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It says something about the level of exhaustion that Tim’s reached that he doesn’t notice that his team is in his Nest until he’s in the same room with them. He blinks as his lagging brain catches up, staring at the forms piled onto his couch that are illuminated only by the doorway-shaped pool of light spilling in from the kitchen. They’re all fast asleep, Bart sprawled on one side of Cassie and Kon slumped against her on the other, Cassie herself stretched out with her head tipped back. Bart and Cassie are in rumpled civvies, but Kon—
Tim doesn’t even wonder where the top half of Kon’s Super suit went, because there are massive bandages wound tightly around his chest.
Suddenly much more alert, Tim silently moves to look Kon over, his blood boiling. He recognizes Cassie’s handiwork in the way that the bandages are wrapped, professionally and efficiently covering what has to be long gashes across Kon’s chest, based on how the gauze is placed. Even in the poor lighting, Tim can tell that Kon has gone pale, likely from a combination of blood loss and lack of sunlight. Possibly from kryptonite exposure, too, but it’s a fifty-fifty guess at whether it was kryptonite or magic that had broken through Kon’s defenses.
What Kon needs right now is sunlight and rest, so the fact that the three of them came here—where he can only really get the latter of those things—speaks to the severity of whatever happened.
As does the fact that none of them had contacted him.
Part of Tim itches to get to his computer, to start tearing through security footage and find out exactly what happened, but he puts a pin in the urge. Sleeping on the couch long-term is uncomfortable even for metas, and it had probably only been for sake of ease that the three had stayed out here in the first place. Tim has a perfectly good Alaskan King bed exactly for this purpose, after all.
Kon is the only one who even stirs when Tim carries them to his bedroom, and Tim’s heart breaks. Kon is usually the deepest sleeper out of all of them, so to be so close to consciousness, he must still be hurting pretty badly. Tim lays him in the middle of the bed, next to Cassie—Bart kicks when he dreams, so Cassie gets to play barrier tonight—and pulls the fluffy comforter over him. Normally Tim would also add a couple layers of weighted blankets, but it’s probably better not to this time. No need to risk aggravating Kon’s injuries.
Venturing back out to the living room, Tim finds bloody towels and the even bloodier remnants of the top part of Kon’s suit bunched in a pile on the side of the couch, the Nest’s medical kit left open next to it. Tim deals with the mess quickly, then does a lap around the Nest to activate some extra security measures. Last but not least, he checks the kitchen to see how much food he needs to order to be delivered in the morning.
With all that done, Tim finds himself hesitating outside of his office. He wants to find out what happened, to figure out what he needs to do to ensure that it never happens again—but his eyes feel like sandpaper, his limbs seem to be filled with lead, and his brain is starting to turn into cotton. If there was any immediate danger, his team would have warned him, not fallen asleep on his couch without a word.
Unless they weren’t aware of the danger…
Tim mentally shakes off the claws of his paranoia. Worse comes to worst, they all either die instantaneously—which is unlikely—or get ample warning from Tim’s security systems. He needs sleep, and his team always likes it when he’s there with them when they wake up.
Tim goes through his nightly routine on autopilot, uses his phone to orders groceries, then slips under the covers next to Kon. His clone boy is a living space heater, so it’s already all nice and toasty, and Tim starts to drift off almost immediately.
The last thing he does is find Kon’s wrist and press two fingers to the pulse point, slowly relaxing as he holds on to the proof that Kon is still alive.
~
Out of everything that Tim might have expected to have happened, it was not for the Demon Brat to have attempted to kill Kon. And on the Watchtower, no less.
Tim buries his face in his hands, muttering a curse. A tiny part of him wants to cry, but the rest of him is just thinking that he should have seen this coming. The brat still tries to off Tim on the regular; why had Tim expected him to stop there? Of course he’d escalate to Tim’s team.
“I don’t know which part is worse,” Cassie says from the other side of the table, a mug of coffee in hand. She looks just as wrung out as the rest of them, hair pulled up into a messy bun and oversized hoodie slipping off of one shoulder. “That the little hellion actually managed to land a good number of hits, or that nobody tried to stop him.”
“Nobody,” Tim echoes with less disbelief than he’d expected to feel.
“Nobody,” Bart confirms gloomily. He’s flopped down on the table, his tangled nest of hair sticking out every which way. Across from him, Kon looks ready to cry, but also too resigned to actually muster up the energy to do so. He’s still not all the way healed yet, his bandages peeking out from under his shirt. “Granted, there weren’t that many people there, but pretty much the entire original JL roster didn’t even blink.”
“If Bart and I hadn’t been there…” Cassie trails off. They know better than to put that sort of thing into words, not when the universe loves twisting them back around to wield against them later.
Tim rubs his temples. “I assume that Robin had some sort of “reason”?”
“He supposedly thought that I was compromised,” Kon mutters. It’s the first time he’s spoken today, and it shows. He sounds like he’s been gargling rocks.
Or screaming.
Yeah, no. Bad Tim. Think happy thoughts. Like slowly lowering the Demon Brat into a pit of acid and watching him scream.
…O-kay, backing up, when did his fantasies get that dark?
Tim pointedly ignores the fact that he already knows the answer to that question, and that said answer doesn’t quite fall within the realm of “recently.”
…However. This is the first time that he hasn’t felt the slightest bit of guilt or shame for entertaining said sort of fantasy. No, the seething fury in his veins has burned all of that away, leaving nothing but a foundation of resentment and hurt covered in building piles of hate. His so-called “family” trying to kill him, that’s one thing—but going after his teammates? His best friends, the only people in this entire dimension that he trusts with his back?
The line hasn’t just been crossed, it’s been shattered.
The sound that bubbles out of Tim’s throat is somewhere in between a sob and a laugh. The halfhearted bickering that Bart and Cassie had fallen into cuts off immediately, all eyes turning on Tim with concern.
“Tim?” Kon asks, his expression pinched.
Tim takes a steadying breath. “It’s just—it’s funny, y’know?” The smile on his face feels twisted. “All of those times we fought our evil selves from the future, and we never actually stopped to listen to why.”
The others go still, then exchange loaded glances.
But Tim isn’t done. “I mean, if it’d only been once or twice, then sure, that’s not great, but there’s gotta be some horrible futures out there—but we’ve fought what, five or six evil versions of us?”
“Seven,” Kon quietly corrects.
Tim nods his thanks. “Seven versions. Of which each successive one would have remembered defeating the versions that had come before, but still came anyway.”
There’s a weighted silence for a few long seconds, then Bart snorts. “Well, when you put it that way…”
“That things would get bad for us was inevitable, wasn’t it?” Cassie finishes. “It’d always end up as us apart from… everyone else.”
“Just us,” Bart mutters.
Tim looks between each of them in turn. Cassie, who’s never been able to do anything the right way in Wonder Woman’s eyes, and whose only other remaining family member had become controlling to the point of kicking Cassie out just for cutting her hair. Bart, who’s never really been able to bridge the gap between him and his family since Wally died, who had been left to struggle alone when other matters were deemed more important. Kon, who was reviled by the other two Supers from the start, who lost the only other person who doesn’t treat him like a ticking time bomb when Martha Kent had passed on.
Tim’s scars speak more than enough for himself.
“I’m so tired of destroying myself for them,” Tim whispers. It slips out like a confession, like damnation. Like a broken soldier’s last prayer. “I’m so tired of letting them destroy me.”
The words hang in the air, an executioner’s ax.
“Is it really so wrong to want to be selfish, just for once in my life?” Kon adds, quiet and strained.
Cassie makes a sound that’s some mix of a scoff and a sob. “Who cares about right or wrong? I just want to be happy.”
The ax gets heavier.
“They won’t like that,” Bart says tiredly. Nobody needs any clarification about which they he’s talking about.
“Yeah, well they can shove it,” Kon snaps.
“Everybody can shove it,” Cassie adds just as vehemently. “And drown themselves in a volcano while they’re at it.”
Tim blows a breath out, thinking. He locks eyes with Bart when the speedster looks up, and tilts his head in a silent question. Bart needs the prompting, when he gets quiet.
Bart stares back impassively for a long moment, then crookedly smiles. There’s something dark and sharp behind his eyes, the same sort of something that lurks behind Kon and Cassie’s postures and writhes in Tim’s stomach. “You know me, Boss. I just care about us.” He leans forward, forearms on the table. “Where you go, I’ll follow.”
The ax falls.
Tim breathes in. “Well, then. I suppose we should start planning.”