Disclaimer: I own nothing. DC owns everything. They may be abusing their Death Stick privileges recently, but they still own it all.

Brothers Together

Chapter 3: A Thousand Words

Tim's feet pounded against the sidewalk with a steady rhythm, a rhythm that pushed him through the burning pair of his muscles and the confusing, muddled thoughts that were swimming through his mind.

He knew what had happened. His keen detective mind had figured it out the moment he came face-to-face with the other Robin, the figure he'd only seen in photographs and security footage, but whose face he knew as well as his own. He'd accidentally piggy-backed onto Chronos's time-jump, gotten pulled into the past – or something like the past – and those teens that he'd met were the Titans. Dick's Titans.

And that meant that the time-hopping villain was his only chance of returning to his own time.

He picked up the pace, leaping over a row of garbage cans like the Olympic athlete he'd been trained to match. He hadn't made it down to street-level in time to catch up with Chronos completely, but even if he'd wanted to stop now, he didn't really have a choice…

A noise from the right caught his attention with just enough time for him to kick off the alley wall and dodge the R-shaped shuriken that had been thrown at him. He flipped as he dropped through the air, facing his attacker with a groan. "Dammit, I don't have time for this!"

"That's too bad," Robin said in a voice far too serious for someone his age, the white lenses of his mask reflecting the glare of the street lamp. "I'm not letting you slip away this time."

He lunged, raising his weapon over his head. Tim slid back and drew the collapsible bo staff in one motion, catching the blow before it could connect and holding them apart. He grunted under the effort. "Dick, please, don't do this!"

"I don't know how you know that name…" Robin hissed, yanking back and going for a mid-body blow. "But if you think it's going to distract me, you're wrong!"

Tim knocked the other's weapon aside, dropped down, and swept his legs out from under him. "It's just your name!"

The other boy bent backwards in his fall, bracing his hand on the ground to give him the leverage for a controlled summersault. He flipped his staff around and landed a hard blow just under the base of Tim's ribs. "My name is Robin."

Tim stumbled, the air knocked from his lungs. He went down on one knee, his weapon clattering to the ground beside him with a metallic ring. He drew in one solid breath, which rattled his lungs against their casings painfully and pulled another wince to the surface.

Robin paused the fight and stepped forward, the metal toes of his boots click-clacking against the concrete street. "Give it up, kid. It's time to stop playing around."

"Who's playing?"

The light wheeze was accompanied by lightening-fast motion as Tim whipped a smoke pellet from his belt and threw it into the ground. The plastic casing shattered instantly, a huge cloud of smoke erupting up to cover their entire field of vision. Robin darted through the smoke, groping blindly, and managed to get a grip on a leather pouch – one of the compartments on Tim's utility belt, which ripped open as the smaller boy shot away.

By the time the smoke had cleared and Robin could see again, he was once again alone.

"Robin?" A voice echoed down the alley, soft and hesitant. "Robin, are you…?"

"I'm fine, Star," he called back as he straightened, scowling a popping a tense crick out of his back. "I'm here. He slipped away…again."

"Again?" Cyborg demanded as the rest of the team caught up with him. Beast Boy immediately shifted into a blood hound and sniffed around for a scent as a rather irate Cyborg turned to Robin with a sigh. "Man, we've been tracking this kid for two hours now, and this is the fifth time we've lost him. We're not gonna catch him like this, and our chances of catchin' up to Chronos are nil now. I think it's time we call it a night."

Robin sighed and rubbed his sore neck with a frown. "You're probably right…"

Raven stepped forward with silent grace, glancing at Beast Boy before turning her haunting purple eyes on their group leader. "I'm not sure why we went after the kid in the first place."

"He bothers me."

"He's shown no sign of being a threat. Chronos has."

"I agree with Raven," Starfire chimed in, hovering a few inches from the ground as she moved around them. "I do not believe that the strange Robin means us harm. He would not have helped me if he did."

"I never said he was a threat," Robin pointed out defensively, crossing his arms. He frowned in a contemplative manner, his eyes narrowed behind his mask. "Just that…he bothers me."

"I don't blame you, dude," Cyborg added. "Having some kid pop up wearing your costume would bug anybody. Plus, it's a dangerous game he's playing..."

Robin nodded absently, still focused. "I want to know what his deal is. Who he is, where came from, how he got here…"

"Um, dudes?" beast Boy interrupted, shifting back to his normal form. "You might want to take a look at this."

Starfire arrived first, looking over the green-skinned boy's shoulder. "They appear to be photographs."

"They must have fallen out of the pouch the kid tore during the fight," Robin added absently. "So?"

"Take a look," Beast Boy repeated, and passed the pictures into Robin's hand.

Robin lifted them into the light of a nearby street lamp, with Cyborg and Raven leaning in for glances of their own, and his mouth dropped open just slightly. "No way…"

"Oh, man," Cyborg gasped. "Is that us?"

It was.

Partially.

The first picture in the little stack was a glossy group photo almost reminiscent of a school class picture, though the subjects had been separated into two groups – one bunched in the center, the other looped around them in a horseshoe shape. In the first group, they could only recognize the strange boy in the Robin costume, though the brown-haired kid with one arm around the 'Boy Wonder's neck wore a red-and-yellow suit that couldn't belong to anyone but Kid Flash. He seemed to have leapt up at the last moment to throw his arms around the necks and shoulders of 'Robin' and a red-clothed girl in red on his other side. Both of them looked surprised and maybe a little annoyed with 'Kid Flash' – she was giving him the same kind of look that Raven tended to give Beast Boy when he started to act up. Behind those three were two taller teens, both posed so that they were turned slightly out, but twisted back in mid-laugh at their friends' antics. One was a beautiful blonde girl in dark, sleek red; the other a broad-shouldered, strong-looking boy in a black t-shirt, displaying a distinctive and familiar red shield across his chest.

On the other hand, the second group, the one looping around these five, was made up of four extremely familiar figures – Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven and Starfire, all older, different, but somehow still the same. Starfire towered over everyone in the picture save Cyborg, her hair gorwn long and curly down her back, and she was dressed much more…openly…than any of them had ever seen her before. Cyborg had filled out as well, remaining strong and stoic alongside his obvious upgrades. Raven, in some ways, seemed dark and stronger, but also more elegant, hovering solemnly behind Beast Boy, whose trademark huge grin wasn't changed a bit.

It took a few minutes for the Titans' minds to register it all before they finally reacted. Cyborg reached around and snatched the photo out of Robin's hands almost excitedly. "It is us! And man, do we look good! Just look at that tech fillin' me out! I wonder where those upgrades came from…?"

"Hey, you're not the only one!" Beast boy grinned, pushing his chest out like the way his self in the picture had been posed. "Dude, I always knew we'd grow up to be awesome!"

"That's all well and good," Raven sighed and rolled her eyes. "But we still don't know if that's even us in that picture."

"What're you talking about? It's gotta be us, there's no way…"

Raven narrowed her eyes at him. "Time and space are more fluid than you think. It may be us, but it might not be us."

Beast Boy immediately shut up in his confusion, his eyes widening into a clear 'I-don't-understand-a-word-you-just-said' expression. Robin ignored him and pushed into the silence, glancing at the darkest member of their team. "You think it's authentic?"

"It looks authentic," Raven sighed, plucking the photos out of Cyborg's hand with her powers and floating them over to her own grip.

The half-metal teen crossed his arms and slipped back into a serious expression. "Yeah, and I'd guess the kid in the Robin suit is the one were chasing."

Starefire hovered a few inches above the ground to look over Raven's shoulder. "But if that is the case, then why is our Robin not…there?"

"Maybe he's holding the camera?"

No one responded to Beast Boy's comment, but even he didn't really believe it.

Raven separated the group photo from the rest of the small stack and shifted through the remaining three snapshot blandly. Two of them seemed to feature the younger bunch of 'heroes,' though they were dressed differently – one showed the girls, or she guessed that it might have been the girls, as neither was wearing red and only one carried arrows, sitting next to each other and talking; the other the shorter boy, dressed in white and red instead of yellow, running just inches out of the reach of the tallest boy, who wore the gaudiest costume she'd seen in a long time.

The third picture seemed out of place until she realized that the un-costumed, unmasked boy with in the baseball cap was their mysterious not-Robin, being hugged from behind by a taller, older man with graying black hair.

The thought made her stop, just for a moment. She'd never seen her Robin without his mask. Not even in his own dreams.

How…strange.

Returning to the original picture, her fingers brushed against a few unusual markings on the back of the smooth surface, and she turned it over to look.

"There's something written here."

Robin didn't look up from his thoughts, just muttered, "Written where?"

"On the picture," Raven stressed, and pushed it into his grasp to bring it to his attention.

Robin took the photos, his eyes narrowing as he read the hand-written words aloud. "Titans Together – just like always. Signed, Bart."

Cyborg frowned. "'Bart'?"

"What does this mean, Robin?" Starfire asked innocently, turning her big eyes to look at him.

"I don't know. I can guess, but I don't know," Robin's eyebrows scrunched together and he pressed the pictures into a tight stack, though he took care not to damage the 'evidence.' "But we're going to figure it out."

He slipped the pictures away into the pocket of his belt, leading the way of out the alley. "Back to the Tower, Titans. We need to go at this from another angle."

( - ) ( - ) ( - )

Tim counted eight full blocks of absolutely no foot-steps behind him before he let his pace slow, and passed over another five rooftops before he stopped altogether. He panted a bit to catch his breath, scanning his eyes over the area before finally letting himself relax completely, dropping down to rest in a distant corner.

His body ached with the exhaustion and his stomach squirmed with nausea, still uneasy after the time jump and unable to adjust because of the constant momentum. Tim winced, closing his eyes against the swirling colors that flashed by them, and leaned his head back against the wall.

…Two minutes later, when his stomach had settled, he discovered that closing his eyes had not been a particularly smart move on his part. He didn't want to open them again. In the last three days, he hadn't slept even the tiny bit he usually got after a patrol, kept awake by dreams of his father and Stephanie and the others. If he wasn't careful, he would fall asleep here.

…

Which wouldn't be so bad, but it would be dangerous if he didn't take at least a little bit of precaution, and he needed to find his team, if they were here.

Tim reached into a pocket on the left-hand side of his belt, digging out his Titans communicator. Without opening his eyes, he brought the smooth casing up to his mouth and spoke softly. "Titans, come…"

He stopped. What if Dick's Titans used the same frequency?

Another sigh tugged at his lips, and the communicator dropped down to his chest for a moment before he settled on another message to broadcast.

"Conner…Cassie, Bart, Mia…It's me. I don't know if any of you go here, too, but…I'm here. And we need to find each other."

His other hand moved to another pocket nostalgically, but stopped when he felt ripped cloth. His eyes snapped open as he groped at the pocket, trying to convince himself that it wasn't the one he though it was, but it was – most of his evidence bags were now scattered in the wind along with, more importantly, the few photographs from his collection that he kept with him.

Sure, everyone on the team had copies of the group picture, and, given that both he and Cassie had been shutter-happy up to their Apokolips incident, he had more than enough Young Justice snapshots, but…he had a photo of his father there, too. There weren't many left of those, and there never would be any more.

Shit.

He set his communicator on a loop broadcast and let it rest beside him as he curled up inside of his cape. He settled down into the shadows, resting his head on his arms, and sighed into the night air.

Tim told himself that he was going to stay vigilant, that he was going to wait for the others to hear his message and respond before he did anything else. But he had fallen asleep before he could even finish the thought.

TBC…