Chapter Text
After a little light rampaging, Tim high-tails it out of Gotham to lay low for a while until the Bats stop turning over every rock they stumble on to locate him. He sets up in a motel in a small town with no significant vigilante and/or superhuman activity and spends time going over his files and revising plans in light of Ra’s’ new deadline. Even with his unplanned murder spree, he’s barely halfway through the list of the Batfamily’s most dangerous enemies; he has to step up the pace if he wants to leave behind a safer Gotham for Jason and Dick.
And then there’s him.
Tim pulls all the information he has on the Lazarus Pits: locations, limitations, possible weaknesses. It’d be insane to think he could destroy every Lazarus Pit with 100% certainty. The safer bet is to find a way to die so that even the Lazarus Pit wouldn’t be able to drag him back. Or/and—
Ra’s has always been a question mark on the list; ideally, someone Tim should take out, but realistically—maybe there’s a way, but Tim had let the queasy feeling in his stomach when he thinks about Ra’s guide him away from researching it. (Coward.) But now Ra’s is forcing his hand, so maybe—maybe he can solve all his problems with one blow. Let Ra’s take him back—he shoves his fingernails into his own arms to concentrate on because he feels dizzy at the thought of willingly letting Ra’s have him, but it would be temporary and he could deal with temporary—let Ra’s take him back so he can kill them both. Explosives, maybe, fixing what he failed to do with Joker and Harley; let the League of Assassins try to revive their precious Ra’s if their bodies are vaporized.
It needs work, yeah, but it’s a start.
Someone knocks on his door. Housekeeping, maybe, but Tim grabs his gun from the desk he’s been working at and checks the door peephole.
It’s Kon.
Fuck.
“I know you know I’m here, Tim.”
The door is such a bullshit pitiful defense against a Kryptonian, but Tim’s going to hide behind it like he doesn’t know Kon can see right through it. Fuck, how is he so stupid?
“I just want to talk.”
“Did you tell them where I am?”
Kon pauses. “Not yet.”
So he has time. He could pack and run and hope the super-fast ex won’t stop him, which is a deeply unlikely outcome because Tim’s an idiot who left his emergency stash of Kryptonite in Gotham. Stupid, stupid.
“Just let me in. Please?”
Tim grits his teeth. “I thought I made it clear I didn’t want you around when I poisoned you.”
In response, his hand, splayed against the door, tingles with Kon’s TTK as the locks on the door click open. Tim flinches back like it burnt his hand.
Kon’s wearing jeans and the stupid black and red Superboy t-shirt from his ‘who needs costumes, just throw on whatever and save someone’ phase. Tim used to tease him about it but not that much because, honestly, Kon can rock a pair of jeans. For a second, Tim feels dizzily like he’s fallen back in time to when they were both Titans and Kon would sneak into Drake Manor to make out with him without letting any of the staff know someone else was in the house.
“I heard what happened in Gotham.”
Tim fingers the gun he knows would never hurt Kon even if he could bring himself to shoot him. “So you’re, what, here to take me to Arkham?”
“I’m here to ask you to come with me to Smallville.”
Tim bursts into laughter and hates it, hates the hyena-like bark of it and the Joker-bright smile he knows it gives him, but he can’t help it because this is some grade-A unbelievable comedy. “What the fuck, Kon?”
“I’m serious, Tim.” Kon doesn’t recoil like he should from Tim’s loss of control but he keeps his distance still. “I want you to come to Smallville with me.”
“That is… the stupidest fucking idea I’ve ever heard,” Tim gasps out, fingernails pressing into his arms again because he needs to stop and shut up and shut up, he can’t keep laughing like this. Kon steps forward, finally, and grabs hold of his hands so he can’t feel the sting anymore and Tim snarls through the hysterical giggles and backs away but Kon’s not letting him go and it’s—he can’t quite catch his breath—
“Tim?”
It’s too much, everything is just—he didn’t ask for this, any of it, no one asked him if he wanted to survive his own death and he’s just trying to clean up the mess as best he can and here’s this idiot asking him to run away to fucking Smallville like it’s normal to ask a serial killer to your house for a vacation, like his dreams aren’t bathed in the oceans of blood he’s spilled.
Something covers his skin, sunshine-warm and massaging his shoulders gently, and Tim’s too fucked up to demand that Kon let go. Years ago, Kon first tried out this particular TTK trick when Tim was stressed and freaked out after a nasty training session with Damian, and it’s—he doesn’t deserve it, but the memory hurts less than everything else in his head right now, so he lets it be.
Eventually, when he’s breathing a little more easily, Tim picks his head up from where he’d let it slip onto Kon’s chest (weak). “You can’t just ask a murderer to come home with you. Idiot.”
“That’s not who you are.” Tim opens his mouth to respond, but Kon gets there first: “It’s not. You’re hurt and you’re sick but you’re still my Tim underneath it all. You can’t expect me to believe you’re not.”
“Kon—“
Kon lifts Tim like they’re still kids and he weighs nothing in Kon’s arms even if it’s a lie, even if there’s lead in his heart poisoning him bit by bit and dragging him down, down. So Tim says the only thing he can think of to make Kon let go: “I belong with Ra’s al Ghul.”
He’s held in the air, suspended, Kon’s face just as frozen as Tim is.
“I’m not your boyfriend anymore, Kon. I joined the League of Assassins. I’m Ra’s’ consort, and when I’m done in Gotham—“
He can’t say the words.
“What did he do?” Kon’s voice is a rumble, thunder in his veins. Tim’s still suspended in the air, and it occurs to him that he has no fucking clue how this is going to end.
“I wanted him,” Tim says but his voice fucking stutters and he wants to claw the air out of his throat for betraying him.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“I can hear you, Tim.” Kon lowers Tim to the ground, finally, but his eyes are glowing red and Tim has—he’s really, truly fucked up this time. “I can always hear when you’re lying.”
There’s a blur of motion, dizzying and confusing until Tim finds himself sitting on a couch in a sunny farmhouse living room, his back braced against the blue and red quilt draped over the back of the couch. Krypto hops onto the cushion next to him to rest his head against Tim’s lap while Tim blindly grabs the nearest pillow and presses it against his face so he can scream.
Fuck.