sirenspull_logs | So I knew you once upon a time ago...

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So I knew you once upon a time ago...

Who: Tim Drake(

presspasskey)
When: 2/29, early afternoon
Where: The S.S. Kahve
Summary: Tim decides to check up on someone kind of familiar. She does more checking up then he does, though.
Warnings: Language, if at all.

He wasn't quite sure what to expect, in meeting Lois now. She wasn't too different from the one he had met before; with Clark, not pleased with Batman, a ruthless reporter. She was cool. She'd always been cool. But Tim was nervous; the last time he'd talked to her, it wasn't about anything important. He'd stayed away from most of the Supers after Kon died, and that included anyone married to one.

Plus, he was still sick. Catching his reflection in the window as he got to the coffee house, he swallowed nervously. Maybe this had been a bad idea. He didn't look that bad. A little more pale then usual, but then, he was a kid who did things at night, so he never had much of a tan to begin with.

Maybe she'd pass it off as nerves. He'd try to do just that. Going inside, he looked around for her; not finding her there yet, he went and got some tea, taking a seat in the corner to wait.

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It wasn't a lie, not really. Blaine was in trouble with his addiction, but then, so was Tim. And after everything he'd done... he needed to undo it. Somehow.

"He's okay. He's been staying with some friends, and there's a doctor helping him out, but it's... really hard to deal with, you know? He's scared, and he's never gone through it before. He doesn't really know anyone who has, and being hated by all your friends..." Tim shook his head. "It's not easy."

Nodding quietly, Lois considered. Aw hell. Clark's the compassionate-listener-counselor type, not me. She bit her lip. "Feeling alone's never easy--especially if it's for something you don't think anyone's going to get past."

Her tone was absently detached enough that it sounded like second-hand experience--and it was. She'd seen that lonely expression too many times before.

Sighing, she took another sip of her coffee. "Has he been having trouble with his friends--the ones he's staying with, or others?"

Tim paused chewing on his bottom lip as he thought about it for a moment. Should he really be telling everything about his friend? Or should he tell about himself?

"The ones he was staying with, but he's not staying with them anymore. He had to break up with someone, and it's... been a mess. It's a mess. He has to learn to take care of himself, and I feel awful about it. But it needs to be done. You can't always rely on everyone else," Tim finished quietly, taking a sip.

Lois simply nodded again, continuing to nurse her coffee. "Break-ups are--"

Stopping abruptly, she bit her lip. "Yeah, well, self-explanatory. Even if you can manage the friends thing well, which happens. Anyway."

Knowing that any which way she cut it she was going to get awkward sooner rather than later, Lois just gave up trying to be smooth. "How's it been on you?"

"Break ups suck," Tim agreed, taking a sip of coffee and sighing. "It's sucked. It all sucks. I don't think I can say it all sucks enough to describe just how sucky it sucks."

That made him smile a little, a smile that slowly faded away as he looked out ahead of him.

"...It's been hard. I can't go and see him, because we..." Tim trailed off. He didn't know how to say it. He didn't want to say it. "We were enabling each other's bad habits. So, right now, we're not seeing each other."

Lois actually smirked slightly--she approved of that sentence syntax. Still, her smile faded when his did, leaving her to sit quietly for a moment.

Finally, hazel eyes oddly gentle, she asked, "How are you? Really."

Lois Lane was moderately well-known for being blunt, tactless, and insensitive. But she cared about her family, fiercely--and Tim definitely counted as one of hers.

Tim grimaced. "I'm detoxing, right now. Which sucks. It's not fun, I can say that. I'm sick, and I have nightmares, and everything is just... it's all worse, now. I keep waking up in a cold sweat, the faces of everyone I couldn't save floating by me. But I made a promise, and I can't go back on those drugs. I won't let myself," His hand tightened around his cup.

"I haven't talked to Bruce in awhile. I don't... I don't know."

With a faint 'hmmph' sound, Lois scowled at her coffee. "Yeah, I'd gathered that much. I know about hard-to-handle dads, but..." But Sam Lane had nothing on Bruce, and if he knew about this, he would have had a conniption. She gave him a friendly little nudge after a moment.

"Well, he won't be finding out from me, not without your say-so," she declared firmly. "Any idea how long detox is going to take?

"My dad was a lot easier to handle. Bruce is... really different," Tim said after a moment. "...Thanks. I have no idea. Online, it said it could take up to a month. It's once you're done that's the hard part, though."

Dryly, "I'd noticed."

She sits back. "I dunno. It still means willpower, and I'd assume it'd be easier to focus on that when you're not sick and nightmarish. But the worst I was ever on was Marlboro for a few years. I wouldn't really know."

"I messed up. I know I messed up. It was stupid of me, and it couldn't have gone well, and I knew that it would be a problem in the future, and--" He cut himself off, taking a deep, shaky breath. "It made me feel better. It was stupid. But I liked feeling good, like that. Like everything was going to be okay."

Lois simply nodded, as nothing she could think of to say was going to be terribly much good, or sound unpatronizing. In her experienced that was the worst thing she could be right now.

After a few moments, "Does Cass know?"

"Yeah. She's the first one we told about all this stuff. She's been helping me. Even if neither of us have any idea what to do, and all she's really doing is make sure I don't choke on my own vomit or something," Tim shrugged a little. "No one else knows. Especially after my friend had all that fall out with his friends... how could I let anyone know?"

"Good." Sighing, Lois relaxed minutely. At least Cass knew; he hadn't been dealing all on his own.

"Well, now you've got me, too," she said firmly. "And not everyone's going to react the same way. I don't what your other friends are like, but it's not a given they'll react the same way."

"Thanks, Lois. I know that the longer I keep this all a secret, the worse it will be, but... with everyone gone, I just don't want to disappoint him, you know? I never want to disappoint him," Tim shrugged, looking down at the lid of his cup.

"Yeah, I hear you. Just don't let 'with everyone gone' be the reason it eats at you, okay? That much isn't your baggage. Trust me, I've been there." Only her entire childhood.

After another quiet sip, she adds a little more awkwardly, "And... look. It's your life and your call when to tell Bruce--unless work's involved, and then he might have a point about when he gets told. But just remember you can choose your ground on this one."

Tim looked at her in surprise. "It is, though. My baggage, I mean. I've started to think that I'm some kind of jinx, when it comes to having friends and family around. They always end up leaving, or dying, or... being sent to an alternate dimension," He sighed. "I'm coming to accept it."

Lois sighed explosively. "Okay. Well, if you are, you're in the very best of company--also probably the most compulsively paranoid, the most over-controlling, and the most... something else, maybe something better than those."

"You don't like him, do you," Tim said, eyes glancing over. "Most people don't, but... you really don't."

"Actually, I like him just fine. I don't know him terribly well, and he's a jackass. But he's a good jackass. And I trust Clark's judgment, and Bruce cares about him... frankly more than Oliver does, back home."

She smiled then, wryly. "But you can't deny he's compulsively paranoid."

Tim smiled a little at that, draining the rest of his cup. "He's compulsively paranoid, but so am I. So is everyone. I'd rather be paranoid, then be dead," Tim let out a short laugh.

"But he won't change. Not that he should."

"I didn't say it was a bad thing." Her smile was wry. "Except possibly for sanity, but like you said: breathing takes precedence."

She paused a moment, blinking. "Right. Anyway, it isn't something special about you."

"It does," Tim nodded. "Don't worry. I'm not going to go off and kill myself because I can't deal with anything. I don't do that."

He sighed a little, though, shifting down in his seat. "Sometimes I wish I could feel like that. Give up completely, like some people do. But it's not in me to do that."

Lois smiled very slightly. "I don't think you'd be part of the family if you knew how to give up. I haven't known a one of you all yet who has. Even when they try," she added with a roll of her eyes.

Finishing off her coffee, she turned offered him her spare bear claw. "My point is, you don't have a unique jinx or anything."

Tim snorted into his drink and grinned. "No, I know I don't. I don't have a monopoly on it, either. But it is something I think about it, sometimes. I don't try to very much, but when you're feeling a little down, it crops up."

He looked down at the bear claw. "I'll split it with you?"

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