Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Conner hated Training Tuesdays. Specifically, Tactical Training Tuesdays. For one, the alliteration seemed to be going a bit overboard. For another, Conner was quickly finding out that he wasn’t, how would Kori put it, subtle the way Tactical Training Tuesdays seemed to favor. Cassie, on the other hand, was spectacular at it. She was like the Wonder Girl of tactics. 

And Conner was the Superboy of… screwing off. 

Which was why it shouldn’t have been all that shocking to anyone when he wasn’t at the training session that morning beyond the morning team run and decided, instead, to take a quick detour at the dog park. It also shouldn’t have been surprising that the aforementioned quick detour turned into a several hour walk around Los Angeles that ended with him back at the tower that the team had to themselves only once the sun had started coming down. No one had been all that worried. After all, it wasn’t the first - nor would it be the last - time that Conner had struck out of his own. Dick always looked disappointed when Conner came back, his eyes doing that kicked puppy thing he was so good at doing. But Krypto needed the exercise and Conner needed the space away. And he hated Tactical Training Tuesdays. 

He was half expecting Dick’s disappointed face when he walked, shoes echoing on the floor of the empty lobby. It was only the team that had access to the building. Conner wasn’t sure how Dick managed to do it, but it was only their combined fingerprint and retinal scan that even got the doors to open. Conner was only concerned because he didn’t remember giving either things over to be added to any sort of database. They didn’t have a receptionist, even if there was a desk and set up for one. The computer, no matter the time of day, always had a Wayne Tech logo floating as it’s screen saver. 

Maybe they did have a secretary. 

The elevator didn’t play any music and Krypto, who hated the elevator more than anything, brushed against his leg. The silver fur left in his trail should have been annoying but Krypto was perhaps the one thing that could keep Conner calm nowadays.

He didn’t know what was the matter with him, if he were to be honest. Conner was just… angry . Everything made him angry . Dick assured him that he had been trying to get in contact with Clark Kent - Superman, Conner’s memories told him - but it was to no avail. He didn’t have to tell Conner that this Clark Kent wanted nothing to do with Conner for Conner to know that his assumptions were true. The part of Conner that belonged to Lex Luthor hated Clark Kent with a passion Conner could never dream of matching. Resentment. Frustration. Jealousy. Conner understood it for what it was. Lex Luthor hated Clark Kent merely for the fact that he existed. He was a symbol of everything Lex could never be. 

Conner didn’t understand why he was made, was the thing. There wasn’t a logical reason for it aside from the fact that Lex wanted to prove that he could . Half of his DNA belonged to a human and the other half belonged to an alien and Conner wasn’t much of either of those things. What was someone that was half human? What was someone that was half alien? What was someone who barely had memories of their own? 

Perhaps his anger was frustration too. Conner didn’t think that Dick wasn’t trying - that the team wasn’t trying to help him. They obviously were. But Conner wasn’t the biggest concern. After all, Rachel had succeeded in bringing back Donna Troy from the dead, Jason was neither on nor off the team, Rose Wilson still was sharing her body with her dead brother Jericho, Cassie Sandsmark was apparently half god , and Kori was dealing with an entire royal alien takeover mess. So Conner got it. He understood it. His mysterious half human, half alien cloning was the least of everyone’s concern. If he wasn’t an immediate issue than what reason did they have to waste more time than was necessary on him? 

Strategically, it made sense. 

Conner didn’t like being a statistic. 

On the list of how important Conner’s problems were to the team, he ranked at about a seven. He was above Jason but below almost everyone else. 

Except to Krypto. 

“Because you’re the best, huh?” Conner asked the dog absently and scratched behind his ears. Krypto leaned his big, warm head into his hand and flapped his tail on the ground. “Or maybe it’s because you’re the only one that gets it.” 

Krypto, after all, had been experimented on too. He too shared Kryptonian DNA. Both of them, test tube creations no one understood. None of the others had been a science experiment the way Conner had been. But that wasn’t fair, Conner told himself. They all had their fair share of problems that the others could only barely understand. Kori had come from another planet, Dick had been through things he wouldn’t even speak of growing up, Gar had his share of trauma, Rachel had a demon for a father, Rose had Deathstroke as a father, Hank and Dawn both struggled with tragedy and addiction, Donna had literally died…. The thing was that Conner knew he was being unfair. 

But that didn’t change how he felt. 

It was agonizing to be in a group full of people that could, maybe, possibly, understand what he was going through, and feel so alone. 

The elevator dinged and Conner half expected one of the others to be waiting for him but none of them had texted him to see where he was either. Krypto nudged against his leg one more time before taking off in a gentle trot towards his food bowl in the dimly lit kitchen. Conner waited with bated breath in the entryway. For what, he wasn’t entirely sure. 

Well, he wasn’t sure until he heard it. 

People weren’t usually training this late in the afternoon. 

His team members came and went as they pleased most of the time, so Conner wasn’t shocked at the small amount of them that were present. Hank and Dawn hadn’t moved back into the tower and Donna had taken to staying with them while she got her head back on straight after coming back from the dead. Gar and Rachel were out, possibly on a date, or possibly picking up dinner. Conner never knew exactly what they were. Rose was in her room, Conner could hear the soft thrum of her music and the twinkling of her voice as she held both sides of a conversation through a closed door. Cassie had left her door open and had her pretty blonde head bent down towards her hands as she ran a green brush over her nails. Conner wrinkled his nose at the strong scent of alcohol and paint that filled the air as he walked by and she barely looked up, eyes trained on the screen of her computer and colored light drifting over her face. Kori wasn’t home, which meant she was either with Gar and Rachel or out dealing with whatever alien princess drama was unfolding where only her and Dick could see. 

Conner was tense until he peeked into the training room and then his shoulders relaxed and a certain thrill shot up his spine. 

There was always something magical about watching Dick Grayson move. He had been trained both by acrobats and Batman and his moves held grace and coiled strength in equal measures. But everyone had grown used to amazement when watching Dick fight. 

He held nothing to Tim Drake. 

But, perhaps Conner was biased. 

Tim wasn’t anywhere near as trained as Dick was, he didn’t employ the tricks and flips and brute strength Dick did. But he was fast, calculating and purposeful. And, most importantly, strategic . Conner had seen Tim fight a few times, in Haiti, when Robin had dropped in to help the team sporadically, but nothing ever really prepared him for it. Tim had a special sort of ability. He could convince his opponent they were winning while he flawlessly broke down all of their barriers. They wouldn't notice it until they were flat on their backs blinking up at the ceiling in confusion. Conner had loved watching Tim work since the first time they met. He wasn’t as nuanced and showy as Dick, or as angry and ruthless as Jason, but he was efficient and brutal in his own way. 

Dick had never had an equal match during training before. Conner knew he was the best of them in many things. If they weren’t using their powers Dick could beat any one of them with his eyes closed and he could do it even with most of them using their enhancements. But Tim met him blow for blow, ducked and countered until he was forced to call a draw with a panting, impressed smile. 

Granted, it didn’t happen that time. 

Conner had offered up an unfortunate distraction. Tim spun, did a double take when he caught sight of Conner by the end of the mat, and Dick had to readjust the blow he had expected Tim to dodge at the last second. It was a testament to how good Nightwing was, and how well trained both Nightwing and Robin were, that the blow could even be edited moments before it hit. And that Tim knew enough to roll as he fell so that he didn’t hurt himself more than a few bruises. Conner winced and Dick swore when Tim’s back hit the mat hard. 

He could hear the breath leave his lungs, winded, and then rush back in as Tim sucked in a deep, rattling breath and blinked up at the training room ceiling blank shock. “You okay, Tim?” Dick hovered over him for just a moment and Conner wondered why he was looking so deeply into his eyes until he remembered that, out of the rest of the team, Tim was the least trained of all of them. On top of that, Dick and Tim were both human. Going down as hard as he had could have caused a myriad of problems, not to mention a concussion. 

Tim hit the mat twice and shot him a thumbs up. 

“Sorry.” Conner apologized even if he knew neither of them would accept it. 

Distractions, Conner could imagine Dick saying, were something they had to learn to work around. “Not your fault.” Dick reassured him needlessly and draped a towel over his shoulders. He held onto both ends until the towel strained. The muscles in his arms flexed at the movement and he only stayed still long enough to brush the towel over the sweat on his forehead. “Where have you been?” 

He knew where Conner had been. All of their phones were equipped with a tracker (Dick promised that he hadn’t put any in them the way Bruce had done each of his Robins but Conner wasn’t sure how much he trusted anyone ) and Conner was well aware of that fact. Dick would have tracked him the moment he had disappeared from training and deemed his absence okay. Otherwise he would have bothered him to come back earlier. “Dog park.” 

“For five hours?” Dick’s eyebrows quirked towards his hairline but his lips held a small, teasing smile. Conner scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you staying tonight?” Dick nudged Tim’s prone form with the toe of his shoe and Conner heard the way his breath hitched into a small laugh when Tim pushed at his calf in wordless protest. “I’ll set up Jason’s room for you.” 

Jason wouldn’t be happy with that. 

Conner had overheard one too many rants the other boy had over the fact that Tim existed. He called him Replacement as though that was his name. As though Jason hadn’t decided to quit and take on a new moniker. Conner had heard Dick’s quiet defense too but Jason was too angry to let it go. The downside to teenage rebellion, Rachel had said with a roll of her eyes, you never knew who to blame for your own fuck ups. 

Not that she swore when she said it. 

But it was fine, Conner was simply paraphrasing. 

Dick left them alone, clapping Conner on the shoulder as he walked by and footsteps echoing down the hall. The door to Jason’s room creaked open as he shuffled inside, humming softly to Rose’s music as he went. Conner wasn’t sure what making up Jason’s room entailed aside from sweeping it for guns or traps Jason would keep hidden. It was entirely possible that Dick had left simply to give the two of them some time to reconnect. 

What would Conner know about that, though? After all, Conner barely knew anything. 

Tim groaned as he sat up, hands placed strong on the ground behind him to aid his upwards movement even if he didn’t need it. He rubbed at the spot on his back that Dick had connected with and his hair was longer, more in his eyes now than it ever had been before. He had been wearing a headband, Conner noted with an odd interested curiosity, that had fallen out when he had hit the ground. “Please tell me I looked cool.” 

“As you fell to the ground?” Conner smiled, a bit, at the implication. “You looked really cool.” 

Tim glared but there was no heat. He wasn’t actually angry or annoyed at anyone but himself for failing to avoid the blow. Conner, taking pity on him, offered a hand down to him to use to pull himself up. Tim wasn't the type to accept help from anyone, but he allowed Conner to haul him up to standing with a strong hand on his forearm. He straightened with a bright smile and they were close enough that Conner could feel the curl of his breath over his lips. Rather suddenly, Conner was on a rooftop in Gotham looking up at the clouds as the chill of early winter settled into his bones. Suddenly, he was looking into Tim’s baby blue eyes and wanting nothing more than to swim in their depths forever. Tim had grown taller, Conner realized, enough so that his nose was only centimeters under Conner’s own. He would never be tall, Tim had said so himself when they had first met, but he was losing all of the tell-tale signs of adolescence and smoothing out into adulthood. 

His eyes were darker the closer they stood, his eyes shot down to Conner’s lips and Conner could feel the pounding of his heart in the arm he still held onto. They leaned closer as one, a ghost of a kiss between them, and then Conner, without thinking, thrust him an arm's distance away as Rachel stumbled into the room. She brought with her the smell of Thai food wafting from the kitchen where Conner could hear the others gathering. Rachel glanced between the two of them and then shrugged. “Dick told me to get you two for dinner.” Her voice held the sort of apprehensive curiosity that set Conner’s cheeks aflame. He ducked his head and dropped Tim’s forearm from his grip. 

“Right,” Tim said the word slowly and nodded to himself after a moment of awkward breathing. Conner, in fear of what would happen if he looked at him, spun so Tim could only see his back, footsteps heavy on the padded floor as he left the training room behind. 

“Everything okay with you two?” Rachel asked and Conner pretended he wasn’t listening. That he couldn’t hear the pounding of Tim’s heart as it beat in his very human chest. 

Tim hummed and his shirt shifted as he shrugged, voice suspiciously light in the space of the distance Conner had forced between them. “Are you and Gar dating yet?” Rachel coughed at the switch in conversation. 

Conner spared them a glance over his shoulder. 

Tim smiled weakly and something like shame curled in the pit of his stomach. 

The thing was, Conner thought as he layered his plate with food and made idle conversation with Gar, was that he didn’t really know how to feel about Tim. Tim didn’t make him feel like anyone else and, objectively, Conner knew it wasn’t anything to really be worried about. Tim was nice and smart and he had probably figured out how Conner felt before Conner could figure it out himself. But he was also Tim . Conner’s first friend. Well, second if he counted Gar. Tim didn’t feel anything like Gar did, though. He felt both more important and more concerning. Conner couldn’t think straight when he was around. 

Conner both wanted to destroy Tim Drake and protect him from the world. 

And that was more than a bit worrying. 

He ducked out of the dining room and into his own bedroom and, if Conner tried hard enough, he could ignore the way Tim’s eyes seemed to follow him the entire way. 

It was best if Conner didn’t get him involved until he figured himself out. 

--

“So,” Dick asked later that night, the blue light from the computer monitors reflecting on his face and fingers drumming a pattern only he recognized on the counter. The steam from a mug of too sweet tea that Kori had made him was brushing against the bottom of his chin and his cheek still tingled with the imprint of her kiss as she begged off to bed twenty minutes earlier. She had left him and Tim alone with a knowing look. Bruce, after all, didn’t know that Tim was visiting. Tim hadn’t said so himself but Dick thought he knew the other boy well enough to figure that out. 

That and Bruce had texted him earlier to verify that Tim had, in fact, run off to Dick and not to Europe in an effort to imitate Jason. Tim sighed and it was the sort of sigh Dick knew all too well. 

He hadn’t been sleeping. 

Tim was good was the thing. He knew how to hide anything that ailed him in a way that Dick would be jealous of if he wasn’t also concerned about it. Things seemed to be going good with Bruce from everything Dick could see. Tim and Bruce were getting along surprisingly well. The newest Robin had the brains to rival Bruce in a way Dick hadn’t thought anyone could. He was stubborn, and brilliant, and he fit the role in a way that even Dick hadn’t. He had still been through something rather traumatic, though. Even if he hadn’t been close to either of his parents. “Do you want some tea?” He nudged the mug to the corner Tim currently sat in and the younger boy raised a smooth eyebrow with a twitch of his lips at the question. “Kori put too much sugar.” 

“And you’re pawning it off on me?” 

“It’s probably still not enough sugar for you.” 

Tim snorted his small laugh that Dick was fond of and cradled the mug between his hands, fingernails chipping at the ceramic and eyes gazing into the dark water as though it held answers to questions Tim hadn’t even voiced yet. 

Dick didn’t know what was wrong with him. Not that there necessarily had to be anything wrong with him for him to visit but Tim wasn’t the type to drop by unannounced unless something was going on. They had grown close in the past year, closer than Dick had ever had the chance of being with Jason (which wasn’t necessarily the fault of either of them, Dick had been in a rough place when Jason had first shown up and Jason was perpetually abrasive), and Dick thought that, perhaps, Tim was the closest thing to a younger brother he could ever have. Kori and Rachel both said that he had an uncanny ability to get troubled kids to trust and talk. Dick just thought he was really good at staying quiet until they just blurted out their feelings. “What’s up, Timmy?” 

Tim wrinkled his nose at the nickname and pulled his knees up to his chest in the chair, a hand running through his shaggy, still wet from his shower bangs. “Dad woke up.” 

Bruce hadn’t mentioned that . 

There was a small part of Dick, a small, small and rude part of him, that was extremely jealous of Timothy Drake. The child in Dick would do anything to have even one of his parents alive still. To have the possibility of holding them (and being held by them) once more. He wanted nothing more than to introduce them to Kori, to hear his mother’s soft and teasing accent, his father’s booming laugh. The Graysons were a ghost of a memory as he got older. He wasn’t sure if he even fully remembered the way his parents looked save for the pictures he had so few of. It wasn’t fair of him, Dick knew that, but emotions so rarely tended to be things that worked in fairness. “Isn’t that a good thing?” He asked instead of voicing his inner feelings. 

He asked for two reasons - one, he wanted to gauge how Tim was exactly feeling without coming to his own conclusions, and two because Dick was unsure of his own feelings on the matter. It was good , in retrospect, that Jack Drake was awake. What it meant for Tim, though, was something Dick didn’t know. If he had run to Dick of all people instead of staying in Gotham he had to assume that Tim didn’t quite know how to feel about it himself. 

Tim looked at him through his bangs and took a long sip from the tea. His face screwed up in disgust as the taste hit his tongue and, very slowly, he placed it back on the counter and swallowed. “That tastes terrible.” He stated with a cough into his elbow. 

Dick pursed his lips to hide a laugh. 

Kori really wasn’t great at making tea but oh how she tried . Dick wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that the more she tried the worse the quality got. “You can stay as long as you want.” Dick said instead, steering the conversation back to where it needed to be as gently as possible. 

Tim was good at changing topics without many noticing. It was a talent born out of avoidance and, while Dick appreciated the nuance of it, some things were better off being confronted than ignored. If Dick could follow his own advice his life would be a lot easier. “He’s not well enough to leave the hospital yet.” Tim said after a moment of staring at the CCTV Dick had pulled up earlier. “But when he is…” 

Tim would have to go live with him again instead of with Bruce. 

It made something swirl in Dick’s stomach. He pushed away the jealousy and focused, instead, on the gnawing worry. “You don’t have to stay there if you don’t want to. I’m sure we could figure something out.” 

Tim shook his head slowly with a sardonic smile. It didn’t look right on the face of a sixteen year old. “He wants his family to be with him.” 

Family. 

Dick had never asked Tim how he felt about living with Bruce aside from a casual brush about the conditions. But Dick didn’t find the title of family , as it applied to Jack and Tim, to be accurate. Jack Drake was Tim’s biological father but he had never raised more than a finger to be responsible for him. He didn’t really know his son, after all. 

But it wasn’t Dick place to say his opinion in the matter. Tim’s relationship with his father didn’t involve Dick or Bruce or any of them. And Dick knew what he would have given at sixteen to have the opportunity Tim now did. “What do you want?” He asked instead because Dick didn’t think many people had ever bothered asking Tim that in most decisions. 

Tim faltered, his fingers picking at the seam of his borrowed sweats and brow furrowed. He avoided Dick’s eyes like a professional and looked, instead, at the space above his head. “I don’t know.” He said it quietly, broken, as though it hurt to admit. As though Tim wasn’t used to not knowing things. 

He didn’t jump when Dick’s hand settled on his knee, but his eyes did shoot to Dick’s purposefully kind gaze. “We’ll figure it out, okay?” 

Tim’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. “Okay.” 

--

Conner blew out a long and frustrated breath and told himself that it wasn’t worth being annoyed over. 

He was still annoyed, though. 

Cassie looked at him with curious eyes, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulder as they jogged through the park. It was Conner’s morning routine to go for a run with Krypto but Krypto hadn’t wanted to get out of his bed early that morning and Cassie had eagerly offered to take the dog’s place. Tim hadn’t been awake yet, Conner could hear him breathing slow and steady in Jason’s bed and he had stayed up long enough to hear his muted and soft conversation with Dick the night before. 

He shouldn’t have listened in, privacy was important, but Conner couldn’t ever simply not listen whenever Tim was involved. 

That wasn’t the issue, though. Conner knew Tim hadn’t brought up his father simply because Conner hadn’t given him the chance and he couldn’t be annoyed at anyone but himself for that. The issue was Cassie Sandsmark. 

It wasn’t that Conner didn’t like her. She was a fair match for him in strength and stamina and she was very aesthetically pleasing to look at. She had all of the right curves and angles and her hair was the color of golden sunlight. 

But she was also… Conner didn’t want her around as much as she seemed to insist on being around. As the newest member of their team, Cassie had fit in a lot easier than Conner had. Rachel, Rose and her seemed to gravitate to one another in solidarity of being women and Cassie was newly addicted to whatever Animal Crossing was that Gar had introduced her to. She went to Kori for fashion advice and traded music with Dick and, hell, even Tim seemed to get along with her whenever he popped in. It really was only Conner that had any sort of reservation and, well, he couldn’t exactly pinpoint the reason why. 

Except, Conner had reservations with everyone lately. 

It really was starting to become an issue. 

“You could slow down, you know.” Cassie panted from a step behind him but pumped her arms enough so that she was running beside him again. 

Conner barely restrained a growl in misplaced frustration. 

He just wanted to be alone was all. 

The team always did everything together and Conner didn’t really mind it most of the time. But the runs he took with Krypto were precious in a way most things weren’t. Conner felt most normal with his feet pounding on pavement and running until his lungs started to scream in protest. Conner didn’t spare Cassie an answer - he had a feeling none of the ones he had would be kind - and, instead, turned the corner into a busy intersection. 

Cars honked as he sprinted across the road, barely glancing to be sure that no cars were in immediate danger of hitting him. Conner wasn’t entirely sure who would actually get hurt in that situation - him or the driver of the vehicles. Cassie swore from behind him and pulled herself to a stop at the curb and Conner, in a fit of glory that felt slightly malicious, smiled into the sunlight where she couldn’t see. He didn’t wait on the other side of the road and, instead, kept moving forward. She would either find him or head back to the tower. It wasn’t his concern where she went. 

A crash had Conner’s arms windmilling around him as the ground shook beneath his feet and he stumbled into a stroller nearly toppling it to its side. The mother pushing it yelped and he steadied himself and her with a strong grip, quickly scanning to make sure no one in the immediate vicinity was injured. 

A meteor crashed into the pavement loud enough that it reverberated through his bones. “Go!” He shoved the mother away and she took off in a sprint, the stroller left behind but the baby cradled in her arms. Screams from every side had a headache pulling at the edges of Conner’s senses but he was noticeably more concerned with whoever had fallen into a crater in the middle of the outdoor mall. He jogged to the edge of the rubble and squinted up into the blue, clear sky. Where had the thing even come from? 

It was the flash of recognition that stumbled up his spine, first. It was like looking into the mirror except for small, barely noticeable differences. He wore his hair differently, was more filled out in the shoulders and definitely older but, if Conner didn’t know any better, he would have thought that he was looking at himself. 

Conner knew better. 

The red, curving S against blue armor was what gave him away. 

The green smoke flowing out of the bullet holes in his chest was what got Conner moving. 

Someone had just shot Superman out of the sky with the one thing that could kill him. 

And Conner wasn’t the type to leave him behind to see if they would act again. 

--

“What is he even doing in Los Angeles?” Kori asked for what had to be the tenth time but Dick didn’t seem to hear her. She pulled sterile gloves over her fingers and watched him bend his head over Superman’s chest, long metal tweezers in a much too steady hand. Experience, Conner thought. Only experience would explain how Dick seemed unfazed by the pump of blood that welled up over the metal as he stuck them in the holes in the man’s chest. It squelched as he pulled them out and Conner gagged at the sound and smell of it, turning his face away at the last moment. 

“Tim, call Bruce.” Dick ordered but Tim had already been on the phone with their mentor, explaining the situation in a specific sort of shorthand Conner didn’t understand. 

“ETA two hours.” Tim announced from where he stood by Conner’s elbow. His fingers brushed over Conner’s sleeve. “No one got you, right?” 

Kori glanced up at the question, eyes wide and concerned, as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to her before Tim had voiced it. 

Conner shook his head. “No, it only hit him.” 

“Who just has Kryptonite bullets?” Cassie bit at her thumbnail. She had stumbled upon Conner struggling under the weight of Superman only minutes after he had pulled him from the crater his fall had created and the shoulder of her exercise top was covered in dried blood. 

Conner knew who just had Kryptonite bullets. He didn’t answer, though. Not that he had to, because Gar answered for him, a grave tilt to his voice. “Cadmus.” 

Tim’s fingers squeezed Conner’s at the name and Conner didn’t even remember grabbing his hand moments before. His pulse was nice, though. Calming and steady and keeping Conner tethered in a way that nothing else could. “Conner,” Kori called urgently, her strong hands holding Superman down as Dick worked. “Can you look into him, see if there’s anything left?” 

Conner didn’t exactly know how his x-ray vision worked. As far as he knew, they didn’t have an on and off switch that was easy to locate. He squinted his eyes and hoped but it did nothing. He shook his head, failure clogging his words in his throat. 

He had been wanting to meet Superman. 

He hadn’t wanted to meet him like this. 

Kori swore at his denial and Dick looked up sharply, brown hair shaggy in his face. “It’s fine Conner.” It didn’t feel fine and the stern tone in Dick’s voice didn’t make him feel any better about the situation. “You need to get out of here.” 

“I can help hold him down.” 

“He was shot with Kryptonite, any closer or more prolonged and it might start to affect you too.” Tim tugged on his hand as he spoke, words calming but holding no room for argument. 

“Cassie.” She looked up sharply, eyes wide with earnest concern. “Come help Kori hold him down. There’s still one more I have to get.” She glanced slowly at Conner and Tim, smiled softly as she brushed by them, and grabbed the top of Superman’s ankles as Kori held down his shoulders. 

It felt wrong to leave Dick to treat Superman on his own but Conner supposed Tim was right. Kryptonite could hurt Conner about as much as it could hurt the older man and Conner was no good to them if he was hurt. They ducked into Conner’s bedroom, Krypto’s head shooting up and ears back as they entered, and Conner fell heavily onto his bed. He too had blood on his shirt and shorts, the toes of his sneakers streaked with the red stuff, and Conner didn’t know why it shocked him to see it but it did. Superman wasn’t supposed to bleed. Not like humans. 

Krypto’s collar jingled as he pawed his way over to Conner, his black nose nudging into Conner’s forehead until he looked up enough to brush a hand through his fur. “Tell me everything you remember.” Tim didn’t ask but Tim never asked. Not when it was potentially about a mission. He didn’t make it seem like an order, though. Conner could take as long as he needed to get the words out, Tim was more than willing to wait. He was still in his pajamas from the night before, a pair of Gar’s sweats hanging off his hips and one of Dick’s shirts long enough to cover his palms. He carried a wet cloth in his hand and Conner didn’t know when he had gotten it but he was thankful for the gentle brush over his shaking hands as Tim washed the blood from his fingers. He worked slowly, methodologically, as though he did it himself any number of times. “Did you see anyone?” 

“No,” Conner answered softly and Krypto nudged at his cheek, a whine low in his throat. “I turned the corner and he fell from the sky.” 

“Okay.” Tim’s knees hit the ground as he knelt in front of Conner and Krypto, the water from the rag dripping onto the carpet. Kori had gotten him that carpet as a sort of welcome present. He liked the way it felt under his feet in the morning. “What do you remember hearing?” 

Conner shrugged uselessly. “Screaming.” 

“Anything else?” 

Conner wanted to scream at him then. No he didn’t remember hearing anything else! It was all so loud and sudden and Conner could barely remember anything except the way the ground shook and the green smoke rising from bullet holes mingling with red, red blood. Tim’s eyes shot up at him and he sat up on his knees, his fingers brushing over the top of Conner’s forehead and through his hair. “ No .” 

“Close your eyes.” 

He glared. “Why?” 

“Con.” 

He closed his eyes. 

Tim’s hand was soothing against his scalp, fingers digging in for a moment and then brushing over the same skin with a gentle caress. “You were running. You had just crossed the street, and you could hear everything around you. Conversations from pedestrians, a food truck setting up for the day, birds chirping in their nests. And then what did you hear?” 

Conner swallowed and the sun was hitting him in the face, bright in the early morning sky and warm against the chill that had settled into his skin. “A baby had just woken up from their nap.” 

“Were they with their mom or their dad?” 

“Mom. She was out getting some breakfast.” She had snort red hair that curled at her chin and had been talking into her phone speaker, excited about the day they were about to have. “They’re here on vacation.” 

“Some vacation, right?” 

Conner laughed despite the situation. “I don’t remember hearing anything else, Tim. Really.” 

“Humor me.” 

He scowled but acquiesced. “Fine.” 

“So the mom’s talking to someone about vacation, and the baby just woke up -.” 

“The dad. She was talking to the dad.” 

“Okay,” Tim sounded unfairly amused and he shifted so that his weight was off the curves of his knees. “And then the ground shook.” 

“No, that’s not right.” Conner wrinkled his forehead. It was on the edge of his senses, something that was nagging at him for proper attention that he hadn’t given it before. He focused on the split second memory, there was something there. Something between the ground shaking and the baby starting to cry that he couldn’t figure out. 

It had been a pop. 

A shot. 

A… 

His eyes shot open and Tim flinched at the sudden appearance of Conner’s gaze on him. “He broke the sound barrier.” 

“He…” Tim’s breath hitched and he blinked, as though he was shocked that whatever experiment he had been doing had actually worked. “He broke the sound barrier?” 

“He was running away.” Conner confirmed and stumbled to his feet.

“From where?” Tim clamoured after him and winced at the crack in his knees. Conner had to tell someone . The information felt too important to stay between the two of them. Tim’s hand fisted in the back of his shirt and he yanked him backwards. 

Conner could have broken free of his grip, if he really wanted to, but Conner never wanted to be very far from Tim. “Tim -.” 

“Calm down.” He snapped and Conner blinked at the tone of his voice. His eyes had hardened and lips had settled into a frown. For a second he wasn’t looking at Tim but at Robin. Tim blinked and his shoulders settled back down to their normal height. “What direction did he come from?” 

“I don’t… up.” 

“Conner think .” 

“I am thinking!” 

“Left or right?” 

“Left.” He didn’t know why he said it until it had passed his lips and then he realized it was true. “What’s left?” 

Tim smiled then, the slow cocky smile that told Conner that he knew more than he was letting on at all times. “Let’s find out.” 

--

The majority of the team was in medbay, either observing what was going on or helping the process along. Dick, Tim knew, was on the phone with Bruce catching him up to speed as the man headed for them. Kori needed to know whether everything was out of Superman’s system before she could do whatever it was she did to heal him and Rachel was monitoring his brain waves from her spot beside him. In retrospect, Tim should have probably been with them, but, well, figuring out the culprit seemed more important for the time being. 

Plus, Tim wasn’t officially part of their team. 

Not that the offer hadn’t been extended. Dick had asked him one night months ago with that earnest look on his face he had given when he had offered Tim the mantle of Robin a year before. But Tim had denied it in favor of staying in Gotham. He liked working with Bruce. Liked going to school every Monday through Friday, liked the structure of study, train, sleep, patrol. 

And things with Conner ever since their unspoken kiss had seemed… tense. 

Tim was far from idiotic. He knew running away from his problems didn’t actually solve any of them, but Conner wasn’t exactly something Tim could apply an equation to and figure out. Humans didn’t think like machines. And Tim had needed some time to figure out the new situation he found himself in without a team being tossed into things. 

Plus, Tim thought he was much better when applied to a case. And Superman mysteriously being shot out of the sky right in front of Conner seemed too close to a coincidence to actually be a coincidence. What was it Bruce said? Coincidences didn’t exist. Things happened the way they happened for a reason. 

Not that Bruce believed in anything close to fate or an all seeing fate that controlled everything. What he had been saying was something closer to there always being an ulterior motive at play. People didn’t normally have kryptonite stored away and they didn’t normally aim it at the universe’s favorite superhero. 

Most importantly Conner couldn’t be present during the examination and Tim wasn’t just about to leave him alone. 

Hacking into the Titans computer was a shade too easy and either Tim hadn’t actually hacked into it or Dick was a lot worse at security than Tim had originally given him credit for. Either way, the CCTV footage from the street Conner had dragged Superman away from was easy to pull up. It was current, Tim noticed with a quick glance. There were news crews surrounding the crater Superman’s body had left and Tim was sure it was already breaking across the nation that someone had shot down the hero. Conner’s feet echoed soft across the floor as he shuffled into the room, pulling the door shut behind him gently and fresh clothes covering his body. Tim observed him quickly, took in the plain red t-shirt and dark jeans and white socks covering his feet, and then sent his eyes back to the computer, cheeks a shade pinker than they had any right being. “Found anything yet?” Conner spoke like words were something precious. It was nice, Tim thought, in a world where so few put any sort of measurement in their words that Conner valued his so much. 

“I just pulled it up.” Tim assured and hit the rewind button on the feed. It shot backwards. “This computer has the world’s worst firewall.” 

“Or maybe you’re just good at hacking.” Conner was forcing a smirk when Tim looked at him, caught off guard by the compliment. 

The problem, Tim thought, wasn’t that he wasn’t talking about the kiss. The problem was the distance Conner had insisted on holding him at ever since Tim had put on the mask and cape. He didn’t know what had transpired, didn’t know what was circling through Conner’s mind, didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know. 

Tim hated not knowing. 

It wasn’t his finest moment. 

He smirked back and stopped the camera right as Conner, in the video, turned the corner. The camera was looking at his front but with a quick press of buttons Tim had it spinning to lock onto his back. As though Tim were looking through his eyes. 

Conner leaned over the back of Tim’s chair ( Dick’s chair), hand curled on the arm next to Tim’s elbow and Conner ran warm in a way Tim was intimately aware of. “There.” His finger pointed off to the left where Tim could see, Superman’s cape billowing in the wind. 

He squinted and clicked several buttons until a camera a block over took up the next screen. 

Closer. They were getting closer. 

He clicked again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And then stopped and went back. “There.” Tim pointed at the helicopter, blades spinning through the air and barely in view of the camera. 

“ What ?” Conner leaned closer, his cheek brushing against Tim’s own and it was terribly unfortunate that Tim was a teenage boy and Conner was hopelessly attractive because he always made Tim’s brain a few seconds slower than it usually was. 

It was the L that marked the brand, if Tim were to be honest. But even Lex Luthor wouldn’t be so bold as simply shoot Superman from the sky. And how had he even managed to do so? Superman was faster than a speeding bullet . It was literally part of his schtick. Why was Superman in Los Angeles? Why had he been running away? 

There were too many questions and Tim had none of the answers. 

He didn’t like not having the answers.  

At least he could apply his logic to a case unlike he could Conner . 

“That L is a retired design of Lexcorp.” He explained absently and clicked the button for a still to print. 

“Lexcorp like…” 

“Like Lex Luthor.” Conner didn’t flinch at the name but he didn’t have to. Tim understood how, sometimes, a stone face was more telling than any flinch. “But Lex wouldn’t just shoot Superman out of the sky unless he had a reason.” 

“He hates Superman.” Conner said it as though he hated Superman. 

Tim looked at him sideways but didn’t comment on it. “Yeah he does,” he nodded at Conner’s observance. “But he’s never done anything that he can actually be arrested for. And having your company logo on the side of a helicopter in the sky miles away from where Superman literally created a crater in the earth is a little suspicious.” 

“There’s no evidence he shot him.” 

Conner wasn’t wrong, was the thing. There was no evidence that Lex Luthor or anyone in that helicopter had fired the bullets that had sent Superman careening towards the ground at inhuman speeds. Tim gnawed at his lip. “There’s no evidence that it didn’t happen either.” 

Conner rolled his lips and glared at the screen. “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions.” 

“I’m not ,” Tim argued with a frown. “I’m thinking.” Tim had a habit of thinking aloud. It had never seemed to bother Conner before. He observed the other boy curiously. Something was going on with him that he wasn’t saying. “Lexcorp isn’t based in LA, but they have start ups and branches across the globe just like Wayne Tech. Lex wouldn’t play his hand by shooting Superman out of the sky unless he was trying to get someone else’s attention.” 

Oh. 

It was obvious.

His heart skipped at the thought and he cautiously spun his chair to face Conner head on instead of sitting beside him. “What?” Conner crossed his arms and studied Tim with a nervous glint to his face. 

“You run that route every day.” 

“Most days.” 

“And usually it’s just you and Krypto. But it’s the only time you’re alone.” 

“Tim, what are you saying?” He asked it but it was gruff as though he knew exactly what Tim was saying. 

It felt like he was jumping to a ridiculous conclusion, if Tim were being honest with himself. And it didn’t even fully make sense. His working theory would make sense in why Lex Luthor would bother getting involved, but it didn’t explain where Superman had come from, why he had been unable to avoid bullets, or why Lex would do something as bold as putting his logo on a helicopter so that it could be caught by CCTV. Lex was annoyingly smart, there was absolutely no way that he would have made his reasoning so easy to trace. 

Then again, Tim reminded himself, he wasn’t most people . 

But something as bold as this was something that even the slowest person could pick up on. 

It was obvious enough that it felt wrong. 

“ Tim .” Conner ground out between gnashed teeth. 

Tim didn’t know what Conner would do if he told him. Conner wasn’t acting like himself, he was isolating himself from the team, acting brash and angry, and holding himself at a distance. It wasn’t possible that Conner would do something as dumb as contact Lex Luthor behind their backs… was it? 

He would have told Tim , right? 

Out of everyone he wouldn’t have kept it from Tim? 

“What do you think it was,” Tim asked and his words seemed like an echo in the back of his mind, the analytical part of him waring with his emotions. “Why do you think Lex Luthor would be bold enough to shoot Superman out of the sky right in the same place you run every day?” 

“I don’t know.” Conner shrugged his hands up at his shoulders. 

“Yes you do.” Tim bit at his lip. “You’re not stupid, Con, why do you think he did it?” 

“Why do you think he’s behind it!” Conner stressed. “Not all of us can follow your obscure train of thought Tim!” 

“It’s not obscure.” Tim frowned but shook off the sting of an insult that he knew Conner hadn’t even meant. He did think faster than most, he did draw conclusions that others wouldn’t. Perhaps working with Bruce for so long had made Tim feel as though he didn’t have to explain himself. Or perhaps Conner was purposefully being obtuse? He shook his head. Bruce was the one that didn’t trust anyone. Tim wouldn’t be him. “I’m sorry, I’m shit at explaining things.” 

“Yeah, you kind of are.” 

There it was. The sting shot up his spine and Tim curled his hand into a fist before flattening it against his thigh. “Conner… I think he’s targeting you .” 

Conner’s arms dropped to his sides. “What?” 

“It… It makes sense -” 

“ Why would he target me?” 

“You’re…” He didn’t want to say it. It seemed horribly rude to say why Lex would target him even if it logically made sense. 

Conner looked betrayed at the way Tim’s voice faded from him. “I’m partially his .” 

“No,” Tim rushed to say but Conner wasn’t hearing him. His face was closed off with something that danced between rage and hurt. “Conner, you’re not he just -.” 

“I’m his experiment.” 

“You’re not an experiment -.” 

But it was too late, Conner had already left the room, the door banging a hole in the wall as he stormed off, hanging off a hinge and swinging in his wake. Tim scrambled to his feet and brushed a hand over his face. He ran after him just in time to see him jump from his bedroom window, the breeze brushing over his face and Conner disappearing in a blur of red. Krypto whined and nudged his head against his hip. “ Conner !” Tim spun and kicked at the side of Conner’s bed. “ Shit .” 

He had a feeling that he had just messed everything up… even if he wasn’t sure how. 

And the worst part was that he didn’t know how to fix it.

Chapter Text

Conner ran until he couldn’t run anymore which, with his enhancements, was regrettably far. He didn’t even consciously know why he was running. Running didn’t solve anything aside from the fact that the majority of Conner’s small personal life experience proved the exact opposite. He had run from Cadmus because Eve had told him to, had run from Eve because she had begged it of him, had run to the Titans and then with the Titans. But Conner hadn’t wanted to run aside than for exercise in such a long time and here he was. Sprinting away from the only people that had accepted him on sight without needing any explanation. 

Running away from answers, possible answers for once, just because he was… what? Scared? Ashamed? Angry? 

Kori would have told him that anger was never a base emotion. His shoulders dropped from where he had them hunched towards the sky and groaned. His lungs ached in his chest and heart pounded behind his rib cage. 

What was going on with him? 

There was a memory at the base of his skull, dancing behind his eyes and playing out in his mind, of Clark Kent - angry and lost and so very scared of these powers that had been given to him that no one else had. He had been huddled in a classroom, curled in on himself, while everything was too loud around him. The skeletons that belonged to the people that surrounded him were too prevalent, too noticeable, too there and he was so scared. So very, very scared. 

Conner wasn’t scared , not the way Clark Kent had been. 

Or at least he didn’t think he was. 

If only he could think for himself. If only they were his memories. 

Conner tugged at his hair and kicked at the wooden bench he had stopped by. His foot slid through the wood like it was nothing and he floundered, for a moment, to get it unstuck, splinters digging into the material of his pants and brushing over the skin of his heel. Maybe he was scared. Or mostly frustrated. Lost. Any number of negative adjectives. 

But it wasn’t anyone’s fault, really, except for his own. 

After all, Conner reminded himself, even if they were being blunt about things Tim did have a point. Conner had been running the same route almost every single day, the fact that Superman of all people fell out of the sky in the middle of Conner’s normal path shot through with the one thing that could kill him wasn’t simply a coincidence. It couldn’t be even if Conner wanted it to be. And Lex Luthor was the sort of person to do such a thing. Conner would know, he shared half of his memories. 

That was the worst part of it, really. Conner knew exactly how correct Tim’s assumptions were because he knew the way Lex thought. In truth, the way his mind worked wasn’t terrifying as much as it was interesting. Lex Luthor was cold, calculating, and unfeeling whereas Clark Kent was a strong opposite. Lex wanted his science experiment back or, perhaps, what he really wanted was to chart how Conner reacted. Was he more like Lex or more like Clark? What exactly happened in his mind with both of those warring strands of DNA and memories? 

Conner had the distinct feeling he had just been dropped into the middle of a test and told that he only had twenty minutes left to figure it all out while everyone else had been given over several hours to complete the same task. 

His phone, he realized rather abruptly, was vibrating angrily in his pocket, buzzing against his leg and begging for Conner to pay it any attention. He had run out of the tower without shoes or a jacket, but the air was still warm in the waning afternoon of the day. He was getting curious, cautious and tense looks from civilians in suits and dress shoes with their hair perfectly coiled around their foreheads and briefcases grasped tightly in their grip. His cheeks burned a bright red and he ducked under the shade of a tree, sliding down until he was sitting underneath it with sweaty fingers prodding at the phone screen. 

It had a long crack going its length, from months ago when Conner had been on a mission and it had fallen from his pocket. But, like most things the Titans had, it was the best in WayneTech and nearly indestructible. A cracked screen, Gar had told him with a snort, was literally the smallest and easiest part of a phone to fix. 

He had several missed calls and even more missed texts and something very close to shame swirled in his stomach. Conner never meant to make people worry. 

He had never meant to make Tim… 

He shook his head and opened up the newest message, time stamped from a few minutes ago and bold to tell him it was still unread. It was from Dick, which really wasn’t all that shocking to Conner, and said in a way that was much more bold and upfront than Dick had a habit of being i will send a speedster after you . 

Dick knew speedsters? 

Conner knew speedsters? 

What exactly was a speedster? 

Not that the word wasn’t self explanatory but Conner was running on low fumes and even lower tolerance for anything that required much thought. He scratched at his cheek and typed out a quick i’m okay message before flipping the phone upside down and stretching his back up against the trunk of the tree. 

He wasn’t okay. 

His feet were scratched up to hell and back, but they didn’t burn the way he expected them to. He was woefully thirsty but, then again, Conner had always been mildly curious just how much his body could withstand that the normal human one couldn’t. Not that he had self destructive tendencies, he wasn’t one of the Robins or anything. His phone buzzed incessantly beside him, vibrating against the grass and setting his teeth on edge. Why Conner had left it on any sort of sound was beyond him. It sounded closer to a drill than a phone. 

He flipped it right side up again, frowned at Dick’s name on the screen until it disappeared from the force of his frown alone, and then was replaced, quickly, with Kori’s. He waited until hers faded away too and wondered, in a small and quiet part of himself, why it was them calling and not Tim. 

And then he remembered why he had left in the first place and his stomach turned violently at the memory. 

Tim hadn’t meant anything that Conner had pulled himself to the conclusion of. He hadn’t been saying that Conner was a science experiment or Lex Luthor’s property or anything other than a person, a friend, in danger. He had told Conner that information because he trusted him with it, because he trusted him to make the right decision with the information he was given. And what had Conner done in thanks for that trust? But throw it right back into his face by taking his words as an insult and then running away before he could explain himself. 

For a half human Conner was really starting to think he was the worst sort. 

Theories and evidence based conjecture was what Tim did and he did it well. Conner, apparently, was the sort to jump to conclusions without all of the facts being pointed out to him. 

Then again, Tim was keeping things from him as well, wasn’t he? He hadn’t told Conner that his father had woken up. Hadn’t told him how lost he was about the decision of whether to stay with Bruce or move back in with Jack Drake once he left the hospital. Would he have, though? If Conner had given him the time? 

He wasn’t sure. 

Working with Bruce had changed a lot of things about his friend. Tim, when Conner had first met him and first worked with him, had been full of life, energy and openness. He had wanted nothing more than to be recognized for the genius he was, to be given affection and comfort and trust. And now that he had it he… well it wasn’t that he didn’t need Conner as much as he had then, but that he didn’t need to say everything. Why would he when Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson had already come to the same conclusion themselves? Tim worked with some of the greatest analytical minds now that he was Robin and Conner was far from on their level of expertise. 

It wasn’t fair, he told himself and struggled to his feet, Tim wasn’t doing anything on purpose. If Conner asked for an explanation he was always happy to give one. He never acted without checking with the team first, when he was working with them, and he never purposely talked down to any of them. Still, it would have been nice, Conner thought, if Tim wasn’t always so far ahead of everyone else. 

For just a little while. 

To give them - to give Conner - some time to catch up. 

But the point of that train of thought was that Tim hadn’t called or texted or done anything but yell his name when Conner jumped out of his window and started running away. 

And that made Conner feel something achingly terrible. 

--

If anyone were to ask Bruce which of his children was the most stubborn he would wordlessly point towards Tim Drake and then kindly correct them on the assumption they had just made about any of the boys being his children . They all had parents before Bruce, after all, and in Tim’s case he still had one alive and moving (even if that was in a wheelchair and even if the man had just woken up). If they asked him which was the most impulsive he would point to some space between Dick and Jason because, really, Dick had a habit of jumping into fights without backup and Jason had literally run off to Europe and nearly gotten himself murdered but these were all problems for another time. 

Because Tim was starting to give Dick and Jason and their title of impulsive a run for their money. 

Bruce had arrived at the tower Dick’s team used as a homebase just after Kori had healed Clark as best as she could with the cloud cover in the sky and had walked in to find Dick all but boxing Tim into a corner to keep him from leaving. He wasn’t in his Robin suit, but Dick also wasn’t in his Nightwing one, but in civvies, jeans and t-shirt and fluffy hair flopping into his face (Alfred said Tim needed a haircut but Bruce knew that the teenage boy wasn’t getting one simply on the fact that Alfred kept pushing the issue). He looked angry and Dick looked tired and, really, Bruce wasn’t sure who would win if it became a battle of wills. 

Tim wouldn’t budge, Bruce had learned that many times the hard way. He wondered if that was what Dick and Barbara and Selina felt when they had to argue with him . “What’s going on?” He asked it when neither boy looked over at him when he rapped his knuckles against the doorframe of Jason’s room (more Tim’s room now that Bruce thought about it. He had his bag tucked against the corner and school work from Gotham Academy strewn on the desktop and his bo staff just out of fingertip’s reach under the bed.). Bruce wasn’t one to typically interrupt the two of them, Dick knew how to handle most of Tim’s arguments and Tim knew when to push back against Dick and when not to. 

But Bruce was observant and it was obvious just how unobservant someone had to be to notice that Dick was exhausted and Tim was scared. 

Neither boy flinched and Bruce, mentally, patted them on the back. Tim held Bruce’s gaze steady and pointed his chin out just a bit more, nose pointing up just slightly in the air. 

Oh. 

This wasn’t going to be a fight that either of them could win. 

Not with Tim looking like that and Dick’s mouth set in that line. 

Bruce wished he had taken Alfred up on his offer to go with him to check on Clark. “Clark’s fine.” Dick assured him but didn’t look away from Tim’s hunched shoulders. “I got out all of the Kryptonite and shrapnel, he’s just exhausted.” 

Belatedly, too belatedly, Bruce noted the stain of blood on Dick’s fingertips and at the bottom of his shirt. He had done it himself, then. Bruce didn’t know whether to feel proud or apologetic which, really, was a very common emotion Bruce had when it came to Dick, Jason or Tim. Or Barbara. Or anyone he had a hand in training, really. “Conner ran out.” Tim switched the topic and Dick’s mouth pursed tightly in frustration. 

“Conner’s fine.” He must have said it plenty of times if he was starting to sound like that with Tim. 

Bruce, with a cautious grip, pressed the palm of his hand to Dick’s bicep. He loosened his grip on the desk almost instantly and stepped away, mouth set in a thin line. He stepped back enough so that he was side by side with Bruce, shoulders not as wide as Bruce’s and face still youthful but tense. “Tim, update.” 

Dick rolled his eyes. “He’s not a robot -.” 

“Evidence shows that Lex Luthor was the one that took the shot at Superman,” Tim said with arms crossed tight against his chest and voice cold. “It was from several blocks away and designed so that cameras could catch where exactly the shot came from.” 

“There’s no visual evidence that anyone in that helicopter was the one that fired the shot.” Dick filled in with a long suffering sigh. 

They had spoken about this too, then. He silenced Dick with a quelling hand - Tim would be inconsolable if he wasn’t able to fully lay out his theory and Dick getting caught up in one part would only aggravate him more. After all, Tim had probably already filled in that blank himself and simply didn’t know how to get Dick to see the entire picture he was so easily. “The helicopter had an old logo from Lexcorp on the side.” He argued simply for the sake of backing up his theory and Dick, silently, rubbed at his temples. Bruce wanted to tell him to go to bed, or at least to take a shower to wash off Clark’s blood from his fingers. “I did some research and Lex Luthor’s in Beverly Hills on an apparent vacation but there’s a Cadmus research facility in Pasadena.”  

“Only twenty minutes away.” Bruce had to admit, Tim had certainly tugged on an interesting thread. “That can’t be all you have.” 

“It’s not .” Tim fixed Dick with a small, severe look as though the other man hadn’t let him get this far, and then continued. Bruce’s lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. The two of them weren’t related in any way but sometimes Tim certainly acted like Dick’s annoying younger brother. “Conner’s been here little over a year, you literally brought him right back to the tower Cadmus had already kidnapped him from once and told him to go about his life as normal. And that’s not really a bad thing, honestly I’m not criticizing you Dick.” He was and they all knew it. “But Conner runs the same route every single day, usually with Krypto and usually alone.” The dog, which had been lounging on the bed, ears down and sulking, looked up at his name and whined. He stretched out his limbs and wobbled over to Tim, head nudged under his hand until he scratched at his ears. “You’re telling me that Superman fell out of the sky right in front of Conner in the middle of his morning run the one time he happens to go without Krypto and Lex Luthor is in town - and a helicopter with his company logo on the side - and that’s just, what, a coincidence ?” 

Bruce frowned and Dick sighed. “I’m not saying it’s not a good theory , Tim.” Dick argued once more. “But that’s all it is.” 

“Where’s Conner?” Bruce had met the clone a few times before and he had never seemed irrational until that moment. He was impulsive, yes, but no more so than Dick or Jason. He had all of Clark’s younger anger and kindness and all of Lex’s intelligence and humor. Tim was rather fond of him, the way Dick was about Koriand’r, and the two of them were close. If Tim thought something was wrong with Conner then Bruce was inclined to agree. But Dick also wouldn’t come to the conclusion that Conner was fine, or want to keep Tim out of whatever was going on, without good reason. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Pasadena.” Dick said slowly in time with Tim’s declaration. 

Tim’s eyes widened almost comically if they weren’t also so clouded in frustration. Interesting, Bruce thought that Dick hadn’t said anything about Conner’s location until that moment. “You -”

“I’ve been tracking him since he left. He’s fine . His vitals are normal -.” 

“You’re tracking his vitals ?” 

“His watch is tracking his vitals and they don’t show any sign of distress aside from that normal for doing cardio like he’s just done.” Dick raised his voice to talk over Tim and Bruce, in an odd sort of flash, imagined how different their interactions would be if Jason were more involved. 

“He ran out of here when I told him that I thought Lex was targeting him.” 

“Why would you tell him Lex is targeting him?” 

“Why would you keep that from him?” 

Silence was the answer, then, as Dick struggled for a good enough reason to placate Tim. 

There wasn’t really one, Bruce wanted to tell him not to waste his time. Tim wasn’t the type to enjoy being left out of things and he took the guarding of information very seriously. But that was only if it was for a good reason. If Bruce were to ask him to keep a secret from Dick that was potentially harming, Tim would be the first one to spill it. If Bruce had a good reason then he would keep his lips as tight as he could hold them. There wasn’t a good reason for Dick to keep Conner out of the know, even if the actions were designed to protect someone. It wouldn’t remove the hurt of the action to keep silent. Dick knew that, he had dealt with the consequences of unnecessary secrets more than most, and still it was a habit of his to do the same thing all over again. 

He liked to protect people, Bruce understood that. Dick was the type of person to try to shield anyone from potential danger up to and after his own demise. He wanted to those that he cared about to be safe and protected and Dick would happily give his own life in order to keep them from undue harm. 

One day, Bruce feared that he would . 

And where would Bruce be then? 

He wasn’t fooling himself, Dick was the moral backbone of Batman and Robin. He kept Bruce on track, reminded him why he was doing what he was doing. Dick was the morality, Jason was the anger and strength, and Tim was the logic and, dare Bruce say it, heart . If Tim were anyone else, if he didn’t care as much as he very much did, there would be nothing that he couldn’t accomplish. He would be downright terrifying if he didn’t feel as much as he did. 

They all would be, really. 

Sometimes Bruce wondered if he had made a mistake training all of them - it had seemed like the best solution at the time with Dick, when he was young and angry and he would have done it himself and been killed in an instant. It had been inevitable and needed with Jason, Bruce had needed someone the way that he so rarely did and Jason had needed an outlet and guidance. And Tim… well Tim had forced himself in. Had looked Bruce right in the eye and said that he would do it himself if Bruce didn’t want to do it. Out of the three of them he wasn’t sure what it was that had drawn him into Tim the way the others had. In Dick, Bruce saw himself and the world he wanted, in Jason he saw the parts of Gotham that so desperately needed healing. In Tim? He wasn’t sure. 

But there was nothing that could be said to excuse what Dick had implied for Tim. He hadn’t grown up having to tell lies and half truths - before Robin a year ago he had been transparent with the things he knew. He had morality and ideals that the others never got a chance to. 

Perhaps that was it, Bruce thought. 

He hadn’t wanted the boy to lose that but he knew he would one day. 

And Bruce had wanted to teach him to protect himself from that in the most pragmatic way possible. 

Tim pursed his lips, sighed and turned away from the two of them. “That’s what I thought.” 

Dick looked wrecked. “Timmy.” He begged, and Bruce had a feeling something completely unsaid had passed between the two boys that he had missed completely. When had they learned to communicate without words, Bruce wanted to ask. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? “I’ll call someone to pick him up -.” 

“Don’t bother.” Tim picked at the corner of the windowsill. 

“Tim, come on -.” 

“If he’s fine why would you send anyone to help him in the first place?” 

It was a low blow. 

Tim didn’t usually go for low blows. 

Bruce cleared his throat and both boy’s flushed. “Clark?” He asked Dick with a pointed look. 

“Right,” Dick rubbed at his neck and nodded, turning on his heel and beckoning for Bruce to follow. Bruce, though, waved him ahead. He knew where the medbay in the tower was (it was his tower) and he needed a moment with his newest Robin alone. Dick left them after a moment of contemplative silence but he didn’t shut the door. The message in that was clear - he trusted Bruce with Tim but he didn’t trust him not to accidentally send the boy running. 

“I know you’re worried.” Bruce was never good when it came to emotions, there was a reason why he kept Alfred, Barbara and Dick around. Typically, he sent one of them to deal with high emotion situations, or he would call Clark or Diana for advice. But this, Tim, wasn’t someone that would… easily listen to emotional logic. And it was obvious that whatever was going on, Dick couldn’t fix it. Bruce stepped closer to him and peered into the side of his face until Tim glanced over at him, fingers buried in Krypto’s fur and eyes searching the view outside as though it had an answer to something he didn’t know the question for yet. “But Conner is part of Dick’s team. If this is Lex Luthor behind everything and you run off to help him you’ll just get caught in the crossfire.” 

Tim said nothing and his face was carefully blank. 

Bruce had done dealings with the Drake’s before he had officially met Tim. Janet Drake was a spectacular business woman - she had the poker face most would die to have in a tournament or boardroom. She showed nothing, had no discernable tells. 

It seemed Tim had inherited his mother’s blank, poker face. 

Bruce left him alone, even if it felt entirely too wrong to do so. 

Superman had been shot out of the sky and the only real answers that any of them would be getting were going to be from the lips of Clark Kent. And then , if Tim was right, they would go after Conner and… fix whatever had just been tested that Bruce didn’t fully understand. 

His hand was heavy on Tim’s shoulder and the boy seemed so small under his hand. “Trust me, Tim. Please.” 

“Trust me , Bruce. I’m not your sidekick,” he said with a frustration Bruce had never heard from him before. “I’m your partner or I’m nothing at all.” 

--

There was something very interesting about the relationship between Robin and Superboy. If Cassie didn’t know any better she would compare them to romcom protagonists that couldn’t get their shit together. And, well, Cassie didn’t know any better but, well, a girl could hope. Because Superboy? Conner? He was stupidly attractive. He was the only member of the team that she could spar against without having to pull her punches, the only one that could keep up with her speed and strength. Plus, he was kinder than most people she had ever met. 

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Robin, it was just that… well he was Robin . He was literally trained by Batman - the world’s scariest Bat. He didn’t talk to her a whole lot, tended to stick to himself or Dick or Conner whenever he was around. Gar, when he was not hiding out in Rachel’s room, said that Robin - Tim - was nice. Super smart, nice, had a wicked sense of humor that most didn’t get to see. But, well, Cassie didn’t see it. Sure, she knew he was good at what he did but he was just a human, really. A human on a team of enhanced individuals. 

Not that Cassie didn’t respect the hell out of humans - especially humans like Nightwing and Robin who fought the good fight. Respect didn’t make it any less of a fact that they were humans and very easily breakable. 

But that wasn’t really the point. The point was that Cassie had never spent a good deal of alone time with Tim Drake until he knocked on her door exactly ten minutes after Batman left his room to go talk to Superman and told her his incredibly stupid plan. “We’re going to what now?” She asked again just because she hadn’t wrapped her head around it quite yet. 

He looked at her impatiently, arms crossed over his (rather muscular) chest and tapped his foot ( tapped his foot! Cassie didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed). “We’re going to break out of the tower.” 

“Why not just… walk out the door?” 

“Dick shut it down.” 

“He can do that?” Tim fixed her with a look and, yeah, okay it wasn’t that far from what Cassie knew Dick could do. She just hadn’t thought that he would actually do it. “Okay, why are we breaking out?” 

“Conner’s being targeted by Lex Luthor.” 

Cassie sputtered and spilled her cup of ice water down the front of her shirt. She jumped to her feet and shook the fabric from her skin, a curse falling from her mouth. “I’m sorry what the fuck ?” 

“Thank you!” He threw his hands up in exasperation. “ That is the correct response when someone says that!” 

“There’s a different response?” 

“ Apparently .” He had very nice blue eyes, Cassie noticed the longer that she was in front of him. And he was filling out to be rather handsome himself, but not nearly as big or muscular as Conner. Then again, Cassie had met both Robins before Tim and they were all rather slim. She supposed they had to be, what with the gymnastics and acrobatics they used daily. “But whatever, we have to hack into the main computer which was stupidly easy earlier today but I think is going to be ten times more difficult now that Dick has a reason to actually keep us in . It should still be easy, though. I mean, how different can it be from the Batcomputer?” 

“You… you hacked the Batcomputer?” Cassie was feeling a bit faint. Tim talked very fast, like he had just downed ten cans of monster or done a line of cocaine or something equally as terrifying. 

“When I was like ten.” He waved away the comment as though it were inconsequential. “Then we’re going to turn off my trackers so Bruce isn’t tempted to follow and drag us home, go to Pasadena, and make sure Conner has some backup for whatever he’s getting into.” 

“Okay, I’m one hundred percent on board with anything that involves hacking or backup or mild criminal activity,” Cassie had to plant her hands in front of her in order to get his eyes to focus back on her face instead of wherever it had faded off to. “But a few questions, okay?” 

“Okay. Can we walk and talk?” 

Cassie shrugged and grabbed her jacket off the back of her desk chair. It was the sort of warm outside that usually meant it was going to be chilly at night and Cassie had a feeling they were going to be out for much longer than a few hours. “After you, bird boy.” 

He didn’t glare but he did roll his eyes at the nickname. Tim still held the door open for her to walk through first, though, so Cassie would count it as a win. No one was in the hallway, Rose’s door closed shut and Rachel and Gar talking to her in hushed voices as they traded theories of what was going on. Cassie almost asked if they should get the others involved but then she stopped herself. Rachel was too close to Dick and would tell him immediately out of some sort of unspoken loyalty. Funny, she thought with a sideways glance at Tim, she thought he was the same way. 

She didn’t ask her questions until they were alone, her body hovering by his shoulder as he bent by the elevator door panel and pulled a very tiny screwdriver out of his slim jean pocket. His dark hair fell into his face as he worked but he didn’t move to push it out of the way. “So,” Cassie rocked back on her heels and then onto her toes. “If Conner’s in trouble why isn’t the cavalry suiting up?” 

His mouth twitched. “Well,” Tim said with clenched teeth. “They don’t really believe he’s in trouble.” 

“But you do?” 

“Call it a gut feeling.” Cassie frowned at the twist of his voice. 

“It’s not just a gut feeling, though.” 

“No,” he agreed readily and the front of the panel popped off. “It’s hard to explain.” 

“Try me.” Because Cassie wasn’t dumb. She was blonde, she was strong, but she wasn’t just blonde and strong. She had been trained by some of the best on Themyscira. She could handle some theorizing. 

Tim’s mouth curled in an odd grimace and his fingers twisted a few screws loose to get at an array of colorful wires. He sat back on his heels, glanced down both hallways and up at the camera that was definitely recording them, and then at his watch with a frown. “I think we’re only going to have close to five minutes once I cut this to get out and shut off my tracker.” 

He wasn’t answering her question. 

Cassie scowled. “Easy.” Because it was easy. Or at least the getting out was easy. “I can handle the speed, can you handle the tracker?” 

“I’ve shut it off before.” He said with a shrug. 

“Will Batman just turn it back on?” 

“That’s implying that he knows that I found a backdoor to turning it off.” 

Cassie had to admit, she was a bit impressed. Not many were willing to lie right to Batman’s face. “ Then will you explain?” Tim glanced up at her and studied her face, expression almost shocked that she had caught him in the change of topic. Cassie quirked her brow at him. 

“Of course.” He said after a moment longer, a sharp nod following his admission. 

Cassie smiled and she knew she was prettier when she smiled but his cheeks flooding with a bit of pink wasn’t something she expected. 

Interesting. 

So maybe him and Superboy weren’t anything? “Cut the fancy wire, then.” 

He winced and sat forward. “I don’t know which wire it is.” 

“So?” 

“So…” Tim shrugged, grabbed all of them in a fistfull, and yanked them up until they separated from their metal holding. 

--

Conner didn’t have a clue where he was. 

Well, okay, he knew where he was but he didn’t know where he was. Pasadena wasn’t anywhere he had ever been before, either in memory or in person. It was growing chilly out, too, the wind picking up and brushing over his skin like a caress. He was painfully aware of his bare feet, wished he had thought to grab a pair of shoes on his way out of the tower, and his stomach grumbled. 

Logically, Conner knew he should head back. People were bound to be worried and Conner owed at least Krypto an apology for abruptly leaving. He set the GPS on his phone and started walking, even though he knew how terribly pathetic he looked walking down the street without shoes or a coat on. He could have run back, but his feet, even healed, were sore from his actions earlier that day. 

To put it simply, Conner was tired. 

Which was probably why he missed it the first time. 

Missed them the first time. 

It wasn’t the first time in Conner’s short life that he had been followed but this was the best stalker he had ever had. Their footsteps faded into the footraffic around them, they kept their head down and eyes anywhere but on Conner and he genuinely didn’t know what they looked like. He was going off of the creeping feeling that crawled up his spine telling him he was being watched and Conner, in his limited world experience, had learned that that feeling very rarely lied. 

He would have run except when he went to he found he couldn’t. 

Conner frowned just in time for a car to slam into him from behind. 

He flew up into the air and his body crashed into the hood of the car, an imprint the size of his body in the glass and skin tearing open from dozens of miniscule injuries. 

Conner had never been injured like that before. 

His body felt like it had been buried under a thousand rocks, his chest heaved and his leg screamed in agony. Conner found he couldn’t move, couldn’t do more than groan and blink up at the sun. 

It shouldn’t have hurt, his logical mind told him. He should have been fine, should have been able to shake it off and go about his day. 

He wished Tim was there to theorize why his powers no longer seemed to be working but Conner had left him behind and his head hurt too much for Conner to theorize much of anything. He swore under his breath in time with his heartbeat and shut his eyes, the light of the world just a shade too bright. 

--

Conner woke up strapped to a bed, a blanket tossed over his broken body, and a bald man with suspiciously high cheekbones at the end of where he was laying. He wore a two piece suit, tailored to fit his body and shining under the bright fluorescent lights and when he smiled there was no joy in it. Conner didn’t dislike him on sight but, rather, felt something close to fondness fill his mind before it faded into fear. 

Because Conner hurt . His body felt like it was on fire and when he tried to move his leg he found it did nothing but stab out in throbbing pain. He shouted before he could stop himself and the man - Lex Luthor, Conner’s memories told him - cocked his head to the side, his smile refusing to fade from his face. “Subject 13.” He said in a slow, drawling voice, his hand closing around Conner’s uninjured ankle and squeezing. Someone had been kind enough to cover his feet with socks, but something in Conner’s mind warned him that this kindness didn’t come without consequence. 

“Lex Luthor.” Conner greeted warily and grimaced at the sound of his voice. “What’s happening to me?” 

Lex hummed and sat in the empty chair by his side, fingers steepled under his chin and eyes analytical where they bore into Conner’s body with interest. “I wanted to see if you had the same… weakness as Superman.” 

Conner’s memory prickled and his muscles strained against the leather straps that held him in place. “What did you do?” It was on the tip of his tongue, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Tim was speaking quickly in the back of his mind, trying to communicate something Conner couldn’t hear or process with the jackhammer in his head. 

Lex’s lips curled up higher. “I see you didn’t inherit my genius.” 

It felt like an insult. “Hey man, don’t be a dick.” Conner groaned. The straps weren’t budging and his body hurt too much for him to keep trying. “You hit me with a car.” 

“ I didn’t hit you with a car.” 

“Oh, fuck off man, we all we know you did.” 

It was much more swearing that Conner usually did but he was tired and in pain. Was this what normal humans felt all the time? No wonder all of them looked miserable. Lex chuckled and stood smoothly to his feet. “Welcome back, Subject 13.” 

“Conner.” 

“What?” 

“My name. I have a name. It’s Conner.” 

Lex stared at him then, and Conner squirmed under the weight of his gaze. Conner didn’t know what he was seeing, nor did he know what he was looking for, but whatever it was Lex seemed to find it because he was sitting back down a moment later. “Conner.” He smiled and it felt cold. Conner swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Tell me, Conner,” Lex leaned forward, then, tone patronly. “How have you been?” 

--

“He’s not in Pasadena,” Dick repeated on the other end of the phone. “How are you in Pasadena?” 

Tim scoffed and Cassie, where she was a few steps away pretending to not be listening in on their conversation, muffled a laugh in her sleeve. The shop owner they had begged the phone off of glanced in their direction but went back to her work when Tim offered her a charming smile. “I’m saying unless he’s in the Cadmus building, which we better hope he’s not, Conner isn’t anywhere in Pasadena I can think to look.” 

“Just because you can’t think to look there doesn’t mean he isn’t there, though.” Kori said from what sounded like just over Dick’s shoulder. He had put Tim on speaker the moment the call had connected, and Tim had quickly rolled into an accusation before he could be yelled at. Either Dick had tracked Conner wrong or Tim had been right and something bigger had been going on than Superman getting shot out of the sky. 

And they had all led Conner right into a trap without backup. 

Just like Tim told them they were doing. 

Furious, wasn’t the right word for what he was feeling. 

He pursed his lips and refused to answer Kori’s question. She wasn’t wrong , per say, but Tim had checked everywhere he could think of checking. Conner was nowhere Tim could pinpoint and Tim wasn’t used to not knowing where Conner was during their missions. It felt like a personal failure, if Tim were to be honest with himself, that he had somehow managed to lose Conner after such a stupid fight. But things were moving so fast and Tim, even for someone that was usually steps ahead of everyone else, was having trouble keeping up. 

Lex Luthor was smart and had been planning whatever it was he was doing much longer than Tim could compare to. 

Screwed. 

He felt like they were intimately screwed and they had no idea just how badly.

More importantly, Tim thought pressing a sweating, shaking hand against the leg of his jeans and dragging it downwards over his thigh, was that Tim was very aware of just how scared he was of losing Conner too. It hadn’t been that long since he had met the other boy, but Conner understood him in a way that Tim hadn’t found anyone else did. And losing one person in a matter of one year was enough for Tim, thank you very much. “Cassie and I are going to check out Cadmus tonight.” 

Dick sputtered on the other line. “You are not .” 

“It’s the only place we haven’t checked.” 

“Tim!”

“Conner needs our help !” Tim wasn’t one to normally snap, and definitely not at Dick, but he couldn’t regret doing it then. It was as though it was a year earlier all over again. No one had listened to him then either and Tim had given them the benefit of trust for long enough to be too late for his mother. He wouldn’t do it again. 

Not when it was Conner that needed help. 

“Just… wait until we get there.” Dick pleaded. 

“Fine.” 

He wasn’t going to wait. They both knew that. Tim hung up the phone before Dick could call him on the blatant lie, hands shaking in frustration and met Cassie’s eyes with his own. “Are you ready to break into Cadmus?” 

Cassie beamed and the shop owner squeaked. “I’m so ready, bird boy.” 

Tim was thankful he wasn’t alone, at least. 

It had been a gamble going to Cassie for help, but she was the most removed from the situation and a good asset in a fight. Tim liked Gar, but the boy was too close to Rachel and Kori to keep whatever plan Tim had a secret. Rachel wasn’t someone that Tim trusted all that much, even if it was mostly because of her unpredictable powers than it was her personality. And Rose… Tim wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t put a sword in his back just to tell Jason she did. So he was left with Cassie and, honestly, she was wonderful so far. Pun not intended. 

Or fully intended. 

Tim was never really sure what that meant. 

Cassie Sandsmark, though, was really, tactically, his best option for a siege of sort on Cadmus. She was strong, smart, and a fantastic fighter. 

Cadmus was a giant, tall building with thousands of glass windows lining it’s walls - aka, every other corporate office building Tim had ever stepped inside of. No one paid them much attention in the main lobby, save for a security guard glancing at them curiously before going back to whatever game he was playing on his phone. For a place as high security as Cadmus it was ridiculously easy to walk inside and step onto the elevator. 

“Do you even know where we’re going?” Cassie asked out of the corner of her mouth as several others piled in after them, slim fingers pushing buttons that lit up before the doors closed and the elevator started to ride upwards. 

Tim didn’t. “To visit dad of course.” 

“What?” Cassie wrinkled her forehead at him in confusion and Tim implored her with a slight widening of his eyes. Her face clicked in recognition. “ Oh . Oh, right… dad.” 

Tim took it back. Cassie Sandsmark was not a good thought for a covert mission of any type. It would be best if they were silent, if Tim were to be honest with himself, so he pursed his lips and faced forward, mind spinning in an attempt to come up with a solution to a problem Tim barely understood. He noticed, belatedly, the small green glow in the corner of the elevator as the last woman stepped out, face down towards her phone as she typed furiously. 

Tim tilted his head and shot out an arm, the doors lightly pressing against the appendage before sliding open once they realized something was in the way. He stepped into the hallway, hand curled around a side of the metal door and glanced at the corners of the hallway. 

Green too. 

He stepped back in, a chill crawling up his spine. “What is it?” Cassie asked, expression pinched and serious. 

Tim wasn’t sure. 

But he had a theory. 

Wasn’t that what the problem always was, though? That Tim only had theories and not evidence to back them up? 

He shook his head sardonically and pressed the button for the next floor. 

There was green in the corners of that hallway too. 

In fact, there was green in the corner of every hallway, light and sparkling on the white wall paper. It was faded enough that Tim could have believed that it was simply part of the security cameras if he wasn’t also terribly aware of exactly who Lex Luthor was. “Kryptonite.” He pointed at the stone in the right corner of the elevator in time with it to pull to an abrupt, angry stop. 

The lights flickered once, twice, and then shut off completely, the light glow of the emergency button and kryptonite the only reason why Tim could see the way Cassie’s face shined pale in the dark. “What the hell?” She asked for him, her fingers peeling at the metal of the elevator door to pry it open and peer at the dark hallway above them. “Hey!” She yelled as feet rushed by, emergency red lights flashing against the walls. “Hey! We’re stuck here!” 

Something cold settled into Tim’s stomach. He swallowed past whatever panic he may have felt and focused on his training. He wasn’t Tim Drake, not in that moment. It wasn’t a situation for Tim Drake . “Cassie, you can get out, right?” 

She glanced over her shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, it should… it’ll be tight but yeah.” 

“Get yourself out and I’ll be right after you.” 

“Tim, you’re human -.” 

“This isn’t up for negotiation.” 

First rule of Bat-training: your life is expendable, that of civilians wasn’t. Cassie frowned - she wasn’t a civilian. “Cassie, people will need your help if this is a real emergency.” 

“I’m not leaving you here.” 

“I”m not asking you to.” Tim assured. “Just to get out first and,” he shrugged with a small laugh. “Lend me a hand up?” 

Tim could do many things but flying wasn’t one of them. He had many strengths, none of them were literal super strength. Cassie studied him before nodding and planting her hands on the metal doors and beginning to push them even farther apart. The elevator groaned and Tim sucked in a deep, steady breath. 

This wasn’t a good idea. 

This didn’t feel like a good idea. 

Cassie was half out when the ground shook with an explosion and she narrowly managed to pull herself out before a wire on the elevator snapped. Tim grabbed onto the metal handle and swore viciously as it shook and teetered before steadying. 

“Robin!” Cassie crawled on her knees until she was in front of him, the window she had crawled out of much smaller now that the elevator had dropped more. Her hair was wild around her face and her eyes were wide with worry. “I don’t know how much longer this thing will hold. Give me your hand, I’ll pull you out!” 

Tim reached and Cassie was no longer there for him to grab onto, gone in a streak of red and yellow and brush of wind against his bangs. 

Tim blinked in shock, swallowed past the sudden sting in his eyes and hollow pit of his chest. “Fuck.”

Chapter Text

Being left alone in an elevator that was one string away from sending him plummeting towards his death was probably a rather good metaphor for his life but really even that was a little too on the nose for him. What were the odds? Tim actually had the odds and had absolutely no one with him to tell them to and it wasn’t funny except it absolutely was. He choked on a laugh deliriously, burying his nose into his shoulder to try and stop it from bubbling up and this would be the curse his height gave him. If only Janet Drake could see him now. 

 He bet Dick or Jason never got stuck in a situation like this before. He bet they never got stuck in an elevator in a building that looked like it was on fire - or at least the part of the hallway Tim could see looked like it was slowly being eaten by flames. The putrid smell of smoke tickled his nose and his laughter cut itself short to fade into a cough and he honestly would probably have had better luck walking into the building as Robin. He very obviously had a severe lack of luck as Tim Drake. It had been incredibly illogical to come to Cadmus as himself and Tim should have known that before he had even stepped foot in the building. 

What was the point of emotions if they overruled logic every time? 

What was different about Conner that overruled Tim’s logic every time? 

He jumped feebly but the hole Cassie had crawled out of was just out of reach and Tim could barely see through the dark smoke that was filling the space and eating up all of his fresh air. Tim cursed at himself, he should have planned for this. Tim always planned for every foreseeable situation but he had expected storming into Cadmus and demanding Conner be released to be, what? Easy? Sure, blowing up their own building hadn’t been on Tim’s fuckery bingo card but it was a business run by sketchy and unethical scientists. He really shouldn’t be as shocked as he currently was. They had kryptonite stashed in the corners of every room for goodness sake! They would only do that if they were serious and wanted to desperately keep someone out. 

Or in. 

Tim cursed his own mind. This wasn’t the time. He had to focus . 

He was running out of air much too quickly, he didn’t have a rebreather or an air filter or a grappling hook. Tim had no way out unless he could force his logical mind to be rational and not be chasing after every little thought like a dog distracted by a squirrel. 

He should have brought Krypto. 

The dog could have just flown them out of there. 

But, no, that wouldn’t have worked. Krypto was part Kryptonian - the kryptonite crystals positioned in the corners of every room would have effectively kept Krypto normal and severely lacking in the super category. 

This wasn’t working . 

He pinched himself and coughed into his elbow again, eyes stinging from the smoke.

He had to get out . Staying put wouldn’t do anything but get him killed and Jason would never let him live that down. Plus, Tim had made Jason a promise that he could be the one to kill him and Tim always lived up to his promises. 

If only he could see a way out. 

Because that was the worst part of being smart and logical. Logically, Tim couldn’t figure out a way to freedom. He probably should have let Cassie get out second and had he help him out first. She could fly. She was an actual enhanced being trained by Wonder Woman - among other Amazonians - and Tim was just a human who was much too smart for his own good. He could climb on the railing and then jump but that would mean Tim risking overbalancing the already tenuous balance the elevator was hanging on. He obviously couldn’t jump and grab a hold of the ledge - not only was it already going to be much too hot from the flames licking the entrance but it would also mean pulling himself up onto flames . If Tim didn’t die by smoke inhalation he would die of the elevator crashing down to the final floor or by burning to death once he got out. 

There wasn’t really a good solution. 

Unfortunately, Tim was also the type to fight for survival every time. And if he stayed then his chances were much slimmer than they would be if tried to get free. He would rather die trying than die a sitting duck inhaling smoke until he passed out. Jack and Janet Drake didn’t raise a quitter - granted, they didn’t raise Tim much at all but the point still stood. Bruce hadn’t trained him to give up. It wasn’t in Tim’s nature to roll over and show the world his belly in aquiencenes. 

This was going to suck . 

“You are such a fucking idiot, Tim.” He muttered to himself, heaved a deep breath, coughed on the smoke, and hefted himself up onto the metal bar at the end of the elevator. The entire thing shook and quivered with his weight suddenly on one end and the world tipped, just for a moment. Tim planted his back flat against the wall and glared at the small hole Cassie had pulled herself up and out of and did the math quick in his head. He would need to enter that hole at a very specific angle in order to actually make it all the way through. 

He angled his foot so that it was planted on the wall as the room angled itself on a dangerous tilt and, really, Tim calculated that he had maybe about twenty seconds and a very small percentage of this actually working. He evened his breath as best he could with his heart pounding in his chest and pushed . He felt the elevator snap and hand grab hold of the ledge at the same time. He was right, the floor did hurt. It was a gut reaction to let go and only due to training that he managed to force himself to grit his teeth against the pain. Let it be known that Tim had never wanted to be dangling from a ledge in a quickly burning building in an empty elevator shaft holding on only by his force of will and strength because he was dumb enough to try to storm a building without backup or even his utility belt. He was human. Why in the world had he expected to get out this situation unscathed? 

Fuck his feelings. Fuck his emotions. And fuck Conner (or be fucked by Conner but this was neither the time nor the place and, at this point in time the chances of that ever happening was very very slim). He groaned and the muscles in his arms strained as he pulled himself up onto his forearms, and then onto his chest and then, then Tim could at least army crawl himself up the rest of the way. 

His lungs burned, his hands were all kinds of burnt and flame was quickly pouring in from the origin of the explosion that had rocked the building minutes earlier but Tim just needed a moment. Just a moment. He buried his face in the back of his arms and sent a wave over his body to verify that all of his appendages were still attached. It was uncomfortably warm in the room and Tim knew he couldn’t stay and he pushed himself up to his knees, blinking to try and see through the waves of smoke pouring in from every direction. 

There was a blur of yellow and red and something collided into him just as he stumbled to his feet and Tim, unconsciously, grabbed onto the flash’s mass to pull it to an abrupt stop. 

Green eyes blinked up at him - up , someone in the world was actually shorter than him - in complete shock. The first thing Tim registered was hair the color of ripe carrots, the second was the very familiar yellow, red and black suit, and the next thing was the pull of his stomach as he was suddenly very much outside and not inside of a burning building. He stumbled and his lunch pushed itself back up from where it had settled. 

Speedsters. 

Tim doubled over and, really, a burrito bowl from Chipotle did not taste as good on the way up as it did on the way down. “Tim!” Cassie’s voice roared in his ears and he stayed ducked down as the world shifted and swayed and lungs tried to climb up out of his body by sheer force of his coughs. “I had to yell at that fast guy to go get you.” 

“Speedster.” Tim corrected in between hacking coughs just for the sake of correcting her. “Kid Flash?” He tossed out into the open air and sucked down a greedy gulp of clean air and then coughed again as it stung his throat. “ Fucking shit.” Cassie steadied him with a strong arm around his back and pushed his head so that it was back facing the green grass. 

“Does anyone have any water?” She asked the question as though there were a slew of people around them and Tim would have criticized her if he hadn’t looked up and seen that there was, indeed, a slew of people around them. Scientists and visitors and more appearing in a blur of yellow and red and they should be helping but Tim couldn’t breathe without the world shimmering and shaking like it was an earthquake. 

He waved off her concern. He would be fine. Tim had, generally, dealt with worse things than smoke inhalation and it was really only the certain death that he had somehow escaped that was throwing him off. “We should,” cough, “help.” 

Cassie fixed him with a severe look and rolled his eyes. It was strangely reminiscent of the look Barbara shot Dick whenever he suggested something particularily dumb during training or missions. “You can barely stand.”

“I can,” cough, “stand.” 

She pushed him gently with her hand and he stumbled backwards and fell on his bottom much too close to his regurgitated lunch for his liking. 

Well, when a girl had a point. 

He waved off her smug look and shuffled his body until his vomit was a good few inches away and leaned forward, head balanced between his knees and burnt palms pressed against his ears. They would heal but the scorched skin still stung. He wished he had the pain reliever spray Bruce made for topical injuries, or burn cream or ice - Tim wasn’t picky - but he would have to settle for the water bottle Cassie placed by his feet. She stood silhouetted against the sunset, hands curled into fists at her hips and blonde ponytail slapping the back of her neck in the light breeze. She looked like a blonde Wonder Woman. He had met Diana exactly twice and each time was more surreal than the other - she would be proud of her prodigy if she could see her. He had seen Cassie in action only a few times but she was a, pardon the pun, wonder to see. 

He screwed off the cap of the water and winced as it fell over his palms but the pain was a good sign. It meant he hadn’t injured them enough past the surface. He still had nerves that could feel underneath the burnt layer of skin. Cassie shot him an incredulous look as he coughed again. “That was meant for you to drink .” 

“Any sign of Conner?” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Stop avoiding the issue.” 

“I’m not avoiding the issue.” He was but he took a small swig of the water to swish around his mouth and spit out just to show her that he was, indeed, listening. Cassie didn’t look impressed. “We came here for Conner. Any sign of him?” 

“No,” Cassie said around her pursed lips and dropped her face into her hands, rubbing at her forehead in exasperation. Or nerves. Or tiredness. Tim was never good with people . Not like Dick or Kori or Jason , even. “I haven’t seen him yet.” 

“Want to grab Kid Flash remix edition?” Tim asked as a second thought as the yellow and red blur stopped just long enough to drop a woman off in front of a parked car with more gentleness than Tim had expected of him. She seemed injured, though, hobbling over to rest her aching body on the hood of the car, leg outstretched in front of her and hand kneading into the skin of her thigh. 

“Who?” 

“The…” Tim waved at the blur and Cassie followed it with her eyes before shrugging. 

“Fast boy?” She asked with a twitch of her lips. 

Speedster , Tim corrected mentally. “Yeah, that… guy.” 

Cassie shrugged again but when she tried to grab the blur she only came up with empty air. 

Speedsters , Tim cursed. 

Barry Allen was a nice guy, and smart, and Tim got along fine with him. He was more fond of Wally West, though, but Wally didn’t spend much time at all using his powers unless it was a complete emergency. He had been the original Kid Flash, Dick had told him, and he was still one of Dick’s closest friends, even if they didn’t talk all of the time. He had been part of the original Titans team - his suit on the far left beside Dick’s - and the only member (other than Roy Harper) that Dick didn’t try to reach out to when he put together his current one. Him and Dick were closer than even Bruce knew, Tim thought, but something had happened between the two of them to push them farther apart. It hadn’t been Tim’s place to ask and this was not the time to be thinking on it. 

Tim shook his head to brush the thought away. He had worked with Barry Allen a few times and Bruce had taught him the best way to get a speedster to slow down. They were fast but they weren’t impervious to distraction or sudden speedbumps. 

Tim could be a speedbump. 

He shoved out his arm and the blur crashed in a heep of limbs over it - feet over head, and back flat against the grass. He seemed shocked that Tim had managed to stop him, shocked that anyone had really figured out that a person was in the blur at all, and sat up in a quick spasm. He scrambled to get to his feet but Tim, while not faster , was certainly unpredictable. He grabbed the boy’s ankle and held firm, even if it pulled against the angry burns on his skin. “ Stop .” He ordered in his best impersonation of Bruce’s Batman voice. 

It must have seemed uncannily like the man because Cassie’s back shot up straight and eyebrows shot high into her hairline. The vibrating body stilled and green eyes blinked in his face. “How did you do that thing with your voice?” His words spilled like a waterfall from his lips, fast and nervous and the moment they were out he started to shake again. Tim wondered if it was a baseline shake or if the other boy was nervous. 

“Is everyone out?” 

The boy glanced over his shoulder to the west side of the building where Tim had come from, flames licking up the glass walls and fire engine siren’s filling the air. “I… I think so.” 

“Conner -.” 

“Who?” 

“Tall, muscley guy,” Tim held up his hand in the approximation of Conner’s height. “Doesn’t like shoes and has a killer jawline.” 

A killer jawline , Cassie mouthed at him and Tim’s cheeks flooded with color before he could stop them. 

“Uh,” The boy looked at the crowd. “Is he allergic to shirts?” 

“No, he doesn’t have any allergies that I know of.” 

Cassie shot Tim another incredulous look and the redheaded boy cocked his head to the side. “Yeah he’s over there with the bald guy.” He pointed and Tim’s world narrowed down to a single moment. 

It was cliche to say that time stopped when his eyes settled on him, not to mention highly impossible, but Tim’s sight did tunnel slightly around Conner, bandages over his ribs and tanned torso on display with low hanging sweatpants dangling off the line of his hips. He was clinging onto Lex Luthor’s shoulder as though he were the only thing keeping him upright, with his chin tilted up towards the waning sunlight and dark eyelashes painting his cheeks. Tim did a quick visual check for injuries he could see, potentially bruised ribs, leather cuffs hanging off his wrists, a bandaid slapped over his eyebrow. “Is that Lex Luthor?” Cassie asked out of the corner of her mouth but Tim had a one track mind when it came to Conner no matter the situation. 

He stumbled to his feet, nearly toppled over and froze when Conner’s eyes snapped open and locked onto him. 

They were so very impossibly wide and blue. 

And how could anyone say that Conner looked a thing like Clark Kent? Clark Kent never made Tim’s heart jump like Conner did. 

It was like a tidal wave of relief that crashed over him and even though the clean air pulled at his lungs like it was trying to set them on fire Tim couldn’t find a part of him to feel anything other than relieved . He stumbled forward a few steps and then doubled in a hacking cough once more. Cassie leapt forward to grab his arm to hold him steady but it was a strong grip that closed around his wrist instead and Conner felt so solid under his hands. “What are you doing here?” He said in a rush, breath brushing against Tim’s cheek and Tim wasn’t a hugger - he didn’t hug . No one in Bruce Wayne’s household hugged but he pulled Conner into one regardless. He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach his shoulders but his arms fit solidly against the bare skin and Conner’s heartbeat pressed against his own, his arms wrapping tight and secure around Tim’s waist. 

“You needed help.” Tim mumbled into his neck and took a moment to breath him in, a panic that must have been so deeply ingrained that Tim hadn’t even noticed fading away into nothingness. Conner’s grip tightened and with it Tim felt every part of him that was missing slot back into its correct spot. “I didn’t mean to imply -.” 

“I’m sorry for running out.” Conner spoke into his hair, his voice a rumble in his chest and Tim squeezed his neck in response. 

It wasn’t okay, and he wasn’t one to lie and say that something was, but what was done was done. There was no need to focus on it more than he may have needed to. He cracked open his eyes and met Lex Luthor’s cool and curious gaze with his own. “What’s the deal with Lex?” He asked, slowly pulling away from where he had been settled to look into Conner’s face. He brushed a careful stroke of his fingertips over the bandaid on Conner’s forehead with a concerned frown. “Did he hurt you?” 

“I think he hit me with a car.” Conner tilted his head but didn’t move his arms from where they were settled around Tim’s center. “I think he’s okay, though.” 

“He hit you with a car , Con.” Tim scoffed. “That’s not okay .” 

“Everyone has a dysfunctional family.” Conner smiled weakly and Tim wanted to be annoyed with him, really he did, but he would find time for that later. Once the relief had worn off into something more tired than energetic. 

“That’s borderline abusive.” Tim felt the need to point out and swept his gaze over Lex Luthor’s body. He seemed to be favoring his right side over his left and he hadn’t looked away from them once. 

Conner, with a grip stronger than Tim would have expected if he didn’t know how Conner’s powers worked (Superman had powers due to Earth’s sun and Conner was part Superman. The chances that his injuries had healed almost instantly once he was out of the range of Kryptonite were extremely high. Tim would have to remember to compare him to a houseplant once they were away from all of the prying eyes around them.), gripped Tim’s chin in his hand and turned his gaze around to face him. His eyes swept over Tim’s face, lost some of their blue as they worked in x-ray vision (which was uncomfortable to know what was happening when Conner was looking at him but not looking at him) and swept up and down his body slowly. He flushed at the realization of what a gaze like that seemed like thanks to the noise Cassie made from behind him. “Your lungs look weird.” 

“You don’t hear me insulting your lungs?” Tim said but it lost of it’s effectiveness with the cough that the words triggered on their way out. “It’s just a little smoke.” 

Conner furrowed his brow but his lips were curled into a small smile. “Just a little smoke, my ass.” He would have argued more but Cassie sidled up to them, her arms sliding quickly over Conner’s shoulders to give him a short hug and causing them to step away from each other. 

“It was really nice to meet you guys but I… gotta jet…” The speedster hooked a thumb over his shoulder and turned into a blur. 

Tim groaned and tossed back his head. Why did they always have to run ? He shot out an arm again and grabbed a fist full of fabric, yanking the boy back. It pulled a bit at his muscles and he winced as the weight of the boy settled. “Stop doing that.” 

“I…” The boy blinked at him and then shot his gaze to the others. His shoulders dropped. “I swear I just wanted to help.” 

“You did help.” Cassie reassured him. 

“Who even are you?” Tim asked a moment after her, hand tight in the spandex suit. Tim was lying to himself if he thought that he could actually keep a speedster from leaving if he wanted to, but Tim was really good at lying to himself. “Because you’re not Kid Flash.” 

“You know Kid Flash?” The boy’s voice raised several octaves before his cheeks colored a bright red and he cleared his throat. “I’m Bart.” 

“Bart?” Tim raised his brows. “Like Barry? Bartholomew?” 

“Do you know my grandad?” 

“Who?” Conner asked Cassie slowly from behind them. 

“I have no idea.” She muttered back. 

“Barry’s kids are like seven.” Tim would know, he had babysat the small speedsters once. It had been an all around terrible experience for everyone involved and the kitchen at Wayne Manor had nearly been destroyed. 

“Uh….” The speedster, Bart, looked to the side and shrugged. “Can you bring me to him?” 

Theoretically, yes, Tim could. Logically, the best Tim could do was Batman and Nightwing. He didn’t have Barry Allen’s number, nor did he have Wally West on speed dial. His best mode of contact for either of them would be through Dick or Bruce and Tim… had sort of, probably, definitely pissed them off by disabling the elevator at the tower, shutting off his tracker, and running away. 

To a building that was now on fire. 

Towards a mad man who had, potentially, shot down Superman full of kryptonite. 

There was so much going on and Tim still didn’t have the entire store. 

“I can get you close.” He decided on and Bart beamed. He looked about fourteen, at best, and vibrated with an energy Tim couldn’t match on his best days. But he had saved everyone from an explosion inside of a big office building and easily stayed beside them so Tim was willing to give him a pass. “What even happened ?” He asked everyone as a whole and Conner sighed, rubbing at his forehead. 

“Does anyone have a shirt?” He asked instead of answering. 

So it would be a long story, then. 

--

“Did you shoot Superman?” Conner asked for what had to be the twentieth time within a ten minute span. Lex Luthor’s eye twitched for the fortieth. 

“I’ve already said that was… unfortunate.” Lex was choosing his words carefully, Conner would know, he had spent a good deal of time around people that chose their words carefully. He had released Conner from the leather handcuffs - or, rather, the leather handcuffs from the bedrails - and a nurse had brought them a pitcher of water a few minutes after it had become clear that Lex was planning on staying and having an actual, honest to god, conversation with Conner. 

“That’s a nonanswer.” Conner pointed out with a roll of his eyes and shifted his shoulders, just a bit, until he felt the pull of them against the bed sheets. It felt good to be sitting up, even if every bone in his body seemed to scream in protest at the movement. “They think you shot Superman.” 

“Who?” Lex cocked his head but smiled like he knew the answer. “Your team? Nightwing ?” 

Well… Conner didn’t actually know what Dick thought on the matter. He hadn’t stayed around long enough to get anyone but Tim’s opinion on what had happened. He scratched at his nose and shifted his gaze until it was looking out of the window, the sunset just starting to paint the sky pink. 

Lex made a noise in the back of his throat and placed a cup of ice water by Conner’s hand on the little plastic tray table that was attached to his bed. He sat back down fluidly, the ice in his own glass clinking against the sides as he swirled the water with a curl of his wrist. “ You think I shot Superman?” He phrased it as a question but meant it as a statement. Conner pursed his lips. “Perhaps I did. Or perhaps I’m being framed.” 

“By who?” A voice that sounded very much like Tim’s ruminated on the thought in his mind. If Lex was being set up it was an awfully clever way of doing it - get a helicopter with one of his company’s old logos on the side, shoot Superman out of the sky and leave Conner to run towards the one person he should have been running away from. 

Then again, Conner winced, that was exactly what Tim had been trying to say about Lex. Conner was a science experiment whether he liked it or not - or at least the result of one - and Lex was the scientist. He wanted to observe his creation. “Now that is a question.” Lex hummed and tapped his fingers against his glass. 

“You could have just called, you know.” Conner felt the need to point out. “You didn’t have to shoot anyone. Or hit me with a car.” 

Lex’s lips twitched. “I didn’t hit you with a car.” 

“Having one of your people hit me with a car is kind of the same thing.” Conner scoffed and scratched at the skin above his bandages. “Speaking of, how did that even hurt me?” 

“You’re terribly unobservant.” Lex noted and Conner felt a spike of irritation climb up his spine. It reminded him of talking to Tim at the worst of times. Lex didn’t want to let Conner in on the information he had and Conner was getting tired of the circles he was insisting that they run in. 

He tightened his hand into a fist and squeezed until his bicep was bulged. “Stop playing games.” He growled. 

“You’re not as scary as you think you are.” Lex sipped leisurely from his water. 

“And neither are you.” Conner spit out the words with a glare. “Why am I here?” 

Lex stared at him, then, cataloged something on Conner’s face that he made him want to squirm and frowned, eyebrows pushed in towards either other. “Have you met him yet?” 

“Who?” 

“Superman.” 

“Well I mean, if getting the guy you pumped full with kryptonite back to somewhere he could be taken care of and meeting are the same thing.” 

Lex hummed and his face smoothed. “We used to be friends, Clark and I.” 

“You know who Superman is?” Conner didn’t know why he was shocked, but Lex’s words still sent him for a loop. He hadn’t expected that. If Lex Luthor knew who Superman really was why wouldn’t he tell the world? “I mean, yeah. I did.” Because he had memories of it. The two had grown up practically next door to each other, the Kent farm and Luthor abode were miles away from each other but space meant nothing in Kansas. Clark had spent afternoons at the Luthor home and Lex, in turn, spent his father’s bad days with John Kent tending the fields. Best friends, his mind supplied. Clark had trusted his greatest enemy more than he had trusted anyone else. 

And Conner didn’t know what had changed that relationship, he didn’t know what had broken it down in the end, but he supposed it had something to do with secrecy and power. Lex wanted all of it and Clark had it and refused to hand it over. It was for the better, Conner wanted to say, that Lex didn’t have all of the power he wanted. What would he do with it? Take over the world? Save everyone by hurting them? After all, what was a little pain if everyone else was better off? “Clark wears glasses and slicks back his hair.” Lex said with an undignified snort. “He relies too much on the power of people to brush him aside as a mild-mannered reporter. It wouldn’t work so well if Clark Kent wasn’t so stupidly forgettable.” 

But Lex hadn’t forgotten him. Conner thought about pointing it out but held his tongue. “I ran out before I could meet him.” Conner said after a moment of silence. “I don’t… really know who I am.” 

“You are a creation -.” 

“I’m a glorified science experiment.” Bitterness clouded his mind. “Sentient only because of luck.” 

“Aren’t we all?” Lex raised a smooth eyebrow. “I was curious how DNA of a human would mix with DNA of a Kryptonian. I wanted to know if it was even possible to combine the two.” 

“So you created…” Me , he finished the sentence in his mind and picked at a piece of lint on his blanket. 

“You have the best parts of me,” Lex nodded in agreement. “With all of the power of Superman.” 

It didn’t feel like an assurance but he doubted Lex meant it as one. Conner was a science experiment, a clone , one of the greatest scientific achievements of their century. So why did it feel so much like an insult? Why did Conner feel so… fake ? “So what am I, then?” 

Lex opened his mouth to answer but an explosion from the hallway shook the floor and sent the water on Conner’s bedside table spiralling towards the ground. The glass shattered and splashed over Lex’s leather shoes and dripped uselessly over the toe box. He stood in a fluid movement and straightened the cuffs of his jacket. “Stay.” He ordered Conner like Conner would have ordered Krypto and peaked out of the door. A yellow blur pulled him into the hallway and Conner blinked. 

What? 

“Hi! Sorry, this isn’t going to be fun.” A voice said from in front of him and Conner barely registered green eyes before he was stumbling in the sunlight and into a bush. “Sorry, sorry!” 

Almost instantly the pain that had been in his body began to dissipate as sunlight hit his shirtless body. 

--

“Sit.” Bruce growled and pointed squarely at the chair in the medbay almost viciously. Tim dropped immediately. 

Dick wanted to go to him in sympathy - he had been on the other side of Bruce’s anger one too many times - but, if he were being honest, Tim had pissed him off too and acted with the sort of reckless abandon he had never expected of the boy. Dick frowned from where he stood against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and tablet held in front of him as he watched Tim’s vitals fill the screen. Really, Dick knew he was partially at fault for Tim’s behavior - the other boy didn’t do well when he thought he was being pushed aside. He should have done better to listen but it had been a long twenty four hours and Dick was still running off a very small amount of sleep. “How are the vitals looking?” Kori asked, her boots clicking on the floor as she walked in, fingers brushing down her long dark hair. 

“He could have really messed up his lungs.” Dick pointed out with a frown and tapped on the screen so that Tim’s heart rate logs filled the screen. He didn’t know how to admit the fear that had come over him when Tim’s tracker had gone out. It was a bit too similar to Jason’s getting carved out by Slade Wilson to give Dick any sort of comfort. A bit too similar to Jason running off to Europe. A bit too similar. 

“Breathe.” Bruce placed a plastic mask over Tim’s nose and mouth and held it in place. Tim’s hands were shaking, Dick noted absently, the adrenaline from earlier either wearing off or he was worse off than he was willing to show. “In.” Bruce counted out the time, one, two, three, four, “Out.” One, two, three, four. He coached Tim through a few more cycles, knelt down in front of the younger boy’s form and dark eyes showing a concern he would never admit aloud. 

He was angry with Tim too, but Bruce was more concerned with getting his health back from the brink than he was lecturing him at the moment. The lecture would come, Dick wanted to assure Tim, but it would be once Tim could breathe normally for himself. He would probably be benched for a few weeks, not only to give his lungs time to heal but to teach him a lesson. After all, Dick had been benched for less when he was Robin. “He’s fine, Dick.” Kori said softly, her hand kneading the tense muscle between his shoulders. “They’re all back. Alive.” 

He pursed his lips. 

She was right, he knew that she was right. Tim, Conner and Cassie had even somehow brought home a new friend, vibrating with energy reminiscent of Wally when he was younger and buzzing circles around their training room. Rachel and Gar were keeping an eye on him, helping him settle in. Clark, with curious eyes, was watching all of them from behind a pane of glass. He was fully healed, standing with arms crossed over his chest, and head tilted just a bit to the side as he listened to Bruce count out Tim’s breath and listened to his lungs. 

He had confirmed what Tim had been saying, when Bruce and Dick had talked to him. Lex Luthor had shot him out of the sky. Clark had been on his way to the tower - Lois had apparently finally managed to convince him that Conner wasn’t a problem he could avoid forever. The boy was going around wearing his insignia on a shirt. 

In truth, Dick felt for Conner. He couldn’t imagine what he was going through. He was half Lex Luthor, half Clark Kent, and all teenager. He was sure that Conner felt brushed aside and Dick wanted to yell at Clark himself. Conner hadn’t asked to be made. He hadn’t asked for anything except answers and no one had been willing to give him them. “You’re benched for a month.” Bruce said, sitting back on his heels and hand lingering on the oxygen mask over Tim’s face. 

Tim paused from where he was wiping a wet cloth over his cheeks, cleaning off sweat and grime from the fire he had been stuck in. His jaw set stubbornly and Dick felt hot anger stab at his chest. He bit his lip and Kori’s shoulder tensed with his body. “He’s not your problem.” She meant it in the best way, of course. Tim wasn’t his to train or punish. 

But, somehow, in the last year Dick had known him, the boy had smoothed his way into Dick’s heart. Just like Jason, Dick felt responsible for him. On top of that, Dick had been training him. He had taught him about his tracker, about the program Bruce had used to make them, about why they were so important. To think that Tim had been listening and at the same time figuring out how to shut them off without removing them was both impressive and hurtful. He watched Bruce and Tim out of the top of his eyes and ducked his head down so that it was over the tablet instead of tilted towards them. “I didn’t do anything.” Tim argued. 

In the time that Dick had known him he could count on one hand the amount of times Tim actually sounded his age. Typically, the boy wasn’t one to disrespect Bruce or Dick’s rank above him. He knew when he did something wrong, knew when he overstepped or acted irresponsibly and he admitted it. Bruce’s punishment was more than Dick would have given but it wasn’t steep . Tim had broken the rules, nearly been killed in a fire where none of them could have even tried to help him, and acted without thinking. “We do not ,” Bruce growled with a frown. “Act the way you did without taking responsibility for our actions.” 

“I am taking responsibility for my actions.” Tim shoved Bruce’s wrist away and pushed the mask to the side with it and Dick stepped forward to tell him to put it back on because his lungs needed the clean oxygen but Kori stopped him with a placating hand on his wrist. 

This wasn’t a fight between him and Tim. He wasn’t part of Dick’s team, not like Gar and Rachel and Conner and Cassie were (who Kori had spoken with already, in a stern but soft voice with Cassie’s head hanging low but chin stubbornly set, none of them were sorry and they weren’t willing to even pretend to be so). Tim wasn’t his to punish or sternly talk to. He was Bruce’s sidekick. He was Bruce’s to handle. Bruce passed the mask to his other hand and pressed it back to Tim’s face with a frustrated scowl. “Your lungs are damaged.” He stated. “Keep this on.” 

Tim didn’t argue that point, which Dick figured was probably because he could feel how weak his lungs were. “I told you -.” 

“Be quiet.” Bruce snapped and Dick couldn’t help wincing. Tim’s jaw snapped shut and his blue eyes stuck to Bruce’s in a show of pure stubborn righteousness. “I told you we would act once we talked to Clark. You were too stubborn to admit that there was a specific way we needed to handle the situation and nearly got yourself and Wonder Girl killed.” 

Tim wanted to argue, oh Dick could tell that by the tightness of his face but Bruce was a steamroller when he wanted to be. Dick would know. He had done just as bad, if not worse, than what Tim had at his age. “You acted irresponsibly. You acted irrationally. You acted with emotion over logic and that is not what we do.” 

“That is all that we do.” Tim snapped and Dick watched something perhaps a bit dangerous flash across Bruce’s face. He shook Kori off his wrist and stepped between them, smoothly, body angled to block Tim from Bruce’s wrath. 

“Take a breather.” It was testament to how much Bruce trusted him that he listened, standing and spinning on his heel before walking from the room. He didn’t storm so much as move like a dark cloud, the door shutting softly behind him. Clark, Dick could see from where he stood, went after him, Bruce’s name on his lips. Dick didn’t know if Clark would offer any comfort or help or if Bruce’s worried rage would simply turn towards him but he figured that if anyone could handle it, it was Clark. Dick waited a beat, Kori’s eyes steady and strong on his and imploring him to either say something or walk away himself, and then sat down heavily on the bed beside the youngest Robin. “You understand why he’s upset, don’t you?”

“I’m not a child.” Tim argued stubbornly, but his blue eyes were watering and refusing to look at Dick’s face, chin pointed forward and fingers shaking as they pressed the mask where it needed to be. Dick took sympathy on him, bat his hands down and held it in place himself. His skin was a bit clammy, and on the tablet his temperature was four degrees higher than it’s normal base temperature. “I’m not sorry.” 

“I know.” Because Dick did know. None of them were. Conner expressed an apology for running off but he wasn’t sorry that the others had gone after him. Cassie had refused to say it herself and they wouldn’t be able to drag an apology out of Tim. “I am,” Dick admitted after a glance at Kori and she smiled, softly, walking across the floor to sit on Tim’s other side, her hand brushing over the back of his neck before planting itself on his upper back. She tapped her fingers in the steady beat of how his breathing was supposed to be until he matched it unconsciously. He felt better with her there, a fingertip’s glance away, and offering a support he needed without him having to ask. “We should have listened to you.” 

Tim’s lips twitched and his breath stuttered on the way out of his pursed lips. “I’m not a kid.” He argued again. 

“You’re not an adult, Timmy.” Dick said with a small laugh and shifted so that his knee was bent on the sheets, brushing against the line of Tim’s from where he sat with his ankles crossed. “You did something wrong. And you’re going to have to live with the consequences of that.” 

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” He implored and fixed Dick with too bright blue eyes and begged him to understand. But Dick didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t . 

“You shouldn’t have turned off your tracker.” He searched Tim’s eyes and found a spark of shame. “You know you shouldn’t have turned off your tracker.” 

“No one would have let me go.” 

“You should have tried to do it the right way.” 

“I did .” Dick flinched. Tim had , was the thing. He had laid out his suspicions and Dick had brushed them off. It seemed awfully familiar to a year before, when Tim had insisted that his parents were missing and none of them had listened. 

He frowned, then. Was that what was causing most of Tim’s anger at the situation? Back then no one had believed him even when he had laid out all of the evidence. Dick had been guilty of brushing him off, had promised he wouldn’t do it again and then… had done it again. With Conner. With a member of his own team. 

Perhaps they were all in the wrong, here. “I know you’re not used to this, Tim.” It was obvious how much he wasn’t used to it. Once Dick had said it he realized how it had been staring them in the face for so long. “I know you’re used to doing things on your own but you’re part of a… family now. That comes with obligations and responsibilities.” The Drake’s had never been much of a family unit before Janet died and Tim had taken up the mantle. “I know Bruce won’t say it but his anger comes from worry.” He swallowed and took a cue from Kori’s nod and soft, beautiful smile. “You scared us. You scared me .” 

Tim ducked his head and his chin brushed against his chest. “I didn’t want to scare you.” Tim mumbled after a moment, fingernails picking at a scab between his knuckles. Kori pulled his fingers away with a gentle tug and smoothed the skin with a brush of her fingers. “It was just…” He blinked several times and Dick had a feeling he was about to cry. 

“No one was listening.” He filled in the blank. “I know. We all should have done things differently but, come on Tim, you know Bruce will say sorry only once hell’s frozen over.” He nudged Tim’s shoulder with his own as he said it just to get the small smile Tim sent him. “You need the break for your lungs and burns to heal, anyway. A month isn’t that long.” 

Tim wrinkled his nose in displeasure but agreed. He dropped his head on Dick’s shoulder, then, and shut his eyes and Dick took it for the trust it was meant to be. 

It had been a long day. 

--

A knock interrupted Conner from where he was twisting his blankets in an anxious heap on his lap. It was soft, and careful, and not from a footfall that he recognized but when Conner looked up he knew exactly who he was looking at. Clark Kent wore thick black framed glasses that hung down from his nose, had the presence of someone that had stopped intergalactic wars just by existing, and a goofy, lopsided smile. “Can I come in?” He spoke and it was a rumble in Conner’s chest. Krypto looked up from where he was perched on Conner’s knee and growled. 

Clark stopped, a foot in Conner’s room and foot out, a frown on his face. Conner scratched his fingers in Krypto’s chin and said nothing in response. 

In truth, Conner was exhausted, pissed off, and worried. He could hear Dick and Tim talking in the medbay, had heard Kori sternly telling Cassie that running off had been wrong and revoking her privileges for a week, and could hear Bart rambling a mile a minute in the training room to Gar and Rachel. Bruce Wayne he had heard too, turning his anger towards Clark and claiming that it was all his fault for getting shot in the first place. It would have been hilarious to listen to if Bruce hadn’t punctured his words with the fact that Tim could have died . 

His lungs had apparently been damaged nearly severely. He had been stuck in an elevator in a building that was quickly burning down around him and, if it hadn’t been for Bart, Tim would have died before Conner had even known he was there. “I wanted to thank you.” Clark said awkwardly from the doorway. “For bringing me here.” 

Conner didn’t have anything to say. 

For so long he had wanted nothing more than to meet both of his DNA donors. He had so many questions and no answers were being offered. 

But, how did the saying go? 

Never meet your heroes. 

He wondered if this was how Tim had felt when he had met Batman and Nightwing for the first time. The sudden realization that they didn’t have what you expected was startling and threw him off kilter. Conner didn’t know who he was and he was starting to think that who he was turning out to be wasn’t what either Lex or Clark wanted of him. “I asked for you.” Conner said when Clark took his silence as dismissal. Clark’s shoulders tensed and he glanced back over his shoulder. 

Conner wondered if he would look like him when he was older - big, imposing, important, the bearer of truth, and justice. Or if he would look like Lex - bald, expressionless, clever, and angry. “I asked for you and you never came.” 

Clark ducked his head and dropped his eyes from Conner’s. “You have to understand, Conner -.” 

“No, I don’t.” Conner stubbornly squeezed his blanket in his fist. “I don’t have to understand.” He shook his head and glared at his bookshelf. “I didn’t ask to be made. I just asked for some help.” 

“Conner -.” 

“I almost got my…” How would he best describe Tim? Were they friends? Were they more than friends? All Conner really knew was that when Tim was around, when he could hear his heartbeat, he felt more whole than he ever had before. “I almost got Tim killed because you and Lex Luthor can’t sort out your own shit.” He shifted his gaze to Clark and counted the space between them. He hurt to look at, his pedestal and expectations too high. Conner turned his back to him, curled his body around Krypto and buried his nose in his soft fur. “If he died I never would have forgiven either of you.” 

Or himself. 

But Conner didn’t have to say that part out loud. 

He fell into a fitful sleep that night, Tim’s heartbeat the only thing keeping him tethered. 

Chapter Text

“My dad woke up.” Conner nearly dropped the glass he was filling with water, startled. Tim smiled at him - that crooked smile that showed all of his teeth - and pulled himself up onto the counter, arms straining as he pushed up and Conner winced for him, remembering the burns on his palms. Conner offered the glass wordlessly and Tim took it with a small, barely there thank you and sipped it in silence. 

In truth, Conner didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know which conversation was most important for them to have. Tim still looked tired, and his lungs still sounded a little backed up, but his words made something slither in Conner’s stomach. Apprehension? No. Worry? Maybe. Or perhaps it was guilt wrapped around trust and squeezing it into submission. Conner had wondered, after all, why Tim hadn’t told him when he had told Dick. He had known even then that Tim had merely needed time but Conner had been quick to anger, and even quicker to jump to conclusions. 

Conner reached above Tim’s head to grab a second glass and pretended that he wasn’t acutely aware of the way Tim’s eyes were glued to the water he was holding. He was halfway through pouring his own glass before he spoke, words slow and steady and pushing out of him like air through a small hole in a balloon. “I don’t know who I am.” 

Tim looked up at him sharply and Conner sighed, turning off the faucet and leaning his hip beside where Tim sat. They were close enough that their arms brushed and close enough that if Conner breathed he was breathing in the scent of Tim - the smell of the soap he had used, the smell of the the toothpaste he had used earlier and something that was more uniquely him (papaya and lemongrass and sage). “What do you mean?” He asked slowly, calculatingly, watching Conner from the corner of his blue eyes. 

Conner shrugged. He didn’t really know how to put into words what he meant. It was a question that seemed to be circling him ever since he had gained conscious thought. Who was he? “I’m half Clark Kent,” He started and then paused, took a sip of the lukewarm water, and started again. “I’m partially the greatest man in the universe -.” 

“You’re half Isaac Newton?” 

“What?” Tim’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile and Conner snorted, shoving gently at his shoulder. “Shut up,” the two of them laughed, though, soft in the early morning glow that was filling the room with orange light. They should have been sleeping still, laying soft and warm in their beds, but Conner couldn’t sleep beyond a light doze and Tim, Conner knew, had always had trouble getting his brain to stop working. “I’m half Superman and then half his greatest enemy.” 

“Socks?” 

“Tim, what?” 

Tim laughed and it was the sort of soft snorting laugh that Conner knew was unique to only him. It filled him with a warmth that settled deep into the darkest corners of his mind and lulled him into a sense of security. “He hates socks.” 

“Did you pick that up in your infamous bat training?” 

“No,” Tim shrugged and didn’t elaborate. 

“I just don’t…” Conner continued softly, his fingers picking at the rim of the cold glass he cradled between his hands and mouth frowning. “I’m not Clark. But I’m not Lex. And I don’t…” 

Tim sighed and his heels, which had been rhythmically bumping against the cabinet he sat a top of, stilled. His glass clinked when he set it down on the other side of the sink - he had lean behind Conner to do it but he did it and Conner noticed he had drank the entire thing without him even noticing - and Tim leaned back on his hands as he straightened, chest pointed towards the fluorescent lighting above them and chin tilted upwards as he thought. “Who says you have to be either of them?” 

“I just…” Conner shrugged. “They’re like my parents, right? I share their DNA. Their memories.” 

“DNA doesn’t make a family.” Tim said automatically, stiffly, as though it was something he was thinking a lot on himself. 

“Then what does ?” Conner asked desperately. “Because Tim, I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know why I’m here.” 

“Look Conner I’m not…” He sat up and pulled his knee up onto the counter with him, turning his body so that he faced Conner and hands pulling his ankle in towards his thigh. “I’m not the expert on family here. None of us are.” He swallowed and his hair flopped into his face, blocking his eyes momentarily from view. “I don’t… Jack Drake is my father. He gave me half of my DNA and this slew of problems. But he didn’t raise me. He didn’t make me who I am.” 

“I completely hijacked this conversation.” Conner realized abruptly. Tim had sat down to talk about his father and Conner had shifted it towards himself. 

“When was the last time you actually talked to anyone about how you’re feeling?” Tim asked softly and reached out to brush Conner’s wrist with the pads of his fingers. “Conner, you don’t have to be Clark Kent or Lex Luthor.” 

“But then who am I?” It felt like desperation clawing at his throat, begging for an answer that he didn’t think anyone could really give him. 

Tim stared at him for a moment, flexed his jaw, and then ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. “Your favorite movie is The Greatest Showman, you’ve made me watch it like fifty times in the year I’ve known you. You know all of the words to every song and I’m pretty sure most of the dances.” 

“It’s not my favorite movie.” Conner argued weakly. 

Tim fixed him with a look that had his cheeks coloring. “Don’t lie to me.” He squeezed Conner’s wrist, though, to lessen the sting of the words. “Your favorite band is The Oh Hellos which, I don’t even know how you found them.” 

“They’re on Gar’s playlist.” 

Tim nodded his head in concession. “Your favorite food is a strawberry frosted donut. But, like, the shit ones with the fake strawberry frosting not the puree strawberry.” 

“They have bits in them.” 

“You don’t like coffee but if you have to drink it you prefer it to be black.” 

“It’s so bitter.” 

“Having it black doesn’t remove the bitterness.” 

“Yeah but you add a mountain of sugar and that can’t be healthy.” 

“My point is,” Tim squeezed his wrist again, smile crooked and eyes earnestly staring into his own. “You’re not Clark Kent and you’re not Lex Luthor and that’s okay . You don’t have to be Superman and you don’t have to be whatever brand of psychotic Lex is.” 

“He’s not psychotic.”

“Could you not argue with me for like, maybe, ten seconds and listen to what I’m saying?” 

“I’m listening to you.” Conner insisted because it was true, he was . But it was just so easy to rile him up with pointless arguments that made his cheeks go pink. “I’m always listening to you.” 

“I like Conner more than either of them.” 

It was attraction. 

That was what Conner felt towards him. 

His realization was so sudden that he felt almost blindsided by it. Of course , he wanted to say. It was so obvious now that he was looking it in the face. Tim was like an ocean of crystal blue that rushed over him whenever he closed his eyes - he calmed Conner in a way nothing else did, knew him more than Conner thought he knew himself, and cared like no one Conner had ever met before. Attraction felt a lot like friendship, only his heart beat faster, pulled quicker, pushed him towards doing more. 

Conner set his glass down beside Tim’s - still half full - and he was happy that it was only him that had super hearing because his heart was pounding fast enough that it would have worried him to hear it from anyone else. Tim’s knee was pressed into his chest and his lips tasted like the toothpaste he had used earlier. He sucked in a breath, long and harsh from where Conner had slotted their mouth’s together and his hand curled into a fist on his knee. Perhaps the attraction wasn’t mutual but Conner thought he was pretty good at reading Tim too. 

The hints had all been there, the pulsing between them, the unspoken words from a year ago when Tim had kissed him on top of the Wayne household. It felt both different and the same to be doing so now - it was the same swooping, flying sensation, like jumping out of a plane without a net and suddenly feeling the way the air rose up to meet him and push him to straighten and float. It was the same pliant lips under his own, the same breath on his cheek, the same eyelashes fluttering closed. But it was different. It felt like more . Like something that hadn’t been there before was more in the open, more solid now that a year had passed. 

He pulled back, just a hair, and Conner could hear the world in Tim’s breathing - ragged and rough and a little desperate. He could feel the pulse of his heart from where he held onto the side of his neck, if he ran his tongue over his lips Conner would have tasted Tim on them. How hadn’t he noticed it before? How hadn’t it clicked why Tim was so important to him? 

Tim had only ever seen him for who he was. He had never expected Superman or Lex. Only Conner. Only whatever Conner was willing to give. 

He traced the way his eyelashes fanned out dark against his ivory cheeks, brushed a strand of hair behind his ear and leaned back in. 

Tim met him halfway, a hand tugging at the bottom of his shirt until Conner was more in front of him. The other boy tilted his head, deepened the kiss in a way Conner didn’t know he knew how to do, and a noise that Conner was sure he wasn’t meant to hear passed from the back of his throat and sent something hot and sharp down his chest. Their noses brushed, Tim’s chest curled into his as Conner pulled him closer, his heel curling around the back of his leg to keep him in place and it was wet, noisy, and they weren’t going to be alone for much longer. They were in the middle of the kitchen, in the middle of where anyone could walk in and see but Conner found he didn’t care. He found he didn’t care. That this was the best feeling he had ever had before. 

He never wanted it to stop. 

For perhaps the first time since he could remember he was happy to be himself. 

If this was what it meant to be Conner, he thought, then he was more than willing to grab it and hold onto it for the rest of his life. 

--

That was new. 

Gar shouldn’t have been shocked, he told himself. He had seen it coming from miles away back when they had even met. Conner had always been protective in a way that simply being friends didn’t explain. For a while Gar had thought that the feelings had been one sided, though. That Tim didn’t feel the same way that Conner did. But watching them interact even before now had cemented it in stone. Even if they were nothing before they would be something eventually . 

It was something that was simply bound to happen. So it really shouldn’t have been shocking for Gar to see them acting different when he woke up that morning and, yet, he was. 

The thing was that Gar considered the two of them to be his friends. Conner was a teammate, he was something that Gar trusted to have his back. He played video games with him sometimes, they helped each other with dinner duty when it was their turn, he told him all about his feelings for Rachel and the weird sort of are they, are they not thing they always had going on. And Gar, while he didn’t think of them were really close to Tim, he thought the other boy was fantastic. In more than just his skills of observation and deduction - Tim was kind , a natural born leader and quietly hilarious. He liked them apart and he liked them together and he shouldn’t have been jealous that Tim had gone to Cassie for help over him but… he was. 

Tim had his back to the entryway but Gar knew he had known the moment Gar had entered the room. Conner didn’t bother to hide the glance he shot in Gar’s direction but he didn’t tense the way he would have before. Instead he waved, his arm draped across the back of the leather couch and Kryto on the floor by his feet. Tim, for his part, had his toes hiding under Conner’s leg, knees pulled up to his chest and one of Dick’s sweatshirts over his shoulders (it was much too long for him but, somehow, it didn’t make Tim look small). They both looked tired and yet wide awake, sitting a normal distance apart and yet the air between them seemed almost electrified. “Morning.” Conner greeted after a moment of Gar’s staring. 

He shook himself out of whatever stupor he had been stuck in. “Hey!” He walked over to the two of them, a bowl of cereal cradled to his chest and sat on the coffee table, legs folded under him. If Dick or Kori walked in and saw him right now he would never hear the end of it - while Dick wasn’t fond of Gar climbing on furniture he never seemed to mind so long as it wasn’t the coffee table. They did have a point, Gar supposed. There were plenty of seats he could take and, still, Gar enjoyed sitting on the table far more than sitting on any of them. His spoon clinked on the side of the porcelain and he watched them, for just a moment longer as Tim played with something on his phone and Conner ran his fingers over Krypto’s fur before speaking. “So… when did this ,” he waved his spoon between the two of them with raised eyebrows. “Happen?” 

Conner’s cheeks flushed and Tim, with an indifference Gar was hopelessly jealous of, looked up at him with a slow raise of his brow. “When did what happen?” He asked innocently and Gar frowned. 

Had he interpreted it wrong? 

“Don’t mess with him.” Conner muttered and shoved at Tim’s knee until the indifference faded away into a shit eating grin. 

Fucking bats , Gar thought with a grimace. That was the sort of look Dick would give Gar when he had caught him in a joke that Gar hadn’t even noticed before. “Man, come on.” Gar whined. “I’m happy for you?” 

“Thanks, man.” Conner smiled, his shoulders easing from whatever nerves had sent them careening upwards before. “I’m going to make some coffee. Want anything?” 

“You hate coffee.” Tim muttered and Conner mused his hair as he walked by. 

Gar snorted down into his cereal bowl. 

He hadn’t spent nearly as much time with Tim as he had Conner but that wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Tim wasn’t around the entire time, he spent the majority of his time in Gotham and when he was at the tower he was usually training with Dick. It wasn’t that Gar wasn’t comfortable around him but it was just… well Tim was unpredictable. “Why didn’t you ask me?” Gar asked his cereal and felt Tim’s eyes snap over to him over the top of his phone, calculating and narrowed as though he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with people most of the time. 

Which Gar knew was fair. He knew how Tim had grown up. Had seen the fall out from the year before when one of his parents had died and Tim had felt worse about failing than he had about his mother dying. “I didn’t mean to offend you.” He said it slowly, as though he wasn’t sure if they were the right words to use for the situation. 

Gar would have found it funny if it wasn’t so entirely sad. “You didn’t offend me.” Gar searched for the words to say what he was trying to say - to get the point across that he struggling to show. “I just… I would have listened. You know that right?” 

“I do.” Tim assured him, a confused tilt to his head. 

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” 

“You would have told Rachel.” 

The thing was, he wasn’t wrong . Gar would have told Rachel. He would have insisted that she be let in on it and then taken her along. “Would that have been such a bad thing?” He asked with a twist to his spoon. 

“She would have told Dick.” Tim said as explanation. “Or Kori.” 

“Maybe things would have gone better if you had.” 

“Things didn’t go bad as it is.” 

“Tim, you blew up a building.” 

“ I didn’t blow up a building. Bart did.” 

“The point is,” Gar said a bit louder than he needed to. Conner glanced in their direction from where he was setting up the coffee pot, a frown creasing his forehead. “That you should have trusted us. We’re a team, Tim.” 

“ We’re not a team.” Tim said it with his hand waving between the two of them and Gar frowned. “ You’re a team with Kori, Dick, Rachel, Rose… Conner and Cassie.” He tacked the two on the end as if he wasn’t sure their designation himself. “You would have felt obligated to tell one of your team leaders what I was planning and they would have put an end to it. Telling Cassie, who wouldn’t say a thing to Dick or Kori as she has the least to lose with them, was the best strategic move.” 

“We’re not a team?” Gar asked, blinking and shocked at the sting of hurt that stabbed through him. 

Tim tilted his head, his dark hair falling in front of his eyes to tickle his nose and shook his head with a shrug. “You’re my friend, Gar. But you’re not my team.”

“Who is your team?” 

Tim shrugged again. “I don’t think I have one.” 

--

“I come from the future.” Bart had changed into a pair of Wally’s old clothes Dick had found stashed in his old room and they were long on him but made to withstand the amount of movement speedsters tended to show. It was a good thing too, Tim thought, as Bart hadn’t stopped moving since Tim had met him. He buzzed with energy, shifted from foot to foot, and fidgeted with whatever anyone handed to him. 

“That’s new and exciting.” Rose said from where she leaned back against the wall of the meeting room Dick had forced them all into, arms crossed against her chest and a perpetually bored look on her face. 

Tim barely resisted rolling his eyes. Time travel, especially with speedsters, wasn’t exactly anything that classified as brand new information. Bart looked at her and then back to where Dick stood, just a step in front of Bruce and Clark and shoulder to shoulder with Kori. Tim was sure there was some meaning behind how they stood, he was sure it had something to do with Bruce trusting Dick to run his own team and Kori being just as much in charge as he was. Or, perhaps, Tim was reading too much into things. Perhaps it meant nothing at all. Perhaps it was just as it appeared on the surface. “The Dominators have taken over the world and I came back here to warn my family. And…” 

Bart looked down, shifted his feet and crossed his arms. Tim shared a look with Bruce, curious to see if he saw what Tim did. But Bruce didn’t look at him. Bruce hadn’t looked at him since benching him. Conner’s hand brushed against his elbow and Tim looked at him instead. He nodded, barely noticeable and Tim’s mouth twitched. “They’re dead?” Bart shot his eyes to him, green watery around the edges. “Where you’re from?” 

He nodded, slow and unsure and wiped a quick hand under his eyes. “The dominators land in a few years. Start a slow takeover.” 

Tim wanted to tell him that everything would be okay. That they would talk fix everything. But Tim wasn’t one to lie. “We can send a signal out to Barry.” Dick said with a glance back at their mentor. Bruce didn’t nod but Clark did. 

“What about Wally?” Bart asked, desperation in his voice. “He’s the Flash now, right?” 

“No,” Dick said sharply. “He’s not anything right now. And we’re not getting him involved.” 

“He’s the flash though.” Bart insisted. 

“He’s not now.” Tim supplied when Dick only pursed his lips. “He’s retired. Did you overshoot?” 

Bart shrugged. “I don’t know. I… I don’t really know where I was aiming to go.” 

“Except away.” Conner filled in the blank with a sympathetic wince. 

Bart bit at his lip and nodded. “If I didn’t leave... Please I have to talk to them.” 

“We’ll help you.” Tim decided. The others shot him a look, Gar curious, Rachel with eyebrows raised, and Bruce with a carefully blank look. But Tim had known what he was going to offer before Bart had even posed the question. He was lost, he had been forced to leave his life behind in an attempt to save everyone he cared about. Tim could sympathize. “ I’ll help you.” He edited at the silence that had filled the room at his admission. 

“Me too.” Conner said instantly, his presence a warm wall against Tim’s back. 

“I’m in.” Cassie raised her hand lazily, a coy smile on her face. She winked when Tim tilted his head in question at her. 

Bart’s shoulders dropped in relief and he buzzed forward, arms reaching to wrap Tim in a hug before he caught himself and shot out a hand to shake instead. “I’m Bart Allen.” 

“Tim Drake.” 

“Whoa,” Bart breathed. “Really? You’re him ?” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“You’re so cool.” 

--

Bruce wasn’t avoiding Tim but… that was exactly what he was doing. Talking to him would have been the best solution but Bruce wasn’t a big fan of talking much in general. Dick had rolled his eyes at Bruce’s steadfast bullheadedness earlier that day. “You need to talk to him.” Dick had insisted with his arms crossed and that look on his face that told Bruce that he knew best. He shared that look with Barbara. “He knows what he did was wrong. He’s just not used to people caring.” 

Bruce wanted to tell him that he already knew that Tim’s issue wasn’t that Bruce cared but that he just was used to being left to his own devices. He understood it. Tim had never had to answer to anyone before. And he was acting like a kid . Like his age required him to act. He was sixteen. Dick had pulled a lot of worse stunts at sixteen. “Him and Conner are quite the team.” Clark said after a moment of silence, after the younger heroes had left the room to put together dinner or do homework or train or whatever it was Dick required of them. 

He looked over at his old friend - which Bruce wouldn’t admit aloud for Clark to hear, he never would let him live it down - and saw the way he frowned and scuffed his foot against the floor. Bruce had noticed it a year before. “They’re well matched.” He said after a moment of pause, brow creased and hands toying with a rubber ball. The two of them were in Dick’s security room, sitting before the array of computers and cameras and Bruce was pretending that he wasn’t looking for his boys on the monitors. 

“I don’t know how to handle him.” Clark said after a moment of silence. “Conner’s… he didn’t ask to be made.” 

“But you didn’t ask for him to be made either.” Bruce understood it, really he did. Clark had been over it before with him. It wasn’t that Clark didn’t like Conner, it was that Conner was made of his DNA without his permission. “You don’t have to be there for him, or train him, or support him.” 

“But I will.” 

“But you will.” 

“You know your Robin is scarily smart.” Clark observed. 

“He is.” Bruce sat up a bit straighter at the admission. He was, truthfully, proud of Tim. He had broken the rules but no one had gotten hurt aside from himself. 

“Why do you keep training them?” Clark asked. “Dick, Barbara, Jason, Tim. Why do you keep putting them out there if the idea of them getting hurt scares you so much?” 

“If I don’t,” Bruce shrugged. “They’ll just go out there and not have the correct tools to keep themselves safe.” 

Clark smiled, stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good father, Bruce.” He said lowly. “Don’t shut him out.” 

“Shut who out?” 

Clark winked and backed out of the room, calling out a loud greeting in the hallway. Bruce narrowed his gaze and watched the door. It eased itself open a crack and then all the way and Tim slid in through the gap, shutting it softly behind him. He swept his eyes over the boy, caught the length of the light blue sweatshirt that didn’t belong to him (it had a faded, Haly’s Circus logo on the front) and the flop of hair he had swept to the side. He had light bags under his eyes and nerves pinched the corners of his mouth into an uneasy smile. Tim was good at hiding his emotions but he was still a teenager. He stopped by the end of the monitors and waited until Bruce gave in and waved him forward to pull himself into the seat that Dick usually occupied by Bruce’s left shoulder, his legs pulled up to his chest until he was as small as he could get in the chair. “I’m sorry.” He said softly, fingers pulling at a loose thread and teeth digging into his bottom lip. 

Bruce hadn’t expected an apology. He also hadn’t wanted one. “Tim…” He started off in a gruff voice and then stopped. He didn’t know what to say. What were the correct words for the situation? He was both proud and upset by the boy.

“I know what I did was reckless.” Tim continued when it became clear that Bruce wasn’t going to. “I shouldn’t have turned off my tracker.” 

“How did you do it?” Bruce asked after a moment of staring at the side of his face. 

Tim’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile and Bruce missed it once it faded. “I’ll show you?” 

“Later,” Bruce agreed. “We don’t need Dick to overhear and get any ideas.” 

It startled a laugh out of Tim’s mouth, and he watched Bruce out of the top of his lashes before looking back down. “I don’t want to go home.” He said softly, in a tortured sort of voice and then heaved a deep, shaking breath and coughed a bit into his shoulder.

Bruce worried about his lungs. He had gotten enough clean oxygen to be okay but clearing them and healing the damage from the fire would be slow. Cautiously, he draped his arm over the back of the boy’s chair and ruffled his hair with his fingers. Dick had always been one for physical affection, he had always stolen hugs when he was younger, asked for attention in a squeeze of the shoulder or fallen asleep on Bruce’s chest. Jason had been the opposite. He had been through so much that any form of affection almost always made him clamp up and do something to push it away. Tim, though, was simply not used to it. He sought it out but seemed shocked when it was given to him without question. “You have school on monday,” Bruce reminded him even though he knew that wasn’t the home Tim was talking about. 

“I should be happy he’s awake.” Tim clarified. “But all I can think about is that it means that I’m going to have to move back into the Manor and…” He shrugged. “What if it’s just like it was before? With him always gone.” 

“What if it’s different?” 

“That’s even more terrifying.” Tim admitted with a scoff. “What if he’s home all the time? What if he suddenly wants to be something he’s not to me?” 

“Living your life in the what ifs will only drive you insane.” Bruce reminded him gently and scratched his fingernails gently over the boy’s scalp. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were worried?” 

Tim bit at his lip, glanced at Bruce, and then sharply away with a jerk of his shoulders. “I don’t want to lose this.” He whispered and Bruce frowned. 

Was that what most of this was all about? How scared had Tim been that once his father woke up Bruce would push him aside? Truthfully, it had never crossed Bruce’s mind. Tim was as much a part of his, dare he say it, family as any of the others. How many times had people given him something to hold onto and then just tore it away without warning? Barbara had pointed it out to him once but Bruce hadn’t paid her any mind until then. Bruce’s home, Robin, all of it, was perhaps the first time in Tim’s short life that he had been given something stable to rely on. “You will always have a place at home.” Bruce said with a hard swallow. “It doesn’t matter when you need it, it doesn’t matter if you never need it again. It’s there for you. If you ever need somewhere to go.” 

“Bruce…” 

“I’m not good with this,” He reminded him with a ruefully smile. “But you’re a good kid, Tim. Any father would be lucky to call you their son.” He pulled the boy’s head onto his shoulder and turned his attention to the monitors, watching a woman tug a dog across the street. “You will always be Robin.” 

--

“There’s someone that wants to meet you.” Clark ushered him forward and Conner followed at a subdued pace, just steps behind him and nerves clawing up his spine. It had been at the insistence of the others that Conner had even gone with him to Kansas, alone time with Clark Kent wasn’t exactly high on Conner’s to-do list lately. Clark had flown them most of the way, and then he had driven a car the rest of the way. 

The Kent farm was something Conner recognized by memory before they even pulled into the driveway. It was miles away from the Luthor home, surrounded by tall wheat stalks, and the echo of cows and pecking of chickens was the only thing Conner could hear for miles. It was secluded but welcoming, a completely different feel to it than that of the Luthor farm Conner had wandered onto years before. Clark hadn’t spoken much on the ride there, the radio the only noise between them - a soft country tune that played in loop in Conner’s mind - but he had sat unmoving in the car once he had put it in park for quite some time. 

Conner’s heart pounded in his chest as Clark opened the creaky door, a sign that said Welcome to our Home banging gently against the wood as it moved. “Come on,” He said softly and beckoned Conner in after him. He toed out of his shoes at the entryway, shrugged out of his jacket and placed his keys on a hook by the door. “Ma?” He called out and disappeared down the hallway. 

It was the smell that hit Conner first - the open air and fertilizer and fresh apple pie. And then it was the sound or, really, the lack thereof. It was quiet save for the animals, breeze through the grass, and the people in the home. There were pictures on the wall that showed Clark’s evolution from baby to adult - kindergarten graduation besides a wedding photo of him and Lois Lane. “Clark!” He recognized her voice in a visceral sort of way. She sounded like a part of him. He had heard that voice call that name so many times in his memories that it almost felt like a dream. “John! Come on inside, Clark’s here!” Her feet pounded against the floor as she all but ran to meet her son. 

Martha Kent wasn’t actually the first person Conner met, but, rather, John was. He walked out of the kitchen to the right of where Conner was standing, his combat boots still heavy on his feet and nerves clawing at his stomach. He had too many lines on his face to count, both from age and smiling, and he wiped his hands with an old cloth. He startled, just a little, when he saw Conner in the doorway, glanced down the hallway where Conner could hear Martha asking Clark about Lois, and then back at Conner. “Hello, there.” John Kent greeted and then walked forward. He stared into Conner’s eyes with a half cocked head and grinned. “You do look an awful lot like Clark.” 

Conner didn’t know what to say. He felt both as though he were looking into the eyes of his father and very much unwelcome. Did they know how he had come to be? Just how much had Clark told them? John reached out, then, and patted his shoulder with a weathered hand. “Why don’t you come on in, son?” 

“Right.” Conner nodded and bent down to untie his shoes. 

John waited patiently, tossed the cloth over his shoulder and placed a hand square between Conner’s shoulders when he straightened up, sock clad feet padding near silently on the wooden floor. “Clark told us your name is Conner,” John said conversationally. “Is that right?” 

“Y… Yes, sir.” 

“Do you have any nicknames you like to go by?” 

Conner thought of it, imagined the way Tim’s lips curled around the shorted half of his name he had coined and said after only a moment of contemplation, “Con. I go by Con.” He rubbed at the back of his neck at the sudden embarrassment. He went by Con when Tim called him Con. No one else had ever used the name before. 

“I go by John,” John said with a guffaw. “Or Pa , if you’d like.” 

Martha Kent was about a foot shorter than Clark but she made up for it in personality. She swatted at her son’s shoulder with a good natured open palm when he tried to steal a cookie and clucked her tongue when she settled her eyes onto Conner, ushered forward by John’s steady hand. “Hey Pa,” Clark beamed at his father and stood up to wrap him in a tight hug. 

“Clark, my boy.” John hugged him just as tightly back and Conner thought, suddenly, to what Tim had said in the kitchen a few days ago. DNA doesn’t make family . Clark wasn’t related to any of the Kent’s, not by blood, and still, despite their differences, they considered him their child. 

“You must be Conner,” Martha said by his elbow, her voice warm like the sunshine outside and eyes soft. 

“It’s… It’s nice to meet you ma’am.” 

She smiled and wrapped her arms tight around his neck. “Welcome home, Conner.” She whispered in his ear and held him tight. 

--

The new team was born out of a mutual need. The four of them were outcasts even when they were among others like them. They didn’t have a tower, like Dick’s team did, but they didn’t really need one. Cassie had moved into Diana’s apartment in D.C., Bart into Barry Allen’s home to be trained by him and Wally West, Conner into the Kent Farm and Tim back into the Drake Manor. It was a team of necessity, they worked well together, dealt with each other’s problems without a triage, and met up once a week to train. Unofficially, Tim was their leader. But Conner thought that, aside from training and the missions that the Justice League sent them on, they were more a group of friends hanging out than they were a crime fighting team. 

Technically, none of them were part of the Titans anymore. Dick had let them go easy enough, and they had promised to call one another if a problem ever arose that needed their attention or was too much for one team to handle on their own. Conner, Cassie, Bart and Tim played video games together, had a group chat where they talked about anything others saw fit, and molded together well. 

They fit in the way that they didn’t fit with the others. 

Bart jokingly called them Young Justice but the name stuck even if they didn’t want it to. 

And it was good. It felt good. 

It felt like home. 

“Con,” Tim shoved at his shoulder and fixed his mask over his eyes. His bo-staff was short and clipped to his hip and he snapped his cape into place at his shoulders. “You ready to get to it?” 

Conner, for his part, smiled, slid an arm around his back and bent him a bit at the waist in a deep kiss. He wouldn’t have done it if Tim hadn’t wanted it - no matter how good he looked in the Robin suit - but Tim didn’t protest. His hands were firm on Conner’s shoulders, either to hold him in place or push him away, but he kissed him back in a way that left him breathless. “Hey!” A ball of paper smacked into the side of Conner’s face and they broke away to turn in unison towards her. She rolled her eyes and fixed her hair into a high ponytail with a black rubber band. The golden W on her belt shone in the dull moonlight and Bart ran circles around the three of them, only stopping long enough to hold out a hand to Tim. “Stop making out we have a job to do.” 

“Young Justice assemble!” Bart cackled. 

“No,” Tim declined immediately but placed his hand in Bart’s. 

“Go go Young Justice?” Bart tried, a hand bracing Tim’s neck for whatever speed he was about to push them into. 

“We’re not Power Rangers.” 

“Let’s just go .” Cassie said with a groan. 

“Come on, come on,” Conner said with a laugh. 

Tim’s breath was a tell that only Conner could hear and he said, moments before Bart kicked off, “Young Justice out.” And disappeared into a blur of red and yellow. 

Moments and miles later Conner heard the echo of Bart’s incredulous “What?! ” 

He traded a look with Cassie and the two of them shot forward with twin smiles adorning their cheeks. 

It was nice to have friends.