hello hello I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello [largely open]

[thegoshdarn]

Santa Claus' workshop is simultaneously incredibly surprising and not surprising in the slightest. It's certainly a new experience, but its design and decoration make it essentially exactly what she'd imagine if she was asked to imagine what it would look like. Admittedly, she hasn't really believed in its existence since - did she ever believe in its existence? Hmm.

At least the red in her suit sort of fits in with the general color theme. The vocal distorter's off but the mask is still on, so she's really just what you'd expect from your third Robin up until she starts talking.

Which, to be fair, she's not doing a whole lot of compared to glancing around with interest while she waits for Cassie to find her brother and Kon and whoever else she deems appropriate.

Comments

[thegoshdarn]

She ducks away before he can do any more damage to her hair. "Is there a magic wardrobe somewhere? Not the portal to a winter wonderland kind, just the kind with things I can wear that I haven't been patrolling in."

[circusbat]

Dick snorts and spreads his arms. "What more winter wonderland could you want than this, little brother?" Yeah, he did warn her. "But yeah, there's clothes that aren't your uniform here. Ask the yetis if you can't find something to wear, they'll make it for you."

He pauses a moment. "Ah, yeah. Apparently, elves don't actually do any of the work around here. They're just kind of annoying and try not to step on them because they're small, but it's pretty much the Yetis that make the toys."

[thegoshdarn]

...All right, she'll bite. "What are they here for, then? Bragging rights?"

[circusbat]

"Apparently? Testing the toys. Because they're kinda worse than toddlers."

[thegoshdarn]

"All right, makes sense." As much as anything does right now. "Nice to know they have some quality and safety standards."

[circusbat]

"Well, it's Santa's workshop. They're not going to give little kids toys that are going to hurt them, right?" Hey, it makes total sense to Dick.

[thegoshdarn]

"Don't try to make me apply too much logic to this. I'm still not completely convinced I'm not just having some impressively detailed hallucinations."

[matchmadeinhell]

That is okay, cling away lil' chum.

It finally occurred to Kon that Tim's outfit was back to "I'm punishing myself by wearing the costume of the 'bad' Robin" so he finally put Tim down and squinted in confusion.

"How come you're back to the old, easier-to-confuse-with-Doctor-Midnite duds? Are you from a different time than me and Cass? You look teenier."

Because, as Tim would probably notice now that she wasn't being squooshed, Kon definitely looked older, just like Cassie had. Not that much older, but his early twenties had finally come calling.

[thegoshdarn]

"And you look older, although I wasn't going to bring it up because I'm too polite." With the voice distorter off, it's pretty obvious that this isn't the Timothy Drake he knows. "I'm a little insulted you think I'm the bad Robin, though."

Upon closer inspection, it's not the Red Robin suit she's wearing, just the Robin suit with more red and black. The stylized R is still present, too.

[matchmadeinhell]

"Whoa, haaaang on." That was a full recoil, not of disgust or anything. It was a surprise recoil. "You're a lady?"

Soooo, not his Tim? He squinted, holding her at arm's length but still holding on.

"You're a lady Tim!" He tilted his head. "A...Timberly?"

He didn't seem that weirded out by it, but hey this was a guy that'd met roughly a kajillion alternates of himself. Including a girl version.

"You must be an alternate dimension Tim. Except a girl." He paused. "Am I girl where you come from? You didn't look surprised I was a dude but Cass could've told you. I met a girl version of myself once. She was blonde but just like me besides that, and she was super hot. Naturally. It was very confusing."

Saying whatever stupid crap pops into the top of his head. Yep, definitely a version of Kon like her own.

[thegoshdarn]

Timberly. Ugh, why. "It's Timothea." Because just, no. And she'd sort of guessed he wasn't the Kon she knew, given that he's a fair amount older, but it's nice to have... well, maybe not nice, but it's confirmation.

"And no, you're still male where I'm from." A slight pause. "And dead."

So there's that.

[matchmadeinhell]

"Awwww." He couldn't help it, he knew how much his death had hurt his loved ones. Kal, Ma, the Titans. But Cassie and Tim had been hurt the worst. Especially since they lost Bart not long after.

"I got better, though. Lemme see how similar our realities are. If they're similar, you'll probably get your Kon back, too. Were we all Teen Titans in your world after we were in Young Justice? And what was the lineup? And did I die in the Crisis fighting Superboy Prime? And did I hang with the Legion of Superheroes in the future for a little while?"

If it was all the same or similar, some of the good things might be the same or similar, too.

[thegoshdarn]

"Essentially yes to all of the above."

That's a good sign, she assumes. "How did you...?" Come back.

[matchmadeinhell]

"I'm pretty sure the recipe was: dig up a not-so-fresh Superboy from the grave, put in the oven, aka Superman's Kryptonian chrysalis, baste lightly with Superman and Lex Luthor's DNA, add a heavy dollop of the genius of three Brainiac 5's, simmer on no heat for 1000 years under the Fortress of Solitude, and viola! One very live, very confused Superboy. Garnish with a stupid T-shirt, take him back in time, share with friends and family, and enjoy."

He gestured at himself with a "BAM!" gesture.

"It's weird as hell. Technically I'm alive and dead at the same time. Here I am, alive and kicking, and at the same time, my body's still stewing under the Fortress of Solitude and will be for a thousand years. Kal upped the security on the Fortress like crazy, even stronger than it was, because if anyone ever does something to my body, this me will cease to exist and it'll probably cause some kinda horrible paradox."

He paused.

"The good thing is if all that stuff is the same - and it sounds like your life is almost exactly the same as our Tim's - that means you'll probably get your me back, too."

[circusbat]

Dick snorts. "Yeah, I felt like that to start with, too. But there comes a point where it's all just a little too weird, you know? Like, I hadn't been here a week before I got pulled for an other world mission? Evil Superman."

[thegoshdarn]

"So assimilation by saturation." She raises an eyebrow. "What was he doing?"

[thegoshdarn]

"Well," she says with an awkward little sort-of-smile, "that's good to know." And massively strange, but what in their life has ever not been? She's perfectly fine with massively strange if it brings him back to her. "So how... old are you now?"

Because the shift in age has not escaped her notice, no.

[matchmadeinhell]

"Oh man, lemme do the math."

This was never, ever easy.

"Chronologically..." He held up six fingers, almost like a child showing off they were 'this many.' Then seven. Then six. Then, eight? "Okay, wait, so I turned 'eighteen,' quote unquote, right before the second crisis, and then it was a year and a half that I was in-"

Wait, he almost slipped, best not tell Tim about that yet, even if she wasn't his Tim.

"A year and a half after I came back. And now it's maybe been a year or less that I've been here? We haven't been keeping track - we don't age anyway and we're probably going to be able to go back to the time we left. Minus one, plus the time in hypertime, plus six months with the Legion. So, chronologically seven or so, physical age of twenty ('cause of the year I was stuck at sixteen), relative mental age of twenty-one or twenty-two, give or take some time in various dimensions and in the future."

[circusbat]

"I wish I could say the 'usual stuff', but it was a lot worse than that." Dick steers her toward some chairs, mostly because it's more comfortable to talk about while sitting. "He was basically killing anybody who stepped out of line even the least bit. Had already killed a lot of the villains of his world but was working with Luthor. He nearly killed his Kon and convinced the Titans to go into the Phantom Zone with him so that he didn't die. Took Blue Beetle off at the knees, literally, and threatened his family if he didn't comply with staying out of things.

"Which all would have been bad enough if it weren't for the fact that so many of the members of the Justice League were helping him. Not Batman, but he had Wonder Woman helping him and Hal had become a Yellow Lantern and somehow he talked Barry into helping him..."

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Sorry about Kon," Cassie says, approaching Robin with two mugs of steaming cocoa. "I tried to give him a heads up, but he zipped off the moment the words "there's a version of our Robin here" were out of my mouth."

She held out one of the mugs, handle out for Robin to take.

"So, now that we're not standing in front of a complete stranger, what's the pronoun situation here?"

[revvinguptheharley]

Having taken up the job of helping test toys with the elves, Harley is racing along one of the many open walkways in the workshop with a pack of elves chasing her. They are waving padded foam nerf melee weapons and shooting little nerf guns while she shoots back at them dodging around Yeti and other heroes who happen to be in the way.

In retrospect this probably should have been done outside or somewhere with a lack of Yeti trying to work but Harley and the elves were not big on foresight.

Crashing through a pile of meticulously painted toy planes causing the Yeti who had been painting them to roar in fury Harley didn't even see Tim until they were practically ontop of each other.

"WHOA! LOOK OUT!"

[thegoshdarn]

She's willing to let whatever it is he just omitted slide for the moment, if only because this information is confusing enough as-is. Tim just shakes her head and sighs, a tiny smile playing at her mouth. "You know, sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had friends I could ask how old they are and receive three different, equally valid answers."

Much less interesting, probably.

[thegoshdarn]

"Wow. That sounds like..." A little too similar to the future she and the other Titans encountered, actually. Not in the same ways, but... in tone. (She spares a brief thought for hoping no one told this Dick the full details about that little incident. It's awful to be grateful for a teammate's personal crisis, but she's just a tinY bit thankful her M'gann was too distracted by her own problems to turn that into a thing.) "...a nightmare," she finishes with a little sympathetic wince.

[thegoshdarn]

"Hm?" She accepts the mug automatically and blows on it a little to cool it so she won't burn her tongue on the first taste. "It's all right; we managed. And - generally, female when I'm not..." She waves a hand vaguely. "...on duty."

[thegoshdarn]

With the warning and a little bit of instinct, Tim manages to guide their falls somewhat so they don't end up as quite as much of a tangled mess. Which is the good part. The bad part is that then she has a second to realize who it is that just ran into her.

"...Harley."

Even if she's been assured that Harley is on 'their' side now, it doesn't make her feel any less exposed for not having her mask and voice modulator on.