"You should get some sleep," Selina says, looking over to Tim in the passenger seat, street lamp and headlights zipping over him as they travel down Yeavely South, the roads humming low beneath them. Her hands are still sweaty, there's a pressure in her chest from anxiety that hasn't left since they fled her apartment.
Tim looks up at the city-lit dark orange sky before them and shakes his head. "No," he says quietly. "I can't sleep now."
Selina frowns and turns back to the worn out roads. Wow, she thinks with a tired sigh. I really screwed it all up tonight.
It's hard enough to believe that Tim trusted her enough to follow her, to obey her commands not to talk to his friend, to lead him on this wild goose chase out of North Gotham. They left the amethyst pendant on Tim's firm order, Pamela Isley has the cats by now, and they're moving far away.
There's gifts and curses to be found in living in the middle of the busy streets of Midtown. Gifts are that there's so many people, it'll be easy to get lost, and they can easily move around, even get to Pennsylvania if they need to. Curses: they'll be close to Wayne Tower, and the blue boys will be coming up from Downtown. And if Batman has anything to do with this, it'll be difficult to stay lost.
Tim had become silent, lost in his thoughts, and the insecurity that she had struggled to clear away when he first walked into her home came back full force. Who could blame him? Selina didn't even try to resist the temptation to burgle and she had tricked him into believing that they were going to stop crime together, not become a part of it. There were police cars a long way away from them, detectives concluding that Catwoman and Stray had killed Alicia Caldwell and there may even be a Batman turning his watchful angry eye towards them.
Tim looks back down at his phone, taps in new letters that will lead him someplace else, face hard with concentration and study. Tock, tock, tock, constantly, never ending, the annoying clicking his phone makes when he's typing furiously.
"Can you tell that thing to shut up?" Selina mutters dryly.
Tim doesn't answer, only glances nervously up at her, but she sees his thumb turn to the side of the device and it's silent now as he continues typing.
She's not helping the situation, she realizes. You don't antagonize a fellow fugitive.
"What are you looking up?" Selina asks, a little quieter, looking back and forth from the road to Tim.
"Alicia Caldwell's history," he replies. "If there's any reason for dangerous people like that guy to follow her."
"Some people are just cruel," she says.
"I know," Tim replies and she knows that. She knows it well. His entire life has been affected by cruel people.
"But some actually have some motives," he continues. "And I don't see anything except-"
"Tim, are you sure that's a good idea?" Selina interrupts and she can see from the corner of her eye, his head jerking up from the phone.
"Why not?"
"Baby, the cops are on our tail, and from what we know from the news is that nobody seems to suspect that it could be anybody else who killed Caldwell except for us," she says firmly. "No; we run from this until they think we've gone and only then can we live our lives normally again. I've been through this before."
"But we didn't do it," Tim answers, pulling against the seat belt to focus harder on her. "Somebody did but it wasn't us. They need to know that, they need to know that whoever this guy is had a target and he let us – the burglars – go. Now why would anybody do that-"
"I don't know—"
"- unless he had a personal vendetta against Alicia."
"You trying to prove something to your dad?" Selina asks suddenly and once the words are past her mouth, she regrets them. Tim's dad is such a sensitive subject.
Tim halts and is lost on what to say for a moment. He shakes his head as if to clear it, shifting in the seat to get a better focus on her.
"Batman would want to know," he blurts out. "And anyway...he needs to know, Selina." And Tim pauses, looking down at his phone and then he clicks it into sleep and when he speaks again, his voice is quiet. Sad.
"Selina, I don't want to be running forever from him. I'm just...putting walls in front of us, more walls than there were before. Dick asked me to hold on and I'm not doing enough."
Selina's finger taps slowly on the steering wheel. "Sweetie, you've done so much for so long."
"I know that," Tim replies. "But this is different. No…no." and he sits back into the passenger seat, looks out the window. The headlights of the cars driving by slide across his face, light to dark, dark to light.
He doesn't finish whatever it is that he's trying to say.
"What will we do?" he finally asks.
"There's a place on the outskirts of Gainsly that we can stay in," Selina answers. "The, uh...owner...owes me."
Tim looks up, and with the flashing lights she can see the blue of his eyes in the corner of her own. "Yeah, I guess that is how it works in the real world."
"No, that's how it works in a fragmented one," she replies. And there's a long slow silence, until she whispers, "Go back to sleep, baby."
He doesn't right away, folding his arms over his chest, just leaning his head against the window.
And this is miserable. This is wrong, but there's nothing else to do, nothing can change. At 3 o'clock in the morning, the senseless feeling and questions on what everybody else might be planning while they drive down this crazy road fills Selina's mind.
Maybe some of them are lucky and they're not driving away with their lives.
"Timmy," a soft whisper invading the dark. "Timmy, wake up, baby; we're here."
Tim sits up and opens his eyes, feeling an ache on one side of his head where he was pressed to the window pane. There's a weird red and yellow glow over the dashboard and when he leans forward he sees a sign in blaring capitals, "VACANCY". The Y dims weakly.
It's almost four o'clock in the morning and when Tim looks around, he sees they're parked alongside a long row of adjoining buildings, the street is speckled with litter and rust along the pipes that snake their way across the bricks. Harsh yellow light. Across the street is a bar, still lit and pulling in profit by the masses.
"Where are we?" Tim breathes.
"We're at Corlie's, just outside Gainsly," Selina answers, shutting off the engine. "We can stay here for as long as we need."
She gets out and so does Tim, shouldering his backpack and gripping his cap. He takes a deep breath of freezing night air along with a restaurant's aroma, simmering gasoline and the contents of a dumpster a few yards away, he follows Selina up the cracked brick steps to the front door.
It'd make a nice townhouse if it was fixed up. There's still some signs that it once belonged to somebody who loved it, with the sign in the snowed in garden that says "herbs" in swirled design, but there's specks of rust along the sides. The black metal fence is rickety, and a cat on the step uncurls itself to get a look at the two of them.
Inside the building, the world is covered in dark brown, dusty cherry wood and vintage carpet, a certain smell of beer and perhaps a cheeseburger here and there. There's a man behind a bar with a bald head and a short dark beard, tomato-stained apron covering a blue t-shirt. He looks up from drying tumblers as Selina and Tim walk in.
Selina glances back towards him, mouthing, "Put your cap on," and Tim covers his head, keeping his eyes more or less on the ground. But he can't help watching Selina go up to the man and her sneaky smile spreading over her face. "Hey Willie," she says quietly.
Willie, the man behind the bar, raises a bushy eyebrow at her and says, "Well hey, hey, Miss Kyle. What cannae do for you?"
"Gimme a room for two, no questions asked," she answers just as silkily. Tim notices the man's dark eyes dart towards him. Tim stuffs his hands into his pockets, not turning away, but not reciprocating eye-contact.
"Who's your friend, Sadie?" Willie asks.
Sadie? Sadie Kyle?
"I said no questions," Selina keeps her smile. "I believe it was...six months ago? This place was about to go under. That uh...pretty emerald pair of earrings? Fetched a pretty penny and I believe the deal bought me a lifetime membership here."
Tim swallows. A lifetime membership here. He wonders what the earrings looked like.
Interesting.
"I know our deal," Willie mutters dubiously. "Cannae trust 'im?"
"He's with me. That's all you need to know."
"What room?"
"Just let me see the city lights from the window."
Willie twitches, going to the cash register and stirring a pile of colorful keys, eventually pulling out a little bronze one. "Here you go," he says. "No shenanigans."
"Have I ever brought shenanigans here?" Selina says, snatching the keys with a glint in her eyes.
"You've never brought a boy here."
Tim frowns. Selina pauses, flicking the key chain in her hand with a dry smile, an...emotionless smile. "That sounds like a hidden question."
"I didn't ask one though," Willie shakes a finger at her.
"He's my son," Selina says coldly. "That's all I'm givin'. Good night. Or good morning, more like it."
Selina jerks around, grabbing Tim's elbow and almost dragging him towards the old wood staircase leading up to the rooms. The steps are steep, indicating their age, going around two times. The carpet covering it was once red and is now a dusty maroon. Selina steps firmly leading Tim to believe she's used to it. His sneakers bump into the edges.
They head to the farthest room in the single hallway, and Selina moves quickly. Shoving the key in and twisting hard, coming into the room and once Tim is in, she closes it with a slam, locking and then tries to turn the knob, she seems satisfied when it doesn't budge.
"Safety measures," she mutters.
Tim looks around the room, putting his backpack on one of the two beds, sees a little worn desk against the window, large enough for his laptop. Notices some chipping on the painted dark mauve wall. He turns on the lamp on the nightstand in between the two beds and then sits down on one. "It's nice," he says, touching the phone set on the nightstand. But Selina sniffs.
"Smells like moth balls," she says, peering in the closet.
"And roses," Tim says with a small smile, reaching out to touch the dried bouquet that hangs from a white ribbon on the bed frame opposite him.
Selina chuckles, then goes to the window and moves the sheer curtains, narrowing her eyes at the city. Tim knows she's looking for the red and blue and white of police cars. She's listening for the scream that Tim hears on a regular basis.
"I'm going to take a shower again; I just don't even care," she says, waving the curtains back across the window. "Then I'm gonna try and get some sleep, okay?"
"Okay," Tim says and then she pauses and her expression changes, the one where her eyes stop flicking around and she bites her lip, looks deep into his face. "What is it?"
"I'm..." and she sighs, shakes her head. "I...really screwed up tonight. And I'm sorry I put you through that."
Tim bows his head, shrugs. "I mean, it's okay but- just...that's not who I want to be."
"I know," she says quickly. "I know. I used you. And I'm sorry for that."
Tim winces, gets up off the creaky bed and stands before her, just whispers, "It's okay."
And then she smiles and pulls him close. She strokes his hair, rubs his side, kisses the top of his head. "I'm gonna get you out of this, kitten. Mama Selina's gonna get you out of this." she whispers.
Tim takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, his wants and needs hissing just rest just rest just rest but then his eyes open.
To get out.
The only way out is to prove that we didn't do it. It's to get whoever was in there cornered and with no chance of escape.
Flip the odds back. Let him be the one who's running away.
"Selina," he whispers, pulling back, but she won't let him out of her hold. "The only way we can get out is if we get justice on our side."
She tucks some of his hair behind his ear, almost careless. He wonders if she's listening. "Huh. That'll be hard."
"Yeah, but we can do it," he says, but she won't look him in the eye. "Selina. We can call that number and find out who it is. Who really killed Alicia Caldwell."
And now her green eyes sparkle at him, and her eyebrows come down in suspicion. "Call him? That's...that's out of this world levels of dangerous."
"No, he's using us as a cover," Tim replies. "He's making us seem like the murderers so that he's not involved. We call this number, we get in touch with him and we act all buddy with him until we figure out who he is and report him to the authorities."
"The authorities are onto us, Tim," Selina says slowly, carefully. "We won't be able to touch them with a ten-foot pole."
"But Batman," Tim whispers and Selina takes a deep breath, shaking her head at the mere mention of Batman. "If we have evidence," Tim continues on, "then we can prove our innocence to him. That's the way justice works."
Selina, tilting her head, reads him, processes his words. She's silent for a moment until, "It's worth a try. And if it doesn't work?"
And Tim blinks, can't figure out what to say. He has to look away from her gaze, has to focus on her hold.
He knows that no matter what, he'll never be able to let Bruce go. Never be able to let Dick, and Jason, and Steph and Cass and Barbara – Conner – and the life he knew once behind him.
But when he looks back up at Selina, he sees someone who won't ever lock him away. She won't ever let him go. Despite it all.
"We run, I guess," he whispers.
"Hm," Selina says, rubbing up and down Tim's back. "We'll have to run a little farther away." Now she lets him go and but places her hands on his shoulders. "Let's call the man," she almost growls.
Tim turns around and faces the beige phone on the nightstand and Selina pulls a notebook out of the drawer. "He recognized you," Tim says. "You wanna talk to him?"
"He knows you better; he graced you with an amethyst pendant," she says, sitting on the bed, curling her legs under her. "You talk to him."
Tim nods, but he can hear his heart beat quicken a little bit. He pulls his notebook out of his backpack and sits on the bed opposite Selina. He picks up the cradle, looks at the phone number and types it all in. He turns it on speakerphone and then puts the cradle on the nightstand.
Dial tone, one, two three times. Selina and Tim stare at each other, waiting.
A slow even voice answers.
"Who is this?"
Selina points a finger at Tim.
Tim swallows and takes a deep breath.
"Stray."