#i just think Kon would really enjoy pole dancing

[awhitehead17]

Universal Signs

Chapter 12 / Previous Chapter 

Also on AO3

Enjoy! :D

When Tim wakes up, he spends a good amount of time simply staring at the ceiling of his room not doing anything. There’s a lot on his mind and it kind of makes him not want to leave the bed so he doesn’t have to deal with any of it.

Wouldn’t that just be easier? To simply avoid everything and pretend that there’s absolutely nothing wrong. Pretend that he was in his large open bedroom in the Manor instead of a supply closet on a spaceship. Pretend he was on Earth with his family and friends instead of floating through space with over-powered aliens. Pretend his enemies were the press instead of a whole league of killers potentially after him…

He shakes his head and lets out a moan. He can’t believe this is his life right now. What the hell is he going to tell his family once he gets back to Earth? Would they even believe him? That’ll be a bridge he’ll have to cross once he gets to it. For now he needs to decide on whether he wants to face the reality of his current situation or avoid it for as long as possible. 

Unfortunately that decision is taken away from him as his room’s door opens up. Not even bothering to ask for permission, Kon walks into his room and stares at his sprawled out form on the bed.

Tim doesn’t bother getting up, he’s kind of gone the past the point of caring about impressions. Alternatively he curls up into a ball, wrapping the blanket tighter around him and shoots the alien a glare. “You know, we humans have a thing called knocking and waiting for permission before entering a room, also known as manners. Remind me to teach you about them at some point.”

Kon raises an eyebrow at him, Tim guesses that’s either because of his attitude or because of the subject. “Well hello to you too.” Kon says evenly. “You’ve been in here a while I thought I’d check on you but also invite you to join us while we train.”

“Train? Train for what?” Tim questions with a frown.

“Now we know that The League of Assassins may be after us, we thought it would be good to do more training to improve our fighting skills and strengthen our abilities. Would you like to join us?”

“I uh…” Tim blinks at him for a moment as he comprehends the question. Fighting? The only fighting he’s ever really done was dirty wrestling matches with his brothers and the self-defence classes he’s been through, however he admits he’s pretty good with a bo staff. On the other hand, he’s never actually been in like an actual proper fight before.

Plus there’s the fact of the fact these guys are aliens, he’s seen what they can do with their inhuman powers, what chance does he have?

Well, he’s always liked a challenge. “Sure, why not. It’ll be interesting.”

Smiling, Kon nods. “Great! When you’re ready just come on over.”

Kon’s manners are just as bad as they were when he first entered Tim’s room. The alien simply turns around and leaves, abruptly ending their conversation before Tim could question him further. He huffs in indignation. Manners; is that so hard?

At least these aliens are better than the ones he was imprisoned by, they didn’t even respect him like they do on this ship. Also another bonus of these guys and not the others (beside not being a prisoner) is that at least all three of them look human. On the other ship there were all kinds of creatures Tim had never even imagined seeing before. There were a couple human appearances but those people were simply assholes.

Somehow he finally finds the willpower to get up and out of bed. Once standing he does some light stretches to loosen his muscles before moving around his room to change into some clean clothing.

As he’s getting dressed he suddenly realises that his back hadn’t hurt at all, throughout all of that movement. Not once did it twinge in agitation or pain, he had actually forgotten about the wounds that had nearly ripped open his back.

If he had to guess he would say it’s been about three or four days since that incident happened. His internal clock is still haywire as he hasn’t yet worked out what time it would be. That cream the others have been putting on him has really done wonders if he’s already all healed up! Tim will get one of the others to check his back for him to make sure, but at least that part of his current life is over.

At this point, it’s all the little things.

Once changed, he exits his room and starts wandering down the corridor. Its only when he’s close to the common room that he realises he has no idea where they were training. He curses Kon for his abrupt leaving earlier and starts looking through every door he could.

On occasion he finds his mind getting distracted by the strange looking technology that fills up different rooms. He’s able to pull himself away before he gets too invested but makes a mental note to go back later on. He’s been on this ship for who knows how long and he still hasn’t explored everything yet!

Eventually he finds where the crew were gathered. Walking through the door, Tim stares at the room and takes it all in. On one side of the room there was some sort of simulator running. It takes up half of the room and currently has blue holographic bodies of all shapes and sizes running in different directions. There’s a blur of motion and suddenly the holographic bodies burst and disappear like sprinkles before reappearing elsewhere.

The second half of the room was split into three sections. One third had what resembled a variety of weights on a rack with different bench presses around it. The second third, the biggest of the three, simply had large mats placed on the floor. The final third had, from what Tim could see, a variety of weapons all stacked neatly in a large cabinet type of thing, it reminds him of something from a spy film when all the weapons get revealed from behind a closed door.

It was there on the second third that he sees Cassie and Kon. The two aliens were engaged in what looked like a hand to hand fight. He watches them with fascination as they kick, punch and dodge the other’s attacks. It looked like they were dancing, just a very fast and violent dance. Kon was brute force, putting all of his weight into his swings and kicks. Cassie, on the other hand, seems to be more agility based, dodging with speed and using a few different tricks to strike against Kon. With them two on the mats, that must make Bart the one in the simulator.

Tim stands there for a while watching the aliens spar with one another. It doesn’t even look like their tiring, which is insane, but eventually they spot Tim standing awkwardly at the doorway and soon stop to look his way.

“It’s about time. We thought you may have changed your mind.” Kon greets him with a smile.

Tim shrugs, “Nah, I’m not a chicken, I can handle a challenge.”

His comment gets him two identical confused looks, it’s then that Tim realises what he just said. Of course they wouldn’t understand the chicken reference, chances are that they don’t even know what a chicken is.

He sighs and waves a hand dismissing it, “Don’t worry, it’s an Earth saying. So, what’s the plan?” He glances around and sees Bart as a blur of motion on the other side of the room. He turns back to the others with a sudden thought, “How come I’ve never seen you guys train or even hear you mention it before?”

They both blink at him for a moment before catching up with his questions.

“We’re going to put you in the training simulator to see what you can do and go from there.” Cassie tells him pointedly.

Tim makes an ‘oh’ shape with his mouth but doesn’t comment. Her tone of voice was one to not argue against.

“As for why you haven’t seen us train is because we happen to train at random intervals. We often train individually or when we do train together I believe most of the time you happen to be sleeping.”

He guesses that explains their absences when he couldn’t find them sometimes. He never really even thought about them training or doing some sort of abilities practice.

Cassie studies him for a moment before turning to go over to the stacked weapons. “So what weapon would you like, we have a wide variety but whatever you feel comfortable with you’re welcome to use.”

Tim blinks before making his way over to her side and has a proper look at the weapons. There’s so much that stands out to him, plenty of things that he’s never seen before however his eyes drift to the plainest thing on the shelf and something he is familiar with. A bo staff.

Tim reaches out and picks it up, feeling the weight of it in his hands. It’s lighter than he expected it to be and wonders what it was made of, it looked like it was made from some kind of wood but there’s a high chance that he wouldn’t actually know the material used.

“This will do.” He declares looking at her.

Cassie gives him a funny look but doesn’t comment on it. She gestures to the other side of the room and makes her way there, Tim follows closely behind. Bart was now out of the simulator, having left it while Tim was choosing his weapon. The speedster was stood next to Kon and was speed talking away in the Kryptonian’s ear.

The two of them get to the other side of the room and Cassie stops, not knowing what else to do, Tim stands beside her. He watches with bewilderment as she brings up a holographic screen that materialises from out of nowhere and starts playing around with it.

Tim stares at it for a moment, not having any idea on what she was doing, before looking away and back at the staff in his hands. He twists it a couple times when a sudden though appears in his mind. “Hey what happened to that metal pole I had? The one I carried around when you first picked me up?”

Cassie shoots him a raised eyebrow before turning back to what she was doing. “Why does it matter? I have no idea.”

Tim shrugs, trying to think of the answer. He liked that pole, even got attached to it. “It, uh, doesn’t really… I was just wondering.”

“You dropped it when we got attacked by the Galavent. It got left behind and we didn’t think about it because we were trying to make sure you didn’t die!” Bart says blurring next to him.

Tim takes a moment to catch up with what happened and nods in understanding. So that’s what happened to the pole, shame, he liked that pole. It helped him find some kind of balance while he wrapped his head around everything that was happening with his life.

Cassie turns to him, crossing her arms over her chest. “Ready?”

Tim glances at her, at the simulator and back again. He swallows suddenly feeling nervous and jittery. “What do I have to do? Will it hurt me?”

“Different holographic shapes and figures will appear around you, all you have to do is fight them off and not get touched. If they do touch you, it may sting for a moment.”

Tim slowly nods in apprehension. Is it too late back out? He’s not sure if he wants to do this. A side-ways look shows him all the aliens are looking at him expectantly and he swallows thickly. He takes a deep breath to try and compose himself, as long as it doesn’t kill him right? Right.

“Let’s go for it.” He tells Cassie after a moment.

She presses a button on the screen and gestures for him to enter the simulator. Tim honestly has no idea what he’s got himself into as he walks into the centre of the room, he just hopes he makes it out in one piece.

-------

He’s pulled something. Tim’s pretty sure he’s pulled a muscle or something along those lines because he is sore.

Overall he spent a good 5 hours in the training room with the aliens. It’s been about two hours since then, during that time he’s stretched, had some food and had a very pleasant shower. Now that he’s back in his room, collapsed on his bed, all he can feel is the achiness in his body and the bruising he’s received.

In reality, training hadn’t been as bad as what it could have been. Tim certainly isn’t skilled enough to keep up with the aliens and all of their super-human abilities but he held his ground for a little while. Once he had finished in the simulator, he had sparred with each of them separately, it gave him an insight on how their powers work and just simply fighting against different abilities.

That’s also where he picked up all the bruises, hopefully they won’t freak out too much when they next see him because its only after the shower that they’ve started to show on his skin now. A nice variety of ugly black and blue patches in different areas.

It’s easy to say that fighting the aliens is nothing like wrestling with his brothers.

He did manage to get the drop on both Kon and Cassie however, which was a delight considering who they are. He had surprised them both by doing a flip to dodge their attacks and striking out with one of his own. They had stared at him in disbelief for a good minute before asking what he did.  

He showed them how he can perform a back flip as well as a front flip. They seemed to be absolutely flabbergast with it. At first they freaked out when he had jumped, all three of them seemed to be in the middle of rushing towards him by the time he landed safely on his feet. It took him doing the trick a few times for them to not feel so on edge with what he could do, especially since he had no powers to help him perform.

Tim laughed at their reactions and commented that they should see his brother. If they think Tim is fancy for doing a couple flips, then they should see what his acrobatic brother could do. He would love to see their faces after seeing the variety of ways Dick could bend, making it seem like he has no bones in his body.

It would certainly be interesting.

When he hears his room’s door open, Tim groans. He buries his face into a pillow and scowls. Hadn’t he just come into his room? What do they want now? He can’t be bothered to do anything else. Whoever it was stops by his bed but doesn’t move any more.

“Tim?” It was Bart. “Are you sleeping?”  

In response Tim simply grunts into the pillow, not wanting to be disturbed. Bart doesn’t seem to get the message because Tim was suddenly being poked.

“Tim?”

He puts up with three more pokes before forcing himself up on his hands and sending Bart an unimpressed look. “What is it Bart?”

Bart smiles, clearly not seeing that Tim was annoyed with him. “We’re at the next planet we need to collect from. Cassie wanted me to come and get you.”

Sighing, Tim nods and starts getting up from the bed. “Okay sure, I’m coming.”

“Okay!”

When Tim blinks and reopens his eyes Bart was no longer there. He shakes his head and just lets it be, he still isn’t used to that superspeed thing. It’s becoming less surprising now but he still wasn’t entirely used to it.

With little energy Tim drags his feet across the floor until he’s out of his room and heads down the corridor towards the cockpit. He wonders what kind of item they’ll have to collect this time, hopefully it’ll be easier and a lot safer to collect than the others, especially after the most recent one.

He doesn’t really want another adventure like that thanks.

Walking into the cockpit he eyes Kon up at the dashboard, then Cassie and Bart sat at the table going over some papers. Tim strolls over to the table and collapses in an empty seat. “Please tell me this item is easier and safer to collect than the last.”

That gets him a laugh from Kon on the other side of the room, he spins around in his chair to face him. “This item is easy to collect, yes. Not all of us really have to even go, all we have to do is go to the supplier and exchange objects.”

Tim starts nodding in understanding before he stops and shoots Kon a look. “So was there any reason for Bart to come and get me or no? If only one of us needs to go then do I have to be here?” It was a bit blunt and harsh but he felt knackered after that workout session. It’s been a while since he’s done so much physical work and after being injured a couple times it’s kinda taken it out of him. 

Kon blinks in surprise at the questions. “Uh, we thought you would have wanted to know what was going on that’s all. I apologise that we disturbed you?”

The alien sounds so unsure on what to make of the situation that Tim feels bad for putting him in this position to begin with. He goes to apologise but Cassie jumps in before he could.

“Actually Tim, you and I can go over some details about The League,” She tells him, “there’s information that you should probably know and I want details from your time with them. Bart and Kon can handle collecting the next item.”

Tim raises his eyebrows but doesn’t protest. Maybe finding out more about The League wouldn’t hurt, though he has no idea what information that Cassie thinks that he may know, because he doesn’t know anything at all. When he was there, he couldn’t understand any of them and was too busy freaking out about being in space.

Kon turns back to the dashboard and guides the ship until they touch down on the new planet. The Kryptonian and the Speedster say their farewells as they exit the cockpit therefore leaving him and Cassie alone.

Tim still gets mixed feelings from Cassie, one moment she seems to be okay with him then the next she’s acting kinda hostile towards him. He didn’t know what to make of her but he really doesn’t want to cause any trouble.

The two of them end up sitting at the table and Tim sits there feeling tense and awkward as he waits for Cassie to start the conversation. At the moment the Amazon is sorting through some papers into a couple piles in front of her, promptly ignoring him.

Tim twiddles his thumbs and tries his best to not fidget too much. It was beginning to get uncomfortable and he wanted nothing more than to simply go back to bed, fall asleep and pretend this never happened. However he doesn’t always get what he wants.

There were several minutes of tense silence until Cassie finally engages with him. Showing him a variety of different bits of paper she starts explaining the history of the League of Assassins. Tim does his best to keep up with everything she was saying, any questions he had she answered to the best of her ability. Once they had gone through the history Cassie moved onto asking him about his time with them. Tim did his best to explain what he saw and why he thinks he was there, it wasn’t very informative but it was something.

They were still talking about the League when Bart and Kon return to the ship sometime later. The two aliens enter the cockpit smiling and laughing with one another, Cassie and Tim stop conversing watch them as they walk over to the table and settle down next to them.

Cassie raises an eyebrow, “Well?”

Kon waves a dismissive hand. “Surprisingly no conflictions with the trade, so it was a simple swap which makes a nice change compared to previous items.”

“Yeah he was pretty crash.” Bart grins. “He even gave us extra for no charge!”

Cassie hums noncommittedly. “Our next item is on the next planet from this one, it shouldn’t take too long to get there.” She gets up and heads for the dashboard.

Kon soon follows her and takes his seat in the pilots chair, the two of them work together to get the ship in the air once again and to take off so they could get away from this planet.

“How are you feeling?” Tim turns to Bart who was watching him. Tim shrugs.

“I’m fine. Cassie and I were going through stuff about the League.”

“There’s a lot there.” Bart hums knowingly. “They’re real nasty, its sad that you got involved with them.”

He knows that Bart doesn’t mean anything by those words but Tim couldn’t help the slight anger that rises up in him at hearing it. “It wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter.” He says sharply. Tim crosses his arms over his chest and looks away, thankfully Bart doesn’t continue the conversation.

Tim uses his time to go over the notes he made when he and Cassie were talking about the League, the files she had seemed to be great, however he couldn’t read any of them so to solve that problem he wrote his own.

He moves one piece of paper which uncovers the one hiding underneath it. Tim pauses, staring at the new piece of paper in front of him. Taking up most of the page was an image of the master of the league, the Demon’s Head as Cassie had called him, Ra’s Al Ghul.

The image was, what Tim would describe as, a mug shot. He looked human, with his Caucasian skin, long face, two green eyes, brown hair with white parts above the ears and facial hair that sticks out at the chin.

Tim shivers at the sight of him. He really hopes he doesn’t see that man again, he doesn’t know what would happen if he does see him but what he does know is that it won’t be pleasant. All Tim wants to do is go home and forget this whole space trip ever happened. It’s his fault Tim was in space to begin with, he’s the one who kidnapped Tim for whatever reason in the first place.

That being said, would he go after Tim again when he returns to Earth? What’s stopping the Demon’s Head from coming after him a second time? Will Tim ever be safe again?

Shaking his head he clears those thoughts and quickly covers the paper so he didn’t have to look at that hideous face anymore. He can’t be thinking about that right now, there's more important things to be dealing with.  

He glances up to see Bart staring at him with a slight frown on his face. Tim raises his eyebrows at him when they make eye contact as if to say, ‘mind your own business’, whether Bart gets the message or not he’s not sure. Tim’s soon distracted from the speedster because the other two soon join them.

“We’re on route to the neighbouring planet where we need to collect the next item. It shouldn’t take too long to get there. While we’re there we can do some stocking and check things over of the ship.” Kon informs them as he glances at each of them in turn.

“Okay, now that’s sorted, can I go back to bed?” Tim asks, almost whiningly. “It’s been a long day and I’m tired.”

The three aliens look at him and he fights the scowl threatening to take over his face. He’s tired but he wants his own space as much as he wants to go to bed, so just going to his room knowing he wouldn’t be disturbed for so many hours will be more than enough.

“Actually Tim, I was going to suggest an entertainment session. We haven’t done anything fun like for a while.” Kon says.

Tim sighs and hangs his hang in resignation. Stupid aliens and their capability to go on without sleep. Opposite him Bart brightens up in his chair. “Yes! We haven’t done one of those in eons! Whatarewegoingtodo? Arewewatchingsomethingonthescreen? Howaboutplayingsomegames? Ohohohohwhataboutthecards?”

Tim rubs his hand across his forehead and doesn’t even bother in trying to keep up with what the Speedster was saying. Kon, on the other hand, has no problem interpreting what he was saying.

Kon shrugs, looking between Bart and him. “Well I was going to have it as an open discussion. Perhaps if Tim isn’t feeling okay we can do it another time.”

Well, now he just feels bad. Tim sits up straight in his chair and looks at Kon. “Don’t worry about me joining in. I wouldn’t be much fun anyway, go on without me.”

“What about we use the screen instead?” Cassie suggests. “Tim can still rest but we can do something together?”

Both Kon and Bart nod, seeming satisfied with the idea that they still get to hang out together and do something. Tim simply agrees to his fate, they want him to join in (which is appreciated) and he isn’t getting away from not doing so, perhaps he could fall asleep on the couch?

A little while later, Tim finds himself lying on one end of the couch with a pillow under his head and a blanket covering him. The others are all sprawled out along the couch beside him, everyone watching the screen in front of them.

Tim has no idea what they’re watching, there were a variety of blue and purple blobs with faces resembling something like DaVinci would paint on the screen, he figures this is perhaps some planet’s animation. He has no idea but he’s pretty sure he’s going to get nightmares from watching those things. They’re terrifying.

He must have actually drifted off to sleep in the end because the next thing he’s mildly aware of is someone picking him up off the sofa. He makes an unhappy whining sound because a sudden rush of cold air meets an uncovered part of his body, Tim attempts to curl into the warmth still there as much as he can.

Soon enough Tim’s being placed back down on something soft, he’s then covered with a blanket and is left in peace. Tim succumbs to sleep pretty quickly after that.