{the cunning kitten}
-He who kills is clever, he who wounds awkward-
"Thanks," Tim said to Superboy, peering down at the sidewalk below. For a split second, when the assassin hadn't gotten up, Tim had thought he might've been dead. But no. Nothing could be so simple. The assassin jumped to his feet, and looked up. Their eyes met, masked or no, and Tim felt a chill run down his spine. What are you?
"No problem," Superboy said, moving his jaw with a wince. "Dang, that guy packed a punch."
"Jason, you okay?" Tim asked, turning around. Jason was lying on his stomach on the floor amongst strewn chairs, bloodstains, and bright red knives. His chin was resting on folded arms as he stared at them dully.
"Fucking peachy," Jason said phlegmatically.
"Good." Tim walked back into the kitchen, avoiding the blood puddles as he went, and he picked up his cellphone. Alfred had hung up, probably to call the police. Or track the call. Or both. He pressed the number one, Selina on speed dial, and he searched the drawers of the counter top for a plastic baggie.
Selina picked up after two rings. "Hey, kitten," she said. "I'm on my way home. Do you have something you want to tell me?"
"Uh." Tim looked around the ruined apartment, and he sighed. "Don't come home. Trust me, it'll be better if you don't. Kind of just got attacked by an assassin."
"Excuse me?" Selina sounded relatively calm about it, which wasn't surprising. "Who was it?"
"I don't know." Tim went back to the dining room, picking up the cleaver and dropping it into the plastic baggie. He bagged the kitchen knife too, and began collecting the other knives. "He was after Jason."
"So Jason is with you," Selina said. "Good to know, considering you're all over the news. So you beat the assassin off, then? That's my boy."
"It wasn't easy," Tim admitted. "I almost didn't, to be honest. Superboy kind of saved our butts, big time."
"You're welcome," Superboy said, looking around the apartment with vague interest. "Also… sorry. For being an ass to you before."
"It was understandable." Tim went back into the kitchen to retrieve a larger plastic bag to put the smaller ones in. "By the way, do you have like, a car or something?"
"Uh," Superboy said, his thick eyebrows rising. "Dude, I can fly. Why would I have a car?"
Tim sighed. "Typical," he murmured, taking his bag full of knives and shaking his head. "Selina, I've gotta go, but uh… yeah, we're fine, and if you do come home, I swear most of the blood isn't mine."
"Most." Selina's voice had gone very low and very dangerous. "Tim—"
"I'm fine, I promise," he said. "Love you."
"I love you too," she said, her voice still dark. "But so help me, if you're lying, I'm going to find that assassin and tear his throat out."
Tim smiled, and he shook his head. "If I wasn't fine, I wouldn't have called, and you know it. Just stay away from here for tonight. I'll call you later." He hung up, pocketing the phone and stepping over Jason.
"This is torture," Jason said, rolling onto his side to glare at Tim. "Someone put me in a chair!"
Superboy picked Jason up, placing him carefully on a chair. "You good?" Superboy asked, backing off slowly.
"I'm great," Jason replied, folding his arms across his chest, scowling ahead of him. "Except for the part where I hate everything, and want to go home."
"I can take you—" Superboy offered.
"No." Tim spun around to face them. He'd been deep in thought before, trying to sort out what they were going to do. "Take him to Oracle. We need him somewhere secure, and the clocktower is about as secure as we can get unless we get into the Batcave."
"Which is unlikely." Superboy looked down at Jason, and he gave him a thumbs up. "You cool with that?"
"Whatever."
Tim set down his bag, stripping off his torn shirt. "You guys better go," he told them. Jason looked at him as if he was about to spring up and try to strangle him. Tim decided to ignore it. "We don't know if that guy will come back, and I personally don't want to stick around and find out."
"I can carry both of you," Superboy said, folding his arms across his chest. His eyes were narrowed, and he was studying Tim with varying degrees of distrust.
"I have to check something out." Tim retrieved one of the knives he had not collected from the paneling, and he stared at it, running his thumb across the blade. "Red said the assassin from the hospital was tiny."
"That guy wasn't too big," Superboy said slowly.
"Tiny," Tim said, testing the point of the knife— not a kunai, a knife— with his thumb. He immediately jerked his finger back, wincing. The tip was sharper, much sharper. Tim pressed his thumb to his mouth, licking away the bead of blood that had appeared. "She said the assassin from the hospital looked like a child, but she couldn't tell because of how covered up he— or she— was. Layers of clothes." Tim pointed at the window with the tip of the knife. "That guy? One layer aside from some armor, and it hugs his body better than my suit does. And that's saying a lot."
"Sorry we weren't checking out how defined the fucker's ass was," Jason said in a blunt voice. "But thanks for pointing it out, now that I think about it, yeah, looked pretty damn firm."
Superboy choked on a laugh, and Tim rolled his eyes. "Jay, not the time." Tim pressed his lips together, his mind going wild. "There's two assassins after you."
Jason looked exhausted, and he shook his head, glaring at a wall. "I wish I could say I care," Jason said. His voice was so dead, Tim almost wanted to slap him. "But I don't."
"You should," Tim snapped, stabbing the knife into the table. That startled Superboy, but not Jason. "This is your life we're risking ours for! You only just woke up, and you're just going to pretend like none of this matters?"
"I just want to go home," Jason said, for perhaps the umpteenth time. "I don't care who wants me dead. This isn't anything new, cat boy."
"But now is different because you don't have the big bad bat to protect you," Tim said quietly. "You have to be careful. Gotham is crazy enough right now without Batman around, and adding the fact that you might have some kind of prize on your head? Think, Jay!"
"I'm thinking!" Jason slammed his hand on the table, and the resounding smack startled even Tim. "I'm thinking that I should have fucking stayed asleep! I don't understand what's happening, and you're not explaining, and I'm thinking that if I'm so much goddamn trouble, why don't you guys just let me die?"
"Stop!" Superboy shouted, slamming his own fist onto the table. They all jumped when a huge chunk of wood splintered off. Jason looked down at his hands, or perhaps his missing leg, and his entire body went lax. He said nothing more, and Tim took a deep breath, feeling stupid and guilty. He shouldn't have yelled at him. That had been wrong. "Stop fighting," Superboy said in a softer voice. "I'll take Jason to Oracle. You do what you've gotta do, cat boy."
"Tim," he corrected, folding his arms across his chest. It was then he remembered that he was bleeding rather profusely, and he sighed, turning away. "I'll meet you guys at the clocktower in an hour. Take the knives, Red'll want the blood samples."
"Sure," Superboy said, picking Jason up. Jason looked unhappy, but said nothing to object. Jason held onto the bag as they both turned away. Something occurred to Tim then, and he stared at Superboy, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
"Hey," he called. Superboy looked back expectantly. "How'd you know to save us?"
The boy gave a lopsided grin, and he laughed. "Oracle got a call. I was the closest." Superboy shrugged, and took off, flying from the window with Jason in his arms.
Goddamn heroes, Tim thought in disbelief, clambering over broken furniture to get to his room. He grabbed a sweatshirt from his drawer, and went to the bathroom to clean his cuts and bandage them. He winced a little as he did so. The worst one was his shoulder wound, which was deep enough that it might require stitches. He could only shove a few extra bandages in his pockets and pray it didn't come to that.
He grabbed his coat and his keys, stuffing his suit into a backpack just in case. He walked back the way he had come from the hospital, pulling up his hood to spare his ears from the whipping winter winds. It was a very blustery day, and there was a dance of tiny, barely formed snowflakes that were only just beginning to take on some sort of shape. Tim was reminded that Christmas was soon, and he smiled a little. Bruce Wayne's going to have a good Christmas, he thought idly. If we can keep Jason alive that long.
He made it to the hospital, and he wondered what the hell he was doing. I made myself public enemy number one in the place I actually needed to go, he thought. Only I could do that. He sighed, and noticed the distinct lack of police cars. He probably had Barbara to thank for that. He probably had Barbara to thank for a lot of things, including his life.
Tim had been looking up at the window that had shattered the previous day, and he squinted around him. They had moved Jason into a different room to spare him from the cold, but now that he was looking, there was something peculiar about the wall. There were three long gouges running down the face of the building, starting about halfway from the broken window, and stopping a few feet above Tim's head. He looked around, checking for onlookers, and then took a few steps back. He jumped, his feet gliding upward as he climbed carefully, feeling gravity begin to tug at him. He managed to grab hold of whatever was sticking out of the lacerations. He yanked it out of the wall, and dropped to the ground, twirling it over in his hands.
A kunai. Completely identical in every way to the one that been used against Barbara. Tim pulled out the knife the assassin in his apartment had used to compare them. The kunai was smaller and skinnier, newer by far. Its metal was nicked, but not as many times as the knife. Its shaft was as thin as a pencil, and when Tim tried to close his hand around it, it didn't fit. Small hands, he noted. Small assassin. The knife was ornate. Old. It was sturdy, and sharper than the kunai, but it looked more like an antique than a weapon. And there was also the raised, gold enameled owl inlaid on the flat of the blade to account for.
"You a knife expert, or something?" a sweet, soft voice asked. Tim jumped, nearly dropping the kunai and knife. There was a girl leaning in front of him, her face slim and smooth, with a round button nose, smiling lips, and large eyes. She was shorter than him, but not by much, and she stepped back a bit, still smiling. She wore a thick purple beanie, and her short blonde hair curled across her forehead, and her cheeks, and around her ears, bouncing at her chin. She was wearing a violet coat that reached to her knees and a periwinkle scarf. He could see leggings tucked into flat, durable looking brown boots.
"Um," Tim said, glancing at the weapons in his hands. "Not exactly, no."
"Oh." She cocked her head, and gave a little laugh that wisped against the frigid air, foggy and white. "Well, what exactly are you doing, then?"
"Just…" Tim tucked the weapons into his bag, and he gave a one-shouldered shrug. "You know, investigating. Some weird stuff's been going on here."
"True," said the girl, glancing up at the gouges on the wall. "Wonder what could do that."
"Yeah," Tim sighed. "I wonder."
"Well!" The girl's big blue eyes got bigger as she jerked her hand out. "I'm Steph."
Steph. Tim stared at her, his eyes flickering over her face, helplessly trying to recognize something from her. But truth be told, he had no idea what the girl he had lost once had looked like. They sound alike, though. Maybe Tim just wanted them to sound alike.
"Steph," Tim repeated, feeling wary. He couldn't stop staring at her face, and his heart hammered in his chest as he tried to rationalize this. Steph is a common name, he reminded himself. It's not her, it can't be. But he wanted it to be. He stared at her for so long, she seemed to get startled.
"Right," she said, her hand dropping to her side. Her pale brows rose, disappearing behind her curly bangs. "Short for Stephanie. I'm new in town, actually."
"Oh?" Tim's eyes narrowed at her, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he knew her. Is it Spoiler, or am I crazy? For all he knew Spoiler was dead. "What brings you to Gotham?"
She gave a long sigh, and shook her head. "My brother," she said contritely. "I'm actually looking for him. The nanny wasn't exactly being watchful, and he got away from her."
It's not that hard, he found himself thinking. Nannies are airheads. He didn't say it though. Instead, he said, "Oh. I'm sorry."
She nodded, pursing her lips as she glanced around. "I mean, he's not stupid," she said, her breath a puff of white air as she spoke. "At least, I didn't think he was. I'm really just like, shit, what if I don't find him before nightfall? Then I'd have to get the police involved."
"I'm sorry," Tim repeated earnestly. "I wish I could help, but I need to get going."
"Oh?" Her eyes drooped a little sadly. "Okay. Sorry I bothered you about it, I'm just really worried."
"Maybe… I mean, what does he look like?" He knew what it was like to be a child alone in Gotham. It was truly terrifying, and he wouldn't want to inflict that upon anyone.
Steph beamed at him, and he thought that was strange. "He's little," she said, gesturing with her hand. "Really pale, and his hair is a lot lighter than mine. Like, platinum blond."
"I'll look out for him," Tim said.
"Thanks," Steph said, pecking him on the cheek. Tim blinked, and he grabbed her arm as she spun away, squeezing her wrist with just enough pressure to make her gasp. The kunai and knife she'd swiped from his backpack clattered to the sidewalk.
"Spoiler," Tim hissed, yanking her closer.
She stared up at him in shock for a moment, and then her parted lips melted into a smirk. "Aw," she said. "You remember me. I'm actually really flattered."
"We had a date," Tim reminded, grabbing her other wrist as he felt it sliding down his chest, into his coat pocket. "I was looking forward to it."
"Really?" She cocked her head, leaning up and away from his face, her nose bumping against his. "You're so sweet, kitty."
"I also thought you were dead," Tim said, watching her every move with undivided attention. He did smile though, following her movements and swaying back and forth, a game of teasing and dragging out words and breaths. Her mist blew into his face, and his into hers, and it was an intimate sort battle of trickery between strangers. "I was worried."
"You really are sweet." Her eyes widened at that, and she pressed her palms against his chest. "We should totally do that date thing. Paris, right?"
"Coffee," Tim said, smirking as he felt her press her lips against his. He knew what she was doing. He'd seen Selina do it half a hundred times. But he let her, because he couldn't strike her first. Not in public. He blinked at her face, surprised as she deepened the kiss, yanking him down by the lapels of his jacket, and he loosened his grip on her wrists, waiting. But she seemed to really want to drag it out. That puzzled him. Sure, he understood that he was trying to distract him, and it was almost working. Her lips were very soft and steadily working at his, moving delicately to try and pry them open.
What are you doing, Spoiler? He let her pull at him, and he it surprised him when she spun him around, pushing his back against the wall of the hospital. She kissed him hard, as if she was desperately trying to unlock some kind of secret he held, some word on his tongue that she wanted so bad, she couldn't stop attacking his lips. Her body was very warm against his, and though Tim had kissed others since that horrible night with Jason, he found himself thinking back to it. He had been too young then to understand how truly useful his body could be, and even now he was always reluctant to use Selina's methods. He didn't really know if it was him saying and doing these things, or if it was some monster inside him that itched to get out.
"You're shy," she breathed, breaking away from him. She sounded surprised, as if she hadn't expected him to be so reserved. He was eying the weapons still lying on the sidewalk, and he had to wonder what she was doing. She had him. She could kick his ass if she wanted. But she was prolonging this. Maybe she really does like me, he thought, feeling a slight rush of warmth. "Like, really shy. Come on, open up."
He leaned down, meeting her lips and feeling her smile. It was odd, feeling this complete stranger breathing against him, tugging him closer and closer, as if she just wanted warmth and breath and smiles. Perhaps that was what she wanted after all. She got her tongue between his lips, and it tickled against the roof of his mouth. He tucked a blonde curl behind her ear, and he felt her lips tug upward, her teeth dragging against his mouth tentatively.
He felt something wet against his cheek, and they broke apart. He glanced upward, blinking as a fluffy flake clung to his eyelashes. "Snow," he said quietly. He looked down, and he saw her eyes glittering with a strange sort of mischief. He jolted as she stepped back, her leg winding up and smacking into his jaw.
Note: Oh hey, look, TimSteph. Yay for sloppy makeouts. They're always so fun, aren't they? By the way, I was bullshitting Kon's characterization. I know Young Justice's Kon, but not his comic personality. Obviously I wasn't using his YJ personality bc there's enough angsting to go around thank you.
Mad props to Victor Hugo for having beautiful quotes when he probably didn't need them, but who the fuck cares, it's Victor Hugo.
