sideshow 02f: 'of sun and wind and tide'

After their impromptu breakfast conference split up, Dick retired to his Tower room and locked the door—it isn't that the team doesn't know who he is, and by inference who Batman must be, but he still values his privacy and this will only be harder if he has to worry about picking up another uninvited audience. He glares at the phone like it's a venomous snake that's curled up on his desk and started nagging him about his career prospects, then closes his eyes and takes a long, centering breath.

It's midmorning at this point, on the Tuesday following a three-day weekend. Bruce is probably asleep and Jason should be at school, assuming they haven't gotten caught up in some epic case, as Batman and Robin tend to do, especially given the opportunity of a legitimate day off school. Either way, if he calls the Cave he'll probably have to leave a message, which his cowardly side approves of but which won't help his intel-gathering goals.

House it is. He squares up to the phone, lifts the handset, punches in the Manor's number from memory. Half a smile pulls at his mouth, remembering that time Bruce leaned out of his office to ask his secretary to look up the Manor number for him, so he could call Alfred to pick Dick up from Wayne Tower; the looks of incredulity on everybody's faces that Bruce Wayne didn't know his own phone number. Batman never gets enough credit for his sense of humor.

The smile falls away again as Richard's haggard face flashes across his mind's eye.

Bruce wouldn't.

As he listens to the ringing, he changes his mind half a dozen times about whether this is a good idea. What's he going to say? 'I have a brainwashed superclone of me here, and he says Bruce created him. I'm over ninety percent sure that can't be right, but if you could just give me a hand with these last few percentage points…?'

Click. "Wayne Manor," says Alfred's voice, formal and cool, but not hard.

"Hey, Alfie, it's me."

"Master Richard!" Warmth rushes in, and Dick grins. It's nice to hear. "You don't call often enough. Will you be coming home for the weekend again?"

Dick winces. That was the reason for the last three times he called, making sure he wouldn't be in the way if he dropped by, but now he's built up expectations. Alfred can be such a grandmother sometimes. "No, I'm kind of wrapped up in something. Sorry."

"Well, hopefully you will have extricated yourself by Master Bruce's birthday party in three weeks. You did receive your invitation?"

One of the best parts of moving out was exempting himself from Bruce's black-tie affairs. "Uh, maybe? I haven't picked up my mail recently. But that's not the point."

"What is, then?"

"I, uh…" He wanted to talk to Alfred instead, but now he can't think of a good way to broach the topic. Bruce is easier, because he doesn't worry about being rude to Bruce. This unconcern extends to having him rousted out of bed. "Can I talk to Bruce?"

"I'm sorry," Alfred says, actual sympathy rather than chilly brush-off, "Master Bruce left for the office not half an hour ago."

Since it's him, on a secure line, 'for the office' means for the actual office, and Dick glances at the clock. Quarter past nine. "Kind of an early start for him, isn't it?"

"Master Bruce has been staying in somewhat more in the evenings, during Master Jason's convalescence."

Dick frowns. "Jason's sick?"

"He was shot three times in the torso by the Mad Hatter."

What.

What, no. Jason was fine when Dick invited him to the party a week ago. And he's spent at least two days recovering, for Bruce to have established a pattern of less patrol since, so sometime between last Tuesday and last Friday, he got shot. Badly. Listening to Alfred's flattened intonations, he probably almost died. And no one, including Alfred, bothered to tell Nightwing.

(The kid would have been so pissed off to die to someone like Mad Hatter. Which is a stupid thought because if Jason was dead he wouldn't be around to be angry about how it happened, obviously, and this would be a completely different, much more horrible conversation, and be happening days ago.)

Dick shakes off the uneasy feeling of having somehow jinxed Jason into getting shot with half-formed resentful emotions, and says, "But he's going to be okay?"

"His life is out of danger, certainly. Doctor Thompkins predicts that he should make a full recovery, without long-term impairment."

God, that hadn't even occurred to him, and it should have. Being permanently disabled by injuries sustained in the field is one of those nightmares he tries not to look at too hard. "God. Well. That's good news, at least." He shakes his head, hard. "Look, Alfred. The reason I called…has Bruce been acting…weird, recently? For him, I mean?"

"You mean apart from his reaction to Master Jason's injuries?"

Dick's getting the feeling Alfred blames him for his not having known. Which is all kinds of unfair. "Yeah, Alfred. Apart from that."

"Not particularly. He has reopened the subject of retirement, for one or both of the duo, but Master Jason is staunchly opposed to the proposal."

Well, he would be. Dick always was, until the last time. Damn, he hates being the last to know. "Could you maybe tell me this stuff sooner, Alfie?"

"What timeframe would you consider convenient?"

Dick may or may not growl slightly in his throat. "Look. I don't call because he doesn't even have time for me when I'm there in person. You guys could always call me, you know! What do you want? I'll be home next Friday, if I can, okay? I'll watch his back for a night since Jay's laid up, maybe we'll fit in dinner. Okay?"

"Very well," says Alfred, and he sounds much less stiff—possibly sorry for giving Dick a hard time, because last Dick checked Alfie didn't actually blame him for leaving. Things must be tense at home, if Alfred's letting his feelings get out of hand.

Not a good sign.

"Just, in the meantime—tell him we have to talk. Soon. Tell him it's about what happened to Flash. Ask him…what he knows about the Court of Owls."

There. That had sufficient hooks for Bruce not to brush him off. And Alfred can be counted on to notice if Bruce reacts weirdly to the question.

"I will pass your messages on, Master Richard." Alfred's voice is grave. Maybe the seriousness of the situation got through in Dick's tone.

"Thanks, Alfred."

"Take care."

Alfred lets him hang up first, and then Dick turns, takes three steps, and flops facefirst onto his bed. Uuugh. And he forgot to leave a message for Jason. He should've told Alfred to tell the kid he was rooting for him, or something.

Oh well. He'll make it up next time he visits. Shot three times in the chest and nearly dying is not the kind of thing you bounce back from in less than a week. They can…play Mancala, or something. Jason is weirdly good at Mancala. And probably it's something he can play without aggravating his injury.

Gah.

He lies on his face for half an hour before picking himself up and going to look for Changeling and some bottled water. Finds the water first, and when Gar isn't in the gym rather than search the whole Tower, Nightwing ducks into Ops and asks the duty officer—not unexpectedly Cyborg—where to find him.

"Down in the cell with, uh, Richard," Vic says, like Dick should know this. Glances at the bottled water in his hand, and obviously can't help smiling as he figures him out. "Nobody wanted to interrupt your call."

Dick rests the cool side of the water bottle against his forehead. His team. Honestly. "It hasn't even been an hour."

Vic shrugs. "Gar figured forty-five minutes was close enough. You want me to bring up the surveillance on screens?"

That would spare him missing any more of whatever's going down, admittedly, but even if Vic's offer was motivated partly by his own curiosity, Dick doesn't want to be underfoot. He also appreciates that Cyborg hasn't been abusing his override abilities to snoop on his own account. "Nah," he says, smiling. "I'll just head down."

Vic does a thing with his eyebrows that probably means 'darn, I wanted to eavesdrop' but shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Dick does.

Donna's on monitors when he gets down there; she looks around when he opens the door and grins. "Hey, nobody but the person on surveillance duty is allowed in here," she says.

"Shut up," Dick answers, not quite as cheerfully. "You know I didn't mean me. What'd I miss?"

On screen, Changeling is casually tossing a sealed bottle of water from one hand to the other as he stands just inside the door.

"Seriously, though," he's saying. "You gotta be kidding me, here. You just blundered in past our state-of-the-art security system accidentally, and you don't remember doing it? What were you, drunk off your head?"

Richard is watching him, and…Gar has moments, alright. Where one of the animals he turns into comes out in his body language and he seems imperfectly human in a way his coloring never manages. All of them have them, really, the times when whatever abnormality makes them fit to be Titans rears up and makes itself visible in what should be a normal interaction. Dick knows he mostly does it himself when he's angry or worried, and goes distant and unyielding to be ready to handle whatever's about to hit him. Or when his temper flares, and the fact that he knows exactly how to hurt people comes across, even if he has no intention of actually doing it.

Never in a million years could he manage the cool inhumanity that's on Richard's face right now.

It's weirdly like watching a mongoose corner a snake. Part of Dick wants to take bets on the winner. Last he checked, they were one for one, bite and backhand. That was with Richard restrained and outnumbered, but then, he still is.

Gar snatches the bottle out of the air again and hunches forward a little, conspiratorial. "Okay, how 'bout something else. I hear you thought the Flash was somebody called Blaze, that's why you pounded him into the floor so hard we're going to be scrubbing up speedster blood for a month. Blaze is that scary?"

"He blows people up," Richard says.

From the way Gar does his best not to startle, that's the first thing Richard's said in a while. "Just…out of the blue?" he rallies. "I mean, you jumped straight to the nuclear option. Don't you normally wait to see if people are actually planning to blow you up before you beat their faces in?"

Richard does Bruce's 'you belly-crawling idiot' look again, and Gar makes an offended noise. "The Dash," Richard says, and it's impressive how withering he can be without any real tone in his voice, "is allied with Owlman."

Gar gives a puff of air, then slouches a little harder against the door and melts down into the world's mossiest-looking orangutan. "Break it down for me," he says, as Richard fails to turn a hair at this simian alteration. The bottled water almost disappears into his long-fingered hand. "Owlman is?"

"Master of the Court of Owls."

"And Dash is?"

"Blaze's uncle."

"Ah-ha," says the orangutan.

In the monitor room, Donna shakes her head. "I can't believe this is working."

"Gar is very annoying," Nightwing says. Rather pleased with himself, actually. "We already knew he got to Richard. And honestly he talked to me best when he was trying to wrongfoot me. So."

It's interesting, come to think of it. Richard may not have much real reason to refuse to talk to them in the first place, but he's still letting himself be baited surprisingly easily. He definitely has counterintelligence training, so what's up with that? A trap? An error in programming? Does he just not care?

Absently, Dick cracks the seal on the bottle of water he's still carrying and sips at it.

"So," the green ape says in the cell below, "you're saying you figured Flash was out to get you because his uncle has a deal with your old boss. Your old boss has a hit out on you?"

Richard shrugs. A merest twitch of motion. "I ran."

"That's the whole reason?"

"It's enough." Richard shifts, slightly, his borrowed cotton shirt sliding against brushed steel. The chains clink.

"Okay. So you tried to kill Flash because you thought he was Blaze, who would either explode you or hand you over to Dash who would hand you over to Owlman, who's pissed off at you for quitting your job without permission. It's like a regular game of Telephone. Or possibly World War One." He looks to Richard for commentary; Richard gives him nothing. Gar hunches forward, the dramatic eyebrows that come with his current body emphasizing his exaggerated cajoling expression. "Come on, man. I'm not asking a lot here. I told you I'm not holding a grudge about the teeth unless you gave me a disease. Relax."

Richard is unimpressed.

Gar lifts the water bottle again, holds it out. Not close enough for Richard to actually reach, but it's an offering gesture, not a taunting one. "Drink?"

Richard doesn't move. "What do you want," he says, at least two seconds too late to be natural.

"Words, my gnaw-happy spitting-wing-image; you produced already. You want or not?" After another second Gar lets the bottle sink to the floor. "No trust," he laments.

"Trust." Richard's lip curled, for a fraction of a second, as he barked out the word.

Long, furry green arms are crossed. "Hey. You tried to kill one of us. We haven't done anything to you. I mean, you hurt me worse than I hurt you." And that's the thing: Changeling struck Richard while he was in their custody. He was getting teeth out of his wrist, but it was still less than strictly appropriate. If their prisoner believes they're going to hurt him, Gar definitely laid part of the foundation for it. (Which is another reason why he's Nightwing's first choice for this; he's going to be a factor in any attempts to make Richard feel secure, so he might as well speak for himself.)

Richard doesn't bring any of that up. "You're keeping me in a cage."

"It's not a cage," Gar argues.

"I had enough of that for a lifetime."

Changeling grins, which is quite a sight on an orangutan's wide mouth. "So you're saying," he says, and turns into a bright green parakeet, fluttering at what was his face level a second ago, leaving the water behind on the floor. "You Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?"

Richard's blank expression seems particularly blank, and Gar makes a disappointed scoffing sound and turns back into himself, now standing. "No? Nothing? Tough cell."

In the viewing booth, both Dick and Donna rolled their eyes at the forced reference, and Donna went so far as to groan, even though Gar wasn't there to appreciate it. Dick laughs a little, now, at Gar's frustrated expression as much as the one he suspects is what bafflement looks like on his double.

"Look," Gar says, lounging against the wall now. "You're freaked out. I get that. I don't like cages either." That's a rare moment of sincerity from Changeling, though he clothes it in enough casual disregard to maybe fool someone who doesn't know him. "But we're not trying to be decent because we want something from you. We're being decent because we're basically decent people, alright? Even our Fearless Leader." He bends down and picks up the water bottle. "You'd have gotten this no matter what you said." And then he lobs it underhand so it hits the cot and rolls back, bounces off the wall and hits Richard's hip.

Looks up at the camera and signals for escape, and Donna opens the door.

"Thoughts?" Nightwing asks, when Changeling joins them. In the cell below, Richard has opened the bottle of water with careful deliberation and poured a large drop onto the inside of one wrist. He seems to be waiting to see if anything happens. What does he think they gave him, hydrochloric acid?

The green guy shrugs. "He tries to be stoic but he's actually pretty easy to goad. He's more than a little feral, you were right, and some of the same stuff worked on him that works on animals. If we were planning to keep him as a pet I'd say I made great progress."

But they aren't. Nobody is sure what they are planning to do, which Dick is aware is undermining the planning process.

Gar grins. "He has no idea what we want from him, and it's pissing him off." In his cell, Richard has taken a small sip of the water—Dick is inclined to characterize it as 'cautious' but there's none of the body language or facial expression that usually goes with caution so he knows he might just be projecting, that this testing procedure might be habit, or a studied insult aimed at the cameras, or a lot of things that have nothing to do with anything as emotional as uncertainty.

It was actually kind of a relief to see him being pissy at Gar and be reminded that Richard actually has a personality, as good as he is at acting otherwise, so Dick isn't being as sarcastic as he sounds when he says, "Wonderful."

Changeling takes his eyes off the screen roll them at Dick. "I'm starting to think he seriously has no idea how he got here, either, and it's freaking him out. So yeah. No trust, assassin-you is way feral. Didn't learn much that's new except the Dash-is-Blaze's-uncle thing."

"And he's frightened of Owlman," says Donna. Dick quirks an eyebrow at her, and she shrugs. "He mentioned not wanting to be handed over to 'the Owl' before, before you got focused on the Terminator."

"You're right," Dick affirms, nodding. How had he missed that? Because he'd been leaping ahead with the possible implications of what Richard had said, and then Bruce had come into it. "We knew he tried to kill Flash because he was afraid. This time he revealed that what he was primarily afraid of was Owlman's reaction to his having quit being Talon."

"I guess 'Owlman' is the boss of the Court of Owls?" Gar shakes his head. "Do we believe in the Court of Owls?"

"We're still figuring that out," Dick answers.

"Figure faster."

A/N: Jason's getting-shot episode here, also referenced in my fic All the Roofs of Uncertainty, is a thing that actually happened in actual 1987. For comics values of actual. He recovered with astonishing alacrity, as he did from all his hospitalizations because DC was into the gritty realism of getting the kid hero hurt, but not so much the dull grind of his actually being benched for a plausible period of recovery.