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Tim never did find you where Bruce had gotten the magical object, or what had possessed the man to bring it to the Batcave for them all to try.
And they did all try it.
It was a small thing, like a miniature fortune teller's box, the paper being spit out after someone touched it, a name upon it.
Maybe more than one.
It told of past lives. If you had lived any that was.
"So, who's going first?" Dick asked as he looked at the object, more than one of the bats shifting uneasily as they looked upon the box. As they looked at something that could tell them of a life that had once been there's, and could spell out what might come of them in this life as well.
No one was exactly brimming at the gills to go first.
Not with stakes like that.
"Not it," Jason says, looking at the box as if he was expecting it to bite him. "I'm not itching to know anymore tragedies."
(He didn't want to know if he was so removed from the boy that had died that his own name would appear on the paper as well. That Robin might.
There were some things that he could die once more without knowing for sure)
Tim couldn't blame him for that, not as he was looking upon the magical creation and as certainty crept down to the very bottom of his bones. As he was sure just who would be written out upon the slip of paper.
He had already lived out his past life in this one after all, just maybe not in the way that the world would have thought of him.
Still, he'd rather have it done now than hanging over his head as the rest did so.
"I'll do it," Tim offered, the shake of his voice hidden as he stands.
He thinks that Cass knows all the same.
"You sure, Boy Blunder?" Steph asked, looking at the boy with apprehension as well. She didn’t think that she wanted to know.
"Sure enough," the third Robin confirms as Duke looks at him with open concern and Bruce looks at him with the hidden sort of it. The kind that can only be seen in the pinch of the man's brows. "Besides, I already know who its going to be."
"Bullshit," Damian calls, his own shock keeping him from defaulting to the way that he usually spoke. He blamed Todd for the language though, and thought that he was right given the way that the former Robin grinned as Bruce made a wounded sort of noise at it. As Grayson did as well. "There is no way that you could, Drake."
But Tim was sure that he did.
Sure in someone else's as well.
Tim pulled out his phone, sending a quick text on it. One that wasn’t answered through another message, but through someone appearing at his side in the cave, wind rushing through it as the other did so.
"You called?" Kon asked, that familiar grin on his lips as he stood with his hands on his hips, ignoring that glares from more than one of the bats as he did so. It wasn't like he was particularly subtle in his feelings, especially not to a room filled with detectives.
"Magical box that shows our past lives," Tim explains, blunt and brief as he does so, jacking a thumb at the box in question. "Do it after me?" He asked, giving the other the chance to say no. To call it quits here and the other leave the cave now.
It might have been smart to do just that. To not know. But, the super never had been able to back down from a fight.
From a challenge.
Tim may not have phrased it as one, or even meant it as so, but it felt like one all the same. A challenge that he was holding with himself.
Besides, he didn't really think that there was a past life that he could have. Not with how he was made.
Not with what he was.
(He was wrong)
"Sure," he agrees, that smile growing wider to hide his own unease. "Why not?"
Tim doesn't do more than nod to acknowledge the decision before turning back to the box. Before placing his hand on top of it. The former Robin didn't even look at the name on the paper when the box spit it out, simply grabbing it and holding it in his palm as he looked to the other to do the same.
Kon took in a shuddering sort of breath as he stepped forwards as well and placed his hand upon the old wood, feeling the magic rush through him and watching as the paper fell onto the table face down.
Neither looked at their own papers as they raised them for the bats to read.
"Orpheus and Eurydice," Tim says, know the words were true even without having looked upon what was there.
He was right
He knew that he was even as the bats before them looked at him with the raised brows of those that wondered just what could have occurred for him to know such a thing.
Tim knew that it couldn't have been anyone else for him, not after he had tried ans failed to bring the one that he loved back from the dead, the darkness taking a hold of him as well in the process.
"In every life then?" Kon asked, thinking of the same memories, of a lab below Paris that had been operated by love that had no where to go. By the way that he knew that he should have been so much angrier than he was at having seen exactly what the other had done while he had been gone, but instead had only fallen a bit more in love, crazy as such a thing was.
"In every life," Tim agreed, the proof of it held in his palms.
He hoped that they would get a softer ending this time around.