from enemies of mankind to their protective spirits (closed)

[ployboy]

Who: Tim, the Bats, potential others
What: December catch-all
When: Month of December to early January
Where: Lakeside

Content Warnings: Keep an eye on thread headers (animal death, casual suicidality, past injury to start us off:)

It's been a week since-

Well, whatever, it's best to start from the beginning.

The beginning: it's dark. Not your average everyday darkness: advanced darkness. Because of this, and because of a lame(ish) leg, the trek to Lakeside takes longer than Tim would've liked. But he had been to Lakeside before (Kieren knows) and he had swapped out locks to the Blackbear resort cabin: out with the old, in with the new seemed fitting and it was always top of the lists of things to do when searching for tips for a big move.

So: new town, same darkness, same snow, new locks.

(Tim, being Tim, had been unable to resist rigging his bear traps to launch themselves to any successful intruder- boobytrapping is illegal but who gives a fuck? This is Canada.)

It's freshly December, he thinks, when he knows he's been followed.

It would be less unnerving if he didn't have the nagging suspicion of who stalked him- Tim distinctly remembers praying for a grizzly attack when his suspicion turns to certainty. But he needs to hunt, and the bo staff with the retractable blade makes for a fine spear (and after so many month of maintenance he had been unable to find a substitute for keeping the thing ready that's as effective as keeping it in use). He returns with two rabbits, dead and tied to his pack, and Blackbear cabin has yet to procure an actual bear to maim him. Tim digs out his keys to the front door, simply because he has keys to the front door, and so: suck it.

He wonders if his brothers are aware that this is what his nightmares are made of:

Jason Todd and Damian Wayne are in this house Tim's been convinced he'll be using, and Tim knows he's outgunned. He remembers the pirate Edward's cabin, had popped in there every once in a while. But it was tiny and unsafe. And this resort cabin is now very unsafe, and tiny.

(It's not tiny.)

Tim unlatches the rabbits from his pack and decides to not acknowledge-- (oh, who is he kidding-?)

"This is the worst intervention I've ever seen."

There's not even a banner.

And Tim hates himself, because he's frowning (he's always frowning) and as he lays out the rabbit to skin and dress, he can't even grasp his one knife as he turns to the yahoos and asks, loathing the words- "Is everything okay?"

Comments

[pacificator]

"Oh, I don't know. Don't sell the bears short." Or the cats, or... whatever. There's probably plenty of wild animals here that would love to gnaw on a tasty treat like Tim.

She watches as he makes his careful approach toward the package she'd left on the table, eyebrows lifting and pinching inward. "Remote detonating device would be way too much trouble when I could just shoot somebody," she points out. "What do you think I am, a Bond villain? It's a Christmas present, you paranoid twerp."

....Maybe not the best way to get him to believe she'd brought something for him with no expectation of return and no intention to harm, but he's been rubbing on her last nerve for almost a whole year.

[ployboy]

It works in his favor when he raises his brows at Wynonna's straight-forward solution to the Is It A Bomb problem: "Oh, right. Well, I thought I wasn't supposed to assume."

Makes an ass out of you and me.

Not feeling particularly clever, just mildly and irritatingly vindicated, Tim feels his body angle more towards her regardless as he tentatively reaches for the-- huh? Did he hear that right? Christmas present?

(IEDs are not that hard to make and yeah, yeah it's a ridiculous accusation. Even Tim seems dryly amused at it.)

The thing has some heft, has an irregular shape under the makeshift gift wrap.

"What is this, like... coal?"

It is not.

Boyish, Tim forgoes any fanfare as he begins to tear at the paper. He hears himself mumble, "What caliber is your gun? Colt, right? So... 40-something?"

[pacificator]

".45," she says, a bubble of wry amusement rising through her at the way he attacks the package, like a... well, like a kid at Christmas. "Yeah, it's a Colt."

The last time he asked about her gun, he'd broken into her house while she was busy being haunted by the memory of her murdered sister. It hadn't gone very well.

This time, there's a lift to the words that suggests... or maybe very warily hints... that she'd be willing to tell him more. She's almost always willing to talk about Peacemaker with someone who knows even a little bit about guns. In fact, she even relents enough now to volunteer: "Buntline Special."

She lets him have the assume thing — if it means he'll ask questions instead of deciding based on who-knows-what kind of mental equations he's got running through that hamster wheel brain she'll take a small loss for a greater win — and just hangs out with her hip tucked against the side of the table. "And no, it's not coal."

Which would actually be pretty useful around here, and thus a decent present. But it isn't coal.

[ployboy]

"Yeah," Tim says absently, distractedly, agreeing...ly. Yeah, it was a Colt. Some single-action revolver, some replica or hand-me-down of the early modern wars. Or cowboys. The piece of ivory was hard to forget; Tim wouldn't even need to glance at it now to see it. He doesn't glance at it anyway, because he has binoculars in his hands.

His first instinct is to raise the things, entranced as he is. He wants to see if... the lens don't look too bad, not in this light, not considering all of the wear they must have... but his second instinct is to wipe at the eyepieces. His face is serious, like maybe he's not convinced this isn't going to blow up on him after all.

It's kind of negated by how he bunnches up the front of his sweater to scrub away any would-be residue from the eye-holes. Like, is he not supposed to suspect (sorry, assume) he's walking right into raccoon eyes? Fat chance.

Tim doesn't think his heart's worked this hard for the past four minutes, at least.

Maybe not for the reason one would think. _Assume. He gets the joke- his ears burn red at the slight. But it's the barely there tremor that gives it away, as he fiddles single-mindedly with the focus controls: the burn of dying resentment, much the way that the fire in the fireplace will burn and turn to nothing but cool soot eventually.

Tim is just not worth a damn unless he's associated, somefuckinghow with someone better.

He gets it.

He tries to say something, gives up. Tries again. Asks, "Uh. What. Why?"

Because he's eloquent, y'know.

"You could use this!"

[pacificator]

In the end, she hadn't thought all that hard about whether to pick something up for him or not. Tim's doing plenty of over-thinking for them both, which is nice because it frees Wynonna up to just do stuff.

Like break into the cabin where he's staying.

Like bring him a Christmas present.

He stares at it now, more than half suspicious, and she can even manage to forgive him for not wanting to talk about Peacemaker because: oh, she nailed it.

She watches as he scrubs at the eye-holes (smart, and if she'd thought of it, she absolutely would have put soot on them) and looks the binoculars over. They're decent ones, she thinks; liberated from the mostly picked-over outdoors store. And even if they weren't, they're still better than his bare eyes.

His outburst has her shrugging one shoulder, crossing her arms as she lounges against the table. "So?"

(Let's be real: when would she ever use binoculars.)