My arms are aching. I'm fit from all the traipsing around the world I've been doing, but I can't say I've specifically developed the muscles needed for this kind of work. I put the huge scissors against the wall and roll my shoulders and neck.
Dick glances over at me. "Want to take a break?"
"I am," I reply, stretching my arms behind my back. Twisting my neck back and forth one more time, I grab my tool again. "And now I'm done."
He regards me with a sad look, almost like he's apologizing for dragging me into this mess, before returning to work as well. We'd been at this for almost four hours and we hadn't found anything. We had made plenty of progress, though. The entire second floor and most of the third was now completely carpet free. In the hallways, anyway.
Dick insists there's no point doing the first floor, as the entire thing was renovated due to an attack several years back. He still hadn't explained what he was looking for. To be honest, I don't think he's even sure.
After we'd settled into our rhythm, our speed had picked up. The shears we're using are sharp and heavy duty, taking apart the carpet with no trouble at all. In no time at all, we'd finished the third floor hallways.
"To the fourth?" I ask pleasantly.
"No," he says, sounding defeated. "It doesn't have carpet. It's an attic."
"Did you already check up there for what you were looking for?"
"Yeah."
"Do you think he left some message or something?" I finally cave, exasperated. "I mean, there's got to be a reasonable place to look."
He looks surprised, almost like he hadn't considered what I'd asked. "A message from him," he muses, looking around at the carnage surrounding us.
Without another word, he barges into the nearest room. I move to follow, but all he does is walk in, swing his head left and right, and walk back out. He repeats this process for the next room and the next as I follow, confused but remaining quiet.
In a couple rooms, he kneels to inspect the carpet, but doesn't do more. Still confused, I follow as he enters another room, this time lived-in. Dick takes a moment longer in this one, kneeling by an edge, and I cautiously peer in and test a foot on the carpet.
"Am I dead?" I mutter, looking around for the Teen of Angst.
Dick grins at me. "This is Dra- I mean Tim's room." I tilt my head at his emphasis. "Tim Drake."
Ah, Damian calls everyone by his last name. Not that I hadn't noticed in the past few days, but it can be difficult keeping track of everyone's monikers for each other. Dick calls everyone by their first names-and occasionally by nicknames- Damian by last, and Alfred with "Miss" and "Master" tacked on. Also, everyone refers to multiple people as "Red". I don't know how many people that works for or who they are, but I'm leaning towards double digits. At least. "It's a good thing I don't have a last name," I mutter.
Dick glances up, mildly interested, but doesn't press the issue. He has no idea how grateful I am for that. I'd tried going by Fenton for about two weeks after escaping Vlad the first time. No matter how much Danny assured me I could take the name, it felt wrong. Like I was trying to become Danny. I already took his first name.
We leave the room and enter another, which Dick assures me is also safe. The next, he warns me playfully, and I enter a room that reeks of the Angst. There's a large black dog snuggled up on yet another large bed, which lifts his head and growls at the two of us.
I tilt my head at the dog and make no move to enter the room, observing from the outside. Lavish, but completely bare. The only sign that the room is occupied is the dog and a stereo by the bed, stacks of cds scattered around it. Dick observes the carpet once more.
Next we enter Bruce's room, which Dick pauses longer at, taking time to run his fingers over the carpet and test the strength of it around the edges. Like Damian's room, it is lavish but impersonal, like a hotel room.
Finally, Dick leads me to his room. Like Tim's room, it's in chaos, with clothes and papers strewn about. There are video games attached to the TV across the room from Dick's bed, which is unmade. Against one wall there's a huge bookcase, accompanied with a desk covered in some of its books. I notice some basic gymnastic equipment such as a mat and a pull-up bar, along with a large poster of three circus acrobats. The Flying Graysons, it reads.
Dick's family.
I study it for a moment before watching Dick observe the carpet once more. He stills at one area, running his fingers back and forth, before standing abruptly. Hurriedly, he starts collecting items on the floor, tossing them on his bed. It's unimpressive until clothes becomes the TV and its stand, the chairs and a lamp. He tosses them all on the bed, and I wince when he drops a chair on his TV.
"You're going to break something," I warn pointlessly before leaving the room to get the shears. When I return, Dick had fit everything but the bookcase and the desk onto his bed. I hand him his and he punctures the carpet, wiggling the blade inside the hole.
Before he can cut, Damian's voice cuts through the air. "GRAYSON!" he shouts, equal parts anger and confusion. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
I struggle not to laugh and fail miserably.
A moment later, Damian rushes into the room, face livid. Huh, quick. "You destroyed father's house," he growls, eyes dark.
"I helped," I offer unhelpfully. Damian turns his glare on me and man, if looks could kill I'd be more than half-dead right now… Still, I can't force the amusement to leave, and Damian scoffs in disgust at my smile.
"They're just carpets, Damian," Dick explains patiently.
"What are you, Drake?" I take that as an insult, with the way he says it. "Destroying the house needlessly will do nothing! Nothing!"
"Just be glad I didn't do your room," Dick comments offhandedly, focusing back on the floor. With a push of his arms, the carpet slices. I help as soon as Dick has moved, cutting the opposite direction. Damian continues to rant about the respect his Father's house deserves, and how it will be his because he's his Father's only "true" son, but after a moment I block it out.
After we finish our perpendicular lines, I realize Damian's rant had trailed off. Uncertain, Damian moves to the flap we'd created and grasps underneath it. Dick and I join him on either side, together pulling away the thick, heavy carpet.
Damian breathes out an utter of disbelief while Dick lets out a strangled sigh, somewhere between exhaustion and relief. Stretched out before me, slightly off-center from our cut, is a huge, etched in drawing of a bat.
It's just an outline and is extremely crude, probably done with something blunt, like a butter knife. And the bat… it's less of a real bat and more of a symbol. Like… Batman's symbol. Below it, there's a jagged 1939.
"Is that what you were looking for?" I ask, a satisfied grin spreading across my face. Dick mutters wordlessly and brushes the scratches. Damian, also speechless, goes to his shoulder. Both are entranced.
"It's actually old," Dick observes, his fingers still tracing the outline. "Weathered just as it should be."
"Is this… Was this Father?" Damian asks, breathless.
I frown and fold my arms, dejected. "Not unless your dad's a time-traveling Batman," I quip. They both look up at me, expectant. Uncomfortable, I let my arms fall from their fold. "What?" I look at the symbol and then back at their almost-guilty expressions. Realization dawns on me a moment later, my brain rapidly connecting the dots. "Oh! OHH!"
Damian groans. "There you go."
Dick, with an excited grin he's trying in vain to suppress, tugs on one of the inner pulleys of the clock. Whirring, the clock slides aside, revealing a small elevator. Without waiting, I jump inside, bouncing on the balls of my feet.
Dick joins me, sliding his finger across a screen to close the door and start the elevator. "Ahhh this is so exciting," I bubble, anxiously awaiting our destination. Since it's so high speed, it only takes moments before the door slides open. Impatient, I dart forward, trying to see everything at once.
This is almost like seeing Northern Lake Baikal in Russia. There's too many amazing things to see at once!
The cavern is high and disappears into stalactites and darkness, and in the midst I can hear the faint squeaks of bats. There are a few different floors that I can see, all open so you can see all of them from anywhere in the cave, poles running as stairs between them. The floor we'd landed on housed the Bat-Computer: a large, multi-screen, multi-keyboard phenomenon with several wires connecting all sorts of gadgets to it.
"This is the forensics floor," Dick explains, pointing out a couple pieces of tech around the area as we go. Next, he walks over to a nearby pole and grabs it, flicking his wrist down before letting himself fall through the hole.
I grab the pole and bounce into the hole, but instead of following the normal rules of gravity, the area around where my hand holds glows blue and I shoot up instead.
I decide to go with the flow.
Dick notices I hadn't followed him down, and, with recurrent chuckles, follows me back up. "And this is kind of a lab. We do a lot of different things up here. This way is the trophy case…"
It's an outlying area that continuously runs through all floors, holding a wide variety of strange items. This is just like the Le Fevre in Paris. I might actually die of excitement. I need to see everything. Right now.
Sensing this, Dick intentionally walks and talks slowly, much to my chagrin. I dart ahead of him, forcing him to speed up before getting left behind. We head down, this time Dick showing me how to slide down instead of rocket up.
The pole is some kind of techno-wonder, using energy to pull me down quicker than gravity would. I barely manage to let go as we reach the level past the main floor. "Training area," Dick explains, and goes down to the next floor without showing me around.
"And this…" Spreading his arms wide, he displays the large basement. "Is the hangar-slash-tech lab." With a swipe of his finger on his phone, the lights flick on, illuminating the area.
A small portion of the Cave's floor is water, occupied by a thin, sleek water craft and several smaller jet-skis/boats, gently rocking with the current. One huge area holds aircrafts, one larger than the others, all facing a large tunnel I assume they use to exit. A hallway directly behind Dick holds, from what I can see, different battlesuits and weaponry, all spotlighted like trophies.
Dick gestures behind me, smile half his face, and I turn to see the best-freaking-car I've ever beheld in my entire three years alive.
"Is that the Batmobile?" My words come out high-pitched and a little too fangirly for my taste, but I refuse to be embarrassed. Instead, I go over to the car and inspect the sleek form of it. It's matte black, seeming to absorb the light around it. The wheels are some futuristic crap with barely anything inside, almost like outlined circles.
I don't know cars, so I can't describe with the justice this car deserves. It's just. so. cool.
Without warning, the car comes to life, the underbelly and wheels glowing blue and the engine purring. The floor beneath me pitches, slowly rotating the car towards another tunnel. Dick tilts his head suggestively towards the car.
I push down my excitement and manage a calm tone. "Are we going for a drive? If you're teasing, I might just die."
He laughs, tapping his phone again. The engine rumbles as the top of the car slides back seamlessly, broadcasting the interior of the car. I refrain from squealing (though just barely) and skirt around the car, waiting beside the passenger seat for Dick to get in.
With excessive flair, Dick front-flips over the back of the car to land in the driver's seat. I roll my eyes at the show and hop onto the side of the car, swinging my legs in. "Buckle up," he teases, pushing a button on the console to return the roof. I grab the seatbelt beside me and click it into place.
"What about yours?"
He smirks from the corner of his eye, grasping the wheel with both hands. "I'm Batman."
Then he floors it.
The car shoots to life, wheels easily gripping the ground and rocketing us forward, pushing me back into the seat. I let out a whoop as Dick swings the wheel with the turns in the tunnel. A glance at the speedometer shows how close we are to one hundred mph, though why Dick felt the need to go that fast in what appears to be a sewer pipe is beyond me.
A mechanical whirring climbs over the roar of the engine, and the road suddenly dips down, showing the rapidly approaching wall opening just wide enough to allow us through. Dick swerves, sharply turning the car towards the road that had just appeared.
The screen taking up the majority of the console shows a map of possible routes in front of us, showing the direct amount of traffic each possible turn. Dick always takes the least busy street, easily swerving around any cars that straggled on the near-deserted areas.
Growing tired of the revving engine sound, though not of the ride itself, I push a button with a one on it. Dick gives a shout of surprise as the car leaps forward unexpectedly, but quickly adjusts to the new speed. "I know the temptation, believe me, but I wouldn't recommend pushing the buttons."
"I thought it was a preset," I explain, gesturing to the row of 1-6 buttons.
He chuckles, manipulating the screen instead. "No, those are power boosts. Batman doesn't usually have the radio buttons in the Batmobiles, since he's all 'I'm too busy saving Gotham to listen to music', but it's still here." He selects a radio station from the list that pops up.
I don't realize I'm expecting heavy metal until something pop comes on. I look at Dick incredulously, to which he asks, "Umm… What? Do you want something else?"
"No, this is my kind of music," I reply, and somehow he understands my meaning.
"So do I. Bruce liked heavy classical music." He gets a deliberating look on his face. "I think. Music is for the weak, I guess."
I laugh and he turns it up. We drive in music-filled company for a long time, enjoying both the ride and the looks from people as we drive past. As we pass the economy district, I turn the music down low, just as Dick holds out a ridiculously out-of-tune high note.
"Nice," I quip. He sticks his tongue out at me. "Hey I have the best idea that anyone has ever thought of ever." For emphasis, I start bouncing in my seat, attempting to get him as hyped as I am.
"What is it?"
I hold my arms out, as if gesturing to the bright future. "Drive-through."
He snickers, then sighs. "No, we can't. Neither of us have masks on."
"Where's the suit, Dick? Where's the spare Batman suit?!"
Dick dissolves into laughter as I rummage around, looking for where Batman's suit has to be. He tries to tell me where it is, but is drowned out by both my frenzied search and mumbled exclamations and his own laughter. He finally forces out that there's a compartment for Batman's suit under his seat and one for Robin's under mine.
With enough whining/coercing/begging, he finally pulls over into a deserted alleyway, far away from any habitable district, and pushes my seat back to reveal the compartment. "Not that I'm going to make you Robin, but put it on. The windows are one-sided glass. I'm serious, though: one time only."
"That's okay, I don't want to be Robin," I assure him, sliding back the lid to reveal the famous R emblem. "Only for the most epic drive through experience ever. Also, I want to fight Damian."
"Ha, don't do that. He's a trained assassin." I glare at him defiantly and he shrugs. "But by all means, be my guest." He opens the door and slides out. "There's a Bat-former here for Bruce in emergency situations, so give me two minutes."
I watch in amazement as he taps a brick, types a code into the screen it reveals, and steps into the gaping hole the brick wall suddenly creates. Wasting no time (as I'm sure Dick is trained to change quickly), I quickly replace my shirt with the Robin uniform top. It's made for a boy, but is luckily a size too big and fits me fine. I wiggle out of my shorts and into the pants, which run past my feet. I put on the boots to hide it.
The gloves fit well, though I find them far too bulky. The cape is annoying, especially since I'm in a car, but I leave it on anyway. To complete the look, I take the forest green domino mask and conform the material onto my face. I had previously worried whether it would stay on, but now realize the underside of the mask is made with some kind of sticky gum, keeping it secure where I'd placed it.
There's a tap on the glass, and I shout "come in", dropping my shed clothes into the container and pushing my seat back into place.
The person that hops into the seat is no one I recognize. I realize now how so few ever manage to figure out superhero identities: I can't see Dick under all the Batman. His posture is stiffer, his face impassive, his movements more controlled and sure.
I watch the whites of his mask travel my costume, slightly lingering here and there, probably for further analysis. Uncomfortable, I cough slightly into my fist, silently asking Dick to show himself.
Luckily, he does. "McDonald's?"
"Wendy's," I respond, grinning.
"Ooh, frosties."
I bet the old Batman didn't even know what a frostie was.
The Batmobile shoots forward. "You look so uncomfortable in that," he observes after swerving out of the alley and onto the road.
I pick at the material of the glove. "It's… weird."
"No vigilantism for you?"
While the words are Dick, they come from a gruffer voice. It's his default tone in this setting, I think. Ugh, this is so disorienting.
"No," I respond, trying not to think of my alter-ego. Dick is Batman, for ghost's sake. He'd know instantly if I hid something. "There are other ways to do good without being a hero."
He barks a laugh, sounding like Batman even in that. "I dare you to say that at a Justice League meeting."
He's on the Justice League.
How had I forgotten that?! Now I can never tell him about my Phantom side! Danny's on the Justice League… In the brief time I'd known him as a hero, he'd shown me a lot of himself. I know Danny. He'd talked of the Justice League only once in my three visits. He idolized them, believed in them, and longed to fight beside them. Not as a small-town hero, but as a world-wide protector; their equal.
A ghost… A ghost is ageless. But the human underneath… They would never let a seventeen year-old teenager on the Justice League. Danny knew that. I know that.
I can't betray his dream! That'd be like destroying his space shuttle just before he launches into space!
Dick doesn't notice my reverie, or doesn't comment. I shove all those thoughts out of my head. This isn't a present problem. This is a problem for the future. The distant, distant future.
I need to focus on right now, which will be, I note as Dick rolls down his window and starts to order, the best night of my half-life.
Thank you for the comments! Especially those of you who helped with this timeline's plot; it was incredibly helpful. It's so weird editing this chapter, since I'm so far ahead with the plot in my rough drafts. I just did a chapter with Danny Phantom...