The Broken glass Eulogy VIII

Disclaimer: They aren't mine. They belong to DC comics. I'm just using them for my own dubious enjoyment and will put them back more or less as and where I found them when I'm done. More or less.

Author's Note: Many thanks to all who C+C-ed on earlier parts of this fic. Your comments are greatly appreciated and the incentive to write more has been priceless.

Elsewhere . . .

It had been drowsing in the daylight, contented with its lot. The sun for this planet was warm, rich, red-gold. Heated, young and welcoming.

It rather liked it. It was pleased it had been given the opportunity to stay. Then the silent, psychic wail of emotional distress sliced through its torpor, tainting the brilliant afternoon with an edge of grimness. It was being called by that anguish, the familiarity of it sickening. With scarcely a thought spared in gratitude for the tracking beacon it had created last time, it responded. This time, it could find the anguished one. This time, it could pinpoint it with utter accuracy.

This time, it could save a soul.

Gotham . . .

On the ground, splayed in front of the man – monster - who sought to be his master, Robin's trembling ceased, replaced by a boneless floppiness. The face, screaming lips contorted into a rictus of agony, went abruptly slack, eyes staring blankly into a nothingness only they could see.

"Robin!" //Oh no, Oh no no no no!// Racing towards the fallen figure, Nightwing barely spared a glance for the powerful assassin who until recently had been his little brother's rather formidable foe. That assassin had retired to stand by his employer's side, his droll amusement at the turn of events evident even through his full-face mask.//How did we not see this coming?! If the kid who killed himself in Gotham Central PD had an override code, how could we not see this coming! When Robin didn't try again after his own self-destruct code was ordered, we assumed . . . Dammit! We assumed that getting Robin back instead of Twenty had somehow erased all of his own programming! We made a mistake, and now my little brother is paying for it!//

Nightwing barely had time to register the sudden, startling, turn of events before Robin was on him.

Only it wasn't Robin.

Behind the mask brilliant blue eyes, usually lively and intelligent, were flat, lifeless chips of ice. The emptiness was transmitted to the grim clutch of the lips, scissored shut around teeth. With the speed of reaction, faster even than thought, Robin – Vingt – had risen, turned, and leapt to the attack. Code One-Six-Eight. Target: Nightwing.

//DESTROY//

Code One-Six-Eight. Target: Nightwing.

"Robin," Punch, punch-kick-strike combination, "Robin . . . little brother, please!" Duck, weave.

//DESTROY//

Code One-Six-Eight. Target: Nightwing.

"C'mon! Wake up little brother!" Jab, feint. Wet sound of boot striking ribs through the thin fabric of Nightwing's costume, crunch as they broke. Breathing already heavy, now wet and gurgling. //Dammit! I don't know how long I can hold back – and stay back!// Sagging slightly, Nightwing tried again.

"This isn't you! Robin, this is NOT you! Fight it!!" Leap, impossibly high, out of the way of a deceptively elegant wind-through-reeds strike. //A single-blow killing strike! But slow. Fractionally slow. . .is he . . . hesitating? Gah, ribs are killing me!// Spin-pirouette.

//DEStroy…?//

Code One-Six-Eight. Target: Nightwing.

"Robin! You can beat this!" Jab, bounce, "you fought so damn hard to be free!" Backflip, sudden change to attack; punch, roundhouse kick. "Don't you dare give up now! Don't you dare!"

//Nightwing!? The Target is Nightwing?! What am I . . .?!// Further – still slight - hesitation as more of TimRobin than the Doctor's Vingt surfaced. //His voice, his moves, he doesn't want to hurt me. Why am I trying to hurt him. . .?//

Code One-Six-Eight. Target: Nightwing.

//DESTROY//

So powerful, so overwhelmingly strong. The command, the compulsion, to obey. To stop hesitating, to stop slowing himself. He could kill the older man without breaking a sweat, there were six ways he could see to do it right now. He was hesitating. Something was fighting within his programming, disrupting the seamless integration of command and deed. It hurt.

//DESTROY//

Ordered. . . commanded. . . overwhelming compulsion to obey . . .

//DESTROY//

//But I don't want to.//

//DESTROY//

//KAZE! I don't want to! Help me!//

//DESTROY//

"Robin! Fight it! Fight it off!" Nightwing's anguished yell added to the cacophony in his head.

//DESTROY//

Vingt's hand, of its own volition, snapped out, with practiced ease strong fingers avoided the vigilante's desperate counter, wrapping around his big brother's throat and choking off the pleading, rational voice of one he thought of as family. Choking off his air. //Kaze! Yuki! I don't want to! Let me stop!//

//DESTROY//

But Yuki and her cousin were silent, their memories comforting but fallow. //On my own. Command persists . . .// He'd never felt so abandoned.

//DESTROY//

The slim, strong hands clutched tight around his throat and Nightwing tumbled over, flat on his back with the slighter figure crouched on top of him. Nightwing saw stars dancing in front of his eyes; his ribs were on fire, burning up to join the sparks in his vision. Flames mirrored in, but not melting, the icy countenance above him. Unable to breathe, Nightwing settled for silent plea; //C'mon little brother, you can beat it! You can! I know you're faster than you fought just now! I know you're better! You held back! You can still hold back!// Parched lips, starved of air, mouthed a silent word.

"Tim," Above him, the frozen visage cracked. Above him, with all the breath that Nightwing himself had lost, Robin screamed.

//DESTROY//

//No. . .?//

//DESTROY//

//No.//

//DESTROY//

//NO!//

The codes, the programming, ran so deeply seated that to disobey was anathema, the agony of it a burning torture, a wound against self. But what 'self' was that? Sinking into a mire of soul-destroying pain, Vingt could find no answer.

He could, however find a resolution.

Nightwing gasped, sucking in great wheezing lungfuls of air as the steel-like digits around his neck abruptly slackened. His vision cleared, and he stared up into a face he knew as well as his own; //You did it little brother!// Nightwing's joy, though heartfelt was short lived.

Above him duress and agony wracked his little brother's visage, determination warring with compulsion in a bitter, ravaging battle. He scarcely had a moment to note it, to turn to alarm, when the blank smoothness Nightwing had long since learned to dread began oozing across his sib's countenance. //Robin? What the -?!//

The wet thud sounded through the chamber with sickening familiarity. To Deathstroke it was typically the resonance of a job well done. The Demon's Head had heard it far too often, from himself and from others, to have attached a particular emotional value, though he noted it was usually indicative of a turning point. To Nightwing it signified utter failure.

To Vingt, staring down at the shuriken he had embedded in his own chest, it meant simply peace.

"Free . . ." Blood, brilliant red and arterial, bubbled around his lips. It didn't even hurt that badly, he decided. Not compared to how much the now rapidly failing command code had hurt. He was getting cold, though. //And someone's dimmed down the lights. That will make it colder still.// Nightwing had moved, somehow when he wasn't paying attention. That was good, he didn't need to be straddling the other in a death grip. But being held by his big brother was comforting. Like the first time he'd awoken in the cave, scared and disoriented, only to be protected by the other. Nightwing would make it less cold.

Still, cold or not, he'd won. He'd beaten the command codes and while they still whirled, lacerating his mind, trying to slice his 'self' to ribboned strips of pain, he held them in check. They were weakening. So was he.

//Soon it will not matter. I have broken my promise.// The pain was ebbing, and what had been so overridingly important was now difficult to care about.

A faint smile, pained but genuine, crossed his lips.

//Kaze, Yuki, I think I'm coming to see you. I'm sorry, but I will not survive.//

He wished, briefly, that he'd managed to meet his biological parent as Batman had wanted. He'd not completed that mission, and somewhere inside that irked him. He wasn't sure if it was residuals of the programming that made a mission failure so bothersome, or something innately his own.

Around him, the world continued its' slide to blackness. Nightwing was frantically doing . . . something . . . to his chest. //Bandages?// With a last burst of strength, Vingt caught his hands.

"I'm sorry, Big Brother. So s-sorry." His voice failed him then. //So sorry I hurt you.//

Freedom loomed. Freedom, and oblivion, and Vingt raced towards it willingly.

Holding him, Nightwing wasted no time on screaming as he started frantic CPR. He could do this! He could get his little brother back! He could! He –

Deathstroke's blow sent him spinning away from the small, fragile-looking corpse on the floor. Another nearly decapitated him. Furious, Nightwing counter-attacked. //How dare you! Every second I fight with you worsens my chance of saving him! How DARE YOU!// Now, Nightwing screamed, a livid, raging roar. Even Deathstroke the Terminator took a step back at that. But orders were orders, and the client had asked him to step in, to take Nightwing down or at least make him cease his resuscitation efforts.

And that is exactly what he intended to do. A clash of dagger against escrima, and the battle joined in earnest.

Though normally a flamboyant figure, R'as Al Ghul had had, over the millennia, more than a few opportunities to develop the stealth he now displayed. He had, he reasoned, mere moments before the Knight arrived. //For I doubt that many of my Ubu survived the interesting happenstance that meant that the Knight's latest squire was Unit Twenty.// That was a great pity, but like the simmering rage he felt – so close, so very close to having the ultimate assassin in his power! – he held it in check. Wanton destruction, while often very satisfying, would not, in this instance, be helpful. //Nor have I the blissful, disinhibiting insanity of the Pit to guide me.//

The project – the Unit Twenty – was indeed dead. His inspection yielded no possibility of doubt. //And I have seen many false deaths before.// Dead by its own hand, which should not have been possible without a self-destruct order.

The last legacy of the Doctor was a rapidly cooling pile of flesh. Its brilliance and elegance of design dimming, its functionality lost. //I wonder, was it a failure in programming or a partial override that brought this about?//

Al Ghul allowed himself a snarl of frustration.

//This is not how I had planned it!//

Grabbing a conveniently protruding corner of cape, he bundled the deadweight into it. It would not do to get blood down the front of his shirt. //And even in death, you may yield up some of the doctor's secrets.//

Turning his back on the battle that (unsurprisingly given Nightwing's acrobatic prowess) had turned into a sprawling clash that utilized walls, ceilings, and construction equipment with equal flair and aplomb, Al Ghul strode off, heading towards the bowels of his latest lair, skirting the nearly completed Lazarus Pit.

He never made it. As the full weight of the Batman crashed into his side, he wondered why he'd expected to. //Leaving with minimal fuss? Never, when the Detective is involved.// Still, the anger that roiled and bubbled beneath his surface needed an outlet, and the Dark Knight was as good as any.

Drawing his saber, he leapt to the attack, unceremoniously dumping the cloth-wrapped bundle he'd been carrying onto the wooden boardwalk. Meters away from the edge of the Pit, it would be safe enough.

So intent on his attack, and the Bat on his defense and counter, that neither noticed the slight 'pop', the faint displacing of air, that heralded a new arrival.

TBC

Comments, constructive criticisms, thoughts, and chocolate greatly appreciated.