Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best

[cisskabob]

WHO: Cissie King-Jones
WHERE: Tim's room at the Inn
WHEN: Backdated to the beginning of January, no more than a few days after the NYE party
OPEN TO: Tim Drake
WARNINGS: N/A, will update if necessary

---

Cissie's had a few days to digest everything she learned at the party on New Years' Eve, and to try to wrap her mind around the idea of Tim being here too, but not with his memories of Wonderland. She's wrestled with what to do; should she tell him? Should she try to rebuild their friendship first, and tell him later? She finds herself lying awake in bed one night, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep... and realizes that she just misses Tim, which is ridiculous when he's right down the hall. It occurs to her that maybe he isn't exactly the same Tim as the one she knew in Wonderland, but he's still her friend, and they won't get anywhere if she doesn't at least try to talk to him.

Which is how Cissie finds herself at the door to Tim's room in the Inn, knocking, well after midnight. She's not exactly worried that the most nocturnal person she's ever known would be doing something as ridiculous as sleeping, but she still keeps the knocks quiet and speaks softly to avoid waking any neighbors.

"Tim? It's Cissie. Can I come in?"

Comments

[mrsarcastic003]

Cissie's right--Tim isn't sleeping. It may be well after midnight, but it doesn't feel late to him. Probably has something to do with the relatively few times he's gone to bed before midnight over the past several years. Instead, he's been taking walks and trying to familiarize himself with the village. Cissie had been right--it's dark. Even No Man's Land hadn't been this dark--too many people lighting fires and trying to stay warm or keep the dark away. It reminds him of camping, but the few occasions he'd gone camping had had a known end date. This doesn't.

He glances toward the door when Cissie knocks. "It's open."

He'll lock it when he actually goes to sleep--whenever that is.

[cisskabob]

Cissie lets herself in, closing the door behind her. It still surprises her, seeing him look this age, even though that's precisely why she's come to see him. It feels strange, feeling awkward with him. She's not a fan, and hopefully that can change, and fast.

"Hey. How's it going?" she asks, crossing the room to sit on the foot of his bed.

[mrsarcastic003]

He gives her a small smile. "All right. Trying to get settled, if that's a thing that can happen. I'm not completely sure it can, given the circumstances, but I'm doing my best. You?"

[cisskabob]

"The same," she says, returning his smile with a little one of her own. She draws her knees to her chest, wrapping an arm around them, before taking a breath and deciding that, well. The hell with it. She may as well just put it all out there.

"...It's a little different, for me, I think. I... wasn't exactly at home before I wound up in the fountain here."

[mrsarcastic003]

He turns the rest of the way toward her, frowning thoughtfully. "You mentioned. Something about Wonderland?" It sounds... extremely unlikely to him, and not least because Wonderland isn't real. He also likes to think he would remember something like that, and she seems to think he had been there as well.

[cisskabob]

"Yeah. As in Alice's Adventures in." She gives him a wry little smile and shrugs. "Believe me, I know how crazy it sounds. But so does baseball in outer space, roller disco hell and mind controlling tv shows for kids, and we have absolutely lived through those."

[mrsarcastic003]

All right, well, when she puts it like that, Wonderland sounds practically reasonable. He gives her a slightly rueful smile. "Touche. I retract my previously registered disbelief. Can you... tell me about it? Because I don't remember anything like what you're describing."

[cisskabob]

Cissie's smile grows a bit; she's surprised that she feels relief. It wasn't that she thought Tim wouldn't believe her, but she was prepared to argue more to convince him.

"Honestly? I'm not surprised you don't remember. I don't know how or why I remember it, or anyone else. One of the facts of being in Wonderland was that whenever someone left, they didn't retain any of their memories of Wonderland. Sometimes people would leave and come back, and they would remember their time there--but only after they got back. They said they didn't remember a thing when they were home."

[mrsarcastic003]

"So... normally," if 'going to Wonderland' can be considered a normal event, "you wouldn't remember either, and we wouldn't be having this conversation?" He shakes his head a little, frowning. It's not that he doesn't believe her, exactly, but it doesn't make any sense to him. There would be no possible way to verify that it had or hadn't happened. Is that the point? Kind of like whatever is happening here, where they've been kidnapped by some entity for... what? Amusement?

[cisskabob]

"Pretty much," Cissie admits. She is entirely and acutely aware of how ridiculous and outlandish all of this sounds, but it's also the truth, and she's got that conviction on her side.

That, and Jason. Which... makes her shift a little uncomfortably on the bed.

"So. Wonderland was kind of a lot like this place, in that people got pulled there from all different times and worlds, and even alternate timelines, and people who might not even be real, but who are fictional where we're from, but--not where they're from, obviously."

She is not about to drop the 'we're fictional and you wanted to read the comics about yourself, you masochist' bombshell right this minute.

"And this is where I'm going to sound like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, but you were there with me. You were younger, and--you still thought I was Arrowette, and you were pretty shocked when I called you Tim, if that tells you anything. Kon was there too, and so was Damian for a little while, and--I am pretty sure Bart was not the Bart we know. ...Jason Todd was there, too."

She pauses finally, waiting to watch his reactions. She's just dropped a lot of information in one fell swoop, and she's not even sure how much he knows she knows.

[mrsarcastic003]

He frowns as she finishes. "I don't remember anything like that," he says finally. "Which... I guess makes sense if people typically don't. Maybe the difference is that I was home before I was here? Maybe you have to go back home to forget the place you were?" He honestly has no idea, because it doesn't make much sense to him, but it's the only thing he can think of to explain why she would remember it, and he wouldn't. "Unless we're actually from different universes. I don't suppose the sky is pink where you're from or something."

Pause. Wait, did she say Jason was there too? How does she know about Jason?

"...The same Jason that's here?"

[cisskabob]

She shrugs, a little helplessly and more than a little frustrated, even if it's not Tim she's frustrated with. "Maybe. I've definitely wondered that myself. But no, the sky is... not usually pink. Except at sunset or if someone's invading or we've been sucked into another dimension again," she adds, smiling a bit.

The smile stays, but it's a little tight and small, as she nods at his question. "Yeah. That Jason. He... is actually not from our universe. There don't seem to be a lot of differences, but there are some."

[mrsarcastic003]

He lets out a short laugh at her words. Another dimension. Again. Yeah, that sounds about right. It sounds like he and Cissie are probably from the same universe, then. Or close enough that any differences are going to be pretty negligable, but--

"What kinds of differences?"

[cisskabob]

"Well..." Cissie shifts awkwardly, considering how to reveal... everything she has to reveal to him, without freaking him out completely. "It's hard to say everything that's different, because I don't know... everything. But for starters, he didn't know you, and... never tried to kill you."

[mrsarcastic003]

He blinks a couple of times. "Well, that's... going to be a pleasant change." It's been a long time since he was optimistic that his relationship with Jason could ever improve, but he also hadn't considered getting a fresh start with a completely different universe's Jason.

A failure of imagination on his part, really.

[cisskabob]

Cissie's smile was a little bit sad and she shrugged, spreading her hands. "Honestly, I think it helped that in Wonderland, you hadn't met him yet. He was still dead for you, and... Damian was there, and he was a pretty big jerk to Jason. That, and he met you before he found out you were Robin, and I think that helped too."

[mrsarcastic003]

"...It probably would," he admitted. Robin was... kind of the problem between the three of them, one way or another. He gives her a little smile. "And you ended up dragged into all of this, too. So how's that retired life going?"

[cisskabob]

She blinks, and then gives a surprised laugh. Some of the tension she's holding releases, and she relaxes just a little, returning his smile with a small one of her own. "Pretty boring, up until getting kidnapped twice into multidimensional bubbles of the time-space continuum," she admits. "Tim... I think you should know that I know a lot more than you think I do. Or that I probably should know."

[mrsarcastic003]

He gives her a bemused smile. "...Okay? I'm not sure what you mean."

[cisskabob]

Cissie looks back at him and considers for a moment before deciding--in for a penny, in for a pound.

"Bruce Wayne is Batman. Dick Grayson is your brother, and was the first Robin, and then he was Nightwing until he took over as Batman and fired you as Robin so that Bruce's son Damian could be Robin. Jason was the second Robin, until he was murdered pretty horribly, and brought back by the Lazarus Pit. Your girlfriend was Stephanie Brown, who went by Spoiler, but she was Robin too for a little while, until she died too.

Also, Superman is Clark Kent."

[mrsarcastic003]

He can feel his jaw start to drop as she calmly runs through the list of his family's IDs, including Steph's. It makes sense that she would know them if she knows his, and if she's followed what's happened to him at all over the past few years. That's sort of been one of the risks of all being in the same family and doing the vigilante thing--once you know one of them, it's pretty easy to work out the rest. It's how he'd worked out Batman's ID himself, after all.

And then she drops Clark's ID, and he blinks. "Cissie, what the hell?"

[cisskabob]

She gives him an apologetic look. "I did say I know things I shouldn't. Or--that you don't think I know, or should know. And Kon was in Wonderland with us, and so was Lois Lane and Clark Kent for a short while, and also a kid named Jon, who was their son in a different world than ours. Kon didn't exist where he was from."

[mrsarcastic003]

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. It's Cissie. Cissie's been a friend for years--had been a vigilante herself, once. It's actually okay that she knows these things. He just needs a moment to realign. He gives her a wry smile. "I suddenly find myself really wishing I remembered your Wonderland. I think it would make things a lot easier."

[cisskabob]

She returns his smile with a slightly shy one of her own, relaxing slightly as he does. "I wish you did, too," she admits. "We got--really close, actually. When Kon left, we locked ourselves in my room with terrible movies, Lucky Charms and a giant bag of gummi bears. But you were a lot younger--you were surprised I knew your name, and you thought I was still in Young Justice."

[mrsarcastic003]

"That was... a long time ago, wasn't it?" Young Justice feels a little like ancient history these days, for all that it wasn't more than a handful of years ago. So much has happened since then.

As for her remarks about his stress + junk food habit... No. Comment.

[cisskabob]

She laughs, nodding. "It feels like another lifetime," she admits. "It was really weird, being there with you guys, but all of us from different points in time. I did not like knowing more than everyone, I don't know how you do it all the time."

[mrsarcastic003]

He blinks. Then laughs. "Um. I'm not sure I know more than everyone, but thank you? And I will say that knowing more than people around you and not being able to tell them is really uncomfortable, especially when it's not a position you asked for. So I'm sorry you had to be there. That sucks."

[cisskabob]

"You've always known more than everyone I know," she says fondly, smiling. It's strange, but it's almost a relief to hear him say that. She knows Tim forgave her for keeping those secrets in Wonderland, but it still matters that he knows how it feels. "But--thanks. It does suck, and I'm sorry you have to deal with that so much."