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“Recognised: Robin, B-two-zero.”
His first step out of the zeta tube echoed across the metal walls, returning singularly to his ears and leaving behind a deafening silence. The Watchtower admission log opened in hologram before he noticed he hit the button, and Tim sighed in relief before he could think about what Dick would have to say about a response like that.
‘Remind me, when exactly was the last time you and the sun were up at the same time?’
Something like that.
But it didn’t matter, because it meant he could finally have some quiet.
It’s not that he didn’t love watching movies or videos or playing board games or watching Jaime try to teach Bart how to play FIFA when he doesn’t even know how real soccer works. The Watchtower, without any occupants, just had a certain… calm that he appreciated.
Maybe it was the quiet buzz of electricity, putting the semi-constant ringing in his ears to sleep. Maybe it was the knowledge that he was physically thousands of miles from any one of the people who had pissed him off this week.
He had a physics project to do, and while it may be due long after the winter break, it never hurt anyone to get it done... a month or so early.
Whether that was just an excuse he made up in his head, he didn’t care.
Peace, and quiet, and—
“Recognised: Kid Flash, B-two-three.”
Great.
He watched Bart materialise in civvies and in desperate need of a haircut, drowning in ratty, old jeans that were probably Barry’s in high school, with a grey t-shirt under a track jacket. Typical Bart clothes, with a typical Bart prop in his hand: a book.
If peace and quiet had an opposite, it would have to be Bart Allen.
He looked surprised to see him, eyebrows disappearing under his long, unwashed hair for a moment before he smiled, offering a lethargic little wave.
Tim may feel like he's in a constant state of exhaustion, but Bart showed it on his face.
He looked like shit, but that wasn’t too unusual for Bart when out of uniform— mysterious apocalyptic futures probably didn’t come with proper grooming rituals and sleep schedules.
If he had pretty much walked his ass out of hell, he also wouldn’t care too much about those things on the other side.
“Oh, heya, Tim. Christmas Eve study sesh?”
He zipped over to Tim’s side, like lightning if he weren’t a meta, chased by a light breeze.
“You know it. Don’t bother me, and I’ll let you stick around.”
Bart half-smiled guiltily under his heavy eyebags and shook his head once, the gap between his two front teeth visible between his chapped lips.
“Don’t worry. You know, I need to get away from noise sometimes, too. Who knew newborn twins could make such a racket?”
Tim nodded with a chuckle, and they wandered in step towards the red sectional sofa M’gann had insisted they set up after Mount Justice went up. During a busy night, there was hardly ever a place to sit despite its size, though it doesn’t exactly help when Gar transforms into a Great Dane or a Leopard or something and lies out across half the cushions.
“Been staying with Barry and Iris?” Tim asked, and Bart nodded after a short moment, rubbing his eyes.
“Thought I could help out a little, but I’m not too useful when I can’t cook, don’t know how to clean,” he counted on his twitchy fingers, “can’t figure out how to fold laundry, and can’t seem to run errands without makin’ some new problem for Grandma Iris to deal with.”
They both collapsed heavily on opposite sides of the couch, Tim unzipping his backpack and opening up his laptop as Bart sighed, kicking off his jacket and shoes and leaning his head back on the cushion.
“Dude, why don’t you just get some sleep? You look exhausted.”
“I would! I would, but I can’t— I…” He shrugged, looking out the window into the depths of space. “No good reason, just need some time for some light reading, you know, somewhere quiet.”
“I get it,” replied Tim with a quirk of an eyebrow, kicking his shoes off with a sigh as his screen illuminated. Bart cracked his book open out of the corner of his eye, flipping to his page as the room fell into silence.
Tim mentally thanked his Physics teacher for not making him join a group, because no one but him would be able to tolerate a data spreadsheet that was this ‘unnecessarily complicated’, apparently. The people in Physics 2 would get it next year: having every dataset auto-generate a graph and a new table for finding the angular impulse was exactly the type of stuff Excel was made for.
Hahah, ‘impulse.’
He cringed externally at his own internal comment.
Never mind. That was stupid.
He looked up at Bart— though that wasn’t his codename anymore— finding his green eyes bugged out and bloodshot with his nose an inch or so from the page.
‘Pharmacotherapy Handbook - Ninth Edition.’
He almost laughed out loud— at least that was actually pretty funny.
Light reading, huh? It’s like reading Merriam-Webster for fun.
…Which he did. As a little kid, though, when he didn’t have anything else to pick through.
Tim refocused on the spreadsheet, grumbling under his breath as his cursor froze uselessly.
“Ow.”
Tim looked back up at Bart inquisitively as a small bead of blood began to gather on his finger.
“Papercut?”
“Yeah.”
The internet connection finally caught up to him, and the new graph generated before his eyes. The only problem was that it looked absolutely nothing like he knew it was supposed to. He grumbled again as his eyes looked over the data and he realised that it probably would’ve helped if he had imputed the right formula and not just whatever was left over on his clipboard from earlier today.
The only other problem would be his laptop, the fan whirring to life as he tried to delete the old graph, fix the formula, and regenerate a new graph before the internet could think to get going.
Tim checked his watch.
It was crazy how the Watchtower could be simultaneously the most high-tech place in all of orbit and have worse wifi than the Gotham Academy cafeteria’s random dead zone.
Right when it looked like it was going to load, his whole sheet went blue.
“Are you kidding?” He asked no one under his breath, throwing his head to the back of the sofa and his eyes up to the ceiling.
Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
He stretched before returning his hands to the keyboard.
Would he get in trouble for logging into his student portal on the Watchtower system? No one would have to know.
He glanced at Bart to make sure he hadn’t disturbed him, then back at his screen.
He blinked.
He looked back at Bart, who hadn’t moved a muscle since he last looked at him minutes ago.
He was just… staring at his bloody finger, book open uselessly in his lap.
His hand was twitching, or maybe just shaking violently.
“Bart?”
Wait, why hadn’t that healed already? He thought speedsters could heal a broken leg in an hour.
“Bart, are you okay?”
The fat drop of blood flew from his finger as his hand jerked, landing in an inky streak on the glass coffee table. Tim’s eyes chased after it before flicking back to Bart just as quickly.
Tim discarded his laptop beside him, leaning towards Bart with a hand outstretched tentatively. His eyes were glazed over and wide, his mouth closed tightly as if it were sewn, and his dark eyebrows frozen in perfectly flat lines just above his lashline.
“Bart, can you hear me?” He waved his hand in front of his eyes.
He didn’t respond.
A bead of sweat rolled from his hairline, trailing between his eyebrows and down the side of his nose.
Just as Tim was about to stand and shake his shoulder, he suddenly lurched forward, throwing the book to the floor with an unholy bang and shooting to his feet with a degree of instability. He panted like he had just run a lap around the world, his hands in tight claws at either bony hip.
He turned his pale face to look at Tim like a creepy doll in a horror movie, his green eyes looking more through him than at him as he forced a wide yet tense smile.
“I can hear you! And see you. Yeah, I can… I’m going to my room! I am going to go there, and I am going to sleep and hahah— goodnight, Tim! Robin, don’t worry.”
Yeah, right.
He took a single step back before he turned and ran at just above a human pace. Had he tried to go any faster, he would’ve careened into the wall at a million miles an hour, having barely stopped himself from doing so anyway. Tim watched him slide on his socks around a corner, and then a door slammed.
…And then a crash like a thousand bowling pins being impacted by the fastest bowling ball ever.
Tim swore under his breath, running after Bart before every one of the unknown crash victims had even reached stasis. He traced his path down the short hall, flinging his dorm door wide open and falling inside more than stepping.
“Oh, what the fuck—”
Hundreds of empty Reach bottles lay in front of him, spilling out of the open closet door like a landslide. In the middle of them was Bart, on his knees on the ground with his back to him, frantically searching through them, muttering to himself.
“I— I need it, I need it or else, or else I’ll—”
Tim threw himself forward, crushing a bottle or two under his feet as he slid to his knees and grabbed Bart by the shoulders. He spun him around and found himself face-to-face with desperation incarnate, with a tight grip on the front of his shirt. He could feel the sweat through the fabric as Bart bit his lip so hard it began to bleed.
“Or else you’ll what? What are you doing? What is this, Bart?” He demanded, gesturing wildly to the bottles.
“Let me go! Let me go—” Pulled back with genuine terror on his face like a stain, falling backwards into the pile and triggering another ricochet of plastic as Tim gaped.
He hyperventilated, his face red as he began to search through the pile for a second time. Tim pulled unceremoniously on the collar of his shirt, pulling him away from the bottles and into his own arms. He turned Bart by the shoulders to face him, nearly pressing their noses together.
“Let me go! Let me—”
“Bart!” He flinched like an abused puppy as he shouted, clenching his teeth, “What are you fucking looking for?”
He turned his head back towards the bottles, willing himself towards them but making no moves to push against the force of Tim’s hands. His weight began to pull on his arm as the effort of his own body to stay upright waned. Tim lowered him to the wood-clad floor.
The stretched-out neck of his shirt recoiled only halfway as he let it go and lay limply on his chest, exposing the red ghosts of fingernail scratches on his collarbone.
Bart’s head fell to the ground like a rock, and he blinked his long, auburn lashes rapidly under the fluorescent lights as his eyes focused on Tim’s.
“Tim?” He asked, genuine and breathy like a whisper, a stranger to his shouty, panicked tone of only a moment before.
“Bart, what’s going on? What’s happening, dude, I—”
“I’m dying, Tim, I don’t want to die.”
“Why are you dying? What’s happening?”
“I tried to stop it, I’ve tried everything, I—”
He groaned, puffing out his cheeks as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
“I— I don’t know,” he said, strained, “that’s the thing, Tim, I— I think it has something to do with— with that chemical that the Reach was putting in the drink because it—”
He fixed his chartreuse eyes on Tim’s brown ones, a dam of tears in its last moments before it burst and sent a tidal wave down his freckled cheeks.
“It’s the only thing that helps, and it barely helps.”
Tim placed a hand in Bart’s hair, as if tightly gripping his head would hold him together.
“Everything hurts, and I don’t think my heart is working right, and I can barely feel the Speed Force, and the only thing that can fix it is those,” he nodded weakly towards the bottles. “I hate them— I’m sorry, I shouldn’t— I wouldn’t have, but…”
“No, Bart, it’s—”
He stroked his thumb across his pointy, freckled cheekbone.
What the hell, what the hell, what the hell.
“I can’t find any more. I need them, and I can’t find more anywhere.”
“Anywhere? There’s gotta be more up here from—”
Bart shook his head.
“I drank all of the ones we had,” he said with a quivering lip, “there’s barely any of that chemical stuff in there, and—” His whole body twitched violently, and he cringed just as hard, “I’ve tried everything else, and nothing works, Tim, I’m—”
His gaze shot towards the door, and he shrieked like he’d seen a jumpscare in a horror game, bringing his hands up to claw at the skin of his face, his legs scrambling uselessly backwards. Tim tightened his grip on his shaking body, glancing back at an empty doorway.
“Bart! Bart, what—” Tim stared into the hallway, then turned his head back.
He pulled at Bart’s hands and replaced them on his cheeks with his own just as blood began to gather under his jagged fingernails.
“He’s right behind you!” He shrieked, “Blue Beetle is right behind you—”
“Jaime’s not here, Bart, why—” Tim pleaded, “It’s just you and me, and it’s—”
“How do you know my name? HOW DO YOU KNOW ME?” He screamed, trying to escape Tim’s grip as if he had never seen him in his life. “Who are you? Where did you take me?” He took in his surroundings frantically, “What is this place?”
Tim’s mouth hung open dumbly for a moment before he refocused on his terrified, sweat-covered face with a shake of the head.
‘You knew who I was 30 seconds ago! How did you possibly forget that?’ He told Bart in his head, but he didn’t have a chance to express even half of it before the volume and situation switched like the changing of a TV channel.
He simmered down suddenly, his intense gaze returning to Tim.
“What’s happening to me?” Bart asked— begged, just above a whisper once more, manic eyes welling with tears and lip quivering.
They stared at each other for just longer than a second, somewhat equal in panic in opposite situations.
“I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know!” He replied because he didn't, Bart’s pulse under his thumb thumping oddly slow for his stress level.
Bu-dum… bu-dum… bu-dum… bu-dum…
Ignoring that.
He ran his thumb over his cheek, and a streak of fresh blood trailed behind it.
Jesus— Ignoring that, too.
He shook the thought out of his head and looked away.
He needed to call someone, but his phone was sitting uselessly on the sofa cushion in the other room.
“Bart, where’s your phone, where is it?” He gripped his shoulders tightly, shaking him a little.
He stared at him blankly, his mouth agape, eyes wide and blinking rapidly.
“...I— I don’t—”
Shit.
He let go of him for a moment, sitting up straighter and glancing frantically from surface to surface.
He spotted it after too long, peeking out from under a bottle by the dresser. He raced to grab it, gripping it tightly in his hands as Bart’s lockscreen— a smiling, group photo of him, Bart, Jaime, Gar, and Cassie— stared up at him.
He hit the emergency button, pulling up Bart’s medical ID.
He better have filled it out. He better’ve—
family member
Grandpa Barry
+1(816) 184-5222
Once it was ringing, he turned back to Bart. He was staring up through the ceiling now that Tim’s surely freaked-out face no longer filled his vision, his expression completely blank aside from the glassy wideness of his eyes. He was eerily still, lying flat on his back.
“Bart?” He asked, unfamiliar with the shakiness in his own voice. He didn’t reply.
Ringing.
Foam began to bubble at the sides of his mouth.
“Fuck— Bart? Bart!”
Ringing.
He reached forward but flinched back as Bart jerked, eyes rolling up into his head and sticking there as he began to convulse.
“Hey, Bart. Everything okay?” Asked the tinny, exhausted-sounding voice of an angel through the shitty phone speaker.
“Barry! Barry, it’s Robin,” He dragged Bart to the middle of the floor like the head of a mop as the convulsions increased in intensity, “we’re the only ones at the Watchtower, and he’s seizing— he’s seizing, I think, he’s— I don’t know what to do or what’s wrong with him or—”
‘Get a grip, Tim,’ said his own voice in his head.
“I’m on my way,” said Barry’s voice in his ear.
Bart’s hands were in tight fists, his arms pressed to his sides as every one of his meagre muscles contracted again and again. His eyes were still open, however vacant, foam still gathering on his lips, running down his cheeks on both sides.
Tim grabbed a pillow from the bed as he mentally shuffled through every bit of seizure training he had ever had. He slid it under his head just before it jerked hard and fast towards the floor.
His lips were turning purple like a bruise.
He found himself shuffling away from his convulsing body like it was an animal trying to bite him, which was stupid because it’s just Bart’s body having a seizure after he just hallucinated and then forgot who he was or where he was, and—
Pull it together, pull it—
He was shuffling away like a little kid from the situation that wasn’t even his own situation, but Bart’s, and he could be dying right in front of him and—
And a warm hand was placed on his shoulder. A large, red-clad form lowered down beside him.
Tim looked over at the Flash in full uniform, pushing through discarded bottles towards Bart.
This must be what it feels like to be an adoring Central City resident.
“Robin, I’m here. What’s happening?”
“I don’t know! He said—”
PULL IT TOGETHER.
“It’s the chemical in the Reach drink,” he waved his hand towards the bottle avalanche, “he— he said he needed it or he’d die and he can’t get any more of it.”
Barry pushed Bart up onto his side as the more contractions began to wane. Tim watched Bart blink once and then twice, he watched Barry run his red-gloved fingers over the side of Bart’s head, pushing his long, sweaty hair away from the fingernail scratches on the skin of his face.
“Bart, can you hear me? C’mon, buddy, do you know where you are?”
He groaned, voice catching in his throat as consciousness seemed to be returning.
“What was in the drink?” Barry asked Tim quickly, and Tim simply shook his head.
“They were trying to test it at S.T.A.R., but— but Nightwing never told me if they found anything, and I feel like he probably would have told me? But I don’t— I don’t know! I—”
He was rambling. He was shaking more violently than he remembered ever having, too.
B would have his head if he saw him now, probably. So much for composure, professionalism and mysterious aura.
The Flash zipped over to his side, eyes locking onto his like a missile as he crouched in front of him. Tim looked up at him, gazing through a thick glaze of tears.
“Hey, hey. Robin? Listen, bud.”
“Yeah?”
He sounded like that time when he lost his mom at the QuickChek on their way back into Gotham. Six years old then, fifteen years old now… About time for a call-back, huh?
“It’s okay. I need you to call Nightwing, maybe Batman. Ask them what they know about whatever was in the Reach drink, and—”
Bart groaned loudly, and both their heads spun like a compass needle back towards him as he began to seize once more.
“Oh, no, c’mon—” Barry dashed back to his grandson’s side, leaving Tim sitting, back to the opposite wall. “Go, make the call now!”
Tim stared for a moment before he nodded quickly to make up lost time, jumping to his feet and running out of the room. He returned to the couch they had been sitting on just… ten-ish minutes ago? It could’ve been a total of two minutes, and he probably wouldn’t have even been that surprised.
Focus. What was all Bruce’s training for if you can’t focus when you need to most?
He grabbed his phone, gripping it so tight it looked like he was trying to shatter it, fumbling through the passcode twice before making it into his contacts list. Dick’s name appeared at the top of his ‘favourites’ page, and the active call screen appeared before even the end of the first ring.
“Hey, Timmy, how’s Christmas Eve at the Wat—”
“Dick, what was in the Reach drink? What did they tell you?”
“Why?”
“I need to know, Dick!” He shouted into the charging port, his fear boiling into anger directed at no one in particular, “It’s Bart. He’s been drinking what was left of the Reach stuff, and we were in the Watchtower, and he started hallucinating, and then he started seizing—”
He heard him breathing from the other side for just long enough without an answer to piss him off.
“I’m on my way, I’ll be there soon. don’t—”
“WHAT WAS IN THE DRINK?”
“Tim, they… It’s some kind of element with origins off-world. They haven’t been able to synthesise it or figure out what it even is, but they’ve been trying. I— we don’t really know much else at this point— Don’t go anywhere, Tim, I’m—”
The Flash appeared suddenly behind him, tearing the defibrillator from the wall without a word and vanishing once more.
As if it couldn’t get any worse.
“I have to go,” he said shortly, hanging up before Dick could protest, dropping his phone like a rock onto the couch and taking off before it could land. He threw himself down the short hall and into the worst room ever for a second, unwelcoming time, finding Barry crouched over Bart, doing chest compressions.
He heard his ribs crack like the distant firing of a handgun under the force.
“Robin, continue with the chest compressions,” he said without looking up, only nodding his head pointedly to guide Tim to a place on the floor. He placed his hands over his chest where the Flash left off, pushing down hard, over and over, as the AED was practically ripped open to his right.
His green eyes were still rolled back, his mouth slightly open.
He looked dead.
He glanced at Bart’s lips— now as blue as they were chapped.
He looked dead. The most alive person he knew looked dead.
He could feel the broken bones through the skin of his still chest.
He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s—
“Remove all clothing from patient’s chest.”
Tim grabbed him by the shirt collar as he had before, ripping down through the weak and worn fabric before Barry could tell him to do it or do it himself. He pushed the last of his shirt to the sides before he continued compressions. He watched Barry place the AED pads on his pectoral and abdomen, before nudging him lightly to stop.
Tim’s brain began listing every possible reason this could be his fault.
“Evaluating heart rhythm.”
He noticed the sunkenness of his chest now that his hands were off it. Probably not from the compressions. It looked like that one condition he forgot the name of where the sternum grows inward and the chest looks sunken. He had never actually seen it in person before.
“Stand by. Preparing to shock.”
There was a scar on the lower right of his abdomen. It was white and old, but it must’ve been a gnarly wound when he got it. Tim thought that he’d ask him about it when he woke up.
“Everyone, clear. Do not touch patient.”
If. If he woke up.
Shut up.
“Delivering shock.”
Oh, god. Fuck this.
He gasped, eyes rolling forward like two marbles and eyelashes fluttering to life.
“Bart!” They exclaimed in unison, Barry grabbing Bart by the face like he would die again if he didn’t.
But Tim almost expected that he would.
“Robin, zeta to S.T.A.R. in Metropolis, I’m taking him there. Did Nightwing tell you anything?”
“He— He says they haven’t been able to synthesise it yet, but—”
“—but they’ve tried? It doesn’t matter; if anyone can do anything, it’s them. Especially for a speedster.”
He practically disappeared from his place on the floor beside him and reappeared standing, Bart, still attached to the AED, in his arms in the doorway.
Bart’s dazed eyes caught his for the millionth time tonight.
“I—” Tim bit his lip. “I’ll see you there.”
They vanished in a red blur, a gust of wind blowing Tim's hair into his eyes.
“Recognised: Flash, zero-four.”
He looked down at the streaks of Bart’s blood still on the palms of his hands.