Almost ten full years into the active shinobi lifestyle, Kei could easily call herself a combat specialist. Isobu's power and willingness to defend her made up a lot of that. The rest was training, inventive destruction, and Kei's consistent willingness to get herself half-killed for the village's sake. Sure, it was a major factor in her current list of injuries, but it was what she was good at.
In a way, her focus on raw strength saved her from the other traditional shinobi mission types—mostly under the heading of infiltration. She was too unsubtle and temperamentally unsuited for a lot of the sneakiest tactics under the sun. Pure stealth? Something as elaborate as seduction? No, give her a good, honest brawl to sink her and Isobu's teeth into together. She'd figure it out.
But if there was a battle Kei was truly not equipped to fight, it sat under blinking neon lights labeled "Family Problems."
And this entire situation might as well have installed a sign suitable for the Las Vegas Strip on the roof, telling Kei to stay out of this mess. It was, in spirit, hanging over the house with such hideous energy that Kei wanted to hide in the bunker of a Bat-basement until the shouting stopped.
We still could. We know the way down to the waterfall pool. It would drown out all other noise.
Instead, Kei found herself knocking on Tim's bedroom door.
"What?"
Tim's voice wasn't as dangerously wrecked as Kei had ever heard. He still sounded congested and the word ended in an audible gulp, but she'd take any improvement over that incredibly low standard. If she ever heard him scream again, she'd probably punch someone.
"It's just me," Kei said, leaning her back against the door. While the house was well-maintained, she knew her weight would cause a noise as the wood settled against its seams.
"Oh." Kei heard a little sniffling from the other side, being forced down through sheer will. "You—don't come in. N-Not yet."
"Okay." It didn't sound forced at all. She was sure of it. Nothing too overbearing.
That acceptance should have helped. Tim's voice managed a hesitant, "But…"
Kei huffed. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere."
Kei slid down the door until she could sprawl partly on a runner rug that was probably worth more than her entire apartment. Maybe it dated back to the Ottoman Empire's glory days. One leg folded up to lean her arms on the knee, then the other stretched out in front of her. The gentle thump of hitting the floor was probably enough to alert Tim to Kei's current tactics.
To wit: She was a living roadblock.
To what, she couldn't say for sure.
Going by the tone of that half-heard argument, Kei didn't want to be involved. Ordinary teenage angst didn't touch anything that included the last week's events. If anybody here had been entirely normal, Kei might've really followed Isobu's suggestion and turtled up somewhere to let the storm pass by.
Unfortunately, normal flew the coop ages ago.
And now she was about as extricable as egg from a soufflé.
Kei leaned her head back until she hit wood with a quiet, "Ow." Just on reflex. It felt appropriate.
Based on the lack of sound from the window or the bathroom door, Tim hadn't moved yet. She'd been introduced to the Wayne household's security system a little while ago, adjusting to the sounds. Keeping herself aware of all the little details kept her from accidentally using up every scrap of adrenaline in her system. At least, during the adjustment period. Startling too easily was just the start of her problems.
But in the end, it was probably one of those things everyone in this house had in common.
Kei rapped her knuckles on the doorframe after she heard Tim's bed creak, indicating that he'd finally decided to stand. "Hey. I'm here."
A matching creak-slide-thump sounded against her back. Through the hundred-year-old wood, Tim leaned against the door and mumbled, "Th-thanks."
"Do you…wanna talk about what that was?" Kei asked.
Unhappily: "No."
That sort of ended the conversation. Sort of like slamming a door shut, she supposed. "Okay."
Kei curled over her raised knee and tried to game out the potential next steps. Depending on what he said, there were all sorts of potential problems. She just needed to know which way to leap to prevent the worst options. Any hint would work. It was always such a fun time for her nerves when she didn't dare move too far away and miss something important.
Not a minute later, Tim said, "I'm… I… Look, don't ask what that was, o-okay? I'll—just go to bed or take a shower or s-something."
Kei did not mention the local time, because Tim owned an alarm clock and his room has the same blackout curtains in his room as were in every room. He'd figure it out. "Okay."
"You d-don't have to sta—"
"I'm staying." Kei huffed, settling more firmly against the door. "I'll just wait for your all-clear. Go ahead and do what you have to."
"…Thanks."
And that was it, for a while.
Kei felt the floorboards shift the tiniest bit as Tim got to his feet and headed for the ensuite bathroom, listening as the faucets turned. More to the point, she could sort of feel the way water moved around in the house if she paid very close attention. All she really needed to know was that nobody was running away.
Which didn't seem to be the case immediately. If she had to kick down his door and haul the kid away from the window like an errant housecat, she might.
Kei blew her bangs out of her face, for all the good it ever did. I almost wish I was one of those people who can play chess in their heads. Maybe shōgi, like Asuma does.
We could, Isobu said, if either of us had any knowledge of the rules.
I mean, I remember how some of the pieces move…
And I would prefer an activity that requires any appreciable fraction of my strength, Isobu huffed, so I refuse. Choose some other task.
Instead, Kei pulled out her pocket-sized notebook of seal designs (preliminary) from one pocket and a pencil from the other. The paper was wrong, but it had perforated pages so she could rip bad ideas out and ball them up in as physical a way as possible. She hadn't gotten around to setting the first rejects on fire yet.
Maybe Tim would want to watch? Relaxation could take many forms. Burning stuff counted.
Luckily, nobody in this house really asked why Kei kept scribbling designs that didn't stick around. Maybe they thought that the fūinjutsu shield she'd made before was some power just built in, like a Green Lantern's energy constructs. Or that anxious young people needed healthy outlets. She hadn't asked.
And that was why she had the equivalent of a crate full of grenades safely stored in her bedside cabinet. She'd made sure to limit the activation conditions to "creator's chakra" to avoid random destruction, which was as safe as they got. It quelled some of her immediate anxiety about lacking access to her katana or any kunai.
Sure, a guy like Batman probably kept his house as armed and secured as was a) concealable and b) mostly nonlethal, but Kei needed an arsenal. Her own, not borrowed. To hoard or use as she saw fit. She wasn't going to just rip them off a wall or out of a display case like they were set dressing in a James Bond movie. For one thing, if the house randomly came under attack, Kei couldn't guarantee she'd even be in the armory.
It felt like fifteen minutes passed.
It also felt like an hour. Waiting, waiting, and observing.
Just in case.
She didn't comment on it. As long as she could still tell Tim was moving around in his room, nothing needed saying.
Still, Kei let her gaze slide sideways toward the stairs. However long she'd spent to make half-a-dozen explosive designs, it was about time someone else headed their way. Probably after cooling off enough to hold a conversation at under a hundred decibels.
While she hadn't been running her Hidden Mist chakra detection workaround (because Mr. Pennyworth deserved better than finding mysterious dampness all over his furnishings), a single creak underfoot alerted Kei just the same.
Exactly on time, a dark-haired head appeared, only to stop any sign of progress at the sight of her.
Kei raised a hand in a halfhearted greeting. "Mr. Wayne."
Luckily, the shower in Tim's room was already going. He probably wouldn't hear anything unless the next step in this interaction was a shouting match. Though Kei could scream like a drill sergeant if she wanted, and Batman's baritone was hard to miss when he used it, every conversation between them so far had been strange and sad. Not angry.
That could change.
"Keisuke." Blue eyes shifted from her to the door and back. A complicated expression fixed on his face, followed by a careful sigh of relief. "Tim's still here."
Hearing her full given name still pinged as wrong coming from anybody but Tsuruya, but Kei shoved the urge to correct Mr. Wayne away, because that wasn't the point right now. It appeared Mr. Wayne's suspicions leaned the same way Kei's did, which was actually terrible. That meant her worries had what was basically an expert in over-preparedness vouching for their severity. His thoughts were probably made of flowcharts leading inevitably toward doom.
You did not need the additional worry.
Never do, and here we are.
Kei patted the floor next to her spot in clear invitation. Might as well.
Mr. Wayne paused like he had expected some other response. Such as two teenage voices telling him to fuck off in unison. But rather than lingering in that indecisive space, he completed his trip up the stairs and strode on silent feet until he was about an arm's length away from her. Then he folded down onto the spot like somebody who definitely did a lot of yoga-adjacent activities between all the weightlifting sessions implied by his home gym. She hadn't gotten close enough to read the settings.
That wasn't the point either.
Kei shifted her legs so she leaned on the other knee, now. "You thought he'd run?" Despite her tone, it wasn't really a question. Both of them were clearly keeping one ear out for Tim's movements.
"I…suspected." Mr. Wayne had a good poker face. Pity they weren't playing. "He's clever and independent. If he wanted, he'd find a way out of the house."
Kei shrugged one shoulder because she didn't need to answer. If Tim did want to leave, his long-term plans were likely full of frantic question marks and the crushing darkness of an unsympathetic society's blind spots. Given his age and his history (as far as she knew), accounting for those problems were probably lifelong skills. He'd scrape for every moment, but Kei thought he might make it.
At the same time, there were worse places to bide one's time and contemplate than a billionaire's mansion.
Tim had to know that. Kei sure did. She only hated Gotham a teeny-tiny bit as a direct result.
"Why?" The sentence Kei meant to say was something along the lines of, "What did you say that made him become a flight risk?" But it was too ugly to set free, here and now. It got trapped behind her teeth and died there with a sour aftertaste.
Mr. Wayne had a severe frown even without the cowl and the creepy blanking effect it provided. It was mostly in the hooked eyebrows. As a counterpoint, the man wasn't wearing a form-fitting business suit. Instead, he had a big sweater that softened most of his edges enough that sitting on the floor next to a scruffy houseguest didn't seem quite so weird.
He also didn't answer Kei's question.
If Kei had to guess, it was related to hero work. And the Arkham incident. The two were inextricable.
(One higher voice: "—if you would just listen to me—"
One lower one: "—to make sure you're safe—")
Not, Kei thought, a great sign for a useful conversation. Morbidly curious, she wondered if the argument had started in the car and just carried them into the house, or if this had been more akin to a pressure vessel exploding.
But Tim wasn't running. Kei hoped to keep things that way.
The worst case reaction was the one Kei thought of as "I Just Need To Prove Myself." Capital letters definitely included. The details varied a lot, but hot-tempered rookies the world over looked at a dressing-down as a reason to do something impulsive. It had to be an achievement so important—often difficult and dangerous—that they'd completely change their superiors' views and reverse course on the scolding. Around here, maybe it was a solo takedown of some big-name supervillain. She had no doubt whatsoever that a man who spent years as Batman was familiar with the concept.
And given everything, somebody needed to nip that in the bud and then douse the area in napalm for good measure.
There were some less-dangerous options, but only insofar as they didn't involve leaving the house to go punch criminals. One could never really underestimate the damage of a real family argument. When tempers flared, people often said things they'd regret later. Even if they didn't, there were plenty of ways to break relationships beyond mending.
Everyone needed a moment to decompress.
It wasn't Kei's place to send people to opposite corners. And, looking at the tank of a man sitting on the floor next to her, she was pretty sure Mr. Wayne had no idea what to do to make any of this right. If he did, he wouldn't be just as locked out as she was.
(Not very, given that it wouldn't take either of them that much effort to force the door open, but that wasn't the point. Again.)
"If you were responsible for a child," Mr. Wayne said in a low tone, "you would want them safe." It didn't really sound like he was talking to Kei. More just airing a thought bubble out and seeing if it landed safely in the real world.
Kei thought of her students' alternately grim and trusting little faces and winced like a vital organ made a wild bid for freedom. Some of the things Sensei let her get away with as a kid (and still sometimes ordered her to do) were not going to be repeated for the next generation of the First Hokage's educational lineage. Even so, they were still training to become adult shinobi. There was no outright denying them that, only sabotage, and Kei would never cross that line.
Mr. Wayne noticed because he was too close not to. "Keisuke?"
"I have students, Mr. Wayne." Kei spun her pencil in her hand. It did a loop around three fingers before she was willing to continue. "If they were here right now, I'd give them something to do."
In line with Kei's quiet, seething tension, she figured Tim needed to go outside. And probably destroy some stuff. If that place couldn't be Gotham, so much the better. Kei reveled very quietly in the idea of not being stuck in this city for an afternoon, even if it was a thin hope while she hadn't voiced her idea yet.
But unspoken wishes that relied on other people's cooperation didn't really go anywhere on their own. Thus, they might not if she didn't ask. "Do you have a…place? For testing new weapons."
"A demolition range."
"Right."
"Yes, but not near the bats. We have more private property above ground." That made sense. One of Mr. Wayne's dark eyebrows rose. "Why?"
"Tim needs a distraction," Kei said quietly, "and everyone likes explosions."
"…not two days ago, you said your father had been killed by a bomb."
Kei nodded. She didn't look to see if Mr. Wayne was trying to slot the hints of her worldview into his mental portrait of her. He'd done plenty since his parents' death more risky than stopping a mugging, like becoming Batman. He didn't really get to judge.
"…fine, if you have supervision."
Probably Mr. Pennyworth, then. Well, even if they all had to wear earplugs, Kei figured she'd have an easier time wrangling the story out of Tim out in the open after a good, cathartic streak of wanton destruction. If needed.
The sound of the shower finally stopped, and Mr. Wayne didn't exactly flee. He just looked conflicted to the point of constipation and didn't tell Kei anything at all. But by the time Tim opened the door and nearly tipped a complacent Kei onto his bedroom's rug, his dad was long gone.
Tim waved away an errant waft of smoke before saying, "Five seconds this time, all right? That was too close."
"Starting from contact," Kei confirmed, and threw the next pitch.
While her throwing form was strange and unpolished, Tim swung his aluminum bat with perfect aim and a loud PING!
"Count it down!" Kara cheered as she flew high enough to see the ball's arc from an angle humans generally didn't.
With one hand, Tim shaded his eyes the entire time the baseball was in the air. The other ticked down one finger at a time until the ball was almost invisible to the naked eye.
The ball exploded with a distant CRACK. From so far away, it sounded a little like a firework. Which sounded like a gunshot. They all had.
Bruce wasn't invited to this anyway, but Tim had gathered enough goodwill to at least appreciate sparing him that.
The result of having access to the Justice League's facilities, Bruce's financial options, and maybe a bit of careful luck, and now two teenagers could play exploding baseball on an abandoned construction site in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Or, well, since nobody was running any bases, maybe it was just a big concrete batting cage.
Kei picked another baseball out of the cardboard box they'd dragged along, wrapped an exploding tag around it, and checked the glue just to be sure. Then she hurled it up to their babysitter for the next step in this extremely loud take on a stress-relieving exercise.
Supergirl—Kara—caught it in midair, then floated in a slow circle while tossing the ball up and down in her left hand. Clark had a day job, so Kara won by default. Instead of her Supergirl outfit, she had decided the most inconspicuous thing in the world would be overalls with big stomping boots.
Not that Tim could really comment. Jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. A baseball cap dug out of some closet. Things that could get destroyed by hard use and he wouldn't mind. They weren't ever going into the go-bag under his bed. He had other options.
Dick was also excluded for having a day job. He was less honest about his levels of disappointment than Clark was, but made them promise to take pictures of the carnage.
"Looks okay to me. I don't need to keep checking these after the first ten, do I?" Kara wanted to know. She gave the ball one last careful toss before dropping it back to Kei's reach. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and started up the traditional, "Heyyyyy, Batter! Hey, Batter-batter-batter!"
Her superhuman endurance made her better than any automatic, hopper-fed ball machine, except for judging her strength. The flattened, exploded-from-pure-force baseballs behind Tim were at least an object lesson in why Kara needed to be more careful if she wanted to go professional. And why maybe she shouldn't aim at allies. The concrete backstop could barely take it.
Thus, Kara was the outfielder. Her enhanced vision was the only way they were going to find all of the fragments anyway.
Meanwhile, Kei threw baseballs like someone whose first lessons were all ranged weapons, not toys. Probably knives. Her form improved after watching Kara's destructive knuckleball technique, but it wasn't there yet.
Still better than watching leather and stitching catch fire from air friction right as it left the pitcher's hand. There hadn't been a bomb on that one, because both Kei and Tim looked at each other upon hearing "fastball" and "Kryptonian" in the same sentence and decided against it without a single word to Kara. Thus, they all left that experience alive.
"How long of a fuse this time?" Kei asked, idly tapping her baseball glove against her leg. Once again, she'd checked the glue on the paper bomb for safety's sake.
"Five, again." He held the bat at a ready position and slid his left foot forward in anticipation. "Ready!"
PING!
A harsh whistle as Kara flew after the baseball.
CRACK.
"Why explosives, anyway?" Tim asked while Kei prepared the next round.
Though Kei had tried (badly) to explain exactly how her pocket paper arsonist spells worked, she kept slipping into terminology in Japanese that Tim didn't know and made Kara frown through all the way to the end. In the end, they just started experimenting rather than argue technicalities.
Kei paused with her bottle of rubber cement. "It was one of the easiest things to make?"
That didn't make it better. "Then why are explosives easier to make than anything else?"
"Because most of the arrays explode if you do them wrong." That was a very casual shrug from someone who played fast and loose with a future involving all ten fingers. She finished gluing the bomb to the baseball even while they were talking. "I just wanted the boom."
"Ma'am," said Kara, who was older than both of them, "that's like saying you made bear traps instead of mouse traps because you can't wind the tiny springs."
"In my defense, I was nine," Kei said, like that was a defense for anything in her life. She held up her hands as though to ward off further criticism. "And I lived."
"Uh-huh," Tim said, unconvinced. After a tiny bit of thought and a check-in with his personal risk assessment meter, he hefted his bat anyway. "Whatever. Show me what you've got!"
Magical grenade baseball seemed less safe after that, though nothing had materially changed since the start of the day. They didn't stop playing.
By the time Tim started flagging, the desert sun overhead was a broiler. Even if he hadn't been Gotham down to his blood, this kind of weather was only pleasant for reptiles and Kryptonians, and Tim wasn't sure about the reptiles.
And this was high desert in the spring. Tim never wanted to visit in the summer.
Kei's last pitch was an accidental curveball, but Tim did manage to make contact with a wild tennis player swing and another loud PING! The trajectory was a pop fly into outer space that would make any normal outfielder laugh, to say nothing of Kara. And when it blew up, the cover flopped all the way down to the gravelly ground like a dead pigeon.
It felt strangely final, thinking of dead birds.
"So, why baseball?" Tim asked, when nobody immediately jumped to prepare for another round. Given the two women with him, he wasn't sure whether to curse their perceptiveness or not.
Kei took off her glove and picked at the stitching, maybe trying to avoid looking at him or Kara. "You had a poster. And baseballs are cheap."
"I'm assuming it was a Gotham Giants poster, right?" Kara asked, floating over to them with her arms crossed.
"It was that or the Knights," Kei offered, "which seemed weird."
Since one of Bruce's other (million) titles was "the Dark Knight," Tim figured she was trying to let him avoid everything even vaguely related to bats or Batman. Which was…considerate enough, he supposed. They probably wouldn't have been able to take Kei's explosives to a skatepark or a football stadium. A potential audience could potentially complain.
"I also have band posters," Tim pointed out, just to be contrary. "And we're not at a Green Day concert."
Kei actually rolled her eyes at him. "With what money?"
"Personally," Kara said, "I prefer not wearing earplugs while hanging out."
Tim frowned a little, but gracefully put aside the insult to his favorite band. He was pretty sure the order Bruce considered useful for this glorified babysitting job went a) trustworthiness, b) indestructibility, and c) actual ability to keep up with either Tim or Kei. Maybe a different day would've gotten them stuck with that Fawcett City independent, Captain Marvel. Or any of Dick's former Teen Titans roster.
"Oh, same," Kei said, because she also had no taste.
Tim elected to ignore that, too. "Would you even be here if we weren't blowing things up?"
"Oh, good point." Kara grinned. "But hey, look on the bright side! You could have ended up with Green Arrow."
Heedless of Tim's immediate affronted grimace, Kara whirled away in a blur of denim and tremendous speed. A small tornado started cleaning the area of any evidence of their destructive presence, whisking everything away into the same box all the formerly-pristine baseballs arrived in. If Tim didn't know Kara could do the same thing with wrecked cars, he might've offered to help.
Instead, Tim turned toward Kei and her rapidly vanishing stockpile of explosives. Once her pockets were full, Tim said, "You do have money, though."
Kei rubbed the back of her neck as though suddenly uncomfortable in the New Mexico heat. She'd insisted Tim wear enough sunscreen to save a vampire from luminous, fiery death, but otherwise just settled on a ventilated hat and not apparently noticed the heat otherwise. There was something about her hometown being a lot less…wet than Gotham was. "Only technically. On loan."
"What?"
Kei pulled a debit card out of her sleeve like a magician mid-trick. Tim didn't have to examine it closely to see the Wayne Enterprises logo printed on it. "It just feels weird to spend your family's money." The card vanished when her fingers moved again.
A deep pit opened in Tim's stomach, invisible but expanding with each breath. "It's not—"
"Awkward?" But as soon as Kei said that, she bit off the end of her bantering mood and laser-focused on him like she'd seen him go for a weapon. "Tim?"
That was enough.
"Bruce says I'm done." It burst out of him like some kind of monstrous parasite, cracking his chest wide open. In every sense but physical, the wound oozed.
That stopped her momentum so dead it might as well have been a freeze ray. Faintly, Kei repeated, "Done…?"
"Being Robin. Forever." Tim's voice shook, so he turned his face away and covered his mouth so at least he'd have an excuse to go unheard.
Kei's ears were too sharp for that. In a tone barely above a whisper and heavy with sympathy, she asked, "Did he say why?"
"It's obvious why," Tim whispered. His eyes burned. "I-I'm done. Ruined. Too fucked up to st-stay."
Kei's hand landed firmly on his shoulder. Tim didn't look her way. Couldn't, not with a hand swiping over his eyes.
Kei led them both into a shaded bit of ground and handed him a water bottle from out of nowhere. Maybe she'd snuck it along with all the spell-bombs. Once Tim was sitting on an overturned bit of junk—a plastic five-gallon bucket—and drank half of the too-warm water all in one go, he felt a little less like the next great plan would be to dissolve into sand. To never get up again and just blow away in the next dust storm.
"There you go," Kei said as Tim scrubbed at his face. She'd pulled a handful of tissues out of a pocket, plastic still crinkling in her hand.
"Sorry," Tim mumbled, once he got himself back under control.
Kei sighed. "It's been a week."
Tim felt his hackles rise. "So…what? I just give up and accept—"
"I'm saying nobody is in a good headspace," Kei interrupted in her low tone, so quiet that Tim initially wanted to just plow right over her objections. But her flat expression stopped him. "And it's too soon to say anything."
"You don't know Bruce," Tim protested, even so. Betrayal sang a familiar tune. "Once he says that kind of thing, it's over. Are you taking his side?"
Kei rubbed the spot where her scar curved over her nose, muttering something uncharitable-sounding in Japanese. Tim would bet actual money that it translated to "who the fuck said there were sides?" But like, polite. Simultaneously, her other hand landed on top of Tim's head and pressed his hair briefly flat.
"You can't just pet me like a dog," Tim grumbled. Still, he didn't shove her hand away. With Alfred's general Britishness, Bruce's relapse into Bruceness, and Dick's residence in another city, Kei was the most consistent source of basic human comfort.
Another sigh. "I guess not. But I can…tell you a story. About my version of this."
Tim took a deep breath despite feeling the shudder still running through him. Another gulp of water helped him force himself steady. Even if his breathing refused to stay entirely even, he grabbed onto the distraction with both hands. Kei often refused to share any details about her life in a useful, direct way. If Tim used enough active listening skills, maybe this time she wouldn't retreat back into her shell.
Kei surveyed his attentiveness with one eyebrow raised. "So, first of all—I get why a man who lost both parents might be a little upset at the near-miss with his kid."
Tim couldn't argue with that, though he felt the urge rise in him like a flame. Instead, he decided to keep his mouth shut in the hope a lack of response would mean he couldn't scare Kei off her story. All he did was nod.
Settling cross-legged onto a nearby pile of pallets, Kei went on, "And I've been where you are more than once. As the kid."
"You're barely not a kid now," Tim pointed out, grudging.
"Point stands." She tilted her head back to look toward the cloudless, merciless blue sky while leaning back on her hands and making the woodpile shift. There was nothing up there aside from maybe Kara, but she stayed well out of view. "Sensei sent me away 'for my own good' about a year ago, when there was a lot of trouble at home. He thought it might be safer for me to be somewhere else, and it wasn't."
Tim could tell Kei was holding back the bulk of the story, even if he didn't know why. It didn't seem like she was interested in sharing, so he decided not to press today. "And your conclusion was…"
Kei sighed. "That I should've dug my heels in and forced Sensei to tell me everything that was going wrong. If we'd had time to sit and think and then talk our problems out, the fallout wouldn't have been nearly that bad."
Tim stared at her for a few solid seconds, at least until she turned her gaze back to him to await his response. At last, Tim said, "You're still talking around what it was. What happened to you?"
Kei's eyes briefly flashed gold, then faded on the next blink.
"Is it really that sensitive?"
"I mean, it's…" Kei clearly waffled over actually telling Tim much of anything. Which was the story of his life, now. "You're what, fifteen?"
"Yeah."
"Then it comes down to this: people thought I was mind-controlling the government."
What. Tim whipped around to stare at her in utter shock. Then: "Can you even do that?"
Kei sighed again. "No, but it doesn't matter." Kei pointed at her own eyes. "Carrying a spirit like Isobu is a guaranteed way to be blamed for everything going wrong for as long as I'm alive. Most believe that people like me are monsters pretending to be human. That we're all just waiting to pop out of our skins and eat everyone or something. I was an easy scapegoat."
Tim was reminded viscerally of the fallout from the Apokalips invasion attempt a couple years ago. Superman was still dealing with the aftermath of what he'd done while under Darkseid's control, even if Kara forgave him a long time ago. A lot of paranoid government types, Tim knew, would remember the risks a rogue Kryptonian posed for basically forever.
And Kei had lived that for her whole life? From everything Tim had seen, she was shy, maybe traumatized, and kind of sad. A lot of the rest didn't make a ton of sense, but Kei had one of the most harmless personalities of anybody Tim had ever met.
"So, Sensei sent me off on a vacation." Kei rubbed at her wrists. "Something low-risk and boring and out of the blast radius. I've kind of been assuming that your situation was similar."
"Like…I mean, the last thing I remember was a normal patrol." And then an utter blank. According to Doc Tompkins, he'd probably never get the immediate memories around that initial concussion back, and Tim sort of hated it. He wished he could go back and dissect everything up to the critical moment and rip it all apart into hideous shreds. "I wasn't really sent anywhere."
"But you were a kid and you were supposed to be—if not safe, then at least handling everything." When Tim gave a slow nod, Kei continued, "And then it blew up in our faces. And then your teacher is overcompensating for it."
"…How is yours overcompensating?"
Kei gestured at her left arm. "Reconstructive surgery."
"And mine is banning me from helping people." Tim waited to see if any more detail was going to make it through her mental filter, then replied, "Kei, I know you're trying to relate, but I don't… The connection isn't there. When I—with the Joker, I don't remember exactly what happened." Tim hated so much as saying his name. "But I must have done something, I…"
Kei frowned. "Remind me how long the clown was active."
"At…least fifteen years? Why?"
"And Batman probably dealt with him for a lot of that time."
Tim nodded.
"I think that if Batman ever said he never got caught out and almost killed by a clown, he's a liar. The superhero lifestyle is putting yourself on the line basically forever." Kei held up a finger to stall Tim's response. "But it's different when the person who gets hurt isn't you."
Tim crossed his arms, but he bit down on the urge to immediately counter that Bruce was making an awful lot of decisions right over Tim's head. After bringing up Kei's age, undermining his own argument when talking about one of the only consistent adults in his life felt wrong. And it wasn't like Tim didn't know Bruce had a guilt complex to end all guilt complexes. He'd talked to Barbara before about the time her dad got shot on the job and with Alfred about the way Bruce reacted, because Bruce hadn't shared. Bruce never explained anything outside of training and investigative techniques. The emotional honesty of the past week was a total abomination.
It did make Tim feel slightly better to hear someone else acknowledge Bruce's hypocrisy out loud. But that couldn't solve the issue.
"You know, the only reason I'm here now and not a body in the bay is because I got lucky." It felt ugly to say out loud, but also oddly freeing. Tim couldn't remember the last time before this that he'd thought about it in so many words. "And—being Robin, Gotham not being a dead zone under Two-Face's nerve gas…it's all tied up together. But if I wasn't Robin, Bruce would've never even taken me in."
"Do you think he'll kick you out now that you're not?"
Tim flinched. It sounded even worse in another person's voice. A knife directly to that core of dead faith.
"Tim?"
"…Maybe not literally," Tim hedged. "But I know he's already thinking about setting me up somehow with Doc Tompkins."
Kei's hand squeezed Tim's shoulder.
"Give Mr. Wayne's nerves time to settle. Think about what you might need to say when everyone's calmer." She looked away with a sigh. "And if he tries to make you move away, I'm in your corner."
"And if he doesn't change his mind?" About Robin, or about keeping Tim at all?
"Wait a couple years and go independent like Nightwing."
Tim choked on a laugh.
Notes:
Had Kei asked Bruce if he specifically had a gun or artillery range around, she'd have gotten a funny look but the answer is still yes. Wayne Enterprises' holdings are vast and plot-dependent. There's definitely space for someone to practice blowing things up.
In the comics, Tim's preferred sports are skateboarding, baseball, and basketball. Jason's preference is the arts over sports, such as theater. Given how much else the DCAU Tim takes from Jason otherwise, I figure the sportiness is fine for him.
Kara heard absolutely all of that. Clark is going to get a visit from a worried cousin in a bit.