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whetstonefires · 4 years

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Okay, it’s been about a year but here is the second-to-last of the fics I signed up to write for the go-fund-cee drive! For @jes-cher, who has been lovely and understanding about my choice paralysis bullshit.

I’ll be posting a shorter, darker Jason-focused one later, as apology for slow. Ten months of beating my head against my first idea for this prompt before it occurred to me I could just. Write something else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a great idea if it’s clearly not getting written! 😌 Rip.

(Anon who’s the only one left, please feel free to contact me with a new prompt if you’re no longer interested in your original request after this amount of time, or have justifiably lost faith in my ability to execute it, as I chronicled my battle with Lobdell’s writing style, and would prefer I give you 10,000 words of something else. I’ll still post what I have written for that prompt already!)

-&-

Gotham wasn’t actually that bad a city. Steph had actually lived in a few different ones now, and visited lots, and for all the crap her hometown got, it stood up pretty well. The architecture was nice; good balance of eras, a unified aesthetic with a lot of variety to keep it interesting.

The street system wasn’t ideal, especially in the old parts of town, but they didn’t have any of the traffic nightmares of New York or, really, most of the rest of the metro belt. Only Metropolis did a better job at avoiding gridlock.

Public transit was robust and reached most of the city, and while the buses weren’t wonderful they weren’t bad. Sometimes they were even on time. The libraries and schools were all pretty well funded, because the Wayne Foundation made up the tax shortfall in districts with below average income. The street lights usually worked, and the cops were a lot more chill than most places unless they thought you were a supervillain, in which case they still probably wouldn’t shoot you, even if maybe they probably should.

The supervillain problem was worse than average, she could admit that, but crime as a whole actually wasn’t. Air pollution had been really bad forty years ago, and the river still wasn’t anywhere you’d like to swim, but that was true of a lot of places, and their reputations didn’t linger like this. She’d been to Paris! Gotham sanitation workers were about 400% more successful, and they kept working through frankly ludicrous conditions! Possibly they were paid really well, she didn’t know.

The weather, though. She’d give the world that one. Gotham’s weather was consistently terrible, awful, no-good, and deserved everything anyone had ever said about it.

Which made it actually really weird that their supervillain problem featured someone with a plant theme.

“Move somewhere tropical, Eisley!” she groused, as she swung to the next roof, careful of her footing. “Cultivate jungles! Save the planet! Stop making us come out in the freezing rain to deal with your unseasonable bullshit.”

She paused for a second on her last rooftop perch, both to gather herself and in case Ivy took the cue. She often did. Supervillains in general seemed to have a hard time resisting a straight line—which Steph could relate to, honestly. And she’d caught Batman holding back his entrance for the most ironic dramatic moment before, so it wasn’t just a villain thing.

No villain attack, which was good, because Steph was on her own out here. This was hopefully just a scouting mission. Probably Poison Ivy wasn’t even here.

This afternoon, just after lunch, as Steph was getting off work, every park in the city had suddenly erupted with enormous…growths. They were tree-shaped, thirty feet high with little crinkled green leaf things at the top, but from what inspection had been done so far seemed more like fungus than anything. The spreading limbs had a weird rubbery texture.

Steph was calling them Doom Broccolis.

Whatever they were, they were suspicious as heck, and in response to their appearance Batman had immediately rallied the troops. Which had quickly led to the discovery that Red Robin was missing, and had been for at least eleven hours. He’d never checked in last night.

The troops had promptly been rallied even more urgently, and dispersed across the city to its various infested green spaces.

So Steph’s mission, like everyone’s, was twofold—see if she could learn anything about Ivy’s scheme in time to foil it, and search for any sign of Tim. If they were lucky, he’d just dropped out of contact voluntarily for unrelated reasons and could be yelled at later. If not… Well. If not, he needed them.

She’d been telling herself all the way here that she appreciated that Duke and Damian were the ones who’d been sent out with each other as backup, that she was respected and trusted to operate solo and that was a good thing. The practical side of her would really prefer backup please, and the insecure one kept murmuring that maybe what it really proved was Batman cared less if she died.

Batgirl gave herself a little shake. Shut up, little voice, she told it, and mentally squashed the slug of it under her heel. She adjusted her gas mask to make sure the seal was tight. Time to get her reconnoiter on.

And hopefully not have to fight the most powerful metahuman in Gotham by herself on unfavorable terrain, in the freezing rain. That would be really great.

There was almost no sound as she crept through the nasty rubbery grove that had erupted in the long narrow triangle that was Hyde Park.

The broccolis themselves were silent, not even creaking or rustling in the occasional gusts that drove the freezing rain at an angle, and city traffic and all the sounds of people were hushed on a day like today, between the weather and the large-scale supervillain incident. Everyone who could be was either out of town or at home, stuffing newspaper into any cracks in case of spores.

After an unenlightening loop around about half the perimeter, Steph was forced to drop to ground level and forge her way into enemy territory. The doom broccolis had avoided uprooting any existing trees or large shrubs, which meant the spacing was slightly uneven and in some places there was no easy way through on foot, but for the most part they were far enough apart to leave plenty of corridors of sky for Steph to stay out under—cover from line of sight wasn’t worth putting herself directly below the things, if she could help it.

Fairly quickly, she noticed something that had not been in the photos from the main infestation in Robinson Park, forty minutes ago.

She clicked her comm on. “Hey,” she murmured just above the subvocal range, for the throat mic. She’d mostly gotten the knack of subvocalizing rather than whispering, which didn’t engage the vocal cords and which the microphone pasted to her neck therefore didn’t pick up well. “Is anybody else seeing…fruit? On the broccolis?”

There was a second of dead air, and then Red Hood said, with a grimace you could hear, “yeah. Like…huge brown cherries, on a couple of ‘em.”

“The ones here are more or less mushroom colored,” reported Signal from Finger Park. “But kind of like cherries, yeah.”

“Don’t touch them,” warned Batman, with the condescending Dad-instinct need to tell everyone things they already knew. Steph was in the middle of rolling her eyes when she rounded another broccoli and froze dead.

“Holy crap.” The broccoli mushroom tree at the middle of Hyde Park was bearing fruit that wasn’t shaped like cherries at all. Batgirl’s first thought had been holy shit it’s people, but then she’d taken her second look, and now it was worse. “Team,” she said, trying to keep her voice professional, “I… think I found Red Robin.”

Because dangling from the central broccoli, by dark hair that turned into green stems just before joining the bough, were seven still vaguely formless figures, torsos partially sheathed in giant green leaves like Ivy wore sometimes for modesty, and with arms and legs looking just barely stuck together. Like a partly melted wax figure, or dragon fruit that wasn’t quite ripe. The fingers and toes were mostly fused, and greenish at the tips. The faces were kind of melty too, hopefully enough so that they wouldn’t be a sure match against a photo to a stranger, but not so much that Steph couldn’t instantly recognize the lines of one of the faces she knew best in the world.

There were seven under-ripe Tim Drakes growing from a broccoli tree.

A clamor of demands for clarification was starting in her comm, and she crept forward as she waited for Batman and Oracle to quiet them all down. There was a bulge halfway up the meaty-looking trunk. “I said ‘think,’” she murmured, studying the nearest Tim-fruit for signs it was actually the real one, “because this broccoli—”

Something slammed into her from the side before she could say any more, heavy and cold and leaving her head ringing and her stupid gas mask flying away, and the combination of experience and instinct only barely let her leap and handspring with the blow, just fast enough to avoid the grasp of the thing that had struck her.

Her boots and glove almost skidded in the freezing-rain-on-grass and left her wiping out, but the jagged rubber treads she’d selected specifically for moments like this saved the day.

Steph made a three-point landing and stared up at Poison Ivy, standing looking thunderous on the top of a huge coil of some sort of vine, several more of them lashing around her like octopus arms. Steph couldn’t even tell which one had hit her.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Steph thought, and grinned.

“Gotta try harder than that, Pam!”

No one was talking in her ear. The ear she’d been smacked in. She reached up to check. Yeah, the comm had had it.

She couldn’t be sure about the throat mic—the stick-on patch it was under was still in place but she was pretty sure it got most if not all of its broadcast strength from the earbud unit, so it probably wasn’t transmitting to the others anymore but it might be. She’d keep that in mind to a) pass info just in case and b) try not to embarrass herself, in case there was a silent audience.

Ivy didn’t go straight for the kill, so Steph took the time to readjust her stance into a slightly more upright, flexible posture that kept both her hands free, though she didn’t bother to straighten her cape, which had gotten flipped forward over her right shoulder while she was flipping around.

“You’re planting dude-trees now, Pam?” She and Ivy absolutely weren’t on close enough terms to use first names, even if the meta lady had currently been on the upswing and working with the Birds of Prey again, instead of on a sharp down and terrorizing the city. “What, real guys not listening to you anymore?”

“Human beings are disgusting resource sinks,” Ivy said, in a tone of abstracted disgust that didn’t omen well for her losing her head and making a mistake. “Especially men. I’ve always been working on alternatives. Sadly,” she gave a shallow sigh, inspecting her nails, “the ones I’ve developed have always been…limited.”

Steph nodded sagely. “The veggieburger problem,” she agreed. “Hard to get a plant to do the job of meat.”

Ivy glared. Hah. That one got her. “My new varietal,” she snapped, “will overcome that problem. Each specimen engulfs and consumes one large mammal, and produces fruits that mimic the full intelligence and abilities of the prey sample, in a vegetable form completely loyal to me.”

Steph gaped, because one, that was the most terrifying thing Ivy had done in years, and two, consumes was a very very alarming word in this context. “The Doom Broccolis are carnivorous?” she did not actually squeak. She really hoped her throat mic was still working. Even if it wasn’t, though, backup should be incoming.

Ivy rolled her eyes. “They are not even distantly related to broccoli. And yes, although the digestion process doesn’t really set in until the fruits ripen; the early experiments failed to reproduce cognitive function accurately, due to the breakdown of key tissues.”

Whew. So Tim had…at least a little time left, probably. Steph looked uneasily around the grove of horrible flesh fungus. “I don’t see any loyal broccoli people,” she said. Maybe they were off guarding the other parks?

Ivy scowled. “Of course not. The early cultivars weren’t large enough for human trials, obviously.”

…so there were loyal vegetable guinea pigs or something. Sometimes it was easy to forget Ivy had once been an actual lab scientist.

“So wait, you haven’t actually done a person before and you start with—him?” Steph caught herself at the last second; she didn’t know which identity Tim had been caught in.

“Why not? Red Robin is an excellent specimen. Good balance of strength, strategy, and unlike Batman actually takes direction.” Ivy made a sour face, like her inability to control any version of Batman for long was a thorn in her side.

“Is that what you think,” said Steph, who had had the experience of trying to control Tim Drake. He did try to be accommodating, about most things, usually, and he did take direction better than Batman, for what that was worth, but in the end he’d always go off and do whatever he thought best, no matter what, and possibly let you yell at him about it later.

If anyone could take stock of his preconceived values and identity issues and think his way into a twisty workaround for inbuilt loyalty programming in order to fuck over his creator, she’d bet it would be a perfect copy of Tim.

“Also I caught him skulking around my newest greenhouses,” Ivy shrugged. “Waste not, want not. Recycling is good for the Earth.”

Haha, Ivy had just called Tim garbage. Harsh. But as interesting as it would be to see if the veggie-Tims actually did go rogue, them waking up would mean Tim was now actively dying if not already dead. So no. Not that funny.

Steph caught the enemy’s eyes shuttling subtly toward the central broccoli with its heavy burden of fruit. Aha. Just as she had suspected. (As of like…six seconds ago.)

Poison Ivy had been keeping Batgirl talking, buying time for her Tims to ripen.

Steph appreciated the compliment of putting off the fight rather than counting on being able to end it quickly, but she’d been buying time, too. And unlike Ivy, she was done shopping.

Her Batgirl cape wasn’t nearly as wide cut as her Spoiler cloak had been, not as good for hiding things in, but she’d contrived to use its cover to take out and arm nine individual exploding batarangs while they talked. That was more than she carried normally, or even would be allowed to carry normally, but when you were fighting evil trees more ordinance tended to be called-for, and Batman had issued a supply.

Without wasting time, she started throwing. Her aim had never been especially exact, something Damian liked to give her a hard time about, but here all she had to hit was ‘an entire tree.’ No fiddly precision targets today. She had to aim for the ones not showing fruit or trunk bulges, which she was going to have to trust didn’t have people inside, rather than having just recently acquired very tiny people—this seemed like a safe bet since Ivy tended to be soft on kids.

Not enough to stop periodically trying to destroy humanity for their sake, but enough that it was hard to imagine her hurting one face to face.

“No!” Ivy shouted. She got points for not leaping toward the blinking explosives to try to stop them, sending vines striking like snakes instead, but she was too busy doing that to get away from the bomb that had landed only about five feet away from her.

The blast blew her off her feet, and clear off her pedestal of green. She’d managed to remotely yank two of the batarangs out before they went off, saving those doom fungi, but Steph wasn’t worried about that; she’d successfully set the supervillain up for the kind of fatal misjudgment in defense of plants Batman always said was the surest way to beat her, and now she charged in to make the most of it.

She got there in plenty of time to really put her weight behind a punch hammering down into Ivy’s face, then kicked her in the chest, heel driving in just below the collarbone. Ivy gave a very human uph and pained expression, though she didn’t fall, and Steph went for another kick, this one more carefully aimed.

This was a mistake. One green-tinted hand came up and closed around her ankle like a Venus flytrap made of carbon steel, and in one sharp uncoiling move Eisley rose to her feet and with a twist of her whole torso flung Steph head over heels across the grove.

She realized somewhere between getting thrown and suppressing the urge to vomit as she gyroed upside-down that she’d been thrown straight for one of the remaining undamaged, unfruiting tree-things. Could see the surface getting sort of…gelatinous in preparation for her impact, which was so many flavors of no.

Her hands didn’t fumble at her belt, courtesy of many hours of drills and live practice, even as instinct screamed for rush and now now now.

Her grapple caught in one of the spreading ‘boughs’ at the top of another broccoli, and she tugged the line to send herself swinging out on a long arc just short of making contact with the fungus that wanted to eat her.

She peppered the air in front of her with ordinary, nonexplosive Batarangs as she came back around on the end of the wire—Ivy smacked these casually aside, but it made enough of a distraction that Pam didn’t notice in time the moment when Steph got her backup grapple into a different tree, and accelerated.

Going for a kick would have been the smart, safe option, but Steph was rarely smart and almost never safe, so instead of slamming her full body weight heel-first into the supervillain and hoping it stuck this time, she grabbed with the full strength of endless thigh workouts and dragged Ivy clear off her feet.

Ivy’s plants were protective, but they tended to rely heavily on her for targeting anything that wasn’t right in front of them, so keeping her disoriented was a good idea if you could manage it. It said so in her file. So this part, the grabbing, had been an actual plan, even if one it had taken about two seconds to make, and even if ‘hit the supervillain essentially with your crotch’ was probably a combat recommendation no one would make ever.

The next part was sheer impulse, based on how much easier Ivy was to move than expected—maybe her punch resistance wasn’t so much physical density as some sort of supernatural rootedness, and if you could get her off the ground it stopped working?

Steph released the retraction mechanism on her secondary grapple and let it start paying out again, an instant before she hit the max-strength retract button on her original grapple, the one that was still in her other hand, and gripping a bough halfway across the grove.

Her right shoulder screamed, but Ivy let out a startled choking sound as their trajectory wrenched around out of the arc Steph had been carrying her into headfirst, and shot the other way. Which meant she was still discombobulated, which meant Steph still had the upper hand, shoulder or no.

Steph picked the right moment as they went rocketing back, and let go. Momentum kept Ivy flying, and none of her plants reacted to catch her in midair before she landed. Right on target.

Ivy sank headfirst into her own carnivorous fungus tree, in the gelatinous patch where she’d tried to throw Steph. Her legs kicked once, and then fell still. “See how you like it!” Steph shouted, which was perhaps not the wittiest repartee ever, but she didn’t care.

She landed, staggering a little because her shoulder might be dislocated a little bit and was definitely killing her. And normally she wouldn’t turn her back on a villain just because she’d gotten one good hit and they hadn’t immediately gotten up again, but what she’d been fighting for this whole time was time, because the window of opportunity to stop Tim Drake-Wayne from being reduced to protein goo and the pattern for a bunch of veggie-copies was closing fast. This wasn’t a defeat-top-rank-supervillain-solo mission, this was a rescue mission.

She pelted back toward the relevant tree, holding up the elbow of her bad arm with the opposite hand against the jolt. How to get him out? With two good arms she could have climbed or grappled up to the level of the bulge that represented the broccoli’s prey and started cutting, but it would be hard to get good leverage. Was there a better option?

One of the Tim-fruits twitched on its stem. Fuck it.

Steph recalled the grapple-end of her holdout gun from where it had been since she use it to get the drop on Ivy, fired it into the gummy-looking limbs of the Tim tree, and hauled herself up. She needed to start carrying a better cutting implement than a Batarang, how did Midnight Boy Scout not mandate that already, but for now she gripped one swoopy sharp black wing awkwardly in her gauntleted left hand, braced toes and knees against the nasty cool-flesh stem, and put all the strength her bad arm had into cutting through the tough husk.

It wouldn’t cut.

More of the Tims were starting to move. Their copy nervous systems booting up or whatever.

The whole tree seemed like it was twitching, and then she realized it was, or rather just the lump under her feet was, and she pulled back her Batarang just in time for something thin and yellow to burst out through the surface of the Doom Broccoli, and disappear, leaving an almost invisibly thin slash that dribbled a transparent greenish fluid that reminded Steph of aloe vera gel but smelled more like old mango and artichoke.

The rubbery husk was being sliced up from the soft, inner side with the hawks-head emblem that belonged in the middle of Red Robin’s chest, which wouldn’t you know was a holdout throwing star thing after all, just like his R used to be. She should’ve known.

Talk about impractical shapes for a knife.

“Keep going, you’ve almost got this.”

Whether he heard her or not, he went on thrashing and slashing, and Steph with her Batarang tore as best she could with her bad arm at the shreds between cuts, trying to get them to snap and let all the thin slashes add up to one hole large enough to escape through.

The Tim-fruits were still twitching. Would they fall to the ground and then peel their limbs free like they were breaking out of husks, and get up and start walking around? Or would they need to get all the way to looking like functioning humans before detaching from the stems?

A whole arm burst out in a rush of goo. They were going to make it.

The fingers of the nearest fruit came unstuck, one by one, curling around air the way Tim curled his around a staff.

And then he was out, headfirst and gooey.

“Man, Ex-Boyfriend Wonder,” Steph sighed, as she let him grab onto her and lowered them on a slowly paying-out jumpline, helping him reach the ground with slightly more dignity than clawing his way down the slime-encrusted ruptured stem of his prison would have allowed, assuming he hadn’t just landed face-first and died. “Why’d you have to go breaking yourself loose at the last second like that? I was supposed to be the hero!”

“Believe me, you—pbbbft—were,” Tim answered, pausing partway to spit out a mouthful of sap-gel that he must somehow have been breathing in there. “I’d never have even managed to wake up if you hadn’t turned up to distract Ivy and make such a racket. I could feel her speeding it up, toughening up the…things, pushing.” The shiver was understated enough Steph might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been clinging to her waist. She eyed the Tim fruits. They’d stopped moving. Good?

Feet on the ground, Tim brushed fruitlessly at the slime all over his costume, then obviously gave it up as a bad job. “Where is she?” he asked, looking around.

“Over there.” Steph landed too, and pointed to where Ivy was still embedded head-first in a broccoli.

She’d disappeared up to the waist, and didn’t seem to be making any effort to get out. In fact, as they watched she seemed to sink in another centimeter.

“Okay, that’s a bit better than a distraction,” Tim acknowledged. “But also I don’t think we should let her finish. I don’t want to fight a dozen vegetable Poison Ivys.”

“Don’t like to eat your vegetables?” Steph teased, even as she sized up the situation—should they pull Ivy out, probably the faster option but then they’d probably have to fight her some more right away, or try cutting down the Doom Broccoli with her still in it, more thorough?

“Yeah actually I’m not going to be able to look any cabbage varietals in the face for the next six months,” said Tim, apparently agreeing they were broccoli regardless of their creator’s opinion and the mango smell, “but come on. It’s never good when villains start to spawn. Chiraxes was bad enough.”

“Blegh,” Steph admitted. The duplicate Drury Walkers had at least had a super short lifespan and been self-disposing. “Okay, I’m all out of bombs. You?” Probably a dumb question, given all his storage space had been confiscated.

“Ivy took my belt and everything in my bandoliers,” Red Robin admitted, touching the cape closure thing at the top of them, where he’d shoved his little sigil-thing back into place in spite of all the goo. His stupid little gimmicks would be easier to make fun of if they worked out less often, lucky stiff.

“But she left that.” Because Tim had all the luck when it came to details like that. “And your mask?” Not that Ivy had ever cared much about things like the Bats’ secret identities.

He shrugged. “I guess she didn’t expect it to be relevant long.” Anything she wanted to know from or about him, the copies could have told her, soon enough. And he wouldn’t have mattered, once he was dead.

This had been another close one; Steph got those feelings out with a little shiver of her own. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do something about Ivy. Everybody else should be here soon.”

“Backup,” Tim sighed, pushing his hair back from his face and having it stick that way, messily moussed with doom fungus glop. “I love having backup.”

“Sure didn’t act like it back in the day.”

“I am an older and wiser man now. Who values being alive and made of the original meat products.”

Steph stole a glance over her shoulder at the Tim tree. “…I’m really glad those things aren’t waking up.”

“Me too. Think of the ethical implications.”

Steph side-eyed him, not sure whether that was intentional humor or not, then decided it didn’t matter and elbowed him in the ribs anyway. She immediately broke into a run to avoid any counter-attacks, bad arm carefully supported once again. “Race you to the supervillain!”

#stephanie brown #tim drake #pamela eisley #batfam #supervillain fight #rescue mission #prompt #gofundcee #jes-cher #doom broccolis #my fic #batman fic #fanfic #winter weather #capes #shoulder injury

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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The one where ex-Talon Richard Grayson winds up in the Tower with the New Teen Titans and they have to deal with one another has finally continued.

@kiragecko i am so sorry this has taken so damn long.

#my fic #earth-3 #gofundcee #hoc est meum #kiragecko #prompts #technically #teen titans

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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Earth-3

Characters: Owlman, Talon, Superwoman, Orin of Atlantis, Donna Troy, Garth

Warnings: Dehumanization, vague sleazing at 13yo, brief mention of past eye trauma, villains

Words: ~4,500

For Sheillagh O., who has been very very patient about something that in theory was going to be done by the end of January.

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Talon ducked under his master’s elbow and slid the knife in where it belonged, at the base of Owlman’s spine.

It was one of three blades that slotted invisibly into the armor plates along his torso, to serve as additional rigid protection as long as they were in place and, when necessary, to offer an extra edge.

Not that the Owl ever even looked unarmed, nor would be harmless if he were. But there was a difference between the menace of jet claws, and the sharp point that could be made with five inches of steel.

Talon ducked back out again, lifted the left gauntlet from its stand and waited for the matching hand to be held out, that he might slide it on. This might take some space of seconds, as Owlman was flipping through the day’s reports on an obsidian clipboard, inset with faceted beads of smoky quartz forming the shape of the feather tattoo he gave his fully initiated followers, the footsoldiers of his Court.

(There had been a lecture last month, when the clipboard was delivered, about the choice of materials, and the balance between useful opulence and absurd ostentation. The latter, it seemed, would have been using actual gemstones in the decoration, rather than mere quartz.

Talon was glad it wasn’t set with diamonds. Inevitably one would have fallen out and gotten lost, and Owlman would have been in a temper.)

Without looking up from whatever document was making him frown so thunderously, the Owl extended his left hand. Gauntlet on. Flex, to make sure it had settled correctly. Pass the clipboard into that hand, obsidian impervious to the bite of claws, as Talon circled silently around his back.

It was important not to keep his master waiting, but neither could he distract him with haste and rush. There was a balance in this, as in all things. Perfection must brush the fingertips with every movement, though it might never alight within the palm. This was attainable. He had been well taught.

The old Talons had not been trained as squires. He’d been told that by one of the round white masks, old blood who had known Talons before him, in feathered armor, and trained them too. White circle inset with great dark eyes looking down, thinking little of him, in his ragged grey and scarlet. White mask and the voice that issued from behind it familiar, from times when he had been in error, and required punishment.

But the Court had changed, since the days when Talon wore the armor. And the King who ruled it now preferred the personal touch.

He didn’t need help arming up, of course. The entirety of the royal raiment was very particularly designed to be manageable by the wearer, without assistance, because Owlman felt that trust was a negotiable commodity but not one he preferred ever to have to rely upon.

A second pair of hands saved time and trouble, however, and the more height Talon put on, the more often it was his service that was called for, rather than that of the old man. He could almost reach the top of the Owl’s head now, if he stretched.

Clipboard transferred, the second powerful hand stretched out, and Talon slid the gauntlet onto it. Another flex of claws. Testing articulation. It was unthinkable that this armor could be neglected enough to rust, but something could always have gone wrong. Never assume.

The claws dove toward his neck, and Talon froze. What mistake had he made?

But his throat was not opened. One great knuckle hooked carefully under the edge of his jaw. The armored inner pad of the vast thumb pressed against his lower left bicuspid, through the thin flesh of his face. The very end of the thumb’s black claw pricked at the corner of his mouth.

Firmly, the heavy hand turned his face up, into Owlman’s where he knew better than to look unless instructed. Pale blue eyes punched into his own sharply enough it felt they should have punctured, and oozed down his face blindly. (He hated when that happened. The slime stayed even after he recovered, and blindness in the interim was awful.)

“Talon,” said his king, as softly as he ever said anything that was not a threat. Deep, smooth, and just a step shy of gloating. None of the cool sharp edges of his anger. Talon had done nothing wrong. The band around his heart loosened. “Focus.”

The hand withdrew from his chin, and Talon dipped his head in contrition. How could he always tell, somehow. What carelessness crept into his movements, when his mind began to spin away behind his eyes?

"Good." The Owl reached out and lifted the feathered mantle from its stand himself, swinging its weight around his shoulders to settle there, doubling his already great size and casting shadow over the gleaming-dark surface of his breastplate.

Reached up to draw the mask down over his face, and tipped his chin back as he did, throat bared, so that Talon knew to step close, reach up, and hook carefully along the the gorget the row of fastenings that kept the great cloak in place.

A twitch of broad armored shoulders brought the feathers into line, and they were ready to depart.

The meeting was on an island in international waters. Waters, however, that were within a convenient distance of Gotham by small watercraft, a thing ensured by the simple expedient of Owlman having donated the location to the cause.

Not that he didn't still own it, technically speaking, through a network of shells. (Talon knew vaguely that these were legal entities, but always pictured tiny curling conches and delicate oyster-carapaces strung on chains, swinging with every breeze.) But it was used for only this, and was treated for Society purposes as common ground.

The other members maintained just the narrowest thread of awareness that they were on his territory—enough to incline them to defer, but not enough to make them feel trapped.

It was a careful balance his lord maintained, over these titans of the world. Talon knew the delicate power of it because he was one of the most mobile weights on the scales, but also because he imagined anyone would, watching power flow back and forth amongst the mighty. The unstoppable force of alien or amazon curbed and redirected to a common purpose.

Or was that only anyone who had been watching Owlman all their life. Talon could not say.

The Court had been this restive, once. When Talon was new. Had still required delicacy, though never quite so much, because no one in it had had a fraction of the strength gathered here. Now all the Courtiers had learned to bow their round white faces and avert their staring Tyton eyes, and the King had turned his gaze beyond Gotham, into the greater world.

The waves broke black about them as they raced eastward, leaving the lights of Gotham far behind. It was low in the water, this small vessel, but fast and quiet as the wings of owls in the night air. Owlman steered, very upright in the only seat.

Talon crouched at his left hand, one bare knee steadying him against the inside of the hull. It was cold. Thin steel between him and the ocean’s depth.

He could drown for a very long time, before he stopped waking up again.

Sometimes when the boat was caught by a rise, he jostled against his lord’s knee. The Owl took no notice.

“Listen closely to the others,” he instructed, at length, as the shore of the little island and the tower’s height came into view. As though Talon might have forgotten. “I will be expecting a detailed report at the end of the evening.”

He didn’t glance toward Talon. Verbal confirmation was required. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good. I intend to avoid conflict tonight, and in addition to the question of expanded membership, the political situation has expanded the agenda, so we may run late. You may speak to whatever hangers-on the rest have brought as necessary to extract information, but be subtle.”

“…yes, my lord.”

“You have doubts?”

“No, my lord.”

“Obviously they’ll be suspicious if you act out of character.” Yes, exactly. “Don’t.”

Well. That limited the options. A challenge, but the better kind. The more choices he was given, after all, the more likely it was he would make one that was wrong.

Talon tipped his head back a little to catch the flash of the stars. They said you could use them in place of a clock, if you knew them well enough. There would be a clock in the meeting-hall, to time his mission by. Owlman always made sure that business could be conducted according to schedule, so that if it was departed from it would be a conscious decision, and not the careless creep of accidental waste.

There were few worse things than error.

The ocean spoke, and the stars were silent, and he understood neither.

The prince of Atlantis was leaping lightly up onto the dock when they drew alongside it, casting the reins that bound his dolphin mounts aside into the cold March water. He had no need to hitch them in place; they would come when he called.

Careless, artless display of power. All the more effective for its lack of calculation.

"Orin," Owlman inclined his head minutely as he stepped across from vessel to pier. Talon knelt at his heel, lashing the boat in place against the dock—unliving things could not be counted upon to remain obediently where they were left, if something wished to carry them away, nor to come back when called upon, and the ocean did not bow to the Owl-king's will.

"Owl," the prince replied, return nod almost lost in the way he swept his pale hair back, scattering salt droplets against the rising moon, glittering even brighter than the golden scales of his armor. "Lovely night."

"Mm." Disinterested agreement. Claws loose. No offense taken. The embossed patterns of his armor caught the moon in them far more subtly, a spider's web over polished night. "Shall we go up?"

"You take the open sky too much for granted, my good bird," smiled His Highness, voice light as sun on water. "But surely. I sent my squire ahead to ensure the provisions would be suitable, today."

No staff was kept on the secret island, for security reasons, and thus catering was limited. The speedster Dash had been in charge of the food at the previous meeting a month ago, and his contribution had been dozens of cheeseburgers in paper sacks, whose scent had made Talon's idiot mouth water, even though last time he'd eaten anything of the kind (spoils from a target’s home) it had sat in his stomach like stone, until he lost it into a gutter.

Superwoman had been entirely amused by the cheeseburgers, and Ultraman had only gotten annoyed once he saw that Owlman was, and realized his own standards should be higher. Atom, who was the most recent addition to the cohort, had seemed indifferent, as much as the mood of a man six inches high could be read from any distance.

But Hydrolord had almost walked out in offense. Surface dweller food, he said, was suspicious to begin with, fast food was beneath his royal dignity, and cattle were disgusting.

The fact that he'd known what it was at a glance had not gone unnoticed, even by Talon. His Highness went ashore incognito; this was known. Whether he'd eaten Burger King before or only seen it, or watched the advertisements, had mattered less however than the general calumny cast by all upon Dash's entirely unconcerned head. It had been hypnotic, that unconcern. The fragile mortal man with nothing but speed to protect him, surrounded by the most dangerous people on Earth, so sure he could not be touched that a mocking smile played at the corner of his mouth even as Ultraman fumed and Owlman's lip curled in disgust; as Hydrolord made the sea crash against the rocks outside as though it would swallow the fortress whole.

Dash was terribly powerful or very foolish, and either way he was brave.

Perhaps he had given the offense purposely, to show how little he cared for his colleagues’ anger, or perhaps he hadn’t cared enough to concern himself with what they might want. He had simply sat back in his chair at the high council table and eaten cheeseburgers almost too quickly to see the motion of hand to mouth, and yet with no great hurry, and smiled, and let the empty paper wrappers pile up at his elbow.

The meeting had ended early and with everyone but Dash in ill temper, even Superwoman, who’d gotten fed up by then with Atlantean and Kryptonian sulking.

If the Dash had been waging some kind of war that day, Talon thought he might have won.

But this was a new night, and the ocean prince seemed in good spirits as he led the way up the winding gravel path, toward the stone turrets of the refurbished old fort. Pirate-hunters had sailed from this island, once. Never pirates.

The Superwoman intercepted them all in the entry annex. “Orin! Owlman! Just barely on time!” She was wearing a cape today, a great billow of cloth-of-gold that trailed behind her like smoke as she swept forward across black tile, but still fell heavy about her whenever it hung still.

“Diana,” the prince greeted the princess, all careful courtesy. His armor glimmered a slightly paler shade than her mantle. “A fair moon for you?”

“Lovely. I fought some sort of prehistoric flightless dragon in a magical cavern. It was delicious. Have you bested that Kraken yet?”

“It’s learning to fear me.”

She leaned in and patted his cheek, a condescension he accepted with a tight-lipped smile. “Well done,” she said.

“Thank you.” His bow was stiff. “Excuse me.” Prince Orin stalked off toward where his squire was carefully adjusting the placement of silver domes over platters on the long sideboard, his good mood dispelled.

Silver corroded rapidly in seawater. Those domes were not an Atlantean affectation. Talon had seen something similar in Owlman’s home. Wondered if asking about them would be a believable opening to conversation.

“Oh, and you brought your cupbearer again, I see!” Superwoman exclaimed to the King of Owls, the full weight of her attention falling onto Talon, and immediately claiming the whole of his focus. (Not quite the whole; some was still reserved for his king.) “I like this one,” she announced, tapping a thumb against the bronze armor plating along her upper arm with a noise like rain on tin roofing, mouth curling up. “He doesn’t flinch.”

Flinch? Well. No. It wasn't that she wasn't terrifying, of course. Talon simply had very little energy to waste on feelings like fear. He'd been trained better than that.

"Your Highness," he murmured, ducking his head. A hand came down upon it. Not quite as large as Owlman’s, and bare.

"Hm," she hummed. "Courteous little creature you've trained, Bruce. Your way is so dismally slow, though." Long fingers that could crunch bone like dry leaves toyed with his hair.

Owlman's hand clamped down on Talon's shoulder. "But effective."

"I think you'll find my methods are entirely efficacious, thank you." The sharp note in her voice promised pain, but the hand that slipped from his hair, curled down his face and under his chin was merely firm.

Talon's breath threatened to stutter in his chest. He was supposed to defer to her. He was not supposed to allow liberties. How to resolve these dictates. Was this a test.

If Owlman objected to having his right hand pawed at, he would say something. The hand on his shoulder had tightened, but not in threat. Not as a message. There would be claws in that. Talon submitted to the touch.

The Superwoman's skin against his face seemed to burn. As though with perpetual fever. They said she had been created in divine fire. Talon knew his own body temperature was low. A side effect of the electrum in his bones.

Owlman touched him barehanded, sometimes. That was never so hot as this.

She tilted his head up with a firm pressure, and he stared vacantly into her forehead.

"Why the mask?" she murmured.

"That intangible mystique." The Owlman's voice was heavy with impatient sarcasm. "Diana, if you're finished inspecting my possessions..."

Superwoman swiped the pad of her thumb over Talon's lips. The pressure struck like a bolt of lightning, raced up and down his spine, wrenched at his gut and left his whole skin tingling, chilled. He didn't quite manage to suppress all reaction; his master certainly felt the twitch through the hand still clasped tight around his shoulder. It tightened.

"Chapped," she observed. "You should look into an oil or wax for that, boy."

"Diana." Exasperation. There were very few beings in the world Owlman would bother to show exasperation without menace, but the Superwoman was beyond his power to control, or to readily annihilate. He seemed almost a man, with her. Merely mortal.

The Owl would not let the Superwoman take Talon. He would not. It was too great a loss of face. The practical inconvenience of losing him could be weathered, if necessary, but politically—

"Oh, very well." The Superwoman took her hand away. Talon had never been so grateful to belong to Owlman. "Do drop fifty cents on a tube of chapstick for the boy, though; it can't be efficient for his lips to be constantly splitting, no matter how fast they heal, and it's poor aesthetics."

"Thank you," Owlman said, withering. "For your input."

"Always happy to help, Bruce." She winked at Talon. "See you around, pretty boy."

“Isn’t he too young for you?” the Owl grumbled, falling into step with Superwoman and leaving Talon where he stood, the turn of his head and slope of his shoulder indicating absent dismissal. The edges of their capes brushed together, hard sunlight and soft shadow.

“But showing such potential. You do have nice taste, and they’re so delightfully moldable at that age.”

“Must you always interfere with my things.”

“You’re so generous with them. I only trashed your beach house a little, and I took care of the bodies myself. Anyway, I’ll let you play with my next acquisition if you like.”

“I’m not much for games.”

They were out of earshot, then, and approaching the great oval table that took up one whole end of the hall, raised up on a dais with a single beam of light pouring down onto the center, reflecting from the polished surface enough to light the faces seated around it, though the spotlight did not quite reach them.

Ultraman was already in his chair, its high winged back blazoned with the crest of his house on a gilded field. In the smaller chair facing his, Dash sprawled comfortably back against his sigil of lightning.

As he, Superwoman, and Hydrolord all reached their places, Owlman flicked the particular sign of dismissal that meant commence duties toward Talon. At the table, Atom expanded abruptly into being to fill his seat, and in the shadowed hall beyond, Talon fell away toward the lesser table that lay along the far wall.

Where Garth of Atlantis had, in his master’s absence, been cornered by Donna of Themiscyra.

She loomed over him with only a slight advantage in height, and though she seemed unarmed but for the coiled whip stored on one hip, and was smiling, the threat implied in the way she stood far too close for courtesy was very clear.

Prince Orin’s squire was his master’s opposite: stockily built, and thus solid even for an Atlantean, but only half a head taller than Talon despite being the eldest of the three, with ringlets of dark hair and purple eyes, and in place of the broad smile or frothing rage most common on His Highness of the Seas, Garth’s expression alternated between brusque bare-courtesy and poorly hidden resentment.

He seemed a very poor courtier and was a mess of defensive vulnerabilities, but had clearly been selected for his loyalty over all other concerns.

The Superwoman's right hand, in contrast, was her mirror image—"My sister, Donna," she had said absently the first time she brought the girl with her, and the resemblance was strong; stronger than his had ever been to the Owl, and they’d been mistaken for blood relations more than once, the few times he’d been deployed at his master’s side outside of uniform. And yet there were differences, ones Talon had catalogued at once, and watched still for any change.

Her balance was less perfect, and when she lashed out the loss of control was far less calculated, far likelier to leave her vulnerable. The fire in her stare was different, full of sparks and a snapping pride that spoke to doubts which could undoubtedly be targeted, if it came to a fight. Owlman had estimated her age at fourteen, with the caveat that Amazons did not age at the usual human rate.

Talon had spent three meetings with them already, without having been forced to fight. He was sure it was only a matter of time.

Today seemed likely to be the day, by the set of each of their shoulders. He might welcome it—pain was a small sacrifice for the clean certainty of violence, even against those he must not kill without a clear command. Certainly it would be easier than any other interaction.

But in combat he would have no luck subtly extracting information from their conversation. No good. He had a mission to complete. And Owlman planned to avoid conflict tonight.

“Careful, Amazon,” Garth cautioned, as Talon drew near. “To insult me is to insult my master.”

Superwoman’s protégée flicked the long tail of her hair out dismissively. “And I should be scared of your prince? What power does he have, besides the right to go crying to his mommy?”

“He is knight of the seven seas and the prince of Atlantis, who holds the trident of Neptune.”

“And what is that to the Queen of the Cats? Face it, he’s only here to pretend to be relevant outside his goldfish bowl.”

Garth’s hand strayed toward his waist, though there was no visible weapon there. “You insolent—”

His teeth snapped shut on word and possibly tongue as the heel of Donna Troy’s hand slammed up under his chin.

In the disorientation this created she yanked his gut onto her fist with a handful of curls, then flipped the triple human weight of an Atlantean’s dense muscle and bone casually over her shoulder.

He hit the ground on his face and had only time to break the fall before she was on him again, twisting his arm tight against his spine so that any struggle might tear it from its moorings—an even more serious injury for a boy who swam everywhere than it would be on the surface.

She dragged his head back with a loop of silver whip around his throat.

“Insolent,” she said, her face hanging just above the back of his ear, though she spoke loud and clear enough that Talon had no struggle to hear, “is a word for your inferiors. I am no such thing.

“I am the Lady of Ilium, carrying the legacy of the Titans that stand beyond the world. Troy fell because it trusted too well in the guardianship of Poseidon. Learn from them.

“Because if you continue to cross me I will challenge you to a duel of honor, and throw you down again with my lady and the gods to witness, and shackle your will to mine. And do you think your prince will still value your service, if he can’t trust you not to obey me, instead?”

The squire’s short breath and silence were answer enough, and Donna Troy smirked and let him go, standing up and not offering to help him to his feet. The long half-second it took him to rise spoke volumes to those who knew how to look, and the Amazon flicked the long tail of her hair again in scorn.

She flicked her eyes toward Talon with the gesture, and he realized she was gauging his opinion, his reaction to her violence and her successful threat. She wanted his approval? Or his respect. Or his fear.

He didn't fear her. Genuinely. There was...very little she could do that could threaten him, really. Up at the high table, her mistress was smiling sharkishly at his master, looking for a weakness. She would not find it. She would never find it.

Lady Ilium dismissed the squire of Atlantis and tried her own sharkish smile out on Talon, assured of his attention. He showed his teeth in return. It was not a comforting expression, but he didn't think it would be taken as a threat.

Could she break his will, with her magic? What would that be like?

"Anything to say, Birdie-bye?" she asked him.

Perfect. An opening.

He tilted his head. "Your queens don't know about this meeting, do they?" It was a question for both, if Garth wanted to seize the floor.

"Tch." Donna rolled her eyes and looked away, up at the table where the adults were indulging in intrigue. "Hippolyta will come around." She shot him a look. "Anyway it's not as though your government approves."

Owlman owned the city and state governments. The federal was proving a little more challenging. Talon shrugged one shoulder in carefully calculated indifference. It wasn’t the same thing. “My king,” he said, “is here.”

“And you think being the lord of a made-up Court with no realm of his own is somehow of more account than heir to an empire covering two thirds of the world?” Garth demanded.

Talon regarded him without expression, and the Lady Ilium burst into snorting laughter at the sight, and leaned forward to backhand Talon’s arm—a gesture that seemed almost friendly meant, though he felt blood vessels burst at the impact, and immediately begin to mend. “You’re chatty today, aren’t you shorty? Don’t worry about Diana, she knows what’s up. Her mom’s old-fashioned, we just have to work around her for now.

"Lots of Amazons want in on the outside world, letting you men control it just because it would be a huge chore to change things is such a drag.”

She wrapped an arm around Garth’s neck, too quick for him to evade, but rather than choking or cracking his spine she just dragged him sideways, until his head was conveniently positioned to violently tousle his curls. “And don’t worry about Atlantis, gillsy. We’re not gonna mess with your soggy system, that’s what allies is all about. You’re getting us onside, Atalanta’s gonna owe you.”

Donna Troy, Talon decided, was not originally from Themiscyra. Valuable intelligence, if he could support it with evidence. As a first step he would have to find a way to get her to touch him again, and confirm the impression of a hand far too cool to be a thing like her sister-mistress, of earth and holy fire.

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whetstonefires · 5 years

Text

schmoo92 said: As for the fic, I’m trying to think of a way to say ‘what wouldn’t be spoiler-y about the future of Baleful Star?’ (2500)

I mistook this for the actual prompt, rather than the preliminary-question-for-framing-the-prompt it was intended as. This has been deemed acceptable in spite of being entirely wrong. ^^;;;;;

So after much logistical delay, here’s the fic for @schmoo92 from Cerusee’s fundraiser! (Which is still open, btw.) A few-years-later followup to my Ra’s & Tim mirrorverse fic that avoids major spoilers for the ‘verse as a whole.

Timothy Drake was sixteen years old.

Ra’s al Ghul had been trying to recruit him since he was eleven.

“You should stop,” said Talia, as they gazed over the absolute ruins of the base—it was a small one, a single sun-drenched building on the Greek coast, most of the space given over to above-board Leafshadow environmental work in the Caribbean, and only the secret chambers dug into the stone of the hillside connected to their more covert work.

The contents of which rooms had, on this particular day, been something very important.

Even without that, it was a personal insult to find this place defiled. Her mother had spent a lot of time here, fifty years ago. Talia turned from the ruins to her father to further press her point. “He’s never going to change.”

“No.” Dusan ibn al Ghul had both hands on his cane, and looked as if the steady breeze along the beach could whirl him away in one strong gust, and he squinted against the light, but his voice was firm. “Didn’t you notice? He still hasn’t killed anyone.”

Talia turned upon her brother so sharply the ends of her scarf flew out and caught the air, like pale green wings. “Pardon me, he certainly has killed our people.”

“But not,” said Dusan in his papery voice, “when he could avoid it.”

“Because he’s cultivating Father. I don’t understand how you two don’t see it.”

“Talia,” Ra’s reproved. It was gentle enough to be insulting—refusing to engage with her argument entirely, in favor of correcting her manner. Talia crossed her arms, realized it only enhanced the comparison to a sulking child, and dropped her hands to her sides instead. Kept them somehow out of fists.

“I can’t believe you’re falling for the same con twice.”

Dusan looked mildly shocked, but Ra’s only sighed. “If you live long enough, everything happens more than once. But this isn’t the same, Talia. Bruce came to us promising the world. Timothy has never offered anything.”

Talia flinched a little, even though she was the one who had brought up the Owlman and his history with their family, but she did not back down. As if not promising anything was a point in the boy’s favor. “Bruce has obviously primed him to play to your weaknesses. Why else would he have gotten away with all these gestures you credit him?”

“Perhaps he’s very clever.” Ra’s voice was dry, and still so untouchably calm. Dusan at least looked mildly baited by her essentially calling their father an easily led fool, but the eldest of them might easily not have cared at all. Might have been thinking about something else entirely, as he humored his daughter.

“If he was all that clever, and worth your efforts, he’d have found a way to come to us years ago.”

“Talia…”

But she could stand no more of that bland self-assurance. She turned her back on family and tumbled white stone alike. “Sometimes,” she bit out, “I understand why Nyssa is the way she is.”

She stormed away along the beach, feeling horribly young and also horrible, and leaving shocked silence behind her.

It had been a terrible thing to say. The reasons for Nyssa’s state of being were primarily two: Nazis, and the Lazarus Pit. She’d come out of the Pit better off, with more of herself intact, than anyone ever had but Ra’s, probably through the concentrating power of vengeance. But not so much so that green madness did not show in everything she did, even that which was right.

Nyssa Raatko née bint al Ghul, though, blamed their father for everything. For letting the Axis come to power. For letting her family die to them. Talia hadn’t been born yet at the time, but even if she had believed her father had ever had the power to prevent World Wars, she couldn’t think he had failed to do so out of apathy.

But at moments like this, she didn’t think Nyssa’s hate was all madness, either of Pit or of grief. The old man’s shadow stretched so black across the world, that sometimes...

Dusan caught Talia up some way along the coast, out of sight of the wreckage. There were a few sails and one modern powered boat visible against the horizon, and the distant sound of sheep could be heard if you listened through the surf, but otherwise there was no sign of human habitation at all, only sand and stone and sea. Talia was sitting on the sand with her back against a stone, cutting into the horizon with her eyes.

He came picking his way with his cane, carefully choosing his steps, squinting, and for a moment all Talia’s exasperation was forgotten in concern, and she felt nothing so much as ashamed to have dragged a hundred-and-two-year-old across such unsteady terrain as loose sand. Talia had been trying to spend more time with Dusan lately, conscious of his impending expiration date, but they were both so busy and found time for one another so rarely that she felt almost more terribly for blowing up at Ra’s and ruining this reunion than for the physical strain.

But she hadn’t made him follow her. He looked up, and met her eyes. “Talia,” he said, just as if he was not-yet-seventy again, and she was still a little girl running away from her minders.

She was forty-three. She felt so tired. “Why won’t either of you hear me?” she asked.

“We do,” Dusan said, speaking for their father as he had so often when she was a child, and her brother was there when Ra’s couldn’t be. “We just don’t agree.”

No one had been killed today. Ubu, here to retrieve the package, had been hospitalized, but it was only a broken bone. None of that mattered, not really.

“He’s a threat. We can’t keep letting him…”

Dusan sighed. “Your friend Doctor Eisley does not make decisions for the League of Shadows.”

And there it was. “But we’re supposed to value her counsel,” Talia retorted. “Do you think she doesn’t know him better than us?”

“I think her biases should be taken into account.”

Pamela was biased, of course; that could not be denied. And yet.

“He took the Helm of Fate,” said Talia. They’d gone to such lengths to gain control of the artifact, after it erupted from a volcano six months ago. And now, for all that effort, Bruce had it in his keeping. “His master can’t be trusted with something like that.”

“At least he’s probably not stupid enough to put it on,” offered Dusan, and Talia rolled her eyes.

“My heart is comforted.”

Dusan rearranged his weight a little on his cane, shifting the strain of standing upright onto slightly different muscle groups. “When you reach a certain age…”

“Oh, don’t!” Talia broke in. “Don’t—resort to the Wise Old Man thing. You realize Father will always be older than me, right? He’s always been there being older than you, isn’t that annoying, don’t—someone used to do it to you!” she realized, stabbing a finger in sudden recognition and leaping upright at once. “When you were younger! Someone fed up with Father used to use that same Wise Old Man act to win arguments with you! And now you’re passing it down!”

“Wise Old Woman, actually.” Dusan’s smile carried a shade of melancholy. “It was Nyssa. She was insufferable.”

“Nyssa is only thirty years older than you!”

“And I’m only sixty years older than you.”

“Gah!” Talia marched in and stabbed a hand at him—not with much force, because she did not want to risk his fragile bones, but snake-quick. His cane came up in deflection, though, and for long, sea-sighing seconds they stood there on the sand, a score of Talia’s rapid strikes falling in vain.

Her reflexes were better than his, in addition to the strength she wasn’t bringing to bear, but Dusan the Ghost had been training young agents of the Shadows for some seven decades and more, and he had the benefit of being armed with a weapon whose weight and size he intimately knew, and a smile bloomed wider and wider across his pale face as her frustration spent itself against his guard.

Finally, her open hand slapped flat against the front of his shoulder, even as the butt of his cane tapped her knee, at an angle that could have driven the patella out of its place and crippled the leg if it had come with sufficient force.

“Draw!” declared Talia, and found herself laughing. “Come on,” she said, offering her brother her arm, feeling lighter than before even though nothing had changed. “We do have an investigation to complete.”

Dusan transferred his cane to his right hand, laid the left on her elbow, and let her help him back along the beach, to her mother’s broken house.

The investigation turned up nothing further of real use, and then they had to part ways, as Dusan took ship across the Mediterranean to the training complex he ran in Egypt, while Talia and Ra’s returned to what was at present their central base, in the hills north of Kabul—Ra’s had built it up considerably in the 1980s when he’d been spending what time he could in Afghanistan, trying to stabilize the region after the Saur Revolution predictably devolved into infighting and factionalism, and since security had returned to the western end of the Hindu Kush it had become an ideal compromise between remoteness and accessibility.

They took a commercial flight, as there was no tremendous hurry or need for security on this trip, and it was ecologically irresponsible to charter unnecessary flights. This also prevented any private conversation. A fellow passenger recognized Talia from last year’s magazine interview—Ra’s was trying to be photographed less often as his official age became steadily less plausible—and they were able to fill the hours to Kabul with ecology and politics.

One of Talia’s aides met them at the airport with a car, and so it was not until they were home and several immediate items of business taken care of that Ra’s was able to beckon her into a sitting room alone.

Talia pressed the doors shut, half regretting that she hadn’t seized some excuse to rush off while they were dealing with everything that had arisen in their absence. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said.

Ra’s sunk onto a low divan. It was an antique, made in Iran in the 1760s. Her father prized antiques, but had a tendency to use them like any other object. “Tell me, then.”

“You think I’m being cruel, and short-sighted, and reactionary, and you know best, as always.”

“…I intended to say none of that.”

“Well, then? What? Mind you Dusan already lectured me about giving Pamela too much influence.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Ra’s at once. Tipped one hand toward the lounge facing his. “Talia. Sit down?”

She did.

“This is not a question of whether I trust your judgement,” he said. “Talia. I thought we were past this.”

She had, too. She’d been Assistant Director of the Foundation for fifteen years, a position which seemed to take on more responsibility every year as Ra’s prepared to cede her full control of Leafshadow, and had begun taking on general duties as her father’s second well before that. The tortured uncertainty of her twenties, when she had been fighting so hard to believe in herself, her judgement and her place in the world after having built too many dreams around a true love who was false, was far behind her.

And yet the doubt, and the furious need to prove it baseless, still swept over her sometimes. Especially when her father didn’t believe in her. “Then why did you…” Treat me like an idiot child.

“I’m not ignoring you because I think you’re wrong,” Ra’s said. “It’s because…I can’t change what I’m doing, no matter how likely it is that you’re right. Not unless I could be completely sure.”

“Why?” Talia’s fists closed, pressed together over her knees. “Why is that little monster worth this?”

The old mystic sat still for a moment, sifting his words carefully, the way he had taught her to do as much by pointing out the consequences when he failed as by setting a good example. “You judge him by his crimes,” Ra’s said at last. “Which is a fair way to judge, though I think less so when he came to it as a child under the hand of an evil man. You look at him and think he is no different from Bruce Wayne.” His eyes refocused on her face. “But understand that he looks at me, and thinks the same.”

“Then he’s a fool,” Talia blurted, her expression little more than a mass of knots.

“Only if we both are, my dear,” said Ra’s, and sighed. “Probably less so, even still. A fair self-representation may have many motives besides truth, and yet I chose to trust Bruce’s years ago, because I saw in him myself. I would rather trust where I can, than live a life ruled by fear and hate, but I cannot blame a child for seeing likenesses between us, and suspecting a hidden evil.”

“Even if he is less than a loyal minion, that just means he’s scheming for his own benefit. He just wants to use you, Father.” Talia ground her teeth. “He’s horrible, and bloodthirsty. He’s the heir to what Bruce is, not what he pretended to be. He’s not the opportunity to live that over again, to a better end. Nor a second chance at saving Jason Todd.”

Ra’s al Ghul sat silent for several breaths when she had done, long enough to tempt Talia to shift uncomfortably in her seat, but she was calmer now than she had been on the beach and held her posture. “You know me very well, daughter,” Ra’s said at last. “I can’t refute your accusations of my motives. And yet…”

Talia’s breath hissed a little as it left her. Of course there was and yet.

“And yet the boy is also himself. He is clever, and he has nerve. He is caught in a trap partly of my making. He has chosen mercy, often, when the choice was his to make, and for that I…cannot give him up. I am the only one who still believes in him, Talia. I would rather risk giving that to someone who does not deserve it than deny it to one who needs it.”

“He’s hardly a child anymore. How much are you going to sacrifice, to keep holding open a door through which he refuses to walk?”

“What do you suggest I do differently?” Ra’s set the end of the cane he carried whether he needed it or not into the floor. “Should we kill him? Overpower him and hold him by force, until he submits and promises to forswear the Owl, and accept our protection?”

Talia grimaced. That would be far more foolish than anything her father had done. They could never hope to trust him after such coercion, would have to keep him locked up forever. “Why not take him prisoner?” she challenged. “Even if we could never trust him to go free. One could say that by not stopping him by whatever means we allow all his kills.”

Ra’s sighed. “Yes. But he is a weapon. Owlman would kill no fewer with his Talon taken, and if he did not rally everything at his disposal to break us until he took his right hand back, then he would only take another child to suffer the same fate.” His hands on the cane tightened only a little, but it was with the same tension Talia felt. “No,” he said softly. “We must break his power. That is the only way to be sure.”

They came closer every day. Secretly, quietly, never neglecting their other obligations both because they had no obligations that were not desperately important, and because their road forward was such a delicate thing.

It had always been difficult to strike a truly crippling blow on Owlman, because he had, in addition to his two personal power bases of gold and vassals, the bulwark of his alliances with beings such as the Kryptonian and the Mad Amazon. To go onto an open war footing against him and survive, the first blow must also be the last—he had to be rendered useless to his co-conspirators, all his resources stripped from him at once, money and manpower and endless layered contingencies.

It might be years yet before they could move, and yet the expectation that they would was now in sight. Talia’s heart, which had loved what she believed the man to be once and could never quite scrape free the last of him no matter how she tried, beat more urgently in her chest with every breath, it seemed to her when she dwelt too much on it.

“It’s not fair to Damianos,” she said quietly. “You favoring this assassin over him.”

“…I love my grandson, dearheart, no less than I love you. He is thriving and free, and I may hold him in my arms and rejoice in him.

“Timothy is…a wild bird, or a bruised and muzzled dog, I cannot be sure which, but either way it wants coaxing and patience. That he requires more careful work is not a greater regard.” His expression was wry, and not quite a smile. “I don’t believe I even give the Talon more of my time, little as I have of it to spare for anyone.”

“It’s not fair,” Talia repeated, not caring that it was no argument at all.

“I stopped giving Timothy usable information as bait years ago,” said Ra’s, and stood, seeming to really use his cane for once—he would visit the Pit again in a few years, or perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he would wait until Dusan was gone, rather than taunt him in his fading days with the proof of his own immortality, hair washed dark and strength returned to its highest ebb. “If this concerns you so…find the mole.”

And he went.

“Very well,” Talia told the empty room. “I shall.”

But first things first.

She left the sitting-room, ignoring the curious eyes of League members wondering why they had needed a private conference so urgently when they were only just arrived, and climbed the stairs until she reached a high-ceilinged room whose wide windows had once been covered constantly with heavy steel shutters, but now let in the sun.

On one side it overlooked the central courtyard of the compound, and the sound of running water rose from the fountain there. In the center of the largest patch of sun, on a thick carpet, was the one she’d come here to see.

The fat marmalade cat that was his favorite was sprawled in a puddle just behind him, and possibly in deference to her slumber the sound effects of the logistically complex battle between his toy dragon and his action figure were muted. Talia lingered in the nursery doorway, enjoying the sight of him, safe and sound, with the sun in his hair.

But either his training or his instincts outmatched the silence of her approach, and he sensed the new pair of eyes on him after only a minute or so, and looked up. “Mother!” Cat and toys forgotten, he raced to her, artless and unguarded in a way that was already becoming more rare, and Talia swept him up into her arms.

With the warm weight of her son against her breast, nothing in the world seemed very terrible.

The surging dark outside could seem its worst when she held him, if she let it, as her fear for him clutched her heart, but she refused to let that impression linger. This was her time. This was all that was good. Just for now. Just let it be.

But Damianos was already wriggling free, too grown-up and excited to have the patience for extended hugging. “Look what I can do!” he said, pulling out his favorite wooden knife, artfully made to have a realistic balance. That trait was on full display as he flipped his toy up into the air so it spun once, twice, three times, as he reached up to intercept and instead of merely catching the knife spun it over the back of his hand, and then again over his knuckles, smooth as butter, before the hilt came to a solid halt in the palm of his hand, and his fingers closed around the grip, ready to slash.

“Well done,” Talia praised, because it had been. If the knife had been real, he would not have been cut, and there had been no moment at which he seemed he might lose control. “Is this what your tutors are focusing on now?”

Damianos snorted at her, shook his head. “Tt. No, mother, they’ve followed the curriculum. I learned this from one of the guards.”

Talia’s mouth twitched, but she tried to look stern even though she entirely failed to sound it as she said, “Now, love, you know you’re not to distract them.”

He rolled his eyes. “In my room, Mother?”

Talia gave in and ran her hand affectionately over his hair. “Well. Maybe occasionally in your room, if the windows are shut.”

“Anyway, look what I drew!” He flung himself onto the cushion in front of his low drawing table in the far corner, swept aside colored pencils and shuffled through a stack of bright papers that Talia leaned in to catch glimpses of, until he came to what he was looking for and held it out. “This one’s just for you.”

Talia took it, sensible of the honor of being thought of when she was not present. The white of the paper was almost entirely lost under rich pencils. The picture was roses, heavy blossoms dark pink and crimson red. Copied, she thought, from a photograph—Damianos’ skill was excellent for a seven-year-old, but visualizing the play of light and shadow here in this detail and then rendering it into shades of color would be beyond him yet, and they had no such roses here.

“It’s beautiful, love.” Would it be overly doting, she wondered, to frame it. She could put it in her room, no one would see. She traced a vine at the farthest-away corner. She wondered if she should take Damianos to see Pamela’s new garden in Gujarat.

Did he like plants as much as animals? Would it be safe? The last time she’d seen Bruce he clearly hadn’t known she had his child, but the boy Talon could tell him at any time. “Where do they grow?”

“Ah—France, I think? They were pictured in the Geographic Digest.”

This answer lacked enthusiasm, so Talia only nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She couldn’t put the picture away without folding it, so she kept it in her hand. Knelt down on the strip of cushion left empty behind her son, because she was just old enough that given the choice between a padded surface and a hard one she would prefer the former almost uniformly. “Will you show me more?”

He brightened again, and reached for the stack he’d set aside. He was lonely. Talia remembered the feeling. She wished she knew how to fix it.

As a child, Talia had thought with some annoyance sometimes that if her father was going to fit three wives into a hundred years he could at least have had more than one child with each. She had rather desperately wanted more siblings—she’d have had to share with them, of course, and it wasn’t that she’d lacked for playmates, less than Damianos did now since she’d had less strict security requirements. But the children of the League had always known who she was, and it had set her apart in the same way that sharing the blood of the Head would have brought her together with a brother or a sister near her own age.

And Ra’s had been so busy, and with her mother dead there had been only Dusan left to call family, besides him.

She understood, now, since having a child of her own, why there were so few of them. Of course for one thing their mothers had had better things to do with their time than spend it pregnant—Ra’s had a partiality toward exciting women—especially with childbed survival rates as they had once been, and the risk so high. But more…when you were so conscious of mortality as her father always was, it was difficult to look upon a life so beloved.

Damianos was going to die.

Talia was going to die as well, long before her son did inshallah, but he was going to die. Time would close over him like the drowning sea, and if he was fortunate and careful he would waste to bones as Dusan had. Talia herself was past forty. Before Damianos was an adult, she would be the age at which she first remembered her brother. Her son would have to watch her fade away and leave him.

And so would her father.

Always.

She knew it hurt him. She didn’t resent that, really—she understood too well. As she admired her child’s drawing of himself, much older, with a shining sword, which showed a reasonably good sense of anatomical proportion, and wished a little that he wouldn’t wish his precious time away.

She couldn’t resent the pain she caused Ra’s al Ghul just by existing, when eventually she would be gone.

But she could not help but suspect that her father’s years of persistent faith that there was something in Timothy Drake worth saving were rooted not in kindness, nor wisdom, nor even stupid guilt.

But only in the fact that, because of what the father of her child had made of him, whether he truly had chosen it or had it forced upon him…Timothy Drake, the Talon, if he were lucky, if he were careful…might never, ever die.

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