Chapter 10
AN I am so sorry that it's been so long since i've updated, the days just got away from me. I hope you enjoy the chapter though!
5 months later
After the incident with the men in the alley, the team has treated me with more caution than I would like. They treat me like i'll break the second something bad happens, but they don't realise everything i've been through has only made me stronger, that all I needed to thrive was the opportunity to escape my fears.
I've found myself stuck on the easy assignments on almost every single case that we have, and each time I bring it up with Hotch he denies it, saying that it's because i'm still new and figuring out my place within the team.
But we all know that it's a load of shit, before they knew anything about me, he assigned me in all different areas to figure out my strenghts and weaknesses, and then he started assigning me according to my strenghts and weaknesses.
Which is how I find myself sitting here, in a borrowed room in a police station in Pennsylvania, sitting in my own desk chair next to Garcia.
We have been on this case for a little over 5 days and we seem to be stuck, because no matter how many leads we run down, we always get caught in dead ends, and teenagers are disappearing at an alarming rate.
I look over my shoulder when I hear the door open, only to see the whole team enter the small room, all of them wearing matching looks of frustration and exhaustion.
"Do you have anything Garcia?" Hotch asks, sounding on the verge of desperate.
"No, but why are you all here?" she asks, shooting him a questioning look.
"We all need a break from looking at evidence, we've run down every lead, re-checked every crime scene, the only thing left to do is continue to go over the evidence, hoping we missed something." he tells her, and the 'until another kid goes missing' part is left out.
"I could be helping Hotch" I pitch in, feeling oddly reminiscent of when Bruce used to ground me from patrol, leaving me manning comms for the night.
"Garcia needs help with the technical side of things for this case, she doesn't have the same speed or capabilities out here that she usually does, it helps to have an extra set of hands." he tells me, and I know that it's on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she's got it, but I know that she won't, because she's conspiring with him to keep me 'safe'
"Yeah" I mutter, causing Hotch to shoot me a look, but I can't drag up the self preservation to care right now.
Garcia turns back to the computers, the team turning to leave the room, but they are stopped at her frantic shout.
"NO! What the hell! No no nononono, this is not happening!" she says as she types quickly on her keyboard.
I look over the screens quickly, immediately recognising the code flashing over the screens, and while I know that Garcia is one of the best, she isn't the best.
"What's happening Garcia?" Hotch asks, all of them suddenly coming closer to the screens, trying to figure out what went wrong.
"I'm being hacked!" she shouts, still trying desperately to shut the intruder out of the system, but I know where she's going wrong, and I know she won't appreciate it, but if she wants to keep her shit intact, I need to do this.
"Move" I bark, reaching for the back of her chair and pulling it back, away from the screens so that I can take her place.
"Oh no you don't" I mutter as I take over, ignoring Garcia's shouts of protest.
My eyes fly over the screens, taking in all the information and shutting her down at every turn, my fingers fly over the board, bringing me back to when she would test me with shit like this.
It takes me a few minutes, but with a victorious cry I slam the last wall down, effectively shutting her out.
"Take that Bab's!" I shout, throwing my arms into the air.
"And the student, becomes the teacher" I quote, quite smugly.
I smirk as I hear the familiar sound of her accessing the speaker on my phone, turning around to find the shocked, and some angry, faces of the team looking back at me.
"Gloating is unbecoming Timmy" she says, although I hear the pride in her voice.
"Yeah, so is hacking into Garcia's server" I tell her, pulling my phone from my pocket, and holding it up so that I can talk to her for real.
"You and Wing are working the same case, although he's been following it for much longer than you have, he's been trying to pin down this human trafficking ring for over a month now, they moved on from Bludhaven when they realised he was after them." she says.
"So you knew that I was working the case, and instead of calling to tell me that we should maybe work together, you decided to hack my friend?" I ask, wondering what goes on in her head sometimes.
"Well, I suggested that, but Wing said that he thought it would be more fun to drop in unannounced, I just went along with him. Although you can tell your team that there will be new, incriminating evidence waiting for them back in their conference room." she says, going into Oracle mode faster than I can blink.
"Okay, tell him to just call next time, okay?" I ask her
"Sure thing baby bird" she says
"Not a baby" I mutter before she hangs up.
"What the hell was that Tim?!" Garcia asks, half upset, half awed.
"I recognised her code, and while I know that you are one of the best, she is the best, and only someone intimately familiar with the way she works would be able to shut her down." I tell her
"Intimately familiar with her code? Who the hell was that?" she asks
"Oracle, famous in the hacking world, also the person who taught me most of the things that I know." I say casually, knowing just how famous she is in hacking communities.
"Oracle hacked me?" she asks, sounding unbelieving.
"Yeah" I answer, knowing that it isn't really a question, more of a 'still processing' thing.
"The Oracle that works with Batman and the Justice League? The one who has been unhackable for years? The one that anyone who's anyone tells stories about?" she asks, looking for confirmation that i'm not pulling her chain.
"Yes, Garcia, that Oracle." I tell her, amusement now making its way into my voice.
"And you somehow shut her down? Oracle?" she asks
"I told you that I was qualified for a tech position within the BAU, I might have been underplaying some of my talents, but I wanted to work in the field, and it's harder to find great technical people on the right side of the law than it is to find field agents." I tell her, putting emphasis on the part about working in the field, shooting a sidelong glance at Hotch.
"So you are in contact with someone who knowingly works for vigilantes, and who somehow got someone to deliver us incriminating evidence in a crowded police station while we came here?" Derek asks, seemingly wanting clarification on certain points.
"Uh, Nightwing, and yes" I tell him, deciding to just get the truth part out of the way.
"Nightwing?" Reid asks
"Yes, vigilante who works out of Bludhaven, has ties to Gotham and Batman, as well as the Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, and other more superhero-y less vigilant-y people." I tell them, hoping the decision to doesn't blow up in my face.
"No, I know who he is, I was just wondering why you were on a nickname basis with him and this Oracle, and why we once again didn't know something major about you that could end up affecting us, like it just did." Reid tells me, the betrayal on his face sparking guilt, and then anger, so much anger.
"Because, it's personal! like getting tortured was personal, but instead of making it difficult for you all to figure out, and kicking you out of the room like I so desperately wanted to, I let you stay, I let you see me, the real me, and I hate doing that. Masks keep me safe, from everything, I have people that I let them down with, but there aren't many. After 2 months of knowing you people, I revealed one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. Now after 7 months you're finding a connection between me and a vigilante, and you are using it to call me into question, when it never had anything to do with you in the first place. Yeah, I get it, i'm not supposed to know the people that I do, but i'm not a corrupt cop, i'm not doing anything bad. Oracle helped me back then, she saw potential in me with the way I was with computers, I was just a kid when I met them, and they don't put anything in danger here. They are the ones who made sure that you wouldn't find out about the torture, the ones that completely buried my connection to them, because they want me to get better, they are my friends, unconventional ones, sure, but they care about me, and I won't give them up for a job. I get that you are worried about my mental state, but the entire reason I joined this team, is because I knew that I would be helping to prevent people from doing what was done to me to other people, and sure, i'm helpful behind a computer, or a desk, but I need to move, I need to do things, and keep my body moving, because it makes it so much easier to push past what happened to me. Moving, and doing, it's what makes me functional. You might think you're helping me by keeping me somewhere safe, but just because I can't get hurt by somebody that we're hunting down, doesn't mean that it won't hurt me more in the long run if i'm cooped up with my fucking brain all day." I finish off, the anger and tension palpable in the air.
I stare them down for a moment longer, and after realising everything that i've just said, I avert my eyes and push past them all, throwing open the door and rushing out.
AN Thoughts? Good? Bad? Meh? Lemme know what you think. :)