NOW I have fanfic!
Title: When It Gets This Dark
Fandom: DC
Continuity: immediately after "The Future Is Now" in TT and before the Dr. Light fiasco. The cusp of IC.
Pairing: gen, Tim and Kon
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Tim thinks too much.
Author’s Notes: I wrote this right after reading the story arc for the first time. It’s a little weird, and kind of stream-of-consciousness, but I like it. And heed the note that it’s definitively pre-IC, though only by a couple of days. It changes how things are viewed by the characters in this story, and how I wrote it.
When it gets this dark, when it gets to this time of night, sometimes he doesn’t think he even remembers what light looks like any more. When it’s dark even inside his head . . . God, he’s more broody than Bruce and when the fuck did his life get like this? He’s only sixteen, what about him deserves to have all possible horrors trotted out before him like the Joker’s idea of a sideshow?
Batman needs a Robin.
Fuck. His own words come back to haunt him, he’s right, he knew he was then and he knows he is now but he wonders, wonders what Robin needs . . . because it sure as hell isn’t Batman. Every Robin so far has gotten little more than majorly fucked up for being sidekick to the Dark Knight, to say nothing of their myriadly twisted relationships with Bruce. Dick, the first son and heir, might have gotten off less scarred than the other two, lived in a world that was more gray than black for a long time. Jason’s world was black. Tim’s world . . . has always been black. And even though Dick’s less scarred, it’s not hard to be less scarred than a kid who watched too many News programs and stalked the world’s scariest pair of vigilantes. Who joined them just as the game became something less like an extended metaphor and something more like life and death.
And now he thinks . . . when did he lose it? Lose the thread of Tim Drake in whoever Robin is, despite all his efforts to keep this life temporary. He always said he’d never do this forever.
Want to make God laugh? Make plans.
He isn’t sure who said it to him or where he heard it, but it’s the closest thing to true about his life and it makes him want to laugh, only he thinks if he laughs about the mockery that is his life, he’ll never stop.
Gotham needs a Batman, Batman needs a Robin, and all the shadows in the world need someone willing to hide in them and chase the heart of darkness to where it lairs. All dressed in black and part of the darkness, but . . . where does darkness go when there is nothing left but night? Does their endless quest remain endless because they know they could not exist without the darkness, some unconscious weakness that makes the night last forever because not even the good in it could stand the light of day?
What does Robin need?
For a while, he thought he’d found it in Young Justice. They were . . . they were all kids, more normal and more screwed over by the life they’d been led into than any of them were willing to admit. They’d been . . . they were . . . vibrant, in a way no one who wore a Bat - even one in disguise, one shaped like an R drenched in blood - could ever be. They had fun, they got rid of the bad guys, they occasionally saved the world from some really, really laughable threats. Nuns in station wagons full of TNT, and oh God, if he laughs he’s never going to stop.
Then Young Justice died, and he’d been frightened of the Titans. They weren’t the flighty, fun team he’d been leading. He wasn’t even, technically, their leader, though he knew and Cyborg knew, without saying, that if his three were given a choice . . . they were his. The way every Titan ever born follows Nightwing without a second thought. His generation, his team, his responsibility, they belonged to him in a way that transcended modern authority. He thought it might be something like how a proper feudal manor should have worked, ideally. Theoretically. An impossible but pretty dream. A Lord who took care of his followers, who in turn took care of him, with respect and cooperation and a certain degree of . . . friendliness? Emotion. On both sides.
Only there’s a lonely degree of separation between the Lord and his followers, and everything that’s been happening in their Lord’s life, that’s been fucking with his head and his heart and sometimes, he feels, even his very soul, shouldn’t affect the fact that they are still his to take care of. Cyborg can watch them, and invite the new children into their ranks, but he knows and loves and dreads that the children growing up by his side will always be his.
Only, there’s . . .
His.
His team, his people, his best friends, they have never been content to let him sit in his high tower and brood and rule. Cassie . . . has too many problems in her own life to do anything more than be there for him if he comes to her. Bart is a little more . . . complicated. Bart is going through shit of his own, as well, and Tim thinks that maybe it’s just part of what they’re going through, that none of them can grow up without dealing with the drama that is their lives, in or out of the masks and costumes. But Bart . . . Bart will survive, and thrive, and while he was a little worried that Impulse might accidently kill himself before he reached his eighteenth birthday, he’s never really been worried about Bart. There’s an inherent mental health to him that transcends everything that was fucked up about being Kid Flash and obsessed with Barry Allen, who may or may not have been the cleanest hero in all of superheroic history. But Bart’s running himself in circles through his own mind and all the books he’s read, can read and remember at superspeed which scared the living shit out of Wally and just made Robin’s pleased, scary smile a little wider. Kid Flash will be Flash one day, and he will be great.
He always comes back to Kon, mostly because Kon always seems to come back to him.
It’s like the alien/human clone/child (God, too many insane qualifiers for his best friend, his best friend when that’s all that should really matter) doesn’t think anyone else has all the right answers Tim has. It’s . . . he’s fucking scared to death, because Kon trusts him and apparently all he can do is get darker and darker and lost until everything he fought for (Batman needs a Robin) got lost in a spray of blood that would, one day, be his turning point. They’ve stopped calling him Kon, lately, just calling him Conner and when the hell had that happened? Conner wasn’t . . . it had never felt right to call him that. It was like looking Clark Kent in the eye and seeing Superman, or seeing Kal-El, whichever was scarier. Usually Kal-El, a reminder of the alienness that either of his other identities could suppress.
And he’d always felt that there was something Clark, Superman, lost, for being unable to call up the uniqueness that they reserved for Kal. Something that Kon had had, that was beginning to get lost in the . . . did he want to call it humanity? Did he want to admit that he felt far safer when Kon was the alien clone, the odd one, the one who did what was right because it was right and who’d been so naively innocent in the world and yet so shocking. He had so little trust in humanity . . . it hadn’t served either of them well, from Cadmus to the streets of Gotham. To the skies above a future Gotham that he’d painted in blood, with a gun and with the trust of his best friend.
I’m not going to do this forever . . . I will never be Batman . . . had he condemned himself with his own speech? Was every refusal he made just one more step to becoming the creature he’d been? The . . . he’d filled a graveyard, all by himself! Every body a stain on his soul, and even though it hadn’t been his yet, though the blood hadn’t been spilled by the hands under the Robin gauntlets, he felt it stain something deep and everlasting. The knowledge that he could. The knowledge that he . . . would. And an inkling, in the part of himself he thinks Bruce keeps Robin for, that perhaps, perhaps, there is the knowledge that he should.
"You know, if you keep frowning like that, your face will stick that way."
He starts, and wonders just how deeply he was brooding if he missed Superboy coming up behind him, floating or not. Trust goes both ways . . . if they trust him enough to follow him to hell and back, he trusts them enough that, apparently, they don’t set off anything alarming in his senses. "Are you sure?"
Kon snorts. "Nah. You just looked like you had a world-class brood going and I really had to interrupt that, y’know?"
It’s a little more . . . blase than Kon has been in a long time. Tim turns, a little, just enough to raise an eyebrow at Kon through the mask. Kon floats over, settling himself beside Tim on the wall around the roof of the Tower, legs dangling over the edge and fearless of the height in the way only flyers are. The other teen sighs. "Look, just, there’s been enough brooding, okay? Part of that ‘no matter what’ definitely included being annoying during brooding attempts. And man, I know you’re probably really proud of your ability to brood, but it’s just not healthy. In the slightest. Even though the whole us-being-bad-guys future thing was enough to give Superman nightmares for the next eight or nine years. And I’m babbling, and the ‘no matter what’ definitely means you’re supposed to stop me when I start talking and can’t stop."
There’s a moment of silence which, not too long ago, might have been uncomfortable. Or at least, might have masqueraded as uncomfortable, because Tim’s only now beginning to get how long Kon’s been his best friend. How long it’s been since they and Bart saved the world the first couple of times. So they sit, and Kon waits, and Tim has the idle thought that almost everyone who tries to talk to him must develop some sort of patience.
"It’s just that it’s so . . . possible."
Kon starts, though he’s more animate about doing it than Tim ever is without the staff in his hands. "Possible?"
"It’s not what I would have guessed, given the state of our team before you got snatched away by the Legion, but . . . it’s a possible extrapolation nevertheless."
Kon stays silent.
"With only me to lead us . . . because we all know that Cyborg . . ." Can he say it? Can he really tell Kon his feudal metaphor without making them all hate him when they don’t see the burden it places on him, only his title as ‘Lord’?
"Only leads us when you say he can?" Kon snorts, and surprise flashes in Tim for half a heartbeat before he chides himself for forgetting. About everything they see now that they let him see for them in Young Justice. "Yeah, we know. He knows, too. I’m not sure if Kory, Gar or Raven get it yet, but . . ." a shrug. "They will."
"Kory knows," Tim affirms, getting over his surprise that Kon, who once protested not being leader himself, would acknowledge their different status so . . . matter-of-factly. "She’s too much a general not to. And I . . . Am possibly in far too deep to surrender that to Cyborg, even knowing. Knowing what I’m . . . capable of. Who we become . . . who you become! I asked, I asked even though I knew better . . . I couldn’t see it, Kon, what would make you . . ."
"Tim . . ."
"I made you. Into that-that thing."
"Tim!" Kon’s hand on his shoulder hard enough to think about bruising through the armor, a fierce look on his face when Tim turns to him with nothing but bleakness.
"You all trust me, Kon. And I don’t know if it’s a responsibility I should have."
Kon pushes him off the Tower, and Tim lets him.
The air falling past his ears is a shock, at this speed it always is, and even though he knows the ground is closer than he really wants to think about, he doesn’t go for the grapple. He doesn’t know exactly what Kon is looking for, but it was a good way to shut him up, if nothing else. Tim’s pretty sure that he was brooding, only louder and with company. And thinking about the fact that maybe he doesn’t care if Kon catches him, because Kon and the world would be better without him, is better than spouting his darkest thoughts to the world when all it has to offer him back is more darkness to fight with bitterness and pain, like against like till he loses all track of the score.
"Fuck, Tim!"
Kon catches him with an ease that his voice ignores and his body denies. The tension and fear are all etched into his musculature, in the slightly too-tight hold he keeps on Tim until they’re back up on the roof. "Y’know, this is not the safest training method for me catching people midair, Tim. Fucking talk to me, man, don’t just rant at me! That future was dark as hell, fucking scary and, yeah, we all have a dark side! You don’t think I forget mine, do you? How much do you think you brooded, after seeing that, without the Titans to distract you, if we . . . if we stopped talking. So fucking learn from the future-made-past and stop!"
"How?"
Kon stops. Tim shakes his head. "It’s . . . I’ve always been this way." He starts to laugh, and tries to keep it down because maybe if it’s quiet enough he’ll be able to stop. Or at least work around it. "I figured out who Batman and Robin were. That’s what I did. And then Robin became Nightwing, and there was a new Robin and then Robin died . . . and Batman nearly died, too. And then there came another Robin, and Batman . . . is coming closer to not needing a Robin, which is good, because apparently his Robin is scarier than he is.
"Which, you know, less of a shock when taken into account that Bruce might have lived a normal life had his parents not died. What’s my excuse?"
Kon snorts again, and it’s so shockingly out of place that it throws Tim. "Excuse? For being the smartest person I know? For saving so many lives and keeping our whole generation of heroes from doing dumb, heroic things and dying heroic deaths? Oh, yeah, you definitely need to find a reason to excuse all of that, because really, it’s just not right. All the being smart and doing good and keeping people, innocents and heroes and even the occasional bad guy, alive."
"Conner -"
"The future is the future is the future, and knowing you can do something doesn’t mean you will! Get it through your fucking head, Tim - you know, so you can’t not know, but we also? Are not going to argue about the future when we have everything we need to make it not happen right here!"
Tim stays silent.
Kon deflates. "Look, man, I know. It’s . . . fucking scary. I burned Deathstroke’s arm off. I was . . . did I ever have emotion in my voice? The ‘S’ on a background of black and whatever I was doing with Cassie, it was not fun. Totally not anything I want to look forward to. And, according to Cyborg - who we listen to when you’re not around - the best way to not have to look forward to it? Is to stick together. To be -"
"Titans?" Tim finishes wryly. He’s . . . he’s done brooding. For today. And maybe, if he stops thinking about it when Kon’s around, it will go away. Or, as away as that kind of thing gets. But he’s not quite done with the future yet. "I think . . . it was telling. That we stayed the Titans."
"Telling?" Kon repeats, his face scrunched.
"If we’d been heroes? We’d have been the Justice League."
Kon just looks at him like he’s unlocked the secrets of the universe. "The . . . damn, Tim. The League. That like . . . gives me goosebumps." Then he grins, the idea taking alight in his mind. "Us, the JLA. Damn! Tim," he grabs Tim’s shoulder again, only in excitement this time rather than anxiety. "That’s the best thought ever. I totally forgive all brooding if that’s what came out of it."
Tim laughs, and this time it’s under better control. "That’s not generally something I brood about, Kon. I didn’t think I was going to . . . that I was going to stay this way, until a couple of weeks ago. I never thought about . . . the Justice League. But it’s . . . well, there’s the Outsiders, but they don’t do what the League does. And they’re not a symbol the way the JLA is. But we’re all heirs to the mantle, if we want it."
Kon nods, a hand on the ‘S’ on his chest. He has an idle though that another change of color scheme could be in order but . . . not right now. "We want. I want." Then he grins again, and pokes Tim in the shoulder. "As long as you’re not Batman, dude."
Tim shudders. "No. Not Batman. But . . . someone."
Kon shakes Tim’s shoulder one last time. "Yeah. Definitely. And the rest of us will be whoever we are, which will not include plans to take over the world in any way, shape or form. Tim, man . . . I can’t wait."
"Something to look forward too . . ." Tim trails off, as though he might start brooding again. Then, to Kon’s surprise and his own, he turns and gives Kon half a grin. "I like the sound of that." Jumping off the small walls, he darts toward the roof access door and calls behind him, "Last one to the lounge has to eat Bart or Kory’s cooking, whichever one cooks first!" and slams the door shut, leaving Kon to fly down.
"Aw, man! That’s cheating, Tim!"
He hears Tim running inside the Tower, though, and flings himself over the side toward his open window.