"You lied," he muttered, glaring to the side.

He’s more hurt from the lies, if anything.

Ever since Tim’s mother had died seven years ago, he and his father had drifted apart. Drifted apart and stayed like that. It didn’t help that he barely had friends back then either, and definitely not that any of them had been pushed away by the angry, desolate boy he had been after his mothers death—the death of his family, really, as only he and his father remained. There was nothing to bring them back to each other.

But he had a friend. His first in a long while. The child of an earl who owned a small estate, a bit far and unknown. Tim had been trusting, trusting enough to not background check. Every day he had ventured into the markets, either in his part of the kingdom of Gotham, or his friend’s area. They had both agreed to wear clothes not-so-fancy—normal people clothes, rags and covered faces. Disguises.

But they weren’t disguises. Not on the other side, at least.

Tim, on a late, bored night in which he had drunk far too much coffee, decided to just investigate his best friend’s past and family, considering the other was the child of an earl. But instead of finding documents about a small estate and a little-known line of counts, he found blank pages and no news papers. Then, confused, he decided to look into his best friend’s name, then found that no one memorable was of that name. Or age. Or even appearance.

Soon enough he realized he was being lied to by a peasant. Oddly enough, Tim wasn’t angry about his friend being a peasant—he wasn’t some haughty, arrogant noble, not at all. But being lied to hurt. He thought the trust had been reciprocated. Tim confronted his friend the next time they met, it was in a secluded area in the back of a library.

"I don’t get it. I don’t get you—why didn’t you think you could trust me? Did you think I was an asshole or something?" Tim demanded, finally looking at his friend, having to remind himself to keep his voice down. "I think you know I’m not."