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Huntokar.
Not a name Tim’s ever known. Not one he’s ever heard or heard of before.
But he knows the name now. He knows he does.
He just doesn’t know how. Or why.
He looks out of at the skyline below him and thinks.
Huntokar. The one who tried to save. Who tried her best. The one who failed.
But intentions never matter in the end.
It isn’t Tim’s thought. It pushes at his thoughts like a memory. Like the words he barely remembers his mother saying.
But the thought stays. The knowledge stays with it.
The sky burns red and Tim knows it isn’t right. There’s something very wrong here. World-endingly wrong.
There are black holes opening everywhere, dropping people and taking people and sometimes the people taken aren’t the same as the people left behind.
Tim doesn’t know what’s happening but he knows what to do.
He turns his head upward. To the sky. And he looks.
And it’s like the smog of Gotham cooperates with him. Like it wants him to see the stars one last time. The clouds open and the smog goes away.
And there are arrows in the sky. Circles and shapes and patterns.
Nothing anyone could ever make any sense of.
But the name stays the same.
Huntokar.
The destroyer.
Tim swallows down bile he doesn’t remember gathering as he pulls his eyes away from the blackness and void over his head.
Down below him, are people. Running and screaming. Some trampling others. Others stopping to help.
In the midst of it is his family.
Robin.
Batman.
Spoiler.
Signal
He can hear Oracle barking orders in his ear. Can just barely see Orphan moving in the shadows like she belongs there. Gunshots in the distance where Jason is likely holding his own.
“I tried”
Tim blinks and there’s a rip in reality before him. The edges black and wispy like the veil of a widow. Tim can’t help but look through it. Can’t help but see blue eyes looking back at him, striking as they are.
He knows those eyes.
He looks at them in the mirror every day.
“Well, listeners, I don’t know how to tell anyone this but I think I might have to fight another duplicate” the Tim beyond the veil says. And he’s staring back at Tim just as Tim is at him.
Listeners?
But Tim doesn’t have time to think any further before memories invade his mind.
A mother. He doesn’t remember his father exactly. A sister. A brother-in-law. A niece.
Some part of him whispers “No. Not right” but more memories flood before he can think of it any further.
A radio station.
“You’re….” Tim, he’s Tim. Tim Drake. “Cecil?”
Cecil stares at Tim through the tear in reality, seemingly unbothered by the way Tim is curled forwards, clutching his head.
“Huh. So maybe not a duplicate. Something like Cal, then. But…different”
“You’re me” Tim blurts out and almost wishes he hadn’t.
He hasn’t had the greatest luck with alternates in the past.
But Cecil perks up like someone had told him there was zesty on the line.
“Oh. You’re me, then?” Cecil looks him over for a moment. Frowns “You’re a bit young to be me”
Tim’s head starts to clear. As if the distinction between Cecil and Tim’s ages had stopped the universe from trying to merge them together like play-doh shapes.
Tim gets the opportunity to distance themselves further as he looks at Cecil’s outfit and almost winces.
Meanwhile, Cecil is looking over his suit with distain.
“A vigilante. Because a stint as Violet’s puppet wasn’t enough?” he mutters just loud enough for Tim to make out.
Tim scoffs and hears Cecil echo it before everything falls silent.
It’s….just a little awkward.
Usually, the other Tim would be trying to kill him by now.
But Cecil’s just staring at him, eyes narrowed at the fluttering at the edges of Tim’s periphery.
“So” Tim interrupts. Because as much Robin as he is, this is unnerving. There’s something about Cecil’s stare that makes him think of a crescent moon on a silent night and Tim isn’t sure he likes it.
“The end of the world, huh?”
Cecil looks over his shoulder through a window that seems just blurry enough Tim can’t make it out. There’s red behind the window, like bloody fog.
Cecil doesn’t seem all that bothered.
“Not the first time”
“Same”
Cecil seems to be just as uncomfortable as Timis now, shifting before he clears his throat. Tim can see him swallow.
“Tea?”
Tim takes an instinctive step forward, drilled into his head by years of living with Alfred. Ready to take the peace offering.
There’s a tug behind his check, like someone wrapped a string around his spine and through his chest and is trying to pull him forward.
A moment later, and the sounds behind him vanish. The breeze from the skyscraper is gone. There’s no more Babs in his ear.
Tim doesn’t need Cecil to say anything to know that there’s no more veil behind him.
“Hey, Carlos?” Cecil says into the mic in front of him, eyes never leaving Tim’s “How do you feel about kids?”
“I am not a child” Tim refutes. There’s silence in his head. He can’t believe what just happened. But there’s the instinctive need to refute that.
He’s 17, dammit.
“How old are you then?”
Tim clamps his teeth shut before he can answer.
Cecil smiles. Sympathy shines in his eyes.
“Don’t worry, I don’t remember either”
“I’m 17”
Tim blurts it out before he can think through the words. Before he can hear Bruce and Babs lecturing him about secret identities.
Not that it matters, Tim thinks, when he’s talking to a version of himself.
“A baby!” Cecil exclaims and Tim can feel his left eye twitch.
A phone rings a second later and the sound is so distorted that Tim almost curls into himself. Cecil answers the phone like there’s nothing wrong with the sound at all.
“Carlos!”
“Cecil, honey…It’s a bit bloody for kids isn’t it?”
Cecil’s smile stretches far enough that Tim has to wonder about Joker gas before he looks directly at Tim.
Blue to Blue.
Tim. To. Tim.
“Oh, I think he’ll get used to it”