This is an angsty version of other post of mine. Pls go read it first if this is to make much sense, as it is an alternate ending that picks up about mid story.
Warnings: Death, small mention of blood, description of panic/anxiety attack
He’s down on one knee in front of Tim, it’s a bit awkward, considering Tim is still sitting, but it somehow works. It’s still just a joke (Tim isn’t so sure anymore) the ring is cheap and the wrong size for Tims ring finger, and he looks away. Blush creeping up his cheeks. “No, shut up.” Tim takes a deep breath, and he almost regrets his answer this time. What if he had said yes?
Tim doesn’t see the dejected look on Kon’s face, which he quickly covers with a painfully fake laugh. “I should have known you were a diamonds guy instead.” Kon jokes, and Tim curls into himself slightly. The conversation dies a bit, no, actually Tim feels like he took the conversation out back and shot it.
Tim huffs, then reaches out to snatch the ring box from Kons hands. “I don’t mind it.” Tim grumbles, slipping the ring box into his utility belt. The tension retracts a small amount, and they easily talk about other things. But the feeling that something changed between them was felt by both sides, no matter how hard they both pretended it didn’t.
Kon flying Tim back to Gotham afterwards was an experience. One that, hopefully, wouldn’t happen again. Being princess carried after that definitely wasn’t the best feeling. Although, now? Not too long later? Tim would do anything to go back to that moment. The city was a mess, building crumbled and destroyed completely.
Kon laying in a large crater, blood leaking from his skull. Tim didn’t see breathing from 30 feet away, he didn’t feel any breathing when he was kneeling besides Kon moments later, a hand to his chest. He didn’t feel a heartbeat as he looked into those stunning eyes. Kon’s eyes, which were always so bright and hopeful, gleeful and mischievous at times.
They were dull, empty. Something deep, irreplaceable, and majorly important shattered inside Tim’s heart. He had to be dragged away from Kon’s body, breaking down like he’d never usually allow himself to in public. The next few days that passed were torture. Tim locked himself away in his apartment, not allowing anyone inside, not even Alfred.
Tim, after an unknown about of time trying to get himself together, managed for just long enough to make it to Kons funeral. He looked like shit, he knows he does, but the pity looks he gets from the other hero’s in attendance don’t make it any better. When he gets back to his apartment that night, he rips off his mask the moment he’s through the window. He starts tearing off his costume, fumbling with his utility belt enough for something to fall out of it.
The ring box. Tim freezes. It’s difficult to look away from it, his brain processes exactly what it is, but his heart can’t take it. He falls to the floor, his knees hitting against the ground as he hurriedly grabbed the small box with trembling hands. Taking a deep breath, he opens it with the smallest of clicks.
The ring looks the same as when Kon had presented it to him that night on the silo. The cheap metal glinting in the light, the fake glass stone that shimmered despite being just that- glass. Tears pricked at his eyes again. Closing the box, he flopped over to fully lay on the ground, cradling the ring box close to his chest as sobs wrecked his body.
Months later, Tim was in a lab, one that even Bruce didn’t know the full extent of. He was looking up at big, red letters spelled out on the screens.
His breath hitched, he just didn’t understand why he kept failing. He had, by all means, perfected the formula by attempt 26, it was the getting the exact variable right, which he did by attempt 31. Did it have something to do with the cells not replicating right? It starts going wrong once tissue starts forming, it just keeps dying again and again and every time it reminds him of Kon because it’s Kon’s cells that are dying.
Every time he closes his eyes, every time he tries to sleep all he can see is Kon’s body, all he can smell is the blood, all he can hear is the ringing in his ears. The feeling of Kon’s skin beneath his fingers growing colder by the second, cold as cool metal. Tim isn’t breathing anymore, cold seeps into his fingertips and he has to remind himself it’s not Kon, it’s the floor. The cold steel floor, not the cold dying body of his best friend.
He struggles to get oxygen into his lungs, and his hands shoot to his chest. He tugs at the leather cord, haphazardly yanking the makeshift necklace out from where it was hiding beneath his shirt. This metal was warm, small, smooth and cheap. Tim lightly rolled it between his fingers, small stabs of pain from the slightly jagged cut from the glass gem help bring his mind back down to reality.
When he fully becomes aware of himself again, he clears his blurry eyes and starts a breathing meditation exercise that Bruce had once taught him when he first started training to be Robin. Five seconds in, 7 seconds out, wait, five seconds in, 7 seconds out, wait, repeat. Tim rested his hand against his chest to feel his heartbeat, the ring held still held in his grip.
His body feels weak, and all he wants to do is black out. Maybe he’d get some peaceful sleep for once. He knew he wouldn’t. His nightmares only seemed to get worse after a day like this. He rested his other hand against the wall to try and stabilize himself as he stood, and it was then that he realized he had backed himself into one of the small nooks in the lab. In between some equipment and the wall.
Tim shuffled his way out, his legs wobbly. He makes it to his deck and sits down in his not so comfortable chair. He opens his hand which he had kept closed around the ring the whole journey, afraid of what would happen if he had lost his hold on it. He dared to look down, see it in his hands.
He can’t stop thinking about it. What if he had said yes like he wanted to so badly in that moment? Would the pain be worse? Would him saying yes somehow prevented Kons death- oh wow this chair is uncomfortable, yep. He rips that train of thought right off its tracks, he doesn’t want to think about it. He can’t, he’ll just think about it later. That’s a later Tim problem. Or if he never thinks about that possibility, it won’t ever get to him. Right?
He slips the ring necklace back under his shirt, keeping it level with his heart. He gets to work again, filling his mind with endless distractions, possibilities that aren’t life changing related, ones that are instead cloning related. The cells in the tissues just won’t stabilize. He pauses after attempt 43, looking over his notes again.
Again, and again, and again, and again, again, again, again, the cycle does nothing but repeat and Tim makes no progress. He feels like he knows what he had to do in order to move onto the next set of possibilities. But he doesn’t want to. Not yet.
