I know, I know it takes forever for me to crank out things, so sorry, so sorry. But here! Look! And update!
Selina rolls the gem around in her hands, its many faces catching watery moonlight as carefully admires her prize. She should feel bad about the theft. She should feel guilty. She should walk right back to the jewelry store and put back the artifact before someone notices it's gone. But she doesn't, tucking the sapphire away in a pouch strapped to her thigh. (Not even Batman can train a cat, and somehow she thinks he knows it too.)
She starts into a run, leaping across Gotham's rooftops, using her whip to compensate for jumps that are just a little too far. The workout leads her within two blocks of her apartment, home free for the evening with her new addition for her collection. But she sees—
Tim. He's tucked away in the shadow of one of Gotham's many water towers, legs pulled tight against him, forehead resting on his knees. His cape is pulled as tightly around him as he can manage. And he doesn't move. In fact, if Selina had been a little more focused on the final stretch toward home, she's certain she would have missed him entirely.
Selina takes her time approaching him, giving him any opportunity he wants to start or move or greet her. But he stays in place, wrapped and almost invisible, until she kneels down in front of him. Tim's domino is tossed to the side, resting against one of the tower's supports.
"Kitten," she murmurs, wondering if he'll feel her words through his boots, placing two fingers of one of his wrists.
His head slowly comes up, and she will admit that she's surprised to find his face dry. She's even more surprised to find his eyes empty, his face blank. That posture is not one normally associated with calm or empty or whatever it is Tim is.
But Tim just looks at her, eyes going from focused on her face to focused somewhere else before he spells out, "H-E-L-L-O."
Selina wiggles her fingers, running through her vocabulary to sign back. "What is wrong, Tim?" Tim's eyes flicker across her hands before his shoulders roll in a what are you talking about gesture. She breathes out through her nose, holding her head still when it would rather shake from side to side because why are the Wayne men so incredibly difficult. Why can't they all be like Dick? She brushes the thought away (because Bruce is wonderful and Tim is sweet).
Her hand hovers in front of his face for a few moments before he takes her hand and pulls himself up, his cape fluttering around the backs of his knees when he bends to pick up his domino. He doesn't protest when she tugs his toward her apartment, leaping across rooftops without complaint.
(What would he say? Sorry, Selina, I don't want to hang out with you? Tim isn't that kind of kid.)
She pushes open the door to her apartment, waving for Tim to take a seat, feeling comfortable enough to look away only after he takes a seat. His face is still a careful mask, his cape tucked under him like a nest. She pulls out her new prize, laying it on the kitchen counter as she prepares a glass of warm milk for the both of them.
Tim's focus is already back on her when she enters her small (and cluttered, what's a collector to do?) living room. He takes the glass of warm milk in his hands, placing the glass on the small table next to the sofa. "You should return that," Tim's hands says to her, nodding toward the kitchen. But there is no snarky raise of the eyebrow, no quirk of the lips. (What is wrong with my baby?) But she does appreciate that Tim mentions the gem, that he doesn't just take it and give it back on his own. Selina likes options, hates being forced into corners, hated being shoved into doing the right thing.
She loves this about the Wayne family. Options.
"I'll think about it," she purrs, ruffling Tim's hair with one hand, sipping her milk with the other. She picks up her cell phone, checking her messages. (Three missed calls, from Bruce, and six messages from—oh.)
Selina is the first text, followed by What do I do. She scrolls through the other four, I might come over. I'll wait outside. Sorry to bother you. The last one brings a smile to her lips. You should probably put back whatever you're stealing.
She casts a glance over her shoulder to find Tim sipping at the milk, his gauntlets laid neatly on the table. But his mind is still elsewhere, she can tell, and as she dials Bruce's number, she can't help but wonder if Tim's been ungrounded yet, if he's hiding his brooding teenaged rebelliousness behind his societal mask.
"Selina," Bruce's voice is a growl over the phone. "Have you seen—"
"Tim?" She murmurs quietly into her phone, her back to Tim (just in case this conversation is private, she'd rather him not read her lips). "Because he's with me."
An exasperated sigh almost tickles her ear. "He's still grounded."
Selina snickers. "Well, it looks like he's just been out patrolling your city. So he wasn't out clubbing or any of that sinful stuff, Bruce."
Another sigh, this one different, though she isn't quite sure how. "I know you think that this was uncalled for, but he can't just be shirking his duties while he's out—" Selina pulls in her lips to avoid smiling.
"I know. Well, I assure you, we weren't gallivanting in Gotham's clubs tonight. I'll send him home tomorrow, alright?"
It's cute, really, how Bruce worries so much.
"Alright. Thank you, Selina."
"Anytime, Daddy Bats," Bruce snorts at his nickname, the one that's practically infected Gotham's underworld.
"Goodnight," he mutters, and Selina returns the sentiment before ending the call and turning to Tim. Do you want some dinner sits on her tongue, but Tim is curled up on the sofa, his cape pulled around him and the empty glass perched on the end table. Fondness bubbles under her ribcage. She pulls a blanket (fur-lined, stolen from a wealthy Canadian years ago) from the top of her living room cabinet and drapes it across Tim before heading to bed herself.
Three of her cats are already curled up on her comforter, and before she falls asleep, she wonders if this is what it feels like to have a full house.
When the sun creeps through her curtains the next morning, she pushes out of bed, landing lightly on her feet. Her cats are nowhere to be seen as he pads into her living room. Her blanket is folded on the sofa, the glass unseen (probably in the sink or, knowing Tim, already washed).
A note is left on her coffee table (stolen from a museum, it's a piece from a palace that was almost destroyed in one of the European wars) in Tim's close script.
Thank you, Selina, for letting me stay the night.
There is nothing else at the end, and, upon a closer look, the handwriting is shaky with—something.
I should have pressed him more, she thinks, folding the note and tucking it into the folds of the blanket. I knew something was wrong.
(But she'll talk to him later. She'll see that he's fine. What kind of mother would she be otherwise?)