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“Your words have power, Timothy”
-
The world’s ended so many times that the threat has been diluted. Superman has died. Flash has rewritten the universe. But things always get set back to normal, don’t they?
Nothing ever really changes.
The world never really ends.
Maybe that’s what made them so uncaring.
Maybe it’s the story of the boy who called wolf.
There’s embers floating in the air. There’s allies at Tim’s back, struggling to stand, trying to keep themselves together. There’s heat coming from his left side and Tim’s not sure if it’s from pain or from actual flames.
There’s a shift in front of him. Tim’s fists clench and his breathing stutters.
“Go left!” Bart yells suddenly, shoving Tim to the side as he launches himself forward, into the fray.
Tim stumbles unwillingly, feeling his ankle shift under the pressure in a way that is not pleasant.
Looking up, he can see Kon and Clark, flying high and raining down blasts of heat vision. Cassie and Diana on the ground, trying their best not to get eaten. Bart and Barry flitting about trying to find a weak spot in its armour.
None of it does anything.
Tim knows it won’t.
There are Dragons. There are Drakons. This, is a dragon and Tim knows nothing but a well-placed shot with a weapon of celestial bronze will do anything to kill this thing. Knows that all the Justice League and the Titans and Young Justice and the Bats combined won’t even slow it down without the right gear.
But Tim’s staff is lying a fair distance away, in a pond and he won’t make it that far. He can’t ask Bart to get it, not when he himself is barely dodging feet and flame alike.
He’s weaponless. But that doesn’t mean much for him.
It never has, when your very survival means constant adaptation.
Tim takes a breath. Almost chokes on smoke and embers.
He blinks heavily, eyes glazing over brown scales and spiked tail. Sharp teeth and bright eyes.
He blinks again and his sister’s face flashes to the front of his mind, so strong and vibrant that Tim actually flinches. Silena Beauregard’s face scarred and pockmarked and dying.
Another steadying breath.
Tim taps at his wrist, at the golden watch he always wears despite it never working. It hasn’t worked since before the battle of Manhattan. And it never will. Not when the person who built it died. It's not meant to tell the time anyway.
The watch whirs.
Expands outwards.
Plates spin and click and snap into place.
A shield, small and round but enough to deflect blows. Not quite as offensive as he personally prefers, but with his weapon out of reach, it’s the best he can do for the time being.
His eyes close again and he sees the smiling face of Silena, his sister, right next to the smiling face of Beckendorf. One of the last pictures Tim had taken for them before Charles had gone after the Andromeda.
His heart burns and he isn’t sure if it’s rage or grief.
“Stand down” Tim orders, voice carrying over the rattle of the battlefield without effort.
There’s power in words, after all.
His shield comes up to protect his midriff. His chin lifts, because it’s all in the confidence, my son. All in the way you believe you can do it.
“I said, stand down” Tim growls when the thrashing doesn’t falter, the stomping doesn’t stop.
Speedsters come to a halt. Supers freeze mid-flight. Amazons go stiff. Bats slam to a halt like they’d impacted with a building.
But Tim doesn’t have time for them right now.
He needs to focus. He needs to know that this is working. That this will work.
The dragon’s head shakes, like it’s trying to shake the words loose from its head.
Tim imagines Silena’s kind face hardening, giving direction in battle. Sees Beckendorf’s face when he creates.
Lends strength from two of his best friends.
“Stay right where you are” Tim orders and this time he can feel the humming in his own ears, the numbness in his feet as his body fights its own order. Luckily, charm-speakers are immune, but it’s reassuring to feel it, just the slightest bit.
One lifted claw drops with heavy force, sending dust and debris scattering under the force.
Another falls to the ground like the drop of the dead. And Tim smirks.
He isn’t his mother. But he sure can act like her if it’s necessary.
Tim takes a step forward, toward the pond where his weapon had fallen, thrown from his side the moment the dragon had landed, instinctively going after Tim and Cassie, ignoring the rest of the group to try and snap them up.
Luckily, Tim’s been living like this since he was small.
Luckily, he’s been trained since he was a child.
“You will not move” Tim orders when he sees the beast twitch as if trying to take flight, trying to get the advantage of height or to flee, Tim isn’t sure. But he’s not willing to chance it this far away from camp, away from his siblings.
He moves closer to his weapon and the battlefield remains silent.
Guess talking does require moving in some way or another, Tim muses before he comes to a stop at the pond, not deeper than a hand can reach and he smirks again.
Reassures himself as he kneels, his ankle shifting under his weight and shooting a feeling of pain up his leg.
But Tim’s moved through worse.
His glove comes into contact with cold metal, colder than the water around it. It sends a shock down his arm, through his spine because he isn’t unarmed anymore. Has more than a shield to protect himself from whatever threatens him.
“You will stay right where you are. You will not move. You will not flee. You will not fight”
Tim takes a step forward with each sentence, still collapsed staff clenched in his fist for just a moment before he flicks it outward.
Sees the dragon struggle against him and his commands.
But Tim can’t fail.
Not here and not now.
He cannot let the world end.
Not when his sister gave her life to stop exactly that.
“You will not move. You will not flee. You will not fight” Tim repeats, stepping closer still until his head is just under the dragon’s, frozen in the air above him.
His staff twists in his hands and he hears the scrape of celestial bronze against stainless steel.
The point of a spear protruding from his staff right before Tim lunges forward, lodging the spear between 2 ribs and forcing it deeper until the edges of the wound start to crumble into golden glitter.
Only then does Tim wrench the spear from the wound with a step back, eyes still focused as the dragon struggles to make a sound in its dying state.
But Tim had given it an order.
And it will obey.
Because Tim says so.
-
Charm-speak isn’t something that typically drains children of Aphrodite. Many people give orders without even knowing they’re doing so.
But most people have never tried to order a dragon to stand still and let them kill it.
Tim feels completely justified in the way his knees collapse once the last of the golden dust scatters into the ember-laden air.
“Tim?”
Bart is at his side in moments but Tim feels like there’s something in his throat. He can’t speak. Can’t.
“Tim, buddy, you need to breathe. Please?”
But he can’t.
There’s something lodged in his throat that feels suspiciously like blood, like the time Jason slit his throat.
There’s something trying to take his shield, he notices in the next moment and the clarity that comes with his instinctual, immediate bodily “No” allows him to hiss at the person with fingers clenched around the last object Tim has of his best friend.
The same friend who’d actually supported Tim being in the workshop with the Hephestus kids and wasn’t just humoring him.
The same friend who’d taught Tim as much as he could without a single joke about Tim’s parentage and breaking a nail.
Tim wonders if he’s happy now, in Elysium. Because Beckendorf couldn’t have gone anywhere else.
“Tim?”
“Stop!” The word is an order without Tim’s permission and the man in front of him becomes a statue, which is not what Tim had wanted.
“Words are power, Tim. Be careful how you use them” Silena had warned, once.
Tim takes another breath and coughs when something burns his throat like fire.
“Later. Later, please. I can’t deal with this right now”
It isn’t an order. Tim doesn’t think he has it in him to give an order right now. But it’s a plea. A plea to leave him alone for just a moment. No not interrogate his grief.
Nobody moves, and Tim isn’t sure if it’s because he hasn’t released his previous order or because they’re listening.
He also doesn’t care, dropping his head into his hands and hiding behind the shield on his arm as tears begin to trail down his cheeks, no doubt clearing their own paths through the dust and soot on his face.
He hiccups and sobs and screams to the sky because he isn’t his sister.
Because his sister isn’t here anymore.
Because Charles isn’t here anymore.
And Tim’s alone.
But he feels a hand close on his shoulder and it’s warm. It isn’t restraining. Tim glances up through tear-laden lashes and sees Cassie standing in front of him, blocking him from view and interference.
He feels something shift beneath his feet and notices that Kon’s TTK is keeping him from collapsing completely to the ruined ground.
Bart flitting between them all with worried eyes and pursed lips.
Cass standing behind Cassie waving her arms as she makes a “No” motion toward Dick, who Tim notices is frozen and being pulled away by Jason.
Another sob leaves his lips because Silena would want him to have family. To not be alone. Charles would have killed him if he saw him wallowing.
So Tim swallows grief and blood and flames and orders.
He wipes his face of monster dust and tears and soot.
He sniffs and tries to school his face the way Janet had always tried to teach him.
But a child of love wears their heart on their sleeve, even as damaged as it is.