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He’s falling.
He’s beaten and bloody and he’s falling fast.
Maybe a piece of him knew that this fight with Ra’s would end this way. Maybe this is what he wanted.
Maybe he just wants release.
He feels like he has been floating away for a long time, the tether anchoring his threadbare sanity to reality finally snapping.
He knows he’s right. But he also knows that it doesn’t make sense that he’s right.
Bruce is alive. He’s alive. He knows it and he just, he just, he just has to prove it. Somehow.
He feels as though his world has been ripped away from him. The shattered pieces of a life he was rebuilding being crushed into pretty, pearly dust.
His parents are dead.
His three best friends are dead.
Bruce is gone.
Dick took Robin away.
No one believes that Bruce is alive.
And now? Now there will truly be no one to find Bruce because he’s falling.
And he’s almost relieved.
He knows it’s selfish. He knows that someone needs to find Bruce.
But he’s tired. He just wants rest.
So he closes his eyes. Relishes in the air rushing around him and he falls.
The impact is… not what he expected.
His back hits concrete, which is confusing enough, and his bones are not completely obliterated from the impact.
“Jesus, Junior. You alright?”
Tim’s eyes snap open and he jolts to face the oh so familiar voice.
“Kon?” Tim whispers, trying and failing to steady his labored breaths.
“Shit. I definitely shouldn’t have believed you when you said you didn’t have a concussion,” Kon says with a snort. “Can’t believe Mr. No Names On Patrol just name dropped me.”
“Kon, you’re… you’re here?” Tim’s hands are shaking. He knows they are.
“Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?” Kon questions. He knocks on Tim’s head which is… covered by a mas? “I think we should call it a night. You’re clearly a liability like this.” Kon lifts him off the ground and wraps an arm around his waist. “Ready for liftoff?” he asks with a smirk.
Tim can’t respond. He’s too mesmerized by the feeling of his body against his again. He nearly melts in his warmth.
“Gotta hold on, you slimy succulent,” Kon murmurs into Tim’s ear.
His heart flutters at the sound.
And suddenly they’re in the air and it’s the perfect juxtaposition from the falling he had just experienced.
Tim realizes what this is.
This is his afterlife. He’s with Kon. He’s finally done.
Of course, it doesn’t explain why here. Or why Tim’s in this stiff suit and stuffy helmet. Or why Kon is wearing the supervillain equivalent of his Superboy uniform under a leather jacket and why he suddenly has a lip ring.
Do you get to choose how you look in the afterlife? Is this what Kon wants to look like?
The fly is as disorientating as ever and they’re suddenly inside a well lived-in apartment.
Tim is about to ask Kon how to get the helmet off when his fingers are already expertly releasing all the buttons and hatches.
Kon pulls the helmet off of Tim’s head and his eyes darken.
Tim stumbles back, taken aback by the expression that Tim associates with Kon’s more unhinged, aggravated self from their introduction.
Kon shoves Tim into the wall and suddenly his lips are hungrily attacking his.
Wait.
What?
Tim is frozen in pure shock for what feels like a long eternity before instincts finally kick in and he starts kissing back.
Kon is an aggressive, passionate kisser Tim learns quickly. His fingers are in Tim’s hair and tugging sharply. Tim gasps into his lips and Kon takes the opportunity to slip his tongue in and start exploring his mouth.
Kon takes Tim’s thin wrists and pins them against the wall while he grinds against him.
He breaks the kiss and ghosts his lips over Tim’s neck. “Fuck, JJ. Can’t control myself when you look so damn good.”
“Then don’t,” Tim whispers.
Kon’s pupils blow out and he crashes his lips back onto Tim’s.
There’s a ringing from the table. It’s the Bat Tone.
Tim pulls away, turning his face so Kon can’t latch back onto his lips again. “Sorry. I… I have to take that.”
Does he? In this afterworld, are there still bats? Are they the idyllic, more merciful family that Tim always imagined of having?
Kon snorts. “Since when?” He tilts Tim’s chin up and pulls at his bottom lip with his thumb. “Fuck ‘em.”
And suddenly the mirage crumbles. Tim pushes away from Kon and backs up.
Kon eyes him suspiciously. “JJ?”
Tim’s gaze darts around the unfamiliar apartment. There are obvious pieces of him, but some that are completely foreign. Guns littering the tables. The smiley face mask that Kon had taken off of his head. And most damning of all, the unfamiliar reflection staring back at him.
Dimension travel.
Huh.
Yeah, he hadn’t even considered that one.
“What’s up with you?” Kon asks, leaning against the wall, eyeing Tim up and down.
“Just not feeling myself,” Tim says slowly.
“Ah,” Kon says. “Having a Tim day, then, huh?”
Tim flinches, not expecting to hear his true name from this odd, different Kon, especially not with such malice. But hidden beneath the bitten words is… hope. Reverence.
Kon sighs and takes Tim’s chin between his fingers, forcing his eyes to meet his. Kon searches them, clearly looking for something.
“You… are Tim.”
Tim swallows thickly. “I am.”
And something in Kon crumbles. He stumbles back, pulling his hand away like it’s been burnt. His legs hit the table and he sits on it. “Amnesia?” He questions, fingers carding through his hair. “Time travel?”
“Dimension,” Tim says. “I think.”
“Fuck.”
“Who… who is JJ?”
“Joker Junior.” The words come out numbly from Kon. “I don’t know everything. All I know is that Tim was taken and when he came back he… he was different.”
“Different how?”
“Demented,” Kon says. “Merciless in the way he killed and hungry for it, his finger rarely straying from the trigger of a gun. It was a bloodbath, what was left when he was done with it.”
“Why are you with him, then?”
“Because… because I ground him,” Kon says. “And I’m bulletproof.”
Dread pools in Tim’s gut at his words. “That shouldn't be your responsibility.”
“I can leave. I could have left. But I don’t. I stay for him. Because… because of days when he comes back.”
“Tim days,” Tim surmises.
“He doesn’t like Tim. Doesn’t like when he’s anything like him. But I… I hold onto it whenever he comes back and hope one day he’ll stay.”
“But he doesn’t.”
Kon smiles sadly. “But he doesn’t.”
“I’m guessing that means he’s not with the Bats anymore.”
Kon lets out a heavy breath. “The Bats… they don’t understand. They think that he’s too far gone. That there’s nothing left to save. But I… I know there is. There is no permanent solution. No way to turn back time or revert him to the person he was before the torture. But there are moments. Moments where he’s kind. Where he’s good. Where he’s him. But that’s not enough for them.”
“They still reach out to him though,” Tim says. “I heard—”
“He likes to keep tabs on them. Hacked into their channels. But he doesn’t actually let himself be known, and he definitely doesn’t respond.”
"He's still out there patroling though? With you?"
"The hunger never went away. There's something that broke in him, that can't be satisfied until he kills again. I just keep him from killing someone who doesn't deserve it."
“Is it worth it?”
“He is,” Kon says. “He has to be.”
“You deserve more than this.”
“It’s not about what I deserve. It’s not even about what he deserves because God knows that he deserves better than what he’s been dealt. It’s just how it is and what I do about it. What I do because of it.”
“Are you happy?”
Kon’s lips tilt up. “I try to be.”
Tim takes his face in his hand. “I wish I could stay. I wish I could be with you. I wish I could make you happy.”
“I’m gone, aren’t I? Where you come from?”
“Yeah,” Tim breathes. “You are.”
“What do you have waiting for you?”
Tim wants to refute. To fight for the life that he has waiting for him. To make some sound argument of everything that awaits him for when he gets back.
But he thinks about how all his best friends are dead. His mother and father and Dana are dead. Bruce is gone and his bridges are burnt with Dick and he’d never have a home there anyways. What would he return to? To bleeding out in that damn desert?
He considers letting himself be selfish for once. He considers staying.
“Nothing,” Tim says before pulling Kon in for another kiss.
In another world, JJ opens his eyes, a giggle in his throat with no bulletproof boy to stop his trigger-happy fingers and a League full of targets to shoot.