Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Six Years Ago

"Good afternoon, Master Bruce," Alfred said, pulling back the blackout curtains.

Bruce groaned and rubbed his face, but propped himself up against the headboard. Alfred was always trying to get him to rest more; if he was waking him, it was for something more important than a Wayne Enterprises board meeting.

There was a stack of four newspapers on the breakfast tray. That made it… Saturday? Right, because the Arkham breakout had happened during that awful dinner with mayoral candidate… Smith? Carpenter? One of those occupation names.

After the second cup of coffee, his brain reluctantly kicked up the relevant information: mayoral candidate Samuel Cooper, who was so obviously in the mob's pocket he hardly needed Wayne money for his campaign. More immediately relevant, Alfred had woken him to get ready for a Martha Wayne charity gala he was supposed to be hosting. Right.

Bruce reached for the stack of newspapers, but Alfred put his hand on top of them. "Alfred?"

"Before you read the papers, Master Bruce… if you recall, you had a date scheduled for Friday night to go to Haly's Circus with Miss Holly Vanderhees."

Bruce blinked. Yes, he had asked the heiress out to maintain his playboy facade, but he also had a reputation for flaking on commitments at the last minute. "Did she not take it well?"

"No, she was quite gracious. However, there was an incident at the circus that night." Alfred stopped arranging the napkin on the tray and looked Bruce in the eye. "A tragedy. Mary and John Grayson of the Flying Graysons fell to their deaths."

That was a tragedy, but not one that warranted Alfred's careful tone of voice. An accident that killed a couple wouldn't bring up Bruce's own grief unless…

Hadn't there been three Flying Graysons?

Bruce took a moment to breathe before he asked, "How old is their son?"

A flicker of pain crossed Alfred's usually impassive face. "He was eight."

Was? "You said Mary and John fell."

"Young Dick Grayson was taken to the Willowwood Orphanage, but he ran away late that night. He was struck and killed by a semi-trailer."

It had been raining hard last night when he'd returned Scarecrow to Arkham. The driver probably hadn't seen a distraught child in the road. At least… at least the death would have been instantaneous. At least the child was no longer in pain.

Bruce forced himself to eat. He'd had nothing but protein bars for days, and no amount of training would stop his body from cannibalizing his muscles if he didn't feed it properly. He forced himself to read articles with titles like "Fall of the Flying Graysons" and "Orphaned Grayson Dies in Car Accident—Negligence or Suicide?", knowing that he'd have to listen to worse gossip at the gala tonight. 

Batman couldn't be everywhere at once. He couldn't prevent every tragedy, he and would only drive himself insane if he tried. Still, as Bruce traced his finger traced over a picture of a little boy with black hair and blue eyes standing between two parents who loved him, he couldn't shake the feeling of failure.

Now

"Modern art, eh?" Harvey Bullock said, gesturing to the painter's studio, and particularly the corpse pinned to the wall with throwing knives.

Batman disagreed. "Not modern. This is very traditional."

"Could be right. The potstickers are—"

"Antique throwing knives, professional grade. The grooves are filled with mercury for steadier flight."

"Yeah. What about the symbol?"

Batman couldn't stop his voice from going a shade colder. "It's an owl."

Bullock snorted. "No wonder they call you a detective. You don't think it has to do with that old wives' tale about the C—"

"No."

Bullock actually took a step away and raised his hands. "Okay, okay, a man can ask."

Batman realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax his jaw. Bullock had no way of knowing that he'd already investigated that myth as thoroughly as it could be, or that the deceased himself had accosted Bruce Wayne at a groundbreaking ceremony a week ago ranting about that very same myth. "There is no Court of Owls."

Bullock looked like he wanted to push back on that. You can't prove a negative. Lack of proof isn't proof of lack. Instead he shrugged, "Then the perp wanted us to think it existed."

The victim, too. It's real. It's all real, Mr Wayne. Stop the New Gotham initiative, or the Court will come for you.

There was always opposition to new development. Bruce had done everything he could to ensure that the New Gotham redevelopment initiative came with rent controls and affordable housing guarantees to prevent gentrification, but that just pissed off the property investors. Still, he'd expected the opposition to come in the form of political pushback or regulatory challenges, not two dozen throwing knives. Judging by the knives' precise placement, it had taken hours for the man to die.

Now that Batman's nose was growing numb to Bullock's odor—bad cigars, bad coffee, stale sweat and gunpowder—he could smell something else, stronger than the acrylic paints. Linseed oil. It was used as a paint thinner, but not in such concentration. He removed one hanging painting; the smell was coming from the wall. "Give me your matches."

Bullock gave him a look. "In here? Half this shit is flammable; I even put my cigar out."

Batman just stood with his hand out until Bullock handed one over. He struck the match on the wall and immediately the message appeared in flame: Bruce Wayne will DIE tomorrow.

Bullock snorted. "Right." Batman turned to look at him. "Come on, the guy's got the best security in the city. Maybe the entire eastern seaboard. Whoever it is would have an easier time assassinating the president. Still, we'll give his guys a heads-up like we usually do, offer to help like we usually do, get turned down like we usually do."

Batman looked back at the victim. He'd known someone was coming after him, someone who would torture him and leave him to die slowly. Yet instead of running, he'd spent his final hours preparing this warning.

"I want to know as soon as you have any more information on the John Doe."

"Sure, sure. I'm sure the commish will give you a call when they're ready to autopsy. You know, you could always—" He realized he was talking to no one and sighed. "Nevermind."

24 hours later

"Breathtaking, isn't it?" Bruce asked leaning on the rail to look out the windows from the original Wayne Tower's observation deck.

Mayoral candidate Aaliya Lincoln said, "Very impressive, Mr Wayne. But I didn't come here for the view."

Bruce looked over his shoulder and realized she was a good ten feet back, closer to the elevators than the windows. Her arms were crossed, body language closed. "Alderwoman Lincoln… are you afraid of heights?" She shrugged. "Why would you agree to meet with me here, then?"

"When it comes to serving Gotham, Mr Wayne, there is very little I won't do."

"Even if it scares you?"

"Especially if it scares me. Do you think I've gotten this far in my campaign without collecting my share of death threats? A third of my campaign funds are going to private security."

Bruce frowned. "The police should be providing—"

"Who do you think I need to be protected from? The head of the police union recently called me 'an angry gorilla who would get good policemen killed'."

"Patrick Koch has said some awful things, but Commissioner Gordon can arrange for the protection you need."

"Mr Wayne, I know that you're friends with the Commissioner, and I appreciate the concern, but believe me when I tell you that the police are a greater threat to my safety than the mafia, drug gangs, supervillains or the shadowy cabal you warned me about." She took a couple of steps forward and gestured to the view. "Now what was it that you wanted me to see?"

"I know you have concerns about the New Gotham initiative. I'd like to talk to you a bit about my vision for the future of the city, Alderwoman Lincoln. Just beyond the Queen Consolidated towers, in your district, is a devastated area—"

Ms Lincoln snorted.

Bruce blinked. Usually politicians let him get further into his pitch than this. "Did you have something to add?"

"First of all, it's Alderperson Lincoln. I don't see any reason to use gender-specific political titles. Second, I already saw your gala speech."

"I didn't think you were able to attend."

"I didn't; I was at my daughter's school play. I saw recordings, though. That little model you had where you can look down on the city like a child playing with blocks. Not that I expected anything else: your family has been doing it for generations. Take this tower: looking down upon Gotham and protecting it with your rings of stone 'guardians'. Spotting areas of so-called devastation and making plans to fix them without ever really seeing them. When was the last time you visited that 'devastated area'?"

Bruce frowned, not used to being called out this way by anyone but Clark. Certainly not by politicians with warchests as depleted as Ms Lincoln's. "I haven't."

He'd visited some of the sites for the new buildings, but not all of them. They all fit into the same pattern: a bubble in the property market had driven up property taxes, driving out the low-income residents; property developers had jumped on a hot new neighborhood and started building luxury condos; the bubble had burst, leaving partially-constructed buildings and bankrupt developers. So the buildings were left to flood with standing water and slowly collapse on themselves, a zone of devastation where there had once been a thriving working-class neighborhood.

"Visit the site in my district." Ms Lincoln reached into her jacket. The Wayne security guards tensed, then relaxed when her hand came out with only a paper flier. "Come to the community meeting about it. Convince my constituents that building another skyscraper is the best use of that area, and I'll support the development, either as alderperson or mayor." She brushed her Ghana braids behind her shoulder and turned back to the elevator.

"Ms Lincoln, I—" Bruce began as the elevator door opened and a figure in head-to-toe black sprang out. "Get down!"

Small. Fast. The assassin moved like one of their throwing knives, spinning through the air and hitting their target with devastating results. Within seconds all three bodyguards had slammed into walls or floor hard enough to split their skulls. The one who had managed to draw his gun had been rewarded with a knife through his hand.

Bruce tried to intercept the assassin, but Ms Lincoln was closer. She threw her briefcase at them and dove for the dropped gun, coming up on one knee in a practiced two-handed grip. Her hands were remarkably steady. The assassin spun into a back handspring, delivering a knockout kick to her chin before she could get off a shot.

The assassin twisted to face Bruce and stilled. Bruce examined them. The assassin was—small. 5' 1", 105 lbs, slender build. Those flips hadn't just been for style; they needed the additional momentum behind their strikes to take out professional bodyguards a hundred pounds out of their weight class. The lines on their cowl suggested a stylized owl, emphasized by the round yellow lenses of their goggles and the metal beak on its nose piece. The bandolier across their chest still held five antique throwing knives of the type that had killed the John Doe in the painting studio; a sixth was held in their right gauntlet.

" Bruce Wayne ," the assassin said in a raspy voice. A voice that seemed, for all that, young . " The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die. "

"Wait—" Bruce said, and flung himself to the side to avoid a thrown knife. "Who are you?"

The assassin cocked its head to the side, bird-like, and then it sprang into motion. Bruce had intended to fight clumsily to protect his identity: take a few strikes, make his own hits look lucky rather than trained, let himself be knocked off balance a bit. He abandoned that strategy as soon as he took a glancing palm-strike to his left side and felt two of his ribs break. That shouldn't—shouldn't have been possible .

He kicked out at the assassin's solar plexus to get a bit of room, but his opponent went into a deep back bend and came right back up holding a long dagger. Bruce struck full-force at the mandibular nerve in their neck with his left hand; the assassin blocked and stabbed him through the forearm. As soon as the assassin yanked the blade free, Bruce started a mental countdown for when he'd be incapacitated. Training and willpower could overcome a great deal, but not physics: unless he found a way to stem the blood loss, he would pass out.

Not that he would survive even that long, if he didn't fight this assassin with everything he had. Close combat ought to favor Bruce as the larger opponent, but the assassin was impressive at slipping holds; pinning him was like trying to grab a razored spinning top. Bruce finally got an arm around the assassin's throat in a sleeper hold, though he couldn't control their arms. His hold automatically tightened at the burst of pain from the assassin stabbing him in the brachial arteries in both his upper arms; it was tight enough to crush the assassin's windpipe.

Except it didn't.

Enhanced. Had to be. Meta? Some type of Venom? That's how the assassin was keeping the upper hand in close combat: Bruce had 120 lbs on the assassin, most of it muscle, yet the assassin was still stronger.

As if to prove that point, the assassin slammed Bruce, still clinging to their back, into the center of one of the observation deck's windows. Bruce felt the unbreakable plastic flex behind him and hold, protecting him from a 200-story drop, but the impact made every one of his injuries send up fresh pain signals. At least the throwing knives were still lodged in his upper arms, or he would be unconscious from arterial blood loss already. The assassin stepped away, then rammed him into the window again, this time slamming his head back into Bruce's chin; it stunned him long enough for the assassin to slip his grip.

The assassin allowed Bruce to regain his feet. They didn't have a single scratch and didn't even seem winded. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce noticed a throwing knife wedged between the edge of the window pane and the frame. When had—

" Bruce Wayne. The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die. " The attack started as a forward hand-spring before twisting into a two-foot strike to his abdomen. Bruce couldn't have countered such force even if he weren't stunned by pain and blood loss; all he could do was brace his abdominal muscles to protect his organs. He slammed through the unbreakable plastic at the edge of the window pane, where there was no flex and the throwing knife had weakened the seal that kept it in place.

Bruce was falling, and his city rose up to meet him.

Chapter Text

Now

Bruce wasn't afraid of falling. He couldn't have become Batman if he had been, so he hadn't let himself be. At ten he may not have known about exposure therapy, but he certainly knew that Gotham's protector couldn't be afraid of the high diving board. Even if it was really, really high. So every summer he'd made Alfred take him to the swimming pools with the highest diving boards and he'd jumped off them over and over and over again, until he was bored. Feet first, head first, forward flips, back flips.

As he grew older, there were other opportunities. Skydiving. Bungee jumping. Base jumping. ( Adrenaline junkie , the newspapers said. Death wish , the tabloids whispered. Bruce didn't mind; dangerous sports were always useful for explaining the latest broken leg or spinal fracture.) He'd trained in acrobatics, flying high without a net, before he'd started using the grapple gun. (He didn't have a grapple gun now. How could Bruce Wayne explain carrying such a thing?)

He had more than two hundred stories to fall. He'd hit terminal velocity at a quarter of that, after which there was nothing more that could be done. He turned in the air to look down at Gotham, his city, and wasn't afraid.

Some instinct had Bruce look over his shoulder, up at the deck he'd fallen from, just in time to block a stab at the back of his neck. The assassin had kicked him off Wayne Tower, then had jumped out after him ?

The assassin wasn't trying to injure him any more; every one of their strikes would kill instantly if Bruce missed a block. Apparently they didn't trust the ground to finish the job for them. Fortunately for Bruce, freefall favored reach over strength. Even aching and light-headed from blood loss, he was able to keep the assassin at arm's length. He wasn't quite subtle enough angling his body in the rushing air, unfortunately: the assassin spotted the gargoyle he was aiming for, the so-called 'hidden guardian' that couldn't be spotted from the lobby or the observation deck.

" No ," the assassin snarled, slashing at Bruce's throat, " The Court of Owls— ". Bruce blocked with his already-perforated forearm and grabbed the gargoyle with his right arm. He let out a strangled scream as the motion tore the stab in his upper arm open, but somehow he managed to scramble on top of the gargoyle. Bruce gasped for air and looked down.

The assassin dangled from Bruce one-handed grip, a hundred sixty-three stories in the air. Bruce's grip slipped on the blood and the assassin dropped an inch.

"Come on,," Bruce snapped, grabbing on with his right hand as well, "I can't pull you up by myself. If you recall, you stabbed me a bunch of times."

The assassin continued to dangle.

"Do you have some equipment? Grapple gun, parachute, glider?"

The assassin shook their head and continued to dangle.

Bruce wrapped his legs around the gargoyle's waist, bracing against the granite wings, and tried to haul the assassin up onto the gargoyle. Blood spurted from his brachial arteries. He blinked black spots away from his vision—his blood pressure was getting dangerously low, but there was nothing to be done about that until he had use of his hands again—and tensed his bruised core muscles. "How many of those damned knives are you carrying?"

He'd pulled the assassin up high enough to grab onto the gargoyle's base—not that they did , the suicidal idiot—when the part of the gargoyle's wing he'd braced against shattered. Bruce was abruptly upside down, hanging by the grip of his legs around the gargoyle, blinking through the bloodrush. The assassin flexed their arm, bringing those opaque yellow lenses close to examine first Bruce's face, then their clasped hands.

Bruce's arms were shaking, and the damned assassin was still trusting their entire weight to them. "Listen. Has the Court of Owls sentenced you to die?" Bruce realized as soon as he said it that the answer might well be yes; the assassin had jumped off the tower with no special equipment.

A slow shake of the head.

"Then don't get yourself killed. Grab on." The slick menswear fabric was doing nothing for his legs' grip on the gargoyle; Bruce slid another couple of inches. If the assassin didn't do something soon, they would both fall. "Please."

The assassin's other hand came up, and there was a blade in it. They slashed at Bruce's face, forcing him to let go with his left hand to block, but it was a feint. The assassin smashed the hilt of the knife into a nerve cluster in Bruce's right wrist; the hand went numb and spasmed, releasing its grip.

The assassin slipped free.

Bruce scrambled back onto the gargoyle's back and watched the assassin fall a hundred sixty-three stories to their death on the street below. Yet there was something strangely joyful as they soared and flipped and tumbled through the air, like a bird at long last flying free.

12 hours later

Aaliyah Lincoln narrowed her eyes at Bruce. "Could someone explain to me why I am being held another day for observation for one love tap," she gestured to the bruise on her jaw, evident even on her dark skin, "whereas you are allowed to walk around after falling off Gotham Tower with multiple stab wounds?"

"One phrase, Alderperson: 'Left against medical advice.' Though I don't know that the people of Gotham favor that kind of recklessness in a future mayor."

"Not much chance of that. I've missed my biggest fundraising event; I'm barely going to make payroll for my people next week. Speaking of which, these aren't my security people guarding my private hospital room."

"Would it help if I promised my lawyers cleared everything with the FEC, and none of this counts as an in-kind campaign donation?"

"It helps, but it doesn't explain why you're doing it."

"Ms Lincoln, I know you don't think much of billionaires, but I try to at least make restitution for my mistakes. You were nearly killed because someone tried to assassinate me, and I chose to meet with you even after I'd been warned it was a possibility."

"You told me about that. I said we should meet anyway."

"I got you caught up in something you should never have been involved in."

Lincoln bit her lip. "What if it was something I was involved in already?"

"What?"

"I got an odd call just before I went to Wayne Tower. Caller ID said it was from my campaign manager Naija Chawla, but it was the voice of a man I don't know. He told me not to meet with you. He said… 'It's always dangerous, when Waynes fly too high.' Something melodramatic like that. I asked who the hell he was, and he said he represented a Concerned Citizens Council."

"What did you do?"

"I hung up on him and went to our meeting. I don't take advice from white supremacists. Then this morning, I got a voicemail, this time supposedly from my daughter's number." She tapped at her phone for a few seconds, squinting at the screen like the glare hurt her eyes; she wasn't as unaffected by her concussion as she was pretending. She turned the speaker towards Bruce. The distorted notes of an old music box played before it was joined by a wavering child's voice:

"Beware the Court of Owls

that watches all the time.

Ruling Gotham from shadowed perch,

behind granite and lime.

They watch you at your hearth,

they watch you in your bed.

Speak not a whispered word of them,

or they'll send the Talon for your head." 

The recording stopped, replaced by a man's voice. Upper-class Bristol accent, dripping with condescension, but not one Bruce could place. "Dear Aaliyah—you don't mind if I call you that, do you? After all, you've seen the Talon and lived, which makes you one of a very select group. Heed our warning and oppose Wayne's New Gotham initiative, or next time it will come for your head."

"The police—"

"Told me they don't investigate prank calls."

Bruce sighed. "Can you send me the audio file? I'll make sure it gets to the detectives looking into the assassination attempt."

"About that. Any leads on where the Talon's body wandered off to?"

"The Court of Owls and the Talon don't exist," Bruce insisted. "Someone is just… playing games with us. Someone might have broken in to steal the body."

"Uh-huh. Any leads?"

"GCPD is investigating."

"I know that you're a Bristol kid, but you've still lived in Gotham most of your life. How do you say that like it's a good thing?"

"They're getting better."

"They couldn't have gotten much worse."

"Commissioner Gordon is a good man. There are some good cops."

"How many keep their jobs? Hell, how many of his own people have tried to kill Gordon at this point? Not even counting political hit jobs like the sick-out." (That had backfired; city-wide violent crime had actually dropped when the SWAT team got the "blue flu". Still, thanks to the police union, the unit hadn't even received a reprimand.)

"I don't suppose you're a believer in Batman either, Alderperson Lincoln?"

"My mother's family is from the South, Mr Wayne. We have generations of experience with vigilante white men who use terror as a weapon." Bruce kept his face impassive. He'd heard worse about Batman. Hell, he'd heard worse about Superman . "Still better than the GCPD, though."

A nurse cleared his throat at the door. "She needs rest, Mr Wayne. You also need to rest. Stop jumping out of buildings."

"Yes, Jorgen, I promise I'll head straight home."

The Talon waited in a cell that was almost as cold as its coffin. It would have wanted to return to the oblivion of its coffin, if a Talon could want things. Instead it waited.

2 hours later

"What exactly are you hoping to find?" Gordon asked. The coroner had pulled out the John Doe again and then left to do something anywhere but here. They'd concluded from the pattern of old injuries that the man had been some sort of professional trainer, both hand-to-hand and blades, before he'd tried to run and hit a very dead end.

"Something we missed before," Batman said, lifting the hand of the assassin's only confirmed kill.

Aaliyah Lincoln had suffered a moderate concussion and headaches. The three security guards at the top of Wayne Tower and the paramedics who had been transporting the assassin's body to the coroner when it had disappeared had all suffered head trauma that resulted in memory loss of the last days or weeks, but all were expected to make full recoveries otherwise.

Apart from Aaliyah Lincoln and Bruce Wayne, the targets, there had been seven survivors but zero witnesses.

Batman was examining the body of a man who had been tortured to death, looking for… what?

He set up the portable MRI, and Gordon whistled. "Don't suppose you'd like to donate one of those to the GCPD? Actually, never mind, we don't need anything more that can be walked off with."

"Evidence lockup again?"

"Four hundred thousand dollars cash from some very questionable civil forfeitures. Coincidentally, Patrick Koch just bought a new boat. Truly amazing how far that man can stretch a police officer's salary."

"Hn. Hand me the pliers? There's something odd about this molar."

"You a detective or a dentist?" Gordon asked, handing them over. Batman showed him the molar he'd extracted. "Is that an owl symbol on the bottom of a tooth? What for?"

"I'm not sure yet, I'll have to test—wait, what's that in the image?" Batman knew, though. Someone had severed the John Doe's spinal cord between the C2 and C3 cervical spinal nerves. Batman checked the back of the neck, and there was no mark; the knife must have been so thin and sharp that the skin had time to heal before the man died, leaving no external mark. The man had died slowly, pinned to the wall with a dozen throwing knives, but he hadn't felt any pain.

Had that been the same knife the assassin had tried to stab into the back of Bruce's neck? Had that been their first opportunity to offer a clean death without breaking orders? Bruce could almost hear what the orders must have been, said in the caller's arrogant Bristol accent:

Torture your old trainer.

Make him bleed.

Don't let him die too soon.

Leave no witnesses but the black woman.

Destroy Wayne and throw him from his tower.

Make it hurt.

Yet when Bruce had grabbed the assassin's gauntlet to keep them from falling, they hadn't stabbed Bruce. Hadn't hurt him. Hadn't even let Bruce fall to his death trying to pull the assassin to safety.

"Batman, what are you seeing?" Gordon asked.

He pointed to the MRI image that showed where the spinal cord had been severed. "Mercy."

Chapter Text

The Court of Owls wasn't real.

Bruce knew Gotham. From its glittering penthouses to its sewers, from the Docks to the Diamond District, from the old Amusement Park and Chinatown. He'd walked its streets as a billionaire and a beggar, a petty arsonist and a mythic guardian. He knew which restaurants laundered money for the mafia and which did so for the triads; he knew which days the shipments of heroin arrived and which gangs cut it with even more dangerous additives. He knew which days Grandma Fatima opened her kitchen to street children who went away with fingers sticky with dates and honey. He knew that the grad student who did part-time maintenance for the 3425 University Street apartment building was actually the building's owner.

The secrets of Gotham weren't secret from him, which is how he knew that the Court of Owls wasn't real.

He'd believed in it once. It had been his first detective case. Still reeling from the loss of his parents, nine-year-old Bruce Wayne had been convinced that there was a vast conspiracy behind their murders, one that involved their friends and business partners, the elite of Gotham, and the elusive Court of Owls. Everything had become a clue, a sign that he was on the right track, until all those signs pointed to an abandoned clubhouse with a double owl on the crest: Harbor House.

He'd nearly died in that house. Not because of an evil conspiracy stretching to the earliest days of Gotham City, but because there was none. Just a trap door that hadn't been properly secured, and the week it took Alfred to find him.

The Court of Owls wasn't real.

Bruce wondered how many people had said that to the original owner of these bones, his great-great grandfather Alan Wayne. He took another swab and prepared a sample for analysis.

"Master Bruce, you know this is not what I meant when I said we should have more people over. Couldn't you leave the old man to rest in peace?"

"You're the one who told me that Alan Wayne was obsessed with the Court of Owls at the end of his life."

"Yes, well, he was also senile and paranoid. The man may have been responsible for Wayne Tower and a dozen other historic skyscrapers, but I'm afraid his death was an ugly one."

"I'm afraid you have no idea how ugly."

The butler frowned. "He fell into an open manhole. His body was only recovered several weeks later from the sewers, apparently drowned."

"Then no one took a close look at his bones. See these marks? Very like those I found on the bones of the John Doe last week who'd been pinned to the wall by two dozen throwing knives."

"Oh dear."

"Except Alan Wayne was stabbed far more times than that."

Meanwhile

"Get up."

The Talon tried to stand up. The fractured left femur buckled under its weight, sharp end slicing its femoral artery in a spray of black vital fluid. The Talon screamed as it collapsed, because this Owl liked to hear the Talon scream.

"I said, get up ," the Baron ordered again, stomping on the Talon's chest. Ribs shattered under his heel and vital fluid dripped into the Talon's lungs. Still, it struggled to get to its feet. The Talon was an instrument of the Owls' will, and instruments obeyed. The cell was too cold to repair quickly, but after forty-two seconds its femur could once again bear the Talon's weight. The Talon stood and did not cough vital its fluid on the Baron.

The Baron swung his metal baseball bat into the Talon's side; its humerus cracked, but it stayed standing. He swung again, snapping straight through the arm bone, and the Talon screamed, but it stayed standing.

"Archibald!" The Baron flinched. The Talon turned its head to watch the Empress approach. She regarded the arterial spray of black vital fluid on the floor with revulsion. "Really. What is the purpose of this brutality?"

"It failed its mission. Father said we could punish it however we wanted."

"So you chose a baseball bat, like a common thug? Where is your foil? Were all those fencing lessons for nothing?"

"A foil or rapier does hardly any damage, so it just stands there and takes it. It doesn't even scream."

"It isn't supposed to scream," the Empress snapped. "It isn't supposed to make any sound except the words we tell it to speak. It is our most valuable weapon, you stupid boy, not some electronic toy you can break and replace."

"Father said we could punish it however—"

"I doubt he would have left it open-ended if he'd known your attempts would be so… commonplace." The Empress looked over at the Talon, sighed, and looked away. "Fix yourself and clean up."

The Talon broke and reset its humerus. The Empress did not like screaming, so it made no sound. It dipped a rag in its water basin and cleaned its body and cell of any trace of its vital fluid, then returned to kneel at her feet.

"Talon. Our finest weapon. How did you fail the Court of Owls?"

"The Talon did not execute the death order on Bruce Wayne, mistress."

"What use is a weapon that does not kill its masters' enemies?"

"None, mistress. Such a weapon is fit only to be destroyed." Despite its best efforts, the Talon's voice shook.

"Very true. Which would be such a pity." She considered the Talon for a stretching moment before continuing, "We have a new mission for you. Another enemy of the Court who must die. Will you kill our new enemy?"

"Yes, mistress. Always, mistress."

"Good, good. One last thing. A reminder of what happens when a Talon fails."

The Talon's head came up and its eyes locked on the syringe the Empress held out. The Talon did not flinch, or sob, or hesitate. Instruments obeyed. It injected the golden fluid into its carotid artery, and then its world dissolved into bursts of light and the agony in its veins, burning it from the inside out.

The Empress didn't like to hear the Talon scream. The Talon screamed anyway.

13 hours later

Batman groaned awake in a white-walled maze. Walls thirty feet high, and above that only stretching darkness. He took inventory. His utility belt and comm were gone, but they hadn't removed his mask. (A taunt. It doesn't matter who you are. We are in control here. ) His body ached with bruises, but no sharp pain to indicate a broken bone. The corridor spun slowly when sat up, and he breathed through his mouth to try to subdue the nausea. Definitely concussed. He pushed to his feet and started walking, left hand trailing against the smooth wall.

Construction marble under his fingertips. He'd been looking for marble, hadn't he? There had been traces of metamorphic rock ground into Alan Wayne's bones, when Gotham's sewers were made of granite. Batman had gone down the same manhole where his ancestor had once disappeared, and he'd just found a trace of white marble dust on the wall (a trap, why hadn't he realized) when—

"Batman. The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die." The Talon had slammed Batman head-first through the sewer wall, and together they'd fallen into the underworld. Into this twilight maze.

Up and out would be Batman's preference, but he couldn't get to the top of the walls. They were so polished even the rubberized tread on his boots didn't allow him to climb, and the corridors were too wide to brace against one side and walk up the other with his feet. So he walked the paths and counted the paces, mapping the maze in his mind. Then the walls opened out into a larger chamber, and Batman was blinded when the lights turned on before his night-vision lenses could compensate. The brilliant white light struck his brain like a dull ice pick and he had to stop and breathe again to keep from throwing up.

When he blinked his eyes open, Batman found himself before an immense fountain. It was, naturally, a giant fucking owl.

"Batman , " said a voice from all around him. It bounced against the stone, traveling down the paths and chittering back. "Welcome to the Labyrinth. Welcome to your death ."

…And Alfred called him melodramatic.

Batman spotted the speakers, mounted every ten feet along the top of every wall. There were doubtless cameras as well; even if Batman hadn't known about the Court's affinity for torture, this entire setup screamed sadistic entertainment.

The Court of Owls wanted him suffering, terrified, broken. He gave them the detective instead.

The fountain was a twenty-foot white marble statue with clear water streaming from its beak to a shallow basin at its base. Batman cupped a bit to taste the water. Well, the potent hallucinogen it was laced with would certainly make his slow death much more entertaining to the audience. It was also doubtless the only water he would find in this maze.

Lovely.

Batman heard the whistle too late and could only rock forward with a hiss when the throwing knife embedded in the back of his left shoulder. The laughter of the Court echoed around him, but Batman only had eyes for the Talon where they crouched atop the wall directly behind him.

Batman glanced at the drugged water. Had the Talon been trying to warn him?

The Talon rose, neck curving forward like a bird of prey about to—

They dove. Thirty feet of freefall before they struck the white marble tiles, tucking into a tight forward roll that lengthened into a forward handspring and round-off kick to Batman's sternum that lifted him off his feet. He tucked his head but still lost track for a second when his back impacted the giant owl statue, rattling his brain. When his vision cleared he was slumped against the statue in a cloud of fine marble dust, looking into the yellow goggles of the Talon inches away.

Batman struck a flurry of blows, more to gain space than out of any hope of connecting; the assassin wasn't even blocking, just turning their body to allow the strike to pass by. He tackled the Talon, knowing his only real chance against his nimbler opponent was to pin them down, but the Talon allowed it, planted their feet in Batman's stomach and launched him across the chamber. Batman automatically curled into a roll to expend his momentum and couldn't help the small scream when the throwing knife still in the back of his shoulder struck the floor, reverberating pain through his body. Still, he finished the roll and came to his feet.

The Talon was waiting, watching, still. He had a pair of throwing knives in his hands.

Batman ran.

The lights blinked off as soon as he left the chamber, so he ran on in darkness. When he no longer felt eyes upon him, he let himself slide down one of the walls to rest, and to slip the throwing knife he'd palmed from the Talon's bandolier into his right boot.

Three days later

"Was Bruce Wayne at his manor?" the Empress asked when the Talon returned.

"No, mistress," the Talon answered, not looking over at the screen that showed Bruce Wayne stumbling through the Labyrinth. Sleep deprivation. Concussion. Blood loss from the four throwing knives now in his back. Dehydration, as he still had not drunk from the fountain. His strength would fail him if he did not soon.

The Talon did not understand why the Owls sent him to find Bruce Wayne at Wayne Manor when they already had him in their Labyrinth, but a tool did not need to understand, only to obey. The Owls played many games. They called themselves Empress and Archduke and Baron when they wore their Court masks, and they called Bruce Wayne "Batman" when he wore his black mask. The black mask that the Talon had been ordered not to remove. Was the Talon not supposed to know that the broad-shouldered warrior he'd fought in Gotham Tower was the same broad-shouldered warrior he'd fought in the sewers?

"The Gotham Sun says he's in hiding in Belize," the Marquess said with a giggle.

The Archduke waved his hand in dismissal. "The Gotham Sun also says Batman is a vampire. You shouldn't read such rubbish."

The Marquess tilted her head. "They do think the Court exists. So it isn't all rubbish."

The Empress brushed the chatter away. "Bruce Wayne hasn't fled Gotham. The Waynes think that this is their city, that they're safe behind their private security and their manor walls. When we finally catch him, it will be a delight to watch their scion discover the truth." She tapped her manicured nails on the antique table. "Is that valet of his in Wayne Manor?"

"I do not know, mistress. There is an old man in a black suit who cleans." He also descended a hidden staircase into a cave filled with vehicles, a huge robotic dinosaur (also a vehicle?) and—for no reason the Talon could fathom—an enormous penny. The Empress didn't like for Talon to speak out of turn, so it did not add these details.

"Oh good," the Baron said, "Can we stick the valet in the Labyrinth with Batman? This is getting really boring."

"Take off your mask for a moment, Baron," the Empress said. "Good. Archduke?"

The Baron's father stood and backhanded the teenager across the face. The young Owl didn't know how to take the blow properly and stumbled, clutching his cheek. "Ow, fuck! What the hell?"

"Stop your sniveling, Archibald, and try to learn." The Empress gestured to his mask. "You can have that back when you behave like a proper member of this Court."

"But what did I—" the Baron broke off and flinched when his father raised his hand again.

"Marquess," the Empress said. "Perhaps you can explain what Archibald doesn't understand about the Labyrinth."

"The Labyrinth… isn't a game?" she said, eyes darting between her father and grandmother. "It's for teaching lessons."

"Precisely, my dear. Men are full of delusions. They believe that they are powerful, safe, in control. They believe that they matter. We bring them here to the Labyrinth to break them. Talon, does fear break a man?"

"No, mistress."

"Does pain?"

"No, mistress."

"Does madness?"

"No, mistress."

"What breaks a man, Talon?"

"The truth, mistress."

"Yes. Batman believes he is a hero. He believes he has power and control. He believes he knows Gotham's greatest secrets. He believes he can protect and save others. He believes that his will is stronger than fear and despair. If, as Archibald suggests, we put another victim in the Labyrinth with him, he will keep those delusions. He will die protecting Wayne's butler and never learn the truth that will break him."

The Marquess ducked her head. "Please, Empress, could you tell us… what is the truth that will break Batman?"

"The same truth that breaks all of them in the end. That they are helpless, insignificant, and alone." She turned her head to look at the screen, where Batman was creeping toward the fountain's tainted water. "That's why family is so important."

Batman's thoughts had all narrowed to a single point. He needed water. His throat felt like sandpaper and his tongue was swollen in his mouth. His thoughts were as thick as the blood dripping down his back, and black dots swarmed his vision whenever he stood up. His pulse was rapid but weak.

He collapsed to his knees beside the basin and brought his hands together to bring the precious water to his mouth. It was cool and soothed his throat so much that he barely noticed the taste, though there was something about it he thought he should remember. He drank deeply, water filling his empty stomach, until he was hit with a wave of vertigo so intense that he slid off his knees and clutched the side of the basin and the floor.

"Hooo. Hooo."

Batman looked up, and up. The statue above him looked down with golden eyes and mantled its wings.

Batman ran for the safety of the dark.

Chapter Text

Later

The walls were moving, and not just shortly after drinking from the fountain, when the hallucinogens were at their peak effect. It wasn't just a suspicion anymore, but a certainty. He couldn't map the Labyrinth because it was gradually changing. He hadn't felt the hum of the machinery needed to move tons of construction marble, so they had probably been timing the changes to happen when he had collapsed from exhaustion or drugs.

At some point, the Court of Owls decided to show him a new room: A scale model of the city of Gotham. Each blank-eyed owl mask on the wall labeled with a date, marching back centuries. It wasn't hard to interpret. This is the real Gotham. We control it. Gotham has always been ours.

Earlier

Time slipped away in the bright lights and pitch black. He tried to count how many times he drank from the fountain, but numbers slipped away as well. There were tally marks scratched into the back of his left gauntlet. He didn't know what they meant.

The photo room. Was this the first time the Court showed him this, or had it been here all along? An antique camera. Hundreds upon hundreds of rows of photos. In each row, one victim becomes progressively more haggard, terrified, despairing as they succumb to the Labyrinth and the monster at its center. We are in control. This is how you will die.

An instant after the lights in the photo room turned off, Batman heard the whistle of a thrown knife and flattened to the floor. The antique camera fell, speared through, and died with a final pop of its flash bulb. Batman grabbed the knife, but the Talon was gone before his eyes adjusted to the darkness again.

The Talon was fleeing. Batman slipped the knife into his left boot and wondered: was the Talon the monster at the center of this Labyrinth, or was he?

Later

The light isn't safe. The Owls laugh and the Talon strikes and the Bat has spines in his black that bleed and bleed.

The water is poison, but the Bat is thirsty again. He needs the poison.

The Bat creeps out of the safety of the dark corridors and the light attacks him. He looks up; the Talon attacks from above. I attacked from above , he thinks, but he doesn't know why. The Bat is prey. He watches the huge owl statue, but it stays still this time. He scrambles across the floor on his hands and knees and plunges his head into the water. White marble , he thinks, but he doesn't know why. Everything here is white and marble.

"Look at him," titters an Owl, and another answers, "Like an animal."

The Bat is an animal, and animals know when they are being hunted, so he spots the Talon when he appears atop the wall. The Bat dodges the knife. Hallucinogen has no effect on reflexes , he thinks, but he doesn't know what it means. The statue tilts its head to watch him.

"Savage, but still dangerous," the walls say. "The Talon needs to teach him a lesson."

The Talon glides down from the wall on feathered wings and flashes their claws. The Bat has claws too, and leathery wings that the Talon tore to shreds. The Bat hates the Talon. But the Talon's wings are clipped. They are here, too. In the Labyrinth. Trapped by the Owls.

So the Bat does not fight. The Bat runs back to the darkest of the dark, where the Owls cannot see.

Sometime

The Bat cannot sleep. The Talon does not sleep, and the Talon is following him, hunting him, guiding him through the chambers of the Labyrinth. The fountain, where he does not drink the poison again. The city, that is not really a city. The photo room, where the final row is Batman's descent into madness. New camera , he thinks, and for some reason this makes him angry. He smashes it and throws its wooden legs at the Talon when they get too close.

The Bat runs back to the darkest of the dark, where the Owls cannot see.

Sometime

This is a new chamber, one the Bat has never seen before: spotlights illuminate a black marble sarcophagus in the center. Its lid is propped open, and the freezing air flowing from it mists the ground. Even in this horrorshow, the Bat feels a sense of dread. He raises his eyes to meet the opaque yellow ones of the Talon, standing across the chamber.

"You brought me here," the Bat— Batman said, and while the voice was scratchy with disuse, it was his voice. "You want me… You want me to see this tomb." The Talon cocked their head. "You want me to see… your tomb." He stepped forward. It wasn't the first time Batman had investigated a child's murder, though it was the first time the child watched him do so.

There was a photograph in a heavy gilt frame atop the sarcophagus, where in older days a death mask might have been placed. The boy in the photo was about eight years old, with black hair, blue eyes and a dazzling smile. The acrobat's costume he wore left no doubt in Batman's mind as to his identity. "Grayson. You're Dick Grayson."

The Talon came around the sarcophagus to stand beside Batman, head cocked, birdlike.

"You were an acrobat," Batman said, the words stumbling and tumbling out in a rush. "You and your parents, Mary and John, you had a circus act called the Flying Graysons, until… it would have been… six years ago now. The Court must have faked the accident with the truck to take you, but you're Dick Grayson." Hesitantly, Batman settled his hands on the boy's shoulders. The Talon curled into Batman's embrace. "I'll take you away from here. I may have failed you before, but I'll protect you this time, I promise."

Pain exploded as the Talon slid a dagger into Batman's abdomen. Laughter echoed from the walls as Batman sagged to one knee.

"Did you think it would be so easy?" taunted a woman's voice. "Did you think we would let you turn our own tools against us? The Talon knows all about poor little Dick Grayson. Tell him, Talon."

The Talon looked down at Batman and said, "Dick Grayson was an orphaned acrobat at Haly's Circus. He died at age eight."

Batman shook his head. "It doesn't matter what they've told you. You are Dick Grayson—"

"Dick Grayson is dead," the Talon insisted, implacable.

"Tell him what you are, Talon. Show him."

"Yes, mistress." The Talon peeled off his cowl and goggles, revealing a fourteen-year-old boy with pale, waxy skin, blue veins and irises the color of molten gold. "Dick Grayson died. I am his corpse."

Now

Batman touched a button on the side of his cowl, and the white lenses slid up to show his blue ones, bloodshot and wide with shock. The Talon waited for disgust and terror, but they didn't come. Instead, Batman leaned closer. "This isn't from exposure to electrum." He removed a gauntlet and raised a hand. "May I?"

The Talon stilled as Batman rested his hand against the side of its face. It didn't hurt. The Talon didn't understand why the touch didn't hurt.

"Respiration is much slower than baseline, but detectable. As for your heart rate…" Two fingers slid below the Talon's jaw and pressed ever so lightly against his carotid artery. The Talon could feel his pulse fluttering beneath the man's fingers, but still the man didn't tighten his grip. "Slow, but within the normal human range. I don't know what they did to you, Dick, but you are alive."

The Talon knocked his hand away. "Don't call me that! I'm not him , I'm not human, I'm not even alive."

The corner of Batman's mouth twitched. "You're breathing. You have a beating heart. I'm betting you're in the middle of a growth spurt, too."

"Now these pants are too short, too. I swear you're growing like a weed, kid."

No. The Talon curled in on itself, shuddering. It didn't want to hear that voice, see that face.

"The way you move on those rings is unbelievable. I know you were born to fly, kid, but you need to learn how to kill. Brachial arteries, here and here, are good targets; between the pain and blood loss, it'll let you take down a man twice your size."

There was water dripping from the Talon's eyes. It could hear the Owls shouting through the speakers, a cacophony of overlapping voices it couldn't understand, and someone was too close, saying, "Dick," and "It'll be alright" and "Get you out."

"We're gonna get out of this, kid. I've got a plan. The Court's gonna send you after Bruce Wayne, who's crazy rich and connected. All I gotta do is get a warning to him, and he'll be able to protect us. Hey, no, it's okay to be scared, but soon we're gonna be free. You'll be able to fly as much as you want, little bird, and you won't have to kill anymore."

Someone was gripping the Talon by the shoulders. It was Batman, who was Bruce Wayne, who was supposed to be rich and powerful but was just more weak prey for the Owls to devour. The Talon shrieked and struck: the places it'd pierced the man's brachial arteries, where it'd stabbed through the man's forearm, the left-side ribs it'd cracked. It didn't care if that spoiled the game with the masks.

Batman grunted and fell back, hands raised defensively. "Talk to me, please. Are you all right?"

"You were supposed to protect him! He warned you, and you were supposed to protect him."

Batman's eyes went wide, then his expression crumpled. "The man murdered at the art studio, you mean. The man who trained you."

"Trainer. Who I—" The Talon shook its head, trying not to hear the meaty thunks of twenty-four throwing knives, each precisely placed to avoid major blood vessels. Trainer would have been proud of such a neat job.

"I know what you did to him," Batman said, lowering his hands from guard position. "I know everything that you did."

Trainer hadn't fought when the Talon invaded his studio. Hadn't run. Had just looked at the Talon with despairing eyes and said, "I'm sorry, kid. God I'm so sorry. I wish I'd found some way to get you out."

He'd cried when the Talon had used the thin knife on the back of his neck to spare him any pain. Cried and thanked him. "Listen, keep looking for an out. If for one second the Court loosens its grip, you gotta be ready. 'Cause nobody's gonna be looking out for you but you, kid."

"I'm escaping," Batman said, reaching out even though that arm was now bleeding in two places because of the Talon. Because of the Talon twice over. "Come with me."

How long had the Talon (Dick? No, that upset him—best stick with the Talon, for now) known that Batman was Bruce Wayne? The boy had never struck Batman where he Bruce Wayne had been injured, which given the number of times they'd tangled was suspicious in hindsight. Apparently he'd been going easy on his opponent.

That had become blindingly obvious the instant the Talon stopped, because he'd reopened every one of Bruce Wayne's knife wounds in seconds. Batman no longer had two or three days before his body gave out on him; he had two or three hours. No time to refine the plan any further. No time to gather any more intel, though with the name Dick Grayson he suspected he'd found the loose thread he needed to unravel it all.

The Talon stared at the hand Batman had offered him. A chemically altered and brainwashed fourteen-year-old assassin knew Batman's secret identity. (One who was apparently bewildered by the idea of holding hands.) Did the rest of the Court of Owls know? Probably, but there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that from inside the Labyrinth, either. Bruce took the Talon by the elbow and got him running towards the fountain.

The Court appeared to be losing their minds, screaming over each other on the speakers. "How dare—" "—kill—" "—never!" "—punish—" "Talon—" "—escape—" "—die screaming !"

The Talon was dissociating, which seemed like a good strategy. This escape would be far from pleasant. Still, some things were important. "Talon." The boy blinked and squinted at Batman. "I need you to stay over here. Do you understand?" Blink. Blink. That was going to have to be good enough. 

Batman had a certain knack to escaping death traps, and it all came down to attention to detail.

Detail 1: The maze was built of construction marble. The giant Owl statue in the fountain, which had been damaged when the Talon threw Batman against it that first day, was built of softer white marble.

Detail 2: Once you got past the taste of the hallucinogens, the fountain water tasted like the Gotham River.

Detail 3: The antique camera in the photo room used potassium chlorate flash powder. The replacement antique camera did as well. So did the second replacement antique camera.

Detail 4: Potassium chlorate is used in fireworks, propellants and explosives. It is volatile and can be set off with a few sparks.

It had taken some time to collect, but the Court of Owls had provided him with everything he needed. Batman kicked a hole near the base of the owl statue and packed it with the flash powder. He struck one of the stolen throwing knives against the other to create a shower of sparks until one of them caught—

Batman coughed and wheezed as he blinked back to consciousness. The Court of Owls had provided everything he needed , but not everything he wanted. No convenient fuse for the explosive, for one thing. He'd been blown back ten feet by the explosion, but he'd judged the explosive's placement correctly: the massive statue had fallen the other direction and smashed a 20-foot-wide hole through the floor. He couldn't hear the subterranean river—his ears were still ringing—but he could smell it. Even if he drowned in the Gotham River, he would drown free of this place.

Batman was ready to crawl to the exit if necessary, but first: "Talon?" 

There were strangers in the Labyrinth. A middle-aged man with an athletic build, wearing expensive loafers and a filigreed saber at his hip. A teenager with similar features wearing pre-distressed designer jeans and holding a baseball bat, with an automatic weapon slung over his back. They flanked a woman with coiffed white hair who had no weapon but a delicate ivory-handled cane; she needed none, with the Talon kneeling at her feet.

All three wore masks that completely covered their face: simple white ovals with hooded eyes and the suggestion of a beak at the bottom. The Court of Owls had finally stepped into the light.

"What are you?" the woman asked the Talon in the tones of one reciting a catechism.

"The Talon, mistress."

"What is the Talon?"

"An instrument of the will of the Court of Owls, mistress." There was a note of almost relief in the boy's voice as he answered. A recently-freed bird returning to the security of its cage.

"What is the purpose of the Talon?"

"To destroy the enemies of the Court of Owls, mistress." His confidence was growing with each response. "To rend and bleed and kill."

"Very good. Who is this man?"

The Talon turned his golden eyes on Batman. "He is—" the Owls probably didn't notice his momentary struggle to choose the right name "—the Batman."

"Who is Batman?"

"An enemy, mistress. Sentenced to death by the Court of Owls."

"Then why is he still alive?"  

The Talon flinched as if from the crack of a whip. "Mistress, he was—he was to die by the Laybrinth, not—" He stopped speaking when the cane cracked against his cheek.

"Do not talk back to me, worthless vermin, unless you wish to be disposed of like your predecessors." The Talon pressed his forehead to the floor in supplication.

It was past time to wrench control of this situation back. "Don't pretend any of this was his fault. You're the ones who told him to leave me alive. You're the ones who gave me the explosive powder and this monument to hubris. Did you really think I wouldn't knock it down?"

"You are insignificant!" the woman snarled, striding forward. The middle-aged man tried to stop her, but she waved him away and jabbed her finger towards Batman. "You are nobody. We let you keep your mask because it doesn't matter who you are. Just another deluded fool who cannot see who this city truly belongs to."

The man drew his saber and positioned himself to defend her. "Empress, please, this isn't safe."

"Safe? You forget that I wield the Talon. That's what all of you forget. You think that power is about physical strength, political connections, money, but it's always been about one thing, and one thing alone: control." She lifted her chin, so that Batman could tell she was looking down her nose at him even through the mask. "Talon, kill him."

Batman was only thirty feet from escape. It was twenty-five feet too far.

Chapter Text

It was too bright.

The Talon was made for night hunting, with eyes that could see by starlight alone. Without its goggles to filter, it’s surroundings blurred into an eye-watering wall of white. It was a relief to close with Batman and rest his eyes on the man's dark costume.

"You don't have to do this," Batman said, pitched low enough that the Talon was probably the only one who could hear him. "You don't have to do anything she says." He was slower than he had been before he had been thrown by the explosion, and he cried out when the Talon's kick forced his knee to buckle.

Batman didn't understand. He hadn't seen what happened when the Court disposed of a Talon they no longer required. The Talon wouldn't fail. The Talon couldn't fail.

"We can escape together," Batman said. "They don't have any real hold on you."

"If for one second the Court loosens its grip…" Was this the chance Trainer had meant? Was Batman his way out of the Court, a chance to fly free?

Its inattention cost it; Batman's spinning kick to the chest was hard enough some of its ribs gave way, and it slid across the cracked marble almost to the edge of the hole. The Talon scrambled to its feet and drew the last two throwing knives from its bandolier.

"Kill him!" the Empress screamed in a tone that promised interminable punishment.

The Baron said, "Fuck it. I got this." The metal baseball bat rang on the marble as he dropped it in favor of his machine gun. "You want to see real power, grandma? Watch."

The Baron had the weapon on full automatic, barely aimed. Armor-piercing rounds, the Talon noted as the first wild spray went through the kevlar weave of its suit and into its chest and right thigh. It slid closer to the edge of the hole on marble now slick with its vital fluids. "NO!" Batman shouted, throwing himself between the Talon and the bullets.

"...nobody's gonna be looking out for you but you, kid."

Armor-piercing rounds. Batman was human, he couldn't repair himself the way the Talon could. The Talon hauled the man behind him and over the edge. Once more, they fell together.

The subterranean portion of the Gotham River that they plunged into was only barely above freezing, and that probably saved Batman's life. The mammalian diving reflex slowed his heart rate and constricted the blood vessels in his limbs, slowing the bleeding from his stab wounds and the two gunshot wounds he'd just taken in his right leg. It also gave him a bit of breathing room—so to speak—before he had to surface, which was long enough for him to determine the direction of the surface in the disorienting pitch black.

The Talon was limp in his arms.

"Talon. Talon!"

The Talon blinked and opened those remarkable golden eyes. They were luminous in the darkness, as if catching and reflecting every speck of light.

"Thank god." His relief was short-lived. The Talon convulsed in his arms and coughed up thick blood, black in the darkness, before his eyes closed again. "Talon. Wake up, please. Dick ."

One of the boy's hands tightened where it gripped Batman's cape. "Don't." More coughing. Then, without opening his eyes. "Don't make me kill again." He rested his forehead against Batman's chest. "Please."

"Never," Batman swore. "I will never ask you to kill." The child didn't respond, and Batman forced himself to start swimming. The Talon had incredible healing abilities; he'd fallen from Wayne Tower and lived. A few machine-gun bullets wouldn't take him down.

As the minutes ticked away and the boy still didn't revive, Batman's faith in that deduction faded.

Alfred held the tracking device like a talisman. Eight days since Bruce had disappeared into the Gotham sewer. Eight days without a single word, message or signal from any of his devices, and now this: a ping from the tracker in his suit leading him to the Gotham river where it went into a series of underground canals not far from the Iceberg Lounge.

There he was. Alfred's boy. Face-down on a ledge, legs still in the water, his condition obscured by his cape. Alfred cried out and broke into a run, a litany of prayers on his lips to he knew not what deity. The patron saint of heroes and madmen and fools, perhaps, or to Gotham herself. He knelt beside Batman and, for a fraction of a second, hesitated.

He was a trained medic. He knew how to check if a body was still alive. Yet this last moment of uncertainty before all the potential realities collapsed into the true one—a final terrible moment of uncertainty before comfort, or the last moment before his hope snuffed out forever?

Bruce's skin was cold when Alfred pressed two fingers to his throat, but after a second that lasted an eternity, he felt the heartbeat. Slow, weak, but undeniably there beneath his trembling hand. Alfred allowed himself two breaths to regain his composure, then got to work. He briskly unclasped the cape and pulled it aside in order to better evaluate Bruce's injuries, and he made a pitiable discovery.

The boy had been in his early teens, with a slender build and a shock of black hair. His skin was the waxy white of frostbite and cadavers. He'd been shot five times and he wasn't bleeding anymore. His eyes were closed; he might have looked asleep, except for the frost crystals on his eyelashes.

Even unconscious, Bruce had one hand behind the dead boy's head, keeping the body tucked protectively into his chest.

14 hours later

The muffled beeping of a heart monitor. Rustling of wings high above in the cave. A hand, skin dry with age, resting in his own. Bruce knew he was safe before opening his eyes.

"Master Bruce. It has been nine days since you left to investigate the sewers. I think your rogues were getting worried."

A straw poked between his lips and Bruce drank. The water was cool and sweet and mercifully drug-free. "I found them, Alfred. The Court. They've been a parasite feeding on Gotham a hundred years, and I never knew." He tried to push himself up, but his muscles were horribly cramped.

"Sir, please, you need rest. You're injured, dehydrated, malnourished, and that was all before you went swimming in the Gotham River in the middle of winter."

"This cannot wait. Where's Dick?"

Alfred's expression tightened.

"Alfred, where is the boy who was with me?" The Talon would have been frightened and confused. Had he run? Had he, god forbid, tried to attack Alfred?

"I'm so sorry, sir. His injuries were too severe; between the blood loss and the near-freezing water…"

"No. No . Where is he?"

"I didn't know what would be appropriate, so I put his body in the cold room."

Standing up had been a terrible idea, Bruce admitted as the cave spun and swam around him. It was one he'd had plenty of practice with, at least: don't lock the knees, breathe through the pain, make sure to detach any IVs before Alfred could use them to administer barbiturates. His wobbly steps wouldn't have passed a sobriety test, but he did make it as far as the cold room. He had to see the boy.

The autopsy table was the most reasonable place to put a dead body. That didn't make seeing Dick laid out there any easier. The bare skin on his face and hands was traced with frost patterns, and the bullet wounds hadn't miraculously healed. Bruce extended his hand to check for a pulse but found himself cradling the boy's cheek instead.

"I said… I said we would escape together, that I'd take him away from that place," Bruce confessed and felt Alfred's hand squeeze his shoulder.

"You did."

"I promised to protect him."

"I know it may be difficult to recall when you fight alongside aliens and goddesses, sir, but you are still mortal. We humans can only do the best that we can and hope that it is enough."

Bruce found a sheet and pulled it over the boy's body, tucked under his chin like a blanket. Then he strode for the Computer, stripping off the electrodes and monitors still attached to his skin.

"Please, Master Bruce, you must rest in order to heal."

"No."

"Master Bruce—"

"I'll rest when the Court of Owls is in ruin."

"Commissioner."

Commissioner Gordon didn't jump or cry out in surprise. He spun around, already saying, "Where the hell have you been? I sent up the signal twice in the last week and you didn't even have the courtesy to tell me…" Gordon trailed off as he put together a few more details. Batman wasn't crouched on the ledge like usual, he was standing. Stiffly. While favoring one side.

Batman had once debriefed with Gordon after a joint operation, and the commissioner's only clue that he'd been injured had been the pool of blood he'd left behind in the alley. How badly injured was he if he couldn't even hide it?

"What happened to you?"

"The Court of Owls had me for eight days."

"...It's real?"

"Evidently."

"Then that assassin that went after Bruce Wayne…"

"Really was the Talon."

Gordon swore. "That perp walked off a 200-story dive onto concrete. How the hell are we supposed to stop it?"

"The Talon… is not going to be a problem." Gordon didn't understand the grief in his voice until Batman pulled out a folder and flipped to a photo of a smiling eight-year-old boy. "His name was Dick Grayson, and he was an acrobat with Haly's Circus, before the Court took him six years ago."

"Christ. Just when I think this city can't get any worse."

"Or perhaps I should say, before the Court bought him. As they've been buying children from the circus for decades. Haly's Circus is where the money trail begins. I haven't been able to follow it all the way, but I know it's going to end with some very rich and powerful people."

"You know how reliable our digital forensics team is, so I'm assuming you're not looking for their help."

"No. I was hoping for some… non-departmental resources for this case."

Gordon sighed. "You realize she's sixteen, right? A little young to be risking her life for your Mission."

"You and I both know she's going to keep doing what she thinks is right, with or without our guidance. With our help, we'll at least know she has the best tools available and what threats to watch for." He held out an external drive. "This new encryption protocol should make it far more difficult to detect, and if any backtrace does get through, I'll be alerted immediately."

Gordon shook his head, but he was already reaching for the drive. "Only if it doesn't interfere with studying for her chemistry test." Gordon turned his back, then realized he hadn't said it, so he added, "It's good to have you back."

He was surprised to find Batman still there. "Thank you," the vigilante said before he slipped into the shadows.

"Sir, you don't have to do this. I don't know what you think you're accomplishing—"

"I'm not going to cut short my investigation due to sentimentality. Dick deserves—"

"A decent burial, and to be mourned. An autopsy isn't about him at all, it's just torturing yourself with your failure."

"I still don't know what the process he underwent was, or how it affected his physiology. What exactly killed him. There's still so much I need to understand."

"Does it matter?"

"This process, this… talonization. There could be more people who have undergone it. Knowing its effects and reversibility, could be critical."

Alfred hesitated. "Reversibility?"

"The corpse-like appearance, golden irises, light sensitivity, low body temperature and abnormal vital signs… It would be difficult to live any kind of ordinary life with those effects. Thick makeup and sunglasses might allow them to pass for a few hours, but going to school? Making friends? Passing any kind of medical screening? You couldn't keep your secret for long."

Alfred looked at the body on the table. It was still covered with a sheet, a detail that Bruce rarely bothered with when he was performing autopsies. It had been one of many clues that this procedure was far from routine. That Bruce had been thinking about the best way for the boy to fit in at school was one more.

Bruce picked up a scalpel, flicked the sheet back to expose the body's chest, and froze. Alfred didn't think he was breathing. Alfred looked at the cadaver's chest as well and saw that the bullet wounds were gone. "Alfred," Bruce said, voice urgent but quiet, "hypothermia protocol."

With rising excitement, Alfred fetched the chemical heat packs and packed them around the body's groin and armpits while Bruce leaned over so his ear rested against its lips. His eyes, when they met Alfred's, were shining with tears. "He's breathing. Talon, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?"

The boy's eyes opened, and Alfred bit back a gasp at the bright gold color. "The Talon obeys."

"You're alive," Bruce said, hushed in the face of the miracle. He sat on the table next to the boy and pulled him into his arms. "I thought I had lost you."

"The Talon deactivates in the cold."

"I should have realized. That sarcophagus was below freezing. I just… didn't believe they'd actually put you in there."

"Why not? It was the Talon's coffin. That is where the Talon belongs when not in use or training."

"Not anymore," Bruce said, running his fingers through the boy's hair the way Alfred used to do for him when he had trouble sleeping. The boy held very still, blinking up at him in confusion. "Do you know where we are?"

"The cave beneath Wayne Manor."

Alfred stiffened, wondering how exactly the boy knew that.

"Wayne Manor is where you belong now, as long as you want to. You never have to go back to the Court of Owls."

The boy cocked his head, not unlike a bird. "Batman is the Talon's new master?"

Bruce flinched, then attempted a smile. "No, you don't have a master. You're free to do whatever you want."

The boy stared at Bruce in horror. "The Talon must have a master."

"You don't need one. You're free now."

The boy shoved off Bruce's lap and prostrated himself on the floor, naked and shaking. "Please. Please, the Talon obeys."

"You're—"

" Master Bruce," Alfred interrupted and saw Bruce flinch at the emphasis. It couldn't be avoided, though. "I think that, during this difficult transition, we should use terms that the boy is familiar with." He addressed the boy. "Welcome to Wayne Manor, Talon. Bruce Wayne will be your new master and sensei." The tight-strung tension eased and the boy looked up. "Do you know what a sensei is?"

"No, Alfred." There was fear of punishment there, which is why Alfred had pushed.

"You will never be punished for asking questions or for not knowing an answer, Talon," Alfred promised. The boy didn't look like he believed. "A sensei is your trainer in martial arts."

"Trainer?" the boy asked, and there was something new in his gaze when he looked at Bruce. Still fear, still deference, but also curiosity.

Bruce knelt beside Talon. He'd retrieved a rechargeable electric blanket and wrapped it around the boy. Talon's eyes slid half-closed in enjoyment before opening in fear at his lapse. Bruce just smiled. "Yes. I'll train you to disable your opponents, but I'll never make you kill for me."

Talon ducked his head, uncertain. Trust would come with time. For now, it was enough that he was wrapped in a warm blanket and leaning into Bruce's touch. Bruce was running his fingers through the boy's hair again, and Talon's blinks were becoming slower and slower.

Alfred left them in order to prepare the manor for its new resident.

Chapter Text

Wayne Manor was being haunted by a wraith who, so far as Alfred could determine, neither ate nor slept. It was two days before he finally cornered it in the library. "Master Bruce, you cannot simply vanish anymore."

Bruce looked up from his laptop with the blank expression that meant his mind was elsewhere. "Sorry?"

"You should be. You have responsibilities."

He waved a hand vaguely, attention returning to the screen. "Lucius has my full confidence."

"I'm not talking about the company, I am talking about the child you brought home."

That got his attention. "Talon? I thought you were taking care of him."

Alfred bit back a rather profane response to that. Bruce had assumed he would take care of the child, as Bruce assumed Alfred would take care of everything he didn't think of. "I haven't seen the boy in two days. I don't know what or even if he eats. Or sleeps, for that matter, except that he doesn't sleep in the guest bed I prepared for him. I'm not certain he even remains on the grounds."

Bruce paled and finally set aside the damn computer. His gaze went up, to the tops of the bookshelves and the shadowed nooks created by the crown moldings. "Talon? I'd like to speak to you, if you can hear me." After a short wait, he told Alfred, "I'll check the rest of the manor. I'm sure he wouldn't leave without permission."

In Alfred's experience, wild creatures didn't stay long if you neglected to feed them, but he hoped Bruce was right. He picked up the laptop to see what had been more important to the man than the traumatized child he had brought home—

Oh.

Bruce had hundreds of articles open about how to care for traumatized children. Case studies on child soldiers, on children raised in cults, on survivors of the most severe child abuse, brainwashing and dehumanization. Alfred skimmed the notes that Bruce had been taking; in two days and three nights, he'd gotten a solid start on a plan to deprogram a Talon from the Court of Owls without causing him undue stress or additional trauma. Looking through the detailed instructions and the frequent cautions to never express irritation or impatience with the child and do not express anger in the child's presence, or where the child might overhear , Alfred understood that rather than being cavalier about his responsibility to the child, Bruce was terrified.

The Talon stirred when it heard its master calling. It was sluggish from the cold and weak from hunger, but it had dared not follow the other slave, the one called Alfred, into the manor. Batman had not told it to leave the cave, and the Talon obeyed its master. It dropped to the floor of the cave and prostrated itself at its master's feet.

Bruce—for he did not wear his mask—took the Talon by the arm and pulled it to its feet. "Here you are. You had me worried." Bruce rested his hand against the side of the Talon's neck and added, "You're very cold."

The Talon didn't know why that was a problem; the Court of Owls usually kept it near-frozen between missions, and the new master had not told Talon to leave the caves. Understanding why what it had done was wrong was not required, though. "Apologies, master. The Talon accepts its punishment."

"No, I'm not going to punish you. You haven't done anything wrong. I'm just worried about you. How are you feeling?"

The Talon did not know how to answer the question, but the Talon couldn't refuse to answer; that would be disobedient. Perhaps… Alfred had claimed that ignorance would not be punished, and the master had not contradicted him. "I… I do not know how to answer, master."

The Talon expected to be hit, but it seemed Alfred had spoken the truth. "Thank you for your honesty. Can you tell me the physical condition of your body?"

It almost sagged in relief at a question it could answer. "I am uninjured. Regeneration is depressed to 40% by the temperature. I am insufficiently fueled for optimal performance."

"Please come with me." Bruce led the Talon to a pile of blankets. "These are for your use. Since your body generates little heat on its own, we bought electric blankets. You turn them on with this switch; after their batteries run down, you can plug them in here." Bruce handed it one, and the Talon struggled to keep its expression neutral while holding such warmth and softness. "It will heat you up fastest if you wrap it around yourself," the master prodded, and Talon wasted no time in doing so. "What is the optimal temperature for regeneration?"

"Forty degrees celsius, master."

"Hmm. A bit warm for baseline body temperature, but your physiology is much different." The master considered for a moment before asking, "Do you experience any issues at that temperature? Uncontrolled sweating, dizziness, confusion, heat stroke?"

"No, master." Optimal regeneration temperature was perfect.

"In that case, I want you to take care of yourself by maintaining a temperature close to forty degrees celsius when possible. Use the blankets and heated socks for now, but long-term… I'll see if R&D can design you a thermal underlayer you can wear under clothes. That should give you more flexibility."

"Yes, master. Thank you." To be allowed to keep itself warm was a gift. A generous one. It should not risk angering the master, but… Alfred had said questions were never punished, and it desperately wanted to know. "The Talon humbly asks… what if the Talon fails in this task?"

"I imagine you will be uncomfortable until you get the temperature back up again."

The Talon ducked its head, accepting the vague answer. It was sure its new master could find many ways to make it… uncomfortable.

"No, Talon, look at me. If you fail at the task, I'm not going to punish you."

Now master was lying.

"I'm never going to punish you the way the Court of Owls did. If you do something wrong, we'll talk about what happened, and why, and what both of us could do differently next time. It will take time, and we'll both make mistakes, but that's how we learn."

Master had lost his mind.

None of what he was saying made any sense. It was almost as if he was talking about… "Training?" Alfred had said this man was master and trainer. The Talon hadn't understood how one person could be both.

"Yes. Training," Bruce echoed, grabbing a second blanket and leading the Talon up the long staircase into the manor. "I have a lot to teach you, and there's a lot I need to learn from you. Starting with your fuel. How often do you need it for optimum performance?"

The Talon didn't understand how a master could be a trainer, or why a trainer would teach it things other than how to kill, or why he was so interested in having Talon at optimum functional level if he wasn't going to have it kill for him. For the moment, though, the Talon was warm, and the master wasn't angry at it, even when the Talon asked questions or didn't know an answer.

Alfred watched Talon drink the last of his meal. "Do you think you're going to throw up?"

The boy considered for a moment, then shook his head.

"I'm very glad. If you do get sick, it's important to let me know." The boy nodded and stood perfectly still. "You're free to go." He was off, probably to wedge himself into some high corner where he could observe the household from a safe distance.

Alfred made some notes on the recipe. It was sushi-grade tuna, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, enriched with a vitamin/mineral mix and blended into a liquid for the boy's sensitive stomach. It was as far as one could get from haute cuisine and Alfred shuddered at the smell, but at least all the ingredients were fit for human consumption. That had not been true of what the Court had been feeding him, according to the records Bruce had found when he'd gone back to investigate the Labyrinth.

"Alfred." Bruce was angry and trying not to show it. "I need to talk to you."

"My quarters?" Alfred suggested. Talon didn't go in there, so they would be able to talk without little ears overhearing.

"Please." Bruce kept control of his temper until Alfred engaged the locks and turned on the white noise machine. "A sarcophagus?"

"It's just a decorated box, Master Bruce."

He flinched and snapped, "Don't call me—" He cut himself off and paled.

They had never talked about it directly. Alfred had always expected for the demand to come when Bruce was an adolescent. To stop calling him Master Bruce as if he were a child and to shift to the more correct form of address from a valet to his adult employer: Mister Wayne. Yet the young man had never requested that change.

When Bruce had returned from his training, he was the one who had changed. There had been a gulf between Alfred and the scarred man who had stepped off that plane, a distance that the stiff formality of Mister Wayne would have widened. So Alfred had said, "Welcome home, Master Bruce," and brought home not his employer, but his son.

Alfred considered the aborted request now. "Sir, if you wish—"

"I don't. I know what it means. It's not you saying it that bothers me."

"The boy needs familiar things to make sense of what is happening. Even if those things are horrible."

"I know that!" Bruce dropped his head in his hands. "I know. But… what if it's no better? I wanted him to be free, but now he's just terrified of a new master. Of me."

Alfred snorted. "I am aware that you are feeling sorry for yourself, sir, but are you actually asking me if the boy would be better off with the Court of Owls?"

"He's sleeping in a sarcophagus!"

"The important part of that sentence, Master Bruce, is that he's sleeping. Does it really matter—"

"HE ISN'T DEAD!" Alfred waited in silence. "I tried talking to him. About the circus, and his parents, and he remembers some. But he insists that Dick Grayson is dead. That Dick died the same night his parents did."

Alfred sighed. He didn't regret purchasing the faux-sarcophagus; without it the boy wouldn't believe he was permitted to sleep, and the claustrophobic space must feel safe to him. He hadn't known it would dovetail into an argument Bruce was having with the child, though.

"Perhaps Talon needs to let Dick be dead."

Bruce admitted, "I don't think the talonization process can be reversed."

Alfred hadn't realized that was a possibility Bruce was researching. "Even if you could, you can't erase what he's been through. You're never going to get the original Dick Grayson back." It had been the hardest thing for Alfred to accept when he had been the one caring for a traumatized child.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Alfred," Bruce admitted.

"No parent ever does."

Bruce blushed. "How did you know I applied to be a foster parent?"

"I didn't. I've just watched you haul around a sixty-foot ladder all week so you can talk to the boy wherever he's made his perch."

"We're going to need to move the sarcophagus down to the cave before the home visit. I doubt CPS will approve the home inspection if I admit I'm planning on having my foster child sleep in a coffin."

Alfred raised an eyebrow at him. "You're worried that CPS isn't going to approve the home of the richest man in Gotham?"

"There's still procedure—"

"Are we still talking about Gotham CPS, sir?"

Bruce sighed.

Chapter Text

Barbara Gordon leaned back in her chair and stretched. Four more dummy corporations down, who knew how many more to go. When Batman asked for her help, it was never anything easy.

Then again, Batman asked for her help. How many sixteen-year-olds could say the same?

Still, she was starting to pick up on her opponent's style. There was a certain grandiosity that was unnecessary for a bunch of shell corporations that only existed to hide a money trail. Not just unnecessary; she was starting to be able to guess them by name alone, which defeated the purpose of having a dozen shell companies in a line. The Gotham Society for a Better Tomorrow . The Alan Wayne Fund for Young Architects . The Gotham Historic Architectural Foundation . The Thomas and Martha Wayne Memorial Orphanage . They had an obsession with the past, the future, architecture and the Wayne family (though Barbara had found no connections to the Wayne family's real charitable foundations, which raised all sorts of red flags).

Barbara was closing in on the actual source of the money, she could feel it. She'd have their names before she went to bed tonight (even if "tonight" ended up being 6AM).

The doorbell rang, so she clicked over to the front door camera feed. A USPS delivery man stood on the porch with a package the right size to be her new laptop. She skipped down the stairs and opened the door.

"I need a signature from a Barbara Gordon," the man said, bored.

"That's me." She took the clipboard and noted with irritation that it required signatures or initials in three separate places, one of which was to indicate that it had arrived in good condition. Obviously she wouldn't know that until she opened the box.

"Listen, I—"

The delivery man was holding a gun pointed at her stomach. "The Court of Owls says hello. And goodbye."

Certain instincts take over when adrenaline hits, and for Barbara Gordon, those were the lessons drilled into her by her father. In close proximity, control the gun. She threw the clipboard at the hitman's face as a distraction. Then she grabbed the man's gun hand to shove it to the side, and pivoted close to him. He rammed her into the side of the door and she lost her grip and her breath.

Something hit them, sending the hitman sprawling to the ground in the front hall. Barbara kept her feet and turned to face the new threat. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the yellow goggles and black mask of the Talon. The Court of Owls' legendary assassin was supposed to be dead, not in her front hallway.

The hitman might have been thinking the same thing, because he visibly paled. That didn't stop him from emptying his gun into the Talon, who responded as if they were walking into a strong wind rather than a hail of bullets. "Please, man, I didn't know this was your job, I swear," he begged. "The Court never said a word about competition. You want her, she's yours."

The masked assassin cocked their head. "The Talon is an instrument. It cannot want." The man on the ground started crying, and the Talon lashed out with a kick that silenced him. "The Talon's mission is Barbara Gordon. The Talon obeys."

Barbara lunged, the stun gun she'd retrieved from its hiding place in the umbrella stand crackling. The Talon leaned back to avoid the thrust, and then kept going, completing a full backflip into a handspring and landing on a stair railing. They perched there, dripping black fluid on the off-white carpet, doing nothing.

"What are you waiting for?" Barbara yelled, which she knew was stupid. Goading an unkillable assassin into attacking was a terrible idea. A stun gun and a second-degree black belt in judo did not change that calculation. Still, her adrenaline was up now, and she knew she'd be useless once she crashed.

"The Batman."

"...you're waiting for Batman? Why?"

"The Talon obeys."

"You were ordered to wait for Batman. Why? Were you ordered to kill Batman?"

That question seemed to flummox the assassin, who said slowly, "The Court of Owls sentenced Batman to die. But the Court of Owls is not the Talon's master now. The Talon waits for Batman."

The Court of Owls didn't control the Talon anymore. Barbara took a deep breath and felt her hands start to shake. She needed to call her dad. Not 911; this was Gotham, and most of her dad's enemies carried badges. There was one thing she needed to be sure of first, though. "Who ordered you to wait for Batman?"

"The Batman. Protect Barbara Gordon and wait for Batman." They cocked their head to the side, bird-like. "No killing."

"Good, good." Barbara checked the hitman in the USPS uniform; he was still breathing. "In that case, I'm getting the duct tape."

Gordon started to move around the parking garage's structural support, but fell back at a volley of gunfire in response.

"Stay down," Batman growled over his radio. "Some of these men have 50-caliber rifles."

Which his bulletproof vest would do fuck-all against. Excellent use of public funds, equipping the SWAT team with high-caliber assault weapons and—

BOOM

—grenade launchers. Their infrared goggles were keeping Batman on his toes, as well; his tricks with shadows and smoke bombs weren't doing any good. It was taking an agonizingly long time for the vigilante to take the cops out one by one without being spotted—and perforated—by any of the others.

"Dammit, you should have left the second you realized it was a trap, not gotten stuck here with me." The SWAT team would almost certainly have killed Gordon if Batman refused to take the bait and probably gotten away with their pensions intact (so many training accidents in the GCPD these days, such a pity), but that was a price Gordon would have gladly paid.

"I didn't recognize their perimeter until after I was inside it. If I could have left, I would have." That… was unexpected. Gordon was Batman's only ally in his nighttime crusade, apart from a certain "Agent A" who seemed to provide logistical and medical support. Batman had nearly died rescuing a drug-dealer from a high-speed car crash the drug-dealer had caused; Gordon had never doubted that Batman would lay down his life for his allies. "She's your daughter, Jim. I'd put her first if I had the choice."

Only they didn't have a choice other than to finish out this deadly game of hide-and-seek and pray that whoever Batman had sent (Agent A? Catwoman?) to stop the Court of Owls' assassin was good enough to protect Barbara.

"Braun, check in," someone said over the SWAT team's frequency. "Moreau? Smith? Check in… I said check in! Guys, come on…"

"Michaels," Batman growled over both frequencies, followed by panic-fire and a satisfying thud. "That's the last of them, Gordon."

Then Batman was dropping down the bombed-out stairwell and sprinting for Gordon. He turned and sprinted for the edge of the parking garage, ready when Batman grabbed him and launched off the side, firing his grappling gun as they fell. It must have caught, because they didn't splatter on the concrete six stories below (though Gordon's knees protested how hard they hit).

Under other circumstances, Gordon would have loved riding in Batman's vehicle. It was a cross between a sports car and a tank (and, judging from all the buttons, possibly a fighter jet) and broke approximately twenty traffic regulations just from being on a public street. At that moment, Gordon didn't put up a token protest as it accelerated past 90mph.

Right now, Gordon wanted them to go faster .

The front door of the townhouse was closed, but after leaping from the car and up the porch stairs, his heart stuck into his throat when Gordon realized it wasn't locked. He flung open the door, saw his daughter (alive, alive, thank the Gods she was alive), sighted on the assassin, and opened fire.

"Stop!" someone yelled—it didn't matter who, that thing was almost in arm's reach of his daughter—and someone broke his grip on his pistol. Gordon fought for his daughter's life, but his opponent, dressed all in black with a black mask, countered or evaded his every move, finally grabbing his wrists and holding them between them. "Jim. Jim! Calm down, Barbara is safe."

"Dad, I'm okay. I'm fine."

Gordon's tunnel vision retreated enough for him to realize he was struggling with Batman, and then to focus on Barbara's face. He cupped it between his hands. "Are you hurt?"

"No, Dad. Well, the hitman shoved me into the doorway when we were fighting over his gun, so I might have a few bruises, but the Talon protected me."

Gordon pulled his daughter into his arms, then turned his head to glare at Batman. "The Talon ? That's who you sent to protect my daughter?"

"Yes, I did. He was the only person I knew who would be able to protect her in case the Court sent another Talon." The boogeyman assassin actually flinched at that.

"You said he was dead!" Implied, at least.

"He's only fourteen. I was trying to keep the Court from coming after him."

Barbara interrupted, "The Court of Owls will be trying to kill him too, now? Because he protected me?"

Batman took a small step back and offered Gordon his service weapon back, along with the bullets he'd unloaded from it. "Not to kill him, no."

"Reprogramming," the Talon explained. His tone was completely matter-of-fact. "Disposal, when a replacement is manufactured."

"I won't let them," Batman vowed.

"There aren't any, ah, replacements now?" Barbara checked. Yeah, he was 'the' Talon, which implied only, but if she was going to have someone as tough as him after her, she was going to need more than a stun gun.

"No."

Batman frowned. "What about the Talon you replaced?"

"She displeased the masters and was disposed of." Apparently the previous Talon had been 'she', not 'it'. A telling slip, as was the way he was examining the floor.

"Did she escape as well?" Barbara wondered.

"No!" Barbara had the impression of wide eyes behind the goggles before he looked down again. "She reached an age where her body was no longer aesthetically pleasing to the masters." A couple of fingers on his left hand twitched, then stilled. "They said… male Talons could serve longer."

Well that put a horrific new spin on expecting women to always be young and beautiful. Barbara gagged. She tried very hard not to think about what an organization with those priorities might do to this Talon if they captured him.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "Thank you for protecting me, even when I tried to hit you with that stun gun." She forced a chuckle. "I guess that was pretty dumb, when bullets didn't slow you down."

"Not dumb. Electricity—" the Talon said.

Batman grabbed the boy's arm and demanded, "You were shot?"

"The Talon—the Talon is fully functional, damage to the suit is minimal—"

"I don't care about that, I told you not to get hurt!"

"The Talon is functional. The Talon obeys." He went limp in Batman's grip like a scruffed kitten.

Barbara yelled, "Stop it! Let him go!" She swung with the arm that was still holding the stun gun and Batman jumped back, probably on reflex.

The Talon slid to his knees and then prostrated himself on the floor, muttering to himself, "The Talon begs to atone, master. The Talon obeys."

Batman and Jim Gordon both gaped, horrified.

Barbara waved her stun gun, forcing them back. "Don't you dare yell at him."

"I didn't—" Batman began.

"You did. Now back off ."

Jim said, "Barbara, I don't think you should…"

"I attacked him, Dad. Went after him with a stun gun, which it sounds like might actually be effective against him, and do you know what he did? Nothing. He dodged and retreated. He's not a danger to me."

"I know you think that—"

"Dad! Just go and—and deal with the hitman, ok? We bound him with duct tape and stuck him in that locking closet downstairs."

Jim blinked. "The hitman is still alive? The Talon didn't…?"

Batman spoke quietly. "He doesn't like killing. I should—"

"Go deal with the hitman. Give the Talon a bit of space, would you?" Barbara glared after the two men until they'd gone down the stairs, then approached the boy.

"It's okay. Your master isn't angry with you, not really. He isn't going to punish you." The Talon flinched at that. "Or dispose of you! Or anything bad. He's just upset because…" How did one explain Batman's protective (parental?) reaction to someone who thought of themselves as an inanimate object? Gotham City's mandatory high school Abnormal Psychology course hadn't covered this one. "My Dad was upset because he was afraid that he'd lost me, and sad he couldn't protect me, and it came out as anger. Batman was upset because he was afraid for you, and because you were shot multiple times."

She'd never tried to explain protectiveness before, and clearly wasn't doing a good job now. The Talon moved his head enough that he was watching her with one eye. "All damage to the Talon is repaired."

"Yes, but you were still injured, still in pain, and Batman couldn't protect you from that."

"The Talon is a tool of the master. The Talon does not require protection." He was starting to sound irritated, which was better than no emotions.

A psychiatrist would probably put this better, but Barbara wasn't one. "Talon, I know that you think you're a… thing. A tool. That's… I guess that's your choice. Batman and I think of you as a person, though, so we treat you like one. Dad too, for all that he's being a real asshole about it." She tried to run a hand through her hair and got it tangled instead. "Batman's mission was to keep you hidden from the Court of Owls and to protect you from pain and injuries—even ones that would heal—but he failed."

"The master had a mission?"

"Your master has a lot of missions."

"The master… has a master who gives him missions?"

"Pretty sure Batman gives Batman all of his missions, but he still takes them very seriously. If he fails them, he punishes himself."

The Talon's head came up all the way as he struggled with that one. "How?"

"To start with, he's going to apologize for grabbing you and yelling at you. He should have had better emotional control."

"Masters do not apologize to the Talon."

"Batman had better, or I'm going to yell at him some more." Not that Barbara really thought she needed to—he'd crumpled in shame the second he'd realized he was scaring the kid. Yeah, Batman's actions seemed parental, and about as inept as you'd expect from a man with two weeks of experience. Had Batman gone straight from childless to trying to parent a brainwashed teenage assassin who didn't know he was a person?

Barbara broke off to the thumps of three men—one of them carried—ascending the basement stairs. Jim Gordon stuck his head in and, satisfied to see his daughter unharmed and still armed with the stun gun, made his way onto the porch to request Bullock come pick up the perp.

Batman approached, skirting the room and doing his best not to loom. It was not very successful. He dropped onto his knees in front of the Talon (who had prostrated himself again), then surprised Barbara by prostrating himself as well. "I apologize, Talon. I should not have raised my voice or grabbed your arm. I should have expressed gratitude that you protected Barbara so well, even when it caused you pain and injury."

The Talon looked over at Barbara and hissed, "The Talon doesn't know what to do."

"You could accept his apology, if you think he means it."

"The Talon accepts master's apology," he blurted.

"Thank you," Batman said, gentle in the way he had been when Barbara was eight and terrified. "Let's go home."

"Yes, master."

"Barbara—I cannot thank you enough."

Which was basically a dream come true, Batman thanking her for her invaluable assistance, but she found that some of the shine had worn off her hero. "Thank me by taking better care of him."

Chapter Text

Aaliyah couldn't believe the day still wasn't over. An entire lifetime had passed in the three hours since she'd gotten her daughter's tearful call from the police station, yet somehow the sun was still shining on the other side of the blackout curtains. Shavonne had cried herself to sleep while Aaliyah knelt by her bedside, rubbing her back, and now the Alderperson couldn't find any reason to get up.

There was a tap on the door, then Naija poked her head in. "Everything okay?"

Aaliyah scraped up just enough energy to glare at her campaign manager.

"I mean, is Shavonne…?"

"Sleeping." She didn't say that her daughter was strong or resilient. Shavonne shouldn't have to be any of those things; she should get to be a kid.

"In that case, you really should take this call."

"No. Leave me alone."

"Aaliyah—"

"If it's Koch, tell him I still have twenty hours. If it's a reporter, tell them no comment. If it's anyone else..." she shuddered with the thought of talking to any of her constituents right now, particularly her donors. "Tell them there's been a family emergency but I'll get back to them as soon as possible. And go home; there's no reason for you to stay here."

"No."

"Excuse me?" Naija could get excited about her own ideas, but she'd never been outright insubordinate before.

"No. What are you going to do, fire me tonight instead of when you withdraw from the race tomorrow? If I'm going to lose my job either way, you're going to take this phone call. You can decide if it's on speakerphone in your sleeping daughter's room or elsewhere."

In spite of herself, Aaliyah was curious. She tucked her daughter in more securely and followed her campaign manager down to the kitchen. She took the phone. "Hello? This is Aaliyah Lincoln."

"Alderperson Lincoln, this is Lois Lane, investigative reporter at the Daily Planet. I was hoping to get your reaction to some recent events." The woman's voice crackled with energy.

"I would have thought the Daily Planet would have better standards than to report on alleged crimes by a minor."

"I'm sorry?" Lois asked, at the same time Naija shook her head frantically.

Aaliyah took a deep breath and tried to recenter. She could do this. She'd talked to reporters for her entire political career. "I apologize, Ms Lane. It's been a trying day. What recent events were you—"

"Jesus fucking Christ! They pepper-sprayed a thirteen-year-old girl at her school? I know Gotham's always held a special place in the 'All Cops Are Bastards' ranking, but I sincerely hope multiple go to jail for this shit." The righteous anger transmuted into compassion between one sentence and the next. "I am so sorry, Alderperson Lincoln. How is your daughter?"

Lane must be very good at her job, because without meaning to, Aaliyah blurted, "They say they'll charge her with possession and intent to sell cocaine. As an adult."

"Those pieces of shit. Let me guess. Unless you drop out of the race?"

"I'm making the announcement tomorrow."

"I see. Before you make that announcement, I was hoping to get your comment on evidence that your opponent is employed by a secret group of Gothamites who have been engaged in extortion, trafficking, child abuse, murder and assassination. Most recently, they attacked you and attempted to murder Mr. Wayne."

"You mean… the Court of Owls? You can prove they're real?"

"Ohhhhh yes. Someone just leaked over a gigabyte of their financial data to the Daily Planet. We have their names, their Cayman Island and Swiss bank account numbers, and an accounting of who they've been paying off."

Aaliyah was sure it wasn't the most important question, but it was bugging her: "Why the Daily Planet?"

"Other than having a Pulitzer-prize investigative reporting team, you mean?" Lois Lane did not suffer from false modesty. "It could have something to do with the Gotham Gazette being owned by one of the members of the Court of Owls. Listen, the roundup's not going to be perfect. There's going to be a couple of implicated people who flee to Montenegro, a few who get deals for testifying on a bigger fish, and some who have the political connections to get sweetheart deals. I promise you, though, that the evidence against your opponent is going to bury him."

"I appreciate the encouragement, Ms Lane, I do. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the situation with my daughter."

"I see the problem. One moment." Muffled: "Clark, can you get me the list of recipients in the GCPD specifically? No, just the ones in the GCPD. These are all… ? Well shit." She continued more clearly, "I've got a list of police officers who took money from the Court of Owls here, but there's well over fifty names. Can you narrow it down for me?"

"Leadership. The problem is in the leadership."

"If it's Commissioner Gordon, you're out of luck; I checked that first. Let's see, GCPD leadership… Chief Torres of Major Crimes also seems to be missing from the list. Other than that…Christ. Looks like everyone who ranks higher than a Captain has taken their money. There's also a large transaction two days ago, a hundred fifty thousand dollars paid to a rank-and-file officer, Patrick Koch. Isn't he the Union President?"

"Yes. Yes he is." Aaliyah could hear the shake in her voice.

"Alderperson Lincoln, my instincts are telling me there's a lot more to this story, and that it needs in-person investigation. That you deserve an in-person interview where you can tell the people of Gotham just what its police department has been doing. Maybe even let your daughter throw a few verbal punches, if she's up for it."

"She shouldn't have to."

"Neither should you. But if you're going to anyway, I can offer you my typewriter and my readership. I'll see you soon." Before she hung up, Aaliyah heard her yell, "Clark! Tell Perry we're going to Gotham. I've got a line on one hell of a story."

Aaliyah handed the phone back to Naija.

"Am I still fired?" her campaign manager asked.

"You're getting a raise as soon as they announce me as mayor. Call whoever's writing my withdrawal speech, tell them they have a different speech to write. Oh, and if Koch calls? It turns out I do want to speak with him after all."

Victoria Powers snarled at the bank of screens going black as Batman destroyed the security cameras one after another. A hundred thousand dollars to secure the Powers Residential Tower, and another fifty thousand in additional security forces after Batman escaped the Labyrinth, and none of it was keeping him out. It was unacceptable.

"Authorize switching to destructive munitions," she told her son Theodore. "Nothing that could cause structural collapse, obviously, but we might as well declare internal walls a loss." Hmm, perhaps a few 'stray' rounds into the residential floors would slow Batman down; if they targeted the rent-stabilized apartments, that might be profitable despite the cleanup costs. "In fact, tell them to— wait, where did he go?"

Maybe he'd died when that Bentley had exploded, but Victoria wouldn't trust it until she had the man's head on a platter. She cursed how right she always was when machine gun fire started up from the penthouse's balconies.

Theodore drew his sword and moved to protect his family, as was proper. Archibald was still insisting on using the machine gun which, while crass, had at least been effective. His sister Antoinette cowered uselessly. Victoria turned back to the security console and entered one of the secret codes.

There was screaming from all the penthouse's balconies as the security personnel stationed there discovered that they had detached from the building. That was more money this self-righteous vigilante was costing her: even if he caught all the guards, she was probably still on the hook for worker's comp claims, not to mention the cost of replacing the balconies and whatever landscaping had been destroyed by the falling concrete and iron railings.

He probably did rescue all of them, because it was a full two minutes of tense waiting before he crashed feet-first through the guaranteed unbreakable glass of one of the balcony doors (and Victoria would be getting a full refund on that false promise). He disarmed Archibald faster than Victoria could follow and snapped Theodore's sword before knocking both men unconscious.

Victoria shoved her granddaughter in front of her, and the clumsy girl shrieked, tripped and practically threw herself at him. "Please," she begged shamelessly, "please don't hurt me."

Batman held her off with one hand, turning to face Victoria while absently promising, "I'm not going to—"

The gunshot was loud, for such a dainty weapon: Antoinette's little pearl-handled pistol was barely five inches long. Yet it would have done the job, if she'd hit the underside of the chin square on instead of barely grazing it. Perhaps it would be worth teaching her the ways of Power family, after all.

Or perhaps she took after her late sister, that manipulative schemer, a little too much. She'd have to be carefully watched.

Batman struck Antoinette in the side of the head, knocking her out. That wasn't the ideal placement for a bruise; in Victoria's experience DA's and judges were far more sympathetic to black eyes. Victoria would just have to give her one later. Right now, Batman was advancing on her.

Victoria gave up pressing the panic button and went for the intercom. "Security. Security!" The sound of dead air told her it wasn't operational anyway.

"Victoria Powers," Batman said like a sentencing judge. "Leader of the 'Court of Owls'."

"Empress," she snapped, standing with regal posture. It was a title she had more than earned, and she didn't appreciate the way he talked about her Court. She'd had him running like a rat in the Labyrinth for days and days. He was nothing compared to the Court.

"That's what really gets me about all this. So much history, power, wealth, supposed grandeur, and in the end, what was it all for?"

"The Court of Owls is Gotham. From the tallest building to the deepest cavern, we built Gotham; it is ours to shape and to do with its people as we please."

"In other words, you're narcissistic sociopaths who are heavily invested in real estate. You murder people and abuse children to make a profit, and your families have done so for generations. You think that makes you special ? All of the wealthiest families got their money from death and abuse: colonization, slavery, factory owners, robber-barons, opioid pharmaceuticals. Most just keep a layer of plausible deniability instead of kidnapping people for their secret murder maze."

"You're just a brute. You could never understand."

"I understand that your family alone stands to lose nearly a billion dollars over the next five years if the zoning changes Wayne proposed go through in Alderperson Lincoln's district. The other Court families aren't as invested in that area, but together they'd probably lose another half billion as greater availability of affordable units brings down rent. More immediately, all of you decided to short Wayne Industries right before putting a hit on its CEO, and as a savvy investor you know that the risk on that type of bet is… unlimited."

"You can't prove we sent anyone after Wayne."

Batman smirked. "Is that really your primary concern? Wayne Industries stock is up thirteen percent in the last week."

It had been a volatile week for the stock. It would come down. It had to. "Well? Are you going to blather at me or arrest me? I'll be out in an hour, you know. My lawyer—"

"Is also a member of the Court of Owls, is currently in jail, and all his records have been seized."

"A lawyer's records are privileged information."

"Normally, yes. Are you familiar with the crime-fraud exception to lawyer-client privilege, Ms Powers?"

Victoria frowned. "That's some gangster rule."

"It's the reason you really shouldn't have used your lawyer to falsify Richard Grayson's medical examiner's report and death certificate."

It took her a moment to remember the name. "Oh, the orphan boy? It wasn't fake. We did have him killed by a semi truck, right after we gave him the serum. He was dead for at least twenty hours before the reaction with the electrum revived him." Her father had protested that the talonization process was too macabre for a young Victoria to learn about, but she'd always had the man wrapped around her little finger.

"There are serial killers in Arkham who show more compassion than you do for an eight-year-old child you tortured."

"Torture was the way the Talons were trained before I took over. It was barbaric and grisly, just killing the chosen sacrifices over and over until their minds broke. Then you'd see if any of the pieces were sharp enough to be useful, or if you'd have to start over again with the backup. My methods were refined." She still didn't know how Batman had broken through them.

"You claim your methods weren't torture?"

"It was a game! Children love games. We would repeat phrases over and over again until the Talon would always remember them." When the Talon woke and went to bed. When it was half-frozen. When it had been awake for 70 hours. With both hands in a vat of acid. Until the words were seared into its subconscious. "Or I would give a set of instructions to be followed exactly." Walk forward five steps, double back handspring, spin eight times, break right wrist, double back handspring. "Sometimes a punishment was necessary, but I made sure it never caused significant damage." The disabling toxin had been developed to neutralize a Talon, should one ever go rogue. The toxin caused extreme pain, and unlike an electric current, a Talon could administer the appropriate dose to itself.

"You brainwashed an eight-year-old child into thinking he wasn't human."

"It isn't human. It's stronger, faster, highly resistant to injury and immune to illness. It can see in almost complete darkness. It knows it isn't human. Doesn't it?" Victoria could taste victory as she shifted her gaze to the shadow just inside the shattered balcony door and said with the snap of command, "What are you?"

"The Talon, mistress," the shadow answered, as she knew it must.

Batman startled. "Talon? What are you doing here?"

Victoria wouldn't let him seize back control. "What is the Talon?"

"You don't have to answer her," Batman said softly, misinterpreting its reflexive obedience for a choice.

"An instrument of the will of the Court of Owls, mistress."

Batman finally understood the shift of power in the room (really, men ) and growled at Victoria, "Stop it."

"To destroy the enemies of the Court of Owls, mistress." The Talon stepped out of the shadow, a dagger in each hand. "To rend and bleed and kill."

"Talon," Batman said, once again in that soft voice, like he didn't see the undead assassin about to rip him to pieces at Victoria's word. What did he see instead? "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

"The Talon does not want. The Talon obeys," Victoria snapped. "Kill Batman."

"The Talon obeys," it repeated dutifully and struck.

The fight was nothing like their clashes in the Labyrinth. Batman wasn't fighting a concussion, blood loss and hallucinogens in addition to his opponent. The Talon was at a disadvantage in the space, as well; the penthouse had high ceilings, but not high enough for it to launch itself off the bookcase without clipping the chandelier.

The Talon didn't have its full complement of throwing knives, so it tried to dart in for a fast strike and then out of Batman's reach before the larger opponent could grapple it. It was almost like a dance, with Batman steering the direction and the Talon spinning and flipping around him. Unfortunately, Batman could anticipate his opponent; it was only a matter of time before Batman blocked a kick, caught the Talon's ankle and—

Tossed him to the couch.

It was a dance. Batman wasn't even trying to attack the Talon, just blocking strikes and redirecting the Talon's attacks with a gentle toss so that the Talon could get his feet under him before he landed. The Talon was still attacking with kicks and punches, but Victoria noticed that his daggers were sheathed. They weren't trying to kill each other, they were playing .

Victoria would show them what happened to men who played with her. She heaved up Archibald's gun and struggled to point at her targets. She hadn't succeeded when agony like a knife through her left hand made her drop it. She stared in horror at the black bat-shaped blade sticking out of her hand . "You monster!"

"If you want to keep full use of that hand, Ms Powers, stop trying to remove it."

She looked up, sobbing in pain. The Talon was settled on Batman's hip as if it were a young child, leaning into the arm wrapped around it. Behind the mask, she was sure it was smirking at her. She knew how to shut it up. "What are you?"

"The Tal—no. No, I—"

"Shh, hush, it's okay," Batman tried to soothe.

"What are you?" she repeated. She couldn't see its face, but its body language had gone rigid and afraid. It should be afraid. Refusing to answer properly meant punishment.

"I— I'm— But I'm not—"

"Be silent," Batman growled at her.

Victoria might be defeated, but she would always take the opportunity to spit in her opponent's face. "WHAT ARE YOU?"

The Talon keened, thrashing in Batman's grip. The man was so distracted, he didn't notice when she held out a syringe of the disabling toxin. The Talon's keening went higher and louder as it tried to launch itself from Batman's arms. "Please," Batman begged, "calm down, she can't…" He noticed the syringe and his voice went flat. "What is that?"

Batman didn't kill. Everyone in Gotham knew that. He always brought the criminals in alive. Until this moment, until hearing the violence in his lack of expression, Victoria had never thought of what a wide range of possibilities that left him.

Taking her silence as an answer, Batman walked to the shattered balcony door and set the Talon down. He put his hands on the Talon's shoulders and talked to him quietly for a minute or two. When he returned, there was still that sense of brittle calm around him that was one wrong word from murderous fury. "What is it?"

"It's a toxin that targets the Talon's nervous system."

"Causing excruciating pain, I assume." He took the syringe, injected a few milliliters into a test tube he pulled out of his utility belt, then smashed the syringe on the ground.

Victoria snorted. "You look at me like I'm a monster for having it, but you still took some. Afraid of what happens when the Talon turns on his new master?"

Whatever Batman would have responded was lost when the Talon stepped out of the shadow of Batman's cape. "I am the Talon. B-but I'm n-not. Not an in-instrument. Of the c-court." He pulled off his cowl and looked at her with those sad eyes from a corpse-pale face. "I'm a p-person. A boy." He took a gulping breath before finishing, "A-and I-I-I w-w-w-won't kill for you. Anymore. I w-won't kill. Ever."

Victoria Powers had always been able to read shifts in power, and she could tell that this weapon was lost to her forever. The Court was in ruin; her fortune at risk; her very freedom in jeopardy. Her gaze slid to Antoinette's petite pistol. Such a vulgar way to go, but better than being paraded in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit in front of the plebeian press.

"No," Batman said, and knocked her out.

Chapter Text

Talon leapt into the air. Bruce, hanging from a trapeze by his knees, swung out to catch him. They grabbed onto each others' wrists and swung back. Bruce released the boy, who twisted midair to dive through a hoop before catching onto a set of rings to change direction. He followed this with a stunning midair quadruple somersault before swinging down to the mats below.

Bruce leapt between a couple of swinging trapezes to the central pole and descended. "Okay, what did I do wrong that time?"

"Sir?" A good sign. On bad days, Bruce was only ever 'master'.

"You barely cleared the hoop. Did I throw you too hard?"

"You released me a second too late, sir," Talon said diffidently, eyes lowered. Still, it was an actual critique. Another good sign.

A large part of Bruce wanted to climb back up and give it another go, but Alfred would be irritated. "We can try again tomorrow, okay? We should shower and change before Alfred calls us for supper." Bruce was having pot roast with vegetables. Talon would get to choose: a pureed butternut squash soup if he wasn't feeling well, a stew if he was up for it, and the pot roast if he was ready to try something new. He'd liked the fresh sourdough bread last week, though he hadn't been up for trying it again since then.

"Sir," Talon said as they were climbing the stairs to the manor, soft enough that Bruce could have pretended not to hear him.

"Yes?"

"If… if it pleases you," he began. Talon still couldn't say what he wanted or needed directly, but he had found a way to communicate around that block. "You could call me Richard."

Bruce opened his mouth in surprise and didn't know what to say. Do you want me to call you Richard? No, that would require stating a desire. Do you prefer Richard? That would require stating a preference. "I could call you Richard, instead of Talon?" he finally asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Richard. That would please me… very much. Would you like— could Alfred also call you Richard instead of Talon? If it pleased him?"

Richard nodded.

Bruce had once tried and failed to convince this boy that he could be Dick Grayson again. Maybe he could be someone new, though, with pieces of the old. Richard Grayson. Maybe even eventually, if everything worked out the way Bruce hoped, Richard Grayson-Wayne. It wasn't time to ask about that, though.

"Hello, Richard. It is wonderful to meet you. My name is Bruce."

It was meant to be a joke, but Richard shook his hand seriously. "Hello… Bruce."

Bruce's heart melted. "Welcome home."

Lois Lane weaved through the crowd at the Mayor's Inaugural Ball, noting how different it was. There were the usual socialites and business people—Lois had spotted Wayne and the Drakes—along with various politicians in tailored suits and dresses and civil servants in off-the-rack. This year, though, the room was packed with young people, black people, working class people, immigrants, all the disaffected of the city who saw in Mayor-Elect Aaliyah Lincoln a sign of hope that bad old Gotham could change after all.

They would be disappointed, Lois knew. Even now, old men in back rooms were forming alliances and proposing new ordinances to strip Aaliyah of the power she'd won. The Court of Owls might be dead in Gotham, but it didn't take undead assassins to stymie change and twist systems to your own end if you had enough wealth.

"You're Shavonne, right?" Lois overheard someone say. "Hi, I'm Barba—"

"I know who you are," the younger girl cut her off. "Gordon."

"Ah, yeah. Um, I heard about what happened at your school. I mean, I read what you said about it, in that article. I just wanted to see if you were okay. They did drop all the charges, right?"

"That doesn't make it okay!"

"Of course it doesn't. I just—"

"You want an exclusive, something Lois cut from the article? All cops are bastards."

Barbara paused in the middle of taking a step back and snorted. "You're not wrong."

Shavonne pulled up short. "You agree? But your dad…"

"Wouldn't have survived this long if he weren't a bit of a bastard, and if he didn't have Batman watching his back. The GCPD harassed you and your mom, but it keeps trying to kill my dad."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry. It's just… hard to have so many of them here, pretending to honor my mom, when we all know they're taking bribes or covering up shit. Mom said she'd fire them all if she could."

"Probably a good start, but the new police officers would still be hired into a bad system. There should be a different system."

"Like what?"

"More Batmen," interjected a boy of eight or nine who had snuck up without Lois noticing. He was dressed like a miniature businessman, and he hadn't even loosened the tie or fiddled with the cufflinks.

Shavonne rolled her eyes. "There's only one Batman, and it's rude to interrupt…"

"Apologies. Timothy Drake. Please pass my sincere congratulations to your mother, Ms. Lincoln. Yes, there is only one Batman at the moment, which is the problem. No single person, no matter how personally impressive, can safeguard all of Gotham alone. He requires assistants."

"You mean assistance, and who else could do what Batman does?"

"He is not the only one capable of research or detective work," Timothy said with wounded dignity, "as you well know, Ms. Gordon.

Barbara looked startled, then nodded. "Yes, my dad frequently works with Batman, though he'd be pissed if you called him an assistant. Some of the detectives as well." She looked thoughtful. "He could probably use help keeping an eye on the city. Maybe even someone to watch his back." Her eyes went to the gallery's ornate windows.

Little Timothy followed her gaze, and something about his determined gaze—not just the black hair, blue eyes, pale skin and expensive suit—reminded Lois of someone else. A certain someone else who was currently escaping the crowd onto a smoking balcony.

Giving up eavesdropping on children for a more interesting target, Lois followed. She would have sworn she hadn't made a noise, but Bruce Wayne whipped around to face her, convincingly miming dropping a cigarette over the railing to explain his startled response and, she suspected, distract from a shadow slipping around the corner. "Lois! You startled me."

Lois knew perfectly well that Bruce didn't smoke, though the man had been known to chew on a match or two. "Long month?"

The very corner of his mouth curved in a private joke. "You have no idea how stressful it is to go into hiding. I had to miss my regular pilates class!"

"Bruce." Lois caught his gesturing hand and squeezed it. All the hand cream in the world couldn't hide the scars from her touch. "Clark looked for you, you know. He said you must have been deep underground for him not to be able to hear you."

A complicated mix of irritation and relief crossed his face and his shoulders sagged. "He told you?"

"He didn't have to. Bruce, if you wanted to keep your secret identity a secret, you shouldn't have dated an investigative reporter for several months. Did you think turning the lights out would keep me from noticing your scars don't come from crashing fancy cars?"

"Some do," he interjected, innocent as a choirboy.

"The Batmobile doesn't count. Besides, you kept abandoning me in dangerous situations moments before Batman showed up to rescue me. I am capable of basic pattern recognition."

He frowned. "You didn't say anything."

"I was waiting for you to confide in me, if you chose to. A mistake which fortunately I did not repeat with Clark, or we never would have gotten engaged. He said he didn't want to put me in danger, as if letting me make my own choice about whether to be in his life was more dangerous than leaving me in ignorance." Bruce flinched, and Lois forced herself to lower her voice. "That's not important right now. Your secret is obviously safe with me; I don't need another Pulitzer that badly. ...are you going to introduce us?"

"Excuse me?" He didn't glance towards where the shadow had disappeared. Not even a flicker of an eye movement. The man really was a remarkably good liar. Probably Alfred's influence.

"The former Talon. Dick Grayson."

Bruce's expression spasmed. "Victoria Powers?"

"Yes. She's been ignoring the judge's gag order."

"Damn that woman."

"What does she hope to accomplish? Besides pissing off the judge, I mean?"

"Revenge." Bruce called softly, "Richard?" A young man in a full face-mask with white-out lenses swung around the corner and touched down on the balcony railing. He wore a black cape similar in design to Batman's, a black costume and a dark red tunic. He examined Lois, head cocked to the side.

"Hello, Richard," Lois offered. "I'm Lois." The boy bobbed his head.

Bruce took a step back to lean against the railing, and the boy crouched close. Even as Billionaire Brucie, the man rarely let others in his space, particularly where he couldn't watch them. There was a bond of trust between these two. "I'd hoped that his past could stay sealed, but with Ms. Powers spreading all those rumors…"

"You need to set the record straight."

Bruce looked pained. "No. Richard already has to testify against his—against the Court. I'm not going to let reporters rip him apart."

"Of course not, he's a traumatized minor. Someone else will need to speak on his behalf. Who better to do so than Bruce Wayne, the most recent target of the Court of Owls? Which should segue nicely into your announcement that you're adopting him."

Bruce froze. Richard looked at him. "Um. I haven't…"

"Told him yet? Clearly. But you are planning on adopting him." Bruce didn't connect with others easily, but when he did… There was nothing tentative about his bond with this kid.

Bruce told Richard quietly, "You don't have to make a decision yet. There's a lot to consider; as my ward you would be in the public eye, and—"

Richard tucked his head down to rest on Bruce's shoulder and hummed happily. "Not ward. Son."

Bruce stopped breathing for several seconds. "I wouldn't want to replace your parents," he protested weakly.

"You won't."

Lois took that as her cue to head back into the party celebrating the new mayor. Electing a less-corrupt mayor wouldn't fix much. Gotham was still Gotham. It would never be the shining beacon that Metropolis was. Maybe, though, the shadows would be a bit less lonely after tonight.