Chapter Text
Deceit had long been aware there were two individuals on the other side of the emergency line Bluebird and Deceit had set up years ago. It was blatantly obvious there was someone other than Bluebird sometimes answering the texts Deceit sent, and he could easily pin who was who when messaging them.
The more serious one always had perfect grammar and their messages were often shorter. The sender was oftentimes curt with Deceit in the same way Bluebird in person was and never said thank you. That one was easy to identify as the superhero Deceit knew.
The second one was more mysterious even while being more open and casual in tests. Even if Deceit didn’t have the evidence of messages sometimes coming through even when Bluebird was otherwise occupied, he would have been able to tell it was someone else just from the vernacular. Their messages were very different than Bluebird’s.
They were still well-educated judging by their vocabulary, but they tended to use text speech more often when messages were casual and to drop punctuation altogether when they were urgent.
Their messages were more long-winded, and they often said thank you at the end of each chain of messages. They’d often send a thumbs up to acknowledge they saw a message from Deceit even when that message did not necessitate a response. Generally, they just seemed to like Deceit more than Bluebird did, or at least they were more polite.
Deceit had no idea who this second person was who sometimes messaged him. As far as the public knew, Bluebird had always worked alone. Yet, Deceit knew this person had always been there in the shadows since before texting was even a thing. It had been a lot less obvious with the pagers they’d had before, but still there had clearly been two people on the other end.
Deceit sometimes wondered who this other person was. He would never ask.
Tonight, the text message seemed to be from the second, unknown participant in Bluebird’s escapades judging by the lack of proper punctuation. Well, that and the contents of the message.
“Bluebird has been missing for hours and I cant get ahold of him”
That text had come a couple of hours ago and the various updates through the night had been no less worrying.
Deceit and Bluebird did not get along. They’d had a lot of disagreements about the best way to handle crime in the city. These differences in opinion are what classified Bluebird as a hero and marked Deceit as a vigilante, but despite these disagreements, both Deceit and Bluebird acknowledged that the other served a role in the city. They had always been allies even when they didn’t get along.
Bluebird had only gone missing once before. It had been before he and Deceit had a mode of communication open, so Deceit had no idea if the second messenger had been around then. Yet, even that time, everyone in the city had known why Bluebird had been missing. He’d been shot by a memory wiping gun fashioned off a mind-warper’s powers. Somehow, he’d managed to get his memories back and had returned to the superhero scene a week later.
Even back then, the city had held its breath with Bluebird missing. He’d been a much newer hero then, dependable and just, but the city had still been used to the normal pattern of superheroes coming and going at the time.
This time… this time Deceit didn’t know if the city could survive the superhero vacuum if he did not return.
Deceit knew he could not be a Bluebird.
He honestly wasn’t sure anyone could.
And so, Deceit spent his night searching for any breadcrumbs the hero left behind.
~~~
The news of strange happenings at a factory halfway across the city came to Deceit first. He was plugged into police communications in ways that were nowadays more legal for him than he’d like to admit. So, he heard about it as soon as someone reported the issue.
Memory wipes. Pretty much everyone in that area of the city.
He immediately began heading to investigate that part of town. (The police would unfortunately likely allow him past the barricades without Deceit needing to use his powers.)
He got a text message before he managed to get to the factory.
“Bluebird is safe,” was all the message read.
Deceit paused.
He knew a good amount more about mental powers than most. He probably knew more about mind warpers than anyone else.
He recalled his thoughts about the last time Bluebird had been missing years ago. He’d wondered how Bluebird had managed to regain his memoires when Janus’s own mother had spent the rest of her life with a Swiss cheese brain, and she had been the luckiest of those under Blight’s control.
“Was the factory him?” Deceit messaged back.
There was no reply.