Pinky promise I'm still working on all my other WIPs but while we're all waiting for AO3 to come back, I thought I'd post another WIP that I've been playing with to help pass the time :)
It was in the middle of the night and Tim wasn’t supposed to leave his room until the morning. But he was thirsty and the tap water from the sink in his attached bathroom tasted like chemicals. While Mom did say that the chemical taste meant that the water was being cleaned, Tim had his doubts. His parents were very smart when it came to things like running Drake Industries and digging in the dirt that ancient civilizations used to call home, but Mom still didn’t know how to use the state of the art laundry machines in the basement and Dad needed his assistant to make doctors’ appointments on his behalf, so what did they know about chemical water?
They were home after a long time away digging up pottery in South America, sleeping in the master bedroom just down the hall from Tim’s. They didn’t like it when he wandered around the manor in the middle of the night. The excuse was always that he was too loud, but even if Tim stomped loudly down the stairs, they wouldn’t have stirred. He knew that when there was snoring, it was a deep sleep, and the both of them were snoring loudly. Nothing short of a raging fire and shouting into a bullhorn would rouse the Drakes. It was a safe bet that he could go down to the kitchen and grab a water bottle without notice.
Still, as sure as he was, Tim was careful to open and close his bedroom door quietly and kept his footsteps light as he traversed down the stairs and into the kitchen, guided only by the garden lights that came through the windows. The only sounds he could hear were distant snoring, the soft hum of the refigerator, and the ticking of the clock on the wall next to Mom’s old fashioned paper calendar.
It was close to three in the morning, but that didn’t matter much when it was summer vacation and there was no school to get up early for. While his parents did warn him that he had to learn to get up all by himself if he wanted to attend middle school in Gotham instead of going back to boarding school, he still had plenty of time to get into the habit.
The fridge opened with barely a protest and Tim squinted into the brightly lit shelves. He took two bottled waters, tucking both under his arm as he closed the doors. He blinked twice, getting used to the darkness around him once again before heading back towards the stairs.
What felt like a brief gust of wind ruffled against his sleepshirt and shorts just as he was about to go up the first step. It wouldn’t have been noticeable if it were during the daytime- save for the display room, which had its own air conditioning unit (The artifacts his parents brought home were delicate, valuable, and needed to be in a temperature controlled environment despite being found in places like deserts and tropical rainforests, places that famously didn’t have modern luxuries like air conditioning, but who was Tim to argue?), the downstairs unit was always off during the night. The display room was in another section of the manor, across the main living room and down the hall. He couldn’t have felt the air conditioning from all the way across the house, right?
He felt it again, like an invisible force insistently tugging on his clothes. Hesitating, he looked towards the direction the wind was coming from. It must be a window that was left open, he decided. Best to find it so he can close it before an animal or burglar could climb in and steal his limited edition Batman night light. It was in the shape of the bat signal and lit up the ceiling in his room at its fullest brightness. The Gotham Police Department was very quick in shutting down the company that made them. From what Tim remembered, the owner was an aspiring villain who wanted to sell the lights to Batman’s rogue gallery (it was a pretty good replica of the bat signal, and could’ve probably fooled Batman and Robin at least once before they knew about the trick) but was pleasantly surprised to find that there was more money in selling their device to Batman’s fans instead. Point was, it was very rare because the police were confiscating all the ones they could find and offered rewards for whoever willingly gave up theirs. Mom and Dad weren’t very interested in reward money (because the Drakes were a rich family and didn’t need reward money), but Tim hid his under the loose floorboard near his bed until the heat died down just in case. Now it was proudly displayed on his nightstand, in reach so that he can flick the signal on and off while acting out scenes with his action figures.
As if sensing Tim’s distracting thoughts, the wind blew again, this time buffering him in the face and making sure hair got in his eyes. Sputtering, he raised his forearm over his eyes like he was hiking during a snowstorm and marched forward.
The hum of the kitchen appliances dulled and eventually went away completely as he entered the most used living room in the manor. The remote was still resting on the arm of Dad’s favorite corner seat, pillows haphazardly resting on random areas of the long couch. All three of them had a movie night there just a few hours ago, Mom and Dad humoring Tim by letting him choose the latest Star Wars movie. There was only window there behind the couch, the shades drawn tight. The wind wasn’t coming from there.
Tim trudged on, frowning as the wind guided him closer to the display room. It was only then that he realized that this was… weird. No normal wind behaved this way, right? He paused, staring intently at the suspiciously closed door to the one room that stored all of his parents’ treasures.
“Oh boy, I really hope they didn’t bring home a cursed wind pot or something,” he muttered. He felt the wind again, right between the shoulder blades. He stumbled forward in surprise, palms now pressed against the door.
He probably shouldn’t go into the display room.
But alas, Tim was just an eleven year old boy whose curiosity had always overpowered trivial things like common sense.
The display room looked the same as always- about three times the size of his bedroom, full of shelves and glass cases showcasing all the old things his parents brought home from digs. It was mostly boring- clay pottery, stone tools, crude little figurines that looked vaguely human if Tim squinted hard enough. The windows were blocked by heavy duty curtains that were made to keep the sunlight out. Tim reached out and switched on the ceiling light so he could see better.
Now that he was actually in the room, the wind was gone. All was silent except for the ticking of a clock. Tim looked around, confused because there wasn’t a clock to be found. The closest that came to one was a small sundial that rested between pot number thirty-two and forty-one.
He walked between the various cases, just to make sure everything was still in its place. As he did so, he couldn’t help but notice that the ticking sound got louder or softer depending on his location.
“Maybe Dad forgot his watch in here?” Tim said. It made just as much sense as letting a mysterious wind bully him all the way to the other side of the manor, so he began to triangulate the source of the ticking. When he finally found it, he paused. When did his parents bring home… that? It wasn’t an artifact he recognized, and unfortunately he recognized most of his parents’ artifacts. Being their son, Tim was the perfect captive audience they needed to info-dump on about their digs.
This particular one was a pendant, connected to a black strap. Circular in shape, it sort of looked like a gear. The outer edge was a golden color while the inside was a very dark gray, almost black. There was a symbol in the center, bright blue. He didn’t recognize the language, but when he tilted his head it sort of looked like the letters “C” and “W” intertwined with each other.
There was no way Mom and Dad would display this. It looked more like something Tim and his friends would wear at a steampunk convention.
“This has to be a prank,” he tsked. “If I mention finding this to my parents they’ll know I snuck out of bed and wandered the manor when I wasn’t supposed to.” The display room wasn’t necessarily off limits, but Tim wasn’t really ever interested in its contents unless forced to be. His parents would get suspicious and wonder whether he was up to something (Which… he wasn’t, okay? It’s perfectly normal to wander around when somebody can’t sleep at night.).
How exactly they managed to conjure a wind to bully their son all the way across the manor was something Tim didn’t want to think about. He had his water and found the source of the ticking. Whatever that wind was, it wasn’t acting up anymore and all the windows he passed on his journey were closed. It was time to go back to bed and forget about all this weird stuff.
He turned his back on the medallion (Even now it was still ticking away despite not even being a clock) and proceeded to head back out into the hallway. Just as he was about to cross the threshold, the door slammed shut in his face.
Tim jumped back in surprise, choking back a scream, some really dumb part of him still not wanting to wake his parents up. He covered his mouth with the palm of his hand and let a harsh breath.
Taped to the door was a little green post-it note with something scrawled on it. He was pretty sure it wasn’t there until just after the door slamming. In elegant handwriting, it simply said, “Look behind you :)”.
Tim, once again displaying his amazing survival skills, did just that.
The medallion, held by an invisible hand, plunged into his chest.
