Something hard and heavy rubbed insistently into his sternum.
“Tim, you’ve got to wake up.”
The air was so dry it hurt to inhale. Tim gasped against aching ribs as the edges of unconsciousness began to dissolve away. His right side was bathed in an inescapable scorching heat. An attempt to scoot away from it was aborted when it awoke a dozen sharp pains across his body, lit all at once. His breath hitched.
“That’s it.” The grating at his sternum stopped. Instead, cool hands cupped his cheeks. “Come on, Tim. Wake up.”
Tim tried to open his eyes, but it was so bright and hot he had to shut them again immediately. Against the inside of his eyelids, he could still see the blurry negative of a worried face.
“Dick?” Tim’s voice barely came out as a croak. When he licked his lips with his dry tongue, he tasted iron and salt.
“Come on,” Dick repeated, instead of answering. “You’ve got to get out of here.” There was a sense of urgency in his tone that Tim was unable to grasp.
“’S hot,” he muttered.
A strangled laugh. “That’s the fire.”
The heat at his side felt more aggressive at the revelation. “Oh,” was all the reaction Tim managed to summon.
“So you need to get up,” Dick prompted. “Come on, up on your feet.”
Tim groaned again and braced himself. He had to first untangle himself from the heavy thing draped over him, and then he was able to reach blindly for Dick’s hand to help him roll to his side. It exposed his back to the heat instead, and he had the inane thought he understood the plight of a rotisserie chicken.
“Up,” Dick commanded.
The tone made Tim jump. “’m up.” Pushing to a kneeling position made his head ring. There was something wet dripping down his temple. “I’m bleeding.”
“I know. But there isn’t much time.” Strong arms wound beneath his and tugged, forcing him into a higher elevation.
The air was thicker here, and it stung in his chest, making him cough. He tried again to open his eyes, but they watered desperately against the smoke and heat. Trying to wipe it away only smeared grit across his face.
“Can’t see,” Tim said, too out of it to be ashamed of his whimper.
“Just follow me.” Dick weaved himself under Tim’s shoulder for support. “Can you walk?”
In answer, Tim took a shuffling step forward. Something in his shin screamed at the weight, and he would have fallen down again if it weren’t for Dick’s support.
“That’s okay, that’s okay,” Dick muttered, voice tight. “Take it slow.”
Tim’s next step crunched broken glass underfoot. His next sent something small and metallic skittering away. Dick coached him over a large piece of rubble, then around the next when it proved too high. Tim could not place where he was, or what had happened. His world narrowed down to the heat at his back, the obstacles at his feat, and the quiet encouragement in his ear.
The whispers were soon drowned out by piercing sirens and flashing red-blue lights, a cacophony that sent Tim’s head spinning. His temple throbbed. His lungs burned. His leg felt like it had snapped in half. If he could just take a break—
Dick tapped his shoulder, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Just a few more steps. Almost there.”
Tim nodded, dazed and overwhelmed. With gargantuan effort, he took those final steps. They must have passed a threshold, because a breeze carried the smoke away and he was able to take his first clear breath in what felt like years.
“You made it,” Dick sighed. There was something in his tone that Tim couldn’t place. He would worry about it later, when he could think straight.
“I need to sit.”
Dick gently lowered him to the ground. Asphalt. Warm. Road?
When Tim opened his eyes again, it was long enough to make out a hazy Gotham street and the swarm of people and emergency vehicles around them.
A team was already approaching him. “Hey, kid!”
Dick squeezed his shoulder. “The medics will take care of you from here.”
Tim was too slow to grip his hand before it disappeared. He turned around to see Dick walking away. “Wait!” Tim coughed. “Don’t leave.”
Dick stopped long enough to give him a small smile.
And then the medic was gripping his chin, turning his head away to shine a pen light in his eyes. She said something, but Tim couldn’t parse the speech from the noise. Her partner pressed an oxygen mask to his face, and Tim sucked in gratefully. When he searched the crowd for Dick again, he couldn’t find him.
The next hours were a blur of people and machinery and tests. An ambulance ride to the emergency room, then admittance to the hospital. Bruce met him there, expression haggard. Eyes bloodshot. His grip around Tim’s hand was strong but gentle.
Tim’s voice was still rough from the smoke when he asked, “Where’s Dick?” He had looked well enough when he’d left him.
Bruce’s face shuddered, lips quivering. He pressed his eyes shut and back open, and they were glistening. “Dick didn’t make it.”
Tim stared, uncomprehending. “What?”
Bruce brushed Tim’s hair back. The hand around Tim’s squeezed. “Drunk driver. The truck went straight through the building. Dick was hit first.”
He remembered strong arms under his. The order to get up. Walking through the heat. “That doesn’t make sense. He was there.”
Bruce shook his head. “The coroner said—” he cleared his throat. “Died on impact. No pain.”
Tim remembered arms wrapping around him, cushioning the impact. Or maybe he didn’t.
For Whumptober, day 5: "My panic's at the ceiling, but I'm face down on the carpet."
When intruders break into the manor, they aren't interested in Wayne money. The mercenaries find Tim.
Damian witnesses everything from where he's hidden under the bed.
Read on Ao3
“Titus, no.”
Damian cursed quietly as the dog ignored his order, nosing its way through the cracked bedroom door. He took a took breath to summon from his well of patience before following him inside.
Upon his entrance, Damian discovered that Alfred was lounging on Timothy’s bed. The cat’s paw was stretched out in front of it, a splint wrapped tightly around the leg it had injured chasing a mouse last week. Nobody had dared to make the obvious comparison between the cat and Damian’s own casted leg. At least, not to his face.
Titus sat next to Tim, tail thumping as Timothy absently scratched behind his ears. Traitor. The older boy looked up at his entrance. “Damian.” Timothy was slouched in the chair by his desk, a laptop screen blinking code at his elbow. There was a single candy wrapper discarded on the desk’s surface; it was just the beginning of the project. “I don’t have time to play right now. I’ve got to figure out what caused the blip in our security system last week.”
“Tt.” Damian held his leash aloft. “We were supposed to be going on a walk.” Despite his emphasis, only Titus’s ears flicked at the familiar word. Still not enough to dislodge him from his perch.
“I was talking to Titus,” Timothy deadpanned. “I know better than to assume you would do such childish things.” His voice rose on the last words until they were squeaky.
“I do not sound like that!”
Tim rocked his hand and head in tandem, showing his disagreement. But before Damian could defend himself, Timothy raised a single eyebrow at him. “Besides, a walk? Like that? At this time of night?”
Damian glared. “It is barely past twenty hours. And I can walk.” He stomped his casted foot, just to make a point, and then bit his tongue to keep his face from revealing how much the movement had hurt.
“Yeah, uh-huh.” Tim nodded. “Let me guess: you once scaled Mount Everest with a broken leg and both arms tied behind your back, so walking on a shattered ankle is really nothing in comparison.” He turned his attention back to Titus, patting him condescendingly on the head. “You’re a good dog, aren’t you? Keeping your little master safe from himself?”
Damian growled in irritation. “Titus, come here.”
Titus zipped back to him and heeled at Damian’s side like he hadn’t just interfered with Damian’s plans. He’d been forced to coddle his broken ankle for two days already, and that was long enough. Spending one more day lounging about the manor was sure to make him snap. With an assertive click, he snapped the end of the leash to Titus’s collar. “I will return.”
With the reintroduction of the leash, Titus’s nose was pointed straight back toward the door with intense focus. Damian nudged it open, but before he could take a step out, a hand caught his shoulder.
“You know I can’t actually let you go on a walk, right?” Timothy sighed. “Alfred asked me to keep an eye on you.”
Damian shook the offending hand off his shoulder. “You can observe from the window, if you must.”
Timothy made an aborted sound of frustration. “Alfred also told you to listen to me. He specifically asked me not to let you do anything that could aggravate your ankle. Walking counts.”
“I can walk—”
Titus lunged out the door without warning.
Damian’s grip on the leash yanked him to the floor. He hissed when his leg made impact at an odd angle, his cast doing nothing to cushion to fall. Privately, he regretted his decision to wean himself off his pain medications early.
“Are you okay?” Timothy asked.
Damian’s cheeks began to heat. “I am fine. You can’t tell me what to—”
“Wait.”
“Titus," Damian demanded. “Come here.” But the dog had shot down the hallway and out of sight, the leash trailing behind him. He even barked. Father must not have been getting him adequate exercise, if this was his reaction to the prospect of a walk with Damian.
“Did you hear something?”
“TT. Hearing things—”
“Shut up.”
Damian took in a breath to argue, but refrained when Timothy’s tone registered. It was clipped, tight, the way it was when he was on patrol. Damian’s fingers clenched around nothing. He held his breath to listen for movement and—
A creak, on the manor’s stairway, followed by an unmistakable footstep.
Titus barked: once, twice. A yelp.
Quiet.
Tim sucked in a breath, somewhere behind him. “Hide,” he whispered. He didn’t give Damian a chance to respond, just shoved at him until he slid along the floor and was engulfed completely by the bed’s dust cover.
Damian bit his tongue at the pressure against his broken ankle. It throbbed in time with his heartbeat, the pain referring all the way up his thigh. Still, he reached blindly around himself to search for a weapon. Timothy kept his room messy enough; he was bound to find something that could be used in his surprise attack.
Timothy crept toward the lock on his bedroom door.
He didn’t make it.
The door swung open on silent hinges just as Tim’s fingers brushed the doorknob. Tim rushed forward, throwing his weight against the door. But instead of slamming shut, the door stopped around the toe of a boot wedged into its opening.
“I’ve got one!” a deep voice bellowed, from the hallway.
Timothy’s eyes widened as he and Damian put the pieces together.
They were dealing with more than one intruder.
The intruders weren’t worried about stealth.
And they were looking for people.
Not a moment later, there was a bang behind Tim. The heavy oak door shook, bouncing Tim’s weight off and back again.
“Little pig, little pig,” sang the same deep voice from before. “Let me come in.”
Tim made eye contact with Damian and shook his head sharply, flashing the hand signal for ‘Hide. Await signal.’
Damian glared. His hand wrapped around a baseball; he could launch it from his hiding spot and trip someone later. Or maybe throw it with enough force to knock someone out (unlikely, from his angle.)
But before he could wriggle his hands into view to respond, the door jumped again. It threw Tim forward, and a leather glove snapped through the crack and wrapped tight around his upper arm with eerie accuracy.
Tim dropped his weight and twisted, trying to dislodge the hold. But the door swung open further, and a second hand looped under Tim’s other shoulder and reeled him in and up.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Tim asked, every bit the breathless socialite an intruder would expect. It was a trained script they had all practiced, to ascertain whether intruders were there for Waynes or vigilantes. His bare feet slammed down onto work boots ineffectively.
Behind Tim stood a large man dressed in denim jeans, a brown Carhart jacket, and black beanie. A bandana covered the bottom half of his face, but his eyes were visible. They sparkled with malicious glee. “Who are you, is the better question.”
He marched Tim deeper into the room. Three more men, also with their faces covered by bandanas, followed the first one through the door. Damian’s heart dropped as he clocked the gear on them: rope, knives, a cattle prod, glocks. Duffel bags with even more gear.
This was not a robbery.
Damian’s hand wrapped tighter around his baseball as he searched for an exit. Two men stood between himself and the door. One of the windows was free, but he did not know whether he could make it quickly enough, with his leg. They would have to fight.
“I’m nobody,” Tim lied. “A house sitter.”
The tall man laughed, his grip on Tim squeezing tight enough to make him wince. “You’re a liar, is what you are.” He shifted his grip to Tim’s neck and hauled him up further. Tim’s toes barely brushed the floor. “Try that again.”
Tim thrashed in the grip. His voice was strangled when he demanded, “Let go.”
The man cocked his head toward one of his lackeys. “Get a photo. Verify his identity.”
A chill ran down Damian’s spine at the words. One of the men pulled a cheap burner phone from his back pocket, and a moment later there was a bright flash. “Timothy Drake Wayne,” the second man announced. Damian couldn’t see the phone, to tell whether he was comparing photos to a target he’d been sent, using facial recognition software, or communicating directly with whoever had hired them.
Damian wished Tim would make eye contact, so Damian could impress upon him to just fight. Damian had fought with worse injuries. But the older boy stubbornly refused to look in his direction. He even strained to see backward, around the man’s bulk. “Help! Hel—”
He was silenced when a hand clapped over his mouth. The tall man looked much less amused now. “Is there anybody else home?”
When Tim only glared, the man shook him, as though he were a vending machine whose answer would fall out if it were just jostled loose. “Tell me!”
Tim shook his head.
“I don’t believe you,” the man hissed. He pulled Tim in tighter to himself as he turned back to the other men. “Search the rest of the house. Any sign of life, you report back to me.”
The other men filed out of the room, shutting the door behind them. Perfect. Damian could attack while there were fewer enemies, and then he and Drake could pick off their foes one-by-one.
Something soft lightly brushed against the inside of one of Damian’s legs. Startled, he quietly shifted until he could see the source.
Alfred stared at him with wide eyes, back hunched and tail fluffy. He was shaking, body tucked between Damian’s legs. He was curled into a tight loaf, except for his injured leg, which was stuck out in front of him in a thick, white cast.
Damian looked at the shut door. Back at Alfred. The cat was an excellent predator, but would not be able to run in his condition. Any movement Damian made would draw attention to the injured pet. These men did not seem beyond maiming an animal.
Damian had seen enough of that, in his life.
He scooted back further, instead, guarding Alfred. Timothy was far from defenseless. He had told Damian to wait for his signal. And, as much as he wanted to ignore it, Damian’s broken ankle was a problem. Even if he managed to drag himself from beneath the bed without being noticed, his injury prevented both speed and stealth. He was a liability.
Tim’s best bet was to escape, draw attention away from the room.
A low yelp of pain drew his attention back to Timothy. He and the man holding him were close enough to the bed that he couldn’t see above their knees, but he could confirm that Tim had been lowered back to his feet, at least.
“Did you just try to bite me?”
Tim spat out a chunk of leather glove. In the next heart beat, he was shoved to the floor. Damian scanned him for any injuries. His neck was already reddened from being choked, and his upper arm was sure to bruise. Pure determination radiated from Tim’s expression. Determination, and loathing. And, when the man stepped over him, fear.
He did not look in Damian’s direction.
“Who were you talking to?”
Tim tried to roll over, but a large boot dropped onto the center of his back, trapping him. “Nobody,” Tim spat. “It’s just me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I was talking to my dog. We were going to go on a walk.”
The man grunted, a sound like he still didn’t totally believe Tim. “If my men find someone else, you’ll regret lying to me.” Casually, the man leaned down to scoop up one of Tim’s arms, wrenching it high behind his back. The angle was deep enough Tim’s face twisted in pain. “What about that little brother of yours? Damian? Where is he?”
“He’s not here.”
“He’s supposed to be here.”
Tim’s face spasmed at the revelation, but his voice remained steady. “I pawned him off. He’s at a friend’s house.”
The man made a loud, tight noise, like a buzzer ringing. A moment later, there was a distinct snap.
Tim hissed, flinching in the man’s hold.
Unperturbed by Tim’s struggles, the man continued. “You’ve got nine more tries. Where is the little one?”
“I told you,” Tim growled. “Wait! Wait—” Another snap. “Listen,” Tim gasped. “I know where the safes are, I can give you the codes. What are you being paid? My dad can double it.”
The man chuckled and leaned forward, low enough that Damian could make out his profile. “I’m not interested in your money.”
With slow cruelty, he pushed Tim’s arm up further. Tim tried to curl his back, but the boot sank down hard enough to press air out of Tim’s lungs.
“St—stop,” Tim gasped, and Damian could hear an edge of real pain there. “You’re going to—”
With a twist, Tim’s shoulder gave a loud pop.
A strangled cry ripped out of Tim’s clenched teeth. In the next second, he moaned, as his arm was dropped back to his side. Even from his angle, Damian could tell the shoulder was all wrong, sitting at an odd angle. Tim’s pinky and ring finger were also twisted and uneven. Broken.
The tall man dropped to a kneel so he could speak directly into Tim’s ear. “This will go so much easier for you if you just let it happen.”
Tim panted, as much a consequence of pain as adrenaline. “Fuck you.”
Instead of a reprimand, the man patted Tim’s cheek in a demeaning manner. “Maybe later,” he hummed.
From Damian’s angle, he got a perfect view of the blood draining from Tim’s face.
Still, Tim’s broken fingers twitched, out of the tall man’s line of sight. “Hide.”
The door opened again without warning, and the three men stumbled back inside. They wore matching black leather work boots, scuffed at the toes and dull with use. One man had a pronounced pronation worn deep into his treads.
“Ah,” one of the men complained. “You got started without us?”
The tall man didn’t rise from his kneel, but he did finally lean away from Tim’s face. “Just a warmup. What did you find?”
“We checked every room,” the whiner said. He was a broad man with a brawler’s build. “Nobody else is here.”
“Did you find the little one’s room? Are you sure there were no signs of him?”
“Yeah, we found it. Clean as a whistle. No way the kid’s home.”
The tall man grabbed a handful of Tim’s hair and craned his neck back so he could croon in his ear. “Is that right? You are the only one home tonight?”
Tim grit his teeth and didn’t reply.
The tall man took that as confirmation. “I’d say I’m sorry about the arm, but that’d be a lie.” He reached for Tim’s wrists, and in that split moment of distraction, Tim sprang into action.
Tim bucked, and the tall man was leaning low enough that Tim’s shoulders rammed into his nose.
The man squeaked, jolting backward as blood began to gush down his face. “You little fucker!” He reached for the boy, but Tim was no longer on the floor.
In the distraction, Tim had extracted himself, his right arm hanging limply from its socket like a broken doll. He pulled the skateboard from beneath his bed and rolled it under the oncoming tread of the next closest intruder, who slipped over it and on top of the tall man on the floor.
And then Tim was on his feet, two grown men between him and the door. Easy.
Damian didn’t see what happened next, because a large, leather-bound hand darted under the dust skirt, narrowly missing Damian’s outstretched fingers. The hand searched blindly along the floor, fingers skimming the rug.
Alfred started to hiss a warning, but Damian shoved his hand inside the cat’s mouth, letting teeth sink into his fingers so it muffled any sounds. He pressed backward, as quickly as he dared without risking noise.
The air was split by a loud, electric crack, and a resounding thump.
The hand retreated, but it only left Damian with the view of Tim’s prone, convulsing body, a cattle prod pressed into his clavicle.
He should have been able to dodge that.
Which meant he let them.
When the electric current let up, Tim still twitched, panting. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and stained his teeth.
The tall man, voice stuffy from his bleeding nose, laughed. “Oh, good. I like it when they have a little bite in them.” He drew his foot back and released his steel toes into Tim’s side, eliciting a dull cracking noise and another desperate gasp for air.
Before Tim could recover, the men were all over him. Damian’s view was blocked except for the backs of jackets. A whimper came from somewhere in the middle of the cluster. And then they were standing, all four of them, hoisting Tim from the floor like he weighed nothing. They frog marched him toward the bed and threw him on top of it.
The mattress bounced under his weight. Tim’s breaths were audible. Damian was no longer certain it was just because of the exertion.
“Rocket,” the tall man asked. His voice was nasally, due to the broken nose. “You got the camera?”
Damian practically held his breath as the four pairs of boots surrounded the three open sides of the bed. He curled tighter around Alfred, trying to tuck him further out of reach.
“Yeah, I got it,” someone replied.
“Good.” The tone dropped into a pitch that sent a chill down Damian’s spine. “Alright, kid.”
Tim gasped in sudden pain; the bed creaked with his jerk.
“How long on the extraction?” Dick whispered into his comm. He scanned the floor below for an escape route. Most of the workers had convened in the area nearest the closet, leaving only two stragglers on the other side of the boat, their backs turned to him.
“Four minutes,” Alfred immediately responded.
Four minutes. Dick could last four minutes.
“I think Alfred’s trying to kill me.”
Bruce paused, coffee mug halfway to his mouth. He peeled his focus away from his phone to look at Tim with concern. “What?”
“The cat,” Tim clarified. Maybe he should have strategized his entrance, so he didn’t sound so crazy. He took a breath, which stretched into a yawn, and settled his posture to try again. “I think Damian’s cat is trying to murder me.”
This one's too long to post on a mobile app with an unreliable "read more," so you're just getting the link to read it on Ao3
Damian blinked at the low, flat ceiling of his new bedroom. The dim haze of the night’s city lights oozed around the edges of his closed curtains and smeared across its surface, where they tangled with the warm glow of Damian’s bird lamp. The colors made Damian’s chest ache with the memories of patrolling the rooftops.
He wouldn’t patrol again. The choices he made were irredeemable, and his injuries made him too weak. Even Richard had referred to him as “another Michael Heymann,” when he thought Damian wasn’t listening.
But being in the center of Gotham provided a different kind of opportunity. Maybe he couldn’t be trusted to enact justice for civilians, but Richard still needed backup during patrol. Damian’s contraband comm unit had made it through the move undetected. Each night Batman went out, Damian listened.
Bruce was hit with the thought mid-chuckle, a forkful of birthday cake halfway to his mouth.
Dick paused in his story, ever the perceptive one. He studied Bruce just a moment, the gray at his temples making the blue of his eyes even brighter. “Everything okay?”
Bruce looked around the lawn again with fresh eyes. Tim, Barbara, Duke, and their partners were sitting at the other picnic table under the canopy, cake all-but-forgotten in lieu of whatever they were talking about.
Jason ran by with a small child on his back – it was Damian’s youngest, and Jason had sworn after their last family outing that he wouldn’t attempt piggy-back rides again, but clearly the little girl had won him over with her doe eyes. They were chased by a puppy. Scamp, if he remembered correctly.
Members of the Justice League were scattered amongst the partygoers. Clark and Lois kicked a soccer ball with some of Bruce’s older grandchildren. Jim Gordon tapped his cane against his knee as Wally recounted an old speedster story.
As if she could feel his eyes on her, Cassandra looked up from her conversation with Damian, Stephanie, and Wonder Woman. She searched him a moment, before smiling softly at him. She had laugh lines around her eyes now, and Bruce cherished the sight of them.
Somewhere between losing his parents and becoming a vigilante, he had given up the idea of a future for himself. Familiar with contingency plans, he had mentally hedged his promises with “if I make it that long.”
He always thought he would die alone in the dark.
“Bruce?” Dick repeated, next to him. He would probably be more worried, if Bruce hadn’t begun to lose his hearing years ago.
The banner strung across the canopy read, Happy 82nd birthday! Someone had added ‘you old fart’ to the end with a marker.
“Yes,” Bruce answered, and found that he meant it. “Everything is okay.”
Tim’s stomach curled with trepidation as the man called “Rocket” set up a camera and tripod at the foot of the bed. He was still shaky from being electrocuted; his muscles ached and twitched in turn. His shoulder burned, a white-hot flash of pain that overshadowed even his broken fingers.
His grand plan to draw them out of the room had failed. He was running out of options.
“Hold him still,” the leader ordered. “Make sure he doesn’t try to run again.”
Tim woke up slowly, the dregs of whatever he’d been drugged with clinging to his consciousness like static. He became aware of his wrists, first, restrained together with handcuffs warmed from use. Then, the thin sheet covering him. It reminded him of a hospital sheet, clinical and perfunctory.
When he finally was able to coax his vision to focus, he found himself in a cell. The wall closest to the cot he lay on was bare rock, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Across from it was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Tim knew it was probably a window; that he was being observed.
But by who.
He wasn’t injured. That much was a surprise; he normally hurt after he’d been taken. Examining his arms revealed no bruises but the ones he’d already had; the scrapes and cuts on his legs were healing, obviously several days old. There was an IV port in his elbow, which Tim couldn’t reach with his hands cuffed. Nothing was attached to it, at least not right now, but the thought alone of what it could have been used for made his stomach twist with unease.
His dad had warned him about this kind of scenario, about being taken and observed and drugged to the gills. At least Tim knew what to expect. A nervous laugh bubbled out of his mouth at the thought.
He spotted speakers, in the ceiling high above him.
“Hello?” he called to them, angling his face toward the mirrors as well. “Is somebody watching? I didn’t prepare my monologue.”
He jumped when the speakers crackled to life. The voice that spoke through it was low and gravelly, but that could have just been poor speaker quality. “Tim.”
Tim blinked. “You know my name.” It was a statement, not a question, and confirmed something for him: this was a targeted attack. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had nabbed him to try to get to his dad. “Then you know who my dad is. He’ll come looking for me. You’ll be sorry.”
There was quiet murmuring on the other side of the glass. Were there two people watching?
“Who are you?” Tim asked. “What do you want?”
A second voice, lighter than the first, but just as serious, called over the speakers. “How much do you remember?”
“I remember plenty,” Tim lied. There were gaps, but it was probably whatever drug he’d been given. The two men had been wearing all black, with some kind of logo on the chest. Tim hadn’t been able to make it out before they were shoving him into the back of an unmarked car. “You were following me.”
There was a hum, but it wasn’t one of confirmation. Just mild surprise, like Tim was a little mouse that had learned how to roll over. “How do you feel?”
“Bored, mostly,” he responded truthfully. He eyed the contents of his cell. There was a little toilet in the corner, and a tray with food by the door. Hm. “How long until you make your demands and let me go home?”
There was a strangled groan over the speaker. Tim eyed the mirrors curiously, wondering who had made that noise and why. Was it something he’d said? His dad always complained that his jokes weren’t funny, but Tim hadn’t even been trying this time.
“You are home.”
Tim met his own confused gaze in the mirror. “No I’m not.” When that didn’t get a response, another nervous laugh burst from his chest. What kind of trick was this supposed to be? Tim couldn’t figure out the punchline. “This isn’t my home,” he repeated, turning his back to the mirror. He hated seeing the uncertainty there.
But the next sound didn’t come from the speaker. There was a hiss, and Tim turned in time to see a panel of mirror sliding back into place. A large man stood just inside the entrance. He wore loose-fitting black clothes, and had several day’s worth of scruff growing on his chin. His eyes were hollow.
Tim scooted back on his cot as the man approached. The man, seeing this, hesitated, still several feet away. At least this kidnapper respected personal boundaries.
“Who are you?” Tim repeated. He bit his tongue against another giggle. Nerves made them worse. His eyes strayed to the place where there had been a door, a moment ago. He wondered if the other man was still watching. “What do you want?”
The man ran a hand through his dark hair. He looked tired. “We’re looking for your—” he grimaced, as though the next word pained him “—dad.”
Tim sat up straighter at the information. This scenario, he had practiced. “Why should I tell you where he is?”
Moment of truth. Tim waited for the threats, for the drugs, for the interrogation. But the man only sighed. “Because he’s dangerous.”
Tim laughed, but this time it was with humor. The man flinched at the sound. “Duh,” Tim snickered. “That’s why you kidnapped me to get information.”
“Tim,” the man said, eyes serious. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Then let me go home,” Tim shot back, just as serious now. He let the tension hang a moment, before relaxing his posture. “But that’s not how you play the game, is it?”
“This isn’t a game,” the man growled.
“Sure it is,” Tim grinned. “You kidnap me, maybe knock me around a little. Dad comes to rescue me, definitely knocks you around a lot. I prefer the waltz, but this dance is familiar enough.” Tim showed off his IV port. “What was this? Tranqs? Heroine? Xylazine?”
“You were dehydrated,” the man growled.
Tim guffawed. Of course he was dehydrated, he’d been in time-out. “My dad always says he likes me as dry as my sense of humor.”
“He hurt you.”
Tim shook his head, still smiling. “Dad doesn’t hurt me.”
The man stepped to the side, revealing Tim’s reflection laughing back at him. “What about your face?” he asked.
Tim gazed back at himself, transfixed by his own pale complexion. There were tears in his eyes from laughing too hard. “He made me happy,” he said, raising his hands so he could trace a finger across each cheek. The scars were healing nicely, thick and red and rigid. “I used to be so sad, but dad fixed me.”
The man let out a heavy breath. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” he said to the mirror.
The door hissed as it opened, and Tim giggled at the man’s retreating back.
