Sixth Iteration

WHO: Tim Drake
WHERE: Fountain, Inn, various houses
WHEN: Evening of July 9 and onward
OPEN TO: OTA with closed starter
WARNINGS: Underage character who was subjected to torture, arriving from the moment he murders his abuser.

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( introduction )

fountain; july 9; veronica

Tim doesn't want to die badly enough, if the deciding factor is the water's chill. When he wakes up, there's less shock than a physical ache, awareness of his own skin fading in the dark. If only it were warmer, he'd float here until it choked him back to sleep. If only he could just sleep, the dark and dreamless transition from Barbara's grip to this.

Whatever this is. It doesn't rush around him like the river, though it's almost as cold. Tastes better too, when it slips into his mouth.

It's the kind of physical, present, lucid thought that he clings to, swallowing a little more and putting his hands on what feels like concrete siding. Some kind of pool, a wall to kick off from. This is good, this is working: something to do with his body that is only about keeping it alive. Whatever its condition, he's a strong swimmer, and he comes up with his arms catching around the legs and sweeping skirt of a statue.

The park, maybe? The statue is in decent condition: no moss, no vines, no signs of long-term deterioration. An old part of the Manor, closer to the cave than the house? The trees he finds outside the fountain's edge are too wild, the path too foot-worn to be the manicured lawns and carefully edged forest. Bruce's neighborhood is the only part of Gotham to have this many trees without Ivy's meddling.

Nerves build with the chill of the water, soaking into his--scrubs.

Right. That makes a surprising amount of sense, and the first slip of a laugh is genuine, but what follows is a horrible tic, rasping out of a sore throat. He's still trying to swallow the laughter as he gets a grip on the statue and pulls himself up, standing on the platform with her to look out at the twilit wood. In his movement, he notices the press of the backpack, the dragging weight on his shoulders. Is he outside some facility? Did he give Leslie the slip? That--sounds like him, even if he can't remember.

Shuffling his way around the statue, still holding tight, he continues to huff and swallow nervous laughter, trying to decide which way to go.


exploring; july 10-11; ota

The inmates are running this prison, far as he can tell. He doesn't know if this is some remote, free-range asylum disrupted by an earthquake, or there's been no time to breathe before tumbling through a rip in reality.

Or he's just crazy.

That one always starts the wheezing laugh tickling his throat. Nothing is funny, but everything can elicit it. It isn't just--it isn't just what happened. The ugly laughter is just easier than finding the words. Easier than thinking: what does it mean to be stuck here. Would Bruce really send him so far away, let him be taken again?

Is he angry?

Disappointed.

Whatever this place is, it isn't an entirely foreign world. A yellow sun rises and sets, it's temperate enough for the clothes in his pack. People gather supplies and offer meals in two of the larger buildings, and no one is hunting him down with medication or mandates of group therapy. He shelves the first theory pretty quickly, and puts the other two up just below it, in easier reach. Theories get in the way of deduction, and there's a lot of ground to cover, a lot of disparate information to parse.

Finding crude paper in one of the storerooms, Tim adds to his pack, adding a small jar packed with charcoal and a sharpened stick. He wouldn't have needed a notebook on the streets, but he knew those streets the way he knew how far he could jump, the way he knew the fit of his boots. His grasp of information has suffered in transition, and when he isn't slipping in and out of houses that look shaken in on themselves, he can be found at the board in the Inn, copying information with his makeshift pencil, trying to pick out the facts from speculation.

[Find Tim at the blackboard and map on the Inn's first floor, or exploring any house in a state of disrepair. It can even be your house, if it's suffered damage in the quake.]