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It was a rough mission, it was also an extremely long mission. The four of them had been in the desert for at least three weeks. Cassie still isn’t sure what day it is. The desert was hot and now she has sand places where sand should never be. If the bad guys weren’t already in jail she would punch them, again.
Two days into their trip they had to go dark on communications and they weren’t able to contact their teams for the rest of the mission. So the only backup they had was themselves and the elements. The sandstorms Bart can make are truly impressive. Getting home and seeing a shower made Cassie want to cry. She nearly did cry when she was able to take the clothes she had on for three days off. Stepping into the shower was a new kind of reward, she always forgets how good it feels after a long mission.
The team decided to crash at the tower for the night before they have to face the rest of the world. They are all too tired to safely make it back to their respective families. Plus there is something inexplicably comforting about spending the night with your teammates after a mission. Tim thinks it’s because they can trust each other to forever have their back. Cassie will never admit it but she agrees.
She agrees even more when she comes out of the washroom to see her boys sitting on the sofa. They are all sprawled out and Kon looks half-asleep with his head resting on Tim’s shoulder. Bart is halfway upside down and is talking slowly, yawning with every word. Tim is lightly petting Bart’s hair and looks painfully fond.
Tim is the first to sense her leaning against the wall gazing at them. He looks over with a small smile and raises an eyebrow at her. Walking over she bends over to pick Bart up bridal style. “C’mon boys bedtime. We’ve all been up for forty-eight hours, time to sleep.”
Bart nods sleepy in agreement and reaches out for Tim.
Tim gently shakes Kon awake and murmurs into his ear “Conner, bud, you’ve gotta wake up. It’s just for a couple of minutes, let's go to bed.” God those two are disgusting. They’ve always been hot or cold, either hating each other or tripping over their feet to blush at one another. Kon stirs and looks tiredly up at Tim and gives a half-asleep smile.
The two awake members of their little team tug the other two to their rooms. Once depositing their respective sleepy boy Cassie and Tim meet in the hallway. Tim looks even more tired than usual which is impressive. Ruffling his hair she pushes him towards his room. “Go to sleep, you look like a corpse boy wonder.” Her Robin pauses to glare at her and kiss her on the cheek before continuing to his room.
Cassie knows Tim doesn’t have panic attacks very often and when he does have them, he’s an expert at hiding them. Some of the only times Cassie catches one of them is after a nightmare.
In Titan's Tower, nightmares are common. That’s to be expected since they’ve all been fighting crime since they were kids. So they’ve all witnessed each other crying and struggling to breathe at some point. It's been at least a couple of times since they moved in a little more than part-time a few months ago. Tim usually hides away during this and finds them when he’s ready.
So when Cassie leaves her room in the middle of the night for a glass of water she’s not surprised to hear someone gasping for breath as she leaves her room. She pauses for a moment trying to decipher which room it’s coming from. When she determines it’s Tim’s she goes up to the door and knocks lightly. She waits a moment but doesn’t hear anything but heavy breathing. “Tim, it’s just me, Cassie. I’m coming in,” She murmurs the words trying not to startle him. Or wake any of their superpowered friends.
Twisting the handle she steps into the room and makes sure to close the door firmly. Turning to look for Tim in the dark she sees him sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed, trying to stop silent sobs. He seems to be grasping silently at his neck. Which means he was either dreaming of Jean-Paul, who attempted to murder him in the Batcave (Likely). Or Jason Todd who slit his throat as an Fuck You to Batman (unlikely Tim hasn’t had that dream in a good while). Or when he was shot through the neck with something to do with Penguin (A good possibility that one was traumatizing all around). Y’know Cassie should probably talk to him about getting better protection around his neck. It’s a miracle Tim can talk at all.
Dropping down next to Tim she asks quietly “Hey, can I touch you?” He nods still trying to pull his shirt away from his neck and gasping desperately. “Alright I’m gonna take your shirt off, it’ll help you breathe.” Tim just keeps nodding desperately.
So slowly, telegraphing all her movements she reaches for the bottom of Tim’s shirt. In one solid movement, she helps him tug it off. Cassie isn’t even phased by the scars on Tim’s body anymore. They used to bother her a bit when she was younger, now they're just a part of her Robin. That’s all that matters. The splenectomy and top surgery scars are the biggest and most obvious but she pays them no mind as she grabs at Tim's hands.
Placing one of his hands over her heart she holds the other one tightly. “You’re alright, just breathe okay? It will be okay,” Cassie keeps her voice steady as she keeps eye contact with Tim. “Come on, let's do the five senses alright? Start with what you can feel.”
“I feel my bed, your heartbeat, the carpet, my sweats… and um the air from my open window,” his voice is shaky. Tim’s eyes are clouded and darting around like he expects something to jump out of the shadows. Gods she hates Gotham and all its creepy crawlies. She wants to punch all of them in the face and then some days she wants to punch Batman.
“Good, now four things you see.”
Tims exhales the heaviest breath she’s heard yet. Tears are welled up in the corner of his eye and he’s wiping them periodically. “I-I see you, the wall, pictures with all of us, and my staff.” He takes another forcibly deep breath but it's shaky. “I hear the city, your breathing, and Gar snoring down the hall.”
Cassie smiles at Tim and can see his eyes locking onto her, he looks so fucking tired. “You’re doing great, almost there. Two things you can smell,” She encourages still keeping her voice low. A glance over at the clock on the nightstand says it is 3:47 in the morning. Good thing they don’t have anything going on tomorrow.
“That strawberry shampoo you use and the candles Raven was burning earlier,” His voice is going back to normal.
“Wonderful, what's one thing you taste?”
“Blood.”
Alright, then that's that. There's the adorable little Bart in her head yelling ‘abort, abort!’ while running around frantically waving his arms around. “Well then, let's get you some hot chocolate to get rid of that,” Cassie accompanies her words by pulling Tim up. As always he’s steady on his feet but his hands are shaking.
Cassie keeps a hold of his hand and keeps continuous contact knowing he’s too anxious to seek it out himself. No matter how desperately he wants it. Pulling the door open she checks to make sure no one is coming down the hall. Tim doesn’t do well with crowding when he’s anxious.
Sometimes Cassie forgets how unsettling it can be when Tim is so silent she needs to check he’s still there. It doesn’t help that he’s so pale at the moment that he looks like a ghost. He always looks like this after particularly bad nightmares. It reminded her horribly of directly after his Bruce Quest™ and what would she give to never see him look like that again.
Tim is light on his feet as Cassie pulls him into the kitchen. The two of them wander over to the cabinet where they keep the hot chocolate. As Cassie reaches up for it Tim jumps on to the counter. For whatever reason he does it directly in her way.
Deciding that it's a hint she leans forward and grabs the container behind Tim’s head. Doing so she cages him in, trapping him against the counter and the wall directly to the left. Tim seems to sag a little, probably finally trusting that no one can get him while he’s protected by a demigoddess.
Setting the hot chocolate down she slowly throws her arms around Tim. The two of them take a moment just to breathe. There are no earth-shattering realizations while they sit there and the clock ticks on. It's just them. Just Wondergirl and the Boy Wonder. The leaders of a team now disbanded but the members who love so fiercely it's like not a day has passed.
After what could be thirty seconds or thirty hours Cassie pulls away and grabs the electric kettle. It's the quietest, see she unlike some people (ehm Bart) are kind to their friends with super hearing.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Not even a little.”
That's that, while they wait for the water to boil Tim grabs his phone and taps at it. Cassie is about to accuse him of working when some music starts to play. The song is an indie song that Tim’s sister really likes at the moment. Overall not a bad song, but a bit of a depressing one as it describes the singer's battle with grief and depression. That’s probably why Tim likes it.
Cassie pushes herself onto the counter and they sit listening to music while they wait for the water to warm. Tim drops his head onto her shoulder and she starts playing with his hair. In all honesty, she didn’t even realize she was doing it till she was tugging through a knot and Tim made a displeased sound.
Soon the water boils and Cassie jumps down to grab them while Tim wordlessly grabs them mugs. Her friend (is friend truly a strong enough word for what they are?) scoops out the chocolate powder. 2 scoops for Tim 3 and ½ for Cassie. He learnt she likes her hot chocolate sweet a year into their original team. Ah Young Just Us, those were the days. Everything seemed simpler back then. Maybe they were just too young and dumb to know better.
After filling each of their mugs Cassie grabs the container of cinnamon and chucks it at Tim. He catches it without even looking up from where he’s stirring his drink. Tim then dumps in more cinnamon than any sane person would but whatever, she’ll tease him about it another day.
Grabbing her mug in one hand and Tim’s arm in another she pulls them over to the couch. Setting her mug on the coffee table she flops onto the couch and stares at Tim till he flops down next to her.
They are quiet as she picks out one of the older star wars movies that she’s seen a few times but has no opinions on. Tim on the other hand, like most subjects he finds, has far too many opinions on it.
So they sit there through the absurdly long movie and she listens to Tim's quiet commentary. Occasionally she’ll reply if Tim adds some impressively good snark. It’s just the two of them as the darkness fades to the warm hues of morning. They continue watching stupid movies until Tim can breathe a little easier and he stops checking every exit every five minutes. Their hot chocolate was done hours ago and their empty mugs sit on the coffee table. Both of them have mentioned getting up to make more. Neither of them has. Maybe they’ll bribe Kon or Bart to make some when they wake up.
Then the sun comes up as it always does, it brings Kon with it. Waking with the sun is something Kon complains about often and curses Luthor and Superman for even more often. So neither of them is surprised when Kon comes shuffling into the room. There's a quiet mornin’ and Kon collapses back onto the couch. He’s snoring within a minute and they turn the movie up just enough so they can hear it but don’t wake Kon.
They finish their dumb movie and it is a dumb movie. Nothing life-changing or thoughtful, it’s exactly what they need. By now Kon is only half-asleep so they put on the first season of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker. It’s his favourite and he’ll appreciate it when he fully wakes up.
It takes nearly four episodes of Wendy for Bart to come wandering into the living room. He is slow and soft in the way he always is before he fully wakes up but they all know he'll be bouncing off the walls soon enough. By now Kon is awake enough to be narrating a story about some alien minions that he and Jon fought the other day. They weren’t very threatening but Jon was excited so Kon was excited and terribly fond.
Kon’s story is long enough for Bart to wake up. Bart being amazing and a speedster who needs like a million calories a day gets up and makes hot chocolate. He apparently makes breakfast too because they come back with pancakes and sausage. See these are the reasons Cassie keeps her boys around. None of them talk about how eventually they’ll have to get up and go back to their respective families. Then their responsibilities, Cassie can see Tim’s brain starting to boot back online. Where it lists all the things he has to do. Tim wrote it out for them once, it’s truly an impressive list. Half of it is stuff that probably should be Bruce’s job but whatever not her place to argue today.
So the four of them just lay there for a couple of hours. They watch shitty movies and more Wendy the Werewolf stalker than anyone should ever watch. They're young and alive, and even mostly happy. It’s a win and they all know it so they celebrate with Bart's breakfast. Then eventually they say goodbye with long hugs and whispered words. And everything is okay even when it isn’t.