A Time Ago
by betty

A Time Ago

betty

Summary

It's dark, and he's cold.

Notes

Thanks to askmehow and jamjar for beta.

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 1541.

Chapter One

It's dark, and he's cold. No, he realizes, damp. He'll be cold soon, if he doesn't...

"Man?" says a thin voice. Girl, he thinks, or child. He lifts his hand carefully, in case the voice is bending over him.

"Mother!" says the voice, "He's alive now!" The voice recedes.

This isn't right, he knows, but doesn't know how. He's not supposed to wake up like this. There's supposed to be... He's supposed to know...

He takes stock. He feels-- normal, he thinks, but has no baseline. Nothing is painful, although it's still dark. Perhaps he's blind? He's on a soft bed, more like a nest. He sits up, with a hand held above his head in case there's a low ceiling. There isn't.

Noises return. More footsteps, more than one person, and then a soft spot of grey-green, of light.

Not blind, he realizes, and then realizes he was terrified, when his chest unbinds to let him breathe again.

"Man, come! Come, man!" says the thin voice from earlier.

"Shh, Violet," says another voice, a boy's, on the verge of adolescence. "Are you feeling okay, man? Mother says you should come, when you can."

They're carrying bowls that glow dimly, and he can see Violet, and the boy, ragged children, looking at him hopefully. He doesn't want to say anything, because he's afraid he doesn't have a voice, that that part of him was forgotten, and he's afraid to discover it. He stands up.

Violet catches his hand. Her face is lit from beneath by her glowing bowl, and her shy smile is a pudgy frown when he stands over her. Violet's hand is placed in his with perfect faith, so he tries to follow her the same way.

He stubs his toe (should he be wearing shoes?) a few times, before the boy notices, and starts warning him for each step, "Watch the stone, there's a root, now duck," of the variations in the landscape. The ground underfoot is rough.

It occurs to him that since he's outdoors, he should be able to get his bearings from the stars, but looking up, he can see only the occasional darker shadow of a branch against the black.

"Mother?" calls Violet, hopefully, and they climb up on top of a low rock, ("Watch, it's slippery") and scrabble over a mess of immense roots.

"Violet," says a voice. Mother, he presumes. "You mustn't touch Mother, my little bud."

"I know," says Violet, penitently. "Here's the man."

Mother hums, and the tree leaves rustle. There's no wind. "So you woke in the night, then. Fitting."

"Fitting?" he says, unable to stop from asking. His own voice surprises him. He thought it would be deeper.

Mother laughs in the dark. "Since you will be my knight, of course. My own Green Knight."

"I don't--" he begins, and then isn't sure what he's denying.

"Come closer," Mother beckons, and he's afraid to, but everywhere is dark, and Mother is at least a voice. Behind him, the children also approach, bringing their lights closer.

Mother is leaning-- Mother is-- She's a tree, he thinks, and then rejects the thought, sends it back. It's wrong and it's also... It should be unreal, but it's not. She's a face, a shoulder, a suggestion of a hip and a broad trunk, gnarled and reaching up in to the shadows.

"You are my creation," Mother tells him. "My Knight. My children need protection. You will protect them."

Her own Knight. Theirs. It's solid and he can hold on to it. Green Knight. He has someone to be. Someone to protect.

Violet takes his hand again. "Mother feels bad that we're alone," she tells him, "but it'll be okay now that you're here, Green."

"I can give them good food and drink, and all they need in this garden," says Mother, "but you will have to protect them from the burning people."

Green looks at his hands. "Do they.. are the burning people very strong?" he asks. Protecting is right, he knows that, but he's missing how.

Mother gives him his armour, a great leaf that he shapes to himself, then brushes with the sap of another leaf to make it rigid, and gives him throwing pods, but warns him against being too close when they hit. She tells him that a word whispered to a reed will come to her, if he is within the world, and that he must protect her children, whatever the cost.

"It's who I am," he assures her.

Mother makes him swear to her. He knew she was beautiful when first he saw her, but for a moment, she's fearsome. "Swear!"

He doesn't have anything to swear by. "I will."

After that, Mother seems to grow tired, so he asks Sean and Violet to show him where they sleep. He's glad to know he's a protector of these children.

"And also Amir," says Sean, "He likes to sleep up the olive tree, and Jessa, and Daffodil, and Boo."

"Should we go find them?" Green asks, but Violet and Sean seem to think it's a bad idea.

"We'll see them in the morning."

Green has sworn to protect them, and he wishes... it would be easier if he knew where they were. Irritation. It's a new feeling. He adds it to his hoard.

Sleeping with Violet's knee in his back is difficult, but he makes himself conform to her. She's his to protect. Sleeping alone isn't-- he doesn't do that. As he falls asleep, he wonders if he thought, 'anymore' or imagined it.

He comes awake when Violet does. Mother's warm leaf folds itself back, letting Violet out. She walks away a bit and squats to pee, staring at him while her urine puddles. Sean is still asleep, and apparently suffers from sinus troubles. Green examines that knowledge. The sinus is a cavity in the skull, and part of the respiratory system. The sounds Simon makes aren't a sign of anything fatal. Green tries to make the knowledge connect with the knowing of it, but there's no history to it. Violet comes back and arranges him to her comfort, goes back to sleep. Green makes himself follow the sinus in his mind. By the time Sean wakes up and empties his bladder, Green knows where Sean's organs are, and how each of them could fail. Sean is in no more danger of this than last night, but now Green is aware of the danger. He finds this comforting.

Sean and Violet show him food, first, although the others he's meant to be protecting frighten him by their absence. Breakfast is good though.

At first, Green spends all his time nervously counting off his charges; one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, onetwo, threefour, fivesix. Boo is often alone, and hard to find, and he spends a great deal of time looking for Boo on each circuit before he begins to learn the nooks that draw him. He reports to Mother all the time, at first, coming to crouch at her feet, and tell her, "They're safe, I've seen them all."

She only smiles at him, like she expected nothing less from him, and after a while he relaxes in her approval, although not in his duties.

Nights bother him, because the children can't be persuaded to sleep together where he can watch them. "It would be more efficient," he complains to Mother.

She raises an eyebrow, and he discovers it's fairly simple to nap during the day so he can make rounds at night too. He seems to need less sleep than the children.

Jessa, after her first shyness, takes to following him around. She doesn't speak; "Something awful happened to her, once," explains Sean of Jessa's silence. Green doesn't mind it. She speaks in the stubborn set of her shoulders and feet, and in sidelong glances that convey a dry sense of humour.

Green realizes on the second day that Amir resents him for this. He used to be first in Jessa's confidence. "Don't you think you had better let him know he's still your friend?" he asks Jessa.

Jessa turns around and sticks her tongue out at the tree Amir is hiding in. Green isn't sure if this counts as a gesture of friendship or not.

"How do you do that?" asks Daffodil. Green looks down, then hops off the branch and swings up again so Daffodil can see how he did it.

"I can't do that," she protests. Green tries to teach her, but evidently what is inbuilt in him is much harder for her, although after half an hour she has made some progress. He tucks it away with all his other differences; how he's larger than the others, stronger, and knows words that not even Sean does. Mother, he tells himself.

It's a week before the monsters come. Green is shocked to see them, because they look just like people, but he pulls Violet back when she freezes with fear. He places himself between her and the monsters. The shadow of an oak moves an inch on the ground before they leave, and he lets Violet run back to Mother.

"Did you kill them?" Mother asks, and Green feels himself make his face go blank.

"No," he tells her, because she would know if he lied. If. He feels dizzy with potential.

"Next time," Mother tells him. "If they think they can come here without reprisal, they'll come further next time. They'll push, and push. They'll try to take away my children. You won't let them do that. You must kill them if they come onto my land."

Green nods, but keeps his face blank.

A monster comes again, and this time, Green is nearly too late. He hears crashing, and thinks it's an animal and doesn't realize it's Jessa, trying to escape, unable to cry out. A willow thrashes, alerting him, and Green runs up the willow, jumps to its sister, throws himself against a pine's boughs and rebounds and catches the low hanging branches of an oak.

Two men-monsters are holding Jessa, one by each arm, down against the ground. Green hits the bald one in the head, throwing him into the other. Jessa scrabbles up against a tree, and Green uses his fist and knees and elbows to make them hurt, and to make them afraid. He can't kick like he wants to; his feet aren't hard enough.

"Let me go!" screams one of them, and Green fists his shirt and hauls him close.

"Are you afraid of me?" he snarls, and the monster says:

"I-- fuck, let me go, I swear!"

So Green says, "You should be," and throws him to the ground, just in time to hear a wet thud as Jessa brings a rock down on the head of the other one. He looks at her, shocked. Her face isn't hard, it's only a little scared. The man-thing is limp on the ground and bleeding a lot, although head wounds generally do.

Green's monster is running away, and Green runs after him, leaps on his back, and brings him down. "Not alone," he tells him. "Take your garbage with you. We don't want it here."

The healthy one takes the concussed one, dragging him ungently. Jessa watches Green, and not the monsters. Green feels like something horrible has happened, even though he stopped it.

Mother praises Jessa, and looks hard at Green. "I was afraid they might come back for revenge if we killed one," he tells her. Jessa saw how easily they abandoned one another, but she can't speak to tell Mother he's lying. He wishes she would.

The next night, Green discovers that the man-monsters weren't the worst sort. He comes awake at the agitation of the trees, checks Boo and Amir and rakes some leaves over them for camouflage before he goes to find the disturbance. There's a smell, like rot, like something he's never smelled before, but he knows it all the same, and he follows it.

There's light where there shouldn't be, there's a demon, carrying a fire. Green holds his breath and tries to be invisible. The monsters were nothing compared to the demon. The demon carries fire in his right hand. He's immense, horned, tailed, and he's stalking toward the overhang where Violet sleeps.

Green makes himself breathe, then makes himself move, gently, gently, to detach the pod Mother gave him. He counts to steady his heart, then slings it with all his strength so that it will bounce off a rock face to one side. The demon hears it in the air and is turning, wings flaring out, even as Green starts running. He grabs Violet as the pod hisses, cracks and steams out its poison. Violet comes awake in his arms.

"Run to Mother," he tells her, and then rolls to his feet to delay the demon. He's not sure how he knows it won't be dead, but he's right. The Demon comes through the smoke, still bearing fire in his hand. Now Green can see its horribly misshapen muzzle, and glaring eyes. Green crouches low and grabs two more pods. These will not hit indirectly.

The demon slows as it nears him, and Green can hear his heart pounding like rain on the canopy. The demon lowers its firebearing hand and speaks in a rolling voice like stones, "T- Robin?"

Green throws his pod, and the demon throws something at the same time. Green is rolling already, but the demon has anticipated it, and he finds himself caught in tangles, like Mother's vines. After his first attempt to escape coils him further, he stops, and assures himself he can still breathe.

"Robin?" says the demon, again.

"Go away!" Green yells at the demon, and makes his voice not shake. "Birds are everywhere, but this is our place!"

Green's spine leaf cannot cut the tangle, so he crushes one of the pods with a blow as fast as he can. He still gets a spot of acid on his hand, which burns. He spits on his hand and tries to rub the acid off, but the demon catches his hand, and pours something on it. The burning stops.

Green snatches his hand back. "What do you want, here?" he asks the demon, who if he intends to kill Green, at least doesn't intend to do it immediately.

"I--" The demon seems hesitant, and Green regains some courage.

"Don't you know? Do you just lurk around the night scaring people for fun?" he accuses.

"I wanted to know who had assaulted a petty con man with a rock," says the demon. It doesn't make sense to Green, and it doesn't really sound as if it makes sense to the demon.

"I did," Green tells him, "and I'll do the same to you, so leave!" The demon should laugh at the threat, delivered by a bedraggled man wrapped in tangle, but he doesn't. Instead, he covers Green with his wing.

It's dark, and cold, and Green knows who he is. That, at least is a relief.

He keeps his breathing even, and flexes his muscles slowly without moving, to see if he can. He's strapped down. He's covered by something scratchy. He itches.

There's a sound of air, moving in a confined space. There's the sound of footsteps.

"Ah, master Timothy. You are in quite a state, although you've been in worse," says a deep voice over him, and Green sees no point in pretending to be asleep, so he opens his eyes. He's in a well lit cavern and a skinny man who looks quite worried about something is haloed against the overhead lights. Green glares at the man, and the man stares back at Green.

Green's not sure why he's unwilling to speak. Speaking is giving something away though, so he doesn't. Finally the man says, "Would you like something to eat? There's quiche loraine still warm."

Green nods, reluctantly, and the man fusses over his blankets for a moment, and then leaves him.

Green starts to pull at the strap over his right arm. It doesn't give, but he yanks at it rhythmically for something to do.

A heavier tread comes: the demon. His face has changed; the beast snout is now the mouth parts of a man, a straight worried line which seems less frightening.

"Tim," says the demon, "do you remember anything?"

The demon seems to be addressing him, but Green sees no reason to give the demon an answer, especially if it wants one.

The demon pulls off its face and Green feels stupid. It's not a demon, just a man in a mask. He should have realized last... "How long have I been here?" Green asks.

"Nineteen hours, twelve minutes, including transit." Green knows hours, he discovers. This means it's evening, and Violet will be crying.

"Why did you bring me here?" It's supposed to sound challenging, but comes out sounding plaintive, and Green swallows.

The man with the demon mask doesn't seem to know the answer. "I... because you-- You belong here," he finishes, gaining certainty.

The demon-man seems willing to answer his questions, but Green has too many and doesn't know which to ask first. "What--" he begins, and then doesn't know what to say next. The not-demon doesn't seem to know either, and for a moment, Green imagines their frustration is mutual.

"Did you... Were you happy there?" asks the man. Demon.

"What are you called, then?" asks Green.

The man swallows. "I'm called B- I'm Bruce."

"Fine, okay," says Green. "Yes, I was happy, until some stupid man came with fire and tied me up and took me away."

"I'm sorry," says Bruce. "I can't-- You can't go back to that."

"I have to," says Green. He thinks, maybe, he can make Bruce understand. "Mother needs me."

Bruce jerks back. Green can't tell anything from his face, and he wonders if his face looks like Bruce when he's lying. "Your mother is dead," says Bruce.

Green screams and tries to throw himself at Bruce, but can't even rock the bed. "Murder!" he shouts, and his voice is swallowed into the cave. "Murderer, fucking killer, you— " Green can't— he doesn't— without Mother he doesn't— He's sobbing, he realizes. "How could you, you— Demon," he spits, and then breathes, finds the place he needs to act from. Sooner or later, Bruce will have to loosen—

"No, Tim!" says Bruce, and Green is brought up short.

Bruce looks... scared and upset and like one of the children he's supposed to be helping to climb down from a tree that proved easier to ascend then descend. "No, she's— Ivy's fine, she's where you left her." He reaches out and touches Green's face, the wet tear tracks at the corner of his eyes. Green tries to recoil, but can't.

"Mother," Green clarifies. "She's not hurt."

"I believe she's undergoing some kind of... metamorphosis, I— she's as you saw her last, yes." Bruce says.

"Then let me go back to her," says Green, reasonably. "She needs me."

"I need— I need you to remember what happened before you were with Ivy."

Green tries not to boggle too obviously, but Bruce seems to be serious. "I was a— " Green is about to say seed, but is he sure? Do seeds come with language? Do seeds lie to their mother? "There's nothing before," he says.

Bruce frowns.

The other man returns. "I understand you've been living rather hand to mouth, as it were, so I've prepared some beef stew," he says, and puts a tray down on a table, next to Green.

"I can untie you, if you promise to stay here," says Bruce.

"I need to get back to Mother," says Green.

The older man pushes a button and Green's bed whines, and folds up in the middle, and then at the knees until he's sitting. "Go centrifuge some blood, sir," suggests the man, and begins to spoon feed Green. Bruce settles down on a chair and watches instead though, which is a bit unnerving.

Green knows what a centrifuge is. That scares him: it's a thing which doesn't exist in Mother's world.

Bruce stares at him as he eats the stew. It's hard to glare while chewing, but Green tries. The food is nothing like Mother's; it fills him, but something is missing.

"Your name is Tim Drake," Bruce tells him. "You're a life-long resident of Gotham. Your parents are Jack and Janet Drake, both deceased."

Green can't really scowl around the spoon. "I don't want to be orphan-Tim," he says, when the man takes the spoon away. "Go find someone else." Bruce's mouth twists, and the old man pops the spoon in Green's mouth again.

"Enough," says Green, when the man takes the spoon out again.

"Very well, I'll just leave you to your posturing, shall I?" says the old man, and Green dosen't know which of them he's talking to. He wipes Green's mouth with a napkin, takes the tray, and leaves.

Bruce stands up and begins unstrapping Green. Green sits up, and flexes, as soon as he's able, while Bruce unstraps his legs. His neck is a bit stiff, but he's otherwise fine. Except that he wants Mother, and Boo is probably hiding right now.

He waits until Bruce turns, and then tries to kick out the inside of his knee. Somehow, Bruce knew it was coming and has him in a chokehold. Green tries to breathe, and can't for a moment, before Bruce loosens his arm. Green stops himself from hyperventilating. He knows how Bruce did that. He knows how he should have avoided it. When Bruce moves his arm, Green feels his panic grow, instead of recede. He wants to close his eyes, and be alone in the dark, for a moment, but he doesn't let himself.

Bruce puts him in an armlock, and Green doesn't even struggle. He tells himself he's biding his time. "Come," says Bruce, and frogmarches him across the floor. They stop in front of a pillar with clothes inside. "You know this," says Bruce, and it's not a question.

Green stares at the empty eyes. He wants to say he doesn't, but the mask is watching him, and he knows... There's something here he knows or that knows him. The mask accuses him.

"Why do you want me to be someone else?" he asks Bruce, and hates how his voice sounds, plaintive.

"It's who you are. Ivy's been dosing you with psychoactive drugs. You'll remember, shortly." Bruce's voice in his ear is gentle.

That's frightening too. What if Bruce isn't lying? "Maybe it's better to be her Green Knight," challenges Tim. "I protect her children. I have a mother. I don't care if I remember, I can still be her knight."

Bruce whirls on his heel, leaving Green alone before the suit. He can't look away.

Bruce returns with a suit of clothes. "Put this on," he tells Green, and Green does. It's just clothing, but not like Mother's. "Come," says Bruce and pulls his mask back on. Green feels weak and foolish following him, but there's nowhere else to go. He looks back at the suit, once, before .

They get into the ... car, the-- It has a name that Green doesn't know. Green puts on his belt without thinking about it, and then thinks about it hard when Bruce starts the car. He didn't have to look for the belt, he just grabbed it without looking. But that doesn't mean he can't choose, just because he once was someone else.

He tries to imagine returning home to Mother, what he'll say. You're my true mother. But she'll want him to tell her that the demon told him lies, and he's not able to believe that right now. But Jessa needs him, and Boo, and one, two, three, four, five, six, he counts to himself. Onetwothreefourfivesix.

"There's a girl named Violet who doesn't like to sleep alone," he tells Bruce. Bruce is silent, and then points ahead, and a little to the right. A web of lights is swinging into view from behind some dark mass.

"That's Gotham," says Bruce. Gotham glows, softly. Light pollution, some part of him says, but she's beautiful. At her center, towers reach into the sky like a pine, bright points of light showing her spine, her shores, her ribs and fingers. Green's breath catches.

Gotham grows until she disappears, and then they are in the city. It's not dark anymore, there's lights everywhere, and Green resents it until he starts to see that the lights are like the flowers on a plant, each one making a brave display, saying 'look at me.'

Bruce stops the ...automobile almost sounds right, but it's wrong, and gets out. "Come," he says again, and Green is glad to, alone in this city. Bruce is the only person here he knows. Bruce opens a door in the side of a building, and they go into a stairwell. "Do you know where we are?" he asks.

"Wayne Tower," says Green, before he realizes what he said. He knew that from the railing. He doesn't know--

They climb the stairwell. It seems to have no end. Green starts to count the floors, but keeps restarting at six. One-six, two-six... He gets to two six-sixes and two-six and two when they stop. He knows he's counting in base-six to stop himself from thinking.

They go down a hall, and he knows this hall, he realizes, sickly, and Bruce opens a door. The whole wall on the room is glass, and Bruce opens a door in the glass wall, and they step outside onto a balcony. He expects to be afraid of the height, but he isn't, except for a moment. The sun is rising, and Gotham's smog is glowing slightly. Traffic is already starting to pick up.

Bruce points. "That's Robinson Park," but Green is looking at it before Bruce points. He knew where it was. It's only a small green shape against the whole of Gotham, and looks fragile and besieged.

"I protect that," he tells Bruce. He is her Green Knight. Bruce can't make him anything else.

"Gotham needs a protector," says Bruce.

Green looks at the world that Mother protects, and then at Gotham. Gotham is where the monsters come from. Green can barely keep six children safe. Green closes his eyes.

"Damn you," says Tim, and means it.