapped thread pulling taut again.

You looked up at him the moment you realized he was awake, your eyes brightening as a wide smile spread across your face. “Morning, Timmy. You’re up early. You never fall asleep this soon.”

Your voice was easy, warm, familiar—so painfully normal that it made his chest tighten. You looked completely human, completely present, exactly the way he remembered.

And yet Tim felt something inside him recoil.

He shifted away from you, far enough to put a breath of distance between your body and his, eyes narrowing as he tried to ground himself in what he was seeing. “Who are you?” he asked, voice low, guarded in a way he’d never used with you before.

You blinked, startled for only a moment before your smile returned—gentle, indulgent, like you thought he was being dramatic. “Still half-asleep?” you teased lightly. “It’s me. Reader. Reader Wayne.”

You said it with such confidence, such casual certainty, as if that answered everything. As if nothing was wrong.

As if last night hadn’t happened at all.

You tilted your head at him, waiting for him to relax, your posture loose and comfortable on his bed—as though you belonged there.

But Tim didn’t move. He didn’t smile back. And he didn’t feel comforted.

His heart beat unevenly, caught between memory and dread, between the familiarity of your presence and the sharp, instinctive fear crawling up his spine.

Because the more real you looked now… the less he trusted what he was seeing.

Tim’s throat tightened around the words, and when they finally slipped out, they sounded small—fractured. “I… I’ve been talking to a wall this whole time…”

The shame hit him first, hot and sharp, crawling up his spine. Then came the sadness, heavy and slow, pulling at his chest. And beneath both of those emotions, something quieter and more painful settled in—disappointment. Disappointment in himself, in his mind, in everything he thought he understood.

His voice trembled. “All these years… it was just nothing. No one.”

You lowered the comic in your lap with deliberate gentleness, watching him with a softness that didn’t ease the sting—it only made everything feel heavier.

“Tim…” Your voice came through blurred, echoing faintly, as if it slipped into the room from somewhere not entirely aligned with his world. There was something in your tone something he couldn’t quite place. Not just exhaustion, not just pity; a tenderness threaded with regret, warm in a way that felt almost too human for something that might no longer be human at all.

“It seems you’ve finally realized it,” you murmured, your words cracking gently like a thin line of light splitting through darkness. “And seeing you like this… seeing you sad… it hurts.”

You leaned toward him just slightly, a slow, deliberate movement carrying a strange sincerity that made the air tighten around him—made your presence feel painfully real. Your face softened into something warm, gentle, a kindness that made him want to step back and reach out at the same time.

“You weren’t talking to a wall,” you continued, quieter, closer. “You were talking to me.”

The statement didn’t bring the clarity it was meant to. If anything, it made the cold unease inside him spread further. He felt his stomach twist, his pulse stumbling as the room tilted in a way he couldn’t name.

“Why are you saying it like that?” he asked, his voice thin, shaken. “What do you mean I was talking to you?” The confusion tangled with fear, and beneath both of them something sharper stirred an unsteady doubt, the terrifying sense that his grasp on reality was beginning to slip.

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t seem surprised by his reaction at all. You simply smiled a small, almost shy curve of your lips that should have been harmless but, in the dim quiet of his room, felt too certain, too composed, too knowing.

“Because it’s the truth,” you whispered. “I’ve always been here. Every day. I listened to you, talked with you, stayed beside you when no one else did.” Your fingers tightened around the comic in your hands, as though steadiness mattered to you too. “And I was happy, Tim. For once… I wasn’t alone. I finally had someone.”

Tim went still, so completely that even the rise and fall of his breath seemed to hesitate. For a moment he couldn’t form words at all his throat felt too tight, his thoughts too tangled, until finally something thin and fragile slipped out of him.

His voice came out barely audible. “Who are you?”

Your smile faltered—not disappearing, but shifting into something quieter, sadder, as if you’d been waiting for that question for years.

“I wasn’t sure if I should tell you,” you said softly, “but… I suppose you deserve to know.”

You drew a slow breath, eyes lowering for a moment before lifting back to him with a strange calm.

“The painting in the attic,” you said. “The one covered in dust and a white cloth.”

Tim felt the air leave his lungs.

You held his gaze, steady and unblinking. “That’s me.”

_________________________________________

ending

Damian crossed his arms, expression unimpressed in that sharp, princely way only he could pull off.

“I cannot believe,” he said slowly, each word dripping with judgment, “that you still have an imaginary friend or… whatever that was supposed to be. What’s next? Do you also sleep with a teddy bear, Drake?”

Tim groaned, pressing a hand over his face. “Shut up, Damian.”

But before Damian could smirk in victory, Tim added flatly:

“The one with the teddy bear is Dick.”

There was a beat of silence. Dick, sipping his coffee across the table, froze mid-gulp.

Jason choked on his laughter. Damian’s eyebrows shot up. Bruce didn’t look shocked—only resigned.

Dick slammed his mug down. “TIM.”

And for the first time in days, Tim actually laughed. Not because everything was okay—far from it—but because the sound, the argument, the stupid bickering… it reminded him he was still here. Still real. Still himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nami clamors into the inner chamber, panting and just barely managing to shut the door behind her as Sanji helps her in with a charming smile. "Is that everyone?" she asks, turning around and seeing Zoro, somehow already asleep leaning against the wall, Luffy stuffing his face with snacks Sanji laid out, and Usopp glued to the window watching the chaos unfold outside with trembling knees.

Sanji strides over to smack Luffy's head, "Those snacks are for everyone you know, not just you!" he barks, before looking around. "Wait a minute," an icy chill grips his heart, "Where's Y/N?" his head spins so fast you'd think it'd snap, "Wasn't she already inside? After Luffy went to help Zoro?"

"Oh yeah, I told her to go inside and pointed!" Luffy says through a garbled mouth of food.

Sanji pays him no mind as he shoves his way through the kitchen—

"I'm sure she's here!" Usopp's voice follows him.

Sanji rushes through the hallway and the cabin and the bathroom, overhearing Nami giving orders to keep watch out the windows as she wakes Zoro to go back out on deck to see if you were still out there.

His heart is pounding, the icy chill growing into a freeze as the hair on the back of his neck stands up. He finishes searching through the inner cabins—double, no triple checking for any trace of you. Sanji can feel his heart in his throat as he storms back into the kitchen right as Zoro steps back in, closing the door behind him. Just him, only him, no sign of you yet.

Zoro shakes his head.

Sanji lunges at him. and it takes Luffy wrapping his arms around him several times to hold him back. "Did you even search for her or did you just take a look around? She could be anywhere!" he growls at Zoro.

"You think you're the only one who cares for her?! We all do!" Zoro shouts back. "You think I wouldn't search every inch of this ship for her? For any of you? We're family!"

"You can't stop me from going out there!" Sanji yells, breaking loose from Luffy's grip. He turns to his captain, and for once, Luffy isn't smiling.

"We'll all search for her again." Luffy says. He nods at Nami and Usopp, "Search inside again. Keep an eye on the storm and at the windows. No one else goes missing."

Outside, the storm rages on—cold and merciless. The rain and winds tilt the ship every which way, sending the crew spiraling as they slide across the deck, barely managing to hold on. Luffy uses his powers to whip across the deck, searching high and low. Zoro pulls himself along the railing, eyes clamoring for any sign of you on board.

Sanji searched like a man crazed, no rhyme or reason to be found as he focused on his sole mission—to find you. With each passing breath, each torturous second, the fear in his heart climbed higher and higher, choking him. Winds sliced at his cheek, as the rains drenched his suit. Thunder rumbled overhead and the brief cracks of lightning were his only guides. He couldn't tell how much time had passed. How long he would search the ship over and over while she rocked against the merciless waves. Salt water sprayed in his mouth with each wave, seemingly higher than the last, as it washed across the wooden slates of the deck.

Sanji wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. Stopping meant facing reality, facing truth he did not want to know and would never accept. It wasn't until Luffy's arms forcibly wrapped themselves multiple times around him, with Zoro at his side, did Sanji let his knees collapse beneath him.

The winds swallowed his screams as they ripped from his throat. His cries of anguish lay at the altar of the storm, the cruel relentless nature of the Grand Line. The storm matches him beat for beat, walls of rain swallowing his screams of agony, of anger.

It is only when Luffy's arms slowly start pulling him back, Zoro helping him stand, does Sanji numbly follow into the safety of the cabin. Nami and Usopp don't say a word as the three of them step over the threshold, heads hanging low. An eerie silence follows them, the whistling of the wind echoing from outside as the thundering rain pounds against the windows.

Sanji's eyes glaze over, the icy tremors spreading their shards across his chest, binding tightly against his heart. He can barely remember slumping against the wall and sliding down, and the rest of the crew follows suit, sitting together in silence as the storm cruelly mocks them from outside. As the boat rocks, Sanji's eyes keep twitching over to the bedroom door, waiting, daring you to step into the galley, asking why everyone's so glum.

Hours ago. Just a few hours ago, before the storm hit. You were sitting on the counter, idly chatting about the new book you had picked up at the last island, while he prepped for lunch. His eyes shoot over to your abandoned cup on the table, your tea's cold by now. You were here, you were here, you were here. Sanji's chest tightens and caves inwardly. Stray drops of rainwater drip from his hair down his spine, chilling him to his bones.

"The minute the storm calms," Luffy says, voice low and haunting, "we'll start searching for her."

Sanji flicks his eyes upwards—Luffy was holding your mug tenderly, thumb tracing idle circles against the handle.