(no subject)
Title: A Many Splendoured Thing. (Part 3 of 10).
Subtitle: Forgotten Conscience
Author: scarab_dynasty
Pairing: hinted Tim/Kon-El, Tim/Kon-El Clone
Rating: PG
Summary: Change is a many splendoured thing to the casual observer. It also has a tendency to suck, big time, for those experiencing it. Tim is surviving this, even if he is a little less than sane, these days.
Author's Note: Inspired by teh_no’s Ten Conversations About One Thing, I decided to deal with ten ficlets on a chosen issue in a less humorous manner. Some Spoilers for OYL (rather vague.) and IC.
Last Part (Bart Allen centric): http://community.livejournal.com/batfic/257832.html#cutid1
Next Paty (Barbara Gordon centric): http://community.livejournal.com/batfic/261826.html#cutid1
When Tim was Robin things were… different, harder, scarier, tougher, angrier, but the anger of the past is mostly gone, now, and replaced with a kind of subtle longing that can never be fulfilled. The memories range between soft and fluid and as hard metal, cut to the shape of a batarang. It’s always been about the symbols. Hollow Bat. Inherited “S”. Lightning Bolt.
Tim has started to remember things more clearly, lately. He remembers why he became Robin in the first place. He remembers why he stopped and why he started again. He remembers the crisis. He remembers Kon’s body. He remembers Luthor’s promises and lies and dark, green liquid and growing life. (Or rebirth. Whatever.) He remembers the final blow -coming down to the lab beneath Titans Tower one Saturday, three years after it happened to find Superman standing there. And Bart, sitting at a desk across from Tim’s creation. He remembers them both looking as terrified, lost and bewildered as he had wanted to feel; for so many years. He remembers the clone just looking confused.
‘Tim, did you let them come down here?’
Tim had forgotten, by that point, how to feel anything besides anger, pain and the dogged determination to turn back the clock and make things right again. He had been so sure for so long, that the very certainty that what he was doing was right had started to….to worry him.
Batman told him once, “it’s a dead man or a lunatic who thinks he is one-hundred percent correct, one hundred percent of the time.”
So when he came down to the Lab and saw the looks on Superma… Clark and Kid Fla… Bart’s faces, Tim had felt a glimmer of the one thing his mind had not allowed him to feel for several long months. He had felt uncertainty.
He knows how wrong it is that knowing they felt this -understood it- made him feel like laughing, even as the fear set in.
He knows, for a fact, that they think he’s crazy. Or thought he was.
Dick wouldn’t keep coming to visit someone who was totally crazy, after all. neither would Bart.
Well, maybe Bart would.
He hadn’t gone quietly. Not for eight whole years. Not until they finally caught up with them in Blue Valley Nebraska. Locked him -It, they had called him. It. Like he wasn’t born of the very DNA of the man that saved their whole fucking planet. Like he was worth nothing- up in Cadmus. (Wherever the hell that’s supposed to be now, if it’s even anywhere at all and this isn’t just one of the other fake memories his brain has constructed to make things make sense… He’s still not sure whether to believe that’s what’s really happening or not) and Tim up in some lower category wing of Arkham. Tim hadn’t seen him since then.
Tim is still trying to work out how he died again. He saw it on the news, that’s how he knows. They weren’t allowed to tell him. Or just didn’t want to. But Tim will find out, one day, one way or another.
Of all the people who would ever betray him, Tim would never have suspected…
No, that’s not true. He keeps telling himself it’s not true, and it’s not. Bart had wanted to help. Bart was being concerned and… and rational (odd word to use for Bart) Bart had wanted to stop him -From fixing things, or just from making a bigger mistake.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Robin relies on having all the facts and intricate little details available to him. If the facts don’t present themselves, he goes looking for them. But Tim isn’t Robin, not anymore.
Tim isn’t all that sure who he is at all.
Visiting hour. He gets to see Bart today, and is wondering what to expect. Not Cassie. He remembers, after a moment, that Cassie isn’t there anymore, either. And it’s all his fault.
But things will be made right. One way or another.
Bart has promised him.
Subtitle: Forgotten Conscience
Author: scarab_dynasty
Pairing: hinted Tim/Kon-El, Tim/Kon-El Clone
Rating: PG
Summary: Change is a many splendoured thing to the casual observer. It also has a tendency to suck, big time, for those experiencing it. Tim is surviving this, even if he is a little less than sane, these days.
Author's Note: Inspired by teh_no’s Ten Conversations About One Thing, I decided to deal with ten ficlets on a chosen issue in a less humorous manner. Some Spoilers for OYL (rather vague.) and IC.
Last Part (Bart Allen centric): http://community.livejournal.com/batfic/257832.html#cutid1
Next Paty (Barbara Gordon centric): http://community.livejournal.com/batfic/261826.html#cutid1
When Tim was Robin things were… different, harder, scarier, tougher, angrier, but the anger of the past is mostly gone, now, and replaced with a kind of subtle longing that can never be fulfilled. The memories range between soft and fluid and as hard metal, cut to the shape of a batarang. It’s always been about the symbols. Hollow Bat. Inherited “S”. Lightning Bolt.
Tim has started to remember things more clearly, lately. He remembers why he became Robin in the first place. He remembers why he stopped and why he started again. He remembers the crisis. He remembers Kon’s body. He remembers Luthor’s promises and lies and dark, green liquid and growing life. (Or rebirth. Whatever.) He remembers the final blow -coming down to the lab beneath Titans Tower one Saturday, three years after it happened to find Superman standing there. And Bart, sitting at a desk across from Tim’s creation. He remembers them both looking as terrified, lost and bewildered as he had wanted to feel; for so many years. He remembers the clone just looking confused.
‘Tim, did you let them come down here?’
Tim had forgotten, by that point, how to feel anything besides anger, pain and the dogged determination to turn back the clock and make things right again. He had been so sure for so long, that the very certainty that what he was doing was right had started to….to worry him.
Batman told him once, “it’s a dead man or a lunatic who thinks he is one-hundred percent correct, one hundred percent of the time.”
So when he came down to the Lab and saw the looks on Superma… Clark and Kid Fla… Bart’s faces, Tim had felt a glimmer of the one thing his mind had not allowed him to feel for several long months. He had felt uncertainty.
He knows how wrong it is that knowing they felt this -understood it- made him feel like laughing, even as the fear set in.
He knows, for a fact, that they think he’s crazy. Or thought he was.
Dick wouldn’t keep coming to visit someone who was totally crazy, after all. neither would Bart.
Well, maybe Bart would.
He hadn’t gone quietly. Not for eight whole years. Not until they finally caught up with them in Blue Valley Nebraska. Locked him -It, they had called him. It. Like he wasn’t born of the very DNA of the man that saved their whole fucking planet. Like he was worth nothing- up in Cadmus. (Wherever the hell that’s supposed to be now, if it’s even anywhere at all and this isn’t just one of the other fake memories his brain has constructed to make things make sense… He’s still not sure whether to believe that’s what’s really happening or not) and Tim up in some lower category wing of Arkham. Tim hadn’t seen him since then.
Tim is still trying to work out how he died again. He saw it on the news, that’s how he knows. They weren’t allowed to tell him. Or just didn’t want to. But Tim will find out, one day, one way or another.
Of all the people who would ever betray him, Tim would never have suspected…
No, that’s not true. He keeps telling himself it’s not true, and it’s not. Bart had wanted to help. Bart was being concerned and… and rational (odd word to use for Bart) Bart had wanted to stop him -From fixing things, or just from making a bigger mistake.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Robin relies on having all the facts and intricate little details available to him. If the facts don’t present themselves, he goes looking for them. But Tim isn’t Robin, not anymore.
Tim isn’t all that sure who he is at all.
Visiting hour. He gets to see Bart today, and is wondering what to expect. Not Cassie. He remembers, after a moment, that Cassie isn’t there anymore, either. And it’s all his fault.
But things will be made right. One way or another.
Bart has promised him.