His stomach lurches when he sees it reach for him, feels claws catch and tug, not into skin but deeper and something scrabbles and scratches at the walls of his mind, thrashing against the thing carving it out, grasping for purchase like nails shrieking over glass, his brain an eruption of black and of white and of formless static.

It's the strangest feeling.

Tim's gaze falls on Jay for a fraction of a second, wild and nervous and compliant and scared and ready, before everything caves and the lingering pull and resistance is cut away by curved claws as they scythe easily to his center, before something is torn from him and he's split in two and he's falling.

Tim never feels himself keel over.

He never even feels himself hit the ground.