It's All Relative
Chapter 8: Confessions in the Cave
By Teala373
Terry's note said he had gone "to work". Mrs. Todd called to say she wouldn't mind keeping Matt all weekend as he and Jason were having such a good time. Both her sons gone, Mary McGuiness, who was also the presumed dead Barbara Gordon, had the entire apartment to herself. She used the time to continue her methodical thoughts.
She had pulled out her laptop to conduct a little research of her own. She had seen that Dick was already in town and Tim was en route. It would make things a little more difficult, but not impossible.
She wondered how far into this Tim was.
She wondered how much Bruce knew.
She wondered if she could handle seeing Dick Grayson again…
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It didn't go unnoticed by Bruce that Terry was unusually quiet. His silence, as he clicked away on the keyboard of the main computer, was a stark contrast to the very open, very sarcastic young man he was used to interacting with each night.
Bruce wondered if Terry felt out of place because of Dick. He wondered what Terry thought of Dick. He wondered how he would react to the truth. Most of all, he worried that it would all get much worse once Tim arrived.
"Nice work, kid," Dick remarked as he came to stand over Terry's shoulder. Terry was exactly as he expected: a quirky combination of them all with an extra edge that kept Bruce on his toes.
"Um… thanks." Terry felt incredibly odd around the man he was recently introduced to. There was something so familiar to him about Dick Grayson that made his bones ache, but he wasn't sure what it was. He wanted to talk to him and get to know him more, but he found himself tongue-tied and awkward.
He knew Bruce was noticing. He also knew Bruce was hiding something. Bruce may have been good at concealing information form his previous partners, but Terry was more than a partner. He was Batman.
Dick smiled down at Terry. "So, did the old man tell you much, or did you have to dig it up all on your own?"
Terry, feeling awkward again, turned away from Dick and began concentrating on the keyboard again. "We talked about it last night. I think I've got the gist of it."
Dick turned towards Bruce, his eyes glinting under the low lights in the cave. "I'm impressed with how well you've mastered this new skill."
"What new skill?" Bruce met his eldest son's eye, though he found it difficult to do, knowing what he did.
"Having actual conversations with people where you actually divulge information."
"Ace started tuning me out a long time ago. I needed a new audience."
Jet black eyebrows shot up. "And humor, too. Like I said, I'm impressed." His features resumed again to suggest mockery. "Was it the kid or old age that cracked you?"
Bruce's eyes steeled over and his tone was rough. "Guilt."
Dick had been prepared for a barrage of answers, but none of them were a very honest confession. He blinked several time, lost for words. Before he could come up with anything, Bruce excused himself to a more secluded part of the cave that held a kitchenette, bathroom and even a meditation area.
"None of it was his fault," Dick began softly, more to himself than to Terry, "even us leaving. It was just something that happened. No one could have stopped it. Once she was gone, the wheels were in motion."
Terry turned in his chair. "He's different now than I gather he used to be. I think he tells me things so that he doesn't make the same mistakes he did before."
"They weren't really mistakes… it's just that this sort of life… it doesn't exactly come with a manual."
Terry swallowed a lump inn his throat. "Yeah, tell me about it."
Clearing his throat, Dick regained his composure. "So, tell me what you know, kid. I'll fill in the holes for you. This may be a new Bruce, but he couldn't have told you everything."
Smiling thinly, Terry began recanting the conversation of the previous evening.
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For the first time in a long time, Tim Drake felt at ease. The Gotham air was surprisingly soothing to him. He felt like he was home. He felt like he was finally on the path to healing wounds long since opened.
He just wished he was bringing his surrogate father and brother better news. He wished he could tell them that he had found Barbara.
But he hadn't. Instead, he had found himself a mess – a mess that needed to be cleaned up.
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Terry and Dick had been deep in conversation when an alert flashed across the screen. Hitting a button, Terry was dismayed to find that Inque had resurfaced and was up to her old tricks.
Bruce soon appeared as Terry was suiting up. "Freeze gun?"
"Check."
"Back-up Freeze gun?"
"Check."
"Modified batarangs?"
"Double check on that."
"And you're well aware of all your nearest water sources."
Terry threw a withering look before pulling on his cowl. "You're kidding, right?"
Dick snickered as the batmobile fired up and raced out of the cave. "That was a such a line I would say!" When he looked up at Brice's face, he felt his smile fall. "What's wrong?"
The unreadable emotion that had crossed Bruce's face was now gone. "Nothing."
"That was not 'nothing' and you know it. You're much more readable now than you were before."
"Don't push it, Dick." Bruce bit back as he headed for his chair to watch Terry's progress.
"But that's what I do best."
"We'll talk later," Bruce began patching into the batsuit's visual and audio devices.
Dick shrugged as he pulled up a chair alongside him. "If we don't actually talk about it later, then you haven't changed as much as I thought."
Bruce turned, focusing a hard glare. "What do want from me, Dick? I'm 59 years old, living in this house alone because the only thing I've ever been really good at is isolating myself!"
"Tim and I didn't leave because of you," Dick stated softly, "we left because things changed and we couldn't handle it."
"I should have been there for both of you more… I should have kept better tabs on Barbara. I shouldn't have let her go to the embassy…" Bruce rasped, letting his gaze falter.
"That's so typical," Dick huffed, cutting him off, "when something bad happens, your reaction is to control, to micromanage. It wasn't your fault."
"No," Bruce hung his head, "I was a fool… I could have stopped it all…"
Both men's heads snapped to attention as they heard voices. Batman had arrived on the scene and was exchanging the usual witty banter with Inque. The conversation was temporarily forgotten as they began concentrating on the most interesting and dangerous of all the newest Batman's foes.
The software that displayed Terry's transmission also recorded them. Bruce was able to take the video images and piece them together to create a complete, or near-complete, scope of the area. Bruce began looking over the visuals of the transmissions as the fight commenced.
"There's a fire extinguisher near the generator," Bruce noted into the microphone as he zoomed in and out of the image and matched it against a floor plan he had opened. The particular room Batman and Inque found themselves in was one of many robotics labs in a Fox subsidiary building.
Inque, still frustrated over her last battle with the bat, unleashed her unchecked fury as she manipulated her form over and over, quickly maneuvering around the room and getting several good hits in.
Most of the foes were one, maybe two, trick ponies. They weren't child's play, but they were more predictable and formulaic to take down. Inque had no definite patterns or fighting style. She was unique in her shape shifting and her attacks. She was lighting quick and very much in tune with how far she could push her own limits. She was also well aware of her weaknesses and always carefully watched Batman to make a move for anything water or ice related.
Dick squirmed and fidgeted beside Bruce. "This is nerve wracking! How do you just sit here and watch him like this?"
"Stun her with a batarang and move up to shoot the gun," Bruce thundered into the microphone as Batman desperately tried to avoid Inque's multi-tendriled attacks.
"Inque's the worst one," he then addressed Dick's questions as his fingers flew over the key boards, looking for a way to set off the room's sprinkler system, "she's very focused and experienced with using her abilities." He cursed as he discovered that there was no sprinkler system in the room. Because of all the expensive equipment, they had fire doors that sealed off the room and vents, containing the fire by cutting off oxygen instead.
Dick grimaced as Inque used a tendril to whip a batarang out of Batman's hands. "Eh, she's like some freaky cross between Catwoman and Clayface."
"Except worse." Bruce frowned as he began hacking into the computers and machines of the room Batman and Inque were in. Turning certain machines on, Inque became distracted and her attacks became less relentless as she began uncoiling her liquid form from an A.I. interface machine.
"Hey, you know what would be really déjà vu-ish?" Dick had to make a smart-ass comment to break the tension. Watching the battle between Batman and Inque was really unnerving him, for some reason.
Bruce grunted briefly, but otherwise didn't respond as he overrode another computer.
"If Inque was a disfigured actress turned jewel thief that had some weird pseudo relationship with Batman."
Bruce turned briefly to shoot Dick his most withering look.
Dick was unfazed. "She'd also have a weird affinity for some animal and have someone who stared in a movie with her to…"
"That's enough."
He opened his mouth to snap back, but though better of it and pursed his lips together, instead. After watching a few more brutal interactions between Batman and Inque, he decided he couldn't take it anymore.
"I'm going to give him some back-up."
Bruce paused in his order barking to half turn towards Dick. "Alright. Be careful."
Dick rolled his eyes as he quickly dressed in plain, black Kevlar suit that would hide his identity. He vaguely wondered why Bruce didn't offer him any resistance. After all, he could be rusty for all that Bruce knew. He smiled as he fired up the spare batmobile. 'Of course Bruce knows I'm not rusty,' he thought to himself, 'he always knows…'
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Mary had tried watching T.V. to give her aching mind and reeling emotions a break. When the story broke about Batman allegedly trying to capture the ever-elusive Inque, she knew the time for confrontation had come. There would be no well-formulated plan. She would just go in and do what she did best: never back down.
"We're now getting word that a second costumed vigilante has joined the scene and is apparently aiding Batman in his capture of Inque. It will be interesting to see what Commissioner Bard's comments will be when he discovers this new Batman has partners, just as the original Batman did."
"As you know, Commissioner Bard does not share the same sentiments as former Commissioner's Gordon and Montoya on working with the costumed vigilante's. The batsignal was taken down after Commissioner Montoya's murder, three years ago. Bard has repeatedly made his intensions very clear that he will not welcome vigilantism in this city, even though Batman appears to be the only person that can stop such formidable criminals, such as Inque."
Mary shut the T.V. off and stared blankly at it. She hadn't known that Montoya had been murdered. When they moved to Gotham, she had become very engrossed in a project with work and paid little attention to current events, thus she failed to know that Jason Bard was the new Commissioner. As an image of Jason appeared in her mind, so did another memory.
"Don't sugar coat it, Barbara. Go ahead and tell me the real reason you're breaking this off!"
"Jason, I…"
"Let's stop kidding ourselves that you really wanted to make this work. You and I both know I was just a temporary fill-in until that snot-nosed Grayson stopped throwing his temper tantrum."
"That's not true and you…"
"I don't know why you and your father insist on wasting your time with Bruce Wayne and his ward that he insists in molding in his own image! I've never seen two such ungrateful, spoiled brats…"
"That's quite enough! If I knew you got so childish when you didn't get your way, I would have ended this before it began!"
Jason hadn't been a temporary fill-in for Dick. She honestly meant to move forward and start a new life without someone who could give her a stable future. She did, however, leave him because of Dick. Dick had been her soul mate in every way. It hadn't taken him very long to work his way back in her heart.
She frowned. Dick couldn't really be her soul mate if she had to have run from him, too. It wasn't just Bruce she had run from, it was also Dick.
"Don't get sentimental," she spoke aloud to herself, "he's just as much a threat."
Throwing on a coat, she headed out into the night. One way or another, she was going to keep the promise she had made to her then unborn son before the accident.