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[not_the_s]

There was absolutely no reason that he should feel like this. None. Just because everyone else was getting all sorts of people from back home and he had Clark and Luthor. Lois, too, but she didn't remember him. He had Bart and Tim and Cassie and things should have been easy, but he still felt like there were things that he was being left out of. He

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[cantstopmoving]

Irritation flashes, hot, bright and obvious in his eyes before he reminds himself that Kon's a kid, hurting, has no one else to talk to and for much of his life never has. Sighing, Dick pushes a hand through his bangs and gives Kon a wry look. "Three and four. Do you believe it yet? I still don't."

None of the information Kon delivers surprises him. "Let's take those things one at a time, starting with Tim and Bart." Donna's better at this than he is. Roy, too. Dick solves the big problems, handles crises. Donna and... Roy do day to day. But day to day is what they are now, and this will become a crisis if he doesn't give Kon an outlet. "I don't know Bart well enough to tell you what to do there except what you're doing. Be there. Don't let him feel sorry for himself. Kick him when he's stupid. Eventually, he'll thank you for it. Roy--" His voice catches, but he moves on- "And I always did with each other."

Not now. He pushes the emotions back down and locks them away. "Bart remembers what you remember, so you have that to go on. With Tim, he's grown into a different person than the best friend you had. That's hard, but you know how it works with him. You have to be friends today, right now, and work on that. You may think you have a right to know everything that happened for two years, but you don't. Those memories are his, that pain is his. When and how he chooses to share it is up to him."

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Kon stared at Dick. "I know all that." Smack Bart around, be Tim's friend. Obvious stuff that he'd figured out by that first party. "That's not the problem. The problem is when the stuff that's none of my business keeps hitting me over the head. Jill telling me about her ribs like I should know. I didn't. I didn't have any idea and how was I supposed to see Tim's side of it when all I knew was what Jill could tell me? Or how about Nita and how she apparently slapped Tim? I still don't know what that's about. Then there's Xander and how he's afraid of all of you."

He sucked in a breath and stared at the wall. "It has to be okay because otherwise I'm going to keep wondering just what I haven't been told that's going to make life that much more complicated for me."

Sometimes, when it was early or late and he was standing on the roof of the Compound, he wondered whether or not the three of them were just playing the parts of being the friends they had been. "It's fine, Dick. There's nothing I can do to change it, so I'm living with it. Only thing I can do, right?"

[cantstopmoving]

"Five." If Kon knows all of this, then he's ignoring it when he talks to Tim, Dick would bet on it. He knows they talked the night of the Mardi Gras party, and he knows Tim felt fragile to him again after. "Has it occurred to you yet that Nita was talking out of turn? Jill's team and that's different, but Nita slapping Tim is about as much your business as it is mine Diana tossing you off the tower."

If Roy had told him every time Grace slapped him, there'd have been no time for anything else. Okay, so Tim isn't Roy and Tim getting slapped isn't an every day occurrence, but it can't be the actual incident that's bothering Kon. Dick counsels himself to patience and calm, lacing his fingers around his knee. "Xander thinks we have it in for him because he hurt Jill. We don't, but only time will heal that one." And probably Tim apologizing, but what Tim did to Xander is not his story to tell.

"We can do this all day, you can pretend to live with it, or we can try to resolve some of it. But I need to understand how knowing or not knowing is complicating your life. Because right now, we're talking about everyone but you."

[not_the_s]

Kon shook his head. "You don't get it. I'm trying to play catch up and sometimes I wonder if it's..." He kept shaking his head. Maybe if he shook it hard enough, his head would get scrambled and Dick would stop asking questions. He didn't want to answer questions. He wanted to pretend that everything was fine and move on with his life. If he pretended hard enough, it always - almost always - sometimes always - a few times - went back to normal.

"I have been talking about me. I'm fine. I have Tim and Cassie and Karolina and Dairine and Bart and Jill and all of the other people that I know." He didn't consciously put them in any order. It was just the order of people as they came to mind.

Really, he'd already resolved what he thought he could. It just wasn't enough.

[cantstopmoving]

"No, Kon." Dick sits up straighter, not angry at all, but leaning in for emphasis. "You've told me about what Tim hasn't done, what's wrong with Bart, what Jill and Nita have told you, what Cassie did with someone who isn't you."

There's sympathy in his eyes when he stretches out his hand to rest on Kon's leg. "You define yourself in terms of your relationships because you've never had a life that wasn't what we do. Because you don't know where you fit with them, you don't know who you are."

Thank God he has Tim, Babs, Alfred, and Donna. Without them... without them he would do what he did years ago. Build a family again and ache for the one he lost. He used the model Bruce and Clark gave him and built the Titans. Kon needs a role model, and he and Donna are the obvious choices. But what does he have to offer?

"You feel like, if you can learn who they are again, you'll feel like you again." He tips his head to look at Kon. "Am I close?"

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Kon flinched and his fingers dug painfully into the material of the couch. "Sure, Dick. I've had a life outside of what we do. I'm Conner Kent, remember? Nephew of Uncle John and Aunt Martha. Cousin to the famous reporter Clark Kent. Clark's wife is even here." Or what would be his wife sometime down the line.

Like you. That wasn't the question. The question was: who was he? He wasn't sure anymore. Not after finding out about Luthor all those months back.

"Did anyone ever tell you that you should be a shrink? You've got all the mumbo jumbo down pat."

[cantstopmoving]

Satisfied he's made the point he does understand, Dick squeezes his knee and sits back again. "I'd make a terrible shrink. Shrinks listen without advising or trying to fix it. Being a hero's kind of the opposite of that."

He picks up his tea, looks into it, then gets up to get himself another cup from the kitchen while he talks. Helping Kon, or at least trying to, makes it safe to move. His own emotions don't need the leash of stillness they did before. When he opens his mouth to ask Kon how he is again, to force the issue, Dick closes it again and keeps walking into the kitchen. Let Kon sit with the idea. It's harder to deflect if he doesn't have a question to answer.

[not_the_s]

"Yeah, well, I don't have to be fixed," Kon muttered under his breath. "Or advised." He tucked his knees to his chest and rested his chin on top of them. Why he wasn't walking out the door, he wasn't sure. Maybe it was that little bit of truth that he hated to hear but which was the truth. Or maybe he just that masochistic enough.

"Not like I can even do anything about it," he said even softer, cursing himself for saying anything. He glanced up to see whether Dick had noticed. The kitchen was far enough away, right?

Sure. It had to be.

[cantstopmoving]

The kitchen's about six steps from where Kon's sitting. Far enough for privacy if the other person's complicit in giving it. In this case, Dick's not. Sue him, he has Bat ears and a good team leader always listens.

He pours hot water for his tea and adds one of the bags Roy fashioned from dress muslin. Roy did a lot of small things that made his life better; he always has. With Donna getting doctored across the way, that doesn't sting as much as it did a few hours ago, but it still keeps his eyes on his tea while it brews and he stirs.

It also gives Kon a few minutes to chase his thoughts around before Dick asks, "Do you know that Barbara and I were engaged, at home?" It seems like a non sequitur, but it isn't. He has a point.

[not_the_s]

"Barbara?" It almost felt like Kon was waking up when Dick started talking to him and he blinked for a minute before answering. "Barbara in a wheelchair Barbara? No. I didn't. I know that she said something about Bart and Cassandra, but that's about it."

He wasn't sure what that had to do with anything and he glanced at the door briefly. Should he or shouldn't he?

He hated making those kinds of decisions.

[cantstopmoving]

He fishes out the teabag and sets it on a small plate before coming back to the sitting room. Deliberately, he trails his hand across Kon's shoulders, going around the couch to sit at his end again.

"More than a year ago, now. After you died, I got beat to hell. Batman left me with Barbara to recover. We've been friends for--" He glances at Kon, smiling a little at the memory of the first time he met her. "God, forever. She's Commissioner Gordon's daughter. I had a lot of fun playing Dick and Robin at her when I was a kid. Anyway, we got really close again while she took care of me. I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. But, then Bruce wanted to take me and Tim away on a training trip. For a year. She didn't know why, but she told me to go and find myself. Even she knew I didn't know who I was."

Pausing for a long minute, Dick draws a noisy sip off his tea. "It took a year, but I found Dick Grayson. When I came home...I'd outgrown her and who I used to be with her. We broke off the engagement, but we're still friends at home."

He rubs his thumb thoughtfully against his thigh, then sighs, wondering if Kon's going to get everything he's trying to say. "When I got here, Tim dropped me off with her while he went to explain to Bart and Jill." Lie, but protecting Oracle means protecting the fact that she knows Nightwing. "Not knowing that we'd been engaged. Not knowing that he and I had been on a year long trip together at home. Not knowing that Barbara here was before me in time and had never gotten a real answer from me yet about why we weren't getting married."

[not_the_s]

He made it a point not to flinch when he felt Dick’s hand. He knew that Dick was trying to help, but it also wasn’t doing any good.

Oh, he got the point. He couldn't help but get the point. Be yourself, Kon. Find yourself. You don't have to be a hero, you can just be a normal kid. Stay with my parents and you’ll soon settle down. But he was good at playing dumb.

“Okay…?”

He shrugged a little and chuckled. “So you almost got married and ended up changing your mind. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to be next. I mean, c’mon, Dick. Cassie and I just started dating. I’m not planning on going down on one knee any time in the near future.” There. Let Dick thing that he’d confused the point he was trying to make. Let Dick think that Kon thought that this was some kind of ‘big brother’ talk about him dating Cassie.

[cantstopmoving]

For twenty seconds, thirty, Dick almost believes him. But you can't con a con, and Dick's been a Bat longer than Kon's been alive. He smiles, because Kon wouldn't try to fake him out if he didn't get at least part of the message.

"You have choices here you didn't have at home. And chances, too." God, he hopes Donna forgives him for this one. "Maybe Cassie's one of those chances. If you love her, don't wait too long."

He stands and sets his tea on the table, directs a significant look at it, that means pick it up. "Now I need to go check on some other people I love." Yes, Kon, that's right, you're one of them. "I've left them for too long."

[not_the_s]

Kon stared at Dick, wondering if he actually meant that the way it sounded. Wait too long?! He didn't mean that the way it sounded, did he? Marry her...or maybe even more bizarre, sleep with her? No, he had to be mistaking what Dick meant. Had to. Even if he couldn't stop thinking about it, now. And then Dick caught him off guard.

"You..." Love? It baffled him. Why would Dick love him? It almost seemed like they barely knew each other. "...have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Especially with my best friend." There. That he could grin over. Even if it was weird. "And by that, I mean Bart of course."

[cantstopmoving]

Smirking, Dick glances back over his shoulder when he reaches the mudroom door. "I don't think you have to worry about that," he says, and then he's gone, down the stairs to get to the first level rope bridge between the Treehouses. Back Tim and Donna, in case they need him.