Steph & Tim, back of the plane
[It was just as well that there weren't any donuts waiting for them, Tim couldn't have scraped together his infamous junk food appetite if he tried. Stress had a way of wringing the luxuries out of him, all of the inconsequential things like nutrition and sleep. He felt whittled down to a fine point, sharply focused. He liked the idea of being finely tuned, running on energy stores and absolute will, but the truth was that like any tensile wire drawn just a little too tight, he was one rough pluck away from snapping. Snapping meant breaking, and he'd broken before. He knew what it felt like. That desperate desire to stay level and clear headed despite all of the chemical reactions in his brain devoted to otherwise.
Tim was a detective, Damian was killing peopleā¦ it made his empty stomach, if not his bottom line, feel incredibly uneasy. He didn't know what to do. For Tim, not having a gameplan or even the vaguest and most monosyllabic outline of an idea in place, it was legitimately terrifying. This was not a guy who was comfortable with the concept of winging it. He thought that he knew what should be done, but he wasn't sure that he knew what needed to be done. The fact that there was a difference in his mind, it wasn't a comforting realization. Perhaps it shouldn't have even been a realization at all in this moment, Tim begrudgingly acknowledged that he must have known it would come down to this one day. There was a clear and moral line for him, but it didn't feel like a superior one.
He'd gotten to the plane first, which wouldn't have been a surprise to anyone who knew him. Tim was often obnoxiously early if he wasn't right on time. With a black canvas duffel bag wedged under one of the rear-most seats, Tim stationed himself near a window all of the way at the back. In jeans and a Twilight Zone tee, he slumped low in the comfortable seat. It was strategic and definitely antisocial, but he wanted to spend the flight figuring things out in his head. ]