A/N: This is just something I've been writing on and off for awhile. It's kind of long, and doesn't really have much going on in it. I was just bored when I started it and just decided to finish it.
Also, for anyone reading No Safe Place, this story has absolutely nothing to do with anything related to it and what could happen in Mia and Tim's future. Besides them being together. But other then that, if you're like me and compare one writers stories with their others, this is a completely stand alone story.

Sorry if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes in this. I kind of rushed through it checking for any obvious mistakes, but didn't look too closely.
Hope everyone likes it!

XXX

Tim couldn't help but stare all around him as Mia pulled him through the New York streets.
"This is where we use to buy our beer." Mia said as she pointed at a convince store on the other side of the street. "Justin knew the guy who owned it, and somehow he managed to supply it- oh! And that's one of the night clubs we went to all the time." She pointed to the entranceway of a club as they passed by. "I remember everything glowing, like, neon colors. There was another one that we went to about 5 blocks from here, but it was a lot harder to sneak inside. We didn't go there very often." Tim nodded, though he was only half listening to her ramblings. He was too busy starring at the massive buildings they were passing by.
"Tall aren't they?" Mia said and Tim looked at her, and noticing the smirk just nodded. "You get use to them after awhile. Now come on." She took his hand and dragged him across the street at a crosswalk, just as the light was about to turn green.
"That could have ended badly." Tim comment as he looked back at the car instantly whizzing through the intersection. He looked at Mia who shrugged.
"Just gotta watch out." She said as they walked through a gate. "This is Central Park." She said and Tim looked around in amazement. Even just by walking through the gates, Central Park was a sharp contrast to the city on the other side of them. It was like a little bit of country in the middle of a concrete jungle.
"It's amazing ain't it?" Mia said as she spun around in a circle. "But the park itself isn't what I wanted to show you, come on." She took off across the grass to their left, heading straight for a large group of trees. Tim followed her and came to a halt outside the tree line.
"What are you doing?" Tim asked as he watched her pace up and down, seemingly searching for something.
"I know it's here somewhere." She was mumbling to herself. She leaned down to look at the base of a tree before standing up straight to inspect it just about her head. A smile formed on her lips. "Found it!" She said and motioned for Tim to follow her. When he saw her start to walk into the trees, he froze.
"Whoa. No way am I going in there at night Mia." He said. Mia rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand.
"Don't be such a baby." She said. "Dally and I did this all the time, nothing is going to hurt you. Besides," There was a click, and a beam of light appeared on the ground. Mia turned to face him. "I brought a flashlight."
"And how are we not going to get lost?" Tim asked. Mia shone the light off to her left and Tim saw a thin piece of rope hanging in the air.
"Dally and I made a trail." Mia explained as she turned and continued deeper into the trees. "That was back when we were really young kids. At one point, we figure that we might nit be back for awhile, but we didn't want to lose our trail. So we took a piece of rope and ran it along the trail; we drilled a hole in a small tree on the tree line and tied the rope through it. We made mental markings of where it was, and also physical ones. Dally tied an old key we'd found in the knot of the rope." She stepped over a fallen log and waited for Tim to come up beside her. "The key was old and rusty, so it wasn't like it was going to get caught in the sunlight and have someone attracted to it, and it wasn't big enough to catch anyone's attention, unless you were looking for it.
Now the great thing about tying the key in the knot was that the knot wouldn't grow into the tree as it grew and disappear. So Dally and I knew that even if we came back years later, we'd still be able to find our way, to here." She stopped and pointed the flashlight out in front of them and Tim was shocked by what he saw.
Once upon a time, what now looked like a pile of limps and branches was probably a well made fort. By the looks of it, the thing would have had a roof and walls; two made out of branches, the third being a few trees behind it and there being no fourth. But now, the roof was caved in and the two walls had come down with it.
"It looked a lot better when we first made it." Mia said as she walked over and kicked at the pile of dead tree limps. "It took us nearly a year and a half to build it. Now if I'm right..." She was mumbling to herself again as she shone the flashlight around on the ground, searching for something.
"Aha!" She said triumphantly. "I found it!" She came out from behind the tree with what looked to be a very old bottle of wine. "I figured no one would fine it. Never been opened and it appears that no animals got into it either." She sat down on the ground, her back to a fallen log and pulled two cups from the pockets of the sweater she was wearing. She looked up at Tim who was still standing.
"Come on, Tim." She said as she placed the cups on the ground and stood back up. "Sit down and help me pop the cork out of that wine bottle." The rope that they had followed into the woods ran right overtop of the log she'd been sitting against, and Mia tied the string of the flashlight to it so that it hung down over them.
"There," She said as she sat back down beside Tim who was working on getting the cork off the bottle. She looked over at him.
"Ain't you gonna say something?" She asked. "I mean come on, this is New York. The city I've talked about countless times. Did ya ever think you'd end up here?" Tim shrugged as he managed to get the cork off and poured them each a little bit into the glasses.
"Not really." He said. "I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and now that I have, I can see why you talk about it so much." Mia smiled as she sipped at her glass of wine. They sat silently before Mia moved to face Tim, her legs crossed underneath her.
"The last time Dally and I were here, we hide this bottle of wine." She picked up the bottle and turned it in her hands. "We planned on bringing Trevor back with us the next time we came. It was going to be his birthday a week after that." She stopped and looked around at the trees and back at the crumbled fort. "He died 3 days before." Tim looked up from the ground and saw the tears in her eyes. "He was shot by the cops after they caught us supposedly robbing a convince store." She shook her head. "He'd been like my big brother for as long as I could remember. He was always looking out for me and Dally; helping us form the gang, convincing people to JOIN the gang, and always willing to be around when things got tough." She choked on her tears. "It was mine and Dally's fault that he got shot. We'd walked right into a trap without thinking about it." She wiped away her tears and looked up at Tim. From the light of the flashlight about their heads, he could see her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "Trevor's the reason we left New York. He's the reason we left everything we ever knew behind. Dally and I were torn between staying with the gang, and packing up to find something else. We didn't know what, but at that point, anything else was a pleasant thought." She picked up a twig and started snapping it into pieces. "Obviously you know what our decision was; we left here and started traveling down the states. Dally had the final say in the matter, he was thinking that if Trevor can get shot, then what's stopping the cops from shooting at the rest of us. New York gangs were starting to build into more then just a group of people who fought for territory. Drug groups were starting to come out, some gangs were getting into imported weapons, and some were even getting into murders." She sighed. "Dally didn't want to have anything to do with any of it, so in the end, that was our reason for leaving. We were 13 at the time and though we loved running a gang and having control of a part of the city, - albeit a very very small part- it wasn't worth dying over. Though the average age of a gang member was like 25 or something like that, maybe lower. But if you made it past that, you were doing pretty well; or you were cowardly and made your gang take all the falls for you." Tim smirked and finished off the wine in his glass before setting it down beside him.
"I never really understood why you and Dally would want to leave a place you obviously cared about." Tim said. "But I guess it makes sense now." Mia nodded and looked around once more before standing up, takin the wine bottle with her.
"You're the only person who knows the whole truth." She said as Tim stood up beside her, picking up the glasses and stuffing them into the pockets of his sweater. "Some of the guys from the gang thought they knew the real reason why we left, but they only know half of it." Mia took the flashlight off the rope and they started to head back out of the trees to the park.
As they walked out of the trees, Mia pulled her pocketknife from her pocked and cut away at the knot the key was held on by.
"What are you doing?" Tim asked. Mia smiled as she turned around to face him and held out the key for him to see.
"Before Dally used the key as a marker to the trail, we asked our mother's what it could possibly be used for; they were still alive at the time. They said that it was probably used to lock a trunk or something like that. When Dally and I started staying at the old house we used for a hang out, we found an old trunk in the attic. As fate would have it, the key fit." Mia smiled as they started walking back out of the park. "It had belonged to a woman whose husband had gone to war during the First World War. It was full of letters and photographs and just a bunch of stuff. But at the bottom was the most beautiful wedding dress I'd ever seen." She stopped and looked out over the park. Off in the distance, Tim could make out the outline of the tops of the buildings. "We only ever opened the trunk once, hiding it away in the back of the attic. We used the key as a marker for the trail so it would remind us that no matter how bad we thought we had it, other people had it worse. The husband died during the war, the letter was in the trunk. We don't know what happened to his wife, but we think she left the trunk in the attic on purpose because everything had been put in there neatly." Mia smiled softly. "It's like we were meant to find it. I think it's what kept us grounded throughout the years." She turned around and pointed up at one of the buildings. "We use to get up on the top of that apartment building at night and look over the whole city." She took Tim's hand and they walked out of the park, heading back to the motel they were staying in. "Dally used to say we'd run a gang that spread all over New York one day, and we'd find a way to get all kinds of money so we could afford one of the apartments in that building." As they stood waiting for the light to turn red so they could cross, Mia wrapped her arms around Tim's and looked all around her. "I'll miss this place when we go home." Tim looked at her once they were across the road and heading down the street again. The lights on the sign of the night clubs were lighting up, casting a glow across the sidewalk.
"We can come back sometimes." He said. Mia shook her head.
"No. This place is part of my past. I just wanted to see everything one last time. Come on, we can take a taxi back to the motel, I don't trust these streets at night anymore then I use too." Tim smirked as she flagged down a cab and they climbed inside. Mia told the man driving the address and sat back, leaning her head against the window. Tim watched her for a moment before turning to look out his own window. He watched as people walked by, store signs blurred and the lights of the tops of the buildings shone bright.
But even with all the beauty the city seemed to have, Tim could hear the sirens off in the distance.
"Those sirens are always going." Mia said, seemingly reading his mind. "They never seemed to stop." Tim listened to the sounds of the city as he looked up at the New York's city skyline. He'd always wondered what Mia's life must have been like before she and Dallas arrived in Tulsa. Now he could only guess what it must have been like for her to run these streets as a kid; no parents, no real rules to live by, just the cops chasing them around the back alleyways.
"Do you ever wish you hadn't given this up?" Tim asked. Mia looked over at him before looking back out at the city.
"I never thought I'd miss this place as much as I do." She said. "I left here for good reasons, for mine and Dally's safety." She sighed as she opened the door of the cab Once it'd stopped outside the motel and stepped out. Tim followed and pulled out the money to pay the driver.
"There are days where I wish things had been different." She said as they walked to the motel door. "But most of the time, I'm glad we left. Otherwise we wouldn't be here now, would we?" Tim smirked.
"I guess that makes sense." He said. Mia smiled and flopped down on the bed, kicking off her shoes.
"It does make sense." She said and smiled as Tim came over to sit on the bed beside her. "I know what I missed out on, and I'm glad for it." Tim smiled and leaned over to kiss her. Mia smiled when he pulled away. "I didn't give up anything, I tossed it away so that I could find something better." Tim smiled and looked out the window across from the bed. He could still se the city skyline.

XXX

I hope it wasn't too dull for anyone. By the end of it, I felt like it was dragging on a bit.
Reviews would be much appreciated! Hope you liked it!

~Stay Gold!