A/N

I felt this story fitting as I have, once again, pulled a bloody all nighter. For Fanfiction. Again. Ahem, so, to any of you that followed Insomnia, this is a sort of spin off story, that includes lots of sleepless Bart and awesome Tim, not directly related to the other series. I was rather hesitant to post this before now, but I figured what the heck. Enjoy :)

Disclaimer: NO. Don't even ask.

Chapter 1

In Bart's shoes

It was a Tuesday morning. Bart hated those. Tuesday's were the worst. They were after Monday, which crushed you under a weeks worth of homework, and before Wednesday, so not quite past the middle of the week. Everything was scarily sluggish, from the teacher frothing at the mouth as he lectured to the uninterested population of jocks and pops (his new favorite replacement word for the 'popular' crowd), to the small grandfather clock tucked in the corner. The only reason Bart could think why an old grizzled teacher like Mr. Boor would have such a relic was that it was possibly as old as the man himself.

Absently, he tapped the end of his eraser against the plywood that was his desk, his cheek smushed into the palm of his other hand currently propping his head up. His eyes kept fluttering shut, and it was all Bart could do to keep from falling asleep, much less listen to the passionate lecture, no matter how exciting Boor thought electronegativity was.

Halfway through the speech (because this could be filed as one; it had been going for over an hour and a half) Bart had given up on taking notes, his feeble entry's notably trailing off halfway through a sentence as the speedster's head nodded off.

To say he regretted coming to school right after a Team mission would be an understatement.

Currently, he was running on...15 hours?...of sleep over that last week or so, what with his recurrent nightmares and the lack of rest during the mission.

They'd received the mission five days previously, courtesy of Batman, and had promptly spent the week scouring a deserted tropical island. It sounded nice when Bart said it like that, but that would be a lie.

Tropical islands sucked.

As far as Bart was concerned, if he never saw Hawaii again, it would be too soon. Everything from bugs to maggots to mosquitoes and rouge beasts roamed the small plot of sand, and had made it their personal mission to stalk Bart. Not Lagoon Boy or Robin or Blue Beetle; Bart.

For him, the mission consisted of vibrating 24/7 to prevent the bugs from biting him, and running for random rock clusters screaming at the top of his lungs as fun-sized wolves nipped at his heels; and by fun-sized, he meant the size of Sphere. His Teammates were super helpful, of course; they spent the whole time laughing themselves to tears at his misfortune (he couldn't have asked for better partners. If you could not read the sarcasm in that statement, then you were officially related to Superboy).

After 5 days-5 long days-of paranoia, sleeping with an eye open, and relentless nail biting, they'd found the criminal; safety nestled in a hut covered in a mosquito net, sipping a margarita from a crystal glass. Impulse had been the first one in the room, insanely cackling as he tied the crook up and hauled him back to Sphere, his body randomly lurching and his feet sporadically stumbling. Ah, the perks of being an insomniac.

Naturally, the speedster had been impatient as he waited for his Team, and because they were taking so long, he decided to run back home.

Big. Mistake.

After scribbling a quick note to inform his friends where he'd gone, Impulse popped his goggles over his eyes and took off at the speed of sound across the waves, which parted like a crowd making way for the president. Bart giggled to himself, fluttering his fingers at the reflection in the water, which grinned back impishly. And then promptly fell face first into the Arctic sea, his googles pushed down to his neck by the sheer force of the fall.

If you've never been submerged in a sea of salt water, I give you this description.

It hurts. A lot.

Imagine rubbing hot sauce in your eyes and then dumping a vat of chemicals straight over your head. Then, burying your head in a pile of sand and not being able to breathe. That would be something close to what Bart was feeling.

Speaking of which, the burnet popped to the surface with a ragged scream, rubbing his eyes furiously as he tried to dislodge a piece of salt which firmly held onto the corner of his eye. Desperately, he vibrated his molecules at the same frequency that would allow to pass through a wall; and, of course, with unexpected results.

The salt water slipped away (thank the time-traveling speedster gods above!), but he shot like a rocket to the bottom of the sea.

Oh, yay. A Bart-zooka. What a wonderful new use he was discovering for his abilities.

His body still flickering in and out of existence, Bart kicked his legs as fast as he could, flying forward and through rocks. After a few seconds, Bart realized that air was essential to human survival and rose to the surface, slowly raising up until he was, once again, running on water. That would never stop being crash (sometimes literally).

Finally, after another exhausting hour of running and randomly appearing on land on what he assumed was the United States, Bart arrived back at Happy Harbor, speeding through a wall, not even bothering with the access code.

He sped past a surprised Nightwing and down the hall, straight through his door and crashed on his bed, ignoring his sweaty and bloody uniform, conking out almost immediately.

And was cheerfully woken up 4 hours later by his blasted alarm clock he'd insisted Uncle Barry buy him ("Everybody in the Cave has one!"). Groaning, the speedster blindly attempted to hit the snooze button and spectacularly failed, falling over the side of his bed with a yelp.

He was cocooned in his pile of blankets (there was never such a luxury in the future), his arms and legs flailing about as he attempted to escape his self-created prison. In his wild flurry of action, he managed to turn himself completely around and hit his head on his nightstand. Bart groaned; the alarm clock gleefully blared Farrell's Happy, reminding him that he had a lecture to attend-if he missed another one, Boor was going to kick him out of AP Chemistry.

Sometimes, the Universe hated him.

Very, very reluctantly, Bart pulled himself to his feet, stumbling through his door-he wondered why Nughtwing even bothered making him one-making sure to only take a reasonable portion from the breakfast platter M'gann had created (he didn't want to be greedy, and the angry glares he received every time we're just to reminiscent of...him). He raced out of the Cave, splurging the rest of his pocket change at a ratty hamburger drive-through.

On his run to Central City high school, the meaty-calorie-filled patties were unceremoniously shoved in his mouth, zipping by Uncle Barry's house to quickly change into a pair of kaki shorts and a red hoodie with the caption: My Grandpa runs faster than you! Running boots were exchanged for fire resistant sneakers, and then the time traveler was off, barely skidding into the schools parking lot before the tardy bell rang. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, Bart vibrated through the wall and into his seat, just in time to yell "Here!" when Boor called his name. A few groans echoed when his voice echoed through the spacey room, and Bart sunk down further in his chair, hiding further behind the backpack clutched in his lap.

A lot of kids at Central High disliked Bart for reasons beyond the speedster. He'd never done anything to offend any of them-they just didn't like him (which hurt more than he'd like to admit).

So. This brings us back to that moment when Bart was hopelessly losing the battle to sleep deprivation. His eyes glued themselves shut and his head slowly slid itself forwards, itching to lay down on the (rough, pinewood, familiar) desk. Boor's voice became one of the many murmurs surrounding him, a faint hum at the back of his mind. Just a few minutes-that couldn't hurt anything, could it?

"-to introduce Tim Drake!"

Bart's head slipped off his hand and he hit his chin painfully on the edge of his desk. But none of that mattered-the snickering of his classmates, the crying of his bruised skin-because what in the world was Robin doing here?

"What the mode did I miss," Bart muttered to himself, rubbing his chin as he stared at his smirking Teammate with wide eyes.

"As I was saying," Boor continued, glaring at Bart harshly before smiling at Tim with his cracked tooth poking out just slightly, "Mr. Drake is our welcomed guest this semester, seeing as his high school was annihilated a few days ago. Please treat him with respect and show him the friendliness of Central City High!"

Bart's eyes were still wide as he stared at his friend in panic; fans stared at him in awe, some of the pops oohed and ahhed over him, and the jocks cracked their knuckles with menacing snarls promising the Boy Wonder a world of pain. But the ebony continued to smirk, his blue eyes twinkling at Bart as if the two of them were sharing a joke.

Bart was not amused.

A/N

Hope y'all liked! All the speedsters and Bat's are my favorite characters...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Oh! And don't forget to vote on my poll for which story I should write next. One is currently in the lead...

Kisses!

Alyss