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The first thing that hits Kon when he steps outside for the first time is the cold . The air of Gotham is biting and crisp, especially at night when the fog sets in and makes his swirling puffs of breath damp.
Then, it's the noise. Cars swerving and honking, people laughing or shouting, Tim muttering and tinkering somewhere inside the laboratory still. The ocean crashes somewhere distantly and Kon remembers being told by Tim at one point that the harbour is nearby.
The sight, then, is what really knocks his breath away. Towering, looming buildings that inch toward the impossible sky and shroud the city in shadow. Winding, twisting streets that seem to stretch endlessly in every direction. Cracked sidewalks and crumbling roads that could take him… anywhere , he thinks. Kon takes a step outside, moving past the threshold of the lab for the first time in his life. When he glances behind him, Tim's got his back turned and is thoroughly enamoured by whatever he's doing. He could leave , Kon thinks. Right now, right now, right now .
But then there's you , strolling down the street and looking at him like he's been caught .
"What are you doing out here, Kon?" you say quietly, not quite chastising, but wary nonetheless. He looks at you and frowns while you stand in front of him and block out the view of the city behind you.
"I was just looking," he says with a huff, his voice scratchy and unused, his words thick as he forms them. He cranes his head to look past you out toward the freedom of the city and you cock your head to the side to follow his movement.
"Mhm," you respond, disbelief clear in your voice. "Come inside with me, Kon. Come on, we'll talk about it." You brush past him, then, moving to duck under his patchwork arm where it grips onto the door frame so that you can slip inside. He hears you say some sort of greeting to Tim and he listens for a response that he knows will never come.
You've left him there, standing a single step away from the outside world. A bitterness begins to swirl in Kon's gut when he thinks that you must have done it because you're so sure that he'll follow, that he'll never step out of line.
But then he glances back into the lab and sees you sitting on one of the tables, letting your legs swing back and forth as you watch him.
But maybe, he thinks as he loosens his grip on the doorframe, letting the door shut closed gently as he retreats back into the safety of the lab. Maybe you just trust him to make his own choice .
"You should stay in here, Kon," you say gently when he walks toward you and plants himself in front of you, close enough that your knees brush against him as he crosses his arms and scowls. "It's safer for you in here."
"You get to leave whenever you want," Kon counters. Tim sighs and scowls at the noise from somewhere behind you, but he goes ignored by both of you.
"That's different," you offer kindly. "You know it is. I'm not the only zombie in Gotham City. I know how to keep myself hidden out there. Plus…" You trail off then, glancing back at Tim before giving Kon a sympathetic look.
"I know," Kon snaps at you, but his glare is directed at Tim. "You don't belong to him. I do." You sigh heavily at his words, reaching to brush a comforting knuckle across Kon's cheek as his jaw clenches.
When you'd met Tim all those years ago, he'd been nothing more than a mad scientist who was desperately obsessed with controlling life. He'd wanted to own it, wanted to be its master and be able to bring the dead to life. From what you'd gathered, he was from one of the manor houses outside of the city centre, and his rich, neglectful parents had left him with more money than morals and unlimited access to whatever unnatural experimentation he'd like to involve himself in.
Stumbling across you had been a gift to Tim - you were undead, a zombie. You were the perfect subject for Tim to study. You were the ultimate success case. You were the dead thing that had come back to life, the unholy relic that had crawled out of your own grave and was cursed to wander the streets of Gotham, restless and ghostly.
So Tim has studied you. You hadn't loved it, of course - you hadn't wanted to be involved in something so awful, really. But you'd been lost and alone and in need of some sort of protection, some sort of soft landing place to curl up in when the sun came up and it was harder to hide. So you'd let him. He'd poked and prodded and pulled and pushed, desperate because he knew that you would be the key to his understanding of how to bring back the dead. He worked and worked and worked until he'd finally done it.
He'd created Kon. He'd sewed together a life from beyond the grave.
"You don't…" you start, searching for the words as Kon stares at Tim with an anguished sort of scowl. "It's not that you belong to him, Kon, it's just… it's not safe out there."
"I know, I know," Kon sighs, but you continue.
"Tim will take care of you in here. He'll… he'll make sure you're ok."
"No, he won't," he snaps, and you let your shoulders slump as you glance back toward Tim because you know that he's mostly right. Ever the mad scientist, as soon as Tim had perfected Kon, he'd moved on to the next project. He really doesn't care about what's going on behind him - he only cares about what's going on ahead of him.
During the experiments, of course, Tim had kept such a watchful eye on Kon and had never let him out of his sight - and he certainly never let him out of the laboratory. But now… You and Kon are largely ignored by him these days, free to wander and stumble to your heart's content. If only Tim had given his monster a heart that would really beat, Kon thinks hopelessly as he rubs at his own chest.
"You just… you don't know what you're doing out there, Kon," you say gently, flinching a bit at the pained look that he gives you when you say it. "You need to be where someone can look out for you."
"Why not you, then?" Kon says quickly, making you straighten as your brows shoot up. "Tim, he… he won't care. He doesn't care anymore. You can… you can take me out of here. You can help me." You hum thoughtfully at his words, chewing your lip as you look up at him. He's right, sure. Tim doesn't care. He's created this monster who stands before you, living and breathing and feeling for the first time, and he's left him spiralling alone through it all.
There is a part of you, too, that feels the weight of this responsibility. You hadn't really wanted to help, sure, and it makes your stomach twist just a bit when you think about it all. But you had been involved, and now Kon is here in front of you, begging to have a chance to be alive.
"Ok, Kon, alright," you concede, patting his chest with one hand as you glance back toward Tim. "I'll… I'll help, you ok? I'll make sure you know how to live."
And so it begins, this newfound bond that the two of you have. You go back and forth for months like that, watching Kon step outside, step forward, grow and become in ways that he didn't know he ever could.
You're sitting with him at the docks one night, both of you with your shoes off and your feet hanging off of the edge so that you can splash around in the water. The weather has really begun to turn and the frost is setting in, blanketing the city in a bitter, painful cold. But you find that it doesn't bother the two of you so much, and you can let your feet sink into the freezing water without feeling the bite of it.
Kon is sitting next to you and staring at his hands, looking down at his rough, stitched-together palms like they belong to someone else, patches of different skin tones all tinged blue and green and yellow clashing together. And you suppose… you suppose that they must feel like they do belong to someone other than him.
"What are you thinking about?" you murmur gently, knocking your shoulder against his.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with them," Kon mumbles back, still staring down.
"Hm? What?"
"My hands," he says flatly. "I don't know what to do with them."
"Whatever…" you falter. "You can do whatever you want with them, Kon. They're yours."
"It's odd," he continues, and the two of you watch as his fingers twitch when he flexes the muscles, clenching and unclenching his fists over and over and watching the stitches pull. "It's a little strange to have hands that move. Aren't I supposed to do something with them? Can't you… Can't you tell me what I'm supposed to do with them?"
"I'd…" you cut yourself off to laugh a little, and it's a sad, wispy sort of thing that floats through the empty fog. "I'd have to know what to do with my own, first, I think. I'm sorry." You say it honestly, like it's a great failing to be lost the way that you are now.
"Is… is there anyone else I can ask?" You smile at Kon's words. You know he doesn't mean it to be rude; it's just that there's a sort of desperation, when you're lost like this, to find someone who isn't.
"Well, that's the catch," you sigh. "I don't think anyone really knows. Most of living is just about deciding what to do with yourself. Some people go their whole lives without ever really knowing. I… I did." You look down at your feet when you say that, watching the way that you ripple waves out across the otherwise still water. You watch as they disappear into the fog and the darkness of night and you wonder… you wonder where those ripples will end up one day.
"What's that?" Kon asks, and it makes you snap your head up. He's pointing across the bay and through a gap in the wall of fog. There's a sort of beacon over there, a shining light through the dark that shimmers and shines through the dead of night.
"That," you say heavily, "is Metropolis."
"Oh…" Kon hums in understanding. "Tim tells me… he - he used to talk to me about Metropolis. He said that it's completely different from Gotham. Do you think that's true?"
"Oh, it definitely is," you confirm, leaning back onto your palms as you stare at the light bouncing off of the water.
"What, you've been there?"
"Yea, but - before," you clarify. "When I was, uh, alive. You know."
"Oh," Kon says haltingly. "I'm sorry."
"That's alright," you shrug easily. "I've always liked Gotham better."
"Why?" He wrinkles his nose. "Why would you like a place like this?"
"Oh, I don't know," you shrug, laughing a bit. "I guess it just… it grows on you. It kind of traps you here, I guess. I can't imagine being anywhere else now." Kon hums in hesitant understanding at that, but he keeps his eyes trained on the little glimpse of Metropolis that he can see across the bay. When you look over to him, the lights are reflecting in his eyes in a shimmering, shining way that you'd never really seen before.
"I want to go to Metropolis," he says abruptly. You straighten in shock.
"What? Kon, no, you can't -"
"Why not?"
"It's not safe ," you stress. He just frowns, crossing his mismatched arms.
"You said this wasn't safe either," he points out, but you just shake your head imploringly.
"No, Kon - this is different. Gotham is… it's a safe haven for things like us. For the… the broken and the damaged and the unnatural. It's safe for the people who aren't really… people ," you trail off, wincing at the stricken way that he looks at you. "Gotham is safe," you continue gently. "Metropolis isn't. If you go there… you will die, Kon."
"You don't know that for sure," he says stubbornly. You grab onto his hand and squeeze his fingers with your own, cold against cold as you sit in the frozen night.
"No, I don't, but I can make a good guess," you insist. "You have a chance here, Kon. it's… it's a better chance than either of us have out there." Kon shakes his hand from your grip, but the hurt that you feel from the action is dulled by the way he gently cups your cheeks in his palms instead and you feel the seams where his skin is connected pulling against you.
"I want to be alive," he says desperately. "I want to - I need to live . I need to try."
"What if you die trying?" you counter, your voice wavering. Kon just presses a gentle kiss to your forehead, his scarred, stitched lips scratching against your cold skin.
"Then I die trying to live," he says quietly, a determination settling within him. "And isn't that… isn't that the best that I can do?"
"It is, I.." you say weakly, looking up at him with something that feels a little bit too much like hope . "It is, Kon."
It's just like that, then, that he's… gone. Gone into light, into life, away from the wretched curse of Gotham. But you stay, of course, wandering endlessly through the darkened streets, floating sort of aimlessly through the everlasting nights. You hear, day in and day out, all of the things that you'd told him. They rattle around your mind and thump through your ribcage as you stand on the wooden docks and stare out toward the impossible light and the ever-growing distance between the two of you.
What are you doing with yourself? What are you doing with these hands of yours?
Is it not enough to just… live?
You sit there, staring into the endless night, and all that you can do is remember what it was like to live .
I'd like to see the sunset today. I'd like to count the stars tonight. I'd like to go to the art gallery tomorrow. I'd like to drink coffee and read books and dip my feet in the harbour.
I'd like to simply live, you think, in a desperate, burning sort of way… and isn't that enough?
"You need to get a grip," Tim's voice rings out through the laboratory as he scowls at the way you sit by the window, staring out into the night. "I've just about had enough with all of this… this moping . Sulking really doesn't look good on you, you know."
"Do something about it, then," you snap, and Tim stares at you like you've said the unthinkable.
" Me? " he splutters. "You were the one who gave him all of those ideas about living and being and going to Metropolis of all places. You deal with it."
"Do something for me, then," you respond quickly, unbothered by Tim's groaning and grumbling. "Give me some money."
"I… beg your pardon?"
"Give me one of your cards. I'll - I'll go away. I just want to live, Tim. I just want to be able to live."
That's really all that it takes, thankfully. The whole ordeal really has been bothering Tim and it feels like such a small imposition to toss you one of his credit cards and gesture to the door. That's all that you need to wander out, heading to walk aimlessly through the dingy streets of Gotham.
You're free now in a way that you never were before, you realize as you climb up onto the roof of Tim's building, his credit card held between your teeth so that you can use your hands on the rickety ladder.
Not that anything would really happen if you fell, you suppose.
But you're free, and it sort of hits you when you get to the top and can really stare out toward the water of the bay. You can see the lights of Metropolis still, although very faintly through the hazy, foggy night. You sit down cross-legged and prop your chin up in one of your palms as you look out and think of Kon.
You hope that he's safe , wherever he is out there. But more than that, you suppose… you hope that he's happy. Above all else, really, you just sort of hope and pray that he's living and doing whatever it is that he needs to to cling to that life.
But then a short, searing sort of pain zips down your arm and you wince, rolling your shoulder as you try to massage the feeling back into your hand. You're sure you should ask Tim about it, but you haven't really been able to care much about these pains that you've started having. Random aches and abrupt bouts of agony. Numbness and tingling spreading throughout you every now and then.
It's not constant. It's not unmanageable. But it's just enough to make you aware of your body. You're sure it's fine, though. You're sure it's nothing. You're sure it's just a part of being dead , of being something that shouldn't exist and wasn't supposed to come back to life in the first place. You're sure it's nothing.
You're sitting in the botanical gardens when autumn feels like it's really rolling through. Instead of the springy greens and yellows of the gardens, everything is bathed in reds and golds and oranges. Everything around you is bright and tingling with life … and you sit in the middle of it all, propped up on a bench like something that just shouldn't be there.
But Kon sitting down next to you is perhaps even more jarring.
"Kon!" you all but shout, staring at him with wide eyes. "You're - you -"
"Hi," he responds gently, flashing you a nervous little smile. "How have you been?"
"How have you been?" you splutter. "Why… why are you here? Why are you back? Are you ok? Kon, did something happen -"
"I missed you," he blurts out, and it's enough to make your mouth snap shut. "I… I missed you and I wanted to come home."
"Kon," you say, your voice cracking as your bottom lip trembles. "I don't… I don't want you to give up on your life for me."
"Well, that's just it," he laughs, and it's a watery sort of thing as he blinks dampness from his eyes. "I… want this to be my life, I think. I miss you and I - I miss Gotham ."
"…What?" you say, shock colouring your voice as the cool breeze of dusk blows through.
"I know, I know," Kon says, holding his hands up in defence. "It's awful here. There's the… I don't know, the smells and the fog and that cursed, horrible harbour and the - the stench of death that you can just never get away from. But all of that… well, I don't know, it grows on you, I guess." He looks at you, then, in an imploring sort of way as he reaches to grab onto your hand and tangle your fingers with his. "You just can't help but fall in love with it. You can't help but fall in love with this place."
"This… place?" you say slowly, a sly sort of smile flashing across your cold lips. "Just Gotham, huh?"
"Gotham," he admits, shifting in his seat as heat rises to his cheeks. "And… and the people. Some of them. One, um, one of them more than the rest." You smile, then, and Kon thinks that you're alive in a way that he thought he could never be - in a way that none of the vibrant, curling florals of the garden could dream to be. Kon thinks that it's the most human thing of all - the smile on your face and the love in your eyes.
Maybe that's what you taught him, he thinks as he skims a knuckle across your cheek and lets his forehead rest against yours. Maybe you really do have to do it together. Maybe to live is to be with those that you love.
As Kon sits in that garden with you, as he sits in the midst of life beginning, he just wants to be with the people he loves. When you smooth a hand over his cheek and press a kiss to his cold, stitched lips, he can feel it - the way that you intertwine together, two dead hearts beating for the first time again.
But then you pull away with a flinch , and your nose scrunches as you clench your hand into a fist and feel that static-like, burning pain shoots through you.
"Hey," Kon says gently, gripping your face in his palms as his brows furrow, his mouth downturned and making the stitches stretch across his cheeks. "What's wrong?"
"It's… it's nothing," you shrug as the pain passes and you shake out your arm a bit. "It's nothing. My - I don't know, it just… things don't feel right sometimes is all. But it's - I mean… we're dead, right? It's never going to feel right." You try to laugh it off, just a bit, but Kon shakes his head and tightens his grip on your face.
"No," he says sternly, and there's a hint of panic growing in his voice. "No, that's - this is new, right? This didn't always happen? I need to - we need to fix this. We can't… I need to make sure you're ok."
"I am ok, Kon," you say soothingly, but he's already standing, tugging you ever so gently to your feet and ushering you out of the gardens.
"You will be," he replies shortly. "I promise - I'll - we'll make sure of it."
"You're dying," Tim says it shortly, simply , like it's a fact that you all should've clued into by now.
"I beg your fucking pardon?" Kon snaps back. You just stare, your hands clenched into fists at your sides. Tim pulls away from the microscope he'd been peering into with a heavy sigh, looking at the two of you like he's ashamed that you haven't realized the truth by now.
"You're dying," he repeats in a clipped tone. "You didn't think you'd live forever, did you? Look, I really don't have time for this -"
"You have to have time for this -" Kon snaps.
"Live forever? Tim, I'm already dead - are you alright?" you say at the same time, you and Kon stumbling over each other's words. Tim looks at you both rather imploringly.
"Oh yes," he says dryly. "The failed experiment and the thing that I can't even claim to have made. Surely I should make more time for you ." That makes you both freeze - makes you look at Kon with wide, uncertain eyes.
"Failed?" he says, and his voice is small , like a timid child in trouble with their parents for the first time.
"Failed," Tim repeats. "You're… dying . You have a lifespan, Kon, the same as any living thing. I succeeded in bringing you into this life, yes, but only for a while - a long while, don't you two look at me like that."
"Ah," you say, and a bit of understanding dawns on you. "I remember now."
"Remember what ," Kon all but wails as you jump to sit up on the table next to Tim's microscope, swinging your legs and letting your feet hit his chair.
" Eternal life - that's what you were always after, wasn't it, Timmy?" Tim just scowls at you, so you continue, turning to Kon now. "It's not enough to live once. Timmy here wants to find a way to live forever . And since… well, you have a shelf life, it seems - that means he hasn't quite figured it out yet."
"The grim reaper will come back to Gotham one day and I have to be prepared," Tim begins, his voice cracking with hysteria, and you glance at him out of the corner of your eye with a concerned quirk of your brow. "I'm just saying," he continues as he stares at the wall ahead of him, swaying back and forth in his chair. "If John Constantine can find a way to keep it at bay, then I must be able to beat this, I have to -"
You jump off of the table and reach for Kon, grabbing onto his arm and tugging him away as Tim continues to ramble. Kon just squeezes your hand comfortingly, though, and then reaches to shake Tim's shoulder and snap him out of whatever spiral he's in.
"Tim - Tim ," he says earnestly. "What about…" He glances back at you, then, and there's a panic swimming in his mismatched, foggy eyes that makes your heart lurch.
"Oh, well, you're dying, too," Tim says to you, waving his hand in a dismissive manner. "What do you think happens when someone crawls up, out of their own grave? Did you really think you could cheat death forever?"
"Do you think that?" you snap back, but there's a sort of doom crawling up your throat now that hadn't been there before. But you know what Tim's talking about. You know what he means.
Because you remember… you remember being alive and being hungry . More time, more life, more experiences, more, more more .
And you remember… you remember carrying that hunger into death. You remember clawing your way out of your own grave, a desperation taking hold and urging you to scramble for more , pushing you to bring yourself back to the world for one more chance to live .
But then Kon lunges for Tim - he grabs him by the collar of his shirt and shakes him, his patchwork knuckles paling under the strain of his grip.
"Fix it," he spits desperately. "Find a way - you have to fix it. Tim, I can't - they can't die, you need -"
"Kon!" you shout, pulling him away from Tim and spinning him around to face you as Tim huffs and straightens himself. "Kon, it's… it's ok."
"It's not ," he says desperately. "I just - I just got you, I - I just got you back and you're telling me that I'm - I'm losing you now. I can't - I can't do that, I can't, I -"
"Kon," you say gently, holding his hands in yours and squeezing life into them. "You're not losing me today. Or tomorrow probably, or the day after that. I'm sure it'll be a long time before this really does either of us in." You glance over your shoulder as you say it, looking at Tim for guidance - for confirmation. He nods in agreement and there's something clouding his eyes that seems suspiciously like care . There's something about his quiet stance as he watches on that feels a bit too much like genuine empathy.
Kon listens to you, squeezing his eyes shut and letting out one long, shaky breath before he sobs , burying his face into your shoulder to muffle the sound. You let him, of course. You tangle a hand into his curling, brittle hair and shush him gently, swaying the both of you back and forth while he wails and cries and trembles.
"It's the most human thing I can teach you, my love," you whisper into his ear, listening to him sniffle and whine. "It's the most human thing there is - to be temporary. To love and lose and never get it back. It's the fact that you only have it so long… that's what makes it so good to hold onto."
"I don't want you to go," Kon responds slowly, his voice small against your neck, his skin cold as it presses against you and the stitches in his cheeks leave red indents in your skin.
"I'm not going anywhere tonight," you soothe him, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head as he hunches over further to curl into your embrace. "I'm not going anywhere yet… and neither are you."
"Perhaps…" Tim's voice cuts through the sniffling and the crying, but he sounds gentle , hesitant and slow in a way that he doesn't normally. "Perhaps… you've found what you were always so hungry for."
"Hm?" you hum, distractedly.
"I'm saying… maybe what you were looking for… the two of you have found." Tim gestures to the two of you, then, and you freeze a bit as you begin to understand what he's saying.
"Yea…" you say slowly, hooking your chin over Kon's shoulder as you hold him closer and feel the way that his hands grip onto the back of your shirt. "Yea, I… maybe we have."
"It won't be forever," he warns. You sigh.
"I know, Timmy."
"You're… rotting , the both of you. You're decomposing, you're - well… you'll die a second time. But, uh, maybe that just means…"
"I know , Timmy," you say again, cupping Kon's face in your palms and coaxing him to look up at you. "It's a second chance at life. I know." Kon, at your words, blinks a bit sluggishly, his face paled into mismatched blues and greens and yellows, his body out of place even compared to itself.
"Life?" he says quickly, cupping his hands over yours where they still rest on his cheeks.
"Life," you confirm, leaning forward to press your cold lips to his.
"Is this your first time outside?" you quip as Tim sits down on the bench next to you. The botanical gardens are receding further as the weather continues to get colder, the leaves craving and falling as the flowers wilt and wither. But you sit, just the same, just as dead as ever, watching Kon idly throw seeds toward the birds in the pond nearby.
"…No," Tim says stiffly, and you give him a suspicious look.
"Seriously," you say dryly. "How long has it been since you stepped out of that lab?"
"Well, I'm out now, aren't I?" he huffs, and you can't help but giggle a bit at the angry way that he sulks.
"Well," you say easily. "Welcome to the land of the living… sort of."
"No sort of," Tim responds kindly, eyeing the way that you sit with your leg propped up on the wooden bench. "You two are… well, you certainly act alive, that's for sure."
"Aw, thanks."
"Maybe… maybe there's, oh - I don't know. Maybe there's, uh, something… something someone could learn from that." Tim looks away as he speaks, staring out toward the city beyond the gardens, the noise muffled beyond the fences and the climbing ivy.
"Timmy… what?" you ask, shocked.
"Maybe, I - it's… maybe I missed a thing or two. Just once or twice. Maybe life's a little less worth it when you're not… living it. I don't know… something like that."
"Woooow," you drawl. "So, what, you're giving up on it?"
"Don't be stupid," Tim snaps. "Of course, I'm not giving up on it. I just… maybe I'll - I don't… maybe I'll just take a break every now and then. I don't know." You grin as he speaks, but just as you're opening your mouth to make a quip, he shoves an envelope at you.
"What's this?" you ask, quirking a brow as you rip it open and shake out two identical keys.
"I don't use the apartment over the laboratory anymore," Tim says stiffly, watching Kon swish his hand in the cool water of the pond as he crouches in the grass. "It's… it's just empty. Someone might as well use it."
"You're… giving us an apartment?" you ask quietly, staring at the keys in your hand.
"It's nothing," Tim snaps. "Don't mention it." But you're staring at the keys like they weigh the world to you. You're staring at them like you're holding home in the palm of your hand.
"What's going on?" Kon's voice makes you snap your head up and you see him jogging up to the two of you, a frown tugging at his lips as he glances at Tim's sour expression.
You toss one of the keys to Kon in response, watching as he catches it against his chest and cups it in his hands like something precious.
"What do you say," you offer quietly, smiling up at Kon as the sun crests over the gloomy city behind him. "Ready to go home?"
With that, a new routine begins to settle over the three of you, and you and Kon begin to build a life together - a home together in the city that haunts, the city that curses. Tim stays in his lab, puttering away endlessly downstairs and muttering to himself about his experiments , but he…. comes out every now and then. He leaves every once in a while to breathe fresh air and sit on the rooftop with the two of you.
You and Kon are lying on that rooftop one night, pointing up at the stars that are just barely peeking through the shroud of fog that blankets the city, when the building rattles from the force of an explosion in the lab.
"Do you think someone should check on him?" Kon murmurs, half asleep as you curl up against him and rest your head on his hollow chest.
"Nah," you mutter sleepily. "That wasn't a very loud one. I'm sure he's fine." Kon hums in agreement and traces his fingers up and down your arm, the ill-assorted pads of his fingers pressing against your skin gently.
"How are you feeling?" he asks gently, and you shrug against him.
"Better," you admit. "Timmy… well, it's a surprise, I suppose."
"Yea," Kon huffs. "I didn't think he had it in him." He's right - you were both shocked at Tim's quiet, hesitant offer to help the two of you. He can't stop death completely, sure, but it brings a great relief to have someone to turn to when life starts to wear you down.
These days, any time either one of you has one of those strange, undead pains or aches shooting through you, Tim is the first person that you turn to. And it's odd every time, you think, to watch Kon turn to Tim for help… and to watch Tim give it willingly. It's odd to see people grow and change and become .
"What are you thinking about?" Kon whispers as you yawn and press yourself further into him, one of your hands slipping under his shirt to smooth over his stitches and scars.
"Do you feel it now?" you ask in response.
"Hm?"
"Do you feel like you're becoming something?" you clarify. "Do you feel like you're… like you're living? Do you feel alive now?" Kon pretends to think about it, making a big show of humming and pursing his lips as he rolls over your words in his mind. You just roll your eyes in response, though, and curl further into him to close your eyes while you rest against his chest.
"You know," he says slowly, though, the mirth leaving him for a moment as he grows sombre. You lift your head from his chest to prop yourself on your hands and look down at him, cocking your head to the side as you look at his ill-matched eyes.
"What?"
"I think," Kon begins again slowly, smoothing a hand over your back as he looks up at you, his eyes glinting with something akin to life as he smiles. "I think that right here… yea. Yea, I'm already everything that I needed to become."
"Wow," you quip, but you clear your throat and let yourself collapse onto him to hide your face in his chest again. "That's… that's high praise."
"It's deserved," he responds easily, but the way that he wraps his arms around you and holds you to him tightly conveys the earnest need that his words leave out. "…Thank you."
"No way," you shake your head, your face rubbing against the stitches patches of his chest. "Thank you ."
Because you do, you think, have to thank him for bringing you back from the dead in a way that you never could manage by yourself. You do, because you shouldn't be here. You're not supposed to be here, either of you, but you are. Whether you were supposed to or not, whether you wanted to or not, you have come to life and now you must live.