Until the End of the World
Title: Until the End of the World
Author: Sister Wolf
Fandom: DCU (Teen Titans)
Pairing: Tim/Kon
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Major spoilers for Teen Titans v.3, issues 17-19.
fanfic100 prompt 03: ends.



“Wake up, Conner.”

Fuck, his head hurts. Conner groans and tries to lift a hand to rub at his eyes, but he’s brought up short by... chains? The hell? What idiot thought he could hold Superman with chains? Conner reaches out with his TK, ready to break them into their component pieces, and is hit by a familiar wave of weakness and nausea. Fucking kryptonite.

His eyes snap open. “What the-- what the fuck?“

He’s chained, spread-eagled, to a table. Someplace dark and damp-- a cave. But not the Batcave, he doesn’t think. Then Batman steps out of the shadows, and Conner’s filled with too much rage to try to reason it out any more. That fucking freak. Pa had tried to warn him that Batman needed to be taken down. He should’ve listened.

“Struggling isn’t going to do you any good. I’ve... improved... my kryptonite supply.” Tim stands next to the table, arms crossed under the cape, expression unreadable.

Conner glares at him. “What do you want,” he demands flatly.

The side of Tim’s mouth quirks. “That’s a very complicated question. Mainly-- things that I haven’t wanted in a very, very long time. Kon.”

Conner yanks at the chains again. There must be kryptonite worked into the metal-- he’s going to kill Tim. “I stopped using that name a long time ago.”

“Call me nostalgic.” Tim raises a hand to the cowl, then freezes suddenly, tipping his head to one side as if he’s listening to something. “Can’t you feel it changing?”

“Feel what changing?” He really should have listened to Pa when he’d urged Conner to kill Tim and take over control of the Titans. He let sentimentality get in the way. As Pa would say (has said, many times), ‘Your persistent belief in the importance of friendship is your Achilles’ heel, Kon-El.’

“The kids went back in time and they changed their future, Kon. In a little while-- maybe a few hours, maybe only a few minutes-- all of this, all that we know, will never have happened.”

“And the timestream will repair itself and we’ll stop existing, yadda yadda. I was at the briefing, Tim. So why this? Why’d you bother capturing me, if we’re about to disappear anyway?”

“I started... remembering things. Things that never happened.” Tim slips the cowl and cape off, revealing blue eyes that Conner hasn’t seen in... he can’t even remember how long.

“So you’re delusional,” Conner sneers.

“Delusional?” Tim hops up onto the table (still too light and agile to really be Batman, Conner’s always thought) and sits next to him, knees drawn up, elbows resting on his knees. “If anything, I feel more-- sane-- than I have in almost a decade.”

“You’re a head-case, Tim. Always have been.”

“Always?” Tim ducks his head and half-smiles, and Conner can almost see the shadow of a dark green mask around his eyes. “That’s what we said once. Don’t you remember? Always, Kon.”

Conner thunks his head back on the table and stares up at the shadows of the ceiling. “No. I don’t know what you’re...” Except that suddenly he does, and it’s as if he’s opened up a slideshow of vacation photos he can’t remember taking.

Tim, smiling at him, blue eyes crinkled at the corners. Tim, waking up in the sunlight, head pillowed on Kon’s outstretched arm. Tim, eyes dark and lost with passion, kiss-swollen mouth moving with words that Kon can’t quite make out, until suddenly he can-- he remembers-- “Always.”

“You remember,” Tim breathes. He’s slipped off his gauntlets, at some point, and his bare hand cups the side of Kon’s face.

There’s a clicking noise, and suddenly the manacles around Conner’s wrists release. The chains clatter to the table as he lunges to catch Tim by the wrists and flip him onto his back. One hand around Tim’s throat, the other holding his wrists, Conner glares down at him and growls, “I should kill you for this.”

Tim smirks. “What’s the point? We’re about to stop existing anyway.” His eyes are still and watchful. Conner tightens his fingers on Tim’s throat. One squeeze, and--

“Always,” Tim whispers, trying to smile at him. Half of his face is seared down to blackened muscle, and Kon desperately focuses on his one remaining eye, watching involuntary tears of pain cut tracks through the ashes on Tim’s face. “Always,” Tim mouths to him as Kon batters helplessly at the forcefield between them, watching Tim’s body convulse from lack of air and then slowly go limp, floating in the dark, cold water. “Always,” Tim tries to say, coughing bloody foam from his lungs. Kon frantically tries to stem the flow of blood from multiple gunshot wounds with his bare hands, but he can’t, there’s too much--

And ten years of anger-- of hopelessness, of compromises for ‘the greater good’-- seem to thin and fray, as it gets harder and harder to remember what really happened.

“You remember.” Tim slips his hands from Kon’s weakened grasp, resting them lightly on Kon’s chest, tracing the edges of the S-shield with his thumbs.

“I remember, but-- jesus, Tim,” Kon laughs brokenly, “I almost wish I didn’t.”

“Too late. You feel it? It’s all unraveling, Kon. Just a few minutes more--”

“No.” As he kisses Tim, as he clutches him with hands and body and TK, he can feel it all starting to fade away. The world is glowing at the edges, turning white, everything beyond this moment, this kiss, disappearing into nothingness. “No--”

“Kon.” Tim pulls back, staring into his eyes. His eyes are blue, so blue, and they’re all that’s left as Kon falls into nothingness, and as the world ends he can hear Tim say, a thousand times and one,

Always.

***