sideshow 02d: 'the sand-washed stone is more'
A/N: Back after brief hiatus to update Till-Then. (To my fellow Americans: Tuesday is election day. Civic engagement is super cool.)
Dick knows his jaw drops. He takes a graceless step backward into the comforting solidity of the wall.
Stop, he tells himself, regaining his composure. He, or whoever sent him, is just trying to get a reaction out of you. You and Bruce might have spent a while on the worst terms imaginable without actual vows of vengeance being involved, but you know he wouldn't do this.
And if he ever did, the copy he made damn well wouldn't resort to murder that easily!
The Deathstroke theory is both less disturbing and slightly more plausible, whatever the chained killer on the cot thinks. Even if Slade would have less in the way of both means and motive.
But most likely is this third party, the Owl. New on the scene, or someone old under a new name. Who may be trying to get at Bruce through him, and very likely is the reason his duplicate knows their identities. Why he is so certain that he is Richard Grayson. Dick shakes his head. "That doesn't sound like him," he says.
There's that silent scorn again, stronger than ever. "You know him?" copy-Grayson says. He continues giving very little in the way of nonverbal cues, but Dick is fairly sure he's not the only one using this opportunity to get his double's measure.
Dick chuckles, a little weakly, and runs his hand through his hair again. "Does Dick Grayson know Bruce Wayne," he repeats. "Wow."
The more questions he gets answered, the fewer theories are compatible with the data. Of course that's your goal in any investigation, narrowing the possibilities down until you arrive at the truth, but if you run out of theories altogether you'll know you went wrong somewhere, trusted bad information or made a leap of faulty logic, and have to start over. And testimony is always the trickiest leg of any case—incredibly useful, but horribly unreliable. In this case, it's almost all they have. That needs to change.
Eyes narrow now, watching him, the clone repeats, "Dick."
Nightwing shrugs. "It's what people call me. I'm told it's only sometimes meant descriptively. Listen—" He raises a hand to gesture, and realizes that sometime in the last several seconds the young man chained to the bench has gone tenser than he's been since before the breakfast cereal. It can't be the hand itself; the prisoner didn't startle when Nightwing jolted upright, has not displayed specifically physical defensive body language, and he isn't afraid of being hurt. He's afraid of something, but it isn't pain.
That flat challenge from last night is back, as his double searches his face. "Anyone could know that," he says.
Nightwing blinks. "Know what?"
"They mentioned it in interviews. It doesn't mean anything."
"What are—"
His enunciation has gone hard again, and he holds the eyes of Dick's mask. "My parents called me Dick. Dickie."
He's right. That is a matter of public record, if you're willing to dig a little for ancient news coverage of the Flying Graysons. It doesn't prove anything.
But now they know that he thinks he had parents.
"Yeah," says Nightwing. "It's always been my nickname, too." He sees the way the other man breaks eye contact, head glancing away left while the right shoulder comes a fraction of an inch forward. Defense. Rejection. Still not the physical kind. "You…" he says, suspicion solidifying. "You don't think I'm real. Do you."
His double gives a minimal shrug of one shoulder. "Illusions. Holographic systems. The Circus has a shapeshifter." He scrapes his eyes across Nightwing's chest. "My replacement is thirteen. I don't think you're a clone." Dick can't detect any stress on the 'I' or 'you,' and isn't sure it's even meant to be there. Since apparently their prisoner doesn't believe in a single thing he's seen or heard since he got here.
And how do you prove that you're you? To someone apparently convinced that reality is an elaborate hoax, no less. To your own delusional clone.
Bruce probably has a protocol for this. Dick doesn't.
Logic actually seems like a safe first bet. "Why would we do that?" he asks. He wants to ask it gently, but is instinctively sure his duplicate will distrust gentleness, even more than Jason did the one time he tried it. Like Pantha, or any other young hero he's worked with who's been through too much, and has no history of just treatment to fall back on. "Why go to all this trouble to convince you that you…" Don't exist. Aren't real. Are my clone.
A smile, then. Cold and thin and painfully cynical, enough that it reminds Dick of the night years ago when Robin was interviewing every dockside prostitute he could find about the john he and Batman suspected A) had murdered Lacy Lisa Levoutte and B) was State Senator Andrew Biggs. Frustrated, around two AM, he asked one woman if she even cared. It could be her next.
She smiled, just like that—different, with cheap plum lipstick laid on heavily and stained imperfect teeth and a woman's weary posture, but still. Like that. If it's not him, it'll be some other big man. It doesn't matter. There's no getting justice for us. Nobody cares, kid.
We do, he told her. Batman and me. We care. We'll get him.
"People," his doppelgänger says, so bitter it's weightless. "Can say no."
Because he was just thinking of that streetwalker—he was eleven years old and thought she was ancient but in retrospect she was probably not quite thirty—Dick's first association is straight to sex, no means no, and he thinks for a second the guy is saying it's all a complicated Titans scheme to sexually assault him and pass him off as a sexbot with no human rights, or something. Then he gets it.
Maybe it is sex he's talking about, and maybe it isn't, but this isn't about what they can make some hypothetical third party think. The imaginary hoax is all aimed at him, Dick's double, my name is Richard Grayson. Telling him he isn't a person. That that name isn't really his. That he has no human rights.
That there's no point trying to say no. To anything.
The point is that light bitterness, that old familiar acceptance of a status quo that offers you nothing, no protection, no justice, no hope. We care, Robin had told that woman, the most disinterested of all the potential witnesses he'd questioned even though her own life could be on the line. She'd smiled again, nothing joyful in her eyes, nothing seductive in her posture, and answered, I don't.
Nightwing feels anger rising in his gut, anger edged with a little shame.
"Did someone," he begins, and then doesn't bother to finish, because obviously someone did. Someone told him he wasn't a person, that he had no right to refusal, to choices. Someone used him. Someone.
He says it was Bruce Wayne, but if Dick had thought it was even a little possible before, he doesn't now, because Batman has a nearly infinite capacity for cruelty under the right conditions, and he is somewhat prejudiced against anything that isn't a normal human, and on top of that he's an enormous asshole, but this kind of treachery is beyond him.
Bruce never tried to force Dick to be Robin. Tried to make him stop, a few times, but always gave in when he insisted. Never tried to force him to stay. Got really upset when he dropped out of college, but didn't actually apply any direct pressure to get him to change his mind. He won't work with you except on his terms, and once you've agreed to them he can be an appalling autocrat a lot of the time, but. He had every opportunity to try to mold Dick Grayson into the kind of person who would follow orders before his own heart. And he didn't.
Somebody tried to break his double's will, and his double escaped. And here's Dick, making nice and asking questions and insisting the guy isn't real.
Which he isn't. Because Nightwing is instead, because he thinks that Batman did this to him and that is not possible, because he doesn't know how to use his face and has a mysterious healing factor. He cannot be the real one. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have rights. And Wally's going to be fine, so Dick thinks…he can afford to care.
"Listen," he repeats. Reaches up, strips off his mask. Seeks out those identical, strangely flat eyes, which lock onto his and don't flicker. "Richard. You honestly only went after the Flash with intent to kill because you believed it was the only way to survive?"
He didn't say that, but Dick's starting to believe he didn't say it because he took it so completely for granted.
Richard nods. Obviously, says his eyebrow.
Dick believes him. He takes a slow breath, and breaks eye contact. "Okay. Keep helping us figure this out, and we'll do whatever we reasonably can for you. I promise that no matter who comes asking for you, we won't hand you over without a really good reason. Especially not to anyone evil. Not to Slade, and not to Bruce either."
The fugitive looks at him, and nods. He probably doesn't believe it. If he really doesn't know how he got into the Tower, if he really thinks this is a complicated gaslighting scheme to convince him he isn't a real person and has no right to make his own choices, he has no reason to believe it. Dick said it anyway. He means it.
Clones are people too, when they have minds of their own.
"So if you'll just answer a few more questions, I'll leave you alone for a little bit. Okay?"
Richard nods again.
"Okay. What's 'Blaise'?"
"Flash." Richard sees his bafflement; clarifies. "The younger speedster. Redhead. High-energy. Likes fire. Blaze."
Okay. Eerie. Not that Wally's all that much of a pyro in reality. Dick wonders where that came from. (And his cowl was up, earlier, so how does Richard know his hair color? Or that he's the younger of two? That isn't public knowledge, even if most of Central and Keystone know Wally's not the same Flash. It's not just Nightwing's secret ID. They totally have a leak.)
And this means Richard tried to address Wally by name in a conversational way, immediately before trying to beat him to death. Which means he either knows something about putting people off guard, or he's significantly crazier than he seems. Dick's actually leaning toward option a. In spite of all the delusions.
He's met a lot of crazy people, is the thing, and he's met a lot of brainwashing victims (he's been a brainwashing victim, not that long ago, and had to be rescued from himself), and while Dick may be biased, Richard gives him more of the latter vibe than the former. Especially since exact physical duplicates of people don't just happen.
They can follow up on this stuff about pyro Wally later.
"Okay. Thanks. Second question, why is Slade Wilson after you?"
That look again, like Dick should already know the answer to that, and he's not buying for a second that he doesn't. "I killed someone important to him."
Well, shit. Dick has no intention of going back on his word, especially if it means letting Deathstroke dice his double, but he's not looking forward to dealing with a complete breakdown in relations with the Terminator, as he either mistakenly targets Nightwing or attempts to kill someone under Titans protection.
Especially because the guy on monitors right now is probably related to whoever got killed. Or…not. Deathstroke can have friends, right? Fake Richard Grayson didn't necessarily kill Jericho's mom or anything. They'd have heard about that, anyway. Joey lives with his mom; he saw her a week ago, before she left the country on a Seekers Inc. mission. She almost definitely did not get killed on that mission by Dick's doppelgänger.
(Unfortunately his life is weird, so he has to maintain the 'almost.')
He could push, but not with Jericho watching and without having had a chance to confer.
He's kind of low on questions that can get quick answers. He's leaving as much to buy time to get his own thoughts in order as to give his double a break. Last one. He hesitates a second, then goes for broke.
"I know your name, but if someone asked 'what are you?' what would you say?"
Richard scowls. "Don't waffle," he grates, apparently more annoyed by Dick's attempts at delicacy than the dehumanizing nature of the question. Then the expression is gone, and he looks as blank as he did during his interrogation in the small hours of the morning. But he answers the question, flatly. "I was a Talon."
"Talon," Dick repeats.
"Of the Court of Owls. I left. It was the correct decision," Richard states. Decidedly. As though Dick was going to tell him he should go back.
Talon of the Court of Owls? Seriously?
Dick nods. Hoping he's giving nothing away, though he goes for a nonjudgmental thoughtful look because his own locked-down-nobody-home face is a: not very good (unless he's under so much stress he's punched his way straight through to the other side) and b: angry-looking when it does engage. "Okay," he says, and doesn't push. "Thanks for talking to me."
Richard holds onto the edge of the cereal bowl when he tries to take it, and for a second Dick thinks there's going to be really stupid tension over a Styrofoam dish after everything was going so well, before the prisoner hunches over his breakfast and drinks down the sugary milk left in the bottom. Uh, yeah, Dick did kind of neglect beverages.
"I'll be back with lunch, if not sooner," he says, giving the guy a small smile as he stacks the plastic spoon into the empty bowl and grabs the flimsy table. Richard doesn't smile back, but he does nod, and his eyes seem a little less cold. Though maybe Dick's just imagining that.
Nightwing looks up expectantly at the camera, and the door slides open. Slides shut behind him. He slumps back against it, for a second.
Jericho watches, after the cell door seals, as the monitor room empties around him. Keeps his attention almost entirely on the camera that gives the best view of the prisoner, where he sits on the cot. Waiting to see what he will do now that he's alone, after that strange little drama. Like a play performed through mirrored glass.
'Richard' releases his weight slightly, sinking back into the wall. Crosses his shackled wrists in his lap. And sits. And.
It's still disquieting, even after plenty of time to get used to it. Dick's familiar face, drained of personality and drawn tight over its bones with a different kind of hard living. Each limb placed deliberately, neither tense nor relaxed. Like tools, temporarily put away, until they're needed again. It makes sense, Joseph thinks, that their prisoner speaks of himself as an object, some of the time. He moves like one.
But not like someone who experiences life as a mind-self that is simply contained in a body, with a gulf between the two: after sinking into so many people's selves over the years, and having been in contact with each of their souls in the time that he controlled their bodies, Joe has developed a good eye for what the most common self-conceptions look like on a reflex level, and 'Richard' draws almost as little line between thought and flesh as Dick does. Which means that if his limbs are tools, so is he. Even if, according to him, he isn't letting anyone use him right now.
Yes. It's unsettling. Wrong, at a deep level, like no few of the things he's seen working with his mother, and much more frequently since joining the Titans. But at this point, hours into monitoring duty—mostly just boring.
Dick's obviously compromised. Joe can't say he isn't himself, now, and he couldn't conveniently take over the questioning anyway, unless the clone knows sign—his unique methods of intelligence gathering are too intrusive to use on a cooperative prisoner, with no lives at stake. And no one wants a writing implement in 'Richard Grayson's' reach any time soon. So he can't really help, though he itches to. Except by standing the watch, like this.
He lets out a gusty sigh, loud with all his breath, and twitches his hands in resentful half-signs. It's never quite as satisfying as muttering to himself aloud would be, and he stops, cards his fingers through one sideburn, calms down, and settles back in his chair to watch nothing continue to happen. Which leaves him very few alternatives to thinking.
Wintergreen, Jericho thinks, finally, after all this time trying not to. Yes. Wintergreen. That's the most likely. After all, Dad doesn't have anyone else left. Probably it's old Major Wintergreen who's dead. Who Slade Wilson will be coming to avenge.
Now that he's acknowledged the nagging thought, he tries not to let himself dwell on the whiskered old gentleman who was like an uncle to him, once upon a time. Who told funny stories and always made sure to give equal amounts of attention to Joey and Grant. Shuts all that away in the same mental box where he keeps the memory of his father across the dinner table, laughing with his head thrown back, young face under shock-white hair; evenings in the yard together with his dad correcting his form when he threw a ball or a punch; dad's voice in the next room patiently explaining to Grant why math is actually useful in real life. He loves his father. That's never really been in question. He even knows his father loves him. But...
Joe has never understood how Wintergreen can believe loyalty means supporting Slade in making terrible life choices. That that's an appropriate way to repay the debt of his life. If any of his friends ever decided to deal with a personal crisis by becoming Deathstroke the Terminator (or, you know, any rough equivalent to entering a field like 'deadly mercenary'), he would consider it his duty as a friend to convince them to stop.
Wintergreen helped. He's never understood that.
He watches the prisoner lower his eyelids over hollow blue eyes, and allows himself another sigh. He doesn't know that William Wintergreen is dead. It's just the most likely thing, because Grant made his own terrible choices and died, and Mom's okay, and who else is there? Of course, on the other hand, his parents have been divorced for almost a decade. It wouldn't be surprising if Slade had started dating again.
…it wouldn't even be surprising if his new girlfriend has been murdered by Nightwing's delusional lookalike. Because that's the kind of life they live.
The life his father chose.
Jericho folds his arms, sits back in his swivel chair, and watches his team's prisoner.
A/N: Jericho is one of my favorites. The Titans' relationship with Deathstroke in this period was super weird; among other things, Joey's original team-up with them was to defeat his dad during the (in)famous Judas Contract, but they really do still care about each other as family and are pretty open about it. Slade teamed up with Gar's adopted family to rescue the team one time, I mean. O.o
The brainwashing Nightwing is referring to is the fact that he spent most of our 1987 being forcibly indoctrinated into the Church of Blood. Him and Raven both. They'd both already dropped out of the team for different psychological reasons and it took a bit for people to realize they were even missing, but they did eventually get rescued by the Titans. The team Donna was running at the time was very blast-from-the-past; among other things she got Hawk back (this was a bad idea) and enlisted the current Robin. At this point in my patchwork timeline this was over six months ago and Dick is about as stable as he ever is, but that incident features rather heavily in his lifetime catalogue of traumas, though it rarely comes up in the Batman fandom because it was a Titans storyline.