Chapter Text
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Ten Minutes Earlier…
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“Officials called him “Houdini” because he always killed people in a locked room with no way in or out-“
Houdini.
Houdini.
had Damian heard that before?
Damian had never met a Houdini. He was, of course, aware of the famous escape artist, but this was a serial killer. A serial killer named Houdini.
Damian’s memory was impeccable, so not remembering this Houdini character was seriously throwing him for a loop.
“Killing in both small and large towns, but the M.O stayed the same throughout all the murders: Rooms with no doors or windows, a person impaled on a small sword in the middle of this room, and the word loyalty written in thirteen distinct languages-“
Small sword. Locked Room. Loyalty. Damian knew Houdini.
Damian was Houdini.
He hadn’t remembered the name because admitting to Grandfather that he was connected to the murders he had committed during his trial. He shouldn’t have been noticed enough for a nickname.
Shit.
If news of his failure were to have gotten back to Grandfather, Damian might have been killed the minute he stepped back into the country of Nepal.
Damian blocked out Houdini. He never read any of his papers, and he just hoped that once profilers realized that they could not draw him out, they would leave him alone.
The American Federal Bureau of Investigation, while formidable, is not completely impossible to mislead. After finding out that he has the Behavioral Analysis Unit combing through the scenes in North and South America, Damian made it his mission to learn everything he could about the practices of the FBI. Thankfully, the Americans had never assumed that Damian would move overseas, so they never reached out to Interpol. If they had, the FBI would have discovered that by the time they were onto him, Damian had already committed seventy-four murders.
Damian had been careful. He read his profile. He did the opposite of what he was supposed to, and he got the hell out of dodge before ever having to face the FBI. He was smart, but not smart enough.
The FBI should have never connected those murders, and now, because they did, every Bat in North America was looking for Damian.
Damian had to do damage control. Fast.
“Alright, Damian, it’s time for bed. We’ll brief you on the rest in the morning.”
Damian had never been so grateful to be sent to his quarters before the rest of his Father’s wards.
Damian nodded silently before making his way up the stairs of the Cave, making sure not to travel any faster or slower than he would on a regular day. Father did not seem to notice Damian’s newfound obedience, so he made it away scot-free. Well, Scott Free until he made it to the Manor’s foyer staircase.
“Master Damian, shall I prepare your nightly shower while you ruminate on the day?”
On any regular day, Damian would have loved to spend this time with Alfred.
After each day at the manor, no matter how messy, or saddening, or cruel the world had been that day, Alfred always made time to sit with Damian while his shower warmed up. In reality, Damian did not need his shower to be warm. He had bathed in much more perilous conditions, but sitting silently with Alfred while the two decompressed from their day together quickly became one of Damian’s favorite things about night in the manor.
“I must pass today, Alfred. I find myself more tired than usual on this particular day.”
It physically pained Damian to reject the man, but Alfred took Damian’s response the way he took most conversations: silent acceptance.
“Very well, Master Damian. Call me if you need anything.”
With that, Alfred made his way into the cave, no doubt to pick up his assignment for Cold Case Roulette, while Damian made his way upstairs.
His assignment about Houdini.
His assignment about Damian.
Damian looked up and down the hallways before sprinting to his room and locking the door. He sat on the floor and curled his legs like a child. He did not cry. He just… sat… and thought.
He thought about how each member of his new family would react to the news of Damian being a prolific serial killer sent on missions all over the world to avenge the League of Assassins against their foreign enemies and traitors.
Father would most certainly call for Damian’s emancipation.
It wasn’t as though that would be too difficult for Father, after all head only ever brought Damian to twelve Galas and other family events in the entire six years Damian had spent with him.
Drake would be happy to assist Father in covering up Damian’s existence in social circles.
Damian had a difficult time making friends in the first place, so paying off people in upper circles to forget he ever existed would be remarkably easy.
Todd would most likely bitch about no longer being the most mysterious Wayne adoptee.
No one knew much about Jason’s past, but now no one would hear anything about Damain’s past or future. After all, you can never fully erase someone. Damian would most likely be a hot topic for a few years before people stopped wasting thoughts on him.
Damian would like to think that Richard would mourn him.
But eventually something more pressing would come along, and Richard would be forced to forget him as well.
Cain would never forget Damian. She has a mind like a steel trap.
But it would be much easier for the girl to let Damian go, allowing him to only be a passing thought that comes to her when the night is too quiet, or the voices are too loud.
Damian does not believe Brown cares for him much.
He doesn’t mind; it is understandable. Damian knew that out of all the people who occasionally lived under his Father’s roof, Brown was the one Damian had had the least amount of interaction with.
Thomas barely knew Damian.
They had only known each other for a year. Damian had been cold towards him, and the Robin War had been brutal for them both.
Jon would never recover from his absence. Jon was dependent on Damian, and if at any time Damian were to abandon him entirely, whether by his own choice or because he was forced to, Jon would never recover. Damian would never forgive himself, and the two would grow apart while both mourning each other from across the sea. After all, they were in love, best friends, close acquaintances.
Damian knew that Alfred would hold on to him the longest.
While Damian may not have been kind upon their initial interactions, the two have found a bond. Alfred would stand by his grave the longest, grieve his presence the hardest, and feel his loss the most. But even after all that, Damian understood that even Alfred would come to pack away his feelings regarding Damian. They would be placed on a box in the back of the butler’s mind, revisited just often enough to keep the dust from settling. But not long enough to prevent the pages from being eaten by moths.
Damian didn’t want to be forgotten.
Damian wanted to hold a presence in this family. He wanted his portrait to stay in the hallway, his favorite snacks to remain in the pantry, and his seat saved in the movie room.
Damian would just have to fix this. Damian pulled himself off the floor after what he considered to be a reasonable amount of time for panicking.
Damian just needed a plan. Damian was great at plans. Better than Drake at least.
Damian walked over to his desk before retrieving a yellow legal pad and a green colored pencil.
Richard had bought him that pencil at the book fair last year. Damian had never used it, but he deemed this the most appropriate moment to break it in.
The early morning light was blinding as it peered through the gaps in Damian’s curtains.
How long had he been thinking?
It didn’t matter.
Damian needed to get to work.
Project Peritonitis
Damian smiled to himself as he wrote down the first few steps.
This would work.
Damian needed this to work.
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Two Hours Later…
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Duke Thomas was on the verge of tweaking out.
He had now spent a total of nine hours digging through the files he was given from Tim. All Duke had to do was find a major breakthrough in this seemingly impossible case that some of the world’s greatest detectives hadn’t even been able to solve when they were first presented with it.
No big deal.
Italy, Greece, and the Czech Republic.
Duke was not ashamed to admit that he might have had to look up the precise location of the Czech Republic, but once he had found it, Duke quickly sorted the files.
Duke did not understand how he was supposed to do this.
Unlike the rest of the orphans (sans Damian and Steph) that Bruce had picked off the street, Duke did not possess the random and overwhelming ability to solve mysteries and find clues.
Duke had watched Blue’s Clues, and he was an avid Scooby-Doo enjoyer, and Gravity Falls might have made him cry, but other than that, he did not possess the knowledge required for the task he was given.
Did Batman just expect every random kid he found to have an insane natural talent for detective work?
Duke wasn’t fucking Nancy Drew; he grew up in the Narrows, he didn’t exactly have access to Tim’s nepo baby level education, and he wasn’t young enough to have been taught and grown up next to Bruce like Dick.
Duke had his own parents. Semi-normal parents who didn’t spend all their time taking their son to fucking detective seminars, so yeah, Duke might have been a bit confused.
Seriously, what was he even looking for? He knew they needed a murder weapon, a person with a grudge, and that person needed to have a way to kill these people. This was the basis for any mystery.
Duke had learned that at least from Scooby-Doo, but all this other stuff with geographical profiling, or behavioral analysis, or whatever Jason does, yeah, Duke didn’t know how to do that.
Sure, Duke could point to things on a map, infer why someone would do something crazy, and do whatever Jason does, but he wasn’t the best at those tasks.
The Bats had Tim to build a geographical profile, Dick to “empathize” his way to a solution, and Jason to do… whatever Jason does.
Why would they need Duke?
Duke flipped through the pictures he was given again. He had six murders in Italy, three in Greece, and only one in the Czech Republic.
Each picture showed Duke a nearly identical scene. A person in a cement box wide enough for Duke to take ten paces in any direction and thick enough to prevent any sound from bleeding through the walls, A body in the middle of the room, skewered by the smallest sword Duke had ever seen, no ways in or out, and various places on the walls with the word loyalty drawn out in the victim’s blood.
Duke was still caught up in the Villanovaforru murder.
It was the first one in the series, so there had to be at least one mistake. Whoever killed all these people could not have pulled off the perfect crime eighty-four times in a row. Somewhere they had to have messed up and if a serial killer was going to make a mistake anywhere their first murder would be a pretty good place to start.
The victim was an Italian woman wearing a stark white dress and black flats. Her hair was done up in a messy fashion that led Duke to believe that she hadn’t been planning on going anywhere.
VICAP identified the woman as Giulietta Violetta Vespuchani.
She had a daughter named Bianca and a son called Amerigo. Her husband, Antonio Dominico Vespuchani, was a local woodworker, and he pedaled into town every third Sunday to sell his pieces in the nearby town of Verona.
Duke knew Verona. It was where Romeo and Juliet had fallen in love. Giulietta must have loved the story because her modest home was covered in red roses as well as Shakespearean paraphernalia.
Giulietta was slight and most likely would not be able to fight off an attacker. After her death, it was reported that Bianca, Amerigo, and Antonio had moved to Argentina to join the rest of their family. Antonio never made a statement regarding his wife’s mysterious death, which led him to be pointed out as the prime suspect.
However, investigators were never able to pin anything on Antonio, so after three years of being an open case, the mysterious death of Giulietta Violetta Vespuchani was put in a filing cabinet somewhere near fair Verona.
Local detectives could never figure out how someone could have moved in and out of the box, and while Duke didn’t have an answer for that question, he would like to inform the officers that they were asking the wrong ones.
Yes, Giulietta’s death was odd, but what was arguably more odd would be her life.
Giulietta Violetta Vespuchani didn’t exist until three years before her death. She had no birth certificate, and the only official document with a name on it was the marriage contract with her husband. Her name wasn’t even on the birth certificates of her children.
Giulietta Violetta Vespuchani only lived for three years before her life was cut tragically short at the hands of a serial killer, but before Giulietta, someone else wore her face, and Duke believed that discovering who that was might just help him.
There. Duke was officially a detective.
He had done something smart and useful, and now he could pass off this information to Tim in the morning before patrol.
Duke had been up all night looking over these files. It’s not like he needed to be anywhere the next morning.
Oh wait.
Duke had to patrol at the ungodly hour of five in the fucking morning!
In what world does he have time for cold case roulette?
Duke stood slowly from his seat and reached for the overhead light. He had been awake for way too long, but if he was lucky, Duke might be able to squeeze in a few hours of sleep before patrol.
Just as he reached for the lamp, something caught Duke’s eye. The blood on the wall.
Loyalty, وفاء, Lealtagrave, Верность, Lealtad, Loyalitaumlt, وفاداری, निष्ठा, 忠誠, Loyauteacute, আনুগত্য, Lealdade.
Each of those words had been translated into different known languages by Tim, but there was one that stood out.
ZBC.
It was all uppercase and on the sword side as well as the wall. It held special importance somehow, but it definitely wasn’t any common language.
It almost looked like a keyboard smash.
A keyboard smash…
It had to mean something. Duke flipped back through all the files open on his desk, writing down the odd language from each gruesome scene.
ZBC, THH, RSFCE, PECGSL, NTGCESCN, EPCYHW-TSKCP, TMRER-RHC, DIQMW-ZBC, STQRJ-SGGSM, CTUFTJ-HLP.
They all looked like keyboard smashes, but they all used the Latin alphabet.
Whoever this was went through a lot of trouble to write down the word loyalty in various languages, so why pick the Latin alphabet for their most important code?
The code written on their sword…
A code that looks like a keyboard smash…
A code Duke had seen somewhere before.
Duke sat in front of the papers for precisely twenty-eight more seconds before the answer struck him. Duke had seen this code before, and he knew exactly where.
Duke stood up out of his seat with such force that the chair flew onto the ground behind him.
Duke immediately ran in the direction of the Batcave, where Dick and Bruce had been working, so he could inform them of his discovery.
Suck it, Tim, there’s a new resident genius in Wayne Manor.