I think it's pretty obvious that I don't own anything that belongs to DC Comics; otherwise, it wouldn't belong to them, now, would it?

Rating: T for some language and implied violence

Set sometime within the span of issues #1-12 of Red Robin

Pairings: None

Friendships: Tim and Mia

Awesomeness: You decide.

The pale moonlight barely illuminated the ruins of what was once the center of Star City. In fact, most of the brightness that cut through the smoky dark consisted of a few somehow-still-working streetlamps and the flashing lights of cop cars, fire engines, and ambulances, as well as search lights shining down on the debris from helicopters circling overhead. I could see survivors kicking aside rubble from their footpaths as they trudged to safety, urged on by rescue workers. I wished, for a change, for once, that I could be one of them, knowing that I was leaving one thing behind to find something better waiting for me. All these people had anxious relatives that were probably already in a shelter or something, hoping and praying that they would come back to them. The looks on their faces when those people would walk in and embrace them…I wished someone would look at me like that.

But I didn't have anybody to look forward to seeing, not anymore.

Fortunately, I couldn't wallow in self-pity too much, because a movement off to the right attracted my attention. Flitting shadows, at a time like this, always mean trouble. I can tell you that much right here, right now. Moving quickly and quietly, I readied my bow and notched an arrow, following the movement. It was a person, jumping and sprinting through the labyrinth of alleyways and ruined buildings, and he was pretty damn fast, too. I shifted my weight onto my toes as I ran, trying to stay silent. Whoever this guy was, he was probably up to no good, and it was my job to make sure he wasn't, no matter how much I wished it could've been a slow night.

I ended up tailing him into the older section of town, the part of the city that had somehow experienced the least amount of heavy damage. By this time, I had watched him enough that I was starting to get a feel for his movements, the cadence of his body. I broke off to the side and swung wide, anticipating where he'd go. Sure enough, he ran right by the Intrust Bank, the side of which happened to be what my back was pressed up against. As he passed me, I jumped out, pulling my arrow all the way back and ordering sharply, "Alright, hands in the air, you son of a—"

"Watch what you're calling my mom."

The voice, city-accented and soft, made me pause and lower my bow and arrow. Remember how I said that flitting shadows always mean trouble at a time like this? Well, the young man standing before me, clad in a costume of contrasting intense scarlet and inky black, was the face of trouble itself. Tim Drake used to be Robin, but that was clearly not the case now. The tunic and tight pants kept the same colors as his last costume, but the un-gauntleted gloves, nearly floor-length cape, and chrome-dome cowl, along with the insignia at his chest, attested to the fact that he had moved on to something else. His standard gold utility belt was around his waist, as usual, but his waist itself didn't seem too standard at all. It might've just been me, but he had the look of someone who works out a lot, but doesn't actually eat too much food. I could tell that, behind the cowl, his face bore the brunt of many a sleepless night and fruitless battle. "Tim?" I said, bewildered. "Robin?"

"Not exactly" was his reply.

"What are you doing here?"

I didn't mean for it to sound as harsh as it did. I was glad to see him, really, I was. It was just…unexpected. But, thankfully, he didn't seem to take it too personally. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders and explained as congenially as is possible for him, "I was passing through and figured I'd try to find you." A sudden paranoid air came over him, and he glanced nervously around us at the darkened, empty streets. "Could we…finish this someplace else? I'm not really comfortable down here."

I nodded. "How's higher ground work for you?"

Without warning, he wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me into him, before shooting his grapnel gun into the distance someplace above us and sending us both rocketing upward at an alarming speed. I've plunged off buildings at high speeds before, but that was something else. The only real comfort in the whole situation was that I could feel the warmth of Tim's muscular body next to me, cradling me and holding me steady, keeping me secure. It wasn't even really so much that it was him as it was the fact that I was in the arms of somebody that I could trust, somebody that I could cling to. I wanted to sink into that moment and make it into my whole reality, wanted to live in it forever and never let go.

I almost couldn't stop the disappointed groan from escaping me when my feet touched the rooftop, but I held it in.

We were on top of an office building that had sustained moderate damages, but that didn't stop the nervousness from bubbling up inside my chest. I let loose a silent prayer to the heavens that it wouldn't collapse or implode or something.

Tim, in the style of his mentor, found the nearest gargoyle and sat on the edge of the roof with his back leaning against it. He sighed deeply, relaxing into the position, and looked me up and down seemingly for the first time. "Liking the new look," he remarked, the tone of his voice somewhat flat and dry. "What happened to the red, bleach out in the wash or something?"

"What happened to your hair, shave it all off or something?" I countered.

"Touché…" Reaching up, he pulled the cowl back from his face, revealing shaggy black hair that was longer than I remembered it being the last time I saw him, so long, in fact, that he had to brush it back and tuck it behind an ear. I noticed even with it being as dark out as it was that night that his gray eyes, coldly intelligent and scrutinizing, were bleary and red-rimmed, with heavy black bags underneath. Tim puffed out another sigh and asked, "So, why'd I get such a suck-ish greeting?"

"What suck-ish greeting?" I demanded.

He looked at me like it should've been obvious, which it probably should've been. "Oh, you know—you pointing an arrow at me, almost calling my mother a female dog, letting out my name and former alter ego all in a span of five seconds…"

I averted my gaze sheepishly. "Sorry about all that. I just…I slipped on the name thing, I promise. I'd never intentionally do that to you, not here. I just don't really know what to call you anymore. And about the first thing, with the arrow and your mom, things have been mega-crazy around here lately, so I didn't know it was you. I thought it was just some looter, like it usually is this time of night." I shrugged. "What can I say? I'm not used to having a Bat in my city."

Tim's seemingly ever-present frown deepened a bit. "I'm not exactly a Bat anymore. And don't worry about all that stuff. I was just giving you a hard time about it." He paused. "And I'm not sure you want to know my new name."

"I guess that's fair." I seated myself on the edge next to him, keeping my feet planted firmly on the roof with a white-knuckle grip on the stones under my backside. "So, what's up with you?"

Tim bit his lip and fingered the knuckles of his left hand thoughtfully, as if trying to decide what to say. "Well, they've been…less than good," he admitted, "not bad, per se, but not really good, either. Dick's Batman now, Jason's somewhere or other, and Damian is Robin." He said the last bit with tangible rage in his voice, and I gave him a quizzical look. "Oh, right. You haven't met him yet. Damian Wayne is Bruce's biological son. We think so, anyway."

"And what's so bad about him?" I inquired.

Tim shot upright so fast I thought he'd fall over the edge of the building. "He's probably about the worst, most spoiled, most insufferable, insensitive, inconsiderate little brat that ever lived! And, for some reason unknown to man, Dick had the bright idea to make him Robin!" He stopped to regain his composure, sliding back down into his comfortable position. "I know it's pointless to get upset about it, but…I can't help it. I just…I had to work something out, so, I picked the first thing I could find and took off."

"Why'd you leave Gotham?" I could hear the shock in my own voice at the revelation. Tim was a Gotham boy, born and raised and lived all his life there, so for him to leave now was practically some kind of sacrilege.

A smile turned up the corners of his mouth, or maybe it was more like his characteristic smirk, but it was bitter and painful. "Why should I stay? I mean, nobody really wants me there, anyway. Dick made that real clear. Besides, if I stayed, I'd just end up in solitary in Arkham." He glanced at me and saw that I still looked bemused. "They think I'm crazy," he explained, adding a little twirling motion with his finger beside his temple for emphasis, "and for no reason, really, at that. I mean, seriously, if you were in my position, wouldn't you feel the same way about everything?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, shaking my head slightly. "I have no idea what you're talking about," I said. "I've been shut up in this hellhole for, like, two weeks. I haven't heard about anything that's been going on lately."

Tim shifted a little, bending one knee and resting an elbow on it. That hand gave a little halfhearted wave, dismissively, as if to signal his forgiveness. He waited for a while before speaking, and then he sighed, "Okay, you got me. The real reason I'm here is because, well…this was going to be a stop on my journey. I'm…I'm out looking for Bruce. He's still alive, and I have to find him." I wasn't surprised by the firm tone in his voice and the way that he avoided saying "I think he's still alive". That was my Tim—always sure of himself, always positive that he was right, even when he wasn't. Headstrong, Ollie used to call him. That boy is the most stubborn, most headstrong person I've ever met. Excepting Ollie, that was the case with me, too. I could tell that, despite everything he'd lost over the years, Tim hadn't lost that, and it reassured me, really, that even though he could sit there and confess that everybody else thought he was insane, he still believed that he was right.

Me, though, I still had my doubts.

I suddenly grew uncomfortable and squirmed on the hard stone under his sure gaze and his unflinching demeanor, the attitude of someone who could care less what happens around them or who gets hurt so long as they have what they want. "Tim, are you sure?" I blurted, unable to stop it from slipping out even though I knew it'd anger him. "Are you sure that he's still out there?"

"Yes," Tim stated, almost snapped, confidently. "I'm absolutely, one hundred-percent certain that he's still alive, out there somewhere."

Unsettling silence encircled us for a moment or two. I wasn't totally sure what to say to that. Finally, I worked up the courage to speak and agreed, falteringly, "I—I have to admit, I've had my doubts about that one, too. I mean, Bruce was so…so much smarter, so much more analytical, you know? He had a plan for everything. I don't think he'd go into that one without an auxiliary course."

"See? That's what I've been saying this whole time. There's no way that Bruce died. There just…there can't be."

His tone had gone quiet, and when I looked back up at him, the serious expression on his face had faded into sadness and intense thoughtfulness. "What had you convinced?" I demanded. "When did you know that you were right?"

Tim gave a half-shrug with one shoulder, seeming too distraught by the discussion to answer. "After I lost my friends and my family," he explained, his voice quavering, "Dick was too busy feeling sorry for himself to want to relate to me anymore, Cass and I kind of lost touch, the Titans didn't get it, Jason's always trying to kill me, and I won't touch Damian with a twenty-foot cattle prod. I could only count on two things: Bruce and Robin. That was all I had left, and now that I'm not Robin anymore, I need something to hold onto. I need something to keep me grounded, keep me from losing my mind. That's how I knew that Bruce wasn't dead like they all kept saying he was. If he was dead, the world would feel emptier, less substantial, almost like a dream. All of this is real, sometimes painfully so, and so I know that Bruce is still alive, waiting for somebody to come and save him because he can't do it himself."

Listening to him clarify his reasoning, he didn't seem so strange anymore. In fact, he just seemed like a lost little boy in need of a family, in need of a home.

He was just like me.

A cool wind blew through, ruffling our hair and setting a deathly chill to our skin. Tim shivered and remarked, "Kind of nippy up here, don't you think, Mia?"

I nodded. "Yeah, it is," I said.

His eyes met mine. "Do you want to go inside and get out of the cold, or…?"

I shook my head apologetically. "I'd take you to my place, but…"

"It'd embarrass you to have a guy there?"

"In a sense, I guess." I paused, looking down into my lap to collect my composure before I continued. "It's the homeless shelter down on West Street," I told him softly, "and, if I took you there, they'd assume you needed a place to stay and try to keep you, and something tells me you don't need that stress right now."

Tim nodded his understanding, turning his attention to the starry black sky across the horizon. "I'm sorry." It was the first time he'd apologized in the whole conversation, maybe even in a few months. And he sounded so pitiful that I couldn't hold it against him.

"It's okay. You didn't know."

We didn't talk for another few minutes, until Tim broke the silence by asking, "So, what exactly has been going on in this hellhole for the past few weeks?"

I exhaled loudly, puffing out my cheeks in frustration. "Everything that could possibly go wrong short of us becoming 'Gotham City 2,'" I answered sarcastically. "Prometheus was on the loose, and the JLA managed to bottle him up in some prison someplace, but not before he blew half the damn city to oblivion. That's what all of this crap is." I gestured helplessly at the lights glowing in the distance, the flashing reds and blues, and the sounds of sirens roaring down streets. "There were so many people buried in there that we're still digging them all out. We're not sure what the exact death toll is, since we haven't found everybody yet, but it's just that much more discouraging when we uncover five more dead faces for every living one. And, of course, the worst scum of Star City picked now, of all the worst times, to go off their nuts and cause trouble, so the rest of us are helping kick their asses back into line. And, worst of all…do you remember Lian Harper?"

"Yeah, I remember her," Tim said. "I used to babysit her for a couple of days every year. She's a real cute little girl."

"Well, not only did Prometheus slice off Roy's arm and put him out of commission, but, well…it's not totally Prometheus' fault, what happened. I mean, he had no way to know she was there, but she was still in Roy's apartment, which was in the section of the city that he decimated."

Tim's brow furrowed. "She got hurt?" He sounded furious, enraged at the prospect of anything bad happened to little Lian Harper.

"No, Tim. Lian's dead."

A mutual feeling of grief was communicated between us in that moment, flowing from me to him. He sagged down even lower in his seat and laid his head back onto the gargoyle behind him. "No…" he whispered. "No, it can't be. Please, tell me Lian's still alive."

"I wish I could," I assured him, feeling like I was about to cry. Without knowing what I was doing before I'd done it, I reached out on an impulse and rested a comforting hand on his leg, and we sat like that for the longest time, stock-still, letting the air wash over us and permeate our existence, becoming Star City after the disasters. Then, I realized how awkward it was for both of us, or how awkward it was supposed to be, anyway, and I pulled my hand away, mortified and blushing bright red under my black mask. "Anyway," I continued, "Ollie decided after Lian died that enough was enough, so he went to where they were keeping Prometheus and gave him a good old one-shot solution." I made a motion in the air like I was firing a bow, and Tim connected the dots from there. "He said he did it in the name of the family, but I know that's not true, because the family wouldn't have wanted anything like that in the way of supposed compensation, and he knows that. He did it in the name of vengeance, and nothing more."

"So, what happened to him after that?"

"He turned himself in. He let them arrest him. And, well, now I don't have anybody to live with, no home to go back to, and no older brother to turn to for help."

Tim shook his head in disbelief. "What the hell was he thinking?" he wondered aloud.

"That's just it," I cried. "He wasn't thinking! He wasn't thinking at all when he did any of that, not of what Lian would've expected of him, not of what Roy and the rest of the League would've wanted, and most certainly not of what would happen to me. I guess he just needed to go back to the good old days. You know—the days when he could screw around all he wanted and the only person it'd affect was him and the occasional unlucky girlfriend."

"Hmm," Tim muttered thoughtfully. "But what do you need, Mia?"

I considered it for a moment. "I need…I need a real home, and a family who'll take care of me. I need to know that I'm wanted and loved and that it won't matter what's wrong with me or anyone else, because we'll all be standing together, side by side, just a family's supposed to do. I need to go someplace where I know I can count on somebody to help me. I need someone to hold onto, to turn to when I need them to be there for me, and I want to know that they won't abandon me. I…I don't want to be on my own again. I've lived through enough of that. Right now, I just need one true friend."

I could've sworn that I heard Tim swallow his tears and his pride. "Sounds like you and I need a lot of the same things, huh?" he mused.

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess we do."

Tim let out a deep breath and stood, brushing off his pant legs. "Well, I'm glad we caught up to each other," he said, the vulnerable, emotional deportment giving way to his cooler, more confident, more serious armor in an instant. "I guess we both kind of needed the talk. I've gotta get going pretty soon, though, so I have to get ready to hop on the next flight to Halfway-Across-the-World-Ville."

I chuckled a bit, pushing myself up to my feet. "I won't keep you, then," I replied. "Good luck with finding Bruce. I know you can do it. I've got faith in you." I began to walk off, but I froze when he called out to me again.

"Speedy."

I turned back to him. "Yes?"

Tim appeared to be making a tough decision in a split second. "It's…Red Robin, now."

I grinned. "You were right. I didn't want to know your new name."

The characteristic, familiar smirk turned up the right corner of his mouth as he let out his own little snort of a laugh. "Technically, it was Dick's idea." There was a loud, hissing pop as he fired the grapnel gun into the city. "See you around!" he called, and then he was gone, leaving nothing but a fleeting shadow and a fresh memory behind in his wake.

When I woke up at the shelter the next morning, I couldn't help but feel that something was different about the place. I draped one hand over the edge of the bed and quickly found the suitcase underneath it that held my costume and gear. My hair was in a braid, the way I always wear it when I sleep. My pillow still felt the same, my covers still smelled the same, and I was still lying on the same old, springy mattress that I'd been lying on for the past couple of weeks. I let my head roll to one side, and my attention was attracted to a folded piece of white paper that had been placed on my nightstand. Propping myself up on one elbow, I took it, unfolded it, and skimmed it. It read:

Dear Mia—

Enjoyed our little chat last night. Call me if you want to talk some more.

Love,

Tim

807-7298

I had one true friend after all. His name was Tim Drake, but the world would someday come to know him as Red Robin. And I knew, somehow, instinctively, that it didn't matter what hour of the day I dialed that number, he'd always pick up when he saw it was me. And the knowledge made me smile to myself.

Neither of us had to be the victim, had to be abandoned, not as long as we had each other.

And I knew we'd always have each other, no matter what.

He'd make sure of that.

~ The End ~