Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim stared at the big “99” blinking up at him on the screen. “Just one more try” he whispered, going back to typing the sequencing. He was so close, he could feel it. He could bring his best friend, his everything, his Kon, back.

“What went wrong?” Tim muttered to himself, shifting through all of the data. “What do I need to do to bring you back?” Tim changed a variable in the sequencing but before he could finish, footsteps sounded throughout the lab.

“Tim? Tim, are you down here?”

Cassie. Shit.

She rounded the corner and the rest of the evening passed in a blur of insults and desperate begging for her to understand. When Tim came back to himself, Cassie was gone and he was sitting against one of the failed test tubes with broken glass littered around him like a shrine.

“Cassie’s right, Kon,” Tim said to the open air, “Cloning you wouldn’t bring you back…” His mind began racing and the brain that discovered the identities of Gotham’s vigilantes, the brain that cracked riddle after riddle, case after case, began spinning. “But bringing you back, that could work.”

Leaping to his feet, Tim let out a chuckle and stumbled to the beat-up computer that powered the cloning simulations. He opened a new folder and labelled it Project Orpheus.

He’s walked among Gods, been to other planets, and seen the impossible become possible. Who was to say what was true or false within the historical record. If Diana’s father was a literal Greek God, then there must be kernels of truth in the rest of the mythology… Stuck on that train of thought, Tim did what he did best: research and plot.

Tim was unsure how long he was in the lab. Minutes turned to hours. Hours to days. Days to weeks. Time was blurred by the emptiness in his stomach and tiredness in his eyes. Everything narrowed down to before, during, and after. Before the file. During the search. And after he found a lead.
Eventually, Tim found himself sitting on his ratty rolling chair wearing sweat-stained sweatpants and a loose black t-shirt that used to be Kon’s. He was staring up at his screen with an address pinpointed on a map. “London it is.”

Chapter Text

London was wet and Tim wanted to leave. He missed his lab. He missed the silence of the Batcave and the darkness of Gotham. He couldn't waste time wallowing though, too much time had passed and Tim could not rule out that Cassie had let his cloning attempts slip to the Justice League. Tim couldn’t let them stop him, not when he was so close to getting Kon back.

The first time he was in London he was young, only around four or five. His parents had decided it was time to take him on an architectural dig. They were going stir crazy in Gotham, and the last time they tried to leave, Tim (who had always been too smart for his age) had called in a bomb threat and got their plane cancelled. Nothing led back to him and the news focused on the quick response of GCPD more than anything else, but Tim had a feeling his mother knew. Janet Drake was all-knowing that way. After that, Janet declared that she wanted Tim to understand why it was so important that they left to go on digs, and she had a nanny pack him a suitcase that night. The next day, the entire Drake family was on a private plane to London.
His parents took him to the dig site in the middle of nowhere England. At the site, Janet played the doting mother for about an hour, enough time for the assistants to get photos for the company's social media, before she put him in a chair in a tent and told him to stay put. Tim, naturally, left as soon as he was sure his mother was out of sight.

He had ended up wandering away from the dig site and into the surrounding woods. He swore there were blue-greenish lights flickering behind trees and bushes, but every time his little feet took him closer, the light blinked out and another one appeared further away.

Tim loved science. He had been reading books about dinosaurs and the scientific method in kindergarten. During the last few months he had been carrying around a spiralled Batman themed notebook where he wrote his hypotheses and discoveries about the world. His nanny had not packed it for this trip and Tim missed it dearly. He wanted to write about the little lights.

Eventually the sun had set and the lights lead Tim to a clearing in the woods, where in the centre was a circle of mushrooms that seemed to be pulsating an orange light. Before Tim could toddle his way into the circle a blond man in a long trench coat that smelled like smoke lifted Tim off the ground and started to run. “Fucking will-o'-the-wisps. Faerie pieces of shit.”

The man continued to swear as he legged it with Tim perched on his hip. Once the man decided they had gone far enough away, the man looked over at Tim who had put his head on the man’s shoulder. “Where did ya come from lil one?”

Tim pointed in the direction of his parents dig, “There. Mom and dad are arch-eolo-gists and they brought me with them today. I left, following the pretty lights.”

The man looked at the direction Tim pointed and started walking in that direction. “And they didn’t notice you toddle your way into the forest?” After Tim shook his head, the man groaned, “Oh bugger, I better not be called a kidnapper after all this. God, I need a drink.”

The two broke out of the forest and ended up at the empty dig sight, not a single worker or truck in sight. The man swore again and jostled Tim when he reached into his pocket and produced a cigarette. He quickly lit it and took a drag. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Timothy Jackson Drake, pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Tim announced like he had been taught to for the galas back in Gotham.

“Bloody hell.” The man took another drag of the cigarette, exhauling the smoke away from Tim’s face. “I’m John Constantine, shortstack. Seems you’re stuck with me until we can get you back to your parents.”

Tim narrowed his eyes at his saviour, “Why not the police?”

“I’m not friends with them right now. Better we drop you off without me getting on their radars again.” He took another puff and then turned to Tim, “You know where your folks are staying?”

“London!”

“Well then…” The man suddenly mumbled something in a language Tim could not understand and a swirling sparking mess opened up in the field, the other side a cluttered room with oak floorboards and towers of stacked books. John walked through it and the portal snapped shut behind them. The room smelled like sage and lit candles had light reflecting off various metal and crystal objects, entrancing Tim. “Welcome to London, kid. Let’s get you something to eat before we find your parents.”

Shaking himself out of the memory, Tim knocked on a familiar door. After a few minutes of silence, Tim knocked harder and screamed, “John, it’s me!”

A minute later a swear was heard through the door and it opened to reveal John Constantine lighting a cigarette. He eyed the now full-grown civilian-clothed Timothy Drake and let out a puff of smoke, “Hey, kid. It’s been a while. The Bat is looking for you, what mess have you gotten yourself into?”

Tim let himself into the house, closing the door behind him. The familiar oak floors and towering stacks of books greeted him. “I need to get to the Underworld.”

Constantine took another look at him before turning around and walking deeper into the house. “No.”

“John-”

“No, kid. You don’t know what you’re asking.” Constantine led them into the kitchen and poured himself two fingers of whisky before pausing and grabbing another glass to do the same for Tim.

“Maybe I don’t, but that’s why you’re here. I have a reason, John. And I came to you first like you always told me to do. I’m going to get to the Underworld with or without your help.” Tim grabbed the glass offered to him and took a burning gulp.

Constantine downed the entire thing in one movement. “Why you searching?”

Tim pulled himself to sit on the counter of the cluttered kitchen. He pushed aside jars of wolfsbane and fermenting eyeballs and swung his legs lightly. “My friend is dead. I don’t want him to be. So…”

Constantine poured himself another few fingers. “This the friend you kept dreaming about snogging during puberty?”

A blush raced across Tims face and he narrowed his eyes at Constantine, “I have no clue what you’re talking about. What do you even know about my dreams anyways?”

Downing that second glass, Constantine winced clearly lost in thought. “Too much. Bloody succubus bitch.”

Handing Constantine his half-full glass, Tim jumped down from the counter, “Are you helping me, old man, or am I getting there myself?”

A deep sigh had Constantine leading them into a different room. This one Tim knew intimately, the one where Constantine did most of his spell-work. The walls were bookshelves and the floors were covered in melting wax and protective sigils written in ash or blood.

“There’s no compass or map. Getting there is next to impossible unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and have exactly what you need to access the gate.” Constantine walked up to a shelf in the far right of the room. He grabbed a giant brown leather-bound tome and slammed it onto a clearly thrifted table just below the shelf. A cloud of dust had him coughing as he flipped through the pages. Tim walked over and looked at the book, ancient Greek words alongside moving images of mythical beasts danced on the pages. Eventually Constantine stopped at a page near the back third of the tome. “Get a pen and that notebook of yours, kid. Here’s how you get to the underworld…”