(no subject)

[not_the_s]

Kon hadn't been sleeping very well lately. The thing was that he didn't understand why Tim was so upset. It was just a game. There had always been games or shows or comics and maybe if it had been one of the ones that was real, he would have understood. If it had been their exact life, he would have understood why Tim had freaked out so much. But it was just some stupid kid's game and all he'd been doing was screwing around.

It wasn't until he talked to that girl that he realized that there might be more to it than that. Or at least it might have seemed like more to it. The idea that he secretly wanted to kill Tim over and over...no. He might have wanted to do it at least virtually to Dick a few times, but not Tim. Never Tim.

He hadn't been sleeping well and he was exhausted, so he tried to wake up by heading to the falls and ducking into the water. He was under the heavy spray at the bottom when he saw a flash of familiar dark hair.

"Tim." God, maybe if they could talk. He tried not to wince at the idea of trying to get Tim to talk. He tried to push out of the water and head to Tim before he left. Maybe he would stay. Maybe.

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[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

He hates himself a little, for the spike of adrenaline his name elicits, for the fact that his first instinct is to leave because he never quite knows the difference between an ambush and a situation--a conversation he wasn't ready to have.

He should be ready, even if he didn't expect to have it out here, with his hair still dripping down the back of his neck and his skin freshly chilled by a swim. It's not like he hasn't been waiting for it.

Instead of leaving, he calmly retrieves the towel he'd brought out from a branch and starts drying his hair. "Kon," he answers diplomatically, pulling the now-damp towel around his shoulders like a pale imitation of his cape.

[not_the_s]

Kon winces again at the not-quite flat tone to Tim's voice. It shouldn't be like this. It should be different...better...and he hates that it's not. He hates himself because it's all his fault. He's just not sure exactly why.

He gets out of the water and doesn't bother with a towel. He can air dry. Instead, he watches Tim for a moment, half-afraid he'll leave after the next few words. Finally, he opens his mouth and comes out with an, "I'm sorry." He'd only been half sure that he was going to be able to say it.

[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

Tim sighs and touches his face, pushes at it to hide the beginning of a smile that is all--exasperation, weariness. He's not weary, not too weary to work on this. "Do you know what you're apologizing for," he asks, because he's sorry too, but he'd talked to Jason and Cassie, and he can't just let this go.

[not_the_s]

Kon takes a deep breath. "I...wasn't thinking? I'm used to it. Hell, not a week before Bart was playing some kind of Superman game and that should have clued me in. And not just because it's this stupid island. I'm just used to having Superman video games or Superboy comics."

He'd had, after all, a publicist in the form of Rex Leech.

"I should have thought it would bother you and I didn't and that's why I'm sorry, but..." He shakes his head. "But I don't know why you left. I just wanted to talk. To find out why you were so upset."

He rubs his shoulder without thinking.

[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

It's a start, and if that were all Kon had done to make Tim run off, it would be enough. "It wasn't just the game, Kon." Those things exist, and considering the reality--that game is probably the tamest incarnation of Batman and Robin that anyone's ever profited from.

Robin should be a toy to someone, should be some kid's hero. Eddie had owned his share of figurines, and that was almost okay, because Tim hadn't let Eddie know him very well either. It had been on him that Eddie wasn't what Kon--was, is. A friend. "If anyone else had been playing it, if anyone else had been...playing it that way. And I tried to explain it to you, but it wasn't going the way I--" wanted it to? Expected it to?

The touch to Kon's shoulder narrows his gaze, drags him away from his thought. "I might have stayed if you'd just talked, instead of grabbing me. I know you don't have your strength anymore, but you can't do that to people. You have to let go when people ask you to, even if you just want to talk."

[not_the_s]

"I was blowing off steam at the game," Kon said in his defense. "I was trying to beat this one level and...and it wasn't working." It sounded like a cheap defense and that was part of the problem. It sounded like he just hadn't thought about it and he hadn't. It had never occurred to him that it would be a problem and he doesn't know if he can even fix that.

"Would you have? Or would you have run away like you always do? Come on, Tim. When was the last time that we had a serious conversation?"

He paled a little when he remembered the last time Tim had tried. Kon had found out about the engagement. He remembered joking it off at the time, but later...? No, no getting into that for fear he would get Wallace to matchmake and wouldn't that be weird, having Wallace try to hook Kon up with someone other than himself.

[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

Tim makes a face, all stubborn hurt and frustration, but he looks away, takes a moment to dry off a little more in spite of the humid air and cool his expression. It's not a fair assumption, but it wouldn't be fair for him to assume Kon thinks about it that way. He doesn't know enough about this Kon, and he can't say that isn't half the problem.

Still. "Kon, I don't know when we last had a serious conversation. I don't know what the last thing you heard from me was before that person disappeared, because I'm not that person. Just like you're not the person I saw in Paris before I got here."

He folds the towel in his arms and holds it loosely in front of him. "And we can talk now, we can figure this out, but I need you to promise you won't do that again. I'm not going to stay and talk to you if you're not going to let me decide to do it."

[not_the_s]

"I know," Kon finally said softly. "It's more obvious that you're different now than it was when I saw a Bart who looked like he was in his twenties. I just don't know what to do about it." He looked away. Tim had always been so unattainable and it was a point of pride that Kon had gotten to know him and be one of his best friends. Things on the island got weird, especially when Kon had found out about Tim and Bart. It had made him...he wasn't sure what it had made him do except try to seduce first Morgan and then Bart on Tim's bed.

Then he was gone and so was Bart and Kon had to deal with things with Cassie by himself for a while. Now almost everyone was back and they were different. Bart couldn't talk to him like he could with Cissie and Tim knocked his arm out of commission and ran away.

It had him scared to death that he wouldn't be able to fix things. That he wouldn't be able to make them right, but, in the end, he did what he always did. He turned to Tim.

"Any ideas, smart guy?"

[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

It isn't a promise, but Tim doesn't push it again, decides to let it go with the knowledge that, at the very least, he can disarm Kon if he tries it again. Knowing what will make Kon do that is more important, in the end. Understanding what happened to divide them like this.

Other than magic, apparently.

"You could start by telling me what he did to you before he disappeared," Tim prompts, mouth pulling into a grimace. "What made you so afraid to let me walk away, or am I not the person you tell things like that anymore?"

[not_the_s]

"I...you...it was just different. You had Dick. You didn't need me anymore." That was maybe Kon's greatest fear. That Tim didn't need him anymore. That Tim could just watch him walk away and it wouldn't mean anything. Or at least that it wouldn't mean enough.

Quickly, so Tim didn't see how much he was just talking about Tim, Kon added, "The same is with Bart. He told me the other day that he can talk to Cissie more easily than he can to me. That's just not right."

It had hurt at the time and it still hurt, but the idea that the same thing was happening with Tim was downright terrifying. He wasn't sure he could lose his best friend a second time.

[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

That...softens him, makes him relax a little more now that they're talking about Kon's problems instead of his own. "Oh Kon," he sighs, because he can understand that worry, even if he's pretty sure everyone on the team was easier to talk to than he will ever be. "That doesn't have to be a bad thing, right? Cissie deserves to be that person for him if that's how he feels, and it doesn't mean he won't talk to you.

"I mean, then he's not talking to you because it's easy, it's because he needs to, or just...wants to. It doesn't mean you aren't his best friend," especially if Bart felt comfortable admitting that to Kon.

"You're not always the easiest person to talk to," he points out, especially when he's letting his fear and stubbornness do the talking for him. "But you're always there, and you always want us to talk to you, and that counts for a lot. Even when I don't want to talk, I still feel better knowing you're there when I decide to. I still need that."

[not_the_s]

Kon's lips flickered up a little. This was why he liked have Tim around. No, this was why he needed Tim around. Because he spoke sense. Or at least spoke sense when he wasn't attached to Dick's...something. He needed Tim because Tim was always the first person that Kon thought to talk to. He was the person that Kon trusted first, even before Clark. After all, he hadn't gone running off to Clark to tell him about the email from Luthor.

"Are you sure?" Yet he couldn't help but be worried. The other Tim had seemed so independent. The other Tim hadn't needed him and if Kon had died in some unlived future, didn't that mean that Tim had lived - had learned to live - without him?

"Are you sure that you still need that? Need me?"

[liestobatman.livejournal.com]

Tim had learned to live without a lot of things, or--function, work, survive, maybe. It had felt like that for a long time after Kon died and Bart disappeared, like going through the motions and just waiting for the next loss.

Bruce.

His lips part on a breath and he lets it back out in a soft laugh: he doesn't need Kon as much as he used to, when the deaths were all so fresh, rolling one into the next as inexorably as waves, nothing to be done to stop them. He doesn't need Kon the way he used to, but he'd never say it, because he knows that feeling. The need to be relevant, the need to be needed. Kon needs things from him, and Tim needs that, will always need that even if he learns to live without the rest. "I always will, even if I lose sight of it, even if I act like I don't," he says, quiet but steady, because he's done plenty of that in the past.

"I don't know what I did here to make you doubt that, but I'll try to make it up to you."

[not_the_s]

Kon started a little when Tim laughed. It wasn't something he had expected, the laugh. It made him smile a little and nod and his shoulders started relaxing. Maybe it would be different here after all. Maybe things could actually be...okay. Maybe they would be okay and that was the best part about it.

His lips quirked up. "I might let you make it up to me," he said with the assurance that Tim would figure out by his smile that things were good and no makeup was required. "I'll have to find some suitable way for you to make it up to me. I'm sure I can come up with something."