Chapter Text
Dusk dawned as the daylight died, not that the latter went gently. It lanced forth from the horizon in one last desperate sally. Broken shards of red, orange and yellow pierced the underbellies of the cloud cover and then ignited, making a mockery of the promise of rain as the heavens raged and churned like a roiling inferno instead.
Gotham’s towers - infamous, ill-boding and inhospitable all at once - added their own violence. Stabbing upwards and scratching sideways with sharp spires and menacing gargoyles as the sky bled dark shadows. They spilled forth from weeping wounds ripped all across its canvas, and down they seeped; down, down and further down still. Thick and all-consuming, they slowly spread and drowned everything in reach like voracious ink blots that finally, victorious, deepened into night.
Dick Grayson watched the city loom ever closer from the deck of a skyship still an hour out from the docks. The minutes ate up the miles at a far more rapid pace than he liked…not that anything about this voyage was to his liking, of course. Despite his best attempts at reshaping the image ahead of him into something less antagonistic before he disembarked, stubbornly, it still sat upon the edge of the horizon much like a bloated but still voracious spider lurks in the center of its web.
Then again, that might have always been an exercise in futility. Dick had only ever stepped foot in Gotham once before, and the experience had done nothing to endear it to him. He’d likely forever be anthropomorphizing it so as to better hate it guts.
For all the good that did.
Repressing an equally useless sigh, Dick turned away from the sight before him and crossed to the port side of the deck. He nimbly danced out of the path of a scurrying crewman before reaching the heavy wooden rail that lined the edge of the ship’s deck. There, he folded his arms atop it and leaned slightly forward into the unnatural calm on the other side.
A good fifty feet out from the large vessel, dozens of tiny floating buoys bobbed at the end of their tethers. Light, hollow constructions covered in feather-craftings of various types, they were just sturdy enough to bear the wards that kept the ship protected from the currents it rode across the sky. Hawk, shrike and eagle feathers repelled the ferocity of the atmosphere at these altitudes, encasing the ship in a kind of bubble that kept the air breathable and the pressure bearable. Owl feathers for silence, so the wailing of the winds was nothing more than a distant keening as the crew shouted commands and conversation to each other. Brilliant red tanager and cardinal feathers kept the air warm enough they didn’t freeze despite their great height, and the sky around them alight with a fierce, ruby glow.
Nothing more than a slight breeze teased his dark curls, but it held just enough of a bite that he shivered and drew his cloak tighter around him. From his new vantage point, Dick watched the sea of clouds race by beneath them, a strange blend of the night’s gray and the buoys’ crimson light. They were slowing as they drew closer to the city. Not enough to be noticeable to anyone less traveled than he was himself, but he knew without looking behind him that they were changing the sails now. Replacing the swan-crafted mainsail that kept their vessel aloft with smaller ones meant to gradually decrease their speed and altitude.
The bustle of the crew was enough to mask the sound of footsteps, so he startled slightly when someone stepped up to the rail alongside him. He’d gotten too comfortable thanks to the ship’s relatively small number of people, Dick admonished himself. Wrecking havoc on his situational awareness - something that Gotham would be all too happy to take advantage of.
Or, well. Actual living beings within the inanimate, non-sentient city would, at least.
“You look lost in thought. Need any help being found?”
Dick turned his head to the woman beside him, relaxing slightly as he recognized her as one of more pleasant passengers to be stuck aboard with: Lilith, a red-headed fortune teller from one of the southernmost plateaus.
“Still determined to read the Deck for me?” He asked with a wry grin. She shrugged, unapologetic.
“I’ve drawn cards for everyone else aboard. It’s the completionist in me. It’ll itch, to leave things with just yours unturned.”
Dick hesitated, seeking a graceful out. She pounced on the visible moment of weakness.
“I won’t even charge you,” Lilith coaxed teasingly. “There’s a new Robin in the Deck after all. Time of changes and new beginnings for everyone. I am but a simple woman who takes pride in plying her craft, eager to impart whatever guidance Fate sees fit to pass on to you.”
He was well aware the Robin card had changed faces, as its power changed hands. That was the whole reason he was avoiding the Deck as best he could. It had a tendency to be a little too revealing, when yours was one of the faces in it.
“Well, how can I refuse an offer like that?” Dick said at last. He took care not to convey any of the frustration he felt at not being able to conjure such a refusal, shoving it behind a crooked smile. She beamed, though he half suspected she saw through it anyway.
“Excellent! Come, let’s step into my shop then.”
He raised an eyebrow as he followed her. “You have your own shop aboard?”
“I have my own shop wherever I have my cards.” Lilith smirked and indicated a nearby crate with a flourish, dropping onto another just behind it. “I travel light. Low overhead is the key to a profitable entrepreneurship, you know.”
“You don’t say,” he drawled.
“I do. Now stop stalling. Sit,” she commanded, leaning forward to pat the top of a third crate.
He swallowed another sigh and perched gingerly on the edge of the indicated crate, leaving the other between them. Lilith wasted no time in retrieving her Deck from the depths of her voluminous coat and shuffling it with dexterous fingers. With the ease and swiftness of frequent repetition, she dealt all twenty-five cards in three rows of three on top of the rough wooden surface. Three to a pile, save for one lone card in the center-most position. The crossed feathers adorning the backs of each card gleamed bronze in the reddish light. An old deck. Well worn, often used. Weathered by time and the oils of her fingertips, but still not traded in for one of the gaudier modern decks preferred by those who leaned on ostentation rather than skill.
Wonderful. It would be just his luck, to end up sharing passage with one of the few tellers with true ability.
She began in the usual manner, with the easternmost low card, as with the rising sun. Flipping it over to reveal the face of the new Robin, she nodded as though she’d expected as much.
“The Robin, Regent of change and new beginnings,” she proclaimed. A deeper timbre had entered her voice, making it throatier, more resonant. The kind of thing that made the air shiver with her words, as though stirred and agitated by the presence of actual power, an authority even it recognized. Dick tried not to shiver in symmetry. Who knew if he pulled if off, though.
“He looks angry,” Dick noted. Half for something to say, stave off the rest of the reading, but also absorbing the sight and taking in that detail for the first time. His general avoidance of the Deck meant he hadn’t actually spent much time examining the newest face within it. And as a former Robin Regent himself - not that he was in any hurry to advertise that - well, he did have something of a vested interest in this most recent change to the cards.
“Does he?” Lilith craned her neck, as if attempting to peer at the revealed card from his angle and possibly see it as he did. She shrugged. “Bold, others have said. Defiant. Driven. Eye of the beholder and all that.”
“So much for empirical truth,” Dick said dryly. She flapped a dismissive hand at him.
“Empiricism is overrated, I say. Of course, I am a fortune teller, so I might be a touch biased.”
He snorted.
“Shall we proceed?” When he indicated his assent, Lilith laid her hand atop the middle card of the easternmost column. “The Robin, embodying change and new beginnings, but which does he represent for you? That is for the next card to reveal…”
She flipped it over then, revealing a blond woman with a fierce, proud stance and gaze.
“Change then. Heralded by the Canary, Regent of speech and song. She who brings warning of danger to come, or announces times of celebration. But which she does here, who can say, who can say…”
The fortune teller trailed off leadingly again, but wasted no time in sliding her hand up a pile, to the top row. Dick held his tongue, seeing that she was fully absorbed in her reading now. Or at least he hoped she was, and that she missed his sharp inhalation when she flipped over the next card.
“The Owl. Regent of secrets and silence. A warning then, but of danger to a secret you carry, or from a secret untold?”
He stared down at the most recent card, his own face etched in the card’s lacquered surface, but hidden by the shadows of his hood. Not for the first time, Dick was grateful for the small favor that was the Owl card’s tendency to obscure that Regent’s face.
Even if that was the only good thing the Owl had ever done for him.
Blessedly, Lilith wasted no time in moving over to the top pile of the center column. Whether she was compelled by some higher power channeled through her, or merely sobered by the unexpected gravity of her reading, Dick had no idea. But he wasn’t about to complain. His whole spine prickled with anxious nerves urging him to be done with this already.
“The Tern,” she announced with grim tone and narrowed eyes. She studied the latest card and its pale, balding man, features limned with a bluish hue. “Regent of winter and woes. He who embodies the harshness of uncaring, or a time of ending. Signifying that danger lies ahead for a secret you carry, but not whether that warning is of cruelties to come or heralding that an ending nears, whether you’re ready or not.”
His lips thinned. Dick had his own suspicions as to what that might mean.
Lilith’s hand slid again to the left, poised over the top pile of the westernmost column. Dick braced himself and was glad for the added fortification when the next face was revealed. Of course he would make an appearance in his reading.
“The Shrike, Regent of bindings and battle. An ending nears, then, but does the shrike speak of an end to existing bonds or suggest an ending wrought of violence?”
Again, Dick had his own suspicions, but then that might just be his own biases rearing an ugly head. Whenever Boone was involved, the worse of two options tended to be the most likely result.
That was just basic observation.
Another card was overturned, another face revealed. This one was no stranger to Dick either, though when last they met, Jason Todd had looked very different.
“The Crow, Regent of death and deception,” Lilith said at last. Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “An unlikely deliverance, but it certainly casts things askew. That is the Crow’s nature after all. But does it mean that things are not what they seem, or that the ending that comes is merely an ending?”
“I’ve heard that this was the Robin Regent once,” Dick cut in. He actually had never heard anything of the sort; he spoke from personal knowledge instead. But given that the fortune teller spoke with a voice of true power, one that cracked open a door to a place that potentially held a great many of the answers he’d long sought, he couldn’t help but try and shove a foot in that gap. See if he might leverage that crack open a little a wider.
She cocked her head to the side, but never took her eyes - or her fingers - off her cards.
“I haven’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. People say a lot of things about the faces in the Deck. But as to whether its true or not? Who knows. The claim that Robin Regents always age into another Regent elsewhere in the Deck is an old one. Its never been proved or disproved either way though. No matter how often the Regents’ power change hands, the Owl always hides his face, the Mockingbird is never as she appears, and so on and so forth. Just enough of the cards have their little tricks about them that tracking that sort of thing has never been possible.”
He frowned. Not what he’d been hoping to hear, but about what he’d expected.
“Mother Sky and Father Night have their game, and though we are all players on the board, only a fool thinks he knows its rules,” Lilith concluded with a shrug.
“Seems a bit fatalistic for a fortune teller,” Dick couldn’t resist pointing out.
“Perhaps. All I know is it makes for an excellent fall-back in the event a fortune is told wrong,” she returned.
He dipped his head with a wry grin.
“Fair enough.”
“But speaking of the Mockingbird, here she is,” Lilith continued as she returned to the cards, now on the lowest card of the western column. “Regent of lies and tall tales. A necessary deception then, that’s the best path forward. But in service to a lie you must tell, or to ensure you are audience to a tale that must be told?”
Now fully engaged despite his reluctance to have the cards read for him, Dick gnawed on his lip pensively as she revealed the second to last card.
“The Raven. Regent of midnight and mysteries. She who knows all things whispered of in darkness, who reveals that which shadows would otherwise hide. You must seek a story, then. You will find it either beneath the cover of night or as the answer to a mystery you must solve.”
Dick nodded, though now thoroughly at a loss for what that might portend. The Raven was by far the most obscure of the Regents, and not one he’d ever encountered personally…nor did he know any other Regent who had either. He jiggled his leg impatiently, unable to keep the toes of his boot from tapping a rapid staccato rhythm against the deck as Lilith finally reached for the lone central card.
“The Joker,” she said flatly. Her eyes darkened - no surprise there, that was never a card any fortune teller cared to reveal - and Dick felt his own drawn almost magnetically to the madcap grin leering up at him. “Chaos walking. A choice will be demanded, and from its choosing will come either salvation or damnation. Which though, lies entirely with your choice. Any more I can neither see nor say.”
Her final words hung suspended in the air between them for a weighty pause. Seeming to echo like the final knell of a bell that can not be unrung. The fortune teller’s shoulders dropped, her entire body seeming to slump in upon itself as though suddenly bereft of some strength that had held it artificially poised until then. She shook her head, and he had the sudden sense it was at herself as she deftly gathered her cards back together and returned them to the depths of her coat.
“Not quite the auspicious reading I expected, or at least hoped for,” she said, almost apologetically. “I wouldn’t have insisted if I had any -”
Dick held out his hand to forestall any further recriminations on her part. “To have any idea, first you had to do the reading,” he said gently. “All you did say was that you sought to ply your craft. I can hardly fault you for doing it honestly, and I’m fairly sure if you were going to lie, you could have conjured a somewhat more pleasant fortune.”
“Well, that’s true. I am an excellent liar.”
“And its hardly your fault I live a full and interesting life.”
“That’s true as well. That’s definitely on you.”
He grinned at the revival of her earlier spark, only to then find himself distracted by the commotion of the crew. Rising from his seat, Dick could see that time had lapsed more quickly than he’d realized, absorbed in Lilith’s reading as he’d been. The dizzying heights of Gotham cast a shadow over the entire ship, which was aligned with the docks it was readying to berth in, down at the very edges of the plateau the ancient city was built atop of. The sheer cliff face of the plateau dropped away before them, disappearing down into the mists that shrouded the lower altitudes and hid the almost mythical ground from view.
Dick was pulled back from his study of the city by a light touch on his arm, demanding his attention. He turned back to see Lilith holding out her other hand with three small, black feathers extending from it.
“Crow feathers,” she explained when he looked to her in confusion. “A small token. If the Crow is your best foot forward on whatever path you are here to take, I’m sure you’ll be able to find some use for them.”
“I can’t accept this,” Dick protested. Even just three crow feathers was no small offering - not to mention wholly unnecessary. But as the ingredients for all castings built around illusions and deceit, crow feathers were always in high demand, both through official channels and the black market.
“Please,” Lilith rolled her eyes with exaggerated emphasis. “What do I need them for? I’m an honest fortune teller, remember? And I’m not due to die for another twelve years, three months and nine days. Give or take an hour or two.”
He resisted the smile she was aiming for with that. How to express that they held no use for him either, without giving away the why? No Regent could tap the power of another, after all, and he hardly needed feathers to tap into his own. But Regents were the only individuals who didn’t need feathers to wield magic, and as she herself had pointed out, only one Regent was known for not having his face portrayed by the magic of the Deck.
And Gotham was the absolute last place in Sky he needed to be found out as the Owl Regent.
“If it helps, I’ve already foreseen how this ends. You cave,” Lilith said, still wearing a pleasant expression that belied the steel in her voice. Dick sighed.
“I apologize for being so slow to pick up on the fact you don’t accept no for an answer.”
“You’re forgiven,” she said archly. He finally smiled despite himself as she thrust the feathers into his own hand. He couldn’t help but wonder at her motives, given that she’d gone well past even the phrasing ‘above and beyond’ for a total and complete stranger, but it wasn’t the strangest thing to ever happen in his experience. No matter how he felt about it, he’d long since been forced to acknowledge that by their very nature, Regents like himself seemed to affect people around them in often inexplicable ways. Best thing to do was just accept the gesture for what it was.
“Gratitude and good winds, milady,” he said then, bowing his head semi-formally in respect, the only currency he had to repay her with currently. She smiled and nodded her own back at him.
“And you as well, my gallant sir. May we share crosswinds at our back again someday.”
Dick waved farewell as he watched her cross the deck back towards the stern, most likely returning to the passenger cabins to retrieve her belongings. He already carried everything he’d brought aboard with him in the small pack slung over his shoulder. He pulled it in front of him and knelt to carefully fold the feathers in a small kerchief and tuck it safe and snug at the very bottom of his pack, and just like that, he was officially done with every possible delaying tactic he had available to him, before he was forced to disembark himself.
Gotham, city of ghosts and gargoyles. The streets spilled forth from the mouth of the docks, a crazed cacophony of alleys and cobblestone lanes that defied reasoned attempts at navigation. Wrought iron lamp posts speared up from the pavement every twenty or so feet, all topped with swaying lanterns of crimson cardinal feathers. They rose up through the late hour fog and lined the hills leading to the mansions of the upper class, lighting the way like bloody smears against the inky backdrop of night.
Making his way down the gangplank, Dick closed his eyes and delved into his spiritscape. The red-hued mists of the city giving way to the drab, featureless gray haze within. He breathed deep and slow, mentally parting the fog before him until the owl resting at the heart of it was fully revealed. Its golden eyes regarded him balefully. Judgmental. Challenging.
“I rule here, not you,” Dick said within himself, not for the first time and far from the last. If its crooked beak could smirk, it would, he was sure. But he held his position, and his breath, and finally it spread its snowy wings and took flight. Feathers of gray and white and black all spiraled gently to the ground beneath it in its wake, and he could feel the magic swirling up inside him like a rising storm.
He grabbed hold of it with his mind even as he drew up his hood and gathered his cloak tight around him with one hand. His features disappeared into a whirl of unrecognizable confusion that no one would remember past taking their eyes off him. He made for the nearest alleyway, and sound fled from his footsteps as he vanished into the dark.