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One of the consequences of being a Talon was that RJ didn’t need as much sleep as other people did.
One of the consequences of RJ not needing as much sleep as other people did, however, was that RJ’s grasp of time was, at best, loose and unpredictable. He didn’t understand clock-time or people that kept to it, and he didn’t quite understand that people needed more sleep than he did.
Sometimes, RJ just spent time in the Cave – not really training, per se, but using the aerial gear to “fly” – trying to pass the time that the other members of the household were asleep (a habit that would eventually follow him into adulthood).
Other times, though, RJ got particularly restless or felt the urge to do something new or different.
The first time RJ used the Zetas without permission landed him unceremoniously on the Watchtower. He was spooked by surprise adults and ended up causing a Watchtower lockdown because no one had, ya know, told the League that Batman had a kid. Let alone that Batman’s kid might have access to Zetas. From their point of view, RJ was a potentially dangerous anomaly.
(The League spent hours trying to find and capture RJ, and failing quite miserably. Clark was able to coax him out about a minute after arriving, though.)
The second time, and most times after that, that RJ used the Zetas without permission landed him in Missouri. Which had always been his intent.
That first time, RJ meandered through Central, after dark, a ghost on the sidewalks. He’d done his homework, but he wasn’t really sure where the Flash lived, or what his house looked like. He just knew that he wanted to see Wally. So he meandered.
Apparently his wandering was called in, some time after the sun had started to rise. Luckily for him, the person who showed up was the Flash. And Barry, of course, was a direct link to Wally. Even if he found RJ’s presence concerning and wanted to call B.
“You can’t just go off and play Where’s Waldo, kid,” Barry crouched to be on RJ’s level.
RJ puffed out his cheeks and poked Barry. “Wanna,” he disagreed.
“It’s not safe,” Barry shook his head.
“Is,” RJ disagreed. He motioned to himself. “Talon.”
Barry was passable at sign, but RJ had been trying – very, very hard – to be “more normal,” and one of the easier ways of doing that was verbalizing. Or, that was what RJ thought, anyway. So, he’d been trying to speak in words, without resorting to sign, around people he felt safe around.
(RJ was under a bit of a misapprehension, though, thinking that he, one, had to be “normal,” and two, that speaking would somehow make him “normal,” whatever normal was. He hadn’t discussed it with anyone, but everyone around him would have probably agreed that communicating in a way he found more comfortable, like sign, was more important than conforming to perceived societal expectations of what might or might not have been “normal.”)
“Just because you don’t think much of your safety, or about getting hurt, doesn’t mean that you being out like this wouldn’t concern people. KF would be concerned,” Barry said. “And so would your dad.”
“B,” RJ mumbled.
“Yeah. And Kal,” Barry nodded.
RJ pouted. “Don’t care.” He brought his hands up to sign, but forced himself to put them back down. “Want. Waldo.”
Barry sighed and pillowed his cheek on his fist. “I’ll take you back to him,” he said. “But he has school in an hour.”
RJ lit up.
“And I’m gonna call your dad, kiddo,” Barry said.
RJ dropped the smile and scowled.
“He’d skin me if I kept that information from him, kiddo.” Barry turned and motioned for RJ to get on his back. As soon as RJ was in place, he zipped off, back home.
RJ took the time to clamber back outside of the house, after he was sped there, so that he could look at the house and the street, and memorize how it all looked in case he had to find it again. Or, you know, in case he wanted to sneak out at four and try and find Wally.
Then he got to go wake Wally for breakfast, which he did by bodily throwing himself on the younger speedster’s sleeping form.
“Who the hell the what?” Wally fell off the far side of his bed in his partly-awake flailing. Then he hopped to his feet. “What’s that. What’s that?” he demanded.
“A. Talon.” RJ made wiggly, spooky fingers at Wally, like he’d seen someone do in a movie. “Eat you.”
“Birds don’t eat people,” Wally slumped over a bit, realizing that there wasn’t a real threat leaping on top of him to wake him up. “I mean. Most birds. I guess vultures will scavenge off literally anything though. And I don’t trust geese.”
“Geese.”
“Yeah, geese are evil,” Wally crawled back into bed, recreating the blanket burrito he had been asleep in. “I almost fought a goose last week. Barry wouldn’t let me.”
“Oh,” RJ curled up next to the burritoed outline of Wally, his head on the shape of Wally’s shoulder. “Talons evil.”
“Oh, big doubt, man,” Wally yawned wide. “I’ve met this great Talon, and he’d not evil at all. He’s like, my best friend, actually. Cool dude. The coolest.” He yawned again. “So, obviously, Talons can’t be all evil or anything. Because he’s not.”
“Mm. Talons evil,” RJ disagreed.
“Nah. Geese are evil. Talons are cool,” Wally said.
RJ let that sit between them for a bit, then sat up again. “Breakfast?”
Wally groaned.
“School?” RJ tacked on.
Wally rolled over and covered his head with his pillow. “No one needs another school day! School’s stupid, Arge! So stupid.” He managed to be relatively understandable, through the mufflement caused by the pillow. Or maybe RJ’s hearing was just that much better than a normal person’s.
RJ poked him. “Breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Lie,” RJ poked him again, much harder.
“I’m always hungry,” Wally corrected. “But I’m not more hungry now that I would be any other time. So, I’m comparatively not hungry.”
“Break. Fast. Break. Fast.” RJ punctuated each syllable with another vicious poke to Wally’s poor ribs.
Iris knocked on the door and creaked it open. RJ could tell it was her, even before she spoke, because he could smell her shampoo and hear her particular footsteps. He turned to glance at her, almost to another poke of her nephew. He waved. She smiled and waved back.
“Wally,” Iris said. “Forty-five minutes until the bus, kid.”
Wally groaned.
“If you want breakfast...” Iris let the partial sentence linger.
Wally groaned, louder, but sat up.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d want to risk missing breakfast and then head into school for the next seven hours,” Iris said.
“Seven,” RJ whispered, awed.
“Yeah, you’ve got it good, with those tutors, kid,” Wally laughed tiredly, then zipped around his room to get ready for school.
“’M not a kid,” RJ mumbled. He signed it to himself, as well.
“Sure ya are! We both are,” Wally came to a stop next to the bed and offered RJ a hand.
RJ looked ready to argue, then sighed quietly and accepted Wally’s hand, instead.