Diabolical | T. Drake ✔

[25] A Third Alter

Faint beeping broke the silence as Tim's eyes fluttered open. Everything around him was a hazy blur and he realized that was because he wasn't wearing his spectacles.

"Hello?" He called out, hoping someone was around to hear him.

"Welcome back to the world of the living."

He recognized the voice immediately and he blinked twice, trying his best to see her, "Stephie?"

"Don't you Stephie me," she huffed, quite evidently furious at him for the mess he was in, "I was so worried about you."

"I'm sorry..."

"Apology not accepted," she replied, folding her arms as she leaned back in her seat, "and if it hadn't been for Dick's lectures to not bother you right now, I would have asked you all about what was so important for you to be out in the Narrows."

He paused, blinking again as he still couldn't see her clearly, "but I was not in the Narrows...?"

"You think? Your friend Miguel brought you here, he said you got mugged because you had the nerve to outsass a goon twice your size."

Tim felt something was off. His head was ringing but he was conscious enough to know that he hadn't been in the Narrows by the time he had passed out and definitely not with Miguel. Although he might not want his family to know where he had been exactly and with whom because that could be a bigger issue.

"Where am I right now?"

"In the hospital because you got your back broken."

"Broken?"

"A few of the bones are broken, thank God the spinal cord is intact but you still need to be in a back brace for the next few weeks," she told him, "also, I sent Jason to fetch your spare specs from home so until he comes back, you'll have to put up with not seeing things clearly."

He let her words sink in, trying to make sense of the situation. The last thing he remembered was injecting Crane with his tranquilizer and getting slammed back first into the wall of his basement. He did not remember anything after that.

"You said Miguel brought me here?"

"Yup. Looks like you did end up getting a concussion and losing your memory."

He couldn't fathom why Miguel would be the one to bring him to the hospital nor did he know anything about him being in the Narrows and outsassing a goon. Crane must have had something to do with it. It could be a cover story.

Thinking of Crane, he wanted to know where he was and how he was doing as the effects of the drug might have worn off but that felt like an impossibility at the moment.

On the other hand, Stephanie had taken advantage of the fact that he couldn't clearly see without his specs so he wouldn't know what she was doing. So she was going through his experiment book and stumbled upon a very shocking find.

All the details about Jonathan Crane's behavior were documented visit vise and that seemed weird because she didn't know Tim had been visiting Arkham regularly since the past one month.

But things got complicated further as she read about the diagnosis and recalled how she had found Tim fervently studying DID a few weeks earlier. He had also made some sort of toxin on the basis of all that information and her eyes widened as she saw the page containing the aftereffects of the toxin injection performed on Crane.

"Hey Tim, will it be okay if I go check if Jay is here or not? You're gonna be fine for a few seconds, right?"

He tried to nod but found his body frozen from the upper half, "yeah, no problem."