February 26th, 08:07 AM

Wayne Manor

Tim was lucky. Extremely lucky. When Bruce had examined him, he'd located only two cracked ribs, though he'd briefly been puzzled by a certain unevenness of other ribs, which Tim explained had been broken before and healed on their own. He didn't seem internally damaged, at least not badly.

So far, nobody had said a word about the discoveries of the day before. Bruce had called the school, said Tim wouldn't be attending this week, and that was the end of it. Breakfast the next morning had featured animated conversation on Dick's part, total absence on Bruce's. Tim had noticed that Dick never once glanced at his plate once they started eating, locating the food presumably from memory.

Now they were in the kitchen, watching Alfred do the dishes. Tim had volunteered to dry them, but Alfred wouldn't hear of it. Dick had commented that the butler was very possessive of "his" kitchen.

Dick was perched on the counter near the sink, sucking on a lemon wedge. Tim thought that a hideous thing to do right after breakfast, but Dick seemed to be enjoying it, so he didn't say anything.

As for Dick's observations, he noticed that Tim was mutely fascinated by the large amounts of bubbles Alfred's dish washing was producing. As usual, Alfred was washing by hand. Dick had never been able to fathom why. They had a perfectly good dishwasher. Tim watched the bubbles like he'd never seen so many, and wasn't even sure what they were.

"Bubbles aren't what get dishes clean, and people know it. And yet, suds is a huge selling point with dish soap, because people willingly fool themselves into thinking the bubbles somehow matter," Dick commented, apparently without provocation.

He paused when Bruce appeared through the kitchen doorway, then went on.

"They purposely believe what they know to be illusion. Smoke pellets are no different. Everyone knows I have them, and what I'm doing behind them, but few people have called me out on it. They'll stand there, staring at the smoke like they never saw it coming, like they've no idea what's going on. People, even villains, want to be fooled."

Tim wasn't sure how to respond to that. That was almost like an open invitation to ask questions about Nightwing, as it was a bizarre merging of both the secret identity and the mask. Tim decided he'd be better off staying quiet. After all, nobody had said anything about yesterday's incident. Best he leave that alone. He had the uneasy feeling he'd screwed something up, but wasn't sure what.

He guessed it was probably his knowledge that Bruce and Dick were Batman and Nightwing respectively. That was dangerous information for a thirteen-year-old to possess. Especially a practical stranger, an outsider, like he was.

"Dick, a word," Bruce's face was dark, he sounded angry.

A twinge of fear, swiftly followed by fierce resentment, played through Dick's eyes. Slowly, almost sulkily, he got down off the counter and followed Bruce into the other room. He paused in the doorway to throw the leftover peel from his lemon at the garbage can in the corner. He didn't even turn to gauge the distance, just tossed the peel over his shoulder. It hit the exact center of the can, Tim noticed.

Dick turned his head slightly and flashed Tim an mischievous grin. Then he was out the door.

How does he do that?, Tim wondered, could I do that with enough practice?.

Alfred had paused at Bruce's words, a soapy dish halfway out of the water. Now he went back to washing the dishes, pretending a little too hard that he hadn't noticed the tone of Bruce's voice. His imperfect act added to Tim's unease.

"Robin is dead!," the shout came from the living room.

Bruce and Dick were evidently having an argument. Over Tim. Alfred cast a sympathetic eye in the boy's direction, but said nothing.

"No, Jason Todd is dead," was Dick's response.

"I will not have another Robin in this house."

Alfred glanced at where Tim had been, but he was gone, and therefor missed the rest of the conversation, which took a very different turn.

"I will not create another," Bruce said "just to watch him die."

"You just don't get it, do you?!. You don't choose to create a vigilante. You didn't make me into Robin, you just kept me from killing myself, protected me from my darker half until I was ready to protect myself. Robin was already there, you just saved his life," Dick growled, his fury matching Bruce's note for note "nobody wants to make people they care about into vigilantes. Nobody. But that was never your call. Your choice was in what you did after realizing that I would inevitably come to be behind a mask. You chose to help me become a hero instead of a villain. To help me live instead of die."

"That's not true," Bruce's voice was quieter now.

"You know it is. You know I would have destroyed myself, and everyone around me, if you hadn't tempered the steel of Robin with some reason. Bruce, you can't kill an idea. You can't destroy a symbol. Robin isn't something that can be killed. People can be killed, ideals never die. That boy is Robin, whether you like it or not."

"I don't believe that."

"Well, I do. And I can't let that alone. He nearly got himself killed to save my life, because no one has taught him. No one has refined his raw talent, or taught him to focus. He needs help, Bruce."

"I can't."

"Then I will."

"You can't take him to Blüdhaven," Bruce protested, adding hastily "Legally, he belongs to Morna."

"Then I will stay here and train him. I made a mistake once, I assumed a boy knew what he was doing and let him go before he was ready. I will not make that mistake again."

"And if he gets killed?," Bruce asked pointedly.

"Then I'll have to live with that. But better he die because it was impossible to save him than because nobody had ever cared enough to teach him how to survive."

Bruce may have wanted to continue the argument, but Dick returned to the kitchen, a shiver of irritation running across his shoulders. It took no time at all for him to notice Tim's absence.

"I believe it was all the yelling which disturbed him," Alfred commented mildly.

Dick flashed an angry glance over his shoulder at Bruce, who was just now entering the room.

"He'll be back," Bruce said, almost defensively.

"No," Dick said "he won't. Not unless we look for him."

"What makes you think that?," Bruce asked.

"He overheard you say you didn't want Robin in your house. What do you think that meant to him?. Didn't you hear anything I just said?."

"What does that have to do with-"

"He thinks you don't want him here!," Dick exploded furiously "It's like you don't even listen when I talk!. He is Robin, and you said you didn't want him. Where's the mystery, detective?!," the final word, spoken with a sneer, was the prelude to Dick stomping out and slamming the front door behind him.

"I believe Master Dick has a point," Alfred ventured gently.

"I know," Bruce said with a heavy sigh "and that's what scares me."

He knew he had to go help Dick look for Tim, though he wasn't sure where to start. Tim was Dick's friend, not his. Would Tim go to Barbara, perhaps?. They were something like friends now, weren't they?. Bruce was loath to admit that he hadn't the foggiest idea. He'd sort of purposely avoided learning much about Tim and his habits.

Everything he learned about the boy pointed to a single truth, one which he did not want to face. The self-same truth Dick had just now pointed out to him. Robin was not dead.

01:00 PM

Gotham High

"I don't get it," Barbara said "where could he go?."

She had joined the hunt for Tim when Bruce had called her to see if Tim had visited her. He'd waited for awhile after Tim left, to give the boy time to get there if he was going there at all.

Bruce, Dick and Barbara were now gathered outside the high school. Dick was sitting on a picnic table, bouncing a rubber ball on the concrete as though he'd come here specifically to do that. His casual look was driving Barbara nuts. He was the one who'd said Tim wasn't coming back, that they had to find him, so why was he so damn cool about it?.

"We've looked everywhere," Barbara persisted "even his old apartment, hellhole that it is, he might think of it as being home. But he wasn't there- will you PLEASE stop bouncing that damn ball!?."

Her sudden outburst was met with silence and that damnable calm gaze, the one he'd inherited from Bruce, that unreadable look that was either bastardized confidence or the feigning thereof.

However, he did have the decency to catch the ball and put it in his pocket. He was being obnoxious on purpose, making her ask him to stop. She knew, with a sting of frustration, that he could read her silences in a way that she could not read his. It stood as a humiliating reminder that she did not fit into the world of Batman. Hero she might be, but she was not truly a child of Batman.

She remembered the day she'd met Tim. She had at once been drawn and repelled by him, seeing immediately how he resembled those who were of the Batman line. Though not related by blood, each of them had a certain way of moving, and expressing himself that was unique to the breed. She had taken the name, projected the illusion in form, but could not execute the persona at its base level because it was not truly in her nature. She wondered if she might need to take another name. That thought made her angry too. She felt excluded from a private club, excluded because her state of being did not fall in line with the requirements. It was endlessly frustrating.

Barbara took a breath to calm herself. It came to her that Dick hadn't gone about being intentionally annoying in a long time. He was always at his most obnoxious when he was worried about something, or when he was angry. She guessed he might well be both and decided to lay off him for now.

"Where could he possibly go?," she asked.

"That kid had free run of the city before he was out of diapers," Dick replied "he could go anywhere."

Barbara narrowed her eyes, glaring at him "That's not very helpful."

Through all this, Bruce had been completely silent, he and Dick were studiously avoiding each other's eyes. Evidently, words had passed between them, expanding the rift which had been present for almost as long as Barbara could remember. She'd never asked about it, but she thought it must have come about around the time Dick ran off to Blüdhaven. The same time, she remembered, that he had dropped the name of Robin and acquired Nightwing as an alias.

You didn't ask Bats, real Bats, about their past. They'd either tell you, or they wouldn't. It was on their terms, in their own good time. And it was utterly maddening.

"Well, we can't just give up," Barbara said when it was evident that Dick was not going to speak on his own "we can't give up on him. He could be in real trouble."

"You want I should put up fliers?," Dick asked in a voice tinged with sarcasm.

Barbara opened her mouth to retort, but thought better of it. Dick was tired, probably still hurting from his brief skirmish with Black Death, and evidently injured from whatever fight he and Bruce had been having before all this started. More than that, his eyes were at last beginning to betray his concern for Tim to Barbara. His expression was finally cracking, becoming readable to someone outside those of his own kind. His own kind, what a strange thing to think. He was human, just as she was. But he was also something... very different. Something she wasn't, couldn't be, was incapable of understanding, no matter how much she fussed and fumed about it.

"We're worried about him too," Dick said, his face softening momentarily.

Bruce looked at him, but didn't contradict or confirm that. Dick's eyes met his adoptive father's, just for an instant. It was as though information, complex and diverse, flashed between them, brushing roughly past the uncomprehending Barbara. She'd been left out again.

"I hate it when you do that," She grumbled.

Dick's only response was to smirk, Bruce pretended he hadn't even heard. Before Barbara could think of another complaint, a look crossed Dick's face, as though he'd just read something very interesting.

"Care to share with the rest of the class?," Barbara asked, demanded really.

"I know where Tim is," Dick said, a slow grin spreading across his face, as though this was hilarious.

"What?. How?...," Barbara shook her head, aligning her thoughts "Where?."

With a flick of his wrist, Dick produced a playing card. Barbara knew it must have come out of his sleeve, but he'd done it so artfully that she hadn't seen it, even standing right next to him. Deftly, he flipped the card so Barbara could see the face of it.

"It's a jack of diamonds. So?. And shouldn't that be an ace?," and where the Hell do you keep a deck of cards?.

She knew that Dick had his entire Nightwing arsenal on underneath his clothing, just as she was ready to "go Batgirl" at a moment's notice. She knew there were virtually no empty spaces for putting extra things because every single inch was occupied by something of the Bat arsenal, which was the main reason she always carried a purse. She didn't even have space for a wallet in her pocket. So where did he put those cards?.

Her eyes went to Bruce, and she saw that he'd understood the message contained within the playing card. She also saw he was impressed. Sleight of hand was a must in their line of work. Though Batman might be the better illusionist, Dick was by far the better performer, showing off an illusion without giving it away instead of having to hide it in order to keep its secrets.

"The art of the disappearing act is not in the disappearance itself, but rather the reappearance and the audience's desire for the trick to work."

"English. Some of us were not circus performers," Barbara hissed.

"He's hiding in plain sight," Dick said, turning the card again and again between two fingers "the most obvious place for him to be, except for one thing."

"Dick!," Barbara hated suspense, and Dick knew it too.

"We couldn't find him, because we wanted to be fooled. He didn't run away. He went home."

"We already searched the apartment-"

"He doesn't live there anymore. Legally speaking, at least for the time being, Tim belongs to Lady Westfield," the woman whose diamonds he had stolen.

"It would have been easier if you'd used the knave of hearts, Dick," Barbara grumped.

"Left it in my other shirt," Dick shrugged, in the same motion making the card disappear "that kid's smart, picks up on things real fast," a snap of the fingers produced the jack of hearts (otherwise known as the knave of hearts).

"How come you're not this annoying around the Team?," Barbara asked.

"A performance is only as good as its audience," Dick replied smoothly.

Barbara couldn't quite decide if that was a compliment or an insult, and so let it lie.

"I think he had another reason," Bruce said thoughtfully.

"Oh?," Dick looked miffed that Bruce wanted to elaborate, if not entirely contradict, him.

Barbara hid a smirk behind one hand.

Way to wipe that smug grin off him, Bruce.

"I think he knew we'd figure it out. Knew it was the only place where we wouldn't follow him," Bruce explained "he knew we'd look for him, even if he doesn't admit to himself that he has value."

"Like the people and their foam products, supporting the illusion for themselves as much as the customers who buy the stuff," Dick's comment made absolutely no sense to Barbara, but she didn't ask.

She felt sure that she really didn't want to know. And that was what separated her, now and forever, from Batman and his offspring. She didn't just "not understand" them. She didn't even want to understand, though she was loath to admit that to herself. To understand meant opening herself up to a darker reality than the one she was familiar with, a world of dragons she chose to ignore.

Though the meaning behind the comment was probably benign, asking about it might somehow bring her further into the world than she wanted to be, standing as she was at the threshold between darkness and light, only moonlighting, merely playing at being what these creatures truly were.

Like the man said, she wanted to be:

Fooled.

Westfield Manor

Batgirl was not the only one trying to cast a sheet over reality. Both Batman and Nightwing had put out of their minds the tremendous oddity of Black Death attacking during the day. Though both made it a habit to notice clues and follow them to their logical conclusion, this one they had subconsciously dropped, like a pedestrian dropping a bit of crumpled paper.

It didn't dawn on them, perhaps because they didn't want it to. Even Nightwing, who had already admitted the truth about what Tim was, hadn't come to recognize the deeper reality. He thought on some level that Black Death might have come for revenge, and it disconcerted him to think that there was more than one, and that they might know who he was. He didn't think, even for a moment, that it was Tim who was the real target. And not accidentally, either.

But Tim knew. As soon as he realized his stalker wasn't Nightwing, who was the only other candidate, he knew that he was being hunted by this monstrous hulk of a man whom he knew nothing about. He didn't know why, but the why was far from the most critical piece of the puzzle.

Tim was running from more than just the people he believed didn't want him. Perhaps it was even a lie he told himself, to give him courage to leave them, and take Black Death elsewhere.

He'd picked a city out of a hat, and come to Morna Westfield to announce that he wanted to go there. She had the means to send him. Perhaps Black Death would not be able to follow. No, that was a delusion he could not allow himself to fall into.

But, if he was far away, then at least the people he cared about -people who really mattered- wouldn't be caught in the crossfire. If Black Death wanted him dead, so be it. Yet he suspected this was not the case. He didn't know why, but the crawling of the skin at the back of his neck told him that there was something far more sinister, far more dangerous, going on beneath the surface.

"Were I your mother, I would not permit this," Morna said, sitting on her white couch, one hand gently stroking Etilka's ears.

Tim sat across from her in an armchair, tense and barely able to sit still.

"However, I am not. It was not given to me to care what happens to you, not like a mother ought to. I believe you capable of caring for yourself. You'll not want for anything, so long as you don't cause any trouble over there. You leave in the morning."

"Thank you, Lady Westfield."