Tim Drake x Reader - Explosions And Other Saturday Morning Activities - PART 3
PART ONE HERE, PART TWO HERE, and PART FOUR HERE! Title: Explosions And Other Saturday Morning Activities - PART 3 Pairing: Tim Drake x Reader Summary: After saving Red Robin (and finding out his secret identity), you’ve become a semi-public figure in Gotham, especially so once a rumor starts that you and Gotham royalty Tim Drake-Wayne are dating. You’ve garnered a little TOO much attention, apparently. Black Mask kidnaps you and holds you in his warehouse lair. You fight to find a way out, and to get help from the Batfamily and actual authorities before Black Mask gets his hands on you. But that’s not going to be easy... Notes: Canon-typical descriptions of violence and injuries, particularly severe in this part. Words: 5k Taglist: @silentwhispofhope, @ashfromthesol, @oh-no-my-ravioli, @katelynkargol, @rhymeswithrason, @grincheveryday, @ivysfaves
You woke up laying on a concrete floor, hands bound with a zip tie. A week ago, this would have been insane; your biggest problems were paper jams and how to make Ramen fast enough to pack some in your thermos for lunch. Now, though, waking up with your hands tied was just about as weird as discovering Red Robin’s secret identity and saving some superheroes after your office exploded. Sometimes that’s how it goes.
Sometimes your friend George asks you to help him fix his computer and then knocks you unconscious with some sort of gas! George, of all people! Perfectly nice friend of yours. At least, it had seemed. Could you trust anyone? Whatever. Time to focus.
Your instinct was to sit up and figure out where you were, but you kept still. There might be people watching you who are pretty kept unawares that you were awake. From where you laid, you were staring at a blank, cinder block wall. There was a very small window high up in the wall, letting in a bit of light. It was clearly pretty dark outside, you could see, but either from the moon or cityscape, brightness shone through. You closed your eyes and listened. You couldn’t hear… anything, besides your own breathing.
Time to test if anyone was near you. You kept your eyes closed and made a soft sleepy noise, that’s kind of like a moan or grunt. You heard no noise in response. Okay. You moved your body a bit, like you were fidgeting in your sleep. Still nothing—not a person’s footsteps, not the sound of clothes rustling as someone turned. Perfect. You opened your eyes and sat up, looking around quickly.
The wall you’d been looking at was on your right, in front and behind you were totally bare cinder block walls, and on your left was a wall with an ordinary door in it. The room had a higher ceiling than you’d figured a prisoner/holding cell would have. You managed to stand up and scuttled over to the door. You flopped back onto the floor and looked under the crack. There wasn’t much to see. It just looked like there was a plain hallway outside. Not too helpful.
Okay. It seemed a few things were clear. You had been left alone. You were probably just stuck in some sort of random room in Black Mask’s… Lair? Hideout? Uh. Office? This room kind of screamed office building. The next thing that was clear—you needed to get out.
The first part of getting out was getting free of this zip tie. You had seen an infographic at some point… Okay.
(You were going to be fine. It’s okay. It’s okay, right? You need someone to tell you it’s okay, but no one is here. So you tell yourself.)
So, the first way to get out of a zip-tie was if you presented your hands to your captors with your fists clenched and plans facing down, you could unclench and turn your palms inward and slide out of them. Being unconscious meant they secured your wrists tightly, so there was no way to slip through.
There was a second way involving using your fingernail to lift the locking bar on the zip tie, making it easy to, well, un-zip the zip tie, to pull out the cord. But that was easier when you had multiple people. You didn’t have a good enough angle to get a fingernail in the zip tie on your own.
And the third way. A bit more forceful. You tightened the tie as much as possible with your teeth, then put the locking mechanism between your hands. You then lift your arms above your head and yank them down, and back towards your stomach, flaring your arms out like you’re trying to touch your shoulder blades together. The weakest point of a zip tie is the locking mechanism, so the tie usually snaps at the lock as your arms come down.
You pulled the tie tighter with your teeth, made harder because your hands were trembling. Why should you be scared? This was simple.
(Why should you be scared? Because you were in adrenaline mode. Because your brain went totally calm, so you wouldn’t be panicstricken. Because this was now one too many near death experiences and sometimes you gotta shove it all down to make it through alive.)
After it was tightened to where your circulation wasn’t quite cut off, you lifted your shaking hands as far over your head as you could, then slammed them down onto your stomach. The zip tie didn’t break. You felt your heart beat a little faster, a little panic leaking into your mind. No, no, no. Not now. Try again. Arms up, and down as forceful as you could—!
Snap!
The zip tie broke, and your chest flooded with relief. Unfortunately, strange calm that had held back your sheer panic seemed to have broken as well. The task ahead of you now was a lot more daunting. You were going to leave this room somehow. And make it to safety without getting caught and killed. From the window, you knew it was late. You probably had only been unconscious for a few hours. That meant that people might not know you had been kidnapped. Tim might not know...
(GOD! WHY DID TIM SPECIFICALLY POP INTO YOUR HEAD? THIS IS NOT HELPFUL, BRAIN!)
...And if no one knows you’ve been kidnapped, then no one probably knows to come save you. You’re on your own, then. Okay. Alright. You’ve got this. Probably.
Escaping was the goal. The immediate option was go through the tiny window. There were a few issues. For one, the window was very high up in the wall, and the walls were taller than average to begin with. Next, even though the cinder blocks did mean there were little gaps where mortar separated the bricks, you didn’t think you would get much of a grip if you tried to climb. Last, even if somehow you managed to scale it, if you fell off near the top, you’d certainly break a limb—if not your skull.
So, that left going through the door into whatever compound this was and trying to find a way out. Which was a deeply terrifying prospect, but it seemed to be your only option.
You stilled for a moment. What could, feasibly, happen when you went out there? Why were you here in the first place? Obviously, Black Mask knew who you were after you saved Nightwing and Robin, helping to foil his plans. Obviously, he had you kidnapped by a Wayne Enterprises intern who is really a spy for him. Less obvious points—George was an intern long before you got involved with the bat vigilantes. Does that mean he was a spy for different reasons but was ordered to kidnap you after the whole tower attack mess happened? What was his original goal as a spy? And why now did he kidnap you? If you annoyed Black Mask so much, wouldn’t he just... kill you?
A chill ran down your spine. No. No, if Black Mask wanted you dead, George would have killed you in his apartment. He specifically wanted you alive, probably to use you for… something. Make a big spectacle of killing this civilian hero somehow? Torture you to see if you know the identities of the batclan? Torture you just to get revenge for ruining his operation?
The fact that you were alive suggested that perhaps, even if you did break out and were found by Black Mask’s goons, that you might not be killed instantly. You had to be kept alive for something, in all likelihood. So as dangerous as it is to go out of your cell, it probably wouldn’t be fatal. Probably. The fact was, you likely were being held to eventually be killed or tortured. Black Mask didn’t kidnap you just to let you go. So, leaving your cell and running the risk of getting killed was about as safe as waiting to see what happens.
The door was locked, but you picked it with a broken half of the zip tie and a hair pin that you thankfully had decided to use this morning to keep your hair out of your face. You opened the door.
✹ ✹
The complex was surprisingly empty and open. You occasionally heard people coming, but you always managed to duck into a closet or room before they passed to avoid notice.
Your heart seemed to beat so loud you were sure the goons would hear it through the wall, but, thankfully, life decided against resembling an Edgar Allen Poe story and gave you a break. But your hands didn’t stop shaking as you sped through the complex, searching for some way to get out of here.
There were doors everywhere, and almost every one of them was a small armory. You were aware Black Mask was a crime lord, but you now just were realizing he probably is responsible for all the weapon trafficking in Gotham. It seemed were more than enough guns in these storage closets to arm all of the Gotham gangs several times over. Just what the city needs…
Your eyes were peeled for security cameras, glancing just a tad around a corner to see if you could spot any on the ceiling before you went down a new hallway. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any (although you weren’t resting easy with that—surely there were some out of sight).
Less fortunately, you weren’t much closer to getting out of this place. You couldn’t find anything that seemed to lead towards an exit; you were just lost in a maze of armory rooms. After maybe fifteen minutes of wandering, hearing something, and hiding in a closet full of guns, you came across a room with windows looking in. It looked like a security room, with a bunch of numbered monitors showing camera feeds—most not from this level of this building, but other floors and rooms. There were a few on this basement level, and you bet they probably would have shown you at least briefly moving past.
(Damn. You hated being right. Things had been going pretty well for you for a kidnapping… couldn’t they just continue to go right?)
The way the security room was set up, you thought there may be room for you to slide behind the desk and monitors if someone comes and stay there silently for a while. Not a bad place to search. You tried the handle, and when it opens, you slip in.
There was a computer below all the security monitors, but it was locked and you couldn’t create another profile or anything to log on. You then started searching the drawers of the desk in this room. There were a lot of papers (which at a glance seem to be weapon trafficking records), some pens, a couple guns, and, miraculously, in the final drawer, your stuff. Your keys and your phone.
(Never in your life had you been so glad to see your phone. You could imagine your grandparents making some comment about “kids and their phones!” and you almost smiled.)
You grabbed the phone and immediately crawl behind the desk, out of the line of sight of anyone walking through the door or sitting in front of the monitors. You felt very claustrophobic, but it would be very hard for someone to spot you. Your hands shook as you went to Maps and turned on location. You had a decent signal, and it quickly placed you in an abandoned warehouse in Tricorner Yards… it gave an approximate address. You called 911 next, carefully explaining where you were based on the mapping and what had happened to you. The operator sounded a little alarmed but told you to stay as safe as possible until authorities arrived and that they were contacting the police.
You sat for a few moments in silence after you hung up with 911 before you called Tim. It went to his answering machine (which he hadn’t even set up—lame). You expected that, though.
“Hey, Tim. It’s _____. I’m currently at an abandoned warehouse in Tricorner Yards. Got kidnapped by George, another intern. He works for Black Mask. I found a way to break out of my cell, and find my phone. Now I’m just waiting.”
You paused.
“If they do find me soon, they could kill me. Or worse. And I wanted you to know, in case that happens, that I—I—“
(Wait, what are you doing? What are you saying? You barely know this boy! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??)
“I’m thankful for your help. To me and the city. You deserve to know that from someone who really knows you.”
(Okay. That’s fine. General appreciation is okay. Don’t go too fast on anything else, though. Cool? Cool.)
“I’ll hang up now and continue to hide... Goodbye, Tim.”
(Your breath caught on “goodbye.” Was there a point in not going fast and spilling the raw instinct of your heart when death was so close? Probably not, no. Did you have the courage to overcome your fear? Also no.)
You hung up the phone, then quickly realized if you were caught, it would be better to be found without the phone. You deleted the calls from your history and stuck it back in the random drawer it had been inside in this security room.
You stood for a second, running through possibilities in your mind.
So, at some point, someone is going to retrieve you from your cell and realize you’re not there if, you know, you’re not there. Then an active hunt would probably begin for you. But you’ve now put in a call to the authorities who probably would get the GCPD, Batman, and… his associates on the case. If you return to your cell, making it appear you’d never left—they wouldn’t think anyone was coming. Which could be a huge advantage for your rescuers.
The other option was to continue to hide outside the cell. These security cameras for sure caught you walking around, but since no one has come in here, you’re not sure if they would even check it without a good reason. But a manhunt for a missing captive would be a good reason.
Well, then. Seems like going back to your cell is oddly the best thing to do. On the security table, there was a basic map of this building with numbers. Each number corresponded to a feed, revealing all the security camera locations. The map also gave you an idea of how to return to your cell successfully, because you definitely only ended up here by chance.
With that knowledge, you left the office and headed for your cell.
✹ ✹
Tim was on a stakeout of a gang selling drugs in the Financial District when Batman came in over the coms.
“All members of the batfamily in the Gotham Harbor vicinity. Black Mask’s headquarters have been located in an abandoned warehouse in Tricorner. He’s taken a hostage, _____, the girl involved in saving Red Robin and freeing Nightwing and Robin during our most recent encounter with Black Mask. The police are locking down the area for us to go in and rescue _____, before they begin a full raid of the warehouse.”
Tim grappled to the nearest rooftop immediately, stakeout forgotten. “I’m on my way. ETA 10 minutes.”
“Be there in 15,” crackled Dick’s voice in his ear.
“Good. I’ll need you both,” Bruce said. He sounded sincere, which made Tim’s stomach flip even more than it already was.
You were in big trouble if in Black Mask’s hands. And he had good reason to hate you. Not many civilians could claim having a hand in Black Mask’s defeat—you being one of the rare exceptions.
(Tim thought of your kind but scrutinizing eyes. How you looked at him like he was a puzzle you couldn’t quite solve but wanted to spend more time working on, how your calm voice was the only thing Tim could remember from that horrible day in Wayne Tower, how he was looking forward to seeing you in a way he hadn’t been looking forward to seeing anyone for a long time…)
No, no… Tim tried to clear his head as he moved across Gotham. Feelings only make things more complicated. Best to keep it simple...
(You are someone he doesn’t want to lose. You too easily could be one of his many phantoms, his many ghosts. Gone, but always with him, haunting.)
...best to keep it simple.
✹ ✹
You had been sitting in your cell for about a half hour when a man opened the door.
(Returning to your cell was easy, and the door locked itself behind you. The zip tie still had been broken, but you could have done that and not been able to unlock the door. Hopefully no one would know about your excursion and call to the police…)
“Get up, y—where’s your zip tie?” The man was holding a gun but looked much less intimidating with such an incredulous look on his face.
“Not hard to break one of those,” you said, mimicking the motion you used to break it. “But I’m still stuck here, so it didn’t help me do much of anything other than enjoy the circulation to my wrists.”
The guy still looked dumbstruck for a second before he shook his head and walked over to you. You scrambled backward instinctively but he yanked you up by your arm and shoved your body in front of him. You then felt him press the cold barrel of the gun against your back, through the fabric of your shirt.
You inhaled shakily as the guy jabbed the barrel into your spine.
“Walk, kid. Or I fire this thing and you won’t be able to.”
You did as you were told. The guy barked instructions as you moved through the complex. You didn’t pass by the security office, instead you went through a nondescript door that was actually a stairwell. You went up five stories, your legs feeling like jello as you got to the final landing. There was a pretty fancy looking door. Uh oh.
“Excited to meet the boss, girlie?” the man cooed in your ear, leaning forward. You winced. No, actually. You weren’t excited.
You were terrified.
The man grabbed you by the arm and pushed open the door, throwing you onto the floor before you could even look around.
As you struggled to your feet, you noticed three things. First, you were surrounded by men with machine guns. Second, George didn’t appear to be in the vicinity, which kind of sucked. You wanted to be able to glare at him. Third, this was easily the nicest part of this building. It looked like it could be an office in Wayne Tower. There was a fancy wooden desk, huge windows behind it, a skylight splashing the glow of the moon onto the floor. Cushy, modern, classy…
There was one more thing. Black Mask was standing directly in front of you. Your brain was processing that a little slowly for fear of just passing out in dread right there.
He gave you a kick just as you were standing, and you yelped as you fell back down. His laughter echoed like—well, you couldn’t say like a supervillain. He was a supervillain.
(Was this a productive debate to be having over semantics in your head at a time like this? No. Were you having it anyway to try to cope with this situation? Certainly.)
“I can’t believe this thing ruined the Wayne Tower operation,” Black Mask snorted. “Can’t be older than eighteen.”
You frowned. Didn’t like being called a thing. Also, you were nineteen, but even with your general snarkiness, you couldn’t work up the courage to snap back. You didn’t bother to get up this time; you sat on the floor, staring.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m going to do to you, kid.”
He seemed to be waiting for a response, so you said nothing. He narrowed his eyes.
“Quiet one, huh. That’s fine.” Black Mask picked up a knife off his desk. “I’m sure I can get you talking.”
“I—I can talk,” you stammered, and, god, you sounded as scared as you felt. “I just—what can I tell you? I’m just…”
You trailed off, and Black Mask laughed.
“Just what? Not just anything normal after that your little rescue stunt. I am interested in one thing: those pesky secret identities. You were talking with the bat bastards, yeah?”
(Okay. Keep calm. Confusion, bewilderment; you know nothing about the batclan. Don’t overdo it, though.)
“I don’t know their secret identities,” you said, shaking your head, just to sound as fearing and disbelieving as possible. “I barely spoke more than a couple words to Nightwing when I cut him down before I ran out of there. You need a detective or something. Not me, I—I—”
Black Mask kicked you.
“You cut them down with one of their weapons. You didn’t just find that, now, did you? The other one. Red Robin. He gave it to you. And I attacked them through their masks. There’s no way he kept that on and lived. And you are one of the only people who may have seen that boy without the mask on.”
“I don’t know who he is! I just found him nearly passed out with some makeshift bandana with slits over the eyes an–an–and I took the batarang thing from his belt to cut them down. His face was covered in blood, too.”
Another kick. You let out a scream. You thought a rib might be broken. Black Mask leaned down to you.
“I don’t believe you, girl. And even if you refuse to tell me, I’m going to hurt you so badly, and then show your beaten, bloodied corpse so publicly that no one ever will pull a stunt like yours again.” His eyes were red—shining and fixed on you. You could feel the blood leaving your face. This man was not going to kill you, not at first. He was going to put you through so much pain you would wish you were dead, and then some, before he’d finally finish you off.
Your face must have shown this realization, because he began to laugh as he stood back and gestured to you.
“Now she gets it, boys! Now it’s coming to her.”
(Some laugh with him. Some just look at you, guns trained, eyes void of anything. Those guys were scarier than the laughing ones. Much scarier.)
“This isn’t fun. This isn’t a game. This is war, and you’ve just lost, kid.”
He twirled the knife in his hand, approaching you with a cheerful whistle, and you stared, wondering if it would be better to close your eyes or watch what he was about to do to you.
When the skylight crashed in, you had never been so glad to avoid making a decision. It had been probably close to forty minutes since your call to 911 and then Tim—about time!
You were sitting just under the skylight, and, as you heard a crash above you, you instinctively leapt to the right. A smoke pellet went off, and then guns started firing. You were already on the ground and crawled straight ahead, finding Black Mask’s desk and quickly hiding behind it. Hopefully at least you’d be safe from some of the gunfire here.
Then, the window behind you broke apart as someone—from the brief view of their behind you got, you were guessing Nightwing—jumped through it, covering you in a smattering of glass.
(Maybe glass windows aren’t the move if you’re in a villain lair. Or even in an office building that gets targeted by a villain. You’d like to escape one incident from this saga not covered in glass, but you weren’t sure that was going to happen.)
Strangely, that put you over the edge. Silently, tears ran down your cheeks, streaking your face with hot, wet trails that fell onto your shirt. You didn’t make a sound, not that anyone could have heard over the firefight going on behind you and behind the desk—
(You swore that Black Mask was monologuing something at Batman. In the middle of a fire fight. This is why people hate Gotham.)
—but you cried. You’d kept it together through the whole Wayne Tower fiasco, becoming a semi-public figure through association overnight, and through waking up in a cell and sneaking around this complex… but a little glass and something inside you just, well, shattered.
How many near death experiences had you had in the past week? In the attack on Wayne Tower, the window exploding, barely escaping the stairway that collapsed, almost getting electrocuted, rescuing Nightwing and Robin without notice. In this kidnapping attempt, George not killing you in his apartment, evading the detection of Black Mask’s goons as you snuck around, the batfamily swooping in to save the day right before Black Mask was going to torture and kill you.
A week ago, mere seconds before the windows of Wayne Tower exploded and you became the most ridiculously traumatized intern in the history of Gotham, you were a totally normal girl. You had no ties to anything much bigger than yourself; you were just another faceless Gothamite and another faceless college student.
Even though you felt really glad to have met Tim, you just wanted this to be over. To not be in danger, to not be a pseudo-celebrity on Buzzfeed… to just be you. You, peacefully, happily, without fear. You hadn’t felt like yourself much since the attack. You pushed it all down, you tried to make yourself laugh with lightening thoughts to get you through this…
(And those thoughts were doing a pretty good job, you noted.)
But you can’t bottle up feelings and pretend everything is okay when it’s not. Because it was really not. And when things aren’t okay, it is okay to let it out.
So you wept to the sound of gunfire. You almost didn’t notice when a familiar red-clad figure appeared next to you, almost didn’t notice his wrapping an arm around you and grappling out the window. But the warmth of another person, one who you knew and one who you cared for a little bit more than (or a lot more than) the average person, filled you with relief. It pulled you out of the darkness consuming you for just a moment. Tim. Tim.
He was here, and he was going to help you get away from everything. You rested your head on his shoulder as you flew out of the warehouse into the cool Gotham night, clinging tight to him. You were holding so close to him first because you were VERY high up in the sky, which was slightly terrifying and mesmerizing, but also because you needed some physical comfort and Tim could give it to you.
It was probably only a couple minutes you spent getting a bit of distance from the warehouse district, but the tranquility felt like hours compared to the chaos of the last few minutes.
When you finally landed on the ground, you were standing in front of a police barricade blocking off a few streets that led to Black Mask’s headquarters. There were cops waiting nearby an ambulance who looked ready to wrap you in a blanket and clean you up, which would definitely be appreciated. But you couldn’t let go of Tim’s arm.
Tim—Red Robin—finally spoke to you as he watched you look at the police.
“I thought you might need time to just let it out there, but are you alright? Did he do anything to you?”
You opened your mouth to speak, then got choked up. Tim took your hands, gave them a squeeze, and you finally found your words, swallowing back the emotion.
“No, he was about to do—do something when you guys came in. I’m fine, other than the cuts from the glass. I just—I—”
You thought you might start to cry again, but Tim pulled you into a hug. He rubbed your back in circles and softly whispered “you’re safe” and “don’t worry” a few times. You stood like that a while, not actually crying anymore but feeling that wave of emotion run through you again. When you parted, you found it in you to smile at him.
“I still want dinner with your family, you know,” you whispered.
He smiled back. “Oh, I was planning on it.”
“You should probably get back to… your fellow vigilantes. I don’t want you to be unable to help because of me,” you said.
“It’s not just about taking out the bad guys, _____,” Tim replied quietly, “It’s about saving people. If you need me here, I’ll stay as long as you want.”
(“Stay forever” seems like an excessive response to that offer, but your brain supplied it readily.)
You hugged him again, for a little longer than was necessary, then stepped back. “Go. They’ll need you. I’m going to see you soon, anyway.”
Tim stared at you for just a second. That look in his eyes… You didn’t want to be overoptimistic about anything.
(Was he feeling what you were feeling? Was this real? Beyond the inside of your head and heart?)
Then Tim nodded, and with that Red Robin zoomed away with a shot off his grapple gun.
You walked up closer to the GCPD barricade and were immediately escorted to the ambulance where they began to clean and wrap up the lacerations from the window exploding at you. They spoke softly to you and let you know that things were going to be alright, and that they were going to keep you safe and protected. You appreciated it all, but your heart wasn't in it. It was somewhere else entirely—swinging through the cityscape with a boy dressed in red and black. The thought tugged a gentle smile across your lips. You closed your eyes.
(UPDATE: PART FOUR IS HERE!) (THERE WILL BE A PART 4!! WHICH WILL BE THE LAST PART!!! I’ve already written it. It is all done. I just have to edit it...! And, I promise, it’s a lot lighter than this chapter. What’s going to happen between you and Tim? Is anything going to happen? You’ll see! Thank you all for reading!! I’ve gotten so many wonderful comments and asks encouraging and thanking me for this fic, and it makes my heart so full. I’m so glad people have enjoyed this story! I hope you’ll stick around for the final part!! Let me know if you would like me to add you to the tag list! ˘◡˘ )