| Return to a Mad World |
[Jan. 30th, 2010|01:30 pm] |
He'd stepped off the plane at Star City International Airport to much fanfare and camera flashes. Seven years after leaving the United States, Tim Drake returned to the United States aboard a Wayne Enterprises jet, all smiles and handshakes for the camera. Of course, Bruce wasn't there to see him; Tim purposely timed the event to give his adopted father no chance of being here to see by the time the plane landed, not that he believed Bruce would show up anyway. Tim wasn't foolish enough to believe that Bruce didn't know he was back, however, and fully expected to find the man waiting for him in his currently rented loft in the Uptown District.
The questions (and rumors) were already being asked by the local news outlets: What was studying abroad like? Was he dating that Bulgarian actress on that hit Canadian High School series? Did he intend to go to work for Wayne Enterprises or was he fancying a job at rival Queen Industries?
I'm starting to understand why Bruce let the media think he wasn't anymore than a drunk playboy. It kept the questions to a minimum.
The black car pulled up as he stepped onto the tarmac and the sight of the driver reminded Tim for a moment of Alfred, waiting at the end of a school day to pick him up and take him back to Wayne Manor, where Tim would do his homework before getting ready for night of solo crime-busting, or doing the legwork on a case while Bruce was on the streets. Tim saw this driver was a woman, though, and the moment passed. Those times were gone, and so was the boy who lived them.
He didn't go directly to his loft, but to an alleyway on Rickman and 23rd next to the Delpher Warehouse. Tim got out of the car with his camera as the driver looked on in confusion. The police tape was still up, the chalk outline still visible on the ground. Tim snapped several pictures from a few different angles, then put the camera away and started to walk down the street. One block west of the warehouse, he found what he was looking for in the mass of graffiti on the side of Harrison's Jewelers.
CO77X
Tim lost track of how many pictures he took of that single tag on the wall, but it was enough that his camera beeped at him to signal he was out of memory on his card. He grunted and walked back to the car, then got in without another word.
Once he was at the loft, he checked to make sure none of the boxes and containers he'd had shipped from London were opened in anyway, then thanked the driver with a $200 tip and practically shoved her out the door. Once she was gone, Tim got set up his laptop computer, three external harddrives and two printers, all high-quality photo printing equipment, and got to work.
Three hours later, the East wall of his loft was covered in crime scene photos of murdered men and women, pictures of oddly-shaped chalk outlines and the picture of a woman in her mid-twenties with raven hair, brown eyes, and soft cream-colored skin. Her smile was infectious, and Tim fought down the urge to smile back at the photo. He missed that smile so much it hurt.
He needed a moment before he could continue, so he grabbed his coat and headed up to the roof to think, mentally calculating how much time he had for legwork before he needed to hit the streets. Star City reminded him of a cleaner version of Gotham, and he idly wondered if Mia would be happy to see him after all these years.
He looked out toward the skyline and the bay beyond, and felt like he'd entered a prison worse than the one he'd just left.
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