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“Dick Grayson get the fuck up right now.” Tim growls leant over Nightwing’s still body before watching his brother rise with a gasp.
Watching the elder give him an apologetic smile as he attempts to get his breathing back to normal, Tim continues, “I had a plan. Don’t do that shit again especially when the guns do different things, you self-sacrificing dumbass,” he rolls his eyes fondly as he pulls a now grinning Dick to sit up against the piece of building Tim pulled them behind for cover.
Listening to the motions of his brother doing self-checks, Tim takes in their surroundings carefully. The smell of burnt skin and ash in the air makes him want to gag but he presses the thought down and focuses on following the trail of smoke from the newest gun that shot his brother to one of the purple, rabbit-like aliens.
He squints his eyes and watches with his lips pressed together as the alien seems to frown at the gun they used before putting it back in a nearby crate (it’s reinforced- lived through Hood shooting a rocket launcher at it), putting some sort of band around it, and grabbing another bandless gun.
Now completely frowning in thought, he takes a moment to side-eye Dick.
“What did it do?”
Dick looks at him but Tim can tell by the slightest twitch of his temple that it was too loud.
He had whispered the question.
He frowns further. Concussion? Or side effect?
His brother looks slightly to the left of his eyes, “I think it was just a knockback. Normal pulse gun. I hit my head during landing.”
Cursing to himself faintly, he sets his gun- fucking empty -to the side, does a quick look around and feels the back of his brother’s head. Bump. Blood. Doesn’t feel like any skull fractures but they can never be too careful with head injuries.
Ripping out his own broken comm, he steals Nightwing’s before leaning him back against the building.
“Red Robin on Nightwing’s comm. He’s got a head injury, seems mild but needs extraction. On what used to be Park and Midstream behind the eastside of Karla’s Hair Salon. I’ve got eyes on the tactical group so stay subtle. If anyone long-range isn’t nearby, try to grab me a gun on the way over.”
Within the moment, just as people started arguing over the comms over various things that don’t apply to Tim- or maybe they do? And simply Tim doesn’t care- Flash shows up in a crouch in front of Nightwing with a worried frown.
Absently handing him a gun with the slightest of wariness, of him or the gun he’s unsure, Tim gives Wally a nod of thanks before preparing the gun’s scope to take aim.
“I thought the Bats don’t use guns, sans Hood?” The speedster questions as he checks Dick over and reassures him with movements that he’s safe, sharing an absent smile between them.
Tim doesn’t even bother with fake grimacing (like it’s something he needs to be ashamed of) as he stares ahead focused in the scope, “You learn what you need to, and after being almost murdered by two of my brothers and then almost being murdered again during a year abroad where everyone thought I was insane, my favorite assassin bestie thought it was prudent to learn and I didn’t disagree.”
No one caught the pun but that’s okay. Tim can take the imagined snort from Pru in his mind as his victory even as Wally grimaces beside him.
“Do you know what this gun does? Or is it random?” Tim spares him a full look as the older man starts preparing to pick Dick up.
Wally looks up at him to meet his eyes, “Jason said it was normal but it is Jason. We all know they’re just playing with us since they could've taken us all out with one of the original explosion guns, so who knows how vindictive he’s feeling. Especially since I heard Roy was hit.``
Tim just turns away with a roll of his eyes and scoff, “Oh please. Hood has wonderful control these days and wouldn’t ever give me a gun he didn’t know the result of,” he takes aim, “Besides, they aren’t playing with us,” he says nonchalantly like it’s obvious. Like it didn’t cause Wally’s head to snap up to look at him and for the comms to turn silent, “They’re using us as lab rats. These aren’t even their weapons. They’re testing them all to see what they can do and they probably didn’t even notice we were here before they started and then just decided to keep going since everyone likes a live test subject,” he explains lightly.
He lines up his shot.
“Do you think it’s more or less likely that an alien’s heart is in the same place as a humans?”
Dick groans from the noise when Tim takes the shot, stealing Wally’s attention away with a worried frown.
They don’t see Tim mutter a soft ‘motherfu-’ when he sees someone shoot at him the same time he shoots at the leader.
A pink brightness surrounds his vision.
Fuck.
The buzzing in his ears and black dots in his vision increase exponentially until he can’t help but scream at the sharp pain and disorientation that keeps getting worse and worse and worse-
Tim blinks.
Taking a moment to be surprised that he’s still in the exact same position, he instinctively grabs the arm reaching for him and flips the offender on their back with a knife to their throat and a growl in his own.
Clearing his slightly blurry eyes, he watches as everyone stills at the threat. …Everyone?
Confused, he watches with interest and curiosity as he realizes he’s in the watchtower with a knife to Oliver Queen’s throat.
Looking around quietly, he absorbs as much information about what’s happening.
From listening over comms, he knows of some of the gun’s powers; basic repulsors, locking someone in their worst memory, locking them in their best memory, timed paralysis, vague moments of future memories, hell he knows someone who was hit with some sort of love at first sight gun.
His comm at the moment, however, gives nothing but static, which doesn’t quite harmonize with the sound of Barry Allen abruptly screaming as he starts buzzing in and out of reality uncontrollably.
With widened eyes, Tim starts muttering to himself even as everyone else in the JL ends up simultaneously trying to get Flash’s attention to help him while also yelling at everything going on and also not trying to make any sudden movements so Tim doesn’t kill Oliver, “Oh fuck oh shit okay so this never happens to Barry with alternate dimensions or branch offs and there’s no reason for this to be a memory or an illusion cause goddammit this isn't even the weirdest thing to happen to me-”
He ignores Oliver’s face going pale at the name drop, or is it his words?
“-okay it’s probably time travel. But any time travel that doesn’t result in a branch off universe or destroy the current one or results in two universes combining explosively usually means it would be a closed circle, right? And if it’s a closed circle it means this has already happened and if it already happened then that means there should be a file of it- why doesn’t anybody remember this, though? There’s way too many people that can’t act for shit in this room-”
Everyone looks at the door when J’onn walks in and pauses at the scene.
J’onn.
“Oh holy shit!” Everyone snaps their heads back to Tim.
Tim, on the other hand, snaps his head back to his unwilling victim, honestly forgetting about him in his tangent, “Date. Now.” He commands.
Oliver seems to look even more confused and pale, “You’re not really my typ-”
“Oh my god shut the fuck up Ollie and tell me what the fucking date is!” He yells half-hysterically as Barry continues to flash in and out of agony behind them.
Hal speaks up quickly and a little manic, “It’s August 8th, 2008!”
Tim goes back to ignoring everyone to mutter to himself, “2008. 2008. August 2008. C’mon, Tim, you read all the past files when you were bored. 08. 08. 2008. 080808. Why is that familiar?” He questions himself darkly.
“080808,” he repeats slowly to himself.
“Computer, what time is it?”
Everyone jumps a little when a loud, “8:03:24 PM JLT,” blares out.
“8! Oh my god it’s the Circle Conspiracy!” He yells excitedly at the same time as Barry turns solid and falls in exhaustion.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” Hal growls at Tim after running to catch Barry before he hits the ground.
“I just saved his life,” Tim answers absently as he mutters his way through plans, mentally running through the file describing the missing eight days of everyone on the space station.
Everyone gives him looks of disbelief.
“Alright,” he nods to himself as he finally looks up to watch everyone with determined eyes, “I’m a time traveler. Accidental of course. If you know anything about time travel you know about closed circle time travel where everything you do has already been done. That means this has already happened in my time so I need to make sure this goes exactly the same or it’ll break the space-time continuum of our universe and we’ll all die,” He looks over at Barry curiously.
“Barry would probably die first, I think. Or the speed force would consume him. Or spit him out into a different universe. If this doesn’t go the way it should. I know he’s experienced alternate dimensions, and parallel universes, and I know he went back in time and tried to do open circle time travel where it’s like the butterfly effect once which resulted in an alternate branch off universe which was tragic or something but he never tried out closed circle. We thought it wasn’t feasible or that it would result in a branch off or something. I guess now we know it could work in theory…” he mutters to himself in fascination as everyone just looks at him warily or disbelievingly.
They could have known years and years prior if it wasn’t necessary to the timeline to keep everything on the downlow.
“Computer!” Batman clenches his fist like he knows what Tim might say next. He even seems to be about to open his mouth, but Tim beats him to it.
“Alpha Beta Omega Tango Reverse Doubled 03048295 from 08/08/2008 8:00:00 PM JLT to 08/16/2008 8:00:00 PM JLT. Full Tower Lockdown. All footage erased and disposed of. Confirmation Code: Esteemed Guest 06261047. Confirm 1.”
“Confirmed. Waiting for Confirm 2.” The computer echos back.
Everyone looks at Batman who looks at him with wide eyes on how he could know codes that aren’t written down anywhere.
Tim only looks at J’onn.
Staring into the alien’s eyes, he takes his mask off that blocks mental intrusions.
I consent. Look. Listen. Believe me. I have no desire for any harm to come to any of these people.
Everyone watches as J’onn takes a step back in surprise at all the emotion he receives at once.
“...Confirmation Code: Martian Manhunter 9377. Confirm 2,” he says quietly, still staring into Tim’s eyes even as everyone else sucks a breath in.
“Confirmed. Full Tower Lockdown will be finalized in 10 seconds and will end on 08/16/2008 8:00:00 PM JLT. All records will be erased between 08/08/2008 8:00:00 PM JLT and 08/08/2008 8:08:52 PM JLT when Lockdown begins. All records will show lockdown beginning at 08/08/2008 8:00:00 PM JLT. No records will be recorded during Full Tower Lockdown.”
Clark takes a step toward J’onn, pissed and confused, “Why would you do that?”
J’onn finally rips away from the eye contact between them to look back at Clark impassively.
“He only speaks the truth. It’d be quite remiss of me to ignore the words of a child from the future. Let alone a child of Batman.”
Wonder Woman, among others, gasps before looking between Bruce, who is evidently still wide eyed despite Tim being the only one in the room who could possibly tell, and Tim, who half-heartedly glares at J’onn, “Yeah, thanks J’onn. That really makes everything so much clearer and not more confusing for everyone at all.”
“Great, is anyone still worried about me getting my throat slit? Or am I just a non-issue now?” Oliver interrupts from below Tim’s threatening pin.
Everyone watches as Tim blinks surprised and responds blandly, “Oh. I forgot you were still here.”
Oliver just looks at him in annoyance, as Tim gracefully sheathes his knife back to his boot and relaxes.
Scooting off of Oliver and then the table, he rolls his eyes (fondly) at Hal growling at him for walking towards him.
Petting Hal’s head softly, “I didn’t realize your crush on Barry was so early. You guys are cute,” he muses aloud to the mortification of the lantern in front of him.
“Oh my god! I don’t- I don’t have a crush on Barry! What the fuc- shut up!” He sputters with a complexion getting darker by the second as everyone blinks at them.
Looking up from where he was crouched next to Hal and Barry on the ground, he takes the time to look at everyone in a way he couldn’t before. J’onn will have to put everyone’s memories behind a barrier until Tim’s present day and that means currently, Tim knows everything about everyone in the room and they know nothing about him.
A smile lights up his face; he couldn’t help but giggle in a way he hasn’t in a long time at how young they look, “Oh my god, the next eight days are going to be so much fun!”
He pretends he doesn’t see their faces pale in dismay.