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Numb.
That was how Tim awoke.
Over the past week, weather begun frosting over in New York. It welcomed malevolent rain that congealed on the streets, and the ominous rumbling of thunder. This should have undoubtedly alarmed the undercover man; however, he bounded on with his days, blissfully oblivious. Now, as orange rays of sunlight illuminate his apartment at dawn, Tim was forced to belatedly confront his mistake.
He should’ve realised that the wailing rainstorm from the night before, the one that had mercilessly crashed his dreams, was a premonition for when he awoke with no feeling in his throat.
Immediately, Tim pressed his fingers to his larynx, fingers tenuously trailing the pale, jaded scar. His body offered no response to this action, not even an affirming tingle, just irrevocable numbness.
Attempting to speak only resulted with a hoarse gasp leaving his lips despite his exhaustive effort to make noise. It was humiliating to be stripped of his voice again, just because of a day of bad weather.
Like most people who are adorned with grievous injuries, they tended to be volatile depending on the temperature. Tim abhorred the countless days that were stripped from him by unrelenting aches; wasted in his bedroom while writhing and suffering.
The vigilante knew that his circumstances were out of the reigns of his control, however, burning shame at his weakness still pooled in his gut as he opened his jaw and shut it uselessly.
He released a despondent sigh. The only thing Tim could do now was slip into his suit and unenthusiastically prepare for his day.
Swindler, con-man, non-violent Neal Caffrey. That’s who he was.
He wasn’t Robin who had his throat slit by his predecessor, Jason Todd, in a battle against Hush. He wasn’t Tim Drake who had old injuries that were flaring up over some measly poor weather. He wasn’t Red Robin who was on an undercover mission in the FBI for the Justice League.
He was Neal Caffrey. Neal Caffrey who was going to work.
“Neal, you’ve been strangely quiet this morning.”
The hedging voice belonged to Peter Burke, the one who’s eyes had narrowed in suspicion as silence stretched throughout the ride to the office.
Neal turned to meet his eyes, flashing him his blinding, signature smile while closing the car door with a resounding thud. Upon connecting gazes, Peter’s were searching, blatantly teeming with unperturbed scepticism.
Tim only wrinkled his own eyes into a brighter smile – the infamous con smile that faithfully mislead and disarmed his unsuspecting enemies – and shrugged noncommittally.
The street that the two men were standing on was submerged in oppressing shadows that prophesied imminent rain. The sun had been obfuscated by dark, gaunt clouds, heinously stretching the FBI building's silhouette and consuming any sliver of light. Poignant remnants of petrichor from the night before wafted up the path; wet, cold and promising a miserable day ahead.
“Whatever you’re scheming, stop it. I’m not afraid to put you back in that orange jumpsuit,” huffed Peter.
With a gesture of feigned outrage, and a hand clutching his finely tailored dress shirt, Tim chuckled and shook his head, meticulously gelled hair not straying an inch. Defiantly, he turned on his heel and strode through the glass, office doors.
The FBI White Collar office was, as usual, primed with artificially white, fluorescent lighting. Imposing walls of synthetic glass were scattered around upstairs, whilst downstairs was tinged with the aroma of stale, frigid air. It was an incontestably mundane workspace.
Peter had followed him in like a lost duckling and herded Tim straight to his desk, which, unsurprisingly, already had another pile of mortgage fraud paperwork resting on top, spitefully leering at him. Tim’s first course of action was to shuffle through his drawers for a pen and loose paper just in case he couldn’t deflect his way out of speaking. Sign language would be his first option, but he doubts the FBI agents, who’s brains were as illiterate as a pet rock’s, would understand a fraction of the language anyways.
He internally released a small huff of triumph as his fingers grazed the smooth exterior of a ball-point pen. With a quiet rustle, he slipped it into his breast pocket along with a pack of canary yellow sticky notes. This should do.
Tim still felt the piercing gaze of his suspicious caretaker prickling against his neck, instincts that were ingrained from battle raised his hairs. In suit, he stoned his face to dutiful neutrality and locked into his task.
After all, nobody would interrupt Neal Caffrey’s rare moments of productivity in an office-environment.
At noon, the day had predictably whisked by with no excitement. Just Tim, his desk, and origami animals. Time had been droning on for eternity in the ostentatiously bright office, accompanied by the ceaseless rumbling of an unwelcomed storm, but Neal Caffrey had made no move to cause trouble. It was slightly out-of-character, however a calculated move to counteract Tim’s vexatious predicament.
To his dismay, rain had begun to hammer down as the sun yielded to murky clouds, inevitably sealing itself away. It echoed with a distorted dissonance against the hollow roof, the pounding raising in maddening volume like a desperate ex assaulting the front door. Consequentially, his joints and matured scars alike had started thrumming with a dull pain.
And to epitomise his misery, the line across his throat remained hopelessly numb. Swallowing felt distant and lethargic, like his body was a piece of thread that detached from it's dowel, and was irreparably disconnected. He was unable to even process his pristine collar chaffing his skin; the feeling replaced with a faux, phantom expectations, just a mockery of a tingle.
He sighed and bumped his head on his desk in resolute despair.
Jones, from across the room, caught this movement. Slightly unsettled, he waltzed over. “Hey Neal, you doing ok? You’ve looked pretty down today.”
After a second of calculated deliberation, a notepad was whipped out and he scrawled, ‘I’m sick.’
“Oh, that sucks.” His lips downturned, crinkling in sympathy. “You know Peter has told the whole office to watch out for you today, he’s convinced you’re up to something. Maybe you should tell him before he starts tailing you around.”
Inwardly, Tim groaned at the prospect of his carer’s paranoia, annoyance pooling rambunctiously in his gut. But he flashed Jones a particularly iridescent Neal Caffrey smile and shrugged to convey a well-what-can-you-do. He, deviously appealing to the Neal-act, did not make a move to stand as Jones turned away.
“Get well soon,” muttered Jones as he rose.
This day could not be over faster.
Carelessness was a bloodthirsty harbinger of Tim’s alias’s demise. And the malign reason for his vacuous mistake.
It was unbelievable, unbridled stupidity from Tim’s behalf.
Peter was callously leaning over his desk at his point, gleaming like a predator that caught his prey. Of course he would relish in Tim’s embarrassing fumble, not that he would let anyone know he thought it was embarrassing though. To the exterior, he was suave Neal Caffrey with a yawning abyss of undocumented talents, and he was indifferent to Peter’s accusations.
“Sign language wasn’t on the listed languages in your file,” snarked Peter.
Moments before, Tim had slipped up and signed to him. The vapidity of the day had begun weighing down on him, limbs relaxing a little too much as he was draped with exhaustion. Even dealing with WE wasn’t nearly as tiring when his days whizzed by in a flurry of tumultuous activity. So, in his bleary-eyed state, he noted Peter speaking to him, unhinged his jaw, released a silent breath, concluded that he couldn’t speak, and signed as though he would to his brothers.
Yep, a grave mistake derived from Tim’s unadulterated bovinity.
Disconnecting his eyes from Peter’s victorious pair, he tapped his pen on his notes.
‘It never came up, Peter.’
“What’s this, Caffrey. Writing now, are we?” Peter’s eyebrows rose in sardonic disbelief.
Great, interrogation mode. Tim blithely wrote out the same excuse he gave Jones. ‘I have a cold. Sore throat. Don’t want to pass it to anyone. Not speaking.’
“Well then, can you write down for me why you didn’t think to inform us of your literary talents? I find it rather hard to believe you would conceal something as innocent as a language, unless you were intending to use it for nefarious purposes.”
‘Why would I have any nefarious purposes?’
“Right. Neal, stop deflecting.”
‘It’s fine, Peter. I can’t do any alleged crimes with fancy finger work, it’s just because someone I knew had trouble speaking. I guess I forgot about it.’ Tim made a vague motion with his pen while rolling his eyes.
“Seems pretty hard to forget when your first instinct is to use it.”
‘I guess I remembered.’
“Neal,” Peter released a particularly guttural sigh. “Okay then, whatever. Hope you feel better.”
If Tim wasn’t willing to give information, nobody would be able to squeeze it out of him. Although, the rate his partner surrendered their typical banter was slightly abnormal; it was presumably out of sympathy for his ‘sick’ state.
Being treated like a charity foundation sent rampaging embarrassment roaring through his ears. Tim wasn’t going to complain though, in fact, jubilant relief rose through his veins at the prospect of catching a break in tandem; floaty and soothing.
At least now he can ache at his desk without doubtful glares attempting to dissect his every movement. Just him alone with the incessant pattering of rain to keep him company.
Hooray.
Unfortunately, the weather hadn’t relented and nor had the vigilante’s exhaustion, which was why he was in a state of confusion when he found his vision was painted with inky darkness.
His eyesight cleared slowly as reality blurred back into existence; groggy and excruciatingly slow. This was unusual. So was the cacophony of fretful gasps that cordoned around him.
The vigilante viscerally began to compartmentalise.
He was laying with his head tilted back at his desk chair, chin raised to the heavens and mouth gaping slackly. This was harrowingly apparent by the stiff backrest digging sorely into his shoulder blades and the dry desert that had found home in his mouth after it was left open for a prolonged period of time. Fuzzy figures were littered behind him while a warm palm pressed reassuringly against his forehead. He watched them approach from upside down, clearly speaking with emphatic motions of stress, yet utilising a jumble of incongruous words that Tim was too tired to translate.
Conclusively, he had been lulled to sleep by the melodic rumble of the weather and/or pain, and in that brief moment without lucidity, something occurred to leave the FBI agents in disarray.
“Neal,” a tentative voice asked, probably Jones, “are you injured?”
That question abruptly halted his though process. Silky fabric was still rubbing against his skin, so none of his incriminating, throbbing injuries had been exposed. Were they treating falling asleep as an injury? That didn’t explain the gasps though.
He repositioned himself then twisted to face his audience. With a raised eyebrow, he prompted them to elaborate.
This time it was Peter’s gruff voice, strangely emanating from approximately where the hand that hadn’t left his forehead was. “There’s an inflamed scar on your neck, Neal. Should I take you to the hospital?”
His larynx was still oppressively unfeeling, so he hadn’t even noticed that Peter had prised his collar down and bared his scar to the florescent lighting. Frantically, Tim slapped the senior agent’s hands away, heart thumping faster than a cheetah, and smoothed his clothes back into place.
His renowned, analytical mind suppled that it must’ve been irritated to the point that it relapsed to red and swollen, and as he was unconscious, his dangling head had exposed the harsh line, causing Peter to agonise over him and invade his privacy like a mother-hen again. Dang, Tim was exceptionally dumb today.
“Neal, you’re not actually sick, are you.” A very statement-like question. “Your temperature feels fine.”
“You don’t have to hide when you’re hurt, you know?” This time it was Diana’s concerned voice that piped up.
Tim yanked out his notepad. ‘It’s fine, just an old injury flaring up. Cold weather.’
“It’s old? It looks terrible right now though.”
‘Just the weather. It doesn’t even hurt. I don’t need a hospital.’
“And that’s actually why you’re not talking? It seems like a pretty bad injury if that’s so.”
‘I don’t even feel it.’ Not a lie. ‘It really is fine, Di.’
“That’s a blatant lie. You can’t speak.”
“And I can see your skin flaking off it…” Jones trailed off in perturbation.
Oh, his collar did chaff it pretty badly then. Tim hadn’t been able to see the scar since the morning, although, as a pad of his finger gingerly prodded hot, crackling skin, he could conclude that it did, in fact, look desiccated to the exterior. That presumably justifies their disconcertment.
‘I’m used to it. Not as bad as it looks.’
“How did you get it?” Ah, Peter was ever the same, hedging for information.
‘A disagreement from when I was a teenager.’
“You’ve been doing this since you were a teen?”
‘No, it was about something else.’
“Educate me, then.”
‘Why?’
“I’m concerned for you, Neal. I just want you safe.”
The shift in tone threw Tim off, reversing like a light-switch, though he had thought of Peter as a good friend after cracking so many cases together. Tim couldn’t lie to him in good will.
‘Family disagreement. It’s over now.’
There was a tense silence with palpable disbelief laced in the air, after all, information about his life before 18 was non-existent. It was Jones who cut through the taut tension. “Oh. Are you sure you’re okay?”
‘It’s old.’ Tim huffed out a noise of exasperation. It was becoming increasingly difficult to think when his thoughts were still being assaulted by the ruthless pelting of rain. ‘It’s really not that bad.’
Their concern was rapidly piling up, until it teetered on borderline overbearing. Tim felt it weighing down on him with consecutively greater pressure; the protectivity was suffocating.
Furthermore, everything ached – aside from the one vital thing that left him aphonic – and it was too loud to maintain a coherent thought due to the discordant chatter from both the weather and people. Tim needed space.
He interrupted their unrelenting questions as he peeled off a note and slapped ‘Bathroom’ on the desk.
The FBI agent’s eyes seemed to flash in an emotion akin to pity – the last thing Tim wanted – and subtly released their hovering circle of unwarranted patronisation.
Tim exhaled in relief and positioned himself to stand. Woefully, as he rose, the cold seized his limbs in a frozen grip and locked them in place, the brief movement setting his joints aflame. The ache rapidly devolved into torturous, biting agony, cascading from his toes to chest and hovering tauntingly at the edge of his throat. Instinctively, he hunched inwards to satiate the tingling nerves, although, that was the wrong decision as moments later there was wind carding through his hair and he fell down gloriously, dropping dead like an inelegant stone.
Thud.
Another chorus of gasps echoed from above; it was getting old and, frankly, igniting another wave of embarrassment.
Strange words were fluttering by above him, once again oddly fragmented as he attempted to regain his bearings.
“-Stabbed”
“Don’t mo-ve”
“Sci-ssors-”
“-Hear?”
“Bleedi-ng-”
“Us-?”
“H-ello?”
Tim just wanted to go back to sleep so, so desperately, so that he could escape the tumultuous scuffling. Maybe Peter would let him off today out of pity, no, nevermind, Tim would never want that. Shaking his arm to dissipate the haze, he braced it on his side to heave himself back up.
“Stop,” he finally processed a firm, female voice. “Lay back down. You’ve been stabbed in your abdomen. You fell on some scissors.”
Tim scoffed at the preposterous order; he was fairly certain he hadn’t felt any impaling type of pain. Although, when he lifted the arm that had been supporting his body, it was dripping wetly with a dark crimson substance. A tangy, iron-like scent wafted from the grotesque waterfall – bloodfall? – oozing in front of him.
He had, in fact, been stabbed.
Great. This was more embarrassing than accidentally using sign language. Imagine tripping on nothing and suddenly having a pair of scissors in his gut. If brothers ever found out, he would never live it down.
The sensation of gnawing pain still rampaged throughout his body, negating the pang that should be present in his abdomen. Tim was tempted to pry his emergency first-aid kit from the concealed compartment in his desk and sew himself back together, however, with as many eyes in the room on him now, it was an inexplicable skill to explain. He also doubted the agents would take well to an ‘untrained’ civilian that was already lying in a pool of clotting blood, yanking a foreign intrusion out of his own body. In fact, he was almost certain the majority had never seen exposed, convulsing flesh before or heard the wet squelch a knife being jostled within a body. His only choice was to surrender his stomach, and his scissors, to them.
He glumly sighed and flopped back to the ground, content to succumb to his body’s complaints and allow his colleagues to deal with the issue.
Immediately, there was a myriad of assurances being spoken simultaneously; incongruous and unwelcomed.
“Breathe deeply, Neal.”
“You’re going to be okay.”
An embarrassing consolation, after all, he had experienced far worse.
“Good job, keep it up.”
“Focus on my voice.”
“Call an ambulance.”
“We’re taking off your shirt to inspect the wound,” rang out particularly clear.
What was that. Oh no. He tried to escape, frantically writhing on the floor like a worm, however, his limbs were still aflame from a concoction of the poor-weather-induced phantom pains, and the recent, bludgeoning fall. Traitorously, they seized up and left him victim to the FBI’s help.
In a final attempt, he dipped his finger in his inky blood and sought to scrawl ‘stop’ on the tiled floors, however, he was thwarted from even completing the first letter as the dissonant sound of his bloody shirt ripping silenced the room.
To the dawning horror of around 20 FBI agents, an amalgamation of brutal, life-threatening wounds were haphazardly exposed to the cool, office air, causing him to involuntarily shiver. Insidious crevices branched up his torso, stab scars and blunt force trauma marks alike arbitrarily weaving between one another, whilst being accented with hundreds of healed stitches.
Some had, evidently, been meticulously cauterised, as discoloured, misshapen flesh bubbled and swelled in abnormal locations; the medical fire tinting them a sickeningly auburn hue. Miscoloured gunshot wounds also embellished his skin in morbid splotches, their sunken and circular indents arranged like Swiss cheese.
In increasing gruesomeness, there were unidentifiable shapes – such as broad teeth bites or Lichtenberg burns – miscellaneously leering from crooks on his shoulders as well.
Any scar that could be imagined, was present.
In fact, he derisively knew that there wasn’t a patch of skin along his odiously repugnant torso that wasn’t grievously disfigured. The precise line that sliced balefully along his throat seemed almost inconsequential now in comparison to the devastating array that was being showcased to the FBI agents.
In a blink, everyone had abruptly frozen to marvel at their CI splayed on the floor, with various degrees of trepidation plastered on their faces. And Tim couldn’t do anything about it.
He cautiously flicked his attention to Peter. His partner’s hands had gripped Tim’s crumpled shirt so tightly that his knuckles faded to white.
“I thought you were non-violent.” His voice was wavering.
With his body still uncooperative, the undercover man twitched his fingers into a grabby motion for his ball-point pen. Peter quickly understood his gesture and hurried to retrieve the objects. During this, he felt gentle wind being fanned on his waist as Jones, who was putting pressure where the scissors had punctured him, waved the audience away.
When he attained his medium for communication, there were only his closest co-workers remaining. Tim ignored his arm tinging in phantom pains and wrote, ‘Sometimes it gets out of hand in my line of work.’
“Those are gunshot wounds,” Peter pressed, voice strained with concern, “and some of them look relatively fresh.”
He turned his focus back on the CI, weightily conveying his agitation as wide, brown eyes bore into blue. A wave of guilt caused Tim’s gaze to divert from Peter’s slightly faster than natural. He tried to play it off as discomfort from the sticky blood seeping into the floor beneath him by wincing and shrugging slightly, though it was indubitable that Peter would see past the façade after the years he dedicated to tracing Neal.
While masquerading as Neal Caffrey, the vigilante was still determined to continue his unfaltering, crime-subduing duties. On the first night he became the renowned art thief, he devised an algorithm to perpetuate movement in his anklet monitor so that he could patently slip it off at any moment. He took advantage of this to regularly sneak out of New York into the consuming city smog of Gotham and battle the inordinate levels of malfeasance with the rest of his family, kindling smoke encompassing him as the scent welcomed him home.
Unfortunately, it was unavoidable that his non-FBI related hobby would emblazon younger scars of distinct infancy on his skin, emphasised by a unique shade of taunting and angry crimson.
“This one.” Peter’s pointed finger hovered fragilely over a black, caked hole that hadn’t quite healed over yet. “It’s new. It happened after you were in our custody, didn’t it. Neal, level with me, if you’re doing anything dangerous right now or have anyone after you, please let us know. We just want you safe.”
‘I’m fin~’ Tim’s hand hesitated, writing trailing off at the ends.
With the abundance of stress radiating off Peter, Tim knew he wouldn’t accept any more non-committal answers. The vigilante also was washed with a strange sense of commiseration for worrying his friend, mental excuses being drowned out by a symphony of warm whispers.
‘My family had a night business of sorts that I joined when I was 14. Sometimes, it catches up with me.’ Tim etched; it wasn’t a complete lie and let them draw their own conclusions.
A haunted sheen draped itself over Jone’s face, paling him at the prospect of whatever fictitious story he had conjured. “The more we learn about your family, the more I don’t like them.”
‘Hey, that’s only the second thing I’ve told you about them. I still love my family.’ He scrawled sappily, feeling uncharacteristically defensive.
His retort elicited a smile from Diana. She chuckled, “You’re feeling pretty sharing today.”
“I’m gonna say it’s cause of the blood loss,” joked Jones, palms still firmly red and welded to his side. “ETA on the ambulance?”
‘Yeah. It’s the blood loss. Don’t expect anything more out of me.’
“Four minutes.”
A deliberating silence infiltrated the stale air.
“Sooo, Neal. That’s a pretty cool scar there,” Peter vaguely waved his hand around Tim’s left ribcage where an exceptionally sizeable scar rested, unsubtly endeavouring to diffuse tensions with small talk of all things. “How did u get that one?”
“No actually,” butted in Jones, “I’m more curious about your family if your delirious enough to be opening up.”
A singular eyebrow ascended to his hairline. His next message took minutely longer to write. ‘Peter, I still have scissors inside me. I think Jone’s hands have more blood on them than the amount left in my body. Can we deal with that first?’
“I’m actually trying to distract you from that, Neal. You going into shock would be pretty bad for everyone so let’s keep this up.”
“Yeah man, try stay calm.”
That was surprising to hear. Appreciation began bubbling within his chest like a water fountain on a boisterous, sunny day. The scar in question had been a gracious gift from Ra’s Al Ghul, with the trivial price of his entire spleen after his brief collusion with the League of Assassins. It wasn’t exactly information that was privy to a meagre government agency though.
Tim tapped his pen against his sticky notes, thinking of an answer and enjoying the friendliness that had permeated the air, before deciding on a response.
‘Would you believe me if I told you my brother’s grandpa runs a cult and stole my spleen?’
“... We’re not getting anything more out of you, are we?”
Tim smiled, almost cracking his cover with a genuine grin, and amusedly shook his head.
“You know, I think you actually got a pretty cool vibe going on under that suit.”
Tim tilted his head.
“Yeah, yeah,” added Jones, grinning ferally. “You could definitely persuade someone that you fought a bear… and won.”
The last words were whispered in dramatised enthusiasm, provoking his smile to stretch impossibly wider. It was like the horrendous weather that had been tormenting his day was incarcerated by an opalescent ray of coruscating sunshine. In fact, he couldn’t even hear irritating pattering of rain anymore.
“That would be worthy of a superhero title, right? Civilian rescues civilians from being mauled by a bear,” headlined Peter, acting in an unconventionally joking manner. His voice was pitching a little high, but Tim preferred to assume it was for humorous effect rather than a resultant of his distress over Neal of all things.
“I can see it,” agreed Diana.
“Yeah?”
“What about,” another melodramatic break from Jones, “Bearman.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No wait. I kind of agree with him. It’s pretty good.”
Throughout the banter, Tim didn’t miss the fleeting glances directed toward him to paranoidly corroborate they still had his undivided attention. Yet, despite the mortification that should be singing his cheeks, he found breathy giggles had begun to rack his body, quaking him like a cocktail shaker.
“Woah woah, Bearman, you can’t beat up bad bears with all that movement.”
Peter’s amiable hand reassuringly landed on his shoulder, inviting his warmth to penetrate his skin. Surprisingly, it welcomed immediate relief to his aching joints too. So, whether Peter was currently wincing out compassion for the dangerously jostling stab wound or the notion of finally hearing Tim’s decrepit voice, he found himself to be indifferent and inexplicably leaning into the touch.
Tentatively, Tim dipped the opposite end on his pen into the auburn, congealed pool of blood, and boldly wrote on a fresh sticky note, ‘Red Bearman.’
“Now that’s morbid.”
“It’s a bit of an iconic move though.”
‘I can’t imagine a hero alias without ‘Red’ in it.’ Tim beamed up at them as he fervently held up the sticky note, enjoying as their faced flipped from concentration to confusion to consternation and finally acceptance.
“That’s pretty cool. Why’s that?”
Reverberating from the outside, Tim started picking on approaching, wailing sirens.
‘I don’t know. I just like it.’
“An ‘I don’t know’ coming from you sounds incredibly suspicious,” Peter lambasted, although he was unabashedly smiling.
The sirens halted and phatic chatter brimming with familiar medial jargon wafted from below. The team picked up on it too and began to shift protectively. The elation that buzzed beneath his skin almost convinced the undercover agent that he didn’t want the ambulance to come and take him, although the squatted away the needless fondness like a fly as soon as it emerged.
“How are you feeling? They’re almost up.” Peter questioned; hand still braced firmly on his upper arm.
Feeling had reunited with the vast majority of his limbs, permitting him to thrust a solid thumbs up in his direction.
At the telltale ding of the elevator, Tim was tenuously lifted onto a stretcher like a fragile porcelain doll, and shepherded off to an awaiting, opalescent ambulance.
As soon as he was outside, cosy air breezed against his face. He discovered that the sky had cleared and adorned his colleagues, no, his friends, in an incandescent halo of sunlight as they waved goodbye. It filled his body, profoundly, with an indescribable sense of warmth, completely unrelated to the now-visible sun.
He foolishly attempted to use his unfeeling vocal chords one again to call his farewells and, solemnly, slumped his head against the pillow at the fruitless result. Although, his jubilance never waned at the new-found knowledge that his team in the White Collar Division accepted not only the criminal Neal Caffrey, but Tim Drake and his abhorrent scars as well. It caused his heart to blissfully swell.
They loved him and all of his dysfunctional glory.
Aching.
That was how Tim awoke.
Blinding light coruscated and convoluted his vision, etching pure whiteness into his mind.
Instinctively, he categorised his knowledge. He was undercover as Caffrey, he naively entered the office aphonically, he was sedated in a New York hospital, and he underwent surgery after being impaled by an innocuous pair of scissors. At the memory, hot embarrassment rapidly flushed his cheeks and crawled down to his neck, tormenting him like booby-trapped cheese would a mouse. Please, may his siblings never learn about this.
The first thing he trepidatiously attempted to do was to discern if his vocal box could vibrate again. As he stretched his jaw, a wheezy sound broke from his lips.
Success.
Unadulterated relief coursed through his veins, draining the tightness from his posture as his stiff muscles mollifyingly relaxed. Enraptured, he strained again, this time a precarious note resounded without wavering.
His voice was back.
Finally.
Tim rambunctiously celebrated, soothing solace untethering all of Tim’s labyrinthine inhibitions and leaving him gullibly oblivious to his audience.
Not assessing his surroundings when he awoke was an imbecilic mistake.
“Welcome back, Timmy.”
Oh no. Faster than a spooked cat, Tim snapped his attention to the stoic figures splayed haphazardly across the corner of the hospital room. The jovial grin of his father was surrounded by a plethora of gleeful siblings, each donned with a matching, menacing smirk, like a flock of devious baby ducklings.
“Sooo, a pair of scissors huh?”
Crud.