A different city // By shrift

When they find Retro Girl's body outside Morrison Elementary, Tim Drake is seven years old. He attends school across the city, a private, upscale institution that has new books every year, Olympic-sized swimming pools, and a great student-to-teacher ratio. All of Tim's classmates have nannies and trust funds, and they've all been inside each other's mansions for parties and play dates. As far as schools go, it's okay; Tim likes to learn, and his father isn't the richest or most politically influential, so it's easy to blend in with the walls.

When they find Retro Girl's body, Tim is practicing his cursive, his small hand gripping a fat pencil with a soft lead point. He writes carefully; his teacher likes it when he stays inside the lines. In its history, G. Jerome Coolidge Elementary has never had any graffiti on its walls. The wrought-iron bars keep out the riff-raff and the Kaotic Chic. Students aren't allowed to leave school grounds during the day.

When they find Retro Girl's body on the playground, Tim is nowhere near, but he's had a "Here For Help... Not Excuses!" poster on his wall since he was three, and he has his own television in his bedroom. If he sits close and turns down the sound, his nanny won't hear. She usually lets him be if he keeps to his room, anyway, and so Tim stays up all night watching the news coverage.

That's how it starts. At least, that's how he remembers it.

*

Tim never believed that curiosity killed the cat. Carelessness, certainly, but not simple curiosity. People make careers out of being curious -- Police Detectives, research scientists, and bored clerks at the Swiss Patent Office, for example. Besides, it's... something to do. Summers are long, the house is empty, and he just wants to know everything there is to know about Powers.

He owns every episode of *Powers That Be* and every issue of *Cape* and *Powers!* magazine. He used to have them on hard copy, but now he stores them on DVD. He's too young to attend a convention or one of the hero nostalgia shows, but Tim sees the pictures, video, and write-ups online. He once spent nine days in a row examining old newspaper articles about Powers on microfiche. He learns to stagger his visits after that, because otherwise the librarians notice. Some look at him with sympathy; some look at him like he's stealing from the rare volumes wing. One offers to call his parents.

"My dad's in Hong Kong," Tim tells her.

The librarian's eyes soften. Her name tag reads 'Beverly', and she has six earrings in the cartilage of her ear. "And what about your mother?"

Tim adjusts the strap of his book bag. It's biting into his shoulder. "She's in Florence. No --" he says, stopping to think. The staff keeps his mother's travel itinerary on the refrigerator door. "Today, she's in Munich."

"Is there anyone I can --" Beverly is saying. Her fingernails are long, each one painted like the eye of a peacock's tail.

"I'm fine." Tim doesn't like interrupting, but sometimes it's necessary. "Thanks."

Tim has accounts at all the Powers message boards, official and otherwise. His username is 'AlvinD' pretty much everywhere; he keeps up with the URL shifts that happen every time the FBI gets too close or the traffic maxes out a site's bandwidth. He's been around for long enough that his name is in the site FAQs as somebody to talk to about costumes. Design, material, armor, modifications -- theory comes a lot more easily to him than playing softball and talking to girls. Plus, on the boards, nobody knows that he's still in elementary school.

His mom and dad give him an allowance. A pretty big one. Tim uses it on computers at first, then at the Army/Navy Surplus store and fabric shops when he's in junior high. Eventually, he buys digital cameras, because in the city, all a person has to do to see a Power is wait in the same spot for twenty minutes. Roofs are the best location. Night is the best time.

Tim gets pretty good at sneaking out at dusk. It helps that he's a good boy, but one who doesn't have many friends -- nobody except Ives, really, but Ives is loyal and easy to distract.

Friends tend to ask questions. And this way he doesn't dream when it's dark.

*

High school is different. It changes some things. His nanny goes away; the housekeeper stays. His classmates are mostly the same, minus those who are now enrolled at boarding schools overseas. Tim's mother promises him a trip to Paris for winter break now that he's old enough to fly by himself. Technically, he probably isn't, but Tim doesn't mention that on the phone when she calls.

Tim hasn't grown much, but Ives has, his knobby wrists sticking out of his shirtsleeves. Ives is still loyal, and a lot easier to distract now that he has discovered girls. Tim likes girls well enough, but they don't make him weird and temporarily insane like Ives, and he's okay with that.

"It's a great place to meet chicks!" his friend Ives says when Tim asks why they're wasting a perfectly good Saturday volunteering to tutor at the city library. Ives gestures wildly and pushes up his glasses with a finger, and Tim comments then that Ives probably needs all the help he can get. Ives swats at him, and Tim ducks underneath his arm to put his backpack down on a chair.

In a way, Tim guesses that Ives is right. The library is where he meets Calista.

"You're failing English," Tim repeats back to the girl sitting across from him. The table between them is beige and scuffed. Near Tim's elbow, someone scratched out 'Z+D 4 Ever' with a pencil.

"I know, it's sad," she says, twirling a lock of hair between her fingers. It's dark and thick, with a sheen to it like coal. "It's, like, hi, native speaker! And yet... I don't *understand*."

"Your spelling sucks," Tim says. "And I'm not sure your grammar fits any known human paradigm."

Calista laughs and ruffles his hair. "You're a cute kid."

"I'm only a year behind you," he points out. He doesn't mention the grades he's skipped.

"Oh," she says. She winces and bites her lip. "Shit. Sorry. You're --"

"Small for my age," Tim says. "Yeah."

Calista shrugs. "Sorry."

"Yeah."

"Fuck. So. English?" she asks.

Tim doesn't mind. Calista is interesting. He teaches her about semicolons and verb tenses, and she teaches him how to curse like a drunken sailor. Three weeks after they first meet, she tells him about the dickweed who defenestrated her mom and then blew a hole in the ceiling, and Tim tells her that he hasn't seen his father in almost fourteen months.

"You call that a problem?" Calista asks. She chews on the end of one of her braids.

Tim considers it for a moment. "Not really."

She grins and aims a spitball at him. She doesn't miss, although most people do. Tim's reflexes are pretty good. "Now explain to me what this pluperfect whatthefuckever thing is again."

"It's the past participle of a verb and the auxiliary," Tim says, reading from her grammar book. The spine is broken and the binding is coming loose.

Calista blinks at him. "I don't get it."

Tim smiles. "It's a pretty crappy grammar book."

"Just get me up to a C-," she moans. "Do that and I'll love you forever, short-stuff."

Two tables away, Ives mimes knotting a hangman's noose around his neck and then flops his head to the side, eyes crossed and his tongue poking out of his mouth like a pink slug. Ives got assigned Teddy Miller, who's an okay enough guy, but Ives complains that he reeks of Thousand Island dressing. Tim thinks that Teddy actually wears a Powers line of cologne; he's sniffed the sales samples in his magazines.

One day, Calista shows up to the library with her hair dyed blonde, colored contacts in her eyes, and her eyebrow pierced. Her clothes and hair also smell of cigarette smoke, but that isn't what's so different about her.

Sometimes Tim hates being observant.

*

It takes some time to plan. It takes time, all his contacts, and several thousand dollars from a discretionary fund he'd set up years ago. There are a lot of Powers he could have chosen to dress up as tonight. Wing's costume best suits Tim's body type, but there are a lot of reasons why it's bad to be found in a Wing costume anymore. He could have chosen Dime or Brightboy, but in the end, he settles on Teague. The costume covers him from head to toe, and the cape masks the mass he doesn't have.

He has devoted years to their design and construction, but this is the first time he's ever worn a costume. It never seemed like the right time, and the costume is just as heavy as he thought it would be.

Tim could have gone to his workplace. He could have called. But Tim's noticed that people usually don't take kids seriously, or really stop to listen, and this is important.

Tim isn't sure that it's the right move to make, but this way he only endangers himself. Well, himself and six other guys who like to dress up as Omega 6, but they're veteran LARPers and they scatter expertly when Tim gives the signal. Red Omega 6 takes the digital base scanner with him, and without the police band, Tim only has his own instincts to rely on. He doesn't find this comforting when a grunt and scrape and clang indicates someone is climbing up the roof access ladder. Tim takes a deep breath, and then he runs.

"I can't believe this!"

Tim wheels at the voice, and it's easy to fake tripping on the hem of his cape. He stumbles to the roof, tar rough under his gloves, and seconds later he chokes as someone drags him up by the scruff of his neck. They're nose to nose, Tim's feet dangling. The man holding him is tall, dark, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. Tim feels a flash of recognition and fear. He has seen this man's face every day since he was three. He knows it better than he knows his *own*.

"Listen, you fucking piece of crap --" Detective Christian Walker snarls. He's angrier than Tim anticipated, but it makes sense. He isn't used to people who care.

Tim twists in his grip. "I'm --"

"Powers are illegal. *Costumes* are illegal. What rock have you been living under that you do not know this?"

"I'm sorry," he gasps. "I needed to talk to you."

"What?" Walker says, startled. Tim can see the whites of his eyes and the white of his shirt, and everything's going white.

"Needed... to talk --"

Walker's expression goes blank. Over his shoulder, Tim can see his partner, Detective Deena Pilgrim. She stands at the edge of the roof, her face in shadow. Making the back of Tim's head itch. Walker drops him suddenly and Tim lands hard on his knees, breathing air in ugly, messy gulps.

When he finally sits back on his heels, Detective Pilgrim is gone, and Walker stands over him with crossed arms and a mouth so thin that it looks painful.

"Talk," Walker demands.

Tim shakily gets to his feet. "Someone's going to find out."

The direct approach seems best. And besides, his throat hurts.

"What?" Walker says. His eyes narrow with suspicion.

"She thinks she's good at hiding it, but she's not."

"What? What is that?"

Tim looks at him. He has to crane his neck to meet Walker's eyes, and his hood slides back. "Calista."

"I do not know what you are talking about," Walker says. His face is grim, muscle bulging at his jaw.

"I know what she's doing."

"I do not know what you are talking about," Walker repeats.

"Look!" His voice is edgy, rising, and he dials it back. "Look. She just -- she needs to be more careful. You have to talk to her."

Walker grabs him by the front of his costume and pulls him close, grabs him so hard that Tim's teeth clack. "What do you know? Tell me what you know!"

"She's... she's Retro Girl," Tim says. "The new one."

Walker lets go and backs up fast, his face as white as his shirt. "Oh my god."

"No, it's not like that," Tim says. He rips impatiently at his mask, probably taking some skin with it. "I'm -- I'm her friend. I help her with English. She --" He ducks his head and fiddles with the mask in his hands. "She floats when she's bored."

Walker's laughter is sudden and loud, and Tim looks up to see Walker standing with his shoulders bowed and his hand over his eyes.

*

Tim climbs down the roof access ladder and steps in something squishy when he reaches the alley below. Detective Pilgrim stands in the alley's mouth, backlit by the street, a cigarette in her mouth glowing red at the tip. Tim waits for her to speak with his hands resting at his sides, fingers twitching.

"Can I help you?" he asks eventually. Walker is still on the roof, watching the sky.

"You," she says. She moves closer and attempts to loom, and even though they're about the same height, it's still pretty effective.

"What --"

"You're not registered," she interrupts.

Fear hits him like a flash of heat, fading quickly to leave him cold and damp underneath his costume. Registration isn't something he allows himself to think about, because first he would need to think about *other* things. And he won't let himself do that. It's too dangerous.

Lying is often strategic and the smart thing to do. Sometimes the truth works the same way. And sometimes he's too afraid to know which one will come out of his mouth.

"Neither are you."

He sees the truth in her eyes the second before her arm goes back. Energy crackles through the air, and then the inside of his mouth smashes into his teeth. Blood spills onto his tongue. He doesn't spit it out.

"Jesus fuck!" She pulls her fist close to her bare belly, stomps away and then stomps back to poke her finger in his face. "I'm hitting fucking kids now?"

Tim tries not to bristle. "I'll be fourteen next month."

"Oh god," she says, dropping her face in her hands. "God, kid, go home."

"I won't tell --"

Detective Pilgrim growls and makes a cutting motion with one hand. "Fuck. Just shoo, will you?"

Tim leaves the alley before she can change her mind. Miles away, he takes off the costume and stores it in a locked and safe place. He takes the subway as far as he can, and then walks the rest of the way home. In the bathroom, he pokes at the bruise spreading across his cheek, and makes a mental note to come up with a convincing lie for tomorrow.

As he falls asleep, he designs a new costume in his head, one just for him. One with a cape. A cape feels right, like how coming home is supposed to feel.

When he dreams, he dreams of dancing on spears, dancing and touching the ceiling with his fingertips, and it's almost like flying.

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