Chapter Text
Tim woke up like he went out; cold. An experience that he would put solidly in the ‘deeply unpleasant’ category.
The cold was no longer a gentle numbing kind of chill that rested like a balm atop his injuries, instead it was a burning cold.
His fingers and toes ached something awful, it honestly felt kind of like when you slam your fingers in a drawer, but like if he didn’t have skin and just slammed his delicate finger bones in a drawer without that nice padding of flesh to muffle the sheer impact.
His head was pounding too, the cold making his eyes throb.
With a frankly ridiculous amount of effort Tim was able to draw his stiff aching limbs underneath him so that he could haul himself to his feet. He swayed, wobbling like a baby deer fresh out of the womb, which was really embarrassing and he was super glad that he was, in fact, alone in the strange alley way and no one saw him. His feet were going all pins-and-needles on him which was really concerning, honestly, but he was going to have to worry about that in a couple minutes, when he could, ya know, walk. Which he kind of couldn’t at the moment. Probably a lack of effort thing, he was going to try to walk harder. That would definitely work. At the very least it would make him feel slightly less pathetic. Tim was so glad no one was in that alley way, he’d never live down literally anyone seeing him like this.
Tim shuffled one cold, pale foot forward, balancing precariously on it while he dragged the other one into place beside it. He’d never thought that hard about walking, but oh boy, did that shit take some serious coordination. Coordination that he should have. He shuffled forward another step, stuttering feet silent on the snow.
The whole world was eerily quiet, the only sound he was picking up was a faint, high pitched ringing, that he was like ninety percent sure was coming from inside his head.
Tim really hoped he wasn’t concussed on top of everything else, that would really, super-mega suck. Didn’t his life already suck enough? Was there no satiating the universe's appetite for his suffering– obviously not. He was going to stop that line of thinking in its tracks, though, it felt a little too close to ‘things can’t get any worse’ and he was not in the business of purposely inviting trouble into his life (Tim was a bold-faced liar).
Focus.
Ducks in a line, Drake.
He needed to walk, with all the grace and precision currently available to him– not much– to the cold, gaping mouth of the alley he was in. And then…uh, probably get like an antiseptic and sweatshirt not covered in the blood of hundreds. Maybe a bottle of water and a handful of cash too.
Okay. Plan: walk out of the alley, acquire not-bloody clothes, acquire medical supplies, acquire water, acquire money, get the hell out of dodge– or maybe to dodge cause he was trying to get to Gotham and all.
Whatever.
Semantics.
Either way, Tim now had a plan, sort of, it was really more of a list of his goals, but it was a good starting place and made him feel a little more steady. Figuratively. He was, despite his brand new mental checklist, still lacking an astounding and embarrassing amount of coordination.
Tim swayed precariously from side to side, staggering and stuttering forward. It hurt. A lot. But also everything hurt, so he wasn’t going to deign it with any particular attention. His feet weren’t special, his arms and hands, and fingers, and throat and head, and shoulders, and literally every single one of his bones also hurt. So they could just shut up and deal, because they weren’t about to get any special treatment from him. No sir.
Despite his slow, stumbling pace, he did eventually make it to the alley’s mouth. Wonderful. That was step number one on his mental checklist complete.
Hell yeah. He did that.
Walking like eight feet, massive fucking accomplishment.
Since that was done and he no longer had to focus literally all of his energy into putting one foot in front of the other thanks to his new best friend– the wall– Tim decided it was probably about time he did some basic recon in the form of actually looking at his surroundings. He lolled his head against the rough stone of his new best friend– the wall– gazing out into the world in front of him.
It was dark out, not the ‘early morning' kind of dark he remembered falling asleep to, but like the ‘it’s definitely the middle of the night’ kind of dark. So he’d been out for a while. Over twelve hours, for sure. If he were to guess, Tim would put his little nap somewhere between sixteen and twenty hours.
Which. Uh. Not great. But we cope.
Other than the fact that it was the middle of the damn night, the streets– at least the one he was looking at– appeared to be empty. There were a few little storefronts scattered around, closed for the day, obviously. But he was more interested in the signage than the stores themselves, because the signage revealed one vital piece of information: where the fuck he was.
Broadly speaking.
He couldn’t read shit from the mouth of the alley, though, as it was on the other side of the street and Tim was currently not at his best. Which put a little bit of a hitch in his giddy-up. But, theoretically, the sign propped up in the store window thirty feet away should tell him what country he was in. Or at the very least what continent. And all he had to do was either magically gain the ability of supervision or walk across that one, quiet, street.
Tim hated everything.
But he also needed to know where the fuck he was at.
One foot in front of the other, Tim.
Ducks in a row.
Walking across that little street was genuinely one of the top three worst things that had happened to him that day. Two days? Three? The time frame was a little unclear, honestly, he should work that out at some point. Not now, though, he had other things to do right now. Notably not passing out from pain and also reading. You know, hard shit.
Now that he was no longer thirty feet away, Tim could definitely tell that that sign was in…a language. And that it read ‘Colette’s Bookshop’. Oh boy. His brain was a little deep fried, huh, which was seriously not helpful. His ducks were not in a row about this. He could read it, though, so that narrowed it down a little. Not much, Tim was very-lingual. Something that absolutely should not have been a weakness, but at the moment all his mind was processing was that he could read whatever the fuck language that sign was in.
Ugh. Now, because his fried ass brain wasn’t going to give him the name of a language, he was going to have to use context clues. Fan-fucking-tastic. Because that was so much easier, and took so much less effort than just knowing. Good job Tim’s brain, he loved how streamlined and simple you made this.
Anyways.
Language.
He could bitch later.
He was able to read the sign, so it was in one of the very many languages he could read. Most likely, though, it was one of the languages he was fluent in. Which was definitely a narrower category, but still not quite enough to come to an actual conclusion.
He knew it wasn’t mandarin. So there was something.
He stared at the sign for Colette’s Bookshop until the letters started to swim and bleed together into indecipherable masses of color.
It was definitely, probably in either French or Italian. Gun to his head he could not tell you which one. But it was definitely, probably one of them.
Colette was a French ass name. And also he was so actually done with that god forsaken sign– so French it was. Wonderful he was in France. Probably. He would need to see if everything else was also in French to really know for sure, but, for the moment, he had a solid theory for where he was at.
Yay.
Now he just needed to enact the actual parts of his plan. Because all that– all that guesstimating and hard work– that wasn’t even part of his plan. That was a sidequest. Fuck him.
Okay. Tim pressed his forehead against the cold glass of Colette’s Bookshop. He couldn’t tell if the cool of it felt good or not, but he supposed it was better than having to hold his head up. His neck hurt something awful. Like so bad he thought his head might fall off– like so bad he kind of wanted it to, if only because the pain would have to stop afterwards.
He would kill for some Advil. Not literally, of course, because then Batman would– not kill him but something equivalent, and Tim didn’t want that.
Medicine was the second item on his mental checklist. He needed not-bloody clothes first to get the medicine. Because a teenager stealing pills was one thing. A teenager who looked like he was ritually sacrificed in the sewers stealing pills, that was an entirely different and significantly more notable thing. And he was lowkey trying to avoid ‘notable’ at the moment. Tim really just needed to get back to Gotham as quickly and quietly as possible, and being caught on CCTV– in his current physical state it would be a little unavoidable– drenched in the blood of hundreds was kind of not a quiet move.
So basically he was going to need a hoodie, or like a trenchcoat, or something before he could get painkillers.
Which meant he was going to have to move, which was the worst thing ever. He wished he could teleport, or summon things. But no. He was just a guy, and that wasn’t going to be changing anytime soon no matter how upset he was about it. He just needed to get his ducks in a fucking row and deal.
Like always.
Tim pushed off the cold glass of Colette’s Bookshop, standing on his own two feet. They were probably cold too, he just couldn’t feel it. Super concerning, by the way, but that sounded like a problem for step two on his combination mental-checklist-plan-of-action. Right now, he was busy waddling forward, very slowly, looking all kinds of stupid, and trying to find a storefront that was advertising clothes, so he could raid its dumpster.
This was a really shitty twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Not the worst he’d ever had. But pretty bad nonetheless.
He didn’t even make it three storefronts before he was very rudely stopped in his quest for suitable attire.
Standing four feet in front of him— having apparently stumbled his way over from the nearest bar—was what Tim could only assume to be an incredibly drunk man. The man was pointing and opening and closing his mouth as if he was saying something, except no sound was coming out. Really, really, drunk then. More importantly, though, the very drunk man was wearing a heavy wool coat that draped down to his knees. He also appeared to be wearing several shirts and at least three pairs of pants.
Tim didn’t want to know and was so curious at the same time.
But, before he could ask why the man had so many– layers, he needed to ask if he was willing to share in his wealth. And maybe give Tim his shoes. Those things looked warm and sturdy, and the drunk guy probably had multiple pairs of nice, wool socks underneath and didn’t need them that much. At least not as much as Tim.
Time to utilize his level one hundred people skills– thank you Janet– and inquire about stealing some of this strange, extremely drunk man’s clothes.
“Excuse me, sir,” Tim said, or at least he tried to. Because no sound came out. He tried again, watching as the drunk man stopped pointing and silently moving his mouth to instead drop to his knees and look at Tim dumbly. Frankly, pretty average drunk guy behavior on his part. However, it was a little bit appearing like the drunk guy was reacting to the words Tim was trying to but not actually saying. But he’d need to confirm that real quick, before he got worried.
“Can you hear me?” it was weird, feeling the words shape in his mouth without actually hearing them. He really hoped he was having a voice problem and not a hearing problem. A hearing problem would be spectacularly horrible. He could cope with a voice problem.
Luck as usual was not on his side.
The drunk guy nodded his head, moving his mouth in what Tim assumed was a ‘yes’. Great. He couldn’t hear then.
He was super-duper fucked.
But he couldn’t really do anything about it. Not now anyways. So. moving along.
“I need clothes.” At least that’s what he hoped he’d said. Tim waved his aching arm towards the man’s great abundance of clothing to really get the point across.
“And shoes.” he pointed at the man’s boots.
The man said something. He seemed excited about it, so Tim supposed it must be something relatively positive. Drunk guy then stumbled back up to his feet– still talking about something or another– and shed his long, wool coat, dropping it onto the snow. Tim watched as the man fought his way out of one of the many shirts he had on– also dropped into the snow– before trying to remove one of his pairs of pants. This, of course, involved a lot of struggling and falling down, but he eventually got it, and the shoes too while was at it, though it was a little unclear whether or not that was on purpose or if they’d just come off with the pants. All of it went into the snow, forming a little pile that the man pointed at proudly. He turned to Tim and said something. Tim really wished he could hear what he was saying. If only to understand what the fuck was happening– why did this man have so many clothes on and why was his giving them to Tim.
In Gotham this would have either ended with him being flashed, or shanked. No in between. But this guy was handing over the correct amount of clothing, and hadn’t even threatened Tim with a knife a little bit.
Which was really weird.
But he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He nodded to the man who was still talking at him and made what he could only pray came across as grateful hand motions. The drunk guy seemed to get it— level one hundred people skills coming in clutch— he stopped talking and nodded back, looking supremely happy with himself. He then said something– you really don’t realize how much people talk until you can’t understand them– waved in a way that Tim could only describe as drunkenly, and then turned back in the direction he came and wandered off.
Leaving Tim with nothing but a pile of much needed, not-blood covered clothing and questions.
What a guy.
Honestly, he might have learned a few deeply disturbing things– namely that he could not hear, that was a later problem, though, because he couldn’t do anything about it now– but he also had shoes. So. He was going to count this as a success.
Now all he had to do was get Advil, water, cash, and catch a plane.
Easy-peasy.
He could so do that.