A Little Overshadowing Never Hurt Anyone

It's Okay Man - Chapter 24

(Hey y'all, sorry for a bit of a long break between updates, I have been really stressed over exams and then just recently my Axolotl got very sick and we are having to work on extreme treatments right now, so I'm a little stressed over that.  But I found some time to fix up and post it so I hope you all enjoy it.)

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Dick was now sitting at the table, just across from the gh-... Phantom. Dick gripped a Chinese food take-out container as if his life depended on it. Jason had ordered it to his safe house for them all to help them eat and talk and get along or something like that. Honestly, Dick was surprised his brother tried to put that much effort into everyone getting along.

Dick managed to slowly pry his fingers off of the container one by one so he could rub at his arms, feeling the tingling, burning sensation that was left behind when Jason had torn off the duct tape without remorse for Dick's poor skin. And to be honest, Dick glanced down to his food and back up at "Phan-Tim," as he has now dubbed him, (even though Jason calls him Tim-Tom, but Dick's was way better)

But, yeah. Dick maybe, possibly, might have deserved to get his skin ripped off. He truly felt like... well, a dick, to put it bluntly. He shot first and asked questions later and hurt an innocent kid for no good reason. Jason had still chewed him out and sent him death glares for a good hour after Dick was untied and agreed to hear them both out fully.

Dick knew what Jason had said was true, and that if it had been a random fifteen-year-old on the streets that they wanted to ask about a mob that was in the area, or a trafficking ring... they wouldn't have shot him with an unknown weapon, dragged him down into the Batcave and thrown him in a cage to interrogate him. That would have been psychotic! Honestly unthinkable for the Bats. It would have made them just as bad as the people they were looking for. It made Dick's skin crawl, and he did it all because what? Some ghost hunters said "All ghosts are evil beings" and they got attacked by a couple of ghost animals?

Dick had no excuse for what he did and honestly, he was feeling really shitty about the whole thing. At this point, he mostly hated the ghost because of what he did to Tim. He glanced up again after impaling a piece of lemon chicken with a chopstick, not eating it and just pushing it around in the container.

That's not his brother he is sitting across from right now, not really. It's a fifteen-year-old teenage ghost called Phantom. Dick wants his little brother back. He wants him safe and in his own body, his own mind. Dick wants to be able to talk to him, bug him about not sleeping enough, and how much caffeine he intakes. And while Tim is technically still there, he doesn't want to talk secondhand through Phantom just to have a conversation with his own brother.

Dick knows that it's not really Phantom's fault they got stuck... or at least he hopes. He had considered interrogating Phantom more about his true intentions, unsure whether to trust him or not, but Jason threatened to kick him out completely with no answers at all if he kept interrogating Phantom for no good reason.

Jason has been quite protective of Phan-Tim since Dick got there; he's been making sure Dick didn't get too close and stepping in between them when it looked like Phan-tim was uncomfortable. It kind of warms Dick's heart to see that Jason was being brotherly to Tim, or, well, part Tim, especially after... after what he did in titans tower. But this gives him hope! Maybe after this whole thing is over and both Phantom and Tim are free, Jason will return and they can all be together again.

But a small nagging part of Dick is worried that this protectiveness and brotherly love is just because of Phantom, a kid who got hurt, a kid who got hurt by the same people that hurt Jason. Phantom is also dead, and maybe his ectoplasm affects Jason's pit rage, focusing it on protection rather than aggression. Dick doesn't know. But he wants to know. He wants to understand. Everything doesn't make sense, and he hasn't slept in days if you don't count the little time he was knocked out and taped to a chair. He just can't wrap his mind around it all.