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Chapter 1

The Pretender

The scimitar glittered red—a fine sheen of liquid blood along its edge, over the crusted black beneath. It dripped to the ground in glistening beads.

Timothy watched it from the floor, blue eyes glazed, head tilted toward the musical plink of those little red droplets with all the desperation of the dying, but it wasn't the growing puddle of newly spilt blood he was concerned with—his own blood, running out—it was the crusted black beneath.

Dirty blood, inside him, crawling through his veins.

"I would have preferred a cleaner method, but well… we both know the effort would have proven futile. Your kind seem cursed with natural resistance to fatality." There was no triumph, no satisfaction in that voice, just curious consideration, cold truth. Light flickered off the silver blade of the scimitar, dancing along the walls.

Timothy jerked when the burning in his veins became unbearable. Fingernails raked furrows along his arms, his sides, but couldn't claw out the fire he could feel just under his skin, snaking deeper inside. He twisted, panting, breaths fanning against the floor. The pale arc of his throat worked, tongue pressed low against a fence of teeth. Sweat-soaked black hair splayed whisper-fine shadows around his head. Even dying, the little scraps of darkness found him—the pits in the floor, the angular slanting shadow of the sword—all pooling under him like a discarded cloak, hugging the little contours of chin and ribs and calves, clinging to eyelashes. When he arced back, the shadows scurried to realign themselves just a fraction late.

His throat closed off any pitiful mewls—it was too late anyway, far too late. Booted heals scraped stone one last time before stilling. Glittering droplets of sweat cooled on his skin, like a fine net of diamonds. There was nothing left but the perpetual chill of the floor, soaking into his soul.

So this was what it felt like to die. It was colder than he'd considered.

"It is done, Timothy."

As with most things, Dick was first.

It was a dark night—it always was in Gotham—and Dick was a shadow on the street, sliding between streetlights and flickering in the guttering glow of neon signs. He existed in the space between breaths, between one heartbeat and another. The shadows stuck to him—the little bits of darkness cast by crumpled paper cups and cracks in the concrete stirring as he passed. If he stopped, he'd become one of them, just another patch of shadows a little darker than the rest, a little too dark for the nearby streetlamps if anyone looked right.

The sounds and colors all rolled together after a while, the world washing by him in blues and grays and… red. The red was a boy, head down, the hood of his jacket pulled up. Dick wouldn't have given it a second thought, but just at that moment as they were passing, the boy's head lifted, and Dick got one perfect glimpse of blue eyes set off by a shock of raven hair. It was just a flash, but it seared his vision with ghostly afterimages of that same face smiling, crying, curled up cutely in sleep.

He jerked to a stop, crashing gracelessly back into the flow of traffic and human noise.

It was a trick of his mind—that was all, surely. Just a trick of his subconscious, playing on that one last dredge of hope he still unknowingly harbored. He'd thought he'd gotten past this. He'd thought he'd stopped seeing his brother's ghost everywhere, stopped grasping after things long lost. If he turned to look, it wouldn't be real. It never was.

He was a fool. He turned anyway.

But by then the boy was gone, leaving only the ghost of that face—his face—in Dick's memory and the bitter taste of desperation on his tongue.

Ultimately, there was only the sound of his own voice whispering into the wind things better left forgotten:

"Timothy."

Tim adjusted the backpack he had slung over one shoulder—red, like the jacket—careful of the eggs and bread nestled alongside the textbooks inside. It had long since passed from twilight into true dark, the ghostly half-light spilling from the corner-store windows behind him eaten up not ten feet from the doors. The darkness didn't bother him. The shadowy corners and dark alleyways were just part of growing up in Gotham. He knew what things lurked out there in the gutters, when they came out, where they prowled, how to avoid the worst of them. That was what mattered.

It was his city. His neighborhood. Even the areas he'd never been to before, he often found he recognized—a déjà vu-like knowledge that there was space to hide behind a certain trashcan or rooftop access at a particular junction.

The day was an endless monotony of school and work, the hours bleeding together in a continuum of pencil scratches and polite smiles. It wasn't until nighttime the drudgery sloughed off and he was free.

As he ducked down the next alleyway, into familiar dank darkness, he spared a thought for Dana, what she'd think if she knew how much time he spent prowling access ways through the roughest parts of the city. If she'd even understand…

"Shouldn't be out here alone, kiddy." A tin can rolled to a stop in front of Tim's feet and he looked up curiously. A face leered out of the darkness, all toothless grin and greasy hair. "What would your mother say?" Someone new. Someone who didn't know about him.

It only took Tim a second to assess the threat, the knife clasped tight in grimy fingers, and another second to discount it. Easily dealt with. Tim was quick and efficient, dropping low, one foot sweeping around to take out the knife. It went skittering into the trash-lined gutters. Before the man could retaliate, Tim's other foot connected with his jaw—mind the eggs, don't jolt the backpack—and since he was already stumbling back, Tim followed through, using the man's thrown-off balance to bring him down. There was a thud as his head connected with the concrete.

"I wouldn't know." Tim crouched over the man, expression detached, one forearm pressed to his throat, just hard enough to keep him down.

"What?" His would-be assaulter stared up at him wide-eyed—the easy school kid sitting on his chest who'd just knocked him flat on his backside without blinking.

"I wouldn't know. My mom doesn't speak to me very often." Tim let him go then, standing up so the man could scramble away and take off down the alley. It was probably the last time he'd be a problem. If overwhelmed the first time, they tended to think twice about a second encounter.

Just how Tim wanted it.

He watched until the man's footsteps faded into the city noise before turning and heading home again, backpack safely slung over his shoulder once more. The man at the next corner just nodded at him. He already knew. There were few things in the darkness Tim couldn't handle, and even fewer he feared. Some of those things he could name. Some he couldn't. For those, there were always rumors… Sitting on the fire escapes, listening to the stories passed back and forth below, he'd heard things: whispers of bodies disappearing or turning up impossibly broken, the most raucous troublemakers vanishing in a night.

Even Tim had seen things sometimes. Shadows that didn't belong. The impression of things moving just out of sight. Like now.

He stilled in the midst of a particularly dark patch of alleyway, pinned under the assessing weight of eyes. There was no movement in the stagnant shadows: neither in the myriad of impenetrably black corners hugging the walls nor in the catwalks above. Not a flicker indicated there was anything out of place, but there was a heaviness to the air, cloying in his lungs.

His only warning was the shiver that went down his back, a ripple in the shadows. He turned to look…

Something hit him—hard, it knocked the breath out of him—jerking him off his feet. There was a moment of disorientation when the world seemed to blur and whistle in his ears, and it was only belatedly, blinking in the sudden return of clarity—and with it, brick walls hemming him in on three sides—that he realized he'd been dragged backward, caged. Like the cats that batted mice into a corner to watch them squirm. It was a good corner too, cut off even from streetlights or lit windows. But it was more than that, almost unnaturally dark, like the shadows had condensed and become a physical whisper against his face and hands. Almost pitch black. Even in normal alleys there was light. Here, he could only tell which way was out by looking up, by noting which direction the perpetual gray cloud cover was not blocked out by building walls.

Maybe he'd been lucky. Maybe until that moment, when he'd stared into the darkness, that darkness hadn't been looking back. And that night, for the first time, the darkness had been watching and his luck had run out.

One foot landed in a stagnant puddle he couldn't see, splashing sickly-warm water up his leg, soaking his jeans. But it grounded him, provided some kind of sensory input to orient around. No sooner did he have his feet back under him than Tim hooked a foot into the shadows, around what he estimated was the ankle of his captor, pulled his fist back, and aimed for what should have been a chest. He hit solid, all points connecting. It should have tripped his captor. It should at least have winded him. Instead, all it did was dislocate several of Tim's fingers.

"Hnn." He couldn't keep the little gasp of pain from escaping. Then there were arms locking around him, unyielding and cold. He struggled against the constricting grip, kicking out with his feet, and gah, he had to stop that before he broke something. Maybe the man was wearing body armor—Tim's toes could testify. It was a logical possibility—logic to stave off the suffocating pressure of irrationality clawing to be let in.

He was shoved up against the brick wall behind him then—the eggs, that crunching sound was definitely the eggs—head cracking against the chipped stone. A single hand against his chest held him pinned there, immobilized, struggling to breathe. He could feel the points of sharp nails biting through his shirt. Another hand scraped fingers consideringly up the column of his throat, hooking under his jaw to jerk his face up for inspection. Then, finally—maybe it was the angle catching the faint light reflected from the clouds above, maybe it was the proximity—the shadows parted, crawling away from a pale face, and he got a look at his attacker.

It wasn't what he expected. It was worse.

There was a small, high-pitched voice in his head whispering monster, monster, but the face frozen above him wasn't that of some hideous monstrosity. It was beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful. A rough, handsome, dangerous kind of beauty, all edges and contrasts. Something about the way the shadows fell only accented it. There was something mesmerizing there, something that naturally drew his gaze, and Tim thought if he looked too long he might never look away again. If he looked long enough, he might forget about running and getting home to Dana and never looking back.

He might forget about the wickedly-sharp fangs gracing that perfect mouth.

It wasn't anything in particular that made Jason pick the boy off—pick that one out of all the others. He might have noticed the red jacket, might have seen the black wisps of hair escaping from beneath the hood. Maybe something in the mannerism.

It was a stroke of misfortune for the kid. Jason didn't pull punches like the others. He wasn't going to let the boy wander off afterward, a bit dazed and with some vague memory of stepping too close to the shadows, ultimately unharmed. He wasn't going to enthrall him either—roll his mind until there was nothing in it, no cares, no pain, no swiftly approaching end. He wasn't a kind person. The world didn't deserve his kindness anymore.

He wanted this to hurt. He wouldn't mind the screaming. Not one bit.

They'd be lucky if they found the body.

He shoved the boy up against the brick wall, further into the darkness. The battering of hands against his chest, the scrape of nails, meant nothing. The quiet, soft little gasps of pain—he'd probably broken toes trying to kick himself free—were only exciting. The kid didn't have a prayer of escaping him, not a hope in hell. Jason pressed him back, enjoying the raspy sound of the brick catching at the red cotton of the kid's jacket.

If he was disappointed in one thing, it was the silence. Usually they threatened or cursed or screamed—screams that scratched against his soul. Blissful screams to drown out the howling memories in his head that were all he could hear, merging with the red in his vision that was all he could see. Usually, they screamed. Not this one. This one was silent. Dispassionately, he examined the catch struggling against his grip.

If the hoodie was red—his color, always his color—it was irrelevant. If the kid's hair was black, it was coincidence. Jason wouldn't be persuaded to let this one off easy. Not even if the eyes were…

He jerked the face up with sudden determination, wanting to see the differences: the prominent nose, the thick eyebrows, the facial twitch, the flaw that dispelled the illusion and proved all the similarities were a coincidence. Only there weren't any. The face that stared up at him was scratched and bloodied, yes, but indistinguishable to the one in his memories. Even the eyes were that same shade of cobalt blue, staring at him accusingly.

He froze, startled into perfect stillness. He'd never forget that face, even after so many decades, and seeing it again now, so unexpectedly, felt like a punch to the gut.

How many times had he seen it all pretty and perfectly preserved in paintings around the manor, or pale and broken in his nightmares? When he closed his eyes. When he opened them. Now in a dirty, dead-end alley, painted on the face of his would-be victim, scratched and coated in the grime through which Jason had dragged him.

It was a trick. It had to be, and he wasn't going to stand for it.

He lashed out blindly at the apparition that stood there defiantly wearing a face that didn't belong to him, but his fist hit only bricks, the unyielding wall in front of him. Somehow, when he'd been distracted, immobilized by shock, the kid had disappeared. His backpack still lay where it had fallen though, in a stagnant puddle, and his smell still clung to Jason's jacket and shirt and hands. It still permeated the emptiness where the boy had been. So familiar. Achingly familiar.

That was all he needed.

He snarled as he started after the kid, the shock boiling down into anger. Because Timothy was dead. He was dead, and Jason wouldn't stand for this… this pretender taking his place.

Author Notes: This story started as just fills for the scenes Bluethursday didn't write on her Vampire Bats story (on Tumblr), but it sort of gained a life of its own. There are still a lot of elements pulled from her original verse, but you'll see some distinct changes too. Instead of changing their names down through the years, I made a distinction between their full names and the modernizations/shortenings of them. Posted with Blue's permission.

Apologies, because this fic really doesn't have enough Young Justice in it to warrant posting here, but it's AU no matter where I put it. My beta and I thought it might be more appreciated in a category that is, itself, an AU. And Young Justice was what got me reading Robin comics in the first place. (now, if they'd just stop putting the show on hiatus)

We're in a whole new world and Jason still thinks of Tim as a replacement. Some things are universal. Over all, I am much happier with my characterization in this piece over my last one. Of course, I'd still love to hear if anyone notices anything really off—might not be able to fix it, but I'll always keep it in mind for next time.

Thanks to Schnick for helping look over my work, despite the fact that it's always about her least favorite character.

The Bad News: Usually I don't start posting a story until it's 90 percent complete, but this story isn't anywhere near that. Because I'm still working out backstory issues and because the next segment contains too many informational bits subject to change, I can't guarantee when the next chapter will be posted. I do have a lot more written on it though. In the meantime, enjoy chapter 1?

Next Time (unless something changes): Tim's had about enough excitement for one night, but his troubles are only beginning, especially when Jason tracks him back home. As if one vampire wasn't bad enough, what's he going to do when he's forced to meet a whole family of them?