the more you suffer the more it shows you really care.

[ployboy]

Who: Tim Drake's broken arm and ____
What: uselessly tidying up the graves at the churchyard
When: Nov 1, 2
Where: church, the community hall



Content Warnings: general depressive moods, some bashing of traditions, a very superficial understanding of a culture, death and talk of death is a given

Tim is actually pretty sure he's managed to snag himself a women's coat: it's black and long and elegant, and it has this faux fur lining it and the big hood. It's very quickly become his favorite garb on account of it fitting stupidly well and the aforementioned fuzziness. Paired with sufficient layers (as if there is such a thing) and the heavy black (sparkly) scarf snaked around his throat, the attire even looks good. Good enough, anyway.

It'll have to do.

Dark circles under eyes seems to be a common symptom of Milton's lifestyles and Tim isn't too far behind already. The fitful sleep has him moving excruciatingly slow as an additional precaution. (If he hurts his arm again he will fucking. shoot. someone in the face in feral retaliation.) The thought makes him snort. It's the closest he's come to emotion since he started his day's pet project. It's hard to scrape off ice and years' worth of snow packed onto stone with only one arm functional, holding the shovel.

A few names on grave markers have been freed. Other memorials just have parts of them newly unobstructed through Tim's efforts but are still well buried in white.

Tim works in silence. Kinda hates it, honestly.

But it's whatever.

Between clearing snow from plots and trudging carefully around the yard, Tim ducks into the community hall to warm himself. Or maybe to hear some chatter around him, to see people who aren't, like, ghosts.

And so goes his day, and the next.

He's never put so much effort into something so fruitless before.

][ooc: prose, brackets, wildcard or bump into this fool elsewhere, go wild! HMU if you want anything specific][

Comments

cw some death up in here

[ployboy]

Happy remembering. That's so not a string of words he's heard in this context before. Or in any context. And it's so absurd that Tim has to wonder if he heard it right. When there's no other explanation for it, he huffs a laugh. It's a sound born of obligation but not entirely devoid of, like, life.

Tim wonders if anyone in this place knows how to read a calendar. Or maybe they're just not too trusting of electronic timekeeping, when anything electronic is so flimsy. He doesn't figure he's brave enough to wade into Christmas just yet--

"Where in California? I have a place in San Francisco."

--because he woke up to Bruce Wayne's shadow reminding him that the 24th was when Janet Drake would be lowered to the ground, and because it was the wet kind of snow that was falling in Gotham then. Tim had done a darn good job in shaking hands, accepting condolences, and thanking the mourners for their time at that funeral.

Christmas is this... what, he's supposed to pretend his life was so wrong that having a happy family around a tree, for one night, was... It's a Made For TV holiday. They all are. When everyone's dead, it doesn't mean shit.

The corner of his mouth twitches up.

Not to be all My father, the inventor of toaster strudels... but Tim doesn't think anyone will understand how odd it is to have the name Wayne be met with absolutely no knee-jerk recognition.

"I won't say no if you want to help," he lands on. "But I've got nothing else to do today. You don't have to."

also tw death/grief, these guys are fine : ' )

[questioningmermaids]

Hey, a laugh. A laugh void of pretty much any emotion, but a laugh. March'll take it, thought he remark about 'a place in San Fransico' is pretty hard to miss. It implies multiple places. March may be a schmuck and an alcoholic without a coherent thought in his mind, but he's still a PI at heart. It's hard to shake picking up little things like that.

Too normal to be a spoiled Trust Fund kid, March thinks. But he's also cleaning graves and seems to be having a moment about it, so maybe the normal descriptor's a little off. Whatever--everyone that's arrived so far has been some level of insane, why not this kid, too?

Probably, after semi offering to help, March should assist. Crouch down a little, clear some graves, show some respect. But Tim's 'you don't have to' comes as an immediate relief. He's not ready to do any of that, just like he's not ready to rebuild the house he and his wife used to have, even if Holly sneaks out every night to stand in the empty lot.

"Okay," he says it just like before, swinging is legs up and onto the ledge he's sitting on so he can be horizontal and stare at the sky a bit, cigarette still in his mouth. March doesn't seem concerned he might come across as kind of a dick.

"LA. I gotta ask--" He pivots his head, watching Tim with curiousity. "A place in San Fran?"

Agreed, everything here is Normal and Good

[ployboy]

--my god, this man actually just said okay and laid down. Not wanting to be all slackjawed over the audacity or, worse, get caught with finding this objectively funny, Tim shakes his head as if he's shaking off a particularly troublesome snowflake on his lashes.

He leans Shovel (that's his shovel's Christian name) against the resting place of Michael H. Golsomething and gets to kicking the ground. All methodical. Six feet away from the last rediscovered headstone. But Tim thinks he's about to come up to a walking path soon, that clear marked 'road' in cemeteries that is always useful in navigation. Just turn left at Lucy's place, go down four plots.

He knows these things, and is breathing a little harder from moving snow with heavy boots when he finally gives up. Yeah, he found a road. It'll be a few more yards before the next dead guy.

Cool, he thinks with some satisfaction.

A few places in San Francisco, Tim's lips move to answer silently. Then he turns back to Holland and answers properly with, "In the City, yeah. My friends all have a key, we hang out there when we can. Usually with really loud music. Some cool cars."

He thinks, well that's one way to describe the Teen Titans.

He used to get all... he used to guard that about himself, the wealth. Timothy Drake-Wayne had said fuck it, had leaned all in. Leaned into the power hard.

He thinks

he thinks Gotham is more his Bruce's, now. And that accounts for several aspects.

So Tim licks his dry lips and clarifies. "I'm from New Jersey. LA's a-- it's a great spot for skateboarding. I haven't done that in a while."

--god, he's not sure why he said that.

[questioningmermaids]

March had been perfectly content to let the guy chip away at his fruitless (if extremely noble) endeavour, staring at the sky and puffing away at his slowly dwindling supply of cigarettes. Two people enjoying silence and the snow, or something profound like that, except this guy--Tim Wayne Drake, which wow, what a name--is saying 'I am extremely rich' in such a casual way that it's not adding up.

Stereotypes, sure, but most rich kids who have places in San Fran and Jersey and multiple cars usually aren't.... Well, not polite, but they aren't nearly as respectful as this guy cleaning up stranger's graves are. It's interesting. Tim's interesting.

Not enough to get up, of course. Certainly not enough to help. But March turns his neck sideways to watch him now, slightly muffled as he speaks without taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

"Your parents let you skateboard? You'll crack your skull open, kid."

[ployboy]

He remembers growling at de Pointe du Lac over the scarcity of coffee beans and then this magical well of cigs that is apparently never going to dry up; is secondhand smoke a thing he needs to worry about with these people? Seriously.

It's another small scoff escaping him, this one with a livelier undercurrent. Which means it's attitude in most catalogs of Teen Speak. Which means it's as genuine a sound as Tim's uttered in-- way too long. It's a funny question. The answer isn't so much. So Tim says, "No kidding." and doesn't say that pebble death is something a skateboarder learns about once, and only once, in their career.

And as he measures his steps, adds the math on sections and the deteriorating centerpiece to the yard, he comes to an abrupt stop.

Does Conner even know how to drive? Did he learn how to-- with a freaking tractor, moving cows from one pasture to another, or whatever the hell he does-- did-- on that farm? Tim looks up and out to the right.

There really is no point to any of this. It's not a question in his mind, hasn't been for a while. He hasn't thought about a lot of things in a while-- Cassie is probably the only one of them to have not wrecked a car she's driving, because she's the fearless leader and the only one of them with a lick of sense. Bart will never live down what he did to the Batmobile that one time.

Live down is probably a bad choice of words.

And Tim exhales and is dizzy and the ugly crawl of everything terrible in him makes his skin itch. He lowers the hood of the coat and doesn't feel any better. He doesn't feel any better knowing the orientation of the graves in this lawn don't differ from the dozen others he's walked.

"I lost the grid," he says. It's said to the wind or to his shovel or to the grave fence that's six meters behind. It's a tired voice, and a failure more than an apology.

He's lost, and has no idea what to

but, you know, it's not like it's new or anything.

He treks back to Shovel, his trusty shovel, and it's like his bones are too old to be in this cold. Blue eyes acknowledge March, and he even nods to the far end of the perimeter gates.

"Hey, be careful if you come along," like it's a stupid thing to warn when this man will certainly not be game to follow. But it'd be rude to not offer the... the out. With mechanical rising and falling of his chest, Tim hears himself go on above that muffled ring of panic in his ears. "There's some dog... uh, footprints. On that side. I didn't think the wolves made it out this far."

[questioningmermaids]

'No kidding,' Tim says, and March lifts his head up, genuinely surprised. Not at the reaction--typical Chet bullshit, youths being way too youth-y and thinking they know everything--but more that Tim's making it. The fact that Tim's a weird kid has already been established to March, so the glimpse of normalcy is a little jarring.

He also has no idea what Tim is saying, not really, but he's not exactly the right person to call out getting too in your noggin about shit. The head turn turns into March turning his whole body, which leads to him sitting back up again.

"Where you going?"

He's surprised it's a genuine question. Even more surprised that he's getting ready to move off of the fence and follow.

[ployboy]

Tim, once again and with no small dose of patient puzzlement, nods to the far end of the perimeter gates. He's equal parts relieved to stop being a show to the bored masses, and he's exhausted at the prospect of losing proximity with a living body once more. "That way," he answers, the swirling here-and-not of his train of thought making the two words sound distant.

Or maybe Tim's just fucking cold and tired, whatever.

"I think this is the only cemetery in the town. It got pretty large. I'm sure there's a registry of the plots... maybe actually in the church. I don't know. Are you coming?"

The last three words are, of course, surprising to Tim. He looks thoroughly uncomfortable at hearing the ask.

[questioningmermaids]

Is he coming?

March looks around, looks at the the cemetary, looks at his half-smoked cigarette. Maybe the kid needs help. Maybe he's offering a helping hand to March. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe he should ask.

"Have fun."

Maybe March just wants to finish his smoke and not think about things for half a second. He offers a lazy turn of the wrist in a wave farewell.