Chapter Text
Why London?
It was a question Tim had been asking himself for the past few days since he’d woken up in an abandoned apartment without any memories. He had no phone, no ID, just a few fifty pound notes in his battered wallet. He didn’t even recognize the face looking back at him in the cracked mirror. He was somehow a total stranger to himself and it was terrifying.
It hadn’t take him long to realize that he was a tourist. His American accent stood out starkly against the hum of British voices surrounding him in the city. A brief investigation in the cafés and diners that surrounded the apartment complex hadn’t provided him with any answers either. Nobody had seen his face before, nor seen another American for days or weeks.
Why had he been in London? Was he alone? What had happened to him? Why did he wake up in a building that had been abandoned for years? There were so many questions and precisely no answers.
The worst part was not even knowing his own name. He couldn’t even begin looking himself up online to see if he had any social media profiles because he had no idea where to start. There was no driver’s license to be found in his wallet, nor a passport. Where was all of stuff? Just another question he had no answer for. They were mounting up pretty quickly.
“You look like a Tim,” the booth’s other occupant declared after he’d recounted all of his troubles. After several days of exploring and crashing back in that miserable empty apartment, Tim had found himself resting up in a cheap American-style diner with a milkshake and an oversized basket of fries. Feeling terribly lonely had led to a few tears springing up and that had apparently attracted the attention of one of the diner’s other solo occupants. Thirties, blond and wearing a scruffy suit. Handsome though.
“Tim,” the younger man repeated, considering it for a few moments. It sounded a little strange to his ears at first. He'd considered himself more of a Toby or even a Jason but... well, he could totally be a Tim. Sure, why not. It wasn't as if he had anything to hold him back from changing it whenever he found out who he really was. “Sorry for throwing my emotions up on you,” he added, wiping the remaining wetness from his eyes. God, he probably looked pathetic, didn’t he?
To his credit, the man just smiled sympathetically. “No worries, lad. Better to let it out,” he hummed before pulling a cigarette out of a packet from his pockets and sparking it up. Tim’s jaw went slightly slack. The waiting staff were either experts at ignoring unwanted customers or they were totally blind to the smoke slowly rising from their booth as the man let out his first exhale. Why wasn’t anybody telling him to put it out? “Bet you’ll be wanting to find your way back home, huh?”
“If I knew were home was,” Tim replied grumpily, eyes darting down to the table. He didn’t need any more reminders that finding his way back ‘home’ and recovering his memories was a long shot.
“Judging from that accent, not around here,” the man joked, chuckling to himself. It didn’t exactly fill Tim with any joy. “You got enough for a flight to New York?” Tim shook his head. “Check again.”
Lips curling into a frown, Tim fished his wallet out from his back pocket and glanced inside. By some bewildering impossibility the number of notes tucked in the back had doubled. He definitely had enough for a flight out of there now. “How did you--” he started, glancing up across the booth and stopping dead at what he saw. Somehow the man had vanished without a trace or single noise. The only proof he’d ever been there at all was the lingering scent of tobacco in the air. “--do that?”
Weirder and weirder…