Work Text:
Sun shines through the open windows, curtains gently swishing in the wind. The air here is nothing like Gotham. Sweeter, for one. More alive. The din of the wide awake city creeps into the apartment. People wake earlier here to get work done before the sun reaches its peak. Then at its hottest, they all retreat home for food and family and rest, and as it falls again and the temperature with it, it’s back to public life and back to work.
The strange rhythm is something he is becoming partial to. How unlike Gotham it is. How un-American. No working to the bone, to the death. No working the undead to bring about fresh death and harvest new bones.
No court. No owls. No talons.
Just Richard Grayson and…the gentle slap slap slap of little bare feet, sticky with sweat on marble floors. The sound gets closer and closer, and just as it’s within reach, Richard shoots his arm out and wraps it around his little Robin, pulling his baby against his chest. Damian shrieks in surprise, brown eyes wide and startled, but it turns into a scowl when it dawns on his little mind that his plan to surprise his parent has been thwarted.
Kiss. Richard signs for his son. And then kisses his temple, and cheeks, and finishes it off by rubbing the tips of their noses together. The frown fights a losing battle, slipping off his face as he whines and giggles and finally, attempts to bite. Richard turns his toddler about, sitting his baby in his lap so they can both look out the glass balcony doors and bask in the sunlight, the heat that almost makes his dead flesh as warm as Damian’s healthy temperature.
When this does not dissuade Damian’s attempts to bite him, he fishes one of the silicone bracelets off the table and gives it to his son. He gnaws on it with a fury unfounded, two tiny fangs digging deeper than the rest of his normally blunted teeth and threatening to shred apart yet another teething toy.
Richard has a curious child, but there are many curious things about himself, so he figures that they make a matched set. With the brown contact lenses over his golden rimmed eyes, and enough makeup to correct the colour of his grey-tinted skin, no one would ever know that the share nor a drop of blood between them.
No one would ever know that Damian was someone else’s Robin first. And Damian, most certainly would never know that he had been discarded. Not when he was Richard’s first, and best, choice.
At a bar along the main street in town, what would pass for a cafe in America, Damian takes small sips from a child sized carton of orange juice, and rips apart an orange jam croissant. His fingers are sticky within minutes, and while Richard has done his best to wipe it away with damp napkins, Damian is immediately sticky again. He surrenders this fight to the toddler, and pretends to sip from the espresso he’d ordered for himself.
The townspeople who have already begun welcoming him into the community greet him, and he makes the appropriate small talk in as few words as possible. They believe this is because he is a foreigner. Not simply because he does not enjoy speech itself. Damian babbles more than enough to fill in the silence, delighting the neighbor a house over from theirs, who has taken to fattening Damian up with all of the sweets she brings over.
It is like any other morning.
They go to the market, they buy food for the day, that only one of them will actually eat. Richard drives to the beach, and allows Damian to grow tired splashing in the shallows and digging at the sand with his tiny hands, enough so that he doesn’t attempt biting again when Richard scoops him up and carries him back home. By the time they return to the apartment, it is burning hot, and everyone is in the process of doing the same.
Richard bathes Damian, dries him, dresses him in pajama’s, and settles him back into the crib he is fast growing out of. Then he changes himself, and while work pauses and everyone hides from the sun, Richard steps out into broad daylight, and he goes to work.
An hour and a half drive up the coast that he makes in under an hour. A villa tucked at the base of a steep cliff face. Many like to vacation here. It’s scenic. It’s peaceful. It’s private.
It’s a good place to die.
Unlocking the door in silence isn’t possible. Here the doors are heavy and locks are heavier. The sound a key makes turning in the lock bounces off the marble and would alert anyone to an intruder. Instead, Richard scales the outside of the building, and gains entry through a third floor balcony where a door has been left open to let in a breeze.
Walking past the child asleep in their bed shouldn’t be so easy when a mere hour ago Richard left his own in much the same state. But this isn’t his child. He opens their door and steps into a hallway. Following the sound of steady breaths, heavy with sleep, Richard steps into a space that blends both kitchen, dining, and living room into one. Common here. Convenient, too.
At this end of the house, the air conditioning unit runs, pumping out icy cold air and covering what little sound he makes as he studies them. Unlike the couple on the couch, he doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t eat any amount of food, let alone the course after course that is traditional at lunch and dinner. He doesn’t sleep, either.
Pity that that is, for them.
He draws his knife and ends the man’s life right there. He dies without waking. Richard takes a photo, a grisly new part of his work that he could do without, but his clients can’t.
In his car, driving back to his apartment, and his son, his phone chimes. He’s been paid, and paid well for his work.
Damian is standing in his crib when Richard enters their room, clutching at the wooden bars and staring at his parent with large brown eyes that question where he’s been. Richard scoops up his son and signs kiss. Kissing his chin, and cheeks, and distinctively shaped eyebrows until they smooth out and the judgement disappears.
At least until Damian tries to bite him.
Then, they go sit down and Richard makes his son penne that he lets cook before mixing in a spoonful of butter and pesto, which Damian then swallows instead of chews even though it threatens to give Richard a heart attack strong enough to get the thing beating all on its own again.
In the next country, the next apartment, they grow comfortable. They fall into a routine. And Richard makes more money. And then they move again.
Richard is cleaning blood off his dagger on a sandy bank when a man sits next to him. “Agent 1.” The man offers in greeting. Brown skin, green eyes, dark brown hair, and matching facial hair.
Most importantly, three black marks on his forehead. Like the stripes of a “Tiger,” Richard remarks. His head tilts. He’s read dossiers on this man. On the organization he works for. Spyral had an uneasy truce with the Court of Owls. Mostly, an agreement to stay out of each other’s ways. Spyral didn’t enter Gotham, the Court did not poach killers or kills from Spyral. It had no need to, after all. The Court has their Talons, and the Court keeps to Gotham.
They should have no interest in him.
Lips tight, Tiger nods back towards the house. “A clean kill.” Richard does not reply. “One of many.” He adds. “My organisation is always looking for people who are efficient in their work. You have a place with us, should you be interested.”
‘People’ is not a word Richard would use for himself. “No.” He declines, in the interest of efficiency. His sheaths his blade and climbs into his car without hearing the longer pitch sure to follow.
Damian is not a happy toddler when they move in the middle of the night.
Tiger finds him again after his next kill in the country. Again in Brazil. Dubai. Portugal. Spain. Richard abandons his contract in Switzerland altogether. Leaves France when he spots Tiger a few days into scouting out his next.
Deciding that he has more than enough money to lay low with Damian after killing the middleman who handles Richard’s contacts, they return to Italy. Another small town just off the coast. Barely more than a couple dozen thousand people. Richard doesn’t buy another crib for this apartment. Damian sleeps curled up in his arms every night, and wakes up every morning to unnatural golden eyes admiring his small, sweet face.
Falling into their old routine again is easy. Croissants and sticky hands, no matter if it is chocolate, jam, or almond. Playing at the beach, splashing in the water, until he’s too tired to bite. Then home to bathe, nap, and eat. In the evening, Richard fills the time with games, colouring sheets, and toys. He learns to cook for Damian. He attempts to speak for longer and longer amounts of time. It is easier to sign, but Richard knows the value of teaching Damian spoken language, in as many languages as they might need to blend, to hide, to live out of sight. In peace.
Six months of respite this gives them. But their stalker is a predator. A big cat. And little songbirds are easy prey.
He’s sitting at their table, flipping through one of Damian’s colouring books. Richard has left him asleep in their room. He doesn’t need to witness Richard killing a man. Not yet, although he does not make the promise of not ever.
“You have a son.” Tiger says, like this is an ordinary conversation and he is not moments from his death. “You’re a father.”
“Parent.” Richard corrects. It is the third word he’s ever spoken to the nuisance at his table, in addition to Tiger’s name and no.
Tiger raises a brow. “Parent?”
Not father. That is a broken man Richard left behind to fall apart in Gotham. Not mother. That is a woman Richard could not conceive of ever resembling. She broke her family, she abandoned her child.
Richard could never do the same to his Robin. To his everything.
Neither word suited him. Truly, he didn’t care if either did. The gender implications behind them weighed both down, and Richard would have no gender were it an option. He only used he and him since it and it’s were inhuman, and the Court preferred it for their monsters, and they and them were similarly reminders of the personality empty corpses that made up the force of Talons the Court wielded.
If he could sleep, he’d have nightmares of them. Of being an it.
Richard is Richard, and he is he because he claimed it, and he is a parent because he claimed Damian as his son, and he has earned it everyday since, providing and caring and holding his little Robin. His baby.
He offers none of this information. It is not free. “Yes.” He confirms, only. “Parent.”
With a moment’s hesitation, Tiger nods. “That is why you will not hear me. You are a parent. You work for your son.”
An odd way to put it, but Richard supposes it is not the most incorrect. He does not kill for pleasure, or joy, or fame. He is a parent who must support his son. He has one skill, and he is very, very good at that one skill. The Court insured it. He could never have another line of work.
“The kill is a means to an end for you, isn’t it?” Tiger asks. He acts like he is thinking out loud. Richard does not believe it to be true. “For a man…or perhaps a person,” He amends. It is still not a word Richard would use for himself, but there’s consideration in it. "With your abilities, there could be other uses for them. Not every contract has to end in a kill.”
Richard clicks his tongue. The “Tt,” is the only sound he offers in response.
“You don't believe me,” Tiger shrugs. “But espionage doesn’t work if you alert those you’re spying on by killing those beneath them. Some people need to live. Arguably, most people need to live. And only the right people die, at the right time.”
Questioning why he hasn’t killed the unwelcome man in his home, a few rooms down from his son, Richard does not reply. Tiger nods like he’s expecting this.
“Spyral could be the right fit for you. And for your son. Your lives would be a lot more routine if you weren’t hopping across the globe, always. A permanent home. No need to work so hard to hide in plain sight, either. The Hypnos will take care of the grey and gold better than makeup and contacts can.”
Pitch delivered, Tiger stands. His chair squeaks against the marble. He leaves a card on the table.
“When you’re ready, call me.”
He leaves through the front door. Richard barely waits for him to be gone before he’s scooping Damian up, into his arms. His son doesn’t wake despite the disturbance. He knows he’s safe against Richard. A little manhandling is nothing when his tiny body needs so much energy to grow and Richard has spent his entire short life carrying around Damian’s dozing form. For company. For comfort. For when the sleepless nights stretched out with seemingly no end in sight.
Kiss, Richard signs out of habit. One on each eyelid, to the crown of his head, before tucking that little head beneath his own, at least until Damian tries to gnaw on him, even in his sleep. Feeling around for Damian’s latest stuffed animal of the month, he offers this to his sleeping son to chew on instead, and contemplates what their lives might look like a year, five, and more from now.
It is not something he’s ever had to do before.
Past was a word for a thing that didn’t exist. The present all Richard could remember. His future cemented in his corpse and written in blood.
Damian changed that. Damian changes that.
The card on the table questions him. The boy in his arms snuggles in, snoring softly.
Whatever Richard chose, he would choose it for him. For Damian. For his son. For his Robin, like the ghost of his mother before him.
Richard takes one more contract. Kills one more person. Comes home to their apartment one more time. Sits with his son in his lap at the beach, watching waves lap at the shore. He turns the card over and over in his fingers until he sets it down.
In a year, in five, in a decade, he may not know who he will be. But in a week, he will become Agent 37.
And, after he teaches Damian how to growl, Agent 1 is not allowed to babysit.