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Cassie found him on the roof of the Tower, which normally meant nothing— Kon liked the roof, liked to sit with his boots hooked over the ledge and dare gravity to try something— except he wasn't sitting. He was standing with his back to the door, arms crossed so tight his knuckles had gone white, and he didn't turn around when she landed.
"You missed the debrief," she said, aiming for casual and probably missing it by a mile. "Robin took your seat. It was weird. He kept looking at the door like you'd walk through it and yell at him for stealing your chair."
Nothing. Not even the usual half-turn, the smirk, the tell him I said hi.
"Kon."
"I'm fine." Fast, flat, aimed at the horizon instead of her.
She'd heard him lie better than that. That was what got her moving— not the words, but the way he said them, like he'd forgotten how the lie was supposed to sound coming out of his own mouth.
She crossed the roof, and he went rigid like he could feel her closing the distance, like her footsteps were something to brace against. When she got close enough to put a hand on his shoulder, he shrugged it off hard enough that she had to reset her footing.
"Don't." The word cracked straight down the middle.
"Okay." She didn't step back. "Not touching. Just standing here."
"Cassie—"
"Standing here," she said again, "being annoying. It's a whole thing I do."
He laughed, or something that used to be a laugh before it forgot how the rest of it went, and then his shoulders dropped and his face came apart, and she watched years of him holding a very deliberate kind of still just stop holding.
She didn't ask what happened. She'd learned that much a long time ago; asking made him perform an answer instead of finding one, made him reach for a joke to hand her instead of whatever was underneath it. So she stood there while he tried to get his breathing back under control, and when he put a hand flat on her sternum and shoved, she let her heels skid two inches across the gravel and didn't grab his wrist.
"Go away." He shoved her again, harder. "I don't want—I can't have you—"
"You don't want an audience. Got it." She planted her feet instead of giving him the ground. "Not leaving, though."
"Cassie, I swear—" His fist caught her shoulder this time, no pulled punch in it, the kind of hit that would've put anyone else flat on their back. She rocked half a step and stayed up and didn't so much as touch the spot.
"That the best you've got?"
Not a dare— she needed him to hear that it wasn't a dare. It came out even, no teeth behind it, the way you'd say it to someone you'd already decided you weren't going to flinch away from no matter what they threw. He hit her again, shoulder, then the flat of her stomach, none of it aimed the way he could've aimed it if he'd actually meant to do damage, and she took each one the same as the first— feet braced, eyes on his face instead of his hands, because his face was where the truth was going to show up eventually.
By the third hit his aim had gone soft, more shove than punch, like he was trying to buy distance instead of land a blow. By the fourth he wasn't hitting her at all, just gripping two fistfuls of her jacket like they were the only thing keeping him upright, forehead dropping until it hit her collarbone. The sound that came out of him then didn't have anything left in it worth performing.
She got an arm around him because by that point it wasn't really an offer anymore, just a fact. He didn't shove her off.
"I can't—" He stopped. Tried again. Didn't finish that time either.
"You don't have to." She said it into the top of his head, since that was the angle she had. "You can just do the thing you're doing. I'll stand here."
So they stood there. He shook, and she held on, and somewhere below them the Tower kept running its ordinary Tuesday— Bart yelling about something two floors down, a door slamming, the low hum of the cooling system— none of it close enough to reach them.
Eventually his breathing settled into something that wasn't steady but wasn't falling apart either, and he pulled back far enough to drag the heel of his hand across his face, jaw tight with the humiliation of a guy who'd rather have fallen apart in front of anyone else— a stranger, a supervillain, Batman— than her.
"I'm gonna need you to not tell anyone about this," he said, voice wrecked, eyes red, playing it like he hadn't just spent five minutes trying to knock her off a roof.
"Tell them what? That you missed a debrief?" She bumped her shoulder into his— the one he'd hit— like it hadn't left a mark, because it hadn't. "As far as I'm concerned, this never happened. I was never here. Robin's just going to have to live with the mystery of your chair."
He huffed something that was almost a real laugh this time, and swiped his face again, and didn't move away from where her arm was still slung around him.
"Why do you let me do that," he said, not really a question, "hit you like that."
She thought about lying, decided against it. "Because you needed somewhere to put it that wasn't going to break." She shrugged, careful not to dislodge him. "And I don't break. So."
He didn't say anything to that. He didn't have to. He just stood there a while longer, leaning into her instead of away from her, and let her hold it.