Little Bird's Vengeance Chapter 17 Trust and Evasion
An interrogation between two talented individuals was, in many ways, a dance. When Romanov had interrogated Loki, it had been a dance of deception, drawing the other to a position of vulnerability before striking. The footage had already been incorporated into the training course as an example of how exaggerating emotion can lead your mark into revealing more than they intended. Sitwell's style, on the other hand, was simpler, relaxed, and seemingly clumsy, almost accidently taking the lead.
This dance would be more straightforward, plain and graceful. Obstruction but not deception. It should be fruitful.
"Who are you?" Fury asked.
"Already told you," the kid replied. "Red Robin."
Advance, respond.
"What's your real name?"
"What's in a name? Which one is real? The one most people know you by? The one that most closely defines you?"
Forward and sidestep.
"How about the one on your birth certificate, or the most recent change to it?"
Press close.
"Irrelevant. I don't exist in this world. It means nothing to anyone but me, so what would the point be?"
Twist away.
"Then by your own argument there's no reason to keep it a secret."
Pull him back.
"We already know there's a connection of some sort between here and my home. To you, it's a near-worthless piece of data. To me, it's potentially devastating information that in the wrong hands could lead to my death, that of everyone I care about, the loss of thousands of livelihoods and possibly even the takeover or destruction of Earth itself. Never underestimate the domino effects."
That was more of a gut punch than a step in the dance.
"Sure you're not exaggerating a bit?"
The kid shook his head. "Depends on who finds out. Shortly after my name became known to the other heroes, the ex-wife of a colleague of my mentor went insane and had my last blood relative assassinated, because he was related to me." He fell silent, staring at the shard on the table, seemingly lost in his memories. He rubbed the bandage on his shoulder absently.
"Agent Quartermain tends to be somewhat hot-headed," Fury told him quietly, temporarily deviating from the interrogation and snapping the kid back to the present. "He always has the best of intentions, but somehow ends up causing more destruction than most. He'll be taking extra classes in just how close a warning shot is meant to be."
"It was an accident," Red muttered. "Friendly fire's part of the risk. Not the first time."
Fury nodded. "Medical care's on us," he said, getting an amused half-smirk in response. Then he turned back to the topic at hand. "So, domino effects? Care to elaborate on that?"
Red frowned for a moment before answering. "Closest analogy I can think of would be if Stark's actions against Stane were classified as criminal acts. What would have happened after his little reveal trick?" He paused while Fury thought it through. It would have been an abominable mess; that was why they came up with the bodyguard alibi in the first place. "It's not quite the same," Red continued. "We have access to the resources of the industrial world leader in pretty much everything except weapons. The extent of our…access is currently secret. If my ID got out, so would that of my mentor and the rest of our people. Which would seriously impact, maybe even permanently cripple, our ability to function in our current roles and to support the rest of our community. It would also ruin the company. Best case scenario, someone manages to salvage most of it and only a few thousand employees lose their jobs. Worst case scenario, our biggest rival takes it over, and fulfils his long-term ambition of getting rid of all the heroes, which knowing our luck would be immediately followed by a massive crisis of some variety that would destroy the world."
Fury stared at him, really wanting to call him liar, but not quite certain of it. "You certain you're not exaggerating?"
Red Robin shrugged. "Like I said, worst case. We have tons of protocols to try to keep it from happening. And don't try telling me you haven't done any worst cases yourself."
"So you don't trust us with your name."
"I don't really trust anyone with it. It's nothing personal. And Stark keeps hacking your systems; I really don't trust him with sensitive information. Discretion is not one of his virtues."
Fury leaned forward. "If you won't trust us, we can't trust you. And if we can't trust you, we can't let you go. We tried house arrest; look how well that worked out." Fury waited for Red to decide. He could see the teen getting tired. And from what Rogers, Barton and Romanov had reported, he may well be willing to trade the information for his freedom. At this point, it was more a gesture of trust, but necessary for what Fury was planning.
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Tim, at that moment, wanted nothing more than to get some rest. But he knew the name issue would have to be sorted out first. If he refused to answer, they'd go in circles all night, and so on and so on, and he'd never be given enough freedom to get home,. He could try giving him a fake name, but this was the spy. Some people (like Cass) were impossible to lie to. You might conceal the truth, but not the fact you were doing so. Being caught out on a lie would destroy any progress they'd made towards trusting each other and to be fair, there were so many precautions in place to prevent any serious consequences of a security leak that as long as names didn't get thrown every which-way, it should be fine. The real issue was containing the information. He reckoned he could trust Fury; he'd not observed any indications he might be lying. And he'd heard Fury would sometimes go over his superiors; if they made "a stupid-ass decision," he'd "choose to ignore it", as the recording Stark showed him went. Like allowing Thor to take Loki and the Tesseract to Asguard, or not firing that nuke at New York- although that also proved he couldn't trust all of SHIELD. Giving Fury his name would mean trusting anyone with access to the database, unless…
"Shut down your spy cameras and surveillance in this room. No records, no recordings, and your word you won't write down or tell anyone anything. I'll answer what I can, but I won't tell someone else's secrets. Deal?"
Fury looked at him for a moment. Tim stared back, feeling a little exposed; he'd been asked to remove his mask before going into surgery, and he hadn't got it back yet, but the added impression of sincerity would be beneficial. After a moment, Fury put his hand to his comm.
"Hill, disable the cameras in this room. I know you're watching. Yes, I'm armed. All the cameras. I'll call you when we're done. No. Just do it."
Tim would have smirked at the one-sided conversation, but his head was pounding too much. He watched as Fury removed his earpiece and set it on the table, placing his smartphone next to it. In the process, he pulled his coat aside enough to show the handgun on his hip.
Tim picked up the earpiece, made sure the line was closed and set it down again. He checked the phone, nodding in satisfaction when he confirmed it wasn't transmitting anything. He glanced at all the cameras he'd spotted earlier. The little green lights had all turned red.
He looked back at the patiently waiting Fury. "My full name's Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. I'd generally go by Tim Drake, or Tim Wayne if I'm dealing with Wayne Enterprises- that's the company. The CEO adopted me after my father was killed."
Fury nodded. "Can I ask about your co-workers, your people I think you called them? You mentioned a Nightwing to Captain Rogers."
Tim absently toyed with the batarang on the table in front of him. "Nightwing is my mentor's first protégé. He currently goes by another name, but I suspect he'll go back to Nightwing sooner or later. We also have an information broker called Oracle, Robin, who's younger than me, but he was raised by assassins until a year or so ago. Then there's the girls, Black Bat and Batgirl. Couple of others we sponsor, Batwoman, Huntress and Catwoman in Gotham, El Gaucho in Argentina, Mr Unknown in Japan, Knight and Squire in England, various others worldwide. We do have a few others we work with without officially associating with them, like Catwoman's new trainee Catgirl. And of course we have a good working relationship with the Police and work with the superpowered hero community a fair bit. Anything else?"
"Your associates' names?" Fury asked hopefully.
"No." Tim drained his coffee cup as Fury's phone beeped. "That's not mine to tell. Again, nothing personal."
Fury nodded. "Hill's getting worried. She wants to turn the cameras back on. Probably will in a moment."
Tim sighed. "Can we continue another time then?" He stretched his arms, wincing when his shoulder protested. "Just feel worn out."
Fury nodded as the camera lights switched back to green. "We have crew quarters abroad. The door will be locked and guarded, but it won't drop out beneath you."
"Thanks," Tim said, stifling a yawn, scooping up his batarang and standing.
"One last thing," Fury said. "You never gave your mentor a name."
Tim grinned wolfishly. "Batman, of course."
AN: I hope you, dear reader, like this. Some of you objected to the previous chapter; I hope this is cleared up now. I have also returned to chapter 16 and added and/or changed some of the details.
Continuing with the next chapter next week. Again, if there;s anything in particular you want Fury to ask Tim, feel free to let me know, although if you wait until, say, Friday, I may not be able to accommodate. Just whatever you feel like.
In other news, I hit a block with Black and Red and opened up a poll on my profile to try to help get over it. Feel free to go vote.
In Family Ties this week, there's a fight brewing...
'Til next week.
Katara