Got Chaos (BtVS/Teen Titans crossover, PG) 1/2
Title: Got Chaos
Summary: "Without my friends I got chaos/I'm often a bead of light./Without my friends I'd be swept up high by the wind."
Media: Teen Titans v.3 & BtVS
Characters: Bart, Lagoon Boy, Kon, Devon, Cass, Steph, Oz & Tim.
Rating: PG
Timeline/setting: TEEN TITANS v.3 #15
Spoilers: TT #15, IMPULSE #50, and SUPERBOY #51; "New Moon Rising" (4x19) and "Chosen" (7x22).
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Notes: Title and summary from Big Star's "Thank You Friends". Forever ago, I started this for my beloved eccentrici. Two of her birthdays and Bartday have passed, but I've finished and revised it for IMG Day. Great thanks to oneangrykate for the inspiration and thenotoriousg for the beta.
Generally speaking, Bart's problem was not that he didn't think, but that he had trouble concentrating. He was thinking all the time, but it was about everything. All at once, too much, everything. Concentration meant that he should have been thinking about one thing, two at most, at a time.
He wasn't sure if this was, actually, a problem per se. It was a problem for other people -- Jay and Wally, mostly, and sometimes Linda -- but not really for him.
Except when it was. A problem, that is.
The sun was almost finished setting on Sunday night, but he was still out on the path near Kory's garden, skating hard.
Skating helped him concentrate; it was just about the only thing that did. It wasn't like running, which took him over and left no space beyond motion. It was slower than running; he had to focus on turns and flips, lest he fall.
He had a lot -- too much -- to concentrate on, to think all the way through, lately.
Bart knew it wasn't fair, how he still couldn't think of the Titans as a real team. As his team. Cassie and Kon and Tim, they were his team. So while Kory and Vic were really nice, Gar was as weird as he ever was and Raven just plain scared him.
It just wasn't the same. Not like how it was.
Thinking like this just made him feel crummy. He wasn't being fair to any of the new people, to the Titans legacy, to anyone.
In the back of his mind, he could hear Max's voice saying, "Whoever said life was fair?" and he grinned.
That wasn't what Max had meant, of course, but Bart was willing to take it. Even if the Tim-face in his mind's eye was glowering at him. Besides, Tim had been gone for going on two weekends now. Maybe three, if he counted this weekend as over.
At any rate, there wasn't anyone to look at him funny for thinking selfishly.
In the old days, Cassie would have, but she wasn't in charge any more. And his last several conversations with her, when he tried to talk to her about these crummy feelings, had gone really creepily. "Look, Bart, I've got a lot on my mind, okay? Can this wait?" she would usually say, then wrap that weird lasso around her hand before going back to whatever sparring dummy she was currently destroying.
Kon! He could see if Kon was still around and talk to him. Kon would never yell at him for being selfish. Plus, like Bart, Kon tended to linger around the Tower on Sunday nights until the last possible moment.
Bart kicked his board up into his hand and ran up the side of the Tower. On the way, he peeked into Kon's window, but the room was empty and dark. He ran faster until he hit the roof.
Just like he'd hoped, Kon was there. Sitting on the edge of the roof, kicking his heels against a strut and staring out over the Bay. From the back, he looked huge, made up of shoulders and nothing else.
"Hey!" Bart dropped his board and ran across to join Kon. "You're still here, I was hoping you'd be, but I've got crummy luck lately, so --"
"Bart," Kon said flatly.
He didn't turn to look at Bart, or even rock over to knock against Bart's shoulder like he used to.
That would be just a part of the crummy luck that Barded been having lately.
"Kon," Bart replied, keeping his voice as cheerful as he could. "Staying late?"
"Looks that way," Kon said. "How about you?"
Bart pulled one knee up and planted his chin on it. The wind off the Bay was chilly. "Not sure." He had the week off from school, but he had no idea how he was going to survive the quiet of five days in the Garricks' house. "Keystone, I guess."
Neither of them said anything for a while.
Bart's calves were jittering; he couldn't tell if that was from the cold or the need to run. Just in case, he buzzed down to his room and yanked a pair of long-johns on under his cargo shorts.
When Bart returned to the roof, Kon hadn't moved. He eyed Bart, then recrossed his arms. "My school's out for a week, so..."
Bart couldn't believe his luck. "Your school's in Kansas, too?"
"What?" Kon pulled in his shoulders. "I didn't say that!"
Bart grinned. "Everybody's off. Statewide teachers' development week. I think it has something to do with evolution and all that, but nobody will go on record to confirm or deny." He tugged the cuffs of his sweatshirt over his hands and knocked Kon's shoulder with his own. Kon was immovable, though, like a rock. "This is so cool! You want to hang out?"
Kon's smile moved a lot slower these days, but at least he was smiling now. "Yeah, that'd be good."
"Cool." It wasn't that Bart was glad that Tim wasn't around -- it really wasn't that, he missed Tim a heck of a lot -- but if it meant that Kon's available for hanging like he used to be, then it was like a silver lining.
"I don't necessarily live in Kansas, you know," Kon muttered.
"Of course not," Bart said quickly. "Maybe you go to that school in Florida. The one that fell into the sinkhole."
Kon lifted his chin. "Maybe I do."
"Could be anywhere," Bart added, in case Kon needed even more reassurance. "So. What do you want to do? We could go to that rave you were always -- hee. Raving about."
"Can't. Shut down," Kon said. "A while ago."
"Oh. Hey, I know! We could go to Tokyo! To Akihabara! I really want to try some pachinko, some of them have betting operations, we could make a ton of money --"
Kon smiled at that, but his eyes still looked sad. "We could, but --"
Bart slumped a little. "We'd probably get in trouble."
"Probably, yeah."
It was weird, now that Bart thought about it, how possibilities kept contracting now that they were getting older. Most people wanted to grow up so they have more freedom, but it was the opposite for them.
"Hey, I know! We could go to DC, to the Library of Congress, and --"
Kon threw his arm across Bart's chest like he was a passenger in a car about to crash. "If you say anything that remotely involves reading in any way whatsoever, I will hit you."
Bart leaned back. "Just an idea."
"I'm a geek five days out of every week," Kon said darkly. "Not on my vacation. No way."
"Reading doesn't make you a geek!" Bart ducked preemptively, then ran to the opposite corner of the roof. When he was out of range, he added, "Does it?"
On his feet now, looking at Bart like he was an alien, Kon just shook his head. "Usually, yeah."
"Oh." Bart lapped the roof several times, then stopped short, spraying the gravel as he skidded. "But so what?"
Frowning, Kon crossed his arms. "Whaddaya mean, 'so what'?"
"There's a lot worse things than being a geek," Bart said. He tried to be as patient as possible. "You could be, you could be -- Deathstroke. Or in the League of Assassins! Mirror Master --"
Kon snorted. "Mirror Master's a geek."
Jogging in place, Bart tried to process that. "Is he?"
Grinning, Kon spread his arms. "Class-A geek. All the Rogues are."
"Nuh-uh!"
Kon nodded sagely. He kind of looked like Tim when he did that, only goofy. "Uh-huh."
"What about Captain Cold? He's pretty hardcore --"
Kon snorted, fake-punching Bart's shoulder. "Hardcore geek, maybe. Guy wears a baby-blue parka, Bart."
Hands on his hips, Bart circled Kon. "Fine. You could be...um. Luthor. That's way worse, a million-gazillion times worse, than being a geek."
Kon's arms dropped to his sides as he backed up against the door.
He looked at Bart for -- Bart was pretty sure it was a really, really long time, however you measured it. Finally, Kon's expression kind of slid together and crumpled. He slipped down the wall until he was lying spread out on the roof. Knocking his head against the gravel, one arm covering his eyes, he started to chant, "I hate my life. I hate my life. I. Hate. My. Li-ife."
While the chanting went on and on and on, Bart circled Kon at a safe distance.
Hesitantly, he nudged Kon's leg with the toe of his sneaker. "Is this, um. Teenaged angst?"
Scissoring open his fingers, Kon peeked at him. "Shut up, Bart."
"It looks like angst." Bart dropped down to one knee. "Don't worry, though. Most people your -- your apparent age, they go through it. Everything seems hopeless and pointless and stuff like that, but it's just the hormones, so --"
"Bart?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up. Seriously." That tone Kon used, it had to be something else he borrowed from Tim. Dark and flat, full of warning, it wasn't anything like Kon's usual voice.
Bart's pager sounded, beeping out the theme from "A Summer Place". Groaning, Kon rolled over onto his stomach.
After checking the screen, Bart whooped and shook Kon's arm. "Hey! It's Lagoon Boy!"
As he pawed the gravel out of his hair and sat up, Kon frowned slightly. "You still keep in touch with him?"
"Sure I do. He was doing an exchange program out in the Marianas Trench last year, really cool stuff, full of --" Bart stopped, biting his lip when he realized that Kon was circling his hand, urging him to get to the point. "Anyway! He's back now and he wants to hang out. Wanna hang out?"
He wanted to urge Kon to say yes, but you couldn't push Kon. It wasn't just the TTK and Superman-big body, it was Kon's whole rebel, free-spirit thing. And lately, especially, he was just so crabby all the time. Push him too hard and he might haul off and kick Bart halfway across the Bay.
Settling for (attempted) telepathy, Bart beamed a big Vegas-neon sign that said YES in bright red script towards Kon.
Kon rubbed his face. "Don't do that."
"Do what?" Bart asked carefully. While it would be amazing if the telepathy actually worked, he wasn't so sure he wanted Kon being able to read all his thoughts. Especially the ones about Cassie. Not to mention other stuff.
"Big calf eyes." Kon pointed at him and sighed. "It's creepy without your goggles."
Blinking hard, Bart touched his face. How'd Kon know what a calf's eyes looked like, anyway? He shook himself and tried to focus. "Oh. Sorry. So! You want to go?"
*
Lagoon Boy wouldn't tell them where they were going. He just told them to head south. He promised that they'd love it, and also that they wouldn't get in trouble. So after quick phone-calls home -- Bart tried not to notice that Kon dialed a Kansas area code -- they were off.
Down the Pacific, Kon carrying Lagoon Boy while Bart ran just below them over the water. The night sky, this far from land, was filled with stars. Funny how ancient light could look so new and sharp.
Carried by Kon, Lagoon Boy kept twisting around to talk to him as they flew south. Skimming the waves with his toes, Bart was halfway-listening, half-commenting, all the way enjoying.
"So then the Land Lovers broke up, because Sheeva got interested in alternative humpback music, started following the Grateful Kelp around, and then Blubber's family moved to Sub Diego, so it was just me and having meetings by myself got a little boring, so --"
Salt-spray kept getting in Bart's nose and eyes, but he figured that was all part of the atmosphere and tried not to sneeze too hard.
"Blubber has parents?" Kon asked. "That robot-whale guy?"
"Sure he does!" Lagoon Boy said. He was bigger than Bart remembered him being. His head-fin was much spikier, his limbs thicker with muscle. Everyone was changing. "His mom's a baleen and his dad's a --"
"Chevy?" Kon said.
"Ha! Good one!" Laughing, Bart kicked up a good wave that soaked Kon's jeans to the knee.
"Watch it, speedy --" Wrapping one arm around LB's waist, Kon shook his fist at Bart.
LB hooted nasally. "This is so cool, guys! Sucks that Robin couldn't come, but --"
Without replying, Kon broke left and rose in the air, looking over his shoulder and daring Bart to follow.
Bart started to give chase, but all of a sudden found himself running aground on a rocky outcropping he hadn't noticed. With a yelp, he stumbled to a stop, knees dragging in sharp gravel, water burning his eyes.
"Smooth move, Ex Lax." Kon hovered a foot above him, smirking, offering his hand.
"We're here!" Lagoon Boy called. "It's just around this cove --"
"Ow," Bart said. He ignored Kon's offer of help and pulled himself up to his feet. "Where are we?"
The beach he'd crashed into was hardly a beach at all. It was really just ten feet of broken shells and black sand that curved up to a narrow stand of wind-twisted trees. Far to the right, the night sky was a little paler, a wavering patch of dark blue and deep rose.
Kon held a finger to his lips and gestured at Bart to be quiet.
From the same direction as the patch of lit sky, music tinkled, then strengthened.
Together, they turned to Lagoon Boy.
He gestured widely, his webbed fingers outspread and head-fin trembling erect as he beamed at them.
"It's Cabaret on the Half-Shell!" he crowed. "A-Number One gathering spot for land-dwellers and aquatic citizens alike! If you love music, you'll love the cabaret! C'mon, it's just getting started!"
They followed him up the rocky beach, through the trees, and down a shorter rise to a nicer beach. Soft sand, pink and gold in the light from bonfires and lanterns, embraced a small cove. Land-dwellers danced on the sand while aquatic creatures -- fish-people and Atlantean maidens and spiny sentient urchins that Bart had only read about, never seen -- milled in the water.
Kon tugged at his shirt and combed his hair back with his fingers. "Ex-cellent," he breathed when a nacreous-skinned selkie waitress offered him a flagon of something. "I like, LB. I like."
"El-bee, ha!" Bart said. His palms were still a little raw, and he was pretty sure that his hair was a mess, but it wasn't like anyone would notice. Not when he was standing next to Kon. He knocked Lagoon Boy in the ribs. "Elbow! Get it?"
Lagoon Boy grimaced. "Like I haven't heard that one before."
"Right, well," Kon announced. "I'll leave you two youngsters now so I can..." He licked his lips as he gazed around the crowd. "Make some new friends."
LB. cocked his head interrogatively, so Bart stage-whispered, "He means girls."
"Oh, right," LB. said. "There's lots of girls here."
Kon strode away. Bart watched him move through the crowd, cocky and tall. He knew that -- as Kon frequently pointed out -- he could probably learn a lot.
Mostly, however, he just wanted to laugh. It wasn't that Kon wasn't handsome and confident -- he was all of that plus, like, chips and drippy nacho cheese -- but that he knew he was. So Bart narrated Kon's flirtation to LB. in his best Ricardo Montalban accent, complete with gropey, grabby hand gestures. Pretty soon they were rolling around on the sand and getting in trouble with the waitresses.
They played in the water for a while, but it wasn't much fun having hold-your-breath contests against a guy with gills. Bart tried to get Lagoon Boy to play Walker, Texas Ranger, but there were too many people in the crowd, and they kept hushing Bart whenever he shouted. There was tons of free food, however, so he took some consolation from that.
When a dark-haired Atlantean slapped Kon's cheek for some remark -- Bart was too far away to hear what it was, but he figured it was Kon's usual come-hither grossness -- Kon returned to Bart's side.
"Women," he said.
"Women," Bart echoed. He tried to make it sound world-weary and knowing. When Kon snorted with laughter, though, that meant he'd failed.
"Sorry, man," Kon said and stole the bowl of kelp chips from Bart's lap. "Where's our green buddy?"
Bart straightened up, scanning the crowd for Lagoon Boy. "He's around here somewhere..."
Down in the water, someone started to sing. The voice was kind of scratchy, but melodic all the same, and the singer --.
"Whoa," Kon said under his breath. "Hot time in the waves tonight."
"She's pretty!" Bart said before he could stop himself. Surrounded by the pink-lit waves, a golden mermaid was singing as she bobbed. Her hair looked like cornsilk and autumn leaves, curling off her face and down her neck; under the water, her tail moved like a carp in a monastery pond, slow and intent.
"I think she's a he," Kon whispered.
Bart ran around the crowd, down the short pier, and squinted at the mermaid. The breeze of his wake blew back her hair, off her chest, and, yes, she was a guy. A very pretty guy, though, with kohl around his eyes and a wide, smiling mouth.
"He's pretty!" Bart said, dropping back down beside Kon. "What's that song?"
"Dunno." Kon cocked his head and made a thinky face. "Bowie? Maybe?"
"He's a glammaid! No, a, a --. A merglam."
When he grinned, Kon's teeth looked like seashells in the low light. "Andro-mer? Mersparkle. Merdude."
Bart started giggling and couldn't stop. Kon tickled him, right under his hairline at the back of his neck, and then Bart really laughed, rolling around in the sea grass and wriggling.
He hadn't had this much fun in an eon and a half, it felt like. If Tim suddenly popped up in the cove, the night would be perfect.
It might happen. It could. There was probably a whole fleet of Bat-subs.
Bart was starting to shiver again. He'd gotten wet and dried out several times over by the time the cabaret broke up and Lagoon Boy gallumphed over to them.
"Did you like it? Did you have a good time? I'm having a great time, how about that music, I loved it! I had no idea my friends were so talented! So! What did you think?"
"I think..." Kon tossed his head, the move he once used to move the S-curl off his forehead, except his hair was too short now to shift, let alone curl. "I think you talk almost as fast as Bart."
Lagoon Boy's fangs shone as he hooted. "Thanks!"
"It wasn't..."
Bart grabbed Lagoon Boy's dorsal fin with both hands and shook to get his attention. "Do you know the mermaid-who's-not-a-maid?"
LB's eyelids moved upward as he blinked. "Who, Devon?"
"Can we meet him, please-please?" Bart bounced on his toes and tried telepathy again.
"Yeah," Kon said. "Let's."
As LB led them through the crowd, Bart tugged on the back of Kon's shirt. "You like girls, right?"
Kon slung his arm around Bart's shoulders and pulled him in. "I like people, young padawan."
Bart stopped short. "Did you get into the seahorse sperm?"
Kon tilted his head and smiled. With the flush on his cheeks and glitter to his eyes, it seemed entirely possible that Kon had partaken of the Atlantean aphrodisiac.
"Nah," Kon said finally and pulled Bart along. "Stuff tastes like -- well, it tastes like sperm."
"Gross," Bart agreed and Kon messed up his hair. "But do you like guys? You're acting like --"
"Gender's irrelevant," Kon announced airily. "You'll learn that if you ever hit puberty."
"I hit it! I --" Bart clamped his mouth shut as they bumped up against LB, who was talking excitedly to an eel-woman with scary black eyes the size of Bart's fists.
"Let 'em in, Morae," the merman called. Between Kon's bulk, LB's quivering fin, and the eel-woman, Bart could only make out the glints of moonlight on Devon's long hair. "Are they cool?"
"Devon!" LB pushed past the eel and caught Kon by the elbow. "Haven't seen you in a whale's age!"
The merman floated back on his elbows, tail swishing under the water, as he checked them out from under heavy-lidded eyes. "LB," he said, his voice a slow California drawl, "I thought you'd given up groupie-ing."
LB blew out a series of giggles from his gills and shook his head. "I did, I just wanted you to meet my friends. This is Kon --"
"-- Conner," Kon put in hastily and clamped his hand down on Bart's shoulder. "We're, uh. Big fans. Hi."
Unless he vibrated, which wasn't an option, what with secret identities and everything, Bart couldn't move out from under Kon's grip. He waved his hand. "Hi, I'm Bart!" At the name, Kon dug his fingers into Bart's shoulder. "What?" Bart whispered. "It's my name."
Kon just shook his head and sat down on the pier. "Don't pay any attention to Bart," he said to Devon. "It's way past his bedtime."
"Hey!" Bart protested, but LB grinned, showing his fangs, and feinted left, knocking Bart into the water. And he'd just started to dry out, too. When he surfaced, spitting out salt water and shaking his head like a dog, he saw Kon leaning forward, chin in hand, talking to Devon intently. He looked around for LB and found him floating next to Devon, chittering and hooting.
Bart tread water for a bit, growing more bored by the millisecond, and he was just about to dive again and go find something else to do when Devon slapped him lightly with his tail and crooked his finger, beckoning him in.
"What's your story, short stuff?" he asked as his tail curved around the back of Bart's knees and dragged him closer. The scales tickled against Bart's skin, but pleasantly, like the wind did at the end of a good long run. "You always hang around ruffians and jocks?"
"I'm not a jock," Kon said, but Devon, with his arm around Bart's shoulders, waved him off.
"He really isn't," Bart said. This close, crowded up against Devon's side, he could see every detail of Devon's face -- the long lashes dark with water, the kohl around his lids, a bit of sunburn right at the tip of his long nose. "He just gets obnoxious when he's --" Bart chuckled. "I was going to say when he's flirting, but really it's when he's awake."
Behind him, Kon growled, while LB giggled. Devon, however, just looked intently at Bart as a slow, wide smile scrolled over his face. "Interesting," he said, though his tone said it was anything but. "But I asked about you..."
He trailed off, one corner of his lips tilting up as he tipped his head. Bart blinked; the sting of ocean water intensified, then vanished, and his chest was asthmatically tight. Even though he was floating in the shallows, back against one of the beams supporting the pier, snugly supported by Devon, he felt suddenly weightless, then heavy as a boulder, and the whoosh of vertigo rocked him hard.
He hadn't felt this woozy and strange since he took Cissie to the Valentine's Day dance, since he kissed Carol, since he saw Tim kissing Spoiler. He thought that maybe he wanted to kiss Devon -- his mouth was very pretty, plump and pink as some of his tail's scales -- but when he moved in, he heard himself talking instead.
"What's it like being a mermaid? Merman? What's the correct term? Do you prefer mer-person? It looks like fun, but I guess there's a kind of tragic element to it, right? Because you're caught between two worlds and you don't really fit in either and --"
Devon started laughing when Kon did, and ducked Bart under the water, then pulled him back by the hair.
"What was that for?" Bart sneezed and Kon thumped him on the back.
"Suave, Bart, real suave." Kon's voice sounded light and full of laughter, the way it always used to, and after Bart bit back a stream of complaints, he realized that a little dunking was well worth it if it made Kon sound like that.
"Dude," Devon said to Bart. "Dude, what are you on?"
Bart looked around. "Water?"
He wasn't sure he wanted to kiss Devon any more. Not with the way he was laughing, high-fiving Kon over Bart's head, telling LB that his friends were mega-rad. Devon was very pretty, but it was starting to occur to Bart that he was also kind of...flighty. This was all pretty confusing.
To work off the confusion, thoughts firing from about forty-eight different directions, Bart swam around the small island twice and ran over the water once he was out of sight. On his way back, he grabbed a nearly-full bowl of snacks from the empty bar before rejoining the group at the pier.
Devon had one arm folded behind his head, his hair floating like golden kelp on the surface, as he stared up at the sky. He was telling a story, and there didn't seem to be any chance of getting laughed at, so Bart dropped cross-legged next to Kon and listened as he munched the popped coral corn.
"...me and Oz, we're living on this houseboat, right near Long Beach," Devon was saying.
"Who's Oz?" Bart whispered to Kon, but Kon hushed him.
Devon's eyes fluttered open. "My guy. Oz." He said the name as if its import was self-evident, so Bart just nodded, the way he'd do when Vic delivered insanely-complicated training regimens.
"Anyway, we've got it pretty sweet there, and we're getting another band together, just living the good life. This chick comes to stay with us. some friend of a friend of Oz's, pale little skank. Albino, almost, she was whiter than --" He grinned and pointed at Kon. "You. So, okay, crowded quarters, but mi boatcasa es su boatcasa, you know?"
"Sure," Bart said; it was the verbal equivalent of his I don't follow nod, but since Devon seemed to be performing and expecting audience participation, it was only polite. "I don't think boatcasa is a word --"
Kon elbowed him sharply in the ribs and said to Devon, "Go on. Pay no attention to the smartass beside me."
Bart tossed a handful of coral corn at him for that, but Kon just opened his mouth and used a little TTK to draw the kernels onto his tongue. Devon didn't seem to notice; his voice had dropped again and his face tightened.
"It's all chill, me and Oz and Vampira or whoever, until the day she went -- loco. Mucho loco --" As Devon drew himself up, frowning and shaking his head at the memory, Kon elbowed Bart before he could correct the Spanglish again. "Crazycookies, she was just -- ha! Batshit. And that's when it all went to hell."
He broke off, his head down, hair hanging over his face.
"Dude," Kon said, gently, like he was coaxing a cat out of a tree. "What happened?"
Devon tossed back his hair, water arcing off it and spattering LB's intent face. Even his head fin had gone still. "Yeah, what happened?"
"Look, it wasn't my fault," Devon said.
"What wasn't?" LB put in. He sounded breathless.
Bart rocked back and forth, kicking out his legs and letting them dangle over the edge of the pier. No one was saying anything; a gloomy hush had descended over everyone, and finally he couldn't stand it. "This is taking forever!" Kon shoved him into the water. "Ow --bbble!"
When Bart surfaced, Devon had his head in his hands. "I get the munchies, you know?" he said mournfully. "All I wanted was some freakin' Cheetos. Even Cheez-Its. Hell, Goldfish."
Kon and LB were leaning in even more closely than before.
"And...so I got some." Devon pinched the bridge of his nose. "Share and share alike, right?"
"Sharing is care--" Bart started to say, but when Kon raised his fist, he ducked under the water reflexively.
"-- went looking in her trunk, I knew she had a stash of snacks that she hid from me, and Oz, Oz is some kind of fucking saint, he's all 'shouldn't steal, Devon' and I was fucking hungry --"
"Like Les Miz," LB said. "When you're hungry, you need food."
"Exactly." Devon smiled for the first time in what felt like forever, but the expression was still sad, his eyes still downcast. "So there I am, hand in her box --" He grinned, then winced. "Of crackers. Don't tell Oz I said that. Anyway, she comes home right then, of course, earlier than she ever had, because I have the worst fucking luck in the multiverse, and --"
The word hung in the air, which suddenly felt very cold on Bart's wet skin, especially the back of his neck. Devon put his face in his hands again and it sounded like he sobbed several times. Bart looked at LB, who had nacreous blue tears spilling over his third eyelid, then at Kon, whose shoulders were up around his ears. Kon's jaw was set as he stared helplessly at Devon.
No one was moving, and everyone was getting more upset. Moving slowly so he didn't make any waves, Bart swam over to Devon and patted his shoulder. His own hand looked small and pale against Devon's golden tan. "I --" Bart said, and swallowed. "It's okay. I get the munchies, too."
The silence pulsed for another moment, and then, all at once, Kon was laughing as Devon looked up and met Bart's eyes. Hoarsely, he asked, "Really?"
"All the time," Bart said, trying to focus on consoling Devon while also blocking out Kon's guffaws and LB's puzzled face. "Pretty much always."
Kon banged his fist against the pier so hard that splinters flew in every direction. Hiccuping laughter, he crowed, "Bart Allen, miniature pothead!"
LB and Devon were laughing now, too, and Bart grinned. He didn't know what the joke was; this was another time when his thoughts moved too fast to make any sense. He pictured the big pot that Helen used to make spaghetti in, melded with his own head -- then the frying pan to the skull in Throw Momma From the Train, one of his favorite movies -- then Alton Brown and cilantro and a big chopping board.
"Bro, I feel you, believe me." Devon put his arm around Bart again, pulling him close and resting his cheek against Bart's shoulder. The embrace felt wonderful, the water warm and Devon's body -- the human torso, anyway -- even warmer. Bart moved past the nonsensical confusion and sighed happily, petting the tangled curls on Devon's neck. Devon smelled really nice, salty and sparkly all at once; the only comparison that came to mind was the crunch of seaweed around an avocado roll. Bart still refused to try real sushi, but he was a connoisseur of what both Tim and Kon derided as crappy fusion.
Bart threaded his fingers through some of Devon's curls and untangled them gently. "So what happened when she caught you?"
Devon squinted up at the sky. "She went apeshit, seriously, freaking out like it was the end of the world, and, you know, I've been to a couple ends of the world, and this wasn't it, this was just me eating some goddamn Goldfish crackers -- and they were stale, too, they didn't even taste good --"
"The girl?" Kon asked. He was lying on his stomach, chin digging into his folded arms. "What'd she do?"
"Okay, so she's yelling and screaming like I just ate her puppy, and Oz is standing there, shaking his head like he always does, and -- long story short --"
"This is short?" Bart asked. Kon reached over and slapped him on the side of the head, but at least LB had an intact sense of humor and grinned quickly.
Reliving the trauma, Devon raked his fingers through his hair, getting it all tangled again. "Chick cursed me! Totally fucking cursed me, said if I wanted Goldfish so bad, I oughta -- and Oz goes wolf and howls at her -- and she's suddenly some kind of batgirl and -- when I woke up, I'm a fathom down and I'm a fucking goldfish." His tail whacked against the surface several times. "Haven't seen or heard from Oz since."
As he went quiet, the froth on the water broke apart, dispersed, finally vanished entirely. Bart blinked. He blinked 18,736 times. Kon just gaped, mouth all the way open like a dog panting for water. LB tilted his head at 649 different angles. Kon gaped wider.
The waves murmured softly around them.
Bart tried to say something, but he couldn't remember ever being so confused in his life. He'd been caught up in the story, and now it was over, Devon had released him and sunk into the water all the way up to his chin, and somebody needed to say something, anything, and soon.
"They can help!" LB said at last, bouncing in and out of the water, the fin on his head erect and waving madly. "Kon and Bart, they're Teen --"
"Detectives!" Kon shouted to drown out LB's gulped Titans. In his normal tone, he quickly added, "teen detectives. We're kind of detectives."
"We are?" Bart gazed at him and Kon widened his eyes. "We are! Totally!" He grabbed Devon's hand from under the water and squeezed it as hard as he could. "We'll find your friend, Devon, and fix everything.
Devon's eyes were red around the edges, the kohl finally smudging away, and his voice was choked. "You can do that?"
Bart nodded vigorously. "It's what we do!"
That much, at least, was true. The kernel of truth was wrapped up in all sorts of secret-identity fibs and misdirections, but it persisted nonetheless. Heroes helped people and fixed problems; Bart didn't know any other way to put it.
*
Fixing problems usually meant -- in Bart's not inconsiderable experience with these things -- bickering a lot first.
This time was no exception. He was a little surprised, since he and Kon were usually on the same side against Robin and Cassie, ever since Young Justice, and more recently against Vic and Kory in addition to the first two. Kon butted heads with anyone who argued for strategy and finesse over sheer power; when he'd come up against Cassie, who also liked to hit first and think later, the arguments centered on what to hit and in what order.
Bart usually ran around, picking up information along the way. He liked to think that he'd carved out a nice niche for himself on any team; it would take Batman-level genius to argue against information-gathering.
By the next afternoon, he and Kon had been arguing for nearly ten hours straight. Longer, if you counted the millennia it took for Bart to get all the sand out of his shorts when they first returned to the Tower. Although the argument had paused occasionally -- for food, on which they always agreed that more was better, for Kon to return to wherever he lived for "nothing like chores, but I'll be back", for some PS2 battles to work off energy -- this was still the longest that Bart had ever argued with anybody. It was worthy of an entry in the Flash museum, if only to fill out what they were still calling the Impulse Nook.
He wished that Lagoon Boy could have hung around longer; he suspected that LB would have been on his side in this. Even if he weren't, the extra company would have offset Kon's stubborn grumpiness at least a little. But LB had midterms coming up in trench studies and human-aquatic relations; the trip to the cabaret had been his last blowout before getting serious and hitting the kelp-books.
To Bart, the first step toward solving this was obvious. Devon said that he was cursed by Batgirl, so clearly they needed to go to Gotham and bring her in for questioning.
They were in the lounge of the Tower, the big-screen TV on mute, showing reruns of MTV's Spring Break coverage, three empty pizza boxes scattered on the floor before them. Bart threw a gnawed crust at Kon, clocking him in the temple, and mentioned Gotham one more time.
"No," Kon said for the gazillionth time. "No way. Not her."
"We have to at least rule her out!"
"I ruled her out," Kon said and smirked at him, hands behind his head as he floated upward out of Bart's reach. "Just waiting on you, little buddy."
"Batgirl. Bat. Girl. He said --"
"I know what he said."
"So let's go!" Bart jumped up to grab Kon's ankle, but missed. When he tried three more times, he was starting to feel like Kon was a particularly thick pinata. "Come on! Next stop, Gotham!"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because she didn't do it."
Bart shook his head and spoke as slowly, as patiently, as he could stand. "You don't know that."
"Uh, yeah, Bart, I do." From up against the ceiling, Kon smirked at him.
"How? How do you know that? Were you there? Were you in disguise?" Bart narrowed his eyes. "Did you steal her costume and curse Devon?"
"I know her," Kon said. "That's all."
"So? That doesn't mean anything. That means less than nothing, which might not be logically possible, but emotionally, it's true."
"I know her, so I know she wouldn't do something like that."
"She -- she -- she -- argh!" Bart fell backward onto the couch. "Are you in love with her or something? Are you protecting her? Is this like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity?"
"Fred Macwho?"
Bart rolled his eyes. "Fred MacMurray? Big-time actor in noir and domestic dramas and Disney movies. Later famous as the father of My Three Sons, Steve Douglas. Born 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois..."
"Shut up, ImpulseMDB. ImpDB. IMDB, where the I's for Impulse --"
"It's Kid Flash, dummy."
Kon snorted. "Kid Ass, more like."
"Super-Jerk. Dork-El. The Meanie of Steel, the clone who couldn't think..." Bart batted his eyelashes. "I've got a million. Don't try me. Dumber-Boy, star of When Superman was a boy and stupid."
Kon was laughing by the time Bart finished. He had fibbed -- he had far fewer than a million plays on Kon's various names -- so the laughter couldn't have come at a better time. Kon bobbed down through the air and landed next to Bart on the couch.
"Anyway, you can't just 'bring her in'," he said and helpfully provided inverted commas with his index fingers. "That girl's like a ninja."
"Does she have nunchuks? Throwing stars?" Bart asked and Kon shook his head. "The mysterious death of a beloved but stern mentor which must be avenged, no matter the personal cost?"
"No."
"Does she have a sword at least?"
"No."
Bart shrugged. "Then she's not a ninja. I can totally bring her in."
"Heh," Kon said. "Not."
"Yeah."
"Not."
"Yeah."
Kon covered his face with his hands and heaved a melodramatic sigh. "Bart, man, look -- we're not going to Gotham."
"We gotta!" Bart was bouncing on the cushions so hard that the couch's frame squeaked; when Kon tried to hold him down, he vibrated free and bounced harder. "We gotta!"
"What are you, three?"
"So? You're two, Super-Baby."
"Two and seven-eighths! Technically."
"Exactly." Bart nodded decisively before hopping up and speeding to his room to grab his knapsack and a trench-coat. Back in the lounge, he found Kon still sprawled across the couch. "Okay, we're going. Ready?"
"No," Kon said flatly. He was using the Robin-command voice again, but this time Bart was ready for it.
Bart pointed at Kon, then over to the window. "Yes."
"No, Bart. En-Noh, no."
Bart tossed his knapsack at Kon's chest. "Race you!"
He didn't look back as he ran down the side of the Tower, but he allowed himself a victorious fistpump when he heard Kon mutter, just before the whoosh of going airborne, "Damn it."
*
Gotham glittered in the late-afternoon sun, its gnarled, Gothic skyline piercing the few clouds that huddled on the horizon. Bart lapped Robinson Park three times, pausing to salute the site where they'd brought down that plantgirl during No Man's Land. After changing into civilian dress, he ate a frozen custard and two roasted cobs of corn while he waited for Kon to catch up.
He was just finishing off a bratwurst with all the toppings when Kon finally appeared, his face red with exertion. He'd landed in the woods, in a thick briar patch by the looks of it, and he was picking the brambles out of his shirt while cursing the whole time. When he saw Bart, he threw the knapsack back at him. "You are in for such an asskicking, man. Doomsday got off light compared to how you're going to feel when I'm through with you."
Bart sprinted backwards, wiping the mustard from his mouth and slinging the knapsack over one shoulder. Over Kon's shoulder, a narrow gravel path curved around a pile of boulders. In the slanting sun, he thought he saw a wink of dark hair, the line of one skinny arm.
"Oh my god!" Bart ran forward, keeping to a human pace, his heart knocking up against his sinuses. "Oh my god, it's Tim!"
Kon froze like one of the statues in the grove on the far side of the park. "What?"
Bart shoved past him and bolted up the path. Tim was crouched behind the largest boulder, tapping something out on his Blackberry. He rocked back on his heels as Bart zoomed into him, one arm around Tim's neck, the other around his waist; he got Tim in the air and spun around as fast as he dared.
"You left! I should clobber you, you know that? I can't believe you just left and didn't call or answer my email or that registered package I sent you, did you get it? I borrowed your shirt from the laundry room and then when you didn't come back, I thought maybe you were mad at me, so I sent it, like, mega-fast FedEx. I asked Wally to deliver it but he told me to leave you alone, and I didn't want to, but then Joan gave me twenty dollars for my birthday and I spent it on the package --"
Tim lifted one arm free, twisted at the waist, and freed himself. Stepping away, he shook his hair out of his eyes. "Hi, Bart."
Bart grabbed at Kon for balance, but Kon was out of reach and he stumbled a little. "Tim."
"What are you doing here?" Tim asked. He was out of uniform, too, wearing a plain white shirt and dark khaki pants. He looked a lot smaller, about as small as Bart usually felt, without the red and green.
Kon snorted. "What are we doing? What are you doing spying on us?"
Tim lifted his chin and gazed at Kon with narrowed eyes. "Answer the question."
"You first," Kon said. He had his legs apart, hands on his hips, and it seemed to Bart as if he'd grown another couple inches on the flight east.
Tim's gaze remained steady. "I have...sensors. For metahuman activity."
"Really?" Bart asked. He paced around Tim, taking in every detail he could. "Cool!"
Tim nodded. He didn't quite smile or anything, but it looked like he wanted to, which, with him, was pretty good.
Kon shook his head, folding his arms over his chest and grinding one heel into the gravel. "You're a civilian now," he said, spitting the last word like the worst kind of cuss. "What are you doing with sensors?"
Bart wondered if this was what the audience at a duel back in the eighteenth century felt like -- every gesture, every word, was leaded with significance and spite, and as a cloud passed over the sun, the boulders darkened and grew, but Tim and Kon stared each other down, their profiles sharp against the dusk.
"We're all civilians," Bart said brightly, desperation making his voice high and false, like he always sounded when trying to cheer Preston up back in Manchester. He reached for Tim's arm and gestured at Kon. "Right, guys? Civilians, like anyone else."
"Tim's gone full-time," Kon said. He sounded like he was announcing Tim's death.
Bart's hand dropped back to his side, well before he ever touched Tim. Of all of them, Tim was the most dedicated -- to what Jay called good works and Tim himself referred to as the mission. Bart and Kon didn't have much choice in the matter, since they were both born -- created -- out of joint and full of weird powers, but Tim was the one who'd always shown them how to do good. How, and why.
Tim as a civilian made about as much sense as Wally becoming a college professor.
He didn't know how much time passed after Kon's announcement. He needed to sit down, but when he did, he landed on a jagged piece of rock and ripped a hole in the back of his pants. The pain cleared his head, at least temporarily, but in that clarity, a new thought surfaced: Kon knew all this time that Tim was retiring, and he hadn't bothered to tell Bart.
Why should he? Everyone believed that Bart was an overgrown child who needed protection from the real world.
He kicked at a clod of dirt, wishing it was Kon's head, and grinned when it exploded under his toe.
Tim stepped over Bart's leg, right up to Kon, and said in that patented boss-voice, "What. Are you. Doing. Here?"
Kon cracked his knuckles and Tim's stance shifted. Mad as he was, sad as he was, Bart couldn't let them fight. He jostled in between them and locked his knees, so he couldn't be tossed aside. "We have a case, Tim!"
Tim frowned, looking skeptical. Then Kon reached around Bart -- Bart had neglected to factor in his greater size and armspan -- and shoved Tim. Bart ducked, Tim shoved back, and Bart ran up the nearest tree. The branch shook underneath him as he shouted at them to stop.
Tim got in a good karate chop to Kon's kidneys, but then Kon wrapped him in a headlock. As Tim writhed, Kon called, "Let the big kids talk."
Bart wished for a rock to throw. He took his knapsack and lobbed it at Kon's back, hard enough that Kon went off-balance and Tim wrestled free. "Screw you, Kon!"
Tim's shirt was pulled over his head and he was down on his knees and one hand. "Give us a moment, Bart? Please?"
"Fine," Bart said and swung to the next tree, then the one after that. He could stop them, if he really tried and kept Kon confused enough to drop the TTK while also dodging Tim's scary martial-arts skills. He could, but just now, he didn't feel like helping either one of them, let alone making peace. If they wanted to treat him like a little kid, that was their own irony to deal with; he wasn't the one rubbing Tim's face in the dirt or flipping Kon down to the grass.
Violence should never be your first option: Max had taught him that, but Bart had already known it, just not in those particular words. Maybe it was in the VR programming, maybe it was just his personality -- that's what Grandma Iris and Helen both said -- but the fact was just obvious to Bart.
Tim and Kon reached a stand-off, which suggested that Tim carried kryptonite around in his bookbag, and now they were standing on opposite sides of the clearing, yelling at each other. Bart moved to the next farthest tree, then another, but their words -- traitor and asshole and much worse -- followed him wherever he went. The words snagged in his ears, pummeled his face; his stomach rolled sickly and his eyes burned and stung. Before he could do anything -- puke or cry or both -- Bart did what he did best. He ran away.
They probably didn't even notice he'd gone.
[continued in part 2]
Summary: "Without my friends I got chaos/I'm often a bead of light./Without my friends I'd be swept up high by the wind."
Media: Teen Titans v.3 & BtVS
Characters: Bart, Lagoon Boy, Kon, Devon, Cass, Steph, Oz & Tim.
Rating: PG
Timeline/setting: TEEN TITANS v.3 #15
Spoilers: TT #15, IMPULSE #50, and SUPERBOY #51; "New Moon Rising" (4x19) and "Chosen" (7x22).
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Notes: Title and summary from Big Star's "Thank You Friends". Forever ago, I started this for my beloved eccentrici. Two of her birthdays and Bartday have passed, but I've finished and revised it for IMG Day. Great thanks to oneangrykate for the inspiration and thenotoriousg for the beta.
Generally speaking, Bart's problem was not that he didn't think, but that he had trouble concentrating. He was thinking all the time, but it was about everything. All at once, too much, everything. Concentration meant that he should have been thinking about one thing, two at most, at a time.
He wasn't sure if this was, actually, a problem per se. It was a problem for other people -- Jay and Wally, mostly, and sometimes Linda -- but not really for him.
Except when it was. A problem, that is.
The sun was almost finished setting on Sunday night, but he was still out on the path near Kory's garden, skating hard.
Skating helped him concentrate; it was just about the only thing that did. It wasn't like running, which took him over and left no space beyond motion. It was slower than running; he had to focus on turns and flips, lest he fall.
He had a lot -- too much -- to concentrate on, to think all the way through, lately.
Bart knew it wasn't fair, how he still couldn't think of the Titans as a real team. As his team. Cassie and Kon and Tim, they were his team. So while Kory and Vic were really nice, Gar was as weird as he ever was and Raven just plain scared him.
It just wasn't the same. Not like how it was.
Thinking like this just made him feel crummy. He wasn't being fair to any of the new people, to the Titans legacy, to anyone.
In the back of his mind, he could hear Max's voice saying, "Whoever said life was fair?" and he grinned.
That wasn't what Max had meant, of course, but Bart was willing to take it. Even if the Tim-face in his mind's eye was glowering at him. Besides, Tim had been gone for going on two weekends now. Maybe three, if he counted this weekend as over.
At any rate, there wasn't anyone to look at him funny for thinking selfishly.
In the old days, Cassie would have, but she wasn't in charge any more. And his last several conversations with her, when he tried to talk to her about these crummy feelings, had gone really creepily. "Look, Bart, I've got a lot on my mind, okay? Can this wait?" she would usually say, then wrap that weird lasso around her hand before going back to whatever sparring dummy she was currently destroying.
Kon! He could see if Kon was still around and talk to him. Kon would never yell at him for being selfish. Plus, like Bart, Kon tended to linger around the Tower on Sunday nights until the last possible moment.
Bart kicked his board up into his hand and ran up the side of the Tower. On the way, he peeked into Kon's window, but the room was empty and dark. He ran faster until he hit the roof.
Just like he'd hoped, Kon was there. Sitting on the edge of the roof, kicking his heels against a strut and staring out over the Bay. From the back, he looked huge, made up of shoulders and nothing else.
"Hey!" Bart dropped his board and ran across to join Kon. "You're still here, I was hoping you'd be, but I've got crummy luck lately, so --"
"Bart," Kon said flatly.
He didn't turn to look at Bart, or even rock over to knock against Bart's shoulder like he used to.
That would be just a part of the crummy luck that Barded been having lately.
"Kon," Bart replied, keeping his voice as cheerful as he could. "Staying late?"
"Looks that way," Kon said. "How about you?"
Bart pulled one knee up and planted his chin on it. The wind off the Bay was chilly. "Not sure." He had the week off from school, but he had no idea how he was going to survive the quiet of five days in the Garricks' house. "Keystone, I guess."
Neither of them said anything for a while.
Bart's calves were jittering; he couldn't tell if that was from the cold or the need to run. Just in case, he buzzed down to his room and yanked a pair of long-johns on under his cargo shorts.
When Bart returned to the roof, Kon hadn't moved. He eyed Bart, then recrossed his arms. "My school's out for a week, so..."
Bart couldn't believe his luck. "Your school's in Kansas, too?"
"What?" Kon pulled in his shoulders. "I didn't say that!"
Bart grinned. "Everybody's off. Statewide teachers' development week. I think it has something to do with evolution and all that, but nobody will go on record to confirm or deny." He tugged the cuffs of his sweatshirt over his hands and knocked Kon's shoulder with his own. Kon was immovable, though, like a rock. "This is so cool! You want to hang out?"
Kon's smile moved a lot slower these days, but at least he was smiling now. "Yeah, that'd be good."
"Cool." It wasn't that Bart was glad that Tim wasn't around -- it really wasn't that, he missed Tim a heck of a lot -- but if it meant that Kon's available for hanging like he used to be, then it was like a silver lining.
"I don't necessarily live in Kansas, you know," Kon muttered.
"Of course not," Bart said quickly. "Maybe you go to that school in Florida. The one that fell into the sinkhole."
Kon lifted his chin. "Maybe I do."
"Could be anywhere," Bart added, in case Kon needed even more reassurance. "So. What do you want to do? We could go to that rave you were always -- hee. Raving about."
"Can't. Shut down," Kon said. "A while ago."
"Oh. Hey, I know! We could go to Tokyo! To Akihabara! I really want to try some pachinko, some of them have betting operations, we could make a ton of money --"
Kon smiled at that, but his eyes still looked sad. "We could, but --"
Bart slumped a little. "We'd probably get in trouble."
"Probably, yeah."
It was weird, now that Bart thought about it, how possibilities kept contracting now that they were getting older. Most people wanted to grow up so they have more freedom, but it was the opposite for them.
"Hey, I know! We could go to DC, to the Library of Congress, and --"
Kon threw his arm across Bart's chest like he was a passenger in a car about to crash. "If you say anything that remotely involves reading in any way whatsoever, I will hit you."
Bart leaned back. "Just an idea."
"I'm a geek five days out of every week," Kon said darkly. "Not on my vacation. No way."
"Reading doesn't make you a geek!" Bart ducked preemptively, then ran to the opposite corner of the roof. When he was out of range, he added, "Does it?"
On his feet now, looking at Bart like he was an alien, Kon just shook his head. "Usually, yeah."
"Oh." Bart lapped the roof several times, then stopped short, spraying the gravel as he skidded. "But so what?"
Frowning, Kon crossed his arms. "Whaddaya mean, 'so what'?"
"There's a lot worse things than being a geek," Bart said. He tried to be as patient as possible. "You could be, you could be -- Deathstroke. Or in the League of Assassins! Mirror Master --"
Kon snorted. "Mirror Master's a geek."
Jogging in place, Bart tried to process that. "Is he?"
Grinning, Kon spread his arms. "Class-A geek. All the Rogues are."
"Nuh-uh!"
Kon nodded sagely. He kind of looked like Tim when he did that, only goofy. "Uh-huh."
"What about Captain Cold? He's pretty hardcore --"
Kon snorted, fake-punching Bart's shoulder. "Hardcore geek, maybe. Guy wears a baby-blue parka, Bart."
Hands on his hips, Bart circled Kon. "Fine. You could be...um. Luthor. That's way worse, a million-gazillion times worse, than being a geek."
Kon's arms dropped to his sides as he backed up against the door.
He looked at Bart for -- Bart was pretty sure it was a really, really long time, however you measured it. Finally, Kon's expression kind of slid together and crumpled. He slipped down the wall until he was lying spread out on the roof. Knocking his head against the gravel, one arm covering his eyes, he started to chant, "I hate my life. I hate my life. I. Hate. My. Li-ife."
While the chanting went on and on and on, Bart circled Kon at a safe distance.
Hesitantly, he nudged Kon's leg with the toe of his sneaker. "Is this, um. Teenaged angst?"
Scissoring open his fingers, Kon peeked at him. "Shut up, Bart."
"It looks like angst." Bart dropped down to one knee. "Don't worry, though. Most people your -- your apparent age, they go through it. Everything seems hopeless and pointless and stuff like that, but it's just the hormones, so --"
"Bart?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up. Seriously." That tone Kon used, it had to be something else he borrowed from Tim. Dark and flat, full of warning, it wasn't anything like Kon's usual voice.
Bart's pager sounded, beeping out the theme from "A Summer Place". Groaning, Kon rolled over onto his stomach.
After checking the screen, Bart whooped and shook Kon's arm. "Hey! It's Lagoon Boy!"
As he pawed the gravel out of his hair and sat up, Kon frowned slightly. "You still keep in touch with him?"
"Sure I do. He was doing an exchange program out in the Marianas Trench last year, really cool stuff, full of --" Bart stopped, biting his lip when he realized that Kon was circling his hand, urging him to get to the point. "Anyway! He's back now and he wants to hang out. Wanna hang out?"
He wanted to urge Kon to say yes, but you couldn't push Kon. It wasn't just the TTK and Superman-big body, it was Kon's whole rebel, free-spirit thing. And lately, especially, he was just so crabby all the time. Push him too hard and he might haul off and kick Bart halfway across the Bay.
Settling for (attempted) telepathy, Bart beamed a big Vegas-neon sign that said YES in bright red script towards Kon.
Kon rubbed his face. "Don't do that."
"Do what?" Bart asked carefully. While it would be amazing if the telepathy actually worked, he wasn't so sure he wanted Kon being able to read all his thoughts. Especially the ones about Cassie. Not to mention other stuff.
"Big calf eyes." Kon pointed at him and sighed. "It's creepy without your goggles."
Blinking hard, Bart touched his face. How'd Kon know what a calf's eyes looked like, anyway? He shook himself and tried to focus. "Oh. Sorry. So! You want to go?"
*
Lagoon Boy wouldn't tell them where they were going. He just told them to head south. He promised that they'd love it, and also that they wouldn't get in trouble. So after quick phone-calls home -- Bart tried not to notice that Kon dialed a Kansas area code -- they were off.
Down the Pacific, Kon carrying Lagoon Boy while Bart ran just below them over the water. The night sky, this far from land, was filled with stars. Funny how ancient light could look so new and sharp.
Carried by Kon, Lagoon Boy kept twisting around to talk to him as they flew south. Skimming the waves with his toes, Bart was halfway-listening, half-commenting, all the way enjoying.
"So then the Land Lovers broke up, because Sheeva got interested in alternative humpback music, started following the Grateful Kelp around, and then Blubber's family moved to Sub Diego, so it was just me and having meetings by myself got a little boring, so --"
Salt-spray kept getting in Bart's nose and eyes, but he figured that was all part of the atmosphere and tried not to sneeze too hard.
"Blubber has parents?" Kon asked. "That robot-whale guy?"
"Sure he does!" Lagoon Boy said. He was bigger than Bart remembered him being. His head-fin was much spikier, his limbs thicker with muscle. Everyone was changing. "His mom's a baleen and his dad's a --"
"Chevy?" Kon said.
"Ha! Good one!" Laughing, Bart kicked up a good wave that soaked Kon's jeans to the knee.
"Watch it, speedy --" Wrapping one arm around LB's waist, Kon shook his fist at Bart.
LB hooted nasally. "This is so cool, guys! Sucks that Robin couldn't come, but --"
Without replying, Kon broke left and rose in the air, looking over his shoulder and daring Bart to follow.
Bart started to give chase, but all of a sudden found himself running aground on a rocky outcropping he hadn't noticed. With a yelp, he stumbled to a stop, knees dragging in sharp gravel, water burning his eyes.
"Smooth move, Ex Lax." Kon hovered a foot above him, smirking, offering his hand.
"We're here!" Lagoon Boy called. "It's just around this cove --"
"Ow," Bart said. He ignored Kon's offer of help and pulled himself up to his feet. "Where are we?"
The beach he'd crashed into was hardly a beach at all. It was really just ten feet of broken shells and black sand that curved up to a narrow stand of wind-twisted trees. Far to the right, the night sky was a little paler, a wavering patch of dark blue and deep rose.
Kon held a finger to his lips and gestured at Bart to be quiet.
From the same direction as the patch of lit sky, music tinkled, then strengthened.
Together, they turned to Lagoon Boy.
He gestured widely, his webbed fingers outspread and head-fin trembling erect as he beamed at them.
"It's Cabaret on the Half-Shell!" he crowed. "A-Number One gathering spot for land-dwellers and aquatic citizens alike! If you love music, you'll love the cabaret! C'mon, it's just getting started!"
They followed him up the rocky beach, through the trees, and down a shorter rise to a nicer beach. Soft sand, pink and gold in the light from bonfires and lanterns, embraced a small cove. Land-dwellers danced on the sand while aquatic creatures -- fish-people and Atlantean maidens and spiny sentient urchins that Bart had only read about, never seen -- milled in the water.
Kon tugged at his shirt and combed his hair back with his fingers. "Ex-cellent," he breathed when a nacreous-skinned selkie waitress offered him a flagon of something. "I like, LB. I like."
"El-bee, ha!" Bart said. His palms were still a little raw, and he was pretty sure that his hair was a mess, but it wasn't like anyone would notice. Not when he was standing next to Kon. He knocked Lagoon Boy in the ribs. "Elbow! Get it?"
Lagoon Boy grimaced. "Like I haven't heard that one before."
"Right, well," Kon announced. "I'll leave you two youngsters now so I can..." He licked his lips as he gazed around the crowd. "Make some new friends."
LB. cocked his head interrogatively, so Bart stage-whispered, "He means girls."
"Oh, right," LB. said. "There's lots of girls here."
Kon strode away. Bart watched him move through the crowd, cocky and tall. He knew that -- as Kon frequently pointed out -- he could probably learn a lot.
Mostly, however, he just wanted to laugh. It wasn't that Kon wasn't handsome and confident -- he was all of that plus, like, chips and drippy nacho cheese -- but that he knew he was. So Bart narrated Kon's flirtation to LB. in his best Ricardo Montalban accent, complete with gropey, grabby hand gestures. Pretty soon they were rolling around on the sand and getting in trouble with the waitresses.
They played in the water for a while, but it wasn't much fun having hold-your-breath contests against a guy with gills. Bart tried to get Lagoon Boy to play Walker, Texas Ranger, but there were too many people in the crowd, and they kept hushing Bart whenever he shouted. There was tons of free food, however, so he took some consolation from that.
When a dark-haired Atlantean slapped Kon's cheek for some remark -- Bart was too far away to hear what it was, but he figured it was Kon's usual come-hither grossness -- Kon returned to Bart's side.
"Women," he said.
"Women," Bart echoed. He tried to make it sound world-weary and knowing. When Kon snorted with laughter, though, that meant he'd failed.
"Sorry, man," Kon said and stole the bowl of kelp chips from Bart's lap. "Where's our green buddy?"
Bart straightened up, scanning the crowd for Lagoon Boy. "He's around here somewhere..."
Down in the water, someone started to sing. The voice was kind of scratchy, but melodic all the same, and the singer --.
"Whoa," Kon said under his breath. "Hot time in the waves tonight."
"She's pretty!" Bart said before he could stop himself. Surrounded by the pink-lit waves, a golden mermaid was singing as she bobbed. Her hair looked like cornsilk and autumn leaves, curling off her face and down her neck; under the water, her tail moved like a carp in a monastery pond, slow and intent.
"I think she's a he," Kon whispered.
Bart ran around the crowd, down the short pier, and squinted at the mermaid. The breeze of his wake blew back her hair, off her chest, and, yes, she was a guy. A very pretty guy, though, with kohl around his eyes and a wide, smiling mouth.
"He's pretty!" Bart said, dropping back down beside Kon. "What's that song?"
"Dunno." Kon cocked his head and made a thinky face. "Bowie? Maybe?"
"He's a glammaid! No, a, a --. A merglam."
When he grinned, Kon's teeth looked like seashells in the low light. "Andro-mer? Mersparkle. Merdude."
Bart started giggling and couldn't stop. Kon tickled him, right under his hairline at the back of his neck, and then Bart really laughed, rolling around in the sea grass and wriggling.
He hadn't had this much fun in an eon and a half, it felt like. If Tim suddenly popped up in the cove, the night would be perfect.
It might happen. It could. There was probably a whole fleet of Bat-subs.
Bart was starting to shiver again. He'd gotten wet and dried out several times over by the time the cabaret broke up and Lagoon Boy gallumphed over to them.
"Did you like it? Did you have a good time? I'm having a great time, how about that music, I loved it! I had no idea my friends were so talented! So! What did you think?"
"I think..." Kon tossed his head, the move he once used to move the S-curl off his forehead, except his hair was too short now to shift, let alone curl. "I think you talk almost as fast as Bart."
Lagoon Boy's fangs shone as he hooted. "Thanks!"
"It wasn't..."
Bart grabbed Lagoon Boy's dorsal fin with both hands and shook to get his attention. "Do you know the mermaid-who's-not-a-maid?"
LB's eyelids moved upward as he blinked. "Who, Devon?"
"Can we meet him, please-please?" Bart bounced on his toes and tried telepathy again.
"Yeah," Kon said. "Let's."
As LB led them through the crowd, Bart tugged on the back of Kon's shirt. "You like girls, right?"
Kon slung his arm around Bart's shoulders and pulled him in. "I like people, young padawan."
Bart stopped short. "Did you get into the seahorse sperm?"
Kon tilted his head and smiled. With the flush on his cheeks and glitter to his eyes, it seemed entirely possible that Kon had partaken of the Atlantean aphrodisiac.
"Nah," Kon said finally and pulled Bart along. "Stuff tastes like -- well, it tastes like sperm."
"Gross," Bart agreed and Kon messed up his hair. "But do you like guys? You're acting like --"
"Gender's irrelevant," Kon announced airily. "You'll learn that if you ever hit puberty."
"I hit it! I --" Bart clamped his mouth shut as they bumped up against LB, who was talking excitedly to an eel-woman with scary black eyes the size of Bart's fists.
"Let 'em in, Morae," the merman called. Between Kon's bulk, LB's quivering fin, and the eel-woman, Bart could only make out the glints of moonlight on Devon's long hair. "Are they cool?"
"Devon!" LB pushed past the eel and caught Kon by the elbow. "Haven't seen you in a whale's age!"
The merman floated back on his elbows, tail swishing under the water, as he checked them out from under heavy-lidded eyes. "LB," he said, his voice a slow California drawl, "I thought you'd given up groupie-ing."
LB blew out a series of giggles from his gills and shook his head. "I did, I just wanted you to meet my friends. This is Kon --"
"-- Conner," Kon put in hastily and clamped his hand down on Bart's shoulder. "We're, uh. Big fans. Hi."
Unless he vibrated, which wasn't an option, what with secret identities and everything, Bart couldn't move out from under Kon's grip. He waved his hand. "Hi, I'm Bart!" At the name, Kon dug his fingers into Bart's shoulder. "What?" Bart whispered. "It's my name."
Kon just shook his head and sat down on the pier. "Don't pay any attention to Bart," he said to Devon. "It's way past his bedtime."
"Hey!" Bart protested, but LB grinned, showing his fangs, and feinted left, knocking Bart into the water. And he'd just started to dry out, too. When he surfaced, spitting out salt water and shaking his head like a dog, he saw Kon leaning forward, chin in hand, talking to Devon intently. He looked around for LB and found him floating next to Devon, chittering and hooting.
Bart tread water for a bit, growing more bored by the millisecond, and he was just about to dive again and go find something else to do when Devon slapped him lightly with his tail and crooked his finger, beckoning him in.
"What's your story, short stuff?" he asked as his tail curved around the back of Bart's knees and dragged him closer. The scales tickled against Bart's skin, but pleasantly, like the wind did at the end of a good long run. "You always hang around ruffians and jocks?"
"I'm not a jock," Kon said, but Devon, with his arm around Bart's shoulders, waved him off.
"He really isn't," Bart said. This close, crowded up against Devon's side, he could see every detail of Devon's face -- the long lashes dark with water, the kohl around his lids, a bit of sunburn right at the tip of his long nose. "He just gets obnoxious when he's --" Bart chuckled. "I was going to say when he's flirting, but really it's when he's awake."
Behind him, Kon growled, while LB giggled. Devon, however, just looked intently at Bart as a slow, wide smile scrolled over his face. "Interesting," he said, though his tone said it was anything but. "But I asked about you..."
He trailed off, one corner of his lips tilting up as he tipped his head. Bart blinked; the sting of ocean water intensified, then vanished, and his chest was asthmatically tight. Even though he was floating in the shallows, back against one of the beams supporting the pier, snugly supported by Devon, he felt suddenly weightless, then heavy as a boulder, and the whoosh of vertigo rocked him hard.
He hadn't felt this woozy and strange since he took Cissie to the Valentine's Day dance, since he kissed Carol, since he saw Tim kissing Spoiler. He thought that maybe he wanted to kiss Devon -- his mouth was very pretty, plump and pink as some of his tail's scales -- but when he moved in, he heard himself talking instead.
"What's it like being a mermaid? Merman? What's the correct term? Do you prefer mer-person? It looks like fun, but I guess there's a kind of tragic element to it, right? Because you're caught between two worlds and you don't really fit in either and --"
Devon started laughing when Kon did, and ducked Bart under the water, then pulled him back by the hair.
"What was that for?" Bart sneezed and Kon thumped him on the back.
"Suave, Bart, real suave." Kon's voice sounded light and full of laughter, the way it always used to, and after Bart bit back a stream of complaints, he realized that a little dunking was well worth it if it made Kon sound like that.
"Dude," Devon said to Bart. "Dude, what are you on?"
Bart looked around. "Water?"
He wasn't sure he wanted to kiss Devon any more. Not with the way he was laughing, high-fiving Kon over Bart's head, telling LB that his friends were mega-rad. Devon was very pretty, but it was starting to occur to Bart that he was also kind of...flighty. This was all pretty confusing.
To work off the confusion, thoughts firing from about forty-eight different directions, Bart swam around the small island twice and ran over the water once he was out of sight. On his way back, he grabbed a nearly-full bowl of snacks from the empty bar before rejoining the group at the pier.
Devon had one arm folded behind his head, his hair floating like golden kelp on the surface, as he stared up at the sky. He was telling a story, and there didn't seem to be any chance of getting laughed at, so Bart dropped cross-legged next to Kon and listened as he munched the popped coral corn.
"...me and Oz, we're living on this houseboat, right near Long Beach," Devon was saying.
"Who's Oz?" Bart whispered to Kon, but Kon hushed him.
Devon's eyes fluttered open. "My guy. Oz." He said the name as if its import was self-evident, so Bart just nodded, the way he'd do when Vic delivered insanely-complicated training regimens.
"Anyway, we've got it pretty sweet there, and we're getting another band together, just living the good life. This chick comes to stay with us. some friend of a friend of Oz's, pale little skank. Albino, almost, she was whiter than --" He grinned and pointed at Kon. "You. So, okay, crowded quarters, but mi boatcasa es su boatcasa, you know?"
"Sure," Bart said; it was the verbal equivalent of his I don't follow nod, but since Devon seemed to be performing and expecting audience participation, it was only polite. "I don't think boatcasa is a word --"
Kon elbowed him sharply in the ribs and said to Devon, "Go on. Pay no attention to the smartass beside me."
Bart tossed a handful of coral corn at him for that, but Kon just opened his mouth and used a little TTK to draw the kernels onto his tongue. Devon didn't seem to notice; his voice had dropped again and his face tightened.
"It's all chill, me and Oz and Vampira or whoever, until the day she went -- loco. Mucho loco --" As Devon drew himself up, frowning and shaking his head at the memory, Kon elbowed Bart before he could correct the Spanglish again. "Crazycookies, she was just -- ha! Batshit. And that's when it all went to hell."
He broke off, his head down, hair hanging over his face.
"Dude," Kon said, gently, like he was coaxing a cat out of a tree. "What happened?"
Devon tossed back his hair, water arcing off it and spattering LB's intent face. Even his head fin had gone still. "Yeah, what happened?"
"Look, it wasn't my fault," Devon said.
"What wasn't?" LB put in. He sounded breathless.
Bart rocked back and forth, kicking out his legs and letting them dangle over the edge of the pier. No one was saying anything; a gloomy hush had descended over everyone, and finally he couldn't stand it. "This is taking forever!" Kon shoved him into the water. "Ow --bbble!"
When Bart surfaced, Devon had his head in his hands. "I get the munchies, you know?" he said mournfully. "All I wanted was some freakin' Cheetos. Even Cheez-Its. Hell, Goldfish."
Kon and LB were leaning in even more closely than before.
"And...so I got some." Devon pinched the bridge of his nose. "Share and share alike, right?"
"Sharing is care--" Bart started to say, but when Kon raised his fist, he ducked under the water reflexively.
"-- went looking in her trunk, I knew she had a stash of snacks that she hid from me, and Oz, Oz is some kind of fucking saint, he's all 'shouldn't steal, Devon' and I was fucking hungry --"
"Like Les Miz," LB said. "When you're hungry, you need food."
"Exactly." Devon smiled for the first time in what felt like forever, but the expression was still sad, his eyes still downcast. "So there I am, hand in her box --" He grinned, then winced. "Of crackers. Don't tell Oz I said that. Anyway, she comes home right then, of course, earlier than she ever had, because I have the worst fucking luck in the multiverse, and --"
The word hung in the air, which suddenly felt very cold on Bart's wet skin, especially the back of his neck. Devon put his face in his hands again and it sounded like he sobbed several times. Bart looked at LB, who had nacreous blue tears spilling over his third eyelid, then at Kon, whose shoulders were up around his ears. Kon's jaw was set as he stared helplessly at Devon.
No one was moving, and everyone was getting more upset. Moving slowly so he didn't make any waves, Bart swam over to Devon and patted his shoulder. His own hand looked small and pale against Devon's golden tan. "I --" Bart said, and swallowed. "It's okay. I get the munchies, too."
The silence pulsed for another moment, and then, all at once, Kon was laughing as Devon looked up and met Bart's eyes. Hoarsely, he asked, "Really?"
"All the time," Bart said, trying to focus on consoling Devon while also blocking out Kon's guffaws and LB's puzzled face. "Pretty much always."
Kon banged his fist against the pier so hard that splinters flew in every direction. Hiccuping laughter, he crowed, "Bart Allen, miniature pothead!"
LB and Devon were laughing now, too, and Bart grinned. He didn't know what the joke was; this was another time when his thoughts moved too fast to make any sense. He pictured the big pot that Helen used to make spaghetti in, melded with his own head -- then the frying pan to the skull in Throw Momma From the Train, one of his favorite movies -- then Alton Brown and cilantro and a big chopping board.
"Bro, I feel you, believe me." Devon put his arm around Bart again, pulling him close and resting his cheek against Bart's shoulder. The embrace felt wonderful, the water warm and Devon's body -- the human torso, anyway -- even warmer. Bart moved past the nonsensical confusion and sighed happily, petting the tangled curls on Devon's neck. Devon smelled really nice, salty and sparkly all at once; the only comparison that came to mind was the crunch of seaweed around an avocado roll. Bart still refused to try real sushi, but he was a connoisseur of what both Tim and Kon derided as crappy fusion.
Bart threaded his fingers through some of Devon's curls and untangled them gently. "So what happened when she caught you?"
Devon squinted up at the sky. "She went apeshit, seriously, freaking out like it was the end of the world, and, you know, I've been to a couple ends of the world, and this wasn't it, this was just me eating some goddamn Goldfish crackers -- and they were stale, too, they didn't even taste good --"
"The girl?" Kon asked. He was lying on his stomach, chin digging into his folded arms. "What'd she do?"
"Okay, so she's yelling and screaming like I just ate her puppy, and Oz is standing there, shaking his head like he always does, and -- long story short --"
"This is short?" Bart asked. Kon reached over and slapped him on the side of the head, but at least LB had an intact sense of humor and grinned quickly.
Reliving the trauma, Devon raked his fingers through his hair, getting it all tangled again. "Chick cursed me! Totally fucking cursed me, said if I wanted Goldfish so bad, I oughta -- and Oz goes wolf and howls at her -- and she's suddenly some kind of batgirl and -- when I woke up, I'm a fathom down and I'm a fucking goldfish." His tail whacked against the surface several times. "Haven't seen or heard from Oz since."
As he went quiet, the froth on the water broke apart, dispersed, finally vanished entirely. Bart blinked. He blinked 18,736 times. Kon just gaped, mouth all the way open like a dog panting for water. LB tilted his head at 649 different angles. Kon gaped wider.
The waves murmured softly around them.
Bart tried to say something, but he couldn't remember ever being so confused in his life. He'd been caught up in the story, and now it was over, Devon had released him and sunk into the water all the way up to his chin, and somebody needed to say something, anything, and soon.
"They can help!" LB said at last, bouncing in and out of the water, the fin on his head erect and waving madly. "Kon and Bart, they're Teen --"
"Detectives!" Kon shouted to drown out LB's gulped Titans. In his normal tone, he quickly added, "teen detectives. We're kind of detectives."
"We are?" Bart gazed at him and Kon widened his eyes. "We are! Totally!" He grabbed Devon's hand from under the water and squeezed it as hard as he could. "We'll find your friend, Devon, and fix everything.
Devon's eyes were red around the edges, the kohl finally smudging away, and his voice was choked. "You can do that?"
Bart nodded vigorously. "It's what we do!"
That much, at least, was true. The kernel of truth was wrapped up in all sorts of secret-identity fibs and misdirections, but it persisted nonetheless. Heroes helped people and fixed problems; Bart didn't know any other way to put it.
*
Fixing problems usually meant -- in Bart's not inconsiderable experience with these things -- bickering a lot first.
This time was no exception. He was a little surprised, since he and Kon were usually on the same side against Robin and Cassie, ever since Young Justice, and more recently against Vic and Kory in addition to the first two. Kon butted heads with anyone who argued for strategy and finesse over sheer power; when he'd come up against Cassie, who also liked to hit first and think later, the arguments centered on what to hit and in what order.
Bart usually ran around, picking up information along the way. He liked to think that he'd carved out a nice niche for himself on any team; it would take Batman-level genius to argue against information-gathering.
By the next afternoon, he and Kon had been arguing for nearly ten hours straight. Longer, if you counted the millennia it took for Bart to get all the sand out of his shorts when they first returned to the Tower. Although the argument had paused occasionally -- for food, on which they always agreed that more was better, for Kon to return to wherever he lived for "nothing like chores, but I'll be back", for some PS2 battles to work off energy -- this was still the longest that Bart had ever argued with anybody. It was worthy of an entry in the Flash museum, if only to fill out what they were still calling the Impulse Nook.
He wished that Lagoon Boy could have hung around longer; he suspected that LB would have been on his side in this. Even if he weren't, the extra company would have offset Kon's stubborn grumpiness at least a little. But LB had midterms coming up in trench studies and human-aquatic relations; the trip to the cabaret had been his last blowout before getting serious and hitting the kelp-books.
To Bart, the first step toward solving this was obvious. Devon said that he was cursed by Batgirl, so clearly they needed to go to Gotham and bring her in for questioning.
They were in the lounge of the Tower, the big-screen TV on mute, showing reruns of MTV's Spring Break coverage, three empty pizza boxes scattered on the floor before them. Bart threw a gnawed crust at Kon, clocking him in the temple, and mentioned Gotham one more time.
"No," Kon said for the gazillionth time. "No way. Not her."
"We have to at least rule her out!"
"I ruled her out," Kon said and smirked at him, hands behind his head as he floated upward out of Bart's reach. "Just waiting on you, little buddy."
"Batgirl. Bat. Girl. He said --"
"I know what he said."
"So let's go!" Bart jumped up to grab Kon's ankle, but missed. When he tried three more times, he was starting to feel like Kon was a particularly thick pinata. "Come on! Next stop, Gotham!"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because she didn't do it."
Bart shook his head and spoke as slowly, as patiently, as he could stand. "You don't know that."
"Uh, yeah, Bart, I do." From up against the ceiling, Kon smirked at him.
"How? How do you know that? Were you there? Were you in disguise?" Bart narrowed his eyes. "Did you steal her costume and curse Devon?"
"I know her," Kon said. "That's all."
"So? That doesn't mean anything. That means less than nothing, which might not be logically possible, but emotionally, it's true."
"I know her, so I know she wouldn't do something like that."
"She -- she -- she -- argh!" Bart fell backward onto the couch. "Are you in love with her or something? Are you protecting her? Is this like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity?"
"Fred Macwho?"
Bart rolled his eyes. "Fred MacMurray? Big-time actor in noir and domestic dramas and Disney movies. Later famous as the father of My Three Sons, Steve Douglas. Born 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois..."
"Shut up, ImpulseMDB. ImpDB. IMDB, where the I's for Impulse --"
"It's Kid Flash, dummy."
Kon snorted. "Kid Ass, more like."
"Super-Jerk. Dork-El. The Meanie of Steel, the clone who couldn't think..." Bart batted his eyelashes. "I've got a million. Don't try me. Dumber-Boy, star of When Superman was a boy and stupid."
Kon was laughing by the time Bart finished. He had fibbed -- he had far fewer than a million plays on Kon's various names -- so the laughter couldn't have come at a better time. Kon bobbed down through the air and landed next to Bart on the couch.
"Anyway, you can't just 'bring her in'," he said and helpfully provided inverted commas with his index fingers. "That girl's like a ninja."
"Does she have nunchuks? Throwing stars?" Bart asked and Kon shook his head. "The mysterious death of a beloved but stern mentor which must be avenged, no matter the personal cost?"
"No."
"Does she have a sword at least?"
"No."
Bart shrugged. "Then she's not a ninja. I can totally bring her in."
"Heh," Kon said. "Not."
"Yeah."
"Not."
"Yeah."
Kon covered his face with his hands and heaved a melodramatic sigh. "Bart, man, look -- we're not going to Gotham."
"We gotta!" Bart was bouncing on the cushions so hard that the couch's frame squeaked; when Kon tried to hold him down, he vibrated free and bounced harder. "We gotta!"
"What are you, three?"
"So? You're two, Super-Baby."
"Two and seven-eighths! Technically."
"Exactly." Bart nodded decisively before hopping up and speeding to his room to grab his knapsack and a trench-coat. Back in the lounge, he found Kon still sprawled across the couch. "Okay, we're going. Ready?"
"No," Kon said flatly. He was using the Robin-command voice again, but this time Bart was ready for it.
Bart pointed at Kon, then over to the window. "Yes."
"No, Bart. En-Noh, no."
Bart tossed his knapsack at Kon's chest. "Race you!"
He didn't look back as he ran down the side of the Tower, but he allowed himself a victorious fistpump when he heard Kon mutter, just before the whoosh of going airborne, "Damn it."
*
Gotham glittered in the late-afternoon sun, its gnarled, Gothic skyline piercing the few clouds that huddled on the horizon. Bart lapped Robinson Park three times, pausing to salute the site where they'd brought down that plantgirl during No Man's Land. After changing into civilian dress, he ate a frozen custard and two roasted cobs of corn while he waited for Kon to catch up.
He was just finishing off a bratwurst with all the toppings when Kon finally appeared, his face red with exertion. He'd landed in the woods, in a thick briar patch by the looks of it, and he was picking the brambles out of his shirt while cursing the whole time. When he saw Bart, he threw the knapsack back at him. "You are in for such an asskicking, man. Doomsday got off light compared to how you're going to feel when I'm through with you."
Bart sprinted backwards, wiping the mustard from his mouth and slinging the knapsack over one shoulder. Over Kon's shoulder, a narrow gravel path curved around a pile of boulders. In the slanting sun, he thought he saw a wink of dark hair, the line of one skinny arm.
"Oh my god!" Bart ran forward, keeping to a human pace, his heart knocking up against his sinuses. "Oh my god, it's Tim!"
Kon froze like one of the statues in the grove on the far side of the park. "What?"
Bart shoved past him and bolted up the path. Tim was crouched behind the largest boulder, tapping something out on his Blackberry. He rocked back on his heels as Bart zoomed into him, one arm around Tim's neck, the other around his waist; he got Tim in the air and spun around as fast as he dared.
"You left! I should clobber you, you know that? I can't believe you just left and didn't call or answer my email or that registered package I sent you, did you get it? I borrowed your shirt from the laundry room and then when you didn't come back, I thought maybe you were mad at me, so I sent it, like, mega-fast FedEx. I asked Wally to deliver it but he told me to leave you alone, and I didn't want to, but then Joan gave me twenty dollars for my birthday and I spent it on the package --"
Tim lifted one arm free, twisted at the waist, and freed himself. Stepping away, he shook his hair out of his eyes. "Hi, Bart."
Bart grabbed at Kon for balance, but Kon was out of reach and he stumbled a little. "Tim."
"What are you doing here?" Tim asked. He was out of uniform, too, wearing a plain white shirt and dark khaki pants. He looked a lot smaller, about as small as Bart usually felt, without the red and green.
Kon snorted. "What are we doing? What are you doing spying on us?"
Tim lifted his chin and gazed at Kon with narrowed eyes. "Answer the question."
"You first," Kon said. He had his legs apart, hands on his hips, and it seemed to Bart as if he'd grown another couple inches on the flight east.
Tim's gaze remained steady. "I have...sensors. For metahuman activity."
"Really?" Bart asked. He paced around Tim, taking in every detail he could. "Cool!"
Tim nodded. He didn't quite smile or anything, but it looked like he wanted to, which, with him, was pretty good.
Kon shook his head, folding his arms over his chest and grinding one heel into the gravel. "You're a civilian now," he said, spitting the last word like the worst kind of cuss. "What are you doing with sensors?"
Bart wondered if this was what the audience at a duel back in the eighteenth century felt like -- every gesture, every word, was leaded with significance and spite, and as a cloud passed over the sun, the boulders darkened and grew, but Tim and Kon stared each other down, their profiles sharp against the dusk.
"We're all civilians," Bart said brightly, desperation making his voice high and false, like he always sounded when trying to cheer Preston up back in Manchester. He reached for Tim's arm and gestured at Kon. "Right, guys? Civilians, like anyone else."
"Tim's gone full-time," Kon said. He sounded like he was announcing Tim's death.
Bart's hand dropped back to his side, well before he ever touched Tim. Of all of them, Tim was the most dedicated -- to what Jay called good works and Tim himself referred to as the mission. Bart and Kon didn't have much choice in the matter, since they were both born -- created -- out of joint and full of weird powers, but Tim was the one who'd always shown them how to do good. How, and why.
Tim as a civilian made about as much sense as Wally becoming a college professor.
He didn't know how much time passed after Kon's announcement. He needed to sit down, but when he did, he landed on a jagged piece of rock and ripped a hole in the back of his pants. The pain cleared his head, at least temporarily, but in that clarity, a new thought surfaced: Kon knew all this time that Tim was retiring, and he hadn't bothered to tell Bart.
Why should he? Everyone believed that Bart was an overgrown child who needed protection from the real world.
He kicked at a clod of dirt, wishing it was Kon's head, and grinned when it exploded under his toe.
Tim stepped over Bart's leg, right up to Kon, and said in that patented boss-voice, "What. Are you. Doing. Here?"
Kon cracked his knuckles and Tim's stance shifted. Mad as he was, sad as he was, Bart couldn't let them fight. He jostled in between them and locked his knees, so he couldn't be tossed aside. "We have a case, Tim!"
Tim frowned, looking skeptical. Then Kon reached around Bart -- Bart had neglected to factor in his greater size and armspan -- and shoved Tim. Bart ducked, Tim shoved back, and Bart ran up the nearest tree. The branch shook underneath him as he shouted at them to stop.
Tim got in a good karate chop to Kon's kidneys, but then Kon wrapped him in a headlock. As Tim writhed, Kon called, "Let the big kids talk."
Bart wished for a rock to throw. He took his knapsack and lobbed it at Kon's back, hard enough that Kon went off-balance and Tim wrestled free. "Screw you, Kon!"
Tim's shirt was pulled over his head and he was down on his knees and one hand. "Give us a moment, Bart? Please?"
"Fine," Bart said and swung to the next tree, then the one after that. He could stop them, if he really tried and kept Kon confused enough to drop the TTK while also dodging Tim's scary martial-arts skills. He could, but just now, he didn't feel like helping either one of them, let alone making peace. If they wanted to treat him like a little kid, that was their own irony to deal with; he wasn't the one rubbing Tim's face in the dirt or flipping Kon down to the grass.
Violence should never be your first option: Max had taught him that, but Bart had already known it, just not in those particular words. Maybe it was in the VR programming, maybe it was just his personality -- that's what Grandma Iris and Helen both said -- but the fact was just obvious to Bart.
Tim and Kon reached a stand-off, which suggested that Tim carried kryptonite around in his bookbag, and now they were standing on opposite sides of the clearing, yelling at each other. Bart moved to the next farthest tree, then another, but their words -- traitor and asshole and much worse -- followed him wherever he went. The words snagged in his ears, pummeled his face; his stomach rolled sickly and his eyes burned and stung. Before he could do anything -- puke or cry or both -- Bart did what he did best. He ran away.
They probably didn't even notice he'd gone.
[continued in part 2]