#there's a minute where damian is just frozen - trying to comprehend what he's seeing because his brother is meant to be dead

[hailsatanacab]

GUESS WHO’S BACK! this time, with a slightly different take on the prompt 🤣 Bio!Dad Bruce, Siblings Danny and Damian!! I know I said I was going to do twin!Damian, but it just fit better this way I think. I told you this prompt really gripped me, so please enjoy even more words on it!!

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Look. The only excuse Danny can give is that he's tired, alright? He's so, so tired. Matchsticks propping up his eyelids kind of tired. Five quiet seconds away from face planting into the ground kind of tired. Mistake the coat rack for his mom again kind of tired.

Beat this ghost into the ground if he doesn't put him back in his bedroom so he can finish his homework and finally get some sleep kind of tired.

Seriously, what the hell? He'd only just gotten back to his room after souping the fifth ectopus of the night (apparently there was some sort of migration happening and it just happened to coincide with the worst case of homework overload he's had since freshman year) when he was enveloped in a swirling mess of green and deposited in an ectoplasmic cage in some random ghost's lair. It's just not fair! If it doesn't rain, it pours, and the only constant in life is that Danny doesn’t ever seem to have an umbrella.

So, when Danny looks down and sees that he's still clutching his textbook and homework packet to his chest, and then looks around to see a few more cages containing a few more blurry looking people all milling around and banging on the ectoplasm in confusion, sees the ghost up the front in the middle of a monologue that Danny just knows is going to take forever, he does the only reasonable thing he can think of.

He does his homework.

Yes, he knows he's meant to be a hero, he knows he's meant to be helping these people escape, but come on! He's also an overworked high school student with several deadlines and a dwindling amount of detentions he can get before exclusion, so what choice does he really have?

The ghost doesn't even feel all that powerful, maybe on par with Boxy? He's got a sense for these things now—an annoyance metre, rather than his normal ghost sense—and from the weak pulse of ectoplasm surrounding him, the cheesy Sigmund Freud-looking therapist getup, and the very fact that he's still monologuing, Danny just knows. More annoying to deal with than an actual oh-shit-the-world-is-ending kind of problem. He could take this guy in his sleep.

Or, more accurately, he could take this guy on close to three hours of snatched sleep for the entire week.

So, sue him. He's using this time as independent study. He's doing his homework and there's nothing this smarmy, two-bit Doctor Phil ghost can do to stop him.

Actually, please don't sue him, Danny has this all in hand, he promises. As soon as he hears the other hostages make a sound, he'll abandon his homework and he'll soup the guy. Just let him do most of it first, please!

Decision made, Danny settles down and cracks open his textbook. Math time!

Hey, so turns out, math fucking sucks.

It's not long before Danny thinks this whole thing was a stupid idea and he kinda wishes he would just get expelled. Give him something broken and he’ll fix it. Give him a lab and some scrap metal and he’s pretty sure he can build whatever, just like his parents. 

Getting these numbers into the right answer, however? Impossible! How in the name of all that is dead is he meant to do this?

He's sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cage, textbook split open and the pages from his packet scattered messily around him, head in his hands, when he hears a knock on his cage. A shiver rolls through him as a rush of ectoplasm powers through the walls, lighting it up in a pale glowing green.

“What? What do you want?” he grumbles, not even looking up. “Because if it’s not an easy explanation for the quadratic formula, I don’t wanna know.”

“Are you doing your homework?” The ghost’s voice is incredulous and Danny can feel him swoop down to the floor to get a closer look, but whatever, he still doesn’t look up. Instead, he focuses on trying to put the numbers into some semblance of order. “You should be concentrating on my game!”

“Oh, man, ordinarily I’d be so into blowing off my homework for whatever game you’ve got cooking, but if I get one more detention I’m pretty sure Mom will actually succeed in killing me and I don’t fancy going through that again, you feel?”

“Excuse me? I don’t think you understand the kind of position you’re putting your—”

“You have to do brackets before multiplication, right? But you’ve got to make it balance on both sides of the equation, so that means I’ve got to… Wait, no, balancing equations is something different, isn't it? Ancients, this is so fucked, where’s my calculator…”

The cage rocks back with the force of the ghost’s fists and Danny has to scramble to keep all of his scraps of paper in some sort of order.

“Dude! What the hell?” 

“Answer my question so we can carry on with the game.” The ghost hisses, his face pressed up against the glass walls of the cage.

Danny rolls his eyes. He’s trying to answer his own questions, thank you very much! Perhaps he should just bust out, end this quickly and get back home. At least there he’d have access to the internet—and more importantly, Tucker’s answers. To compare, not to cheat, of course. 

“Fine, what’s your question?”

“You weren’t listening? Do you even care about this at all?”

“All I care about right now is finishing my homework and getting back home at least an hour before my alarm goes off. So unless you can promise me that, I'm going to fight you now and finish off my homework in peace."

“Fight me? At least threatening bodily harm is something you all have in common. Please, you’re all stuck in there until this game ends, whether you like it or not.” The ghost sneers against the cage in what he probably thinks is an intimidating display of teeth, but instead just has Danny realising that he’s not brushed his own in two days. He's been so tired, he's not had time. It's still gross, though. “Answer the questions and you’ll be able to go home lickety-split.”

“Yeah, alright, whatever—as long as I get to answer my own questions, too. X doesn’t solve itself, you know.” As much as he wishes it did.

“Fine. I suppose this isn’t a test for you, anyway.”

Okay, well, at least it seems like Danny’s just a pawn and not an actual player in whatever kind of game this is. He’s not sure how he feels about that—actually, scratch that, yes he does. It’s really fucking nice to not be the one that’s one fuck up away from losing everything. 

Mind you, he’s still not off the hook for it, yet. Obviously, he’ll still be keeping an ear out for anything going wrong, but what’s the harm in letting it play out a little longer? At least he’ll get some more work done.

“Fine.” Danny parrots. “What’s your question?”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“What’s your name?”

“You don’t know who I am?” 

Huh. It’s not often that happens anymore. Weird. 

Instead of giving him any answer, the ghost just whips around and cackles as he flies off towards the centre of the room. The glow of his cage dies down as the supply of ectoplasm dwindles and he finally takes a proper look around.

“Did you hear that? Did you hear the shock in his voice, did you see the betrayal in his eyes? You don’t know who he is!” 

The ghost is swirling around a podium in the middle of the room, mocking the person in a voice that pierces Danny’s eardrums and stabs directly into his brain. Great, he’s entered the blinding headache stage of tired. He squints and rubs his eyes, but the heavy, blurring tiredness doesn’t leave.

He gives up on trying to guess who the hulking figure in the middle is. All he can assume is that he’s the reason they’re all here, what with the five or six other cages surrounding placed facing him.

Look, it’s unreasonable to ask Danny to do maths and hero work, let him just pick one thing to focus on.

“That’s your first point lost, I’m afraid! Let’s keep going, shall we? The questions are going to get a little harder now, good luck…”

With that, the ghost flies over to the first cage and poses another question. “When is his birthday?”

There’s barely any hesitation from the man on the podium who gives his answer as “March 20th,” with a confident growl. It's pretty impressive, to be fair. Danny can’t remember what date his own birthday is half the time, let alone anyone else’s.

To be fair, Danny has two birthdays, so it's doubly hard.

He doesn't forget.

The first birthday, the one he celebrates, is the day he found the Fentons. He tells them he doesn't know his actual birthday and they believe him, so every April 3rd they celebrate the day he came into their lives. 

Or, at least, they do in theory. The Fentons aren't great at remembering birthdays either.

He reserves his true birthday for remembering where he came from. For mourning the life he left behind, the family, his brother. And when the day is over, he pushes it aside and carries on with his completely normal life as best he can.

Which is what he’s doing now. Carrying on with his life as best he can. Doing his homework. 

When this stupid game finally finishes, he’ll get transported back to his bedroom with his three sheets of (hopefully) correct answers and he’ll get some sleep. 

Then he’ll wake up, go to school, and do it all again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as the ghost feeds enough ectoplasm through the first cage so that it lights up just like his did. Immediately, the man inside starts shouting, threatening the ghost with some very creative swearing to let them all go, but Danny just tunes him out because he’s doing what he does best. He's getting on with it.

He swallows and settles back down on the floor, trying to ignore the way his eyes are prickling. Cool. Entering into the “crying way too easily at just about anything” stage of tired. Lovely.

Right. Come on, you can do this. Take a deep breath. It’s just math. 

Solve 7x^2 - 25x + 2 = 0 using the quadratic formula. Give your answer to 2 decimal places. 

What the fuck.

He keeps an ear out as the ghost goes down the line asking the same question and receiving much the same results. Meanwhile, Danny’s getting nowhere fast. 

So, a = 7, right? Which means that b = 25 and c = 2, that’s good, okay, so plug that all into the quadratic formula—wait, shit, b = -25 instead! Does that make a difference?

Whatever, now he has to… fix all the numbers in the formula, so minus minus 25 which is… 0, right? Right. Then it’s all the brackets, so first he’s got to square -25 which is… fuck. Where’s his calculator, did he bring a calculator? How in the hell is he meant to do that in his head?

Danny’s halfway to pulling his hair out when he hears it. The ghost is laughing, congratulating the man on the podium for his three right answers even if it looks like he’s gotten this one wrong, judging by the reaction of the person inside the cage. Danny can’t quite make out what’s happening because all he can see is numbers and, having abandoned squaring -25, a square root that he doesn’t know how to deal with.

So it's understandable that the shout doesn’t quite register to begin with.

“—yal! Danyal!” 

But when it does, when the name finally makes it through, he freezes.

It can’t be real.

“Akhi, please!”

It’s not real.

His head whips up to the cage that’s glowing, but it’s too far away, too bright in the darkness, to really make out for certain that… It can’t be. He can’t be here, why would he be here?

Part of Danny really, really wishes he was paying attention to the monologuing.

“Danyal, please, answer me!” The voice is desperate, so, so desperate. Hoarse and wet and thick with tears, a far cry from the confident boy he used to know. The… the only time Danny’s heard his voice like that was when�� But it can’t be him. “Let me go, let me see him! Danyal!”

“Answer my question, you little rat!” The ghost growls, face twisting in a snarling grimace that gets him nowhere. Of course it wouldn’t, there's no way that would scare him.

“Danyal! Please, akhi, please!”

It… Oh shit, is it really him?

Danny stands up, his pencil clattering to the floor, and he steps close enough to the glass wall of the cage so that he can reach out and touch it.

He hesitates.

What if it’s a trick? What if he’s in a nightmare dimension and the ghost is actually super powerful and this is all a trap? It’s not a game for the man on the podium, it’s a game made for torturing him—hell, it even had math in it! He hates math!

It can’t be real.

“Danyal, please, let it be you, please be alive, Danyal… Akhi, please.”

He lets his ectoplasm flood the cage, the walls blinding him as he pours in too much, far more than the ghost keeping them captive could ever hope to conjure. He wets his lips, regulates his ectoplasm to a trickle so that the light dims and he can finally see out again, and tries to say something. Anything. His heart is pounding and his mouth is dry.

“Dami?” he whispers, not daring to hope. Then louder, “Damian?”

“Danyal, is it really—”

“What are you doing?” The ghost snaps, taking his hand off of Damian’s cage so that the light dims and he can’t be heard, and shoots over towards him. “How are you doing that?”

Yeah, fuck this. That’s Damian in there, that’s really Damian, and Danny’s not staying in his cage for another second. He takes his hand off the wall and powers up an ectoblast, not even bothering to transform. He’s getting his little brother.

The glass of the cage shatters easily.

He steps out of the cage easily.

He… It’s not quite as easy to walk over to Damian.

It’s even harder to smash it open, so he just stands there, staring. Watching as Damian—and it is, it really is—stands there, too, his mouth moving as he's trying to call out to him but no sound is heard. Danny can read his lips well enough… 

Damian sniffs, wipes his eyes and nose on his sleeve, and smiles tentatively. It’s a small, fleeting thing. Unsure. Sad. Hopeful.

“Damian?” He still can’t believe it, it has to be some sort of trick, surely. Still… even if it is, he’ll get to hold his brother again. Even if it’s not real. He smiles back at him and readies an ectoblast. “Stand back.”

And then that stupid ghost fires one straight at him instead.

Damian’s gaze flickers behind him, shouting a warning that he can’t hear, and he turns intangible on instinct. The bolt flies through him, but it’s not even strong enough to break Damian’s cage. Yeah, Danny was right. This guy's just annoying, not even worth the time it'll take to fight him.

“You’re ruining it, you’re ruining my game! You’re… you’re a ghost?”

There it is, there's the realisation, finally. He turns to face him, anger boiling in his veins. Fuck this guy.

“You’re an idiot?”

“Excuse me? How dare you?” The ghost blinks, then puffs himself up, ghostly flames licking up his stupid, ill-fitting suit, still not fully comprehending what’s going on. Not knowing the danger he’s in. “In my own lair, how dare you call me that?”

“I’m not a ghost.” Danny interrupts, ice beginning to creep out from his feet. He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “I’m Phantom.”

“Wh—Phantom?” Immediately, the ghost loses all of his fire and shrinks into himself. “Oh, Ancients, I’m… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, I didn’t mean to—”

“And yet, you did. Is this a challenge?”

“Challenge? Cha—no, no, of course not, of course not, I wouldn’t be challenging you, not at all! Here, I’ll just, I’ll… I’ll let everyone out and then you can be on your way, I’m so sorry!”

Danny doesn’t even bother to answer, he just turns back to Damian with a roll of his eyes and—he’s still there, he keeps expecting him to have vanished, for this all to have been a dream, but he’s still there—and he readies another ectoblast.

“Stand back, okay?”

Damian nods and moves away, his eyes flicking between Danny and the ghost behind him with undisguised contempt.

The ectoplasmic glass shatters easily and then Damian is out of the cage and in front of him, just an arms length away.

They stand there for a long minute, watching, neither of them able to make the first move. Danny should probably start explaining some things, right? Ancients, there’s so much, but…

It’s been six years.

Six years without his brother.

Six years of only allowing himself to remember on one day, because otherwise he’d break down, otherwise he’d go back and…

Six years.

“Hey, Dami.” He tries to smile, tries to step forward, tries to do something other than stand there stupidly, but he just can’t.

“Are you… Danyal? Is it really you?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” he laughs, but it comes out weak and watery.

He’s definitely in the crying stage of tired now.

“Are you—” his eyes flicker over to the ghost again and Danny knows what he’s going to say with just as much certainty as he knows he’s not going to like hearing it. “Are you alive? Truly?”

He shrugs, puffs out some air in a sardonic grin, and spreads his arms wide. “Depends on how you define it, I guess. It’s… kind of a long story.”

It’s not comforting, from the look on Damian’s face, but then he hadn’t really expected it to be. He couldn’t lie to him, there was never any lying to Damian. Even when they were children together, he always saw through him.

Damian brings his arm up, towards him, but falters before they actually touch. Danny can feel his core twist and he so desperately wants to reach out and bridge the gap, but… 

“Can I? Danyal, can—”

Ah, screw this, Danny hugs him. 

He hugs him and the solid warmth of his presence, the familiar scent, the feeling of weight, of rightness, of home makes everything truly click for him.

It’s real.

It’s Damian.

Danny clings on tighter and a second later, he feels Damian’s arms circle around him, grabbing fistfuls of his hoodie and pulling it taut in his effort to hold on. Damian’s shoulders start to shake and he can’t help but laugh softly, his heart fluttering in his chest. At least he’s not the only one crying.

“Akhi, it’s really you, it’s really…”

“I’m here, Dami, I’m sorry, I won’t leave again.” He pushes his face into Damian’s shoulder, sniffing against the fabric. Yikes, he hopes Damian won’t be mad at the pretty obvious wet patch. “I promise.”

They stay there for a few minutes longer, clinging to each other, trying to breathe through it, when Danny feels a shifting in the ectoplasm around them. He groans, he just cannot catch a break! 

This guy really does not know when to stop, does he? It’s always the weaker ones, too, the ones that have absolutely no hope in defeating him that never know when to bow out gracefully. It’s annoying. If this ghost isn’t careful, Danny will have to update his annoying list and finally move Boxy out of first place. At least he knows when to make himself scarce.

With a sigh, he conjures up a shield just as the ghost lets the blast loose. If he was alone—he’s so glad he’s not alone—he wouldn’t have bothered with the shield at all, but it’s not like he’s going to let Dami get hit.

“You’re really starting to piss me off, you know that, right?”

“You ruined my game! I don’t care who you are, no one leaves until my game is finished!” The ghost—Danny doesn’t even feel bad about not knowing his name any more, this guy sucks—snarls and throws another ectoblast which Danny knocks away with one of his own.

With one last squeeze, he lets Damian go, already feeling the loss of it. Fuck this guy.

“Last chance, let everyone go and I’ll let you go. Call it a thank you for reuniting us.”

“I already told you,” he spits, both his hands glowing with ectoplasmic fire, “no one leaves until the game is finished!”

Danny pushes Damian behind him and pulls a thermos out of thin air, still not bothering to transform. He knocks the ghost back with a strong blast of ectoplasm and soups him before he can do anything but groan.

At least it was over quickly. 

"I win."

He throws a smile over his shoulder at Damian and pops the thermos back in the pocket dimension it came from. The ghost can stew in there for a couple days, really think about what he did. It’s just rude.

Then he lifts both his arms up and shoots five ectoblasts in quick succession at each of the remaining cages, finally freeing the rest of the ghost’s hostages. Let them get themselves together while Danny can go back to giving Damian a hug.

It’s been so long.

He goes to grab Damian again, but stops when Damian hisses sharply and pulls his hand back.

“You’re hurt?” 

Oh, Ancients, he’s hurt! Did Danny do that? Is it bad, was it an ectoblast? What happened?

Before he can spiral too far, Damian lifts up his wrist to reveal a splint already protecting his injury.

“I sprained it a few days ago, it’s nothing terrible. That’s why I’m me and not, you know.” Damian shrugs and gestures, presumably, to the guy on the podium. Danny has no idea what that’s meant to mean.

“Not what?”

“Not patrolling as Robin. I have been benched until I’m sufficiently healed.”

“Yeah, sure, that makes sense—I’m sorry, wait, what—you’re Robin?” He follows Damian’s outstretched arm towards the guy on the podium and… “Holy shit, is that Batman?”

“Mother never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“He’s our father, Danyal.”

“That’s our… That’s our Batdad? Fatherman? Dadbat? Dad-Dad Bat… man? What?” He shakes his head a little, trying to make some of his thoughts actually connect because nothing is actually making any sense right now. “What the fuck?”

His face burns as he hears the barely stifled laughter coming from pretty much every broken cage. He swivels his head around, eyes wide like an owl, and tries to place the names of the audience he’d forgotten about.

Nightwing—that’s the Nightwing—waves with a cheery grin as he makes his way over to them, and there’s Red Robin with his hand clamped over his mouth, nowhere near successful in silencing his laughter. Black Bat, Signal, Red—is that Red Hood, the crime boss, over there? Holy shit!—all wave at him, too, but mercifully they stay where they are.

Batman steps down from the podium.

“Sorry, I think I missed just about everything earlier. What the hell is going on here? What kind of game was this? ‘How Embarrassed Can We Make Danny?’ Because that’s what it feels like.”

“Nah, but if it's any consolation, you’d certainly be winning that game!” Nightwing laughs as he stops a few feet away from them.

“It was my fault,” Batman says, his voice low and gravelly. He gestures towards the thermos. “He wanted to test my ability as a father. My knowledge of my children.”

“Oh… How did you do?”

“I mean, not great,” Red Hood laughs from behind him. “He didn’t even know who you were.”

“Well, that’s fair, can’t really blame him for that. I’m meant to be dead.” Danny says cheerfully, nodding with a smile that he hopes is reassuring. “I mean, I am dead, but that’s unrelated. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Red Robin asks.

“Don’t worry about it!” Danny waves him away and slings an arm around Damian, just like he used to do when they were young. He feels like he’s buzzing, his core vibrating happily out of his skin, and he’s pretty sure he’s got the goofiest grin on his face. “It’s all good!”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Red Hood says as he picks his way towards them, cutting off whatever Batman was going to say, thank goodness. There’s no way he’s awake enough for a proper, actual conversation about his death(s) and everything that came after them, not at all. “We have bigger things to worry about, after all.”

All of them groan. Guess he’s not the only tired person here.

“What’s wrong now?” Red Robin asks, already pulling up a dope wrist computer that looks slick as hell but obviously isn’t going to work in the Ghost Zone.

Red Hood brandishes a load of papers and turns his head towards Danny. “Danyal here thinks adding 4 and 7 makes 10, which isn’t a great start, but you should actually be multiplying them there, and then multiplying all that by 2, not just… leaving the 2 out? I don’t know what you’ve done with half of this, but it definitely doesn’t make 10 though. I can also tell you that 25 squared is not whatever this squiggle is meant to be. Pretty cool picture of a horse, though, great job on that!”

Danny slumps and hides his face in his hands with a half-hearted sob. He’s so screwed. “It’s meant to be a cat.”

“Oh.” Red Hood turns the paper on its side, tilts his head, then turns the paper upside. “That’s a really crappy cat. Sorry.”

“Do you know how to get us out of here?” Batman asks gently, drawing Danny out of his shame spiral.

“Yeah, that’s not a problem, I can portal us out. At least I’ve got that down.” He rolls his eyes and rubs at the back of his neck with weak laughter. He’s really not making a good impression right now, is he?

“Let’s go, then. If you’d like, I can help you with your homework when we get back somewhere safe.” It’s so weird, Batman sounds so uncertain, not at all like the fearsome crusader he’s seen on the news. And then he smiles, soft and warm, and Danny can’t help but return it. “Damian can help you with the drawing.”

“Yeah… I think I’d like that. Thanks.”

"Let's play a game of 'How well do you know your kids?'" The being shouted, eyebrow still twitching from Robins latest remark.

"I know all my children perfectly." Batman growled at the entity. He held his ground as the spirits (demons?) smile sharpened, "Than you won't mind!"

A puff of purple glowy smoke engulfs then entire area and the next thing anyone knows is that all of Bruces children, even the ones who weren't with them previously, are locked inside magical cages while Batman is trapped in a invisible mime box with a podium and a microphone in what is quite possibly the most garish game show set up ever.

Why was everything neon green and purple? Why was the guy neon green and purple? Who were these other kids-gdi Bruce! You have more kids?

Danny could just transform and beat up the ghost. Its a pretty weak one after all. But this one doesn't seem to recognize him as a halfa and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do his homework without being attacked.

Jason stared at the kid next to him. What kinda life did this kid have to calmly get out his math homework and start solving problems while being held hostage by an unknown entity?! And with the bats no less?!

All the while Batman is getting peppered with questions about his kids and is realizing he doesn't recognize a few of the names.

[awhitehead17]

Congratulations You’re A Father

TimKon, Future, Time Travel, a kid comes from the future, Fluff, Angst, Getting Together, First Kiss.

Summary: Learning that he has a kid in the future isn't too bad, Tim can get his head around that fact. But learning that the kid is half him and half his best friend is pretty mind boggling, especially when they aren't even together.

Enjoy! :D 

“Congratulations Tim, you’re a father.”

“You being serious?”

“DNA matches 50%. He is your kid.”

Tim gapes at his older brother trying to comprehend what he’s just been told. The last couple hours have basically been a blur of peculiar events.

Tim and his brothers had been down in the cave, doing their weekly sparring competition, when suddenly a glowing purple portal appears at the edge of the cave grabbing their attention. Before they could do anything about the mysterious portal, a teenager stumbles through it and into the cave.

The portal disappears like it had never been there and the sudden teenager it left behind looks disoriented as he surveys his surroundings. Tim and his brothers had been frozen in confusion at the event, because how did a portal just appear in the Batcave without a single trace, and didn’t immediately react to the teenager.

This teenager was in normal clothes, had dark hair, he had a lean but yet muscular body however the most noticeable thing was how there was a large red patch growing on his t-shirt on his left side. The stranger, seeming unaware of his apparent injury, finally notices them and his gaze lingers. His expression becomes one of confusion when he looks in Tim’s direction.

“Dad?” He had called out and before any of them could yet react, the teenager abruptly collapses on the floor unconscious.

From there it had been a flurry of movements to get this kid patched up and medically seen to as best as they can and work out what he meant by ‘dad’. Alfred patched him up, claiming that it looked like a stab wound and how it needed stitches but wouldn’t cause any permanent damage, after a week or two of rest he’ll be fine.

Once working out that the kid was going to be alright, they kept him sedated and then moved onto working out what he meant by calling Tim ‘dad’. Jason made plenty of jokes about who Tim could have potentially had knocked up. Damian wasn’t interested, claiming he ‘couldn’t care less about there being another Drake in the world’. Dick had been the most sympathetic, he had joined in with one of Jason’s jokes before actually taking the matter at hand seriously, he had been the one who suggested they do a DNA test.

It came back positive.

“Looking at that kid’s age he’s about 16 or 17, meaning Tim you would have been three when you… convinced him. Which is really all kinds of wrong to think about. My guess is that he’s from the future, or another dimension, or like an alternate reality.”

That's where Tim’s thoughts were headed to as well. They happen to be the only options that make sense and the next question is, what one of those options was it? Tim glanced the teenager again and now could actually spot of his own features on the kid, his nose for one. His eye shape (despite them closed at the moment) and the colour of his hair.

However as Tim looks at him, there was something else that felt familiar about him but Tim couldn’t place what it was. He guesses that it’s the other parent's features coming through as well, but he has no idea who it was. It suddenly became an itch he couldn’t scratch and now Tim wants to know who the other parent was, who his future partner would be.

Then again did he want to know? If this teenager was really from the future, did Tim want to spoil that for himself?

He shakes his head, trying to clear those thoughts, time travel and everything linked to it was complicated.

Tim opens his mouth to ask a question but his phone ringing stops him from doing so. He leans over and grabs it from the computer desk, he answers it without looking at the Caller ID.

“Tim, buddy, you going to let me inside any time today? Last time I came through the window you yelled at me for a good 10 minutes and I don’t want a repeat of that.”

Instantly Tim smacks his forehead with his palm. “Shit, Kon, I am so sorry I completely forgot!” He turns away from the phone to where Alfred was already heading for the stairs. “Alfred could you-”

“I’m ahead of you Master Tim, I’ll let Master Conner in and send him down as I head for the kitchen to make us all some snacks.”

“Kon, Alfred will let you in. We’re down in the cave alright.” Tim tells him, he hangs up on his friend before he could get the chance to reply.

From next to him, Dick looks up, “Kon here?”

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose feeling a slight headache coming on, it’s been a hectic few hours. “Yeah, I’m supposed to be going to the farm with him for the weekend. He’s here to pick me up, I had completely forgotten considering everything that’s just happened. Shit.”

Dick blinks at him before shrugging, “You can still go, it may be better if you weren’t here until we can get this all sorted. It stops anything happening to the timeline.”

He considers it for a moment, “Yeah perhaps but…” Tim looks over at the sleeping figure, there was something inside of him making him reluctant to go. This was his kid, from the future or another dimension, but he was his. Did Tim want to pass this opportunity up? He wonders what he’s called, wonders when his birthday was, what about school or interests and hobbies? How similar is he to Tim?

“Tim.”

He sighs, knowing that Dick has a point. “Yeah I know. It’s just… y’know….”

His brother looks at him knowingly but doesn’t comment further. In that moment Kon finally makes his appearance from the stairs as he descends from them.

“I was stood outside for about twenty minutes dude, not cool. I thought you were playing a prank on me or simply testing my patience.” Kon says getting to the bottom of the stairs and starts to walk over.

As he does, he passes the med-bay and sees the sleeping teenager there. His best friend frowns and looks at them, “So when did the Bat adopt another kid? I didn’t know there was another one of you guys.”

Tim rolls his eyes while Dick snorts, “Just be glad he isn’t around to hear you say that.”

Kon simply grins at them when he stops beside Tim. “Is that why you forgot? What happened?”

“Yeah, sorry about forgetting,” Tim apologises to his best friend again. He looks at Kon before glancing at the teenager again, “a couple hours ago-”

He abruptly stops talking as it sinks in who the other parent could be. He flicks his gaze between his so-called kid and his best friend.

It was Kon.

The other parent was Kon.

He could see it now he’s made the connection. The kid’s got Kon’s jaw line from when he was younger, the same lips, cheek bones and his body type seemed to be similar to Kon’s when he first appeared as Superboy from Cadmus. It had to be Kon, surely. Was that why he felt familiar to Tim?

“Tim? You okay?”

Tim ignores Kon and looks at Dick who was watching him with concern, “Can you run the DNA test again but against Kon’s this time?”

Dick blinks at him, his gaze shifts to his friend before turning back to the computer, thankfully not asking questions. His best friend on the other hand didn’t hold back.

“My DNA? Tim what do you mean? Who you running my DNA against and why? What’s going on?”

Tim continues to ignore him as he watches Dick work. Minutes later his brother turns around to them, he looks up at Kon with a serious expression just as he had done to Tim earlier. “Well, congratulations Kon, you’re a father.”

Kon’s jaw drops in shock as he stares at the older man. “What? What do you mean?” He turns to Tim, his expression hardening as he lets out a fake laugh, “Yeah ha-ha, funny joke. Is this is what you’ve been planning? Because it sucks.”

“It’s not a joke Kon,” Tim tells him. “That teenager in the med-bay is potentially from the future or another dimension and he’s – he’s our kid."

Tim couldn’t believe it. Sure it’s fine that he has a kid, he’s thrilled even, because that means he starts his own family, but with Kon of all people? He couldn’t get over that. He’s been harbouring feelings for his best friend for a couple years now but he hasn’t done anything about it in fear of ruining the friendship between them because Kon couldn’t possibly return the feelings back.

But could he be wrong?

Kon stands silent between them, his face currently kaleidoscope of emotions as he digests the information suddenly thrusted at him.

Still sat on the chair Dick looks between them, “You guys obviously have a lot to talk about, this is certainly unexpected but perhaps it would be best if both of you weren’t here. We don’t want to risk any time line mishaps, or paradoxes happening when we can try and prevent them just for safety measures.”

Tim appreciates what Dick was trying to do, but there was a part of him that was still reluctant to go. It seems that Kon was now having the same issue. “But why? If this is our kid then surely we should get the opportunity to get to know him?”

Dick sighs and looks at them both with understanding and with his ever famous patience he tells them, “I understand why you both don’t want to go but think about it this way, you’ll have plenty of time in the future to be with him. It’ll be even better because you’ll get to see him grow. We’ll handle things here okay, you guys go and enjoy the farm. Tell Ma Kent I say hi!”

Tim and Kon both go quiet, they glance at one another before looking away again. In the end, Tim sighs defeated and starts to walk away, “Okay just at least let us know when he goes back, make sure he gets there safely. Come on Kon, there’s not a lot we can do here anyway, he’s sedated for the time being.”

After some hesitation his best friend follows him, but not without looking in the direction of the teenager first. Tim leads them up the stairs and to his room where a bag was already packed and ready to go. His original plan was to finish sparring with his brothers early so he could get ready for when Kon arrived, obviously that had gone out the window with the turn of unexpected events.

Tim changes out of his gym clothes and into his normal clothes. Once he was ready they head out to the back of the Manor where Kon proceeds to pick him up and together they head over to the farm.

The flight to the farm was awkward and tense as neither of them speak. Both of them lost in their own thoughts about occurred in the cave.

When they finally get to the farm they were greeted with a warm, freshly baked apple pie from Ma Kent. They both accepted the treat with a small gratitude but other than that kept quiet. Ma instantly picked up on the tension between them but thankfully didn’t comment, all she said was that the guest room was all prepared for Tim when he was ready to settle.

They eat in silence and once they were done Kon disappears, claiming he needed to do some chores he happened to forget before coming to pick Tim up. Tim knew the truth though, his friend was going for a long flight in hopes to clear his head, he didn’t blame him. While Conner was gone Tim sets himself up in the guest room, he settles in and gets some work done on his laptop he had brought with him.

When evening came around Kon still hadn’t returned. Tim ate dinner with the Kent’s, making small conversation between them before retreating for the night.

Later on Tim makes his way onto the top of the barn, he was watching the stars in the clear night sky as they dazzled brightly. The sky was always such a contrast in Kanas to Gotham, it was so clear and the air was always so fresh.

It’s about 15 minutes later when Kon appears again. He flies over to Tim on the barn and sits down beside him. They sit in silence for a good while, seeming to be unable to start up a conversation between them.

Kon’s the one to eventually start it, “So… we have a kid in the future.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s cool. Great even…”

Tim sighs and runs a hand through his hair, “Look Kon, I get that it’s weird, it’s completely unexpected, but…”

But what? How was Tim supposed to continue this incredibly awkward and forced conversation between them?

“I like you.” Kon blurts out from nowhere. Tim snaps his gaze to his best friend, both unsure and hopeful at the same time. “I like you Tim, in a way that means more than a friend. Finding out that we have a kid was great. Obviously shocking but its great. I’ve always wanted a family, yeah I found brothers between you and Bart back in Young Justice and then of course the girls joined and we all became a family. But it means a lot more in a way I can’t describe.”

“I like you too.” Tim says without thinking. “I have done for a long time, but I was so scared of ever saying anything because I didn’t think the feelings would be returned. I didn’t want to risk our friendship.”

Kon huffs out a laugh, “We’re a pair of idiots aren’t we?”

Unable to stop himself, Tim grins, “Yeah…”

They go silent for a beat or two, still not moving or doing anything with one another. The tension and awkwardness was still there but not as prominent as before.

“I wonder how we got him.” Tim comments looking up at the sky. “Did we use a surrogate? Maybe cloned him? He’s got our DNA so we didn’t adopt. “

Then for a horrific moment Tim thinks back to the time he had countlessly tried to clone Kon when he died. His heart drops at the thought, was he successful in the end? What if that kid in the med-bay was a clone Tim created out of desperation for his best friend?

A hand cupping his face and turning back to face Kon startles him from his thoughts. Seeing the way Kon’s piercing blue eyes gleam in the night make him forget about that awful time that happened so many years ago.

“Does it matter? We have a kid Tim. One of which is half you and half me. Which brings up the question how did he get injured in the first place if he has Kryptonian genes but that's a worry we’ll have in the future. But for now think we need to actually get together before we start anything kid related at all don’t you think?”

He was grinning at Tim and Tim smiles back, placing his hand above Kon’s holding his face. He licks his lips, “That may be a good start.”

No more words were spoken as they both lean in close, pressing their lips together for the first time. As they kiss Tim feels all of the tension that had built up drain out of him, he wraps his arms around Kon in a loose embrace and smiles against the Kryptonian’s lips as he feels arms wrap around his waist, bringing them closer together.

Then like that all of the awkwardness and tension bleeds out from the air around them, leaving them comfortably in peace and for the seeable future. They’ll tackle everything together as they always have done in the past, in the current present and now in the future.