fear another dawn

A/N: Tim is not always depressing, he really isn't, but he was in a bad place when the universe ended, so this is how we remember him. And Titans of Tomorrow was kind of a major turning point for his characterization, in retrospect.

Having major writer's block, so it's time to do fiddly editing on things that were already almost finished. ^^;

You are dreaming.

You know (hope) you are dreaming: you're wearing your costume, the same one you wear most of your waking hours, black cowl pressing over your cheekbones, sweat building up the way it never did under the domino, bandoliers heavy across your chest, armor almost comforting around your shoulders, like an embrace.

The roofs of Gotham cut jaggedly across the light-polluted sky, and they are unfamiliar, but not as unfamiliar as they should be. As you wish they were. Nine years are so very short, even to you who have packed a lifetime into adolescence—and really it is closer to seven, now.

You hope you are dreaming, because he is beside you, in a cape as dark as yours, and even without the gun (one single, simple handgun, not an armory) hung at his side you would know he is not your Batman. Not Bruce, and not Dick either. (Not even poor, shattered Jean-Paul who sharpened his fingers into knives and beat you down as his madness devoured him.) Not even Jason who has never been yours and will never be Batman.

He is there, in his own black cowl, watching you, and you know more deeply than you ever have awake that you are not Robin anymore.

It feels almost as if you never really were. But then who are you? (We're still heroes, you said to him; you, your team, your friends. You were still heroes. What are you now?)

He turns his back on you and you should be glad but you can't. And when he begins to run, you (follow) chase.

It's not quite your old patrol route, even accounting for the way you varied that route wildly to avoid being predictable. You always swung past the 7-11 on Kingsbridge because it never stopped being a popular meetup place for shady deals, and that business survived No Man's Land but it's a burnt empty lot now. He doesn't quite move like he's patrolling, anyway. But he isn't running away from you, either.

A police car trundles along below, and he pauses, holds his jump until it's turned the corner, only then crosses the street in a single leap.

You follow, and wonder why you let him hold you back. Why you joined him in hiding. Habit, because he looks like Batman? Or guilt by association?

The relationship between law and vigilante in Gotham has often soured, but he made Batman a murderer.

"Why do you stay here?" you ask. Your voice comes out thin, whispering. As though perhaps you are not dreaming, but a dream.

He looks at you, the same weightless scorn with which he met all your protestations when you first met him. "This is my city," he says. "I stayed through Cataclysm, as long as I was allowed, and came back even though I knew it was hell. Do you think this would move me?"

Protest rises into your mouth, that that was you, who stayed through Cataclysm, who faced the harshness of No Man's Land. Your loyalty, your determination, your shattered city. That he cannot claim your sacrifices as his own.

But he can. That is the whole point. He is you, even if you are not him.

All that separates the two of you is your decision. Your determination not to become him. And that was not enough, not by itself; he came back again for all your oaths and certainty, for all the deaths that should have knocked his world off-course; he came back anyway, like inevitability, and sometimes when you go to bed without being tired enough that sleep swallows you instantly, you worry that if you could look forward down the timestream he would still be there—

"You're the leader of Titans West," you point out, perfectly casual. Who would expect the head of an empire to spend his life as a fugitive on the far coast of enemy territory?

More than half of what used to be the United States is under the hold of that deformed thing that was once a hero team; more than half of the people you thought you could trust with the world are helping maintain that abomination, as Raven drinks the will to rebel and every other feeling out of their subjects.

You're sure they think they're doing the right thing. You're sure they think it's for the greater good.

That's what's so terrifying.

"And when they need me, they'll call," he says, and oh. You understand. That kind of leader.

He's not in control of anything at all, is he.

You remember poor, brave, twisted Jean Paul. You were so proud of him, at first. His determination to defy what they tried to make him, to become a hero; to fight his way out from under the crushing demands of the System. To protect instead of kill, and be nobody's weapon. You taught him everything you could and encouraged him, and…in retrospect, it all went wrong long before he became Batman. Sometime between when he started spending so much time in the Cave, working out, and when he ditched his glasses for contacts. By the time he asked you to cut off his hair (he loved his hair) the situation was already out of control.

You should have known. You should have done something.

Bruce gave him the cowl, and left. Without a word. And you know it was because he was trying to save your dad, because he didn't think he could be useful with his broken back, because he trusted both of you, but. Your whole purpose was to save Batman from himself, and Jean Paul wouldn't let you. He built a literal, physical wall to keep you out. And even then you thought, maybe—but he beat you down, and bloodied himself to the elbow night after night.

Those claws. Like the grinning bloodied teeth of Jason's Batman and the bark of his guns. And you said once with all your soul you can't just let Batman and Robin die and you still mean it, but you've seen the abominations that come to be when someone who cannot, should not be Batman takes on the role.

So even though someone has to do it, it can't ever be you. (You tried anyway. Broke your word. Of course you failed. Of course you fell. Of course it cost you everything.)

You stop, and he stops, too. Turns to face you. The cape snaps in the wind, and if it weren't for the gun hanging from his belt—he'd look right. He's changed nothing else. Added no personal touches. He looks the same, just slightly smaller. It's Batman.

You hate that about him most of all.

"You need a Robin," you tell him. You didn't mean to. Because he isn't really Batman. Doesn't deserve to be treated like it.

He shrugs. "No one's offered," he says. And.

Oh God.

He's you. You knew he was. And yet.

Yet.

...you pray you really are just dreaming.