Blood Borne

A Word: Ibid.

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For all that the street is alive with rumors and people hunting for a person no one has seen, Red Robin's night begins with him busting up an average drug deal. The world could be burning and there will still be a large number of people who ignore it to go on with their lives.

It's a bit refreshing bouncing the heads of two men off a brick wall and not having to think about if they're misinformed or taking money to hunt someone down. A bad sign that this case is going to be a really bad one since it's only been two days.

"Ten million," Babs tells him when he checks in to report the location of the trussed up dealers for pick up.

"Penguin," Tim guesses even though he doubts the man would offer that much. It's a lucrative business deal waiting to happen, but way too high for Cobblepot to start off with for something that really isn't much of a guarantee. The man is a savvy business man if nothing else.

"Luthor," Babs corrects wearily and Tim wonders if she'd gotten any rest at all, or if she'd reasoned herself into staying up to keep track of things.

"What does he want in Gotham?" Tim asks. It's a rhetorical question because the man has a lot of interest in Gotham. Some legitimate, some not legitimate, some good, and some based purely on revenge. They all know that though and Babs doesn't answer him.

"Can you a handle putting out a fire at the docks?" Babs asks after Tim's headed off.

"Again?" Tim alters his path to take him to whee he stashed his bike for the night.

"Again," she confirms. "People just aren't getting the news that the rumor there is old news."

Awesome. Tim sighs and acknowledges the change in plan. Cracking heads in his territory or the docks, it's all the same really.

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"Tell me you have a bruise at least," Tim says when he arrives at the docks twenty minutes later and finds the fire already well in hand.

Red Hood is idly kicking a groaning lump of muscle and stupidity, and doesn't seem surprised at all to see him there. Jason's wearing his domino tonight and the familiar mask is nowhere to be seen. It gives him a nice view of his teeth when he grins at him. "I have no idea what you're on about, Red."

He knows that Tim is asking about the nun and the flying ruler, but he's going to be deliberately obtuse about it because he knows how much it annoys Tim.

A few shipping containers have been smashed open and some of the contents dragged out. It's clear that this group here was using the rumors from yesterday as an excuse to loot. Tim crosses his arms over the handlebars of his bike and leans his chin on them to stare down at the mostly unconscious men. The docks are silent and still which means he's wasted time coming out for nothing. "Had any bites on your offer yet?"

"Plenty," Jason aims three vicious kicks on his way over to Tim that leaves all of the men unconscious now. He slouches on a rusted post next to Tim and scans the docks just like Tim already has. "Lots of fuckers want to make a few bucks off of this, but they're not even able to come up with a halfway decent lie to try selling me."

"What do they even think you're going to do with the kid when you get them?" Tim asks out of morbid curiosity, because Jason's got a fierce and deadly rep on the street but everyone knows the man doesn't hurt kids. No matter who their parents might be.

"Fuck if I know," Jason shrugs but he's smiling a little and Tim knows he's pleased that Tim's asking because it wasn't all that long ago that they all would have thought something very different about Jason. To be fair, when Jason first came back he probably was angry enough to try something. Tim doesn't think he would have gone through with it though. He's probably one of the few people who would think that though. The moment passes fast and Jason frowns a bit before going forward. "We don't even know it is a kid do we? All the ones we know about turned out not being matches. Maybe Joker got started early and was a teenage dead-beat baby daddy."

Which is a good point. A disturbing point, but a point still.

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The rest of the night goes by like that. Babs feeds them all a constant stream of updates and problem areas that don't amount to a whole lot. The rest of the world is as in the dark as they are in this matter. It's frustrating but also a blessing in disguise. At least they're not trying to race some unknown enemy to an unknown target. A nice change in pace for once.

Unfortunately, if the rest of his night went by normally, his daytime life has to pick back up too. Tim's made his excuse for yesterday, and is officially out of acceptable reasons to skip out on work for a month now. Not without doing more damage to his public persona than it's worth.

He gets a solid five hours of sleep after the fruitless night and shows up to start cranking out files and signatures bright and early. Tam doesn't give him as much flak as he'd expected. The news of the riot is becoming old now, but the damage is still being reported on. The anchors focusing in on the destruction of the orphanage and laying heavily onto the fact that none of the children -who had to be evacuated for their safety- where matches.

"It's times like this that I think the media isn't all that bad," Tim comments as he finally mutes the program that he's been paying only partial attention to. The guilt trip being televised is really raking in the cash being raised to fix the place up. Tim has no doubts that St. Adens will be fixed up to be better than it was before. "But then I remember how annoying they can be and how often they make facts up."

"Or how often they chase down the right facts that you don't want the world to know about," Tam points out as she gathers up some of the files he's finished with and replaces them with more work. She's being nice and feeding it all to him slowly.

"Just the facts that will end in death," namely his which is a compelling argument that she doesn't have an argument against.

"You have a lunch meeting to approve some prototypes," Tam says as she pulls out a single sheet from under the files to spin in front of him. It's a timeline for his day as well as the rest of the week. Everything she's had to rearrange have been typed in a vivid red. All capslock too. "You have fifteen to actually eat before you have a bunch of face to face meetings with people from PR about those marketing photos."

Tam lists off the kind of terrifying array of meetings and times that he has to meet, and Tim grits his teeth because he knew this was coming the minute he woke her up to tell her to make excuses for him yesterday.

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The day blurs by and Tim only manages to get a few updates from Babs after lunch that make him pity Dick and Cass who had to go straight to Penguin's place to break up what sounded like the setup to an awful joke of a standoff. The only information to come from that is the fact that Harley Quinn was spotted among the crowd.

It's really only a matter of time before Joker gets wind of it now. Harley is a wildcard in this. She loves the Joker one minute and then hates his guts the next. Literally sometimes, and no one can really predict her. In this matter it's only a question of when she'll decide to tell him and Tim knows everything that happens after that is going to be a disaster.

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Tim's last meeting of the day isn't much of a surprise to him though the slightly disgruntled and face of Jim Gordon is always a welcome sight.

"Commissioner," Tim greets the man who looks like he really could use more than just the cup of coffee he's taken from the pot next to the conference table. This room is one of the windowless ones and is probably the most private one available without going to the labs right now. "How can I help you?"

"You can start by handing over all of the highly illegal testing you've done," Gordon says and it's going to be one of those meetings. The ones where the man verges on admitting out loud the truth that he's always denied knowing. Bruce's admittance of funding Batman helps with the whole plausible deniablility thing, but can only really go so far.

"I'd love to help you with that, sir, but the records have already been destroyed," Tim admits truthfully. The digital copies are safe in the Cave's system, but everything else was burned. From the samples gathered to the hard drive used to calculate everything. "And I assure you, our technicians had no idea they were analyzing samples that were not given over willingly."

"I'm sure they didn't," Gordon sighs and tilts the paper cup he's holding up dangerously high as he drains it. He goes to the pot again and slowly starts fixing himself another. It's a mixture of the sensitive information of who Tim really is combined with the high status of Timothy Drake-Wayne that has made it necessary for Gordon himself to come talk to him. If his public persona were just a little lower on the social rungs of importance it'd be a couple of detectives instead. Tim can't say he's disappointed by it though. "You were there when Jules Dane was shot. Do you recall seeing anyone remarkable at the time?"

"Um, not really," Tim tells the truth again but throws in some of the nervously embarrassed socialite in there with it too. Just because it's fun seeing the way Gordon tries hard not to roll his eyes at him. "I was more concerned with not getting blood on my shirt. Dry cleaners are always so gossipy about the smallest hint of blood, and you know how quick reporters will buy up all those rumors."

Tim watches Gordon swallow another half cup and knows Babs is going to get on his case later for it if she hasn't already. An upside to her admittance of her role -the only time Gordon has ever really acknowledged the open secret between the man and the family- is that she feels not compunction about using her highly invasive network to harp on the older man about his health. An upside to Tim and Dick mostly, because they're no longer her only outlet for when she vents about how she can't take him to task for the five donuts he ate when no one was watching.

"Rumors," Gordon agrees with a dark and rueful tone. The GCPD has been dealing with their own onslaught of fires to put out. On top of what has to be hundreds of people calling with false tips and demands of action.

"Speaking of, will the police department be doing anything to address some of those horrible things that have been airing on the news?" Tim asks, genuinely curious, because a public address will go a long way to calming some of the growing unease in the city. It's building slowly. The city is watching it all unfold cautiously, the way it always seems to when the people are bracing themselves for worse.

"Once there's anything to actually report," Gordon shakes his arm out and looks critically at his watch. "I'm sure you will see the news report as soon as it's made, Mr. Drake. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter."

"I'm always happy to oblige," Tim smiles as Gordon tops off his cup and salutes him with it on his way out. The interview over and something the man can say was done. Tim wonders as he watches Gordon disappear if he'll make up what was said or if he'll just go for the generic 'rich boy didn't see anything past his own designer shirt' excuse that's gotten so many of them out of questioning with an ease that's kind of insulting.

Knowing Gordon that's exactly what he's going to do, because it amuses him like nothing else when people think all the Waynes are stupid.

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