There's a silence that's held over them, from the frantic rush home, to the shedding of their suits, to now as Tim comes out of the bathroom, hair wet and with new questions darting at him. He ignores the cats who sense that something's wrong, ignores the tiny velvet box on the table.
Who would want to kill a sweet girl while she tried to stop burglars from raiding her new home? Who would...give the burglars a chance? But then request they- he -schedule an appointment? Appointment for what?
Scheduled burglary?
He throws a towel around his neck and walks into the living room, turns on his computer. Selina is in her bathrobe and at the counter top, black hair sticking up all over the place. "What are you doing?" she asks in a monotone, almost suspicious.
"I'm trying to look up what Alicia Caldwell has been doing the last few weeks, at the least," Tim responds, "Who she's been hanging out with."
"You think this is the time for detective work?" Selina chuckles wryly, pouring a cup of coffee.
"I'm...not sure there is a bad time for detective work," Tim responds, looking up at Selina.
She won't keep her eyes on him, and has been unusually quiet. Tim takes a chance. "So what happened with you?"
Selina shrugs, shakes her head. Lilly Mae rubs against her legs. "Got antsy. Wanted to give it a try."
Tim groans. "But Alicia Caldwell is dead," he says quietly, waiting for a web page. "It's because of..."
And Tim had thought of saying you, but he was the one who had the velvet box given to, he was the one who followed Selina in, he was as deep in as she was.
"It's because of us," he finishes, looking down at his hands. And everything's silent again.
"We were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Selina says, sitting down in front of him on the coffee table. "Don't beat yourself up for this."
He looks up into her emerald eyes, feeling the heaviness again, wanting to go back and erase the last two hours. Just stop at the deal bust, just let us be together at the end, and let's just have us laugh and keep on going and wrap this night up.
He was just starting to feel good about being… Stray.
It was just a little dangerous and Tim has always loved danger except for when it came to moving out of the boundaries that other people had set for him.
And see? It got him in trouble again. Somebody's dead; just like last time.
He should've learned that lesson a long time ago.
"Selina," he whispers, almost desperately. But he can't finish anything more. So when she smiles sadly and reaches for his hands and breathes, "It's gonna be okay," there are too many thoughts in his head (no it's not, someone is dead, we have an amethyst necklace, we don't know who was in the building, who just shot and killed Alicia, and I'm so far down, no you don't understand!) but he can't say it all out loud. It'd get too tangled up. So he watches Selina rub her fingers against his, pressing down on the muscles that are tense, until his hands are limp in hers.
He doesn't get it.
"Let's check the news," Selina whispers, with a crease in her eyebrow. "See what they say."
Tim has to pull one hand out Selina's hold and pick up the remote on the couch. "They'll have found her by now," he murmurs, changing channels.
"Probably," Selina replies, not looking at the TV, taking Tim's hand again.
But Tim doesn't notice because there they are. In blotchy security camera, he relives Selina jumping the fence and he follows, and there are voices sounding concerned, "...a notorious burglar who goes by the name of Catwoman seems to have a companion this time-"
"Selina, that's us," Tim breathes, and though he's been on the news before, as Red Robin or Tim Wayne, it's different, and he can sense every eye watching them but he doesn't know how, how did they-
"This was caught via Miss Caldwell's new neighbors' security cameras, and though we don't have much of a view because Catwoman and her sidekick went out of the frame, it's very obvious that they were planning a break in and the subsequent murder of Caldwell."
"Makes sense," Selina says, still not looking up.
"I met up with Catwoman," an all too familiar voice says, and there's Ol, the thug they met up before all this happened. "She said she had a new friend named Stray."
Tim stares in shock.
"You're official, baby," Selina mutters. "Betcha he doesn't tell all of how he met Catwoman and Stray."
He exhales, watching them replay over and over again, Stray jumping the fence and running towards the house. "Miss Alicia Caldwell had just bought the Carlingwood Mansion in an attempt to be closer to her family who live in Bristol County, and from what police say, she was brutally murdered by Catwoman and her new sidekick, Stray. Back to you, Harry."
"Wait a second," Tim whispers, "No, wait, we didn't kill her, how did they-"
"...but there's a constant question in the minds of everybody involved in this," the second anchor comments, "and that question is this: where in the world is Batman, the supposed protector of our great city? If he was around tonight (and let me remind you all that we haven't seen him in a record two months), would this sweet girl have been killed tonight? It just begs the question of how a vigilante can seemingly take care of everything and miss out on stopping Catwoman and Stray from murdering a kind young lady and benefactor to Gotham City."
"They'll drag Batman out," Tim says. "He'll have to come after this."
"Yeah and he'll bring it to our doorstep, Tim," Selina says firmly. "Heat's coming up. We're gonna have to think of what to do."
She gets up and starts picking up; places dishes in the cupboard, puts away leftover food, throws away trash. "What are you doing?" Tim asks, frowning.
"Cleaning up," she says simply. "If we gotta run, it's nice to leave a clean apartment. Worse comes to worse, I can wipe the place down for fingerprints. That'll be a little more difficult; I'll need some help."
"Whoa, wait," Tim says, getting up, rushing toward her. "They can't prove we killed her! It's not over yet, Batman will get out there and make sure-"
"Oh yeah, Batman will be totally on our side!" Selina laughs. "We break into her house and there's an amethyst necklace missing, and a woman with a bullet in her head and no explanation, not even a mention of this guy who actually did it. Whoever he is, he's covering his tracks and we better do the same."
Tim halts in his steps, watching Selina work, eyes widening as she stands on tiptoe to take down her Derringer. She checks for bullets, and Tim can only stare.
Working...against Batman?
Running from Batman?
He had spent most of his life running to Batman.
"Where...where would we go?" he breathes.
"Anywhere," she responds, takes out some paper towel, sprinkles some water on it. "We should probably get to Midtown, try to blend in. We'll lie low until the heat's off."
"But-" Tim starts and then his phone rings. He takes it out of the yoga pants pocket, and when he sees the caller ID, he frowns. He glances at the TV, sees Stray still jumping the fence, now there's Commissioner Gordon giving what he thinks to the news.
And that dorky picture of Conner Kent is on the phone and the ringtone is still playing.
"Who is it?" Selina asks, voice deep and serious, unlike anything Tim has ever heard from her.
"Conner," he whispers.
"Don't answer it," she says firmly. The emerald in her eyes is hard and cold. "Don't answer anything."
Tim puts his phone on the coffee table, hating to let the ringtone just play over and over, wondering what Conner is thinking right now.
No, he just wants to talk, he knows I knew Alicia Caldwell and he wants my take on it-
"Hey, Tim," the voicemail says and Tim relaxes a little at Conner's voice, he hasn't heard it in a while. "Just wanted to check in on you, cause your dad called me. I mean can you believe it, the mighty Wayne himself called lowly me and wanted to know where you were. He, um. Sounded mad. You better call him back or I'm scared he'll ground you. And that'd be terrible. So get back to me when you can, 'kay?"
Bruce. He called Conner Kent because Tim had told him that he was staying with Conner and when Bruce told him to leave, Tim left Alfred with the idea that he would be staying with Conner. He suspects the figure on the TV, wondering about Stray, wondering about Catwoman.
And Bruce just found out that Tim hasn't been with Conner for a long time. That the pretty tapestry he put in front of Bruce's eyes has a hole in it now and it's getting bigger as Stray jumps the fence one more time.
"Don't call Bruce," Selina says. "He's onto us and if you call him, he'll have your location down. Your phone is tied to his computers. He'll trip us."
"Selina, Bruce isn't my enemy," Tim responds, turning sharply towards her. "And I'm not his."
"Baby, everybody has you on the other side of justice," she says, coming closer to him, still that hard and almost angry look on her face. "And there's one person he's loved more than anybody and that's Justice herself. Don't burn yourself, Tim, don't do that to yourself."
"I'm not burning myself," Tim says, picking up his phone. "If I call him and tell him the whole thing, he'll believe me and we won't have to run."
"Tim," and she grabs his wrist, "You call him and after all the pretty lies you've put before his face, it won't make sense, it won't come together. He'll believe you have something to cover. He knows you all too well. You're his baby Robin. Use Stray as a shield."
"A shield?!" Tim demands, wrenching his hand away. "I don't need to protect myself from Bruce!"
"Okay then, what happens to me?" Selina asks, her voice coming deeper, like a cat's defensive hiss. "We're in this together. You think Batman's gonna believe that the guy with Catwoman was just playing? No, Tim, we're in too deep. We've gone too far."
We've gone too far.
Tim can't tear his eyes away from hers. He can't betray her. He can't let her alone, he can't give her up to Batman and therefore to the police. And she's so right, so right Tim has trouble grasping it; Bruce wouldn't believe that all the lies he put before him would be dashed in a moment like this just to cover his tracks. He can't explain it away. Bruce wouldn't believe him.
And betray the woman who has taken him in, who set him free? Who has spent more time with him than anybody has in a long time, who didn't think he was a failure or a disappointment, who actually lived as if he existed?
She's right. They've gone too far.
Bruce probably already believes that Tim has betrayed him.
So he nods, loosens his grip on his phone. And the glints leave Selina's eyes and sighs. "I...I just want to protect you," she says softly.
Tim bites his lip, works the callouses in his hands nervously. "What do we do?"
She smiles, her hands rubbing up and down his arms. "We plan," she says. "We know that Bruce is on to this. He knows you're not with your buddy, so he'll be calling all over. He'll eventually call you."
Tim blinks – right when I do something wrong, then he'll call, yeah sure – and nods.
"We'll go to Midtown, Gainsly area, we'll change up our looks so no one recognizes us. You need a haircut," she chuckles. "We'll figure out what to do from there. We leave in an hour."
Running and hiding and who knows what else. Tim just nods and picks up his computer, heads back to his room.
He places it in his backpack, getting read to leave... again. He changes clothes and finds Dick's sweater, puts that on. His hair has gotten a little longer than he usually has it, so he uses an elastic to pull it back, even though it can't hold it all and some strands come loose. He takes out a baseball cap to use for later on, just in case.
But he pauses in his work when he picks up his notebook and pen, and he flips through it. He's scribbled down some thoughts on previous cases, some observations he's made over the past week. Even a small drawing here and there; a doodle of the S that stands for hope, double lined.
And then the hard edged bat right next to it.
I'm so sorry, Kon.
But then he turns to a new blank page and writes down the phone number that's written in the velvet box that he memorized simply by staring at it for such a long time. Alicia Caldwell's home address, and everything he knows about the stranger in the house: the glasses, the thin curve of his lips, estimated age, weight and height. Clothing and shoes, with little notes like "maybe" and "thing to remember". He writes down every detail he can remember about tonight, from the time they broke up the deal to the rush back home.
We're leaving is the last thing he scratches in. The blue pen smears.
He's not going to just let the police conclude that Catwoman and Stray killed Alicia Caldwell. He's been raised on justice and justice can mean a lot of things: bringing crime to light but also proving the innocent is a couple of them. Yes, he and Catwoman did unlawfully break into a house, but Alicia Caldwell did not die at their hands.
There is a true murderer and a true thief here.
Tim folds up the notebook and puts it in his backpack. He pauses then and sees the envelope with Bruce's handwriting on the front.
He did bring the letter.
There's something in it, a promise that he's carried for years. He wonders if it still applies, if Bruce remembers it at all.
He picks the envelope up but doesn't open it, just stares at the handwriting.
Just Tim.
"Baby, you ready?" Selina calls, changed into a black turtleneck and jeans, black fleece coat already on.
"Yeah," Tim responds. He takes a deep breath, manages a small smile for her. "Let's go."
She nods and watches him sling the backpack over his shoulder.
"Oh, I've got to call somebody before we go," she mutters, "It may set us off, and it'll be a bit of a shock to anyone who redials it."
Tim pauses in front of the door as she clicks in a number on her home phone. She smiles sneakily at him. "Hey, Pam," she says quickly. "Hey, can you keep my cats for an undetermined amount of time?"