Tim did not actually mean to kidnap an alternate reality's version of Kon.
In his defense, he'd had very limited time in that reality and everything in it had been going to shit and . . . well, everything in it had been going to shit.
Also, Lex Luthor had been a lot more heavily involved in that particular reality's Cadmus, and fuck it if Tim was ever going to leave any version of Kon with that bastard.
With any bastard who could ever look at Kon and call him "it".
"Ow," Tim grunts into the dirty pavement of what he hopes is his own Gotham as blood drips out of his mouth, and feels Kon's fingertips brush very, very tentatively against his back. He's a little too dizzy to lift his head, but he figures it doesn't matter. Like it's just . . . it's fine. They're not in Cadmus and Kon is safe and Tim is . . . conscious, at least, which means he can work with the situation.
Whatever the situation actually is, anyway.
Kon's hands flatten against his back, which is a very familiar tell, and Tim immediately feels the even more familiar embrace of TTK wrapping him up.
Less familiar is the impulse to find said embrace adorable, but in Tim's defense, this Kon is physiologically about ten years old and so far every single thing he's done has been either adorable or heartbreaking or some terrible combination of the two.
"Robin?" Kon asks anxiously. "You're okay, right?"
"M'okay," Tim mumbles blurrily, because it's more or less true. More blood drips out of his mouth and splatters on the pavement. "All okay. S'fine. You hurt?"
"No," Kon says, still sounding nervous. "Dunno where we are, though."
"Should be Gotham," Tim says, forcing himself to lift his head enough to check and nearly laughing as he recognizes their surroundings as the exact part of Crime Alley that he got interdimensionally yanked out of seventy-six hours ago. "Yeah. Gotham."
He pushes himself up enough to look over at Kon. Kon looks very small crouched down next to him with buzzed-down hair, barefoot in pristine white lab scrubs with a shiny metal cuff stamped with an identification number locked around his wrist. "13" features prominently on it.
Tim wants to melt it into slag.
"Is it your Gotham?" Kon asks.
"No clue, but I'm hoping," Tim says. He thinks about getting to his feet but he's pretty sure he'd throw up if he tried. Or fall over. Or both?
Probably both, at this point.
Oh well, he figures, and pushes himself up. He doesn't vomit, surprisingly, although he is very definitely sure that Kon's TTK is the only thing keeping him from falling over.
No reason to look that particular gift horse in the mouth, Tim decides.
"I need coffee," he says as he gives Kon's shoulder an appreciative pat, because the caffeine withdrawal is real. Also he needs medical attention, probably, but also-also he needs to come up with either a cover story for the ER or an explanation for Bruce and therefore caffeine can't hurt.
"Uh, okay," Kon says skeptically. "I don't think Starbucks or anything is gonna be open right now, though, it's pretty late."
"God, what did Cadmus teach you, kid," Tim says despairingly, making a face at the thought. "Starbucks is a punishment from God. We're going to the nearest twenty-four diner and I'm ordering roofing tar. And we're getting you a hot chocolate. Do you want a hot chocolate?"
". . . yeah," Kon says, biting his lip. "Um. I mean, I dunno if I'd like it, though."
"If you don't like it, we'll get you something else," Tim says. "But I haven't slept or eaten properly since I left my reality and I need coffee before it becomes a legitimate medical emergency."
"Shouldn't you get, like, real food, then?" Kon asks skeptically. "Not just coffee?"
"Coffee is food," Tim lies reflexively.
". . . I don't think it is," Kon says, squinting up at him suspiciously. "Are you taking advantage of me being too stupid to know if coffee's food or not?"
". . . we can get something to go," Tim says, wishing he'd blown up a bit more of Cadmus on his way out of that fucking cesspool of a reality. "You're not stupid. Luthor can choke on a fucking cactus for all the shit he kept saying to you."
"I mean, I didn't come out right," Kon says uncomfortably. "I'm not as smart as Dadd–as Lex is. Or as Superman was."
Tim pretends that Kon wasn't about to say "Daddy" for both their sakes. Just . . . yeah. At least for the moment, anyway.
Luthor was a lot more heavily involved in that Cadmus.
Tim tries not to think about the way that Luthor had kept touching Kon. All the little too-deliberate points of contact he'd made time and again and too often.
Tim hadn't seen anyone else even so much as enter Kon's personal space the entire time he'd been in that godforsaken lab, and every single time that Luthor had made a gesture like he might touch him, Kon had tensed in something that couldn't decide between being fear or anticipation.
It'd made Tim want to burn the whole fucking lab and every single LexCorp-owned building he could find to the ground.
He'd settled for interdimensionally kidnapping Kon and destroying all of Cadmus's systems and DNA samples as thoroughly as possible. C-4 had been involved.
A lot of C-4 had been involved.
Possibly that had been a slight overreaction, but fuck if Tim cares. Just–Clark had still been dead, and Cassie hadn't had powers and Bart hadn't been in the time period and Tim himself hadn't even existed, for whatever reason, and apparently neither had Cissie or Greta or Anita or Slobo, and Bruce had already had his hands full with Damian and Dick had been off-planet and Jason had also still been dead and just–
Options had been limited, alright?
Options had been limited, and by that point Tim hadn't had time to go check and see what the Kents were up to or track down Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen or even just tip off the Justice League or the Titans, because by that point he'd been in an examination room with a Lex Luthor who was stroking a frightened Kon's face with one hand while holding a syringe that was glowing kryptonite-green with the other and Tim had just . . . he'd just made some choices at that point, okay?
He'd made some very decisive choices.
And some very decisive commitments.
Or at least one very decisive commitment, anyway.
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