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English
Series:
Part 11 of Febuwhump 2024 , Part 3 of Whipping Boy AU
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febuwhump 2024
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Published:
2024-02-14
Words:
1,129
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1/1
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80
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1,112
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58
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8,140

Stained

Summary:

Tim stares at the bright red blood on the bright white tiles and thinks that he should probably feel more afraid than he does.

Notes:

Fun lil one-shot in my Whipping Boy AU! For quick context: Tim was Damian's whipping boy in Nanda Parbat. Jason has brought both of them to Gotham. Tim doesn't know that he's safe yet.

By-now-routine love to zita for her love of this AU and our ongoing collab ❤️

For Febuwhump #14: Blood-stained tiles

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Tim stares at the bright red blood on the bright white tiles and thinks that he should probably feel more afraid than he does.

The thought feels distant. Everything has felt distant since he followed Damian and Jason off of the airplane and into a car earlier that day. 

Tim is glad for the distance. The distance helps him act like a slave should act: attentive but removed. There, but not. Present, but empty. A tool waiting to be used, instead of the thinking, feeling, moving being that he’s been allowed to be for the past however-many-days of following Damian and Jason halfway across the world. Jason doesn’t even own a whip.

The rivulet of blood is moving slowly across the tile floor, tracking in an uneven line toward the drain at the center of the shower.

When Master Pennyworth had said Tim could clean up in this warm, luxurious, private room, Tim had felt only the faintest trace of disbelief. The distance, again. He had kept his head bowed until Master Pennyworth had left, and he’d been careful when taking off his shirt, turning on the water, and stepping into the shower. He was supposed to clean himself but he didn’t know when — or if — he would be allowed medical attention again. The bandages Jason had applied that morning are tight across Tim’s welts, but Tim doesn’t want to dislodge them. He doesn’t know if he’ll be allowed to see Jason again, either. If he closes his eyes, he can still feel Jason’s hands on his back. He’d touched Tim so gently every time he replaced the bandages, almost like Ra’s used to. Tim will miss that.

The blood reaches all the way to the drain now. Tim can feel more trailing down his leg, the rivulet growing slowly. He hasn’t been careful enough. He’s broken a scab and stretched a bandage and now he is bleeding in the warm, luxurious, private room Master Pennyworth left him in. The distance cracks for a moment and Tim wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that he was back in his cell in Nanda Parbat. The dark stone had never shown the blood like this. He knows he is here to be Damian’s whipping boy, but now his first punishment will be because of something he did himself and those are always, always worse. Tim assumes that Master Wayne does own a whip. Probably multiple whips. He wonders which one will be used on him, and whether it will be Master Wayne or Master Pennyworth who uses it first. He doesn’t…he doesn’t think it will be Jason, even though Master Wayne and Master Pennyworth clearly hold Jason in high esteem. Tim hopes it won’t be Jason.

Tim knows, at a deeper level than he knows most things, that it’s stupid to hope.

Another rivulet of blood joins the first, trailing down Tim’s other leg. He must have broken another scab. His back is healing slowly. All the travel has been hard on it, all the movement. Tim doesn’t know if he will have to move more, here, or if he will be taken to another cell and allowed to rest between punishments. Master Pennyworth is clearly the head servant, but Tim hasn’t seen any others in the brief time since they’d arrived. Perhaps he will be responsible for cleaning and cooking and serving here, as well as taking Damian’s punishments. Tim doesn’t know how that will work. 

Tim watches two streams of blood converge at the drain and can’t bring himself to care.

“Master Tim?” 

Fear slams into Tim from behind, the distance in his mind crashing to pieces like a pane of glass under a fist. With a gasp, Tim lurches forward until he is on his knees. He reaches out toward the blood, wiping at it with his hands, unthinking. The red smears pink and horrible across the white tiles. That’s not better. 

“Master Tim, are you alright?” Master Pennyworth’s accented Farsi comes from the other side of the closed door again as Tim looks around frantically for something, anything, that he can use to clean up the mess he’s made. The fluffy white towels on a rack on the wall are out of the question. Perhaps the roll of thin paper by the toilet, but Tim doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch that, if he’s allowed to touch anything. He’ll be punished anyway, he knows this, but his mind is still scrabbling for possibilities to lessen his punishment even as his hands scrabble at the tile. His hands are pink now, too, which is fine, that’s fine, he can be dirty, he’ll be covered in blood soon anyway —

Except Master Pennyworth told him to clean himself up and Tim has disobeyed that order too. Frantic, Tim’s eyes fall on the long-sleeved shirt and too-big blue jeans he’d been wearing, folded neatly on the counter by the sink. For a breath, he hesitates. Jason had given him the jeans, and Damian had carefully selected the long-sleeved shirt from a bin somewhere on the road and handed it to Tim with something like reverence, and Tim doesn’t want to ruin the only two things that have ever been his.

But they’re not his, because Tim is a slave, and his priority has to be following orders, always. Tim grabs the shirt and starts mopping up the blood from the tiles, pushing away the disappointment as the light green shirt immediately darkens. He is turning around, planning to try and stuff the ruined shirt into the small trash can by the toilet, when the door to the bathroom opens.

Master Pennyworth steps into the room at the same time Tim realizes that his back has been bleeding more heavily than he’d realized. He sees two more pools of blood on the floor behind him. He hears Master Pennyworth’s indrawn breath and a low exclamation in English.

Tim freezes. Then he turns back around so that he is facing Master Pennyworth, but he keeps his head down. Back straight. Hands clasped behind his back — the shirt falls to the floor. Breathe in. Breathe out. That’s it.

He’s so stupid. Trying to hide his disobedience, trying to cover up his many mistakes. Master Pennyworth’s next words are inevitable.

“Stay right here. I will be right back.”

Tim is alone again but he doesn’t move. He waits, and he keeps his eyes on the stained tile floor, and he tries, desperately, to regain some of that distance.

When Master Pennyworth returns without Jason, Tim is relieved.

When Master Pennyworth moves into position behind him, Tim is unsurprised.

When Master Pennyworth begins cleaning and re-bandaging the wounds on Tim’s back with hands that are every bit as gentle as Jason’s, Tim is —

Tim is numb.

Notes:

Yes, Tim could have just turned on the shower. No, Tim did not think of that. Tim is not extremely able to problem-solve right now. Leave him alone.
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