Talon Tomorrow
A/N: I did not make this AU up. This is from canon. Call this fic a ten-year anniversary.
Talon makes sure the blood has mostly stopped, then picks up his partner and runs.
He knows these rooftops well, by this time. They're a long way from identical to the Gotham roofs he used to know, but the two of them have been in this world for ten years, now, and this city for seven. Long enough to learn the lay of the land.
It isn't bad, the life he's living. He firmly believes that. There's a lot of scope for his talents, and no one telling him what to do, and he has Duela.
There is, admittedly, a man with his face wearing a mask that is obviously devouring his soul, while he tries to conquer the world. And Duela has long since shattered into sharp fragments of her old mirrored selves and seems to reflect little, anymore, besides her father's creepy evil twin—Jokester would cry, if he could see. Obviously, he was right about bad influences, except Talon is fairly certain it was less because of him than this universe they'd stupidly settled down in. He should have killed the old Joker first time he got a chance. Not that it would have helped; wherever Duela gets the patterns she mirrors, it isn't from the solid world in front of her. At first glance, she just seems crazy, but he's known her long enough to know she's tapping into something deeper, some other layer of reality maybe. In the old days, she was always forgetting what universe she was actually in, moment to moment. But she's rarely ever made anything up.
(She's one of the only people Raven's mind-warping magic can't affect. Talon suspects that's why Batman and the other dupes started cracking down on them, even before Duela had gone all that far off the rails.)
But it doesn't matter.
If Jokester had been willing to accept his daughter's choice, Talon would have fought for him, just as well as he always had for Owlman. Why not? But he'd refused them his blessing, not crazy enough to flex that far, and now it's been more than a decade since. The old comedian never had her knack for slipping between the moments into what she only ever called other places, and he'll probably never meet the Joker. Talon doesn't care. His partner might, if she ever remembers her Daddy existed.
"Tim," Duela hums, nudging her nose against his shoulder. "Tim-Tim-Timmy-Tim."
No one has called him by his given name in a very long time, except for her. And she uses it on the other one, too, almost as often as his title or any of the nicknames. Sometimes he isn't sure she knows the difference—but most of the time she does. And it's fine. Either way, it's fine. It's not as if Batman would ever kiss her back.
"Just a little further," he murmurs. "We'll get you all patched up to fight another day."
She nods, smearing white facepaint on his cape, and chortles a little when she notices. "Tomorrow," she confides happily, and then laughs harder, jerking in his arms.
Talon doubts it. Batman put a bullet in her thigh—he was aiming for the gut, but she moved. The Bat's getting nastier. His double is possibly not over the time they dressed Talon up in a Batsuit and were conspicuously affectionate all over town.
He knows his alternate is intelligent, that both of them are. Very intelligent. They also, he knows, have very little imagination. Even less than Owlman or Batman, he's pretty sure, and Owlman was so boring—he joined up with him as a kid because it was something to do, something new and different and interesting that his parents would never approve of, but they never noticed him except to be disapproving, so who cared. He joined because it was interesting, but after the first few years it was just another routine. Violence here, threat there, scheme versus scheme…Luthor made a decent mental sparring partner, but Talon almost never got to go up against him; he was only a henchman, after all.
He could have schemed for advancement, but that was boring too, and even if he had killed Thomas and become the new (shorter) Owlman, that would have been the most boring thing possible. Hadn't he gone out of his way to avoid taking over his father's company?
The only fun part was Jokester, really. And then Duela.
He's glad he ran away with her, whatever else.
"Tomorrow," he agrees.
Duela giggles again, and reaches up to run her fingers back and forth across his lips. He smiles at her, and sticks out his tongue a little, poking her. She almost lets out a happy little scream of laughter, but clamps her hand over her mouth in time. They're escaping, after all. Have to be sneaky.
"I always know I can count on you," she pulls her hand away enough to whisper.
She can.
"You should clean your knife," he suggests. It's still got vitreous humor on it from the eye she yanked it out of before Batman arrived. She laughs at him—he does most of the cleaning and laundry that gets done; he's much better at staying task-oriented—but she gets it out and starts polishing it on her skirt. Talon lands from his next jump smoothly enough the blade doesn't even jolt between her fingers.
The Batsignal blinks on—not the old one they say the police used to light, to summon the vigilante or just remind people they could. This one shines up from the summit of Wayne Tower with the fire of several hundred thousand watts, and it's a warning, and a warning only. It means the Bat's out hunting, and if you don't have the stomach to meet him, stay inside.
(He's not exactly a vigilante, anymore. Technically, he's the government. Head of Titans West. The police report to him. It's more than Owlman and his allies ever managed. You have to respect that.)
If you watch closely, you can see a small dark shape leave the roof of the tower, sailing out into the smog layer and just cutting across the fuzzy outer edge of the glowing blazon. If they aren't under cover soon, he'll catch up with them. Talon appreciates the warning, picks up his pace.
They were Titans once, too. For a little while. (And it was fun; Duela laughed a lot then, when they first came to this world, and Talon should have tried the do-gooder thing earlier. New challenges.) But neither side will have them now—Titans East with their morals and Titans West with their sense of order, like the old concept of superhero fractured down the middle, like everything in this world.
Everything but Talon.
Ah, Tim, Talon thinks, smiling a little because if he hadn't had his sense of humor he'd have gone crazy a long time ago, long before he gave up on Owlman. You used to be the good one. I wonder if you think you still are?
The Timothy Drake who is not Batman kisses his Joker on the forehead, drops into an alley where the searchlights will not fall, and blends once more into the shadows.
A/N: Ugh, choosing a section to post this in sucked, I am beginning to understand why so many people abandon ffdotnet once they get settled on AO3. I chose the Titans so I could character-tag Duela, but for anyone who read this fic without exhaustive knowledge of what the Titans were doing ten years ago, this is what I was working with: In the 2005 Titans Tomorrow storyline, adult Duela was the new Joker, up against future Tim's Batman-With-Extreme-Prejudice. Right? Soon thereafter, in 52, Jokester's Daughter Duela Dent (who had just taken over existing from all previous iterations) and her boyfriend Talon Tim Drake ran away from the new Earth-3 after the Jokester refused to support their relationship, and joined the Teen Titans during the skipped year. (Owlman in their brief-lived setting of origin may or may not be Thomas Wayne Jr. He's kind of a petty asshole, whoever he is.)
Shortly thereafter, the Titans of Tomorrow turned out to still exist—and in that version of the bad timeline, assuming Duela still became Joker, she would now have had a boyfriend who was physically identical to her Batman. o_o
Duela's characterization here derived from Tomorrow and the Countdown flashback, since she hasn't been the same more than once since the original Crisis. ;D Also this is the second Tomorrow timeline a year further than it ever actually reached, and the long stalemate has broken in favor of Titans West; Batman was a wanted fugitive in his own city when time-travelling Robin met him.