"I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."
Tim doesn't laugh anymore. He wants to, sometimes. Dick still tells jokes, and when he's on the street, Tim occasionally feels the old, familiar urge to just whoop with glee.
But he doesn't. He smiles at Dick's jokes, and grins when he's flying (not too wide--never too wide), but he doesn't laugh. He doesn't like the sound when he laughs. It's high and wrong, and he doesn't remember what he's supposed to sound like, but this isn't it. Laughing shouldn't make him remember bad things (evil-bad-wrong. Pain and drugs and shocks and pain on top of pain and he wishes he could forget but he never ever can, not even when he sleeps, and he hates that he wakes Dick up when he has nightmares, but he can't keep from screaming when he's asleep).
No one else hears that it's wrong. They say he sounds fine, and he's supposed to laugh, because that's what people do when they're happy, but laughing doesn't make him happy anymore. It makes his face hurt, like he's been smiling too long, and he's always just a little afraid that he won't be able to stop, the way it had been for those few, horrible weeks. He never wants that again.
So he smiles instead. If it means he's more serious these days than he'd ever been as Robin (never, never again), well. It's not a game, is it?
There's nothing particularly funny about this life.
Tim Drake/Robin II
DC Animated Universe
242 Words
Tim Drake is the property of DC comics and Warner Brothers Entertainment. No infringement intended.
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