Hard lessons

They've learned all the hard lessons well, perhaps too well. When they lose Atlantis, lose their home, the place that kept them together through thick and thin as no other place would, that they'd learned to love, the only Lantean tears come from the children. After all, no matter how much it meant to them, nobody's dead, and they know better than to waste their tears on anything less than death.

Sum of His Experiences

Sometimes, when he's about to die, he doesn't notice, too caught up in the science or the adrenaline or the fact that he has no time to spare to notice trifling details like certain death. Other times, he gets the deluxe treatment, his life flashing before his eyes, the best and worst moments of his life in chronological order. It helps, when he's fighting for his life, to have a reminder of why he's doing it, why he's struggling to draw another breath when it would be so much easier to just give up. Because while not all of his life was great (that's the understatement of the century, notwithstanding some of the bad science he's seen and some of the more creatively written mission reports) there are some moments, rare, precious jewels of moments, so perfect he couldn't remember them when he really needs them if it weren't for the life-flashing-before-his-eyes thing, that make it all worth it, that would make a whole hell of a lot worse things worth it. Not that he wants to test that theory.

Alienation (Rodney)

It's strange being back on Earth after all these years- through extensive effort and not a few near-miracles, he and John have avoided being forced back even briefly for the last ten years, and even before that they'd only come back a maximum of once a year, and now they're back permanently.

Somehow, it all feels unreal.

After twenty years of cool blue and the ever-present touch of the city when they were on Atlantis, it's a shock to find themselves in grey corridors that the back of his mind keeps insisting are Genii even if he knows with the more logical parts of his mind (which means most of it) that they aren't. There isn't any sunlight down here, even in the middle of the day, which makes him twitchy after a few hours, because sunlight's something he's used to seeing, on Atlantis and offworld, and it's strange to not feel it on his skin at least once a day even if that does mean he won't burn like he always does unless he's careful.

He knows Earth should feel like home, but it isn't, not anymore; it's just the place he used to live and is probably going to be forced to live again. When they're cleared to leave the Mountain (more because the SGC doesn't have the space for hundreds of people to stay than because of any inherent trust; he's seen the way they eye the Lanteans, like they're maybe dangerous, like they're defectors or broken in some dangerous way), it doesn't disturb him that he can't hear the ocean even though he's heard it semi-constantly (with breaks to go offworld) for so many years, but only because, as he realizes when he automatically calls John "Sheppard" and falls into their usual informal offworld walking formation, Earth feels like offworld to him, and they've rarely been on ocean worlds other than Lantea.

It hits him hardest that this is Earth when they're in a crowd, and their little group are the only ones scoping the exits (though not carrying firearms; someone at the SGC had taken one look at the Lanteans and forced them to surrender their sidearms. It feels strange to be without a pistol at his side (which is slightly disorienting when he remembers who he'd been before Atlantis, how he'd happily never fired a gun), to be offworld without a gun, but at least they still have knives; they'd learned that lesson from Ronon) and nervous in the press of people, and he realizes that this isn't even a crowd for most of the Tau'ri, that it's only a drop in the bucket of the world's population, and everybody looks carefree because they are, they all plan to live 80 or more years and not get their lives and the lives of their friends and families sucked away by space vampires. Many of them have only lost loved ones through old age and accidents.

He isn't certain he understands Earth anymore, much less will be able to fit in even to the meager extent he had before.

Colorado Springs

The first difference she notices (besides the obvious) is the coffee.

On Atlantis, coffee is – was – restricted only by availability. She's been told that for the first year or so after the City rose coffee had been a luxury item, rationed tighter than anything, but once Atlantis had started getting regular supply runs from Earth (with each ship carrying massive amounts of coffee, because few of the scientists can function without it) there weren't any restrictions on who could grab a cup or a pot (as long as there was always a pot brewing) at any hour of the day or night, because no matter how hard everybody tried to keep to a concrete schedule things in the Pegasus galaxy were always haphazard at the best of times, and if you couldn't grab a cup to keep you awake so you could actually see your parents during the one hour in the middle of the night they were in the City what was even the point of having parents? But things are different on Earth.

The first time somebody takes a mug from her just as she gets it filled (and these mugs are ugly, nothing like the ones they'd had to leave behind when they'd left home) she shrugs it off. Rodney's always taking coffee from her like that, without even a 'thank you', when he's busy or tired or thinking about something, and it's not like she expects praise for filling a mug, when she hadn't even made the coffee and there are so many more important things people are doing in the cit- base. On the base.

The second time it happens, it's by a scientist, and one who's every bit as caffeine-needing as one of Atlantis's scientists is after a long day rewiring the jumpers or battling sentient plants or translating thousands of lines of Ancient to find the one bit of information they need to save the day, when they know they have to stay up and working for at least another four hours because everybody else has come down with space mono and the work needs to get done yesterday. The scientist blinks at her blearily and mutters something about "get younger every year" and takes her coffee. She gets out a third cup.

The third cup is swept from her hand as she raises it to drink. She looks up, and a lieutenant-colonel (Forrest, apparently) has it, and he doesn't look like he needs it at all, whereas she's been up for almost 40 hours except for a short nap while the situation was discussed in the General's office or possibly a conference room; she isn't certain because they'd barely been allowed to leave the Gate room. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action (though there are far too many cases where once is enemy action), so she goes on the offensive.

"Will you please give me back my coffee, sir," she lets out through gritted teeth, as politely as she can manage. They are, after all, in some sort of a limbo, and if she messes this up for everybody they literally won't have anyplace to go.

"You're too young to be drinking coffee," he says, sipping her coffee. "It'll stunt your growth."

"It hasn't so far."

"You're not getting any coffee until your parents say it's okay."

She's about to retort that her parents give her coffee, and so does everybody else who's been on Atlantis more than a day, but she sees her dads entering, looking just as weary as if they'd been in meetings for the past six hours without a significant break, because of course they had been. It's so much easier to let them cut through the resistance like the Ancient lasers through, well, anything. "Lieutenant-colonel Forrest won't let me have any coffee until I get permission from my parents," she says. "Can one of you please tell him it's okay before I pass out?"

Rodney immediately starts a diatribe about the "coffee police", and John smiles tiredly and says, "It's fine" and fills three mugs because she isn't the only one who needs the caffeine.

Forrest looks back and forth between Rodney and John. "Wait, she's- you're-"

Rodney freezes, panicked expression on his face, and she thinks she's said something wrong but she doesn't know what. John just smiles again and says "We do things a little differently in Atlantis. Did." The last word is almost soundless, but she knows all three of them feel it in their bones. They're never going back home, there's nothing to go home to. And that thought is bad enough to make her forget that she messed up somehow. And then they're hugging, in a three-way exhausted hug where they're all leaning on each other for support and being careful because they're still holding their coffee. The hug is familiar, and at least this time nobody's injured.

***

They've been assigned quarters (she's supposed to call it an apartment) in "off-base housing". Technically two "apartments", but they only use one even though it's smaller than their quarters on Atlantis were because it's not like they own much more than clothes now, anyway. She's not allowed to leave the apartment even though she's gotten the hang of doors that don't open no matter how hard you think at them and aren't just a piece of hide or fabric draped across the doorway like the Athosians' homes had. Still have, she supposes, even if she'll never see them again.

She's not allowed to leave the apartment, and when she leaves the apartment with somebody else she's not allowed to talk to or in front of anybody she doesn't know. There are more rules that she's supposed to be following (sometimes it seems like Earth is all rules), but she hadn't really paid attention in the orientation they'd been given. Besides, she's sick of rules. She's sick of sitting in the same small apartment without anybody to talk to or much to do. They had to leave behind War and Peace and the movies. There's a computer, but the intranet's servers all got left behind, so she can't talk to anybody on it. And she doesn't know how to contact anybody except for Rodney and John with the "cell phone" which Rodney had spent a few hours muttering over yesterday to make its use as similar as possible to the communicators they're used to having in their ears.

She's heard a lot about Earth, mostly complaining about being forced to go back from people who are going to be reviewed or for some reason have to brief the SGC or the IOA in person; and longing for it from people who just transferred in (although she understands how they might prefer somewhere where there are no Wraith, some of the things they long for sound really weird when they try to explain them to her), so she wants to see what it's like for herself, not through the eyes of others or the lens of a camera. Maybe she'll understand the strange parts of movies better if she goes exploring. And who knows; maybe she'll see somebody she knows.

She opens the door and steps out into the hall. All of the floors here are covered in some sort of fabric that isn't a rug because it reaches all the way to the walls. It's soft, but if they'd had it in Atlantis it would all have gotten stained really quickly, like most of the rugs. There are- were- too many accidents which escaped the labs for anybody to be delusional enough to think otherwise. She memorizes the number on the door as she closes it; she doesn't know her way around, and it should help her find her way back once she's done exploring.

To go anywhere on Earth you have to go outside and walk, like you're on the mainland or offworld or something; there aren't any transporters or jumpers here. Of course, she's explored the city even more than she was allowed (not that she ever went anywhere dangerous, or at least more dangerous than usual; Atlantis warned her about collapsed sections and various other dangers), and everybody had to go running regularly, as part of the mandatory combat training (nobody on Atlantis is was a civilian; they all knew they might have to fight for their home at any moment), so she doesn't think she'll have a problem, no matter how large this city is. Well, except for running out of time, but she has plenty of that; her dads are probably going to be in meetings until late.

She's a little bit hungry, and she knows there's food in the refrigerator that she should have eaten before she left, but she wants to try pizza, which the Earthborn have raved about universally. She tries to get directions, but she isn't on Atlantis, so there's no reply. There probably aren't any maps, either, since there aren't any transporters. She's going to ask somebody, and she'd known she'd have to break the "no talking to anybody" rule sooner or later, but she hadn't thought it would be this soon.

When she gets outside, the door closes loudly by itself, and she jumps at the unexpected thunk. There aren't any people out here to ask where to find a mess that serves pizza, so she starts walking towards where the tallest buildings are, because there's got to be a mess there, right?

The path here isn't dirt, like it is on the mainland; or any of the various materials Atlantis's floors are made of. It's more like rough stone, but how did they get so much of it and with such large sections? She knows from movies that people usually walk on the smaller sections on the sides of the path that are raised up higher than the rest, so that's where she walks. Every once in a while a car drives past on the other part.

It takes her a while to reach a more populated area of the city, and then she just wanders around for a while, marveling at the differences from Atlantis. There's writing everywhere here, none of it in Ancient and most of it in English, saying things she doesn't entirely understand although she understands most of the words used. Everybody's wearing bright clothes, with only a few wearing uniforms, and it feels like being on the mainland for one of the Athosian holidays, with everybody so bright and different from everybody else.

She stops a man wearing an unfamiliar uniform, hoping he isn't a hostile (there's always the possibility, even on allied worlds. She chose him because he doesn't look busy and it's easer to approach somebody in uniform, even if it's unfamiliar uniform) and asks him where she can find a mess hall serving pizza.

"A mess hall…?" he says, like he doesn't understand what she's saying. Perhaps they have a different term for it on Earth, at least outside of the SGC? She tries again.

"Everybody's always talking about pizza and I wanted to try it myself, but we don't have any at the apartment and I don't know where any mess halls are."

"Are you one of the military kids?" he asks.

She's never heard herself called that (most of the people she knows she's known her whole life, or theirs if they're younger), but John is in the Air Force. "Yes?" she says tentatively, not certain if the "military kids" have both of their parent in the military, or if she counts too because of just one.

"Where are your parents?"

"In a meeting."

"And they let you just wander around the city on your own?"

"Um, not exactly. But it isn't anything I haven't done-" belatedly she remembers that one of the biggest rules is "do not talk about Atlantis, period" and finishes with "…back home."

"Okay, tell you what. Why don't I give you a lift home and you can have your parents take you out for pizza later?" For a second, her heart rises with hope before she realizes he doesn't mean home to Atlantis, he means "home" to the apartment. But it's fairly obvious that she's not going to get the option of not going back there, so she nods and follows him to a car she recognizes as a police car. He opens the door on the right at the front for her and closes it once she gets in. When he gets in on the other side, he asks her where she lives.

"102," she says confidently, because there's no way she could have forgotten the number that quickly.

"102 what?" he asks after a pause.

"Apartment 102?" she tries, getting the feeling it's the wrong answer.

"What street is it on?" he asks.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Do you know the street name?"

"Streets have names?"

He chuckles. "Guess not. I'm going to take us to the police station, okay? We can get a hold of your parents from there."

She doesn't have a choice about the police station, apparently, so she saves her arguments for later.

***

"Another one?" a woman behind a desk asks.

"What do you mean, another one?" the police officer asks.

"Haven't you heard? There have been no fewer than five kids brought in because they were wandering around the city on their own. We have interrogation room 2 set up for them once you finish the paperwork, since they all seem to know each other."

"Thanks," he tells her, and leads Jeannie to a chair in front of a desk. He takes the one on the other side of the desk.

"I'm going to ask you some questions, okay?" he says. She wants to fidget and play with the stuff on his desk because it doesn't look Ancient or dangerous and she hasn't seen it before, but she knows better than to fidget with anything on anybody's desk, even if they aren't a scientist. "What's your name?"

"Jeannie Sheppard-McKay," She says, and spells it for him. He types slowly, only using his index fingers, and she wonders why he doesn't type right.

"Who are your parents?"

"Dr. Rodney McKay and Colonel John Sheppard." She's using their titles and full names because visitors from Earth always wanted to know that sooner or later, she supposes because they don't know John and Rodney personally and are lucky if they've even heard of them.

His eyebrows rise at something (maybe he knows of them for some reason?). She really wishes people would stop looking so surprised without telling her why because it's annoying.

"How can I get in touch with them? Do you have their phone numbers?"

"You can't call them now!" she exclaims. "They're in meetings and they're going to be there all day and you really don't want to interrupt."

"Why not? We're going to have to let them know eventually, and if we call them now you won't have to hang around here for as long."

She rolls her eyes. "Like that's motivation to call them. I've been in much more boring places. And you don't want to interrupt McKay for anything that isn't life or death, trust me."

The woman from the desk by the door stops next to the desk. "Don't bother," she says. "Another of them, a boy named Taro Zelenka, is also refusing to give contact information until his parents are done with work because of someone named McKay."

"Taro's here?" she asks with interest. She hasn't seen him in a couple of days, not since they all piled into cars by ones and twos and threes, except for the Athosians and their families who aren't allowed to leave the base.

"Sure, I'll take you to him. If you're done here?" she looks at the police officer.

"Just about," he tells her, and then asks Jeannie, "When can I call your parents?"

"I'd say 2200 to be safe, because even though they're usually still working then they don't mind when I call or stop by. But we just got here and all they have to do is meetings, so 1600's fine."

They're looking at her like they're shocked. "Your parents leave you alone until 10 pm usually?" the police officer asks in a choked voice, like it's weird, like the people he knows don't regularly work that late even though everybody does.

"No, there are usually people around but then we got here and I don't know where anybody I know is."

The woman takes her back to interrogation room 2, where Taro is, and they spend an awkward five minutes trying to talk, but they don't know what they're not supposed to talk about (they're going to learn that, at length, in the debriefing tomorrow) and they aren't left alone; there's another officer sitting in the corner watching them like they might run around and start turning on Ancient devices if he doesn't watch them closely, despite the fact that they know the potential consequences far too well to ever do that. He has what smells like coffee and it's kind of driving her insane that he isn't giving them any, or even offering, but she really doesn't want to leave a bad impression on the people who are already going to be telling her parents that she broke the rules, so she just tries to ignore it.

"239," she says, because there's no way they're not allowed to play prime/not prime, even if they aren't allowed to talk about anything because it's classified.

He smiles at her at the resumption of their usual boredom-breaking game, that they have to play at least once a year because of drills, when they're supposed to just sit there and not go anywhere and actually get the weapons they aren't allowed to touch except for when they're being taught, because the danger of the Wraith is even greater than the danger of them accidentally shooting somebody. Every year, they've been invaded at least once (although sometimes it's not by the Wraith), so nobody (not even the crew of the Daedalus or the people back on Earth) has any illusions that Atlantis shouldn't have drills. They play at random times when the city isn't being invaded, too, just because it's fun to do. "Prime. 767."

They play for a while (not the hours upon hours they do sometimes, but she doesn't know exactly how long) before the man with the coffee in the chair clears his throat. "You guys want something to drink? I can get you sodas."

"Coffee," she says, eagerly seconded by Taro. "What's soda? Can we have some of that too?"

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather just have the soda?" he asks. "The coffee here's kind of nasty."

"So?" she asks. "It can't be worse than the stuff some of the scientists make. As long as it's not decaf there's no problem."

"No decaf. Got it," he says, his eyes round. "Cream? Sugar?"

"Don't even think about putting anything in my coffee except for coffee." She knows that goes for Taro's too, but she doesn't say anything about it because he's edging for the door and looks like he understands it.

"I'll just go, uh. Get those," he says, and makes his escape.

"Think he's actually going to bring us some?" she asks.

"Why wouldn't he?" Taro asks, because somehow he's managed to avoid the insane adults who think there's some sort of age restriction on drinking coffee. She envies him, she really does.

"Earth people are weird," she says. "There was this lieutenant-colonel who didn't let me have any coffee until my parents told him it was okay. Took my cup away from me and everything."

"That's stupid," he says. "I hope it was just that guy, because if it isn't it's going to be forever until we can have any when our parents aren't there."

"Yeah, hopefully it was just him. I mean, the guy who was in here did say he was going to get us some."

"You realize he never actually said that?"

"He implied it, though."

"Implications aren't promises and you know it."

"I suppose you're right. But he looked like he was going to get coffee."

"He looked like he was terrified."

Now that it's been pointed out to her, she can see it. "But why? I mean, all we did was play prime/not prime."

"Beats me. Earth people are weird."

Eventually he returns. Objectively, he hasn't been gone for very long, but she isn't inclined to be charitable with her estimation of how long he's taking until she sees the cups he's carrying in some sort of a tray designed for carrying cups (which has to make carrying full cups easier than trying to keep a tray level enough that you don't spill while the drinks are sliding around) and smells coffee.

"Once you're done with the coffee," he says as they seize the cups he isn't hanging onto, "I brought some Sprite too if you want it."

"What's Sprite?" she asks, before Taro elbows her in the ribs. The police officer's eyebrows raise, and she thinks maybe Sprite is something common on Earth.

"We used to live someplace they don't have it," Taro covers for her slip smoothly, showing he'd paid more attention than her to the debriefing they'd been given before they'd been allowed off the base.

"Oh," he says, and his brows drop. Apparently he believes Taro. "It's a soda. I think you'll like it." She resists the urge to ask what a soda is because he says it like they should know, and even though questions were always encouraged on Atlantis, they're supposed to try to fit in here, which means not asking questions they would probably know the answers to if they'd lived on Earth their whole lives.

The coffee is gone all too soon, but he doesn't seem inclined to go get more coffee, so she asks if they can have the Sprite. Grinning, he sets two cans down on the table. They're closed and there isn't a can opener in sight, so she guesses there must be a way to open them built in, but it isn't immediately obvious enough that she can figure it out without so much as a hint. "How do you open it?" she asks after a moment of thought.

He looks startled, but then he takes the can and opens it for her while she watches how he does it. She can probably do it if she tries, now, unless he did something she didn't see. But she doesn't have to right now because the can's open and he's handing it to her. Cautiously, she takes a sip; she's drank a lot of disgusting things (some of the foods they'd traded for had been less than appetizing; she suspects there's a reason they hadn't had to trade much for them), but she'd rather keep those experiences to a minimum. It tastes strange, but in a good way. She drinks a little more.

Then she realizes she can't breathe and her head is starting to pound. The can slips from her hand and some back corner of her mind notes that she itches all over, but she's more concerned with not being able to breathe. Taro snaps for the police officer to get a doctor, and the only reason he doesn't run from the room is because this is Earth and the doors don't slide open on mental demand here. Taro's trying to get her to calm down even though that's kind of hard to do when you can't breathe. And then her vision darkens and her knees buckle and the last thing she hears is Taro cursing in Czech and Japanese.

***

She wakes to the all-too-familiar smell of the infirmary's disinfectants and an unfamiliar ceiling. She blinks a couple of times before she remembers that she isn't in the infirmary because they aren't on Atlantis anymore, they're on Earth. John's face comes into her field of vision and she realizes she isn't alone in the room. "Hey there," he says, his voice as calm as it always is. "You gave us a bit of a scare." His face doesn't hide his fear, even though it's starting to fade.

"Sorry," she says. "I don't know what happened. I was just drinking and then…"

"It's okay, you just inherited McKay's citrus allergy. You just have to be careful about what you eat and drink and you'll be okay."

"What's citrus?" she asks.

"There isn't any in the Pegasus galaxy as far as we know," he says. "Don't worry, we'll make sure you can recognize it. And you shouldn't be afraid to ask if there is any in the food you're given."

"'kay," she says.

A woman who's probably a nurse, even though she isn't wearing the uniform all the nurses on Atlantis had worn, appears at the door, Rodney behind her. "Jeannie," he says with relief at seeing her awake and recovered. Then he starts in the usual rant. "Why did you wander off when we told you not to? You could have died! You almost did die! This isn't A-" he cuts himself off. "Home. This isn't home, and you can't just do things like that! You could have gotten run over, or kidnapped, or killed. What were you thinking?"

"I was bored," she says, because she was terrified too, before she woke up and talked to John, but Rodney's always comforting to argue with, even when he's panicking. "You can't just leave me there with nothing to do and expect me to stay."

"I blame you," Rodney says to John. "You and your exploring of the city and your running every morning and dragging her into it too. You've set a bad example and it's no wonder she was wandering around alone and almost got herself killed. It must be in the genes."

"Hey!" John exclaims, and she expects him to say his usual 'they're your genes too, you know', but he just glares at Rodney instead.

"Um," the nurse says from the door, "Do you mind keeping it down? And we have some paperwork to be filled out."

"I'll handle it," John says, getting up out of the chair. "You two stay here and discuss your boredom." He smirks and leaves the room following the nurse.

"I thought Lorne did all of the paperwork?" Jeannie asks, confused.

"Oh, well, it's a different type of paperwork that Lorne can't do," Rodney replies. "It has to be filled out by one of your parents."

"I'm sorry you had to come," she says in a tiny voice around the ball of fear that's making her instincts scream for her to be silent, because usually when she's scared she's hiding from someone or something. "I know you were busy today."

"Hey, it's okay," he says. "Well, I mean, not okay because apparently you inherited my allergies, and why that machine doesn't have some way to prevent something like that I don't know, but it's okay in the sense that this is the kind of thing it's all right to call us about, because you almost died and we were just in meetings anyway, not messing with unstable ZedPMs or anything that really needs you to concentrate, and we certainly weren't offworld so you wouldn't have had a problem reaching us. Actually, you should have called when you got picked up by the police, or when you got lost, or- those meetings are torture, it would have been all right to call when you got bored enough to think of leaving the room and we would have at least sent somebody. Speaking of leaving the room, I thought we told you not to do that! Earth is different than what you're used to, even if you think you know it from watching movies."

"But the door opened. I mean, if it wasn't all right for me to leave the apartment it wouldn't have opened, right?"

"What? Why would you-" he stops suddenly. "Oh. Oh. Things don't work the same way here, honey; Earth doesn't have any automatic age restrictions like home does because it's all mechanical. Like on the mainland, remember?" She nods; the mainland is so different from Atlantis that it's difficult to forget even though she's never been allowed to go often, and even less since the Wraith destroyed all of the long-range sensors. "So you have to be more careful here because the city's not going to stop you from doing anything. Plus, you know, the usual problems with some things not being safe for anybody."

"Hey guys," John says, reappearing in the doorway. "You ready to go?"

She doesn't feel 100% herself again, but this isn't like the infirmary on Atlantis. She doesn't know anybody here and it's making her nervous; on Atlantis, you never relax around strangers, not if you have any choice in the matter (not that you always do), even if they're allies. So she nods and slips off of the bed and they leave together. She wants to cling close to them, but they unconsciously fall into the usual distance they walk from each other, close enough for comfort (and to be able to knock each other to the floor if they have to) and far enough apart that they're free to move separately and don't make just one target. She's in the middle as always. To truly complete their usual pattern, the rest of the team should be here, but they're not allowed to leave the SGC. Earth makes no sense; they're all Lanteans, so how come some people have to go offbase and some have to stay on it?

Outside (it's slightly odd to be outside in a city without being on a balcony or pier, but that oddness is drowned out by the oddness of the city itself; everything here seems to be grey but the plants, and there's no sense of connection with the city, nothing there when she reaches out with her mind) John and Rodney both pull keys out of their pockets, and then they're all looking at each other in what's almost confusion; more than one jumper at a time is only used when there isn't enough room in one, and apparently each of them drove a different car to the hospital. This is the first time they've had to deal with splitting up when they're going the same place (or at least the adults are; she isn't sure what's going to happen to her. They know her too well to think she'll stay in the apartment, and they don't want her to get lost again).

"Where's Taro?" she asks, because he'd been there when she'd collapsed and she hasn't seen him since.

"Oh, great, Taro escaped too?" Rodney says. "What is with you kids? Half of the scientists had to pick their kids up from the police stations, so I know it's not just the two of you."

"He didn't call you?" John asks, surprised. "He called me."

"Well, obviously, since I learned about it when you ran out of there. But, no, he didn't call me."

"He's probably scared of you," Jeannie says. "And the doctor would have let you know anyway, right?"

"Sure, if they had any idea who I am!" Rodney exclaims. "This isn't like home, the doctors here have no clue who you are or who I am or who Sheppard is, and they don't even have access to your medical records."

"I suppose he didn't call Zelenka either?" John says. "We should do that, because it's probably not a good idea to leave Taro at the police station. He might decide to try out his Pegasus galaxy pickup lines or something."

"Oh, god, I can imagine," Rodney moans, already pulling out his cell phone.

***

She rides back to the SGC with Rodney. They aren't allowed to get past the gate until one of the guards makes a call, and they have an escort to get down to the SGC proper, which she thinks is a bit weird because she'd been there yesterday and Rodney had been there earlier today, and neither of them had an escort then. She follows Rodney to a meeting room where John and Weir and people she doesn't know are.

"Is this bring your children to work day that I didn't know about?" one of the strangers asks.

"Yes!" Rodney snaps. "Because apparently none of you idiots considered that our kids have never been anywhere they weren't allowed to wander around at will, so that's what they've all been doing. In the city."

"You let children wander around alone in Atlantis? After everything I've heard about Atlantis…that's an incredibly irresponsible thing for you to do."

"Oh, please, like we didn't try to keep them confined at first? But first of all, all of Atlantis's positions are essential to some extent or another. We'd never be able to have anybody watch them in emergency situations, when it's most necessary. Also, all of them have the gene, because apparently the baby machine checks for that and not things like, oh, severe allergies? It's not like we could just lock them in a room. Plus, Atlantis is incredibly childproofed. You wouldn't believe the number of things that can't be turned on by children. Really, they were the safest people there."

"And you never told us about them?"

"We thought you would attempt to remove them and their parents from Atlantis," Weir says. "Were we wrong?"

"No, probably not, but-"

"Nobody wanted to leave," John says. "If push came to shove, maybe that 'declare independence from Earth' resolution would have finally passed."

"More like I'd have to stop ignoring the results of it," Weir admits.

"You lied to us?" Rodney exclaims. "Why?!"

"We needed Earth, and we especially needed them to not try to destroy Atlantis. The last thing we needed was to be even more overextended than we already were."

"And just how long has Atlantis been voting about seceding?" one of the strangers asks, as Rodney asks "How long has it been passing?"

"We've had the vote every year since we reestablished contact," Weir says. "It's passed by an increasing margin every year but the first one." This shocks everybody.

"Every year…?" the stranger echoes. "But why?"

"Why did we vote? I don't think you realize. Before contact was reestablished, every person on Atlantis expected it to be a one-way trip. Even after, for far too many people it was. And the SGC and the IOA kept threatening to pull back people and the entire expedition. It didn't exactly make for good feelings towards Earth, except for as where we'd come from."

"Dr. Weir? Isn't this the sort of thing we really shouldn't be sharing with the people we work for?" John asks. "I seem to remember that from those diplomacy lessons you gave everybody."

"Normally you'd be right," she says. "But you should really take a look at the reassignments before you think I'm the one ruining our futures." She indicates the papers in front of each of the chairs around the table, angry like Jeannie's only seen her a couple of times, because when the situation gets bad enough for her to be this angry everything's so bad that it's an emergency and Jeannie's hiding like she's supposed to.

"You're splitting everybody up," John accuses, skimming through it.

"And not just here at the SGC, on different teams," Rodney says. "They're all over the place, different states and countries and continents, especially the teams and the scientists, like they want to break up any relationships, even friendships."

"Ronon and Teyla aren't being allowed to stay on Earth, the two of you aren't allowed to leave, even on missions, because you're not assigned to SG teams, most of the couples are being placed in completely different countries from each other- I don't even want to know why they want the kids to have to choose between their parents- and apparently, they're not letting us argue for changes."

"What?"

"Either we accept the reassignments or we quit or we'll be fired."

"And the kids?" John asks. "If we quit, will the SGC still give them papers so they can stay on Earth with their parents?"

"What do you take us for, monsters?" the stranger asks.

They all stare at him. "Do you really want us to answer that?" Rodney asks.

He drops his eyes, looking a little bit ashamed. "Yes, we'll get papers as soon as we get their information. But surely you can't be planning to quit! Where will you go, what will you do?"

"Some of us have had our salaries accumulate for 20 years without using it," John points out. "I'm sure we can think of something."

"But you're all valued members of the SGC."

"Don't give us that crap. If we were valued you wouldn't be screwing us over."

"We're just a little overstaffed-"

"Are you going to need two weeks' notice, or can we leave as soon as Jeannie gets her papers? I mean, since you don't need the time to replace us…"

"We haven't even finished the debriefings yet!"

"Two weeks' notice it is. I'll get that typed up. Sheppard, Weir, can you see how many I need to have printed out? I'll probably have to go to a Kinko's, I don't think I'm allowed to print very much here and I'm sure pretty much everybody will want one."

"Of course, Dr. McKay," Weir says.

***

"Oh, God," Rodney moans. "I can't believe we got away with that."

"I don't think you can call it getting away with anything," John replies. "I mean, we quit. It's not like they could keep us there or anything."

"You're right! They couldn't keep us there, so we're good to go." He pauses. "But go where? I mean, we're here, and I don't really want to stay here, because, you know, memories, and even if most of them took place on Atlantis, Colorado Springs kind of reminds me of them. But I don't know anywhere else we could go, really. Unless you do?"

"I've heard you have a really great sister who might want to meet her niece."

"Oh, yes, of course, Jeannie. That's actually not a half-bad idea," Rodney concedes, then moans. "Except for how she's going to kill me for not telling her about our Jeannie."

"Well maybe you should call her and do a little damage control before we show up on her doorstep," John suggests. "Try to calm her down enough that she only maims you- I like you alive."

A Conversation Over Coffee

"Can I sit here?" he asks the girl (and she really is a girl, not a woman; she must have skipped a few grades in school).

She looks up from whatever she's scribbling in her notebook, and it takes a moment for her to come out of whatever place in her head she was and focus on him and the question. "Oh, sure. Just let me…" She starts moving her sprawl of papers and books over to her side of the table.

"Sorry about this," he says. "All the tables are taken."

"Not really a problem," she replies. "I need more coffee anyway. Watch my stuff?" She doesn't wait for an answer, just walks off with the empty cup.

He takes out his assignment and is working on it when she returns. "Oh hey, physics!" she exclaims. "What class are you in?"

"4710," he replies. "Foundations of theoretical physics."

"That's one of McKay's, right?" she asks like she already knows the answer.

"His reputation has spread, I see." Dr. McKay does not teach undergraduates.

She smirks. "You could say that. What do you think of him?"

"He's brilliant; I feel like an idiot next to him. Very impatient, though, and I get the feeling that my papers are going to be bleeding red no matter how small the errors I make are."

"You'll be a better physicist because of it though."

"Oh, I'm not complaining; he's the reason I'm doing my graduate work here."

"Oh?"

He smiles sheepishly. "My uncle used to work with him, and when I got into physics, well…" he shrugs.

"Who's your uncle?"

"Oh, he's not in physics or anything; I doubt you've heard of him."

"You never know."

"I'm just saying. My uncle's Evan Lorne; he used to be in the Air Force."

Her eyes go wide. "Your uncle's Lorne?"

"That's what I said," he says. "Why, have you heard of him?"

"Heard of him? My dad used to be his CO. I'm fairly certain he changed my diapers. He's pretty good at Trivial Pursuit."

"Must not be the same guy. Uncle Evan's terrible at Trivial Pursuit. Pretty good at Chronology, though; he claims he played it so much he memorized all the cards when he worked with Dr. McKay."

"Maybe there are two different Lornes or something" she says, and glances at her watch. "Oh hey, I've got to go. Maybe I'll see you around?" She disappears into a crowd of people coming out of a classroom, curly black hair bouncing as she weaves effortlessly between the students.

Customs of Atlantis

From the beginning, religion has never been that big of a deal on Atlantis. Oh, there are occasional debates and disagreements and outright arguments, but the ones about religion are far fewer and less heated than the ones about, say, Star Wars. After all, Atlantis has, from the beginning, been comprised of open-minded individuals (one has to be open-minded to join an expedition to another galaxy) from dozens of countries, with varying levels of faith and differing religions. Some of them were part of the SGC before joining the expedition, with all the dealing with religion that entailed. And once they get to Atlantis, the offworld teams have a tendency to get sucked into strange ceremonies involving gods they've never heard of (and some which they wish they'd never heard of). Once stories of Wraith worshippers start to circulate, the number of arguments about religious differences takes a nosedive. Any religion, or none, is better than that.

It's never clear who starts it, but one day one of the unused rooms near the core of the city has pictures hung on the walls: Colonel Sumner. Carson Beckett. Peter Grodin. Over time, the pictures multiply, not only because of the rising death toll of the expedition but also as pictures of those who'd died Before. Of those whose dying words they'd never heard from a galaxy away. Candles start being left there, despite the fact that Atlantis neither officially trades for them nor gets shipments of them on supply runs. The Hall of Remembrance (as Teyla dubs it, after similar rooms of civilizations the Athosians trade with) begins to see more visitors, at every hour of the day and night, taking comfort in speaking to those who went before.

It's almost like religion.

***

On Atlantis, everybody is a workaholic to some extent. Oh, most of them will seize a holiday if it's offered, but even at their most relaxed (unless chemical substances are involved) they refuse to stray far from their weapons and are ready to spring into action at the drop of a hat. This would, perhaps, be less of a problem if there was ever a holiday on Atlantis when something didn't go wrong. If it's not an invasion, or injury, or bombs, it's the sewage system rupturing all over the living quarters, it's a huge storm out of nowhere, it's the discovery that the animals actually aren't very friendly. It goes unsaid (but understood) that there's no such thing as vacation time on Atlantis, no matter how many memos are sent out reminding people to relax or how injured you are. It barely even matters how many hours you've been awake, even though there isn't a Lantean who doesn't monitor their colleagues' sleep schedules just to be on the safe side (there's a monthly memo from the doctors on the effects of not enough sleep. They know nobody reads it but they send it out in the hope that someday, somebody will). But despite every holiday being interrupted, nobody ever reschedules their holidays when they're ruined. Eventually, most people learn to fit their relaxation in by the minute and the occasional stolen hour, to adjust games and sports for any number of participants, to not take it personally when someone rushes out of the room during the process of being seduced. Those who don't invariably burn out.

This has various results in combination with various other factors. Lanteans work hard, but they know that the five minutes they get to play speed chess or read a couple of pages in a book or join a football game in the hall that balloons from 5 to 20 players in a few moments may be the only 5 minutes they'll have to relax for days. They constantly live with the knowledge that any moment could be their last no matter how innocuous the task they're performing. In short, they play hard too. There isn't a lot of Earth-style dating; there's rarely time to linger over a meal or a sunset or waste time dancing around the issue. First and foremost, Lanteans know when and how to be blunt, at least with other Lanteans, and how to bear others' bluntness.

The offworld teams have mandatory diplomacy lessons.

***

[why kids call parents by last names]

The first time Taro Zelenka is kidnapped, they learn a hard lesson.

He's kidnapped because the kidnapper wants Ancient technology and he's the son of Radek Zelenka, the second in command of the science department. The kidnapper learned this because Taro called his father Táta, which, while not a word that he knew (unless Czech is secretly spoken somewhere in the Pegasus galaxy besides Atlantis), obviously meant Dad. One rescue later, none of the Lantean children would call their parents by anything other than what other people call them, which often amounts to their last names.

To keep everybody safe (or at least less unsafe) they have to sacrifice a level of overt closeness, but nobody's feelings are any less because of it.

***

Gender is one of the least important distinctions on Atlantis; there are a number of women in important positions, and nobody can think that gender makes people any less capable, not with examples like Teyla and Dr. Weir and any number of highly capable women who do their jobs like they're supposed to, like they need to do them. Far more important are the differences between the marines and the scientists, between people who were there from the beginning and those who came later and those who are still experiencing culture shock because they just transferred in; between those who can hack it and those who are going to go back to Earth; between those who are dealing with the stress and those who could use a bit more time with Dr. Heightmeyer before they make some fatal error or snap under the pressure.

They've encountered cultures which refused to speak to women and cultures which refused to speak with men, but they don't change Atlantis. When Jeannie's old enough, there's no more and no less expectation for her to learn how to fight and shoot and think as there is on Taro.

In the Pegasus Galaxy, it doesn't matter if the person who killed a Wraith is male or female anywhere near as much as it matters that they survive.

***

A number of games have made their way to Atlantis: card games, Athosian games, a number of drinking games, and any remembered games which don't require props at first. Eventually board games start to trickle in. Some of them don't fit very well with the Lanteans any more.

Trivial Pursuit seems a bit more…trivial, now. Knowing what color a lobster's blood is is even more pointless when some of the players don't even know what a lobster is. The game is largely disregarded until somebody comes up with the idea of making a Trivial Pursuit Atlantis edition, which turns out to be a huge hit, with the categories of people(s), planets, events & missions, technology, flora fauna & aliens, and miscellaneous. Anybody can submit questions to be considered, and very quickly the number of questions grows. The database of them is kept on the intranet because a) there isn't a lot of paper to spare for printing them, b) the originators of Trivial Pursuit Atlantis wrote a program for it, c) it makes adding questions easier, and d) too many things have been destroyed to risk such a popular form of entertainment.

Chronology is different. All of the Earthborn know the history involved well enough to make at least educated guesses, even if it is Eurocentric, and when there start to be children in Atlantis it's a way to get them to learn a history that they'll need to know at least the broad strokes of if they ever go to Earth, but that they don't see the point of learning because nobody goes back to Earth voluntarily. Since most of the fiction they've read is War and Peace (with explanations of the culture described in it by those who know enough to explain it), their knowledge of history is decidedly lumpy, but at least by playing Chronology they learn about more than Russian and military history.

Lantean gaming is often cutthroat; capture the flag had had to be banned after a few too many people started getting serious injuries from it.

Children of Atlantis

It's considered unlucky to name a child after someone you knew who died of anything other than old age. The expedition is made up of scientists and marines and people to whom superstition is ridiculous, but there are some pieces of superstition which pop up despite this, which aren't even considered to be superstition by anybody who's been there for a while. The unluckiness of naming children after the deceased hasn't been doubted since the belief came into existence after the way Carson Parrish died the way he did.

***

Most of the children are the result of various unexpected incidents, involving Ancient devices and/or time travel, both on Atlantis and offworld. On Atlantis, there isn't nearly as much assumption that a child's parents are romantically involved as there is on Earth, although some of the incidents are almost certainly "accidents" rather than actual accidents.

***

The children are raised by the community. Everybody on Atlantis is too important to be a babysitter full-time, so different people take care of them depending on who has time off, or at least little enough urgent work that they can afford to be interrupted, and who's injured enough to be taking a break but not injured enough to be completely bedridden. The adults who are watching them often teach them whatever they know the most about. Their educations are varied and excellent and lumpy. They can more easily read a mission report than fiction, because there isn't enough literature for them to read a lot of it, and for the most part they learned to read from mission reports with cautionary tales because they need to know what to avoid.

***

Everybody gets combat training. Everybody. They start learning as soon as they possibly can, starting with running and hiding and quickly moving up to what they can do if they're put in a position where they have to fight or die. As soon as they're old enough to understand the responsibility, they start training to shoot. They're responsible for their sidearms, and they're not allowed to remove them from the holster unless they're servicing them or a Code Red (invasion of the City) has been declared. They wear them at all times, as do all the adult Atlanteans. There have been too many people killed because they thought that just this once they could leave the weapon in their room and have a nice day off.

***

The City has been invaded at least once a year since the expedition got there. In one year, it was invaded seven times. The children stay in the most defensible part of Atlantis when it's invaded, guarded by many people. That doesn't stop Taro Zelenka from having to put a bullet through a Genii's head during one of them. This was not the first time he'd had to kill somebody; the second time he'd been kidnapped his knife had gotten red from the blood of the kidnapper's throat. He was six at the time. The kidnapper had been about to kill his other victim, baby Jeannie.

***

Prime/not prime is the most popular game among the children, hands down.

***

The children are a secret from anybody on Earth. The SGC would undoubtedly force any children to come to Earth, despite them being Atlantis natives, because Pegasus is a warzone and their parents are from Earth. None of the Atlanteans want to return to Earth, and they don't want to lose their children either. Keeping the secret of the children leads to the possibility of keeping other secrets, and slowly the rules in Atlantis start to diverge from the rules on Earth. One of the unofficial mottoes (there are several, including "Yes it's pretty, but please don't touch") becomes "We do things a bit differently in the Pegasus Galaxy".

***

Everybody has dog tags. The SGC only issues them for official members of the expedition, initially leaving Teyla and Ronon and the children without, but the people of a particular planet had been intrigued by the team's tags. Now they do a lucrative trade in personalized dog tags (the kids' are in English and the trade language; most of the ones they make for others are in either only the trade language or in both the trade language and the owner's native tongue), with the owner's name and gate address (in some cases, the gate address of people who know them but not home; the kids' have the Alpha site). The popularity of the dog tags is not due to the Wraith (when the Wraith take somebody with one of their ships, there's no body to retrieve the tags from), but because the Pegasus galaxy is a dangerous place even without them. There's enough dangerous flora and fauna and people for the dog tags to be desired even if much of the time there's no possibility of them being returned to family.

Cross-Pollination

It starts casually: the exchange of information needed to get missions completed successfully and without casualties, the growled explanation a scientist gives of what they're doing so they'll be left alone long enough to save the city or their lives, specialties discussed over meals and on offworld trips, the training asked for when a scientist realizes they'd only just escaped death by Wraith or Genii or the native fauna. On Atlantis, both intelligence and physical prowess are important and prized, and interactions between the scientists and the soldiers are a must. They call it cross-pollination, on the too-infrequent occasions when there's enough time to take it slowly and show someone else what they're doing so that they can do it themselves if they have to. When McKay shoves a sheet of equations at Sheppard and tells him to solve them. When Cadman shows Katie Brown how to blow something up. When one of the marines uses what he's been learning from Dr. Keller to perform a tracheotomy. When everybody seems to know how to curse in every language anybody on Atlantis can speak. It's just another part of being so close to everybody that they feel like family.

Eventually it's institutionalized, because it's easier to tell the reinforcements that it's required to learn as much as they can outside of their specialties than to tell them "hey, you never know when you might need to identify if something's a plant or a fungus. Or solve a math problem that's probably at the graduate level because it'll save the scientists' valuable time. Or blow up a wall without taking the whole room on the other side out, and yes, we know you're a geologist. It's probably a good idea" and have them completely ignore you and because of that inadvertently cause the death of somebody, or more likely several somebodies. Classes remain on an informal level, because nobody has an even schedule where they can say they'll be somewhere at a certain time, unless that time is on the order of "five minutes from now". The veterans have seen enough Hail Marys that have worked because of cross-pollination that they don't question their need to tell an igneous rock from a sedimentary one, or to identify statues to any number of Pegasus's gods, or to fix all of the common types of Ancient technology.

The new arrivals try desperately to keep up with curriculum they'd never had any desire to learn and gradually take part in more of the conversations which touch on any number of things they never would have learned if they hadn't come to Atlantis.

SGA lost scene #1

Andrew Spencer closes the door to interrogation room 2 behind him with a feeling of profound relief. Jane from the front desk is walking past, and he grabs her frantically. "You've got to get me out of this!"

"What's wrong?" she asks. "I thought you said you like kids. And you've only been in there for an hour."

"For all but five minutes of that hour, they've been playing a game."

"What's so bad about that? At least they aren't fighting or anything."

"It's a game where they guess which numbers are prime and which aren't."

"That doesn't sound so bad," she says. "Good use of their education, right?"

"You don't understand. The numbers they're using are mostly in the hundreds and thousands, and they're always right. The boy was wrong once, and she mocked him for five minutes. I am not kidding you about this. These kids scare me, but especially the girl and I'm not sure giving them caffeine is a good idea but I told them I was getting coffee and I'm too scared not to. They won't let us call their parents until four and there's no way I can last that long." He knows he must look insane, eyes wide with fear of these kids who play cutthroat number games at the drop of a hat and drink black, caffeinated coffee, but that's because he probably is going insane so he doesn't worry too much.

She looks at him with a concerned look on her face, because usually he isn't this excitable; he's easygoing and loves kids and she's never seen him this upset. "I'll see what I can do," she says. "In the meantime, why don't you take them their coffee? And maybe you can get them some Sprite, get them to drink something that's not caffeinated if you're so worried about the effects of caffeine on your sanity?"

"Thank you," he says with relief. "As long as I know the end is in sight…well, I'd better go get those drinks before they decide to come looking for me."

Déjà Vu

It's actually ridiculously easy to get papers, but that isn't anything he hadn't expected. This is, after all, Gotham in the '80s, before it was cleaned up, and the "underground" operations are still relatively aboveground. The police force is more corrupt than it had gotten by the time he'd come here. The atmosphere of the city reminds him so much of Blüdhaven that he finds himself attending the police academy before the ink is even dry on his new papers. He shrugs and goes along with it. It isn't as though he can be a superhero without messing up the timeline, and at least this way he might do a bit of good.

It's easier the second time around. He doesn't have any reason to conceal his abilities at this point in time, after all, so he doesn't hold back.

It's strange, the first time he testifies at a case Harvey Dent is prosecuting. Strange to see his face unmarred, his hands sans coin, his personality whole, and know that he's the man who's killed so many, has tried to kill Dick, has caused so much misery for so many people, and to know that he hasn't done any of that, isn't that man, yet. He mentally coins the term "time travel vertigo" even though he knows he won't have reason to use it with anybody but himself unless he somehow gets retrieved. He isn't holding his breath on that one.

Gordon's young, in a way he's never been to Dick, and really hasn't been since he got shot. He's only a lieutenant, half unsure of his place in the world and in the department and in Gotham, and Dick wants to tell him he'll do all right, but he can't, he shouldn't even be in Gotham if he wants to make sure the timeline really is safe. But no matter how he resists what he really wants to do, he's sucked into the fringes of Gordon's fledgling group of people who don't, actually, have too much of a problem with the Batman.

Sometimes he's there when Batman comes, whether because of the Signal or to Gordon's office, and he can't help but stare, because he'd forgotten that Bruce had ever looked so young, before years on the job had beaten him down. Only, he isn't certain Bruce had ever looked this young when he'd known him. Certainly not any time recently. Fortunately, he's expected to stare. He is, after all, a young officer confronted with sudden evidence that at least one urban legend (though it's barely even an urban legend, at this point in time) is true. He makes certain he isn't watching (he could, but it would attract Bruce's attention to him) while he disappears, leaving Gordon cursing. The soft sound of the cape on the windowsill or the rooftop is enough for him to track Bruce by. The memory of the smell of Kevlar and leather and everything that, added together, is Bruce, makes him randomly break out smiling for a week afterward.

Nobody comes for him in the first year, or the second, or the third. Eventually he lets go of the small bit of hope he'd been clinging to (never a lot; he'd seen miracles happen many times in his lives, odds beaten, impossibilities come true; but he'd also seen the inevitable happen too many times not to know that, while the odds are sometimes beaten, most of the time they aren't) and stops waiting for rescue from the past and starts living his new life. It's hard letting things happen when he knows he can stop them (he takes a personal day on the day his parents die, and sits at home and cries and never goes on the roof with Gordon again), but for all the ugliness he could prevent there's a flip side. If his parents hadn't died he never would have become Robin, become Nightwing. If Jason hadn't died Tim would have just kept being the Batclan's personal stalker and wouldn't be the highly efficient Robin he is now. If Barbara hadn't gotten shot by the Joker…Every action has consequences, and he knows that even the worst things he can prevent have eventually saved lives, have eventually made the world a better place.

Nothing he tells himself makes it any easier.

Morse Code

It's strange to be returning to the same school where one of his best friends was shot, especially knowing that she'd died from the wound, but Bernard was handling it well. Mostly. He hasn't hyperventilated or freaked out or anything, anyway. Yet. He's been spending a lot of time concentrating on only his breathing, and fortunately the teachers both don't expect much from him and are giving him a little – make that a lot – of latitude, since they know about Darla.

When he isn't holding to normalcy by force of sheer will he mostly watches Tim, who seems to be taking it a lot better than he is. That isn't, actually, saying very much, but Tim doesn't seem to be acting much differently than he usually acts, which makes him wonder how good of an actor Tim actually is. He sneaks a glance at Tim. Tim looks completely entranced in the lecture that's putting everybody else to sleep, and Bernard snorts mentally in amusement. Definitely a better actor than he'd even suspected.

Tim slides his hand totally innocently off of the desktop and into his pocket. He took his phone out, clearly intending to just glance at the caller ID, but his eyes just stop there and for a second an expression of what's almost certainly shock passes over his face before he wipes it clear and returns to his former position but with his hand in his pocket around his phone. There are only five minutes of class left and Bernard can hardly wait to grill Tim, but unfortunately Mrs. McMillian is one of those teachers who teaches up until the bell (and doesn't let you pack everything up until then either), so he doesn't have a chance until it sounds. And Tim rockets out of his seat like he's on fire or something because they aren't allowed to use their phones in the classrooms (or during school hours, of course, but those just ended), leaving Bernard to curse (mentally and under his breath; he doesn't want to get detention, and this is a high school for God's sake, not a nursery, he should be allowed to curse if he wants) and gather his stuff (which has spread out as usual; he's never been able to keep his mess contained) and follow as quickly as possibly, which isn't very because some people think doorways are appropriate places to stand and talk.

So he only catches the very end of Tim's conversation with whoever's on the other end of the phone, which tells him nothing except that apparently Tim sometimes ends phone calls without saying goodbye or any of its synonyms, just hanging up.

"Hey Tim," Bernard says, draping an arm over Tim's shoulders. Tim does that no-response thing that Bernard's halfway certain means he doesn't like it, but he ignores it. If Tim doesn't want to be touched he can just say so. "What was that about? You practically ran out of there. Not that I don't sympathize with the urge to get out of physics, but normally you don't seem to have it."

"Phone call," Tim says shortly and completely uninformatively.

Bernard sighs loudly and rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I kind of got that. But with your busy social schedule surely you get called all the time?" He isn't sure if this is ironic or not. Tim's schedule has cleared up a lot lately, but on the other hand he still hasn't been willing to talk to Bernard much outside of school. And he's never seen any of Tim's other friends, if they even exist. Then again, he'd thought Tim had made Stephanie up, too.

"Not by her." Tim doesn't seem even a bit cheered up by Bernard, which means…

"Shit." It hits him suddenly. He's only seen Tim looking like this when something reminded him of Darla or Stephanie unexpectedly. "Is somebody else dead?"

Tim nods, once, and doesn't say anything, just twists out from under Bernard's arm and walks away quickly enough that Bernard knows the conversation is over whether he wants it to be or not.

***

Bernard has the skill to coax Tim into telling him at least some things. More than he'd ever expected, really. Like the fact that both the funeral and the will reading are on Saturday, which tells Bernard…something. That Tim's dead friend is older than they are, almost certainly, because she has a will, and he doesn't know of anybody in high school who does. That Tim was close enough to his friend to be mentioned in the will, or at least think he might be. Sometimes Bernard wonders about the parts of Tim's life that he doesn't see.

He doesn't call Tim on Saturday; even if he caught Tim at a time when he wasn't at the funeral or the will reading, Tim would be even less talkative than usual. Instead, he waits for Sunday, when Tim should be at least a little recovered and not nearly so busy. He pretends it's just a normal call, like he isn't bursting at the seams wanting to know everything Tim hasn't, and probably won't, told him.

"So, Tim…you want to go see a movie or something?" he asks. "I'm sure we can find something up to your standards in the theaters."

"Can't," Tim replies. "I've inherited a large amount of computers and I have to move them today."

"Today?" Bernard asks, brow arching involuntarily. "There's a time limit?"

"Not…technically, but it's really better the faster I do it." There's a lot unspoken there, and Bernard can feel it, but he has no idea what it is. Which is frustrating, as are many things with Tim.

"Well, I think I can figure out how to disconnect a computer, if you want some help."

"These aren't exactly standard, but…you mean that offer?"

"You know what they say: good friends help you move, great friends help you move bodies." Which was…perhaps in bad taste, considering. But there's only the usual (usual now, anyway; it's like he's gotten worse at being normal) socially awkward Tim Drake silence (like it takes him a second to realize it's a joke and figure out the right reply) before he retorts.

"And which one are you?"

"I don't know, Tim, you got any bodies you need moved?"

"I might, you never know…but seriously, it'd be great if you'd help. It'd keep the tension at reasonable levels, at the very least."

He's not even going to ask; sometimes even he knows better. "So should I come over now, or what?"

"Oh, right, you don't know where…you have a car, right?"

"Yeah…should I not meet you at your house?"

"We've already left. We're almost there, even."

"Uh, okay, where's 'there'?"

"You know the clocktower?" Tim asks.

"Yeah…" Bernard says. Everybody who's lived in Gotham for a while knows the clocktower, and most Gothamites have lived there for a while (sometimes he thinks there's something in the water that keeps them there no matter how bad things get). He waits for Tim to give directions starting at the clocktower. But he doesn't. "Wait, you inherited computers which were stored in the clocktower?"

"Barbara owned the clocktower," Tim says mildly, like it's a completely normal thing to know somebody who owns such a…landmark. "Just ring the doorbell when you get there and somebody will let you in."

"Sure," Bernard replies. "This had better not be a prank, though. Wait, scratch that, I think it would actually be reassuring if it were a prank."

"Noted," Tim said. "Prank you later, though; I'm at the clocktower."

"See you there."

***

Despite Tim being…Tim, Bernard halfway expects it to all be a big prank involving whoever owns the clocktower getting angry at him, so he's a bit apprehensive when he rings the doorbell. Not that he shows it; even if there isn't anybody watching (and he isn't entirely certain about that; the camera over the door is difficult to miss) he's not going to let anybody know how he feels. After all, nine tenths of success is appearance.

There's a buzz and the door unlocks remotely. Nobody pops up and says anything, or uses the intercom, but he assumes the unlocking means he's supposed to enter. Or at least that's the excuse he'll use if he gets arrested for trespassing. The door opens easily, anyway, so there weren't more locks than the ones which were just unlocked.

The door opens into a hallway. Elevator doors are sliding open at the end of it, like the clocktower's expecting him, and when he enters the elevator they close and the elevator starts to rise without him doing a thing. Just how wired is this place, anyway? And if the previous owner had been the one who'd wired it this much, what kind of computers had she left to Tim? The elevator doors slide open at what's apparently the top floor before the roof (which apparently also has elevator access), cutting off his train of thought.

What looks like a really intense "discussion" cuts off as the doors open, and everybody turns to stare at him like he wasn't expected, like they have no idea what he's doing here. But he recognizes Mr. Drake, so he knows he isn't in the wrong place. Tim darts forward (who knew he could move that quickly?) and pulls him into the room.

"Oh good, you're here," he says, quicker than Tim should ever speak. "I'll just introduce you around and then we can get to work. So, this is Dinah Lance, Helena Bertinelli, Dick Grayson, Jim Gordon, and you already know my dad." He's practically bouncing in place (okay, for anybody else it wouldn't seem extreme, but for Tim? Bernard wonders how much caffeine he's had, especially considering how much Tim seems to enjoy coffee in the normal run of things), and barely gives Bernard a chance to shake hands and say hello before he pulls him into another room crammed full of computer stuff and electronics Bernard doesn't recognize, even from the computer and technology magazines he'll never admit he reads. All of the chairs have been removed from in front of the desks, he assumes for easier access to whatever has to be packed up.

He can't stop the quiet "wow" which slips out of his mouth, and Tim smirks at him.

"I never would have taken you for a technogeek," he says, but with the caress he's giving the computer stuff with his eyes Bernard knows he'd be geeking out far more than Bernard is if he hadn't seen it all a hundred times before. After all, he actually knows what it all is. Presumably.

"I'm not," Bernard protests, knowing it's futile. "But I don't think there's a person alive who wouldn't be amazed by this, even if half of it's barely recognizable."

"Yeah," Tim sighs happily. He's in geek heaven. "Babs always had the best toys, but she never let me play with them, except when I wired the place and helped her test it."

"You wired the place?" Bernard asks, surprised. He would have thought it was done by a professional. "How wired is it?"

"More than you would believe," Tim replies. "It took forever because I had to do it mostly by myself."

"She didn't help?" Bernard tries to work out why. With this much technology, he'd have thought she could do the job herself.

Tim takes a picture from one on top of the desks and hands it to him silently. It's Dick Grayson from the other room with a redhead in a wheelchair, and he practically smacks himself. No wonder she hadn't wired the place herself. No wonder there's an elevator. No wonder there aren't any chairs in this room; it has nothing to do with packing. Sometimes he's just a bit slow.

"So…how'd you get to know her well enough to wire her clocktower?" Bernard asks. "Or do you secretly run a business that I don't know about on the side? Though if it was a business I don't suppose she'd have left you her computers."

"Hey, you never know," Tim says with a shrug. "Can you unhook that monitor and pack it in that box? Use plenty of padding." He starts unhooking a different monitor. "But no, no business. We met through Dick."

"Okay…how do you know him then?"

"Used to live next door to him."

"Now, when you say you lived next door to him, do you mean when you were at that boarding school, or during No Man's Land, or when you lived next door to Bruce Wayne?"

"The latter. Bruce adopted him just recently. I thought you read all those tabloids and gossip columns and everything?"

"What, really? I haven't really been paying attention lately, I guess."

"Things have been crazy," Tim says quietly, and they work quietly for a while, remembering everything that's happened to Gotham and to them lately.

***

"Hey, what's this?" Bernard asks, holding up a metallic sphere. "I think I see a button."

"Don't press it!" Tim yelps, snatching the ball from Bernard's hand before he can. "This is one of Dinah's, actually."

"Did I hear my name?" the blonde - Dinah - asks from the doorway.

"Yeah, we found one of your toys." Tim tosses it at her.

"I didn't know she had any more of these," Dinah says, tossing it casually from hand to hand. Bernard wonders if that's such a good idea, since Tim had freaked out so much when he'd been the one holding it. He thinks perhaps his feelings should be hurt, but at least it seems she knows what it is, which is more than he can say.

"Waste not, want not?" Tim offers with a ghost of a grin.

"Guess so," she says. They're quiet for a while, until the silence makes her shift. "It's going to be weird. Without her." She stops with a glance at Bernard.

"I know," Tim replies. "I might be able to help you with business. A little. But it won't be the same."

"No." She fidgets.

"Why don't you go use the holo-room?" Tim suggests, possibly just to get rid of her.

"It still works?" she asks. "I thought you turned all the computers off."

"It has a completely different set," Tim says. "And I'm not taking them."

"Really?"

"They wouldn't be much use to me without the room, you know."

"If you say so."

"Really, Dinah," he chides her. "You need to get over your technophobia. It's not as if computers are going to become less prevalent in the future, after all."

The noise she lets out is half way between a laugh and a sob. "You sound just like Barbara." She disappears from the doorway.

Tim twitches like he wants to chase after her and apologize, but he returns to packing up the computers.

"Holo-room?" Bernard asks.

***

Bernard has never before been told about anything which "officially doesn't exist, or at least not on Earth outside of a few research labs", but he knows that even if he had been he would have loved the holo room the most, simply because it makes Tim talk to him. And sure, half of the talking he's doing is warnings not to tell anybody about it and attempts to describe things as vaguely as possible (especially where his friend had gotten the technology from), but still. Tim. Talking. At length. Without much prompting at all, nothing behind a murmured mm-hmm. Even if he only has the vaguest idea what Tim's talking about, and half the time it's like his mom lecturing him, it's still Tim talking. It's impossible not to love anything which does that.

And he's always known that there's more under the surface of Tim Drake than he'll ever see, but that doesn't make it any less of a palpable pain to see Tim so alive, so talkative, and then just shut down completely when his dad comes into the room.

"Are you guys about ready to go?" he asks with cheerfulness so fake even Bernard can see it, and this is only the second time he's seen Mr. Drake.

"Sure, Dad," Tim replies. "We just have to take everything out to the car. Or cars; I'm not sure it'll all fit in ours."

"I can take some in my car," Bernard offers. "I think I can find my way to your house from here without too much trouble."

"Why don't I ride with you and make sure?" Tim says quickly, obviously not wanting to spend a lot of time with his dad. "Wouldn't want you to get lost and end up in Blüdhaven or something."

"Sure. If that's all right with you?" Bernard says to Mr. Drake.

He looks like he's going to say no (he kind of twitches, even), but he doesn't. "That's fine. I just hope we have enough space for all this at home."

"I'm sure I can make some."

Bernard has no idea what the deal is with Tim and his dad, but he knows that a) he doesn't want to know, and b) he wants to be as far away from them as possible because he doesn't want to be in the same room as them when their cold war erupts into violence (hopefully of the screaming kind, but he can't get Tim's old bruises and stitches and scars out of his mind). He grabs up a box and takes it into the elevator. They drop their almost-fight to do the same.

The nice thing about elevators is that they don't have to make as many trips up and down; they can fill the elevator, take it down, and unload it to the cars, and return for the remaining boxes and cases. Plus, no stairs, which is always a good thing except (the elevator's signs advise him) in case of fire. Unfortunately, he knows it won't be this easy at Tim's house. Tim's room is on the second floor.

***

It's always somewhat disturbing being in Tim's room. Of course, it's Tim, so disturbing (as Bernard is starting to realize) is not actually too unusual. But it's unnatural for a room to be this clean and neat, the bed made and wrinkle-free, everything obsessive-compulsively put away and, knowing Tim, probably alphabetized. Tim had sketched out a layout in the car and begins unpacking and putting everything in place as soon as they take the first load upstairs. He lets Jack, Bernard, and Dana bring everything else upstairs while he places monitors and computers and stuff Bernard doesn't recognize in places which look completely random until he has almost everything placed. He works without stopping even momentarily to consider placement until he just stops and steps back.

"Got it all placed?" Bernard asks. "Because I think it's about time to turn it all on."

"Yeah," Tim says, pressing a power button which turns everything on. "I just hope I can get in."

"What, the will didn't have a password in it for you?"

"Clearly you don't realize how much security is on these machines. Barbara changed her password a lot, plus there's various biometrics. I mean, hopefully she added the person she left the computers to to the security system, but if she didn't pretty much the only thing these computers are good for is scrap metal."

"Couldn't you reformat them? Or something?"

"She was big into computer security; do you honestly think she wouldn't protect her computers from that?" But the computers have no problem with Tim, booting to various operating systems as soon as they collectively scan his retina. Bernard doesn't recognize the names on half of the splash screens, much less the programs which start up automatically and minimize immediately.

"So I take it she was a power user?" Bernard asks, as if he doesn't know. He hadn't had any idea that Windows could be made to look like that.

Tim snickers. Bernard's never heard him snicker before, so it's possible he's boggling a little. "Oh, you have no idea."

"I think I'm starting to get one."

"You really aren't." Tim seems to remember that he doesn't want to tell Bernard a lot, even so obliquely that he doesn't have any idea what he's being told. "Hey, you want to play a game? I'm sure she's got a few not-yet-released games loaded on these, even if she never played."

"She was a beta tester and she never played? How does that work?"

"She was the worst kind of workaholic, and…not technically a beta tester." He hands a keyboard and mouse to Bernard (pointing at the monitor he now has control of) and pulls out a pair of gloves and a strange pair of glasses for himself.

"Is that some sort of virtual reality thing? I thought those were just science fiction."

"Bernard. You do realize we live in a world which gets invaded by aliens on a regular basis, right?"

"Good point. So why don't I get a set?"

"Because there's only one, and also they take a while to really master. Mainly because you absolutely have to touch-type with them, without the benefit of having anything to actually touch."

"Fine, fine, have it your way. Which game should I kick your ass at?"

***

Tim is actually really good at computer games (and they try several, because Bernard thinks it might just be a fluke at first, a game that Tim's played a lot), the result, he says, of having friends who play them a lot and used to drag him into them all the time. His closed-off expression tells Bernard that they're yet another topic he's not supposed to ask about. Tim's new computers are amazing. They play the newest games on the highest quality and they don't slow down even a little. Maybe in a few years, after the games are released, after they're getting a bit on the old side, computer enthusiasts will have computers which can play the games at this speed without cranking down the video quality.

It goes without saying (or even glaring) that he shouldn't ask for specifics about how Tim's dead friend had this technology.

"We have got to do this more often," he says, flopping back on Tim's no-longer-military-neat bed. "Your computers are awesome."

Tim's only answer is a smile saying just how aware he is of that fact. Knowing Tim, it also means Bernard has no idea how good they are.

"See you tomorrow."

***

Tim's hiding something. Bernard can tell because he's acting completely normal. This is Tim. Is normal even in his vocabulary? He does have a wide and varied vocabulary (he always uses all sorts of big words that are probably on the SAT and, like, in spelling bees, but he never blinks when Bernard uses the most obscure slang terms he knows in an attempt to get Tim to admit there's something he doesn't know), but somehow Bernard doubts it, unless it's defined there as just "not Tim". Bernard's known he was unusual since they first met. How long has Tim known? Surely he isn't so wrapped up in himself that he has no idea.

"So, Tim, what's going on?" he asks at lunch.

"Going on?"

"You know what I mean. You're acting…normal."

Tim raises an eyebrow. "You do realize what you just said, right?"

"Since when do you act normal? You aren't normal, not by any definition of the term."

"Maybe it's easier to…pretend."

"Is it?"

"Yes," Tim says flatly, not even trying to pretend he's telling the truth. It's like he has to lie to Bernard but wants him to know he's lying. Which, translated from Tim-think, doesn't mean he wants to tell Bernard. It means he has a secret so strange there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Bernard will guess, or at least that's Bernard's translation.

Idly, he wonders if there's anybody else who's had occasion to develop a mental Tim-English dictionary. He wonders if they (whoever they are, if they exist) have a better one than he does.

He wishes he knew them so he could compare notes.

He's almost certain Jack Drake doesn't have one, or at least not one that's anywhere near accurate. The people at the clocktower, however…too bad he never bothered to remember their names.

***

Tim seems invested in keeping Bernard away from his dad, or possibly his computers, so for the next few weeks they spend a lot of time going to movies in theaters and eating at fast food joints and hanging out at the mall, even though Tim never buys anything, or even looks at it like he's considering buying it. They could, theoretically, go to Bernard's house, but the only thing it has in its favor is the computers and consoles, and he's been depressed every time he's looked at them since he played with Tim's computers. Besides, it probably does Tim good to be around people outside of school. God knows he doesn't get out of his house on his own, in a way that has nothing to do with being grounded and everything to do with Tim clearly wanting to be a shut-in when he grows up. Or possibly before.

They're in the food court, nursing a couple of sodas, when Tim tenses like he suddenly remembered or realized something.

"What's the matter, Tim?" Bernard asks. "Leave the stove on or something?"

Tim doesn't respond, and the way he's just staring into space and not blinking is now reminding Bernard more of people having flashbacks in movies, minus (of course) the guns and explosions and driving cars into things. But Tim's never been in a war, so any flashbacks he has have no reason to involve guns or explosions or anything violent.

Then again, he has no reason to be having flashbacks.

Wait, had Tim been in Gotham during No Man's Land? He'd never talked about it, but then Tim never talks about anything except, apparently, computers. And him being here during NML would explain his dad's possessiveness/protectiveness, if he's afraid he'll lose Tim if he lets him out of his sight. Maybe the clocktower people were part of the reason Tim was here? It would explain the hostility.

If it's a flashback they need to get out of here. And if it's about No Man's Land there's no way he's going to try to take Tim's soda away from him, even if his ever-tightening grip means his upholstery (and Tim's pants) probably isn't safe.

He manages to get Tim out to his car somehow. How, he doesn't know, because all of his attention is focused on Tim, on worrying about him. Because Tim's never been normal, but this is strange even for him. The cup goes, as he'd predicted, before they're even out of the parking space, so now they absolutely have to go home, because there's no way he's going to let the soda just dry there and ruin the upholstery, and Tim's a bit too far out of it to take him to the deluxe car wash where they clean the inside as well as the outside. And the $5 car wash does nothing for upholstery.

At the house, he shoos Tim out of the car, and he just stands there and does nothing about his pants even though they have to be uncomfortable in their wetness while Bernard dries the seat off the best he can, cursing. Not that he begrudges Tim his little moment of craziness, but he has to use the car, and the wetness is kind of annoying. Then he drags Tim inside before he can realize that Tim almost certainly has some sort of skills with which to defend himself if he really did survive NML. Fortunately, Tim seems content to let him drag him around.

"Take off your pants and put those on," Bernard tells him when they reach his room, pointing to a pair of his pants. Tim's zombie flashback mode is apparently also a follow-whatever-orders-he's-given mode because he starts taking his pants off immediately.

Bernard hadn't thought to guard against this, mentally, because while he knows he's attracted to Tim, Tim is normally way too modest to strip in front of anybody. It's actually amazing that he survived dressing out for gym without dying of embarrassment. Well, unless he actually did die, and became a zombie, and this is just his zombie side asserting itself. He shakes his head, and tries not to stare, because it's Tim. In boxers. Without anything over them. If Tim wasn't all zombified right now…but he is. He takes Tim's pants and puts them in the washer, then calls Tim's dad and asks if Tim can spend the night, using the soda incident and "a shower" as the reason Tim isn't the one calling, as well as the old "I thought if I left it up to Tim he wouldn't ask" to convince Jack. Tim isn't the only one who can lie, and it seems unlikely that he'll be together enough to go home at a reasonable time today.

When he returns to his room, Tim hasn't put pants on. After the sacrifice of pants he'd made, zombie Tim's snubbing them. He should feel insulted. He probably would, if the boxers weren't shorting out every thought in his brain.

"Tim, I know we aren't exactly the same size, but you do need to wear pants of some sort," Bernard says in as close to his normal tone as he can manage, holding the pants out toward Tim. He hopes Tim doesn't notice how little success he's having at not staring. The boxers hide nothing.

Tim grabs his wrist really tight. "Ow. Ow, ow, owowow," Bernard whimpers, dropping the pants. He's going to have bruises, and it doesn't look like Tim's even trying. Tim's hold lessens a little, enough that Bernard could maybe move a little without his bones getting broken, if he didn't know that Tim could tighten his grip at the slightest move he makes. "Okay, Tim, you don't have to wear pants if you don't want to. I mean, we're just in my house, not outside where you can get arrested for indecent exposure or anything." He's babbling, but Tim's scaring him and he talks a lot when he's scared, it's a defense mechanism…and he should really calm down. Even if Tim's having a flashback, maybe he can calm him down and make him let go of his wrist.

…Except he has no idea how to snap people out of flashbacks. And somehow he doubts Tim's going to let go of him so he can look it up on the internet. "Tim, you want to let go of me?" he tries hopefully. "I'm not going anywhere, you don't have to hold on to me." Tim doesn't let go. This is almost certainly the longest Tim has ever touched him voluntarily. Unless it doesn't count as voluntarily because he's so out of it. Without Bernard being the one doing the touching, anyway. "Can we at least sit down?" Bernard asks, edging towards the bed. "Maybe you can go to sleep and wake up, you know, not acting all weird? Or at least, acting weird in the ways you normally act weird, not in this way. I'm so not helping my case here, am I?" But apparently he is, because Tim sits down next to him on the bed, close enough that he can feel his body heat all up and down his side, not just where Tim is gripping him like a vise, like it's life-or-death that he keeps holding on.

Bernard keeps up a steady stream of talk, still trying to calm Tim down or at least get him to let go of his wrist, because the constant pressure on his new bruises isn't pleasant no matter how much he wants - craves – Tim's touch. His strategy has limited success. Tim doesn't let go, but his grip loosens as he pillows his head on Bernard's shoulder and falls asleep.

Gently, carefully, Bernard slides his wrist away from Tim's hand and massages it. Definitely bruised. If it had been a life or death situation…well. It wouldn't have been Tim who was the weak link, that's for sure. If he'd been dangling from a ledge or something, he would have been able to hold on until somebody got there to help pull him up, if he wasn't able to do it himself. It's yet another of those skills it's not entirely unreasonable to develop in Gotham. Bernard wonders if he'd developed it deliberately, if he'd ever had to use it. If he'd ever had occasion to really notice its lack.

Tim's starting to drool on his shoulder. They may be friends, but Bernard doesn't let anybody drool on him, no matter how good a friend they are. Carefully (because he doesn't think his wrist can take much more abuse, and Tim's going to feel guilty enough whenever he snaps out of this without breaking it) he maneuvers Tim into a lying position on his bed. It's a bit early, so he can put Tim's pants in the dryer and look up flashbacks online and then go to sleep on the couch and avoid Tim until he puts some pants on, because Tim's straight (he dated a girl Robin!) and not interested and even if he was right now it would be wrong to take advantage, like date rape or something. He tries to leave, but Tim, still sleeping, puts his arms around him and pulls him down onto the bed next to him, snuggling into him like he's one of those body pillows or Tim's girlfriend (well, okay, not Tim's girlfriend; there's little doubt in Bernard's mind that Tim's still a virgin, girlfriend or no girlfriend). He pulls Bernard down so that he's lying down too, so that they're spooning, and then Tim throws his legs around Bernard so he can't even move, and it's a good thing he went to the bathroom earlier because judging by the way Tim's holding on to him with all of his limbs he isn't going to get another chance anytime soon.

It's a very good thing his parents are out of town, Bernard thinks, because this is not the kind of thing he wants to have to have to explain. Or at least not when it's just because of zombie Tim. Now, if he could convince Tim to give him this much contact without him being all messed up in the head…perhaps they could work their way up to it? He wonders how he could even broach the subject to Tim. He couldn't even talk to Darla about his attraction to her, and asking somebody of the opposite gender out when they aren't interested doesn't freak them out nearly as much as asking somebody of the same gender does.

Speaking of attraction, it's really difficult to ignore Tim and his pantslessness when he's right there at Bernard's back, wrapped around him like…something that wraps stuff. Wrapping paper, maybe. Though he's so warm, he's closer to being an electric blanket. Wouldn't that be delightful in winter, a Tim ready and willing to cuddle? He takes a few moments to enjoy that thought before he remembers that the reason he's having it is because Tim's in the same bed as him (to understate things). Things are going to be awkward enough when he wakes up without getting turned on. So, change of mental subject. To…he chooses a subject at random. Vegetables! Vegetables are completely nonsexual. They don't have genders, aren't involved in sex, there's absolutely nothing erotic about them. In fact, they're so horribly boring he wouldn't be surprised if he dropped off right now. Except Tim eats vegetables. With every meal. Sometimes as a snack too. It's like he's a health nut or thinks he might get scurvy at any moment or something. Or like eating vegetables is some part of his religion, possibly all of it. Which totally fits with Bernard's theory about No Man's Land; he's heard that there hadn't been a lot of vegetables to go around then, and that after NML a lot of people who'd stayed had a newfound love of them. Like the almost worshipful expression on Tim's face when he digs into a nice plate of vegetables. Maybe there's some way he can get Tim to turn that expression on him.

Wait, no, that's the kind of thought he's trying to avoid. But what can he think of to avoid that kind of thought? Is it even possible, with Tim pressed into him so warmly? Ugly old people? His parents having sex? Math? He feels his eyelids growing heavier and welcomes the darkness that signals sleep.

***

He wakes up when the warmth at his back shifts. His side feels cold in a couple of places, and he knows that the warmth had been on them too, and now is gone. He presses back into the warmth in an effort to get it to stay, to not go anywhere.

"Um." Tim's voice says from behind him, and it all comes crashing back. He sits bolt upright and starts rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"Sorry," he says, voice still thick from sleep. "Forgot about you."

"Um. Sorry?" At least it seems that Tim's back to normal. Tim normal, at least.

"You had a- a- flashback or something, and all you can say is sorry? How about you tell me what that was all about?" He turns to look at Tim for the first time since he woke up, but Tim is looking everywhere but at him, like he's fascinated by Bernard's room, like he hasn't seen it before.

"I can't," he says quietly.

"If you can't talk to me, at least tell me you have somebody you can talk to," Bernard says. "Because that? Was not exactly reassuring of your mental health, no matter how good a façade you put up the rest of the time. I'm going to have bruises."

Tim's eyes snap to him, like he can't help but look. "Did I- what did I do?" He sounds halfway terrified, and maybe there's something to Bernard's theory about abuse because he looks like people in Lifetime movies who are afraid of being second generation abusers.

"It's fine," he says, holding up his wrist. "You just held onto me like I was your lifeline or something. Not that I mind, except for the pain, but you really need to talk to somebody."

"I can't. I'm not allowed."

"Why not?"

Tim is silent.

"There's nobody you can talk to about…whatever's bothering you?"

A hint of a smile twitches the corner of his lips. "Nobody living."

"So talk to somebody dead! Talk to their grave or the air or write them a letter. I don't care how you do it. But you need to talk to somebody, even if they'll never be able to talk back or give you advice."

Tim looks shocked, but he nods like it's a good idea, whether it is or not. "Um…where are my pants?" he asks like he's halfway afraid of the answer.

***

The only word he can think of to describe Tim when he sees him next is "guarded". Of course, that could describe Tim at any point, but it's somehow more now, like he's been experiencing actual emotions and doesn't want anybody to know. And it's not because of his little freak-out the other day, or at least not just about that, because he'd been more or less Tim-normal when Bernard had dropped him off at his house afterwards, and now he's…guarded.

This is, actually, an improvement, because it means he has something to guard, as opposed to the terrible blankness of the other day. And it's like it's Tim's natural state to be guarded, because he does it better than anybody, well enough that Bernard only knows he's guarded because Tim lets him see that, even though he isn't anything close to letting Bernard see his actual emotions that he's guarding.

"Am I to assume you actually followed my advice?" he asks. "Is it snowing in Hell? Are pigs flying without mad scientists being involved?"

"It was…helpful," Tim replies, the pause meaning something significant, but as usual with Tim, it isn't anything Bernard can interpret. Sometimes Tim can be so frustrating…but today Bernard's content to just have him back to his usual enigmatic self.

***

~Months Later~

Tim's hurt, he went away for his vacation away from his parents and Gotham and he came back covered in bandages. Not Band-Aids, bandages, taped on and huge and white and Bernard knows that he isn't actually covered in them because Tim's been covered in bandages before (it's what made him develop the abuse theory), and this is nowhere near as covered as he had been then because it's only on his head, and those had been mostly on his body, where there's a lot more area to be covered. But he has bandages, and one of them is behind his ear, like if whatever wound Tim had gotten had been just a bit deeper his brains would have leaked out on the ground or whatever he hit his head on. Or if it had been more forward, he would have lost his ear. Bernard pokes at it.

Tim ducks out of the way, like he hasn't done on a regular basis since- well, since before Bernard met him, because somebody trained him to not mind when people around him get in his personal space and stay there. But it looks like he's only ducking because it hurts, not because he doesn't want – make that isn't willing – to be touched. Which makes entirely too much sense, and he really should have thought of that before poking at Tim's fresh wound.

"Sorry," he says, dropping his hand. "What happened? I let you go on vacation without me for one week, and what do you do? You get injured."

"I can't talk about it," Tim replies, tapping his also bandaged middle and index fingers on the wall in what Bernard's brain is insisting is a pattern, even if he can't work it out.

"You can't share the story of how you got horribly injured with your best friend?" Bernard asks.

"What makes you think you're my best friend?" Tim asks, and on anybody else that tone would be completely serious, but this is Tim, and he's had months in which to find Tim's sense of humor and learn when he's making a joke.

Bernard clutches his chest. "You mean I'm not? Oh, how you wound me!"

"Yes, I've ditched you for the company of a bear whose acquaintance I made in the woods."

"Is that what happened to you? You got a bit too close to the honey or something?"

"I told you, I can't talk about it, but there were no bears involved. I told my dad I fell while climbing." Which, of course, means that there was no climbing involved, at least in the injury, because Tim never tells Jack the truth, even when it would be smarter to. He may have climbed a little just to make sure he was acquainted with the process or something, though. His fingers continue tapping.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Bernard asks. If his fingers were hurt badly enough to be bandaged, he doubts he'd be tapping at every available surface.

"Yes."

***

Maybe Tim's a masochist. It explains the injuries, the old scars, the tapping with injured fingers. But he doesn't stop tapping after his fingers heal, and he always seems to take good care of his injuries and at least try to avoid getting hurt. Bernard could almost pass the scars off as clumsiness, but he's actually seen Tim move. There's nothing clumsy about him unless he's doing it deliberately.

The tapping is not some sort of nervous tic or habit; Tim had picked it up all at once when he'd gotten injured, and it gets faster as time passes. Maybe it's Morse code, with one finger for the dit and the other for the dah? But what's the point of sending messages to yourself in Morse code, especially when it's Morse code which makes no sense? Working off that theory, Bernard learns Morse code and attempts to decipher what Tim's tapping out. But neither BENPYR nor JTAXLK is a word, nor anything like a word, so either it's in code (he wouldn't put it past Tim to use a code in his Morse code conversations with himself, but he doesn't have anything near the ability to decode it if that's what he's doing) or it isn't Morse code, just some weird instant habit of Tim's. If anybody could pick up a habit immediately, it's Tim, so he stops even trying to comprehend Tim's actions.

He starts getting a lot of weird spam in his email account, emails all from different addresses. Most of them try to get him to take various quizzes, but some of them ask really personal questions which, when taken as a whole, seem to be rather pointed. Either somebody's trying to set him up with Tim or Tim's sending the emails. While he can't think of anybody who would want to set them up, the alternative is even more unlikely.

"I've been getting these strange emails lately…" he tells Tim.

Tim freezes, and a strange expression passes over his face. Maybe he had been the one sending them. But he starts muttering to himself. "I can't believe you did that."

"Hearing voices, Tim?"

"In a sense." Tim looks like he wants to jump out of the window to escape this conversation. They're on the ground floor, so he wouldn't get hurt too badly, but jumping through closed windows is never a good idea so Bernard makes sure he's between Tim and the window.

"So, what, you have multiple personality disorder and one of your personalities sent me the emails?" Bernard doesn't give him enough time to pretend that's the truth. "Please, how stupid do you think I am? And I know that you don't regularly berate yourself out loud in second person, so don't try to pretend you do."

"Sorry," Tim says, looking at the floor. "I have a friend who's, um."

"Trying to set us up?" Bernard prompts. Tim nods and doesn't look in his direction. "Well, I assume they at least bothered to find out if you're interested before trying, so…" he steps forward and kisses Tim. He can't get at Tim's mouth at first, because he's looking at the floor, so he kisses Tim's cheek, and then Tim turns his head and his lips slide along his cheek and then he's kissing Tim's mouth, and it falls open, and he can't keep his hands off of Tim, just has to get in contact with as much of him as he can, and it seems Tim has the same idea because he's licking the roof of his mouth and his hands are somewhere on Bernard's back and they're pressed together close enough that there isn't any space between them.

And then Tim's pulling away and saying something, not to him, but not to anybody else because there's nobody else in the room, and Bernard knows he should be focusing but his lips are swollen and possibly his brain is melted because he didn't know Tim was interested, or that he was such a good kisser, or that he could be so expressive. But then Tim turns his computer monitor on, and it isn't showing the usual desktop, it's showing video, and he doesn't think he should be seeing this, because it's the kind of video they never get on TV, video of some field by a farm, with superheroes really close, fighting what looks like Superboy, except that isn't his costume and he's right there besides, on the ground like he's hurt. And the video is being taken by one of the heroes, somehow, because there's movement, faster than anyone but one of them or a professional athlete could move, and there's no reason an athlete would be in the middle of nowhere for a battle like this.

Tim's into it, more than Bernard would have expected him to be, nails digging into the palms of his hands and biting his lip until it bleeds and looking like he wishes he were there even though, if that many heroes can't do anything, there's no way he could if he were there. He flinches every time one of them gets hurt especially badly, but he doesn't look away, just keeps staring like it's a train wreck, like if he looks away it'll just be worse. And then some interminable amount of time later the battle's over, all except the cleanup, and he kind of wonders what happens to the bodies of the dead heroes except that's so not a good thought to be having after watching that, because some of those bodies were pulped, and if none of the other heroes know their secret identities they'll have to be identified by dental records or fingerprints or DNA or not at all. He barely makes it to the bathroom in time.

He rinses his mouth out and returns, and Tim looks a little bit grey but he smiles like he'd just gotten here, like they hadn't talked about the emails or kissed or seen that video. And he can almost believe it was all a hallucination, because his computer looks like it hasn't been touched since last night when he'd checked his email, and Tim's smiling like nothing had happened, but there's a line of blood caked on his chin from when he'd bitten his lip, and his nails are red at the tip, where they'd been pressed into his skin so hard he'd bled. And he's grey, like he should be going into shock or fainting or something, and he's just smiling like nothing had happened.

"Shouldn't we, like, send that video to the news or something?" he asks, and his brain isn't melted anymore, it's frozen, like a block of ice, and he just can't go along with Tim's little charade right now, no matter how much closer it might get him to kissing again.

"What video?" Tim asks, gesturing at the computer, where pipes are endlessly being drawn across the screen.

"I can't deal with this today," Bernard says, to himself or to the air. He doesn't know. But Tim nods once and leaves.

***

It's on the news, later. There isn't any video, just bland descriptions and photographs of those who'd died. Some of them don't even have photographs, just names in the list, and he wonders if anybody knows them, if anybody mourns their deaths as anything more than one more hero who'd died today.

He sees Tim in school, and they're still friends, but Tim's always busy now, busy and not in his house, and when he sees Jack Drake he looks defeated, like he's not allowed to have his anger any more, and without it he has nothing.

Tim continues his enigmatic tapping, and his concealment of his emotions, and starts having bruises and cuts and broken bones all the time again. And Bernard knows that he can have Tim again, if he connects the dots, follows the breadcrumbs, deciphers the encoded Morse code he taps on every available surface.