young, dumb, & broke

[ployboy]

WHO: Tim Drake and (---)
WHERE: Fountain Park, nowhere and everywhere
WHEN: August 28, and surrounding days
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A but will warn in threads

---

Arrival (South Village) : Fountain
[He coughs, and he wakes up.

He wakes up because, when he coughs, there's water rushing down his throat and up his nose and into his lungs. It's not the most pleasant way to wake up after an exhausting night's work. Thankfully (for some given value), it isn't the least pleasant way to wake up, either. Not in Tim's mind. So his throat burns and his eyes have trouble adjusting to the blur of being underwater (fresh water), and it's taking a hell of a lot of control to not give in to the urge to let the coughing fit take over and instead suppress it (Tim's pretty sure he's either beet red or splotching blue at this point). He listens to training, though, and refuses to drown before he at knows what the hell's happened; he's climbing over the lip of the pool (no, fountain) in no time at all, just kind of hanging there for a moment as his eyes adjust again to the surface.

No... immediate threat, that he can process. And still, he's got goosebumps of sorts. The backpack (waterproof-- weird) is ditched and Tim sucks in a breath before submerging himself in the water again. He dives purposefully to the bottom of the fountain-- it's all solid underneath. He pushes, what bit he can. And gives up for today because he's wearing clothes he hadn't been wearing before and that's weird and the next time Tim surfaces, brows pinched in frustration and tiredness (he couldn't even get one full night's sleep)] _{Damn it...} [he sees a-- person. You. Close by. He swings out of the fountain and prays that backpack he's slung onto his shoulders has a towel but first:] You don't look surprised to see me climb out of that thing. [Game: start.]

Arrival (South Village) : Police Station
[He's fresh from the fountain, but his navy blue shirt is hanging from where he'd tied it on a strap of his pack (for easier drying) and he's left in the tank top. It's uncomfortably moist and clings to his skin and Tim wants nothing more than to find a dryer, for heaven's sake-- but that seems like less and less of an attainable fantasy with every block of this town he passes. He's a tourist.

He takes in the sights.

And then he maps out his first destination: coming up this street is what looks undeniably like a police precinct. He makes a beeline for it. There should be records, files, computers, something familiar--

and then he is, not for the first time, so horribly let down.] People keep animals here? [Speaking to himself: check. Stating the fucking obvious: check. Tim steps... almost gingerly through the place anyway, because something has to have been salvaged, right? --god, it's obvious the boy very much wasn't raised on a farm.]

Settling In (South Village) : Inn & Housing & Boathouse
[He'll be around, trying to keep his head relatively low and (amazingly) keeping the exploration to a minimum until he understands this whole... bullshit a little bit better. But Tim isn't keeping still, isn't holing himself up, not really. He knows there's hubbub of something odd, something very uncommon going around. Three cheers for gossip and the habit to eavesdrop. He spends the next few days scouring houses that seem unoccupied, venturing into the Inn during its busier hours just to kind of... hang, and maybe ask questions when someone looks like they definitely know what they're doing.

Occasionally he makes trips to the boathouse, because he doesn't sleep (you can't prove that he does, anyway).

Here is the wildcard option.]

Comments

[spoileralert]

[ You don't die. That stops her short. Her brain comes to a full stop, taking his words in but failing utterly to process any of them.

She doesn't die? ]

What?

[ She finally turns to face him, stunned confusion the only expression left on her face. The tears keep falling, of course. She has far too many of them and has let out far too few. She's numb most days, getting by without feeling much of anything. ]

But... how? I was bleeding out. I remember bleeding out.

[ She's pretty sure she couldn't have made it out of the building like that. ]

[ployboy]

[He'll barf, but not now.

He can't promise he didn't feel something rise up in his throat, though, and suddenly he has an excuse for the sour, dry taste in his mouth.

Tim half-wonders if she knows how much he wants to claw at himself right now, because his skin doesn't feel like his own, it doesn't feel comfortable to him, he can't tolerate it right now.] It was bad.

[She'll hate him for that, and Tim figures he'd be fine with it, because if someone ever flat-out told him his life had been "bad" he can't be sure he wouldn't want to drive a knife through them.

He doesn't notice the tremors in his hands, because why would he? He can't process the reality of their lives on a good day and no, he really isn't cut out for this job, he guesses. It makes him feel like he's swallowed cement. That's how heavy that lump feels.] But Leslie helped.

[spoileralert]

[ 'Bad' feels like an understatement. She was healed when she came here and it's still bad. But she can see the tremor in his hand, even if he can't. She tries to imagine what it would have looked like, what it would have felt like.

She swallows thickly and rubs at one wrist. They still ache, a little. With how messed up her hands got she's surprised she could ever use them again. She stares at the scars there, for something to look at. ]

How did she...

[ No, that's not the right question. She swallows once more and tries again. ]

I didn't think anyone was looking.

[ She'd convinced herself- let herself be convinced- that she was abandoned, forgotten. That when she died it was alone and unmissed. ]