Chapter Text
It's a miscalculation, plain and simple.
Tim really ought to know better. It's a stupid mistake.
But he's spent the better part of the last year running on caffeine and adrenaline, in and out of countries so fast he doesn't have time for the jet lag to catch up before he's in another timezone. He's burned bridges metaphorically and blown up buildings literally; he's lost most of his friends and walked right up to the Grim Reaper's door to demand his father back from the sands of time. He's down a major organ. He's learned to operate without backup. The world's most dangerous assassin wants his messy, painful death.
Tim's been a little busy.
So after Bruce is home — after Tim walks him through the front door of Wayne Manor, where Alfred waits with a warm smile and suspiciously damp eyes — after Dick comes roaring in on his bike from Blüdhaven — after Bruce's cell rings and it's Jason of all people, who's just heard the news — after Damian stands in the doorway and narrows his eyes and says, too soft for the words to be heard over Dick's enthusiastic demands for details about a trip through time, "Don't let us keep you, Drake. By all means, go missing for another year."
After, after, after. After everything, Tim puts on a smile in case anyone is looking (no one is), and he turns and walks away.
He carefully does not wonder whether they'll notice he isn't there.
His apartment is exactly as he left it: pristine and sleek and modern, built like a museum more than a home.
At the moment, Tim doesn't care.
He lets himself in, and he does not think about what Alfred might have made for dinner. He stands under the shower spray until it runs icy and he's all-over goosebumps, and he does not think about whether anyone has asked where he went. He sits in pajamas on the edge of his pristine bed with its aesthetic grey blanket, and he does not think about people crowded around a dining table, talking and sniping and laughing.
He does not think at all. He lies down and buries his face in his pillow, and he sleeps like a dead thing.
And that's his mistake, really.
He's not sure what wakes him; some tiny sound, intruding into his subconscious, where lately any tiny sound that doesn't belong is enough to set his internal alarm bells ringing. He sits bolt upright, slapping a hand out sideways to where his retractable bo waits an arm's length away — and finds that his arms won't obey the command. Won't move at all, really, because they've been cuffed behind him in his sleep.
"Hello, kitten," says Catwoman. "Want to have a little fun?"
Tim's idea of fun is not sitting in some drafty old warehouse, tied hand and foot to a swivel computer chair.
It's a comfy chair, at least. He hasn't even been tied so that the ropes cut into the skin. His captor hasn't shown the slightest inclination toward hurting him — but she also hasn't shown the slightest inclination toward letting him out.
"You could have done this somewhere better, you know," says Tim, and kicks the chair into an idle spin, for lack of anything else to do. It just sort of wobbles and totters forward into a slow turn.
"Oh, don't be like that," says Selina.
Tim fixes her with a flat look. "You could have done this with someone better, too," he says. When she quirks an eyebrow, he adds, "I don't do banter during kidnappings."
"That sounded an awful lot like banter, kitten." Selina flexes her fingers and examines her claws. "But here you are."
"Here I am," says Tim, thinking about his bed and the fact that he could have been asleep in it. "Thanks to you."
"Thanks to me," says Selina, with a little incline of her head, like she's on stage accepting some society award. "I just couldn't help myself. It's been a while, since I had a tango with a bat, and what better way to fill my dance card than to lift the brightest jewel straight out of his crown?"
Tim really must be sleep deprived. For a few seconds, he has no idea what she's talking about.
Then it strikes him that she means him, and it's so ridiculous, so patently absurd, that he starts to laugh.
"Oh, don't be a bad sport," says Selina. "I know you only just got back, but I won't keep you long. I give it an hour, perhaps. Maybe two. Then I get my tango, you get whisked back to where he keeps his treasure trove of little birds, and we let bygones be bygones."
The laughter, Tim notes clinically, has taken on a somewhat hysterical edge. More alarmingly, his eyes have begun to burn, like he might do something as unthinkable as come apart over the most benign kidnapping scheme he's ever been a part of, and he's seen his fair share.
He chokes down the laughter, and he blinks hard against the stinging in his eyes. In a moment, when he thinks his voice will do what he wants it to, he says, "This isn't going to go how you think it will."
Selina's smile is sly and very self-satisfied. "We'll see about that, kitten."
It does not, in fact, go the way she thinks it will.
The hours tick by. Tim is tempted to doze in his rolling chair prison, but being tied up and exposed, however little threat his captor might be, sets his emergency don't-die instincts on high alert. They've been honed to a razor's edge, this past year, and now they try to slice him open every time his eyes droop closed for too long.
Just past dawn, Selina goes to stand in the doorway of the warehouse, staring out at the slowly-lightening sky.
"I did warn you," Tim says, tiredly, when she comes back to stand beside him. "Look. Why don't I tell him you want to see him, and you can just set up a date like a normal couple?"
"Absolutely not," says Selina, and she sounds more upset by all this then she really should be, as far as Tim is concerned. It's not like she doesn't have another perfectly reasonable option here.
"So then what?" says Tim, and lets his head flop back against the chair. It has a nice padded headrest. He kind of wants one for his place.
"We relocate," says Selina, and her eyes glimmer, and every warning about second locations that has been ground into Tim's life from a history of poking his nose into homicides detonates like a grenade behind his eyes, all at once.
"Of course we do," says Tim, resigned. "You want to tell me where?"
He gets his answer around midmorning, when he's been settled into a room in what he can only assume is a safehouse.
It's more lived in than the warehouse was; there's an overstuffed couch, and a tv, and for some reason a bedroom with an en suite bathroom that has a stupid amount of locks on the door.
That's where she takes Tim, leading him still cuffed and bound through the doorway.
"There," she says. "Now you can go back to your little cat nap, and I can go see what's taking the bat so long."
"I could just tell you," says Tim.
"Where's the fun in that?" says Selina, with a wink, and then she leaves him to it.
She's gone for a while.
In the interim, Tim scrapes the place for useful materials — of course there's nothing worth using as a weapon — but he coaxes little bits of wire out of the cord for the lamp, and he uses them to pick the locks on his ankle cuffs. The ones holding his hands won’t come free — they've got a mechanical lock and a little electronic sensor that he strongly suspects is a thumbprint pad, so that will have to keep, from now. If he can get ahold of some wax, maybe he can lift Selina's prints next time she comes to talk.
He tests the possibility of slipping out the vents (barred, probably to prevent this very thing) and the window (heavy duty barred, like the shop fronts of businesses brave enough to operate in Crime Alley). He considers the potential of detaching one of the bars to use it as a club (low, considering he has nothing sharp to use as a file).
He's just thinking about breaking the lamp and using one of the shards as a makeshift blade when Selina pops back in again, in a cozy-looking sweater and jeans, holding a newspaper and a crinkled white deli bag.
Her eyebrows lift at the sight of the ankle cuffs, kicked partially under the bed. "Not bad, kitten," she says, and then, without missing a beat: "Ham or turkey?"
"Coffee," says Tim, who can already feel the start of a caffeine headache pounding behind his eyes.
Selina snorts and sets the bag down on the bedside table. "I don't know if little birds who wreck my lamps deserve a special order. Eat your sandwich and I'll think about it."
Tim takes the turkey.
A bite in, he realizes how hungry he is — that he hasn't eaten since breakfast the day he slunk away from Wayne Manor — more than twenty-four hours past, now, if his sense of time isn't still a mess from the jet lag.
So when the sandwich is done and Selina is eyeing him with an unreadable look, still only a few bites into her own, Tim says, "What time is it?"
"Mid afternoon," she says, and she waves the newspaper at him. "Plenty of time for a special edition to have hit the stands, if they were going to run one."
Tim watches her sidelong. "Something you're waiting for news on?"
"Please," she says, and her voice drips disdain. "Don't play dumb, kitten, you can't pull it off."
Is there a museum exhibit traveling through Gotham that he doesn't know about? Maybe she has her eye on a particular piece of art.
When he just watches her, mildly, she seems to bristle under something in his expression. "Mysterious kidnapping?" she says. "CEO of Wayne Enterprises? Bruce Wayne's son? Batman's partner?"
Tim doesn't examine the little part in his chest that squirms uncomfortably at the words. He doesn't pay attention to the weight that settles over his lungs, like someone's pressing a hand down, making it hard to breathe.
"I'm not exactly Robin anymore," he says. "Or Bruce Wayne's son."
Selina has stopped eating her sandwich to look at him.
"I told you that this wasn't going to go the way you thought it would," says Tim, and he's proud that he manages to make his voice steady enough for it not to sound defensive.
It's on the tip of his tongue to add that she's taken the wrong bird — that Damian is the one she wants. If Damian went missing, Bruce and Dick and Alfred would be on high alert before the night was out. Jason would know by the following day, at least.
But much as bitterness clogs up his throat, he bites the words down. The kid's important to Bruce; Tim isn't about to paint a target on his back, no matter how many times he's painted one on Tim's.
Selina's just staring, still. Tim schools his face into the one he wears beneath the cowl, all business, mouth pressed into a thin, unwavering line. He gives nothing away.
She seems to read something there, anyway.
Her eyes have gone sharp and dangerous. Despite the fact that she's not in the costume anymore, Tim is all too aware that this is what it looks like when someone crosses Catwoman. He wonders, belatedly, if he ought to have been more circumspect about telling her she's bad at planning.
She doesn't say another word.
She stalks out of the room and closes the door behind her; Tim hears the locks latch, one after the next.
He's just starting to wonder whether she'll miss the rest of the sandwich if he helps himself to it when she stalks back in again, fifteen minutes later, color high in her cheeks and eyes still bright and offended.
She thrusts a cup of coffee out at him.
"Well?" she says, archly.
For a moment, Tim's so astonished he can only stare at it.
Then he reaches out, carefully, to take it. "Thanks."
A day turns into a week, and a week turns into three.
Every day, Selina brings him lunch and coffee and a newspaper, and then later on into the evening, dinner as well. Every day, she seems more irritated that the headlines don't say what she wants them to say.
Tim slips the cuffs twice and nearly makes his escape.
The first time, he asks for some of those little cheeses they wrap in red wax, and when she brings him a couple, he presses her hand to thank her and, well, the press just so happens to put enough pressure on her thumb to make an imprint.
All a thumbprint scanner really checks for is the pattern, after all. He doesn't need her actual thumb.
So he eats his cheese and he sets the wrapper aside. Scans the print.
Then he crouches down behind the door, waiting, and when she brings dinner, he sweeps her legs right out from under her. He's out and down the hallway by the time she's on her feet again — makes it to the safehouse door before he realizes the lock requires a code from the inside.
She has Tim clean up the spilled dinner plate, looking unamused, when she gets him back into his room.
When she re-locks him, she puts a scanner on the ankle cuffs, too.
The second time, Tim spreads the lotion from the bathroom pump bottle along the windowsill where Selina leans when she comes to visit. Smooths it out thin, so it dries almost invisible, only slightly tacky to the touch. It takes fingerprints like a charm; Tim has experimented for hours, timing how long it needs to dry to take the most legible prints, how thick it needs to be to maintain the marks, and any other of a half-dozen variables he's thought to test, if only because all he has right now is time.
He unlocks himself at night, to buy the largest window for escape — uses the sharper interior edge of the cuffs, to file down one of the bars on the vents.
He's midway to shimmying his way to freedom when Selina catches him again.
He could take her in a fight, he's pretty sure, but he's waist-deep in a tiny rectangle, no space to turn around, and she re-cuffs his legs before she pulls him out again. He lands awkwardly — starts to tip forward — uses the momentum to try and drive an elbow into her ribs on the way down.
"Ah-ah, kitten," she says, and even as he's making to roll free of her reach — he can do a lot, just with his hands — he feels a boot pressing down between his shoulder blades. "None of that, now."
This time, she cuffs his hands behind his back.
"You're starting to be more trouble than you're worth," she tells him, sourly, when she's finally managed to subdue him. She's sporting a new bruise on her jaw, there on the left side, and Tim feels a little bad for that, honestly.
"You could always let me go," says Tim, tone dry.
Her eyes light up, and for a second Tim thinks she might just do it.
Then she says, "No. But I think it's time for a change of plans."
"This is what finally makes the paper?" says Selina, the following day, when she returns with lunch and coffee and newspaper.
She tosses the paper on the bed, disgusted.
Tim leans in to look.
It's not the banner headline, but it is front page news: Bat Signal Missing from GCPD Headquarters, No Leads Say Detectives.
"You stole the bat signal?" says Tim, incredulous.
"I have a point to make, kitten," says Selina, archly. She holds the coffee cup up to Tim's lips, because his hands are still cuffed behind his back. "It's the principal of the thing."
Tim thinks about insisting that he can drink his own coffee, but at the moment, he really can't. He takes a sip, and she sets the coffee down on the bedside table.
"I thought your point was to steal a little bird," says Tim.
"Yes, well," says Selina. "It was to help myself to something that would get the bat's attention. Plainly adjustments in strategy were called for."
She says it tight and clipped, almost angry. He supposes that makes sense. She'd meant it to be a two-hour kidnapping gig at the most.
Instead she'd gotten Tim, the world's worst consolation prize. She's had to babysit and buy meals for going on three weeks now — had to put up with the damage to the lamp, and the vents, and the cuffs.
She really should have just taken Damian.
Tim clears his throat, and he glances away. "I've been out of the country," he says, awkwardly. "Mostly out of contact. I did warn you. No one was going to notice."
If anything, she only looks angrier, lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. If she were a real cat, Tim suspects that her tail would be lashing as though she means to unfurl her claws.
"Are you apologizing," she says, flatly.
"I don't make it a habit to apologize to kidnappers."
But he is apologizing, he realizes. Not to Selina, maybe — but for everyone else.
Something in his stomach twists, a little. Something at the back of his brain scrabbles like a little bird in a too-small cage, pecking at things he wishes it would leave alone: a much younger Tim, explaining away why he couldn't have a permission slip signed for a school field trip: "Their flight got delayed. It was the weather. Who could expect snow at this time of year in Peru?"
The teacher had nodded along — who could expect it, who could expect it — and Tim had practiced until he could forge his father's signature, after that, until every loop and whirl was perfectly in place.
Selina holds up the coffee cup to his lips again.
"No, thank you," says Tim, stiffly, and it feels like the words have gotten caught in his throat, jagged and cutting, all the way down.
She stares at him with those too-sharp eyes, and Tim wonders what she's looking for — wonders if she can read the nauseating twist of shame that squirms through him. He wills himself to blankness — wills away the sudden, unexpected stinging at the corners of his eyes.
"We're going to take a little trip tonight, kitten," says Selina, and she sets the coffee down again. "Just you and me."
When she smiles, it shows entirely too many teeth.
They're standing on the roof of a record store: just one more unremarkable building in a nondescript part of town. They aren't likely to get mugged, but nor are they likely to get spotted by any passing patrol cars. It's not the sort of area that gets extra eyes on it, one way or another.
The wind's chill and unpleasant; here and there, a snowflake flutters down, teasing at a turn in the weather.
Tim shivers, slightly, even though Selina's given him something to wear: a slim fit black hoodie, a pair of jeans, and a jacket that's entirely too large for him. He suspects she picked it because the sleeves are wide enough to cover up any hint of the cuffs behind his back.
"Let's time it, shall we?" says Catwoman, and she prowls to the edge of the roof to flick on the Bat Signal.
It beams up into the night sky, reflecting there against the clouds, a beacon in the darkness.
"Seventeen minutes," says Selina, a short time later. "And fifty-six seconds."
She sounds flat and unamused, something sharp laced through beneath the words, which doesn't make any sense at all. This is what she wanted, isn't it?
"Catwoman," says Bruce, and his cowl makes his face unreadable as always. He hasn't noticed Tim, yet, there in the shadow of the roof access stairwell.
Maybe Tim can keep it that way. Maybe he can make a break for it, still — throw himself over the side of the ledge, before Bruce looks at him with those I'm-so-disappointed eyes and Tim has time to reflect on how he could have done everything differently for the past three weeks.
"Batman," says Selina, and she slinks into the space between Bruce and Tim, giving every impression of an alley cat with its back up and its claws out. "Good of you to finally join us." Her smile has a hard edge to it. "Lose something?"