(no subject)
Series Title: Renegade Part 2: Under the Hood
Part Title: Dead Arise
Author: cat_13145
I finally have a beta (does little dance) Green Galands
Rating: Pg-13
Disclaimer: If I owned them, you think Battle for the Cowl would have happened?
Summary: They need to know who he is. They need to know why he's back.
Chapter 3 Dead arise.
“Good morning.”
It was always bad sign when A. Marie was still around when he was properly awake and B. she said good morning.
“Morning.” He mutters, trying to buy some time by grabbing some cereal and sitting opposite her. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“Cancelled.” Marie’s voice doesn’t offer him any clue as to what the problem is. “Seems the lecturer’s computer suffered a meltdown.”
Oracle is a traitor. Her eyes bore into him.
“When were you planning on telling me?”
“Telling you what?”
“That you think you know who Renegade is.”
This is not a conversation he needs to be having. Not in their flat, which he is about 99.9% sure Bruce has bugged, Not this early in the morning and not with Marie.
“Not here.” He hisses, and she responds with a raised eyebrow. “Bruce is absent and Oracle is occupied with the Titans.”
He must remember that technically Marie is co-leader.
“He’s been hitting deliveries every night for two weeks. When were planning to tell me that the guy you, Bruce and everyone else is running around ragged after is your brother?”
“Tim’s been with me,” he begins, desperate to avoid saying it out loud, cos that’ll make it true. She waves this aside with one hand. “Your older Brother. Dick Grayson.”
It’s out and there’s nothing he can do about it. He gets to his feet and starts pacing. “Dick’s dead.” He says, very firmly. “There was an autopsy, Alfred showed you the report when Spoiler wanted to join us, don’t deny it.” She doesn’t. “Dead people don’t come back.”
“Clark did.” Marie points out, softly. “Ollie did. Lots of people have.”
“Not bats.” Jason mutters. “We don’t get second chances.”
“Says who?” Marie asks. She sighs and asks. “Who else knows?”
Jason snorts. “Me. Tim suspects, ever since he saw Renegade do the Quadruple summersault.” Marie nods.
“I saw you looking it up online. That was Dick’s signature move wasn’t it?”
He nods. “The only one none of us, not even Bruce managed to copy.” He sighs, running his fingers through his hair. “Bruce is thinking it too, only he’ll never admit it.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Marie says. “He’s been talking to the League. Zatanna, Jason Blood. Roy said he was in Star City yesterday, and when I ask Alfred where he’d gone, he said Metropolis.”
She sighs. “So the question is no longer who is Renegade. The question is what are we going to do about him?”
“We?” Jason asks nervously. Marie leans in and kisses him. “The wedding may be two months away, but I think I’ve been a bat long before that.”
********
Stephanie adjusted her position, so that she could get a better look at the figures below. Oracle, sounding really weird, had instructed them to find out anything they could on Renegade. A contact led her here, where she’s looking down on some drug dealers. Thugs, but still.
They were discussing making a deal with Renegade. Seemed that blonde guy had lost five runners working near a high school. She couldn’t bring herself to be sorry.
“Selling to kids.” She muttered, paraphrasing Marie. “Beyond the pale.”
“Glad you agree.” She spun around.
Standing there was what Oracle had described them as being on the lookout for. A man in black and red, his face completely hidden behind a red hood.
“Hi. I thought I felt my ears burning.”
*********
“Now take the place apart.”
The city was lighter than Gotham, but it was reassuring to know the thugs were just as stupid. More perhaps. By his calculations he had approximately 3.2 minutes until Superman shows up.
More than enough time.
A kick takes care of blond young man, while a well placed bat lead and elbow deal with the other.
The third member is pointing a gun at his head when Clark arrives.
“I had him.” He growls.
“I never had a doubt.” Clark is looking at him. He was holding the third and fourth members of the gang. “You come to metropolis and have to stop a burglary? You should have called ahead; I would’ve gotten you theatre tickets.”
“I came to talk.”
“Really? Because I was serious about the theater ticket.” Clark’s eyes were teasing and the desire to tell him everything was almost overwhelming. But he stopped himself.
“I really need to talk.” Clark frowned. Then nodded.
“Okay. Let’s talk.”
******
“And that last piece of garbage is Teddy Reese, started as a pimp and then moved on to a kiddie porn ring before he fell in love with narcotics.” She knew this of course, Teddy Reese was one of those criminals who created interesting discussions between Babs and Marie, and the rest were all Gotham home grown. Still she was impressed at how quickly he must have picked this all up.
“You seem pretty well dialled in.” she muttered, setting off the alert to let the others know where she was.
“I’d say it was because I keep my ear to the ground, but these goons make more noise than a rhino at the ballet. All you have to do is pay attention.”
He turned to her, giving her a look not unlike the one Jason gave her, when she said she wanted to be Robin.
“So…you wanna take these guys down?”
“What?”
“I’m going down to kick nine kinds of hell of this trash can of garbage. You can watch or join me.”
He dropped a smoke canister as he was speaking and as he jumped, yelling a challenging “it’s up to you,” over his shoulder, she forgot all of Oracle’s warnings.
“Why the hell not?”
********
“Was I not being clear?”
“No you are…” Clark stood, like one of Gotham gargoyles watching him. He wasn’t sure why, he couldn’t stop pacing. His talks with Zatanna, with Jason Blood, with Green Arrow hadn’t reassured him, if anything they’d made him feel worse, which was why he was here, talking to Clark.
“I’m just not sure what you’re asking.”
He sighed, and repeated himself. “I need to know about when you died.”
Clark was evidently confused. “Bruce…you know as well as anyone that after I fought Doomsday I wasn’t exactly dead. I was in a state that mirrored death.”
“We actually don’t know that. It’s just what we told ourselves to make sense of it all.” He was speaking quickly, angrily. All the stress, all the worry of the last two days rushing out of him. “It was easier to fall back on that than admit the harder truth.”
“Being what?” Clark was reaching for him, but he avoids his touch.
“That it has nothing to do with science-or logic- you were dead. And you came back to life.”
Clark’s arms were folded, and he was looking at him strangely. “I don’t agree. But even still we’ve seen it before. Metamorpho, Green Arrow, Hal Jordan, it’s not science_”
“it has been for me.” This had to show how bad the last few days had been. That he was giving in to his emotions. “I’ve always had answer. The fact. For every one of them we lost, whether they thought it was about heaven or god or even magic-
“Magic, mysticism is just another realm’s science. I know that, but…now…” he fell silent. What he was thinking was too great to trust even Clark with it.
“Bruce.” The voice was soft and kind, and he was grateful for that. Even more grateful for Clark keeping his distance. If he touched him, he’d go to pieces. “What’s this about?”
“I don’t know. Exactly.”
******
“I thought you said you took out the dudes covering the door.” Steph yelled as about twenty more broke in.
“Evidently I was wrong.” Renegade was pissed, and she was feeling very uncomfortable. “Keep airborne. Head for the door.”
“I’m gone.”
Her feet sent the flimsy plywood door flying.
“Right behind you!” she could hear renegade yell.
“Live to fight another day huh?” she asked, as she collapsed on the street, remembering all of Jason’s lectures on the subject.
“Oh, I think we’ll just do fine today.”
The machine gun appeared from nowhere. She tried, but at 100 rounds a minute she was doomed. And the next thing she knew there was a dagger in her shoulder.
“You...son of a…son of a…” her thoughts were for Carie. Oracle would do her best, but would they let her keep Carrie?
“I’m no one’s son.” Renegade hissed at her. “Join me.”
“No.” the voice was soft and came from behind her. “This ends now.”
Batman? He wasn’t a part of this. That was her last thought, before she passed out.
****
He was as quiet as ever. When he’d been a kid, he could never stand it. That was why he’d talked all the time. Something his successors had kept up. You’d think Bruce would get the hint.
Exploding the trashcan at him was simply for kicks. He was correct about that. This would end now.
A taser from Kord industries dealt with the bat gun. The rest was a question of pinning the cloak. Restricting the movements. He knew Bruce. He knew his style, his strengths and his weaknesses.
“This is over.” Bruce muttered pinning him.
“No. Not nearly.” He had torn the cowl off. Exposing Bruce to the rain.
“I guess,” he continued. “We should keep this even.”
The shock in his eyes was even better than Jason’s had been outside the café.
“Oh. God.”
“No.” Dick Grayson stood, gazing at his former mentor. “Wanna guess again.”
“You cannot possible imagine…I refuse to believe this ruse.”
“But you do.” He kept his voice sing song. “Why else did you go to Metropolis? To Star City.”
“It’s not possible.”
“No it really is.”
“Dick.” The voice was firm. He smiled
“Yes.”
“How did this happen?”
That’s a can of worms he doesn’t want to open yet.
“That doesn’t really matter much does it? Not to me.” He spotted the batarang where it had fallen. “Here. That’s fingerprints. And here’s blood and even some tissue.” He drew the batarang across the back of his head.
“Check it. You’ll find it’s me.”
“I won’t believe.” He found the detonator.
“Yes you will. You’re a creature of science Bruce.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He smiled, mischievously.
“You’ll find out.”
The explosion provided good cover for his escape.
****
The shoulder wound wasn’t as bad as it looked.
He carried Steph to Bat mobile and set the autopilot for Oracle. He had no idea how he was going to explain this to her.
Dinah meets him at the door, and promptly takes Steph from him.
“They’re upstairs.” She says, and is gone before his brain can even formulate the word who?
It’s everyone. Oracle at her computer with red eyes. Jason’s arm around Marie, even through neither is a massive fan of physical affection in public. Tim balanced nervously on a sofa. Alfred hovering with a tray of drinks.
“Run these.” He tells Oracle holding out the batarang.
The others stand silent waiting and ultimately, it’s more than he can bear.
“Renegade is…”
“Dick Grayson.” Jason finishes the sentence for him. “He turned up at Maz’s. I saw him as he was leaving. Oracle ran the voice print we got from the Black Mask through her database.”
Marie’s hand finds Jason and she squeezes it while he says it, her eyes never leaving his face.
“What…” Tim swallows and licks his lips, before finishing the question. “What are we going to do?”
All eyes are on him. They need an answer.
“This changes nothing.” He said softly. “We bring in Renegade.”
And help him if we can is what he wants to say, but can’t.
TBC
Part Title: Dead Arise
Author: cat_13145
I finally have a beta (does little dance) Green Galands
Rating: Pg-13
Disclaimer: If I owned them, you think Battle for the Cowl would have happened?
Summary: They need to know who he is. They need to know why he's back.
Chapter 3 Dead arise.
“Good morning.”
It was always bad sign when A. Marie was still around when he was properly awake and B. she said good morning.
“Morning.” He mutters, trying to buy some time by grabbing some cereal and sitting opposite her. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“Cancelled.” Marie’s voice doesn’t offer him any clue as to what the problem is. “Seems the lecturer’s computer suffered a meltdown.”
Oracle is a traitor. Her eyes bore into him.
“When were you planning on telling me?”
“Telling you what?”
“That you think you know who Renegade is.”
This is not a conversation he needs to be having. Not in their flat, which he is about 99.9% sure Bruce has bugged, Not this early in the morning and not with Marie.
“Not here.” He hisses, and she responds with a raised eyebrow. “Bruce is absent and Oracle is occupied with the Titans.”
He must remember that technically Marie is co-leader.
“He’s been hitting deliveries every night for two weeks. When were planning to tell me that the guy you, Bruce and everyone else is running around ragged after is your brother?”
“Tim’s been with me,” he begins, desperate to avoid saying it out loud, cos that’ll make it true. She waves this aside with one hand. “Your older Brother. Dick Grayson.”
It’s out and there’s nothing he can do about it. He gets to his feet and starts pacing. “Dick’s dead.” He says, very firmly. “There was an autopsy, Alfred showed you the report when Spoiler wanted to join us, don’t deny it.” She doesn’t. “Dead people don’t come back.”
“Clark did.” Marie points out, softly. “Ollie did. Lots of people have.”
“Not bats.” Jason mutters. “We don’t get second chances.”
“Says who?” Marie asks. She sighs and asks. “Who else knows?”
Jason snorts. “Me. Tim suspects, ever since he saw Renegade do the Quadruple summersault.” Marie nods.
“I saw you looking it up online. That was Dick’s signature move wasn’t it?”
He nods. “The only one none of us, not even Bruce managed to copy.” He sighs, running his fingers through his hair. “Bruce is thinking it too, only he’ll never admit it.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Marie says. “He’s been talking to the League. Zatanna, Jason Blood. Roy said he was in Star City yesterday, and when I ask Alfred where he’d gone, he said Metropolis.”
She sighs. “So the question is no longer who is Renegade. The question is what are we going to do about him?”
“We?” Jason asks nervously. Marie leans in and kisses him. “The wedding may be two months away, but I think I’ve been a bat long before that.”
********
Stephanie adjusted her position, so that she could get a better look at the figures below. Oracle, sounding really weird, had instructed them to find out anything they could on Renegade. A contact led her here, where she’s looking down on some drug dealers. Thugs, but still.
They were discussing making a deal with Renegade. Seemed that blonde guy had lost five runners working near a high school. She couldn’t bring herself to be sorry.
“Selling to kids.” She muttered, paraphrasing Marie. “Beyond the pale.”
“Glad you agree.” She spun around.
Standing there was what Oracle had described them as being on the lookout for. A man in black and red, his face completely hidden behind a red hood.
“Hi. I thought I felt my ears burning.”
*********
“Now take the place apart.”
The city was lighter than Gotham, but it was reassuring to know the thugs were just as stupid. More perhaps. By his calculations he had approximately 3.2 minutes until Superman shows up.
More than enough time.
A kick takes care of blond young man, while a well placed bat lead and elbow deal with the other.
The third member is pointing a gun at his head when Clark arrives.
“I had him.” He growls.
“I never had a doubt.” Clark is looking at him. He was holding the third and fourth members of the gang. “You come to metropolis and have to stop a burglary? You should have called ahead; I would’ve gotten you theatre tickets.”
“I came to talk.”
“Really? Because I was serious about the theater ticket.” Clark’s eyes were teasing and the desire to tell him everything was almost overwhelming. But he stopped himself.
“I really need to talk.” Clark frowned. Then nodded.
“Okay. Let’s talk.”
******
“And that last piece of garbage is Teddy Reese, started as a pimp and then moved on to a kiddie porn ring before he fell in love with narcotics.” She knew this of course, Teddy Reese was one of those criminals who created interesting discussions between Babs and Marie, and the rest were all Gotham home grown. Still she was impressed at how quickly he must have picked this all up.
“You seem pretty well dialled in.” she muttered, setting off the alert to let the others know where she was.
“I’d say it was because I keep my ear to the ground, but these goons make more noise than a rhino at the ballet. All you have to do is pay attention.”
He turned to her, giving her a look not unlike the one Jason gave her, when she said she wanted to be Robin.
“So…you wanna take these guys down?”
“What?”
“I’m going down to kick nine kinds of hell of this trash can of garbage. You can watch or join me.”
He dropped a smoke canister as he was speaking and as he jumped, yelling a challenging “it’s up to you,” over his shoulder, she forgot all of Oracle’s warnings.
“Why the hell not?”
********
“Was I not being clear?”
“No you are…” Clark stood, like one of Gotham gargoyles watching him. He wasn’t sure why, he couldn’t stop pacing. His talks with Zatanna, with Jason Blood, with Green Arrow hadn’t reassured him, if anything they’d made him feel worse, which was why he was here, talking to Clark.
“I’m just not sure what you’re asking.”
He sighed, and repeated himself. “I need to know about when you died.”
Clark was evidently confused. “Bruce…you know as well as anyone that after I fought Doomsday I wasn’t exactly dead. I was in a state that mirrored death.”
“We actually don’t know that. It’s just what we told ourselves to make sense of it all.” He was speaking quickly, angrily. All the stress, all the worry of the last two days rushing out of him. “It was easier to fall back on that than admit the harder truth.”
“Being what?” Clark was reaching for him, but he avoids his touch.
“That it has nothing to do with science-or logic- you were dead. And you came back to life.”
Clark’s arms were folded, and he was looking at him strangely. “I don’t agree. But even still we’ve seen it before. Metamorpho, Green Arrow, Hal Jordan, it’s not science_”
“it has been for me.” This had to show how bad the last few days had been. That he was giving in to his emotions. “I’ve always had answer. The fact. For every one of them we lost, whether they thought it was about heaven or god or even magic-
“Magic, mysticism is just another realm’s science. I know that, but…now…” he fell silent. What he was thinking was too great to trust even Clark with it.
“Bruce.” The voice was soft and kind, and he was grateful for that. Even more grateful for Clark keeping his distance. If he touched him, he’d go to pieces. “What’s this about?”
“I don’t know. Exactly.”
******
“I thought you said you took out the dudes covering the door.” Steph yelled as about twenty more broke in.
“Evidently I was wrong.” Renegade was pissed, and she was feeling very uncomfortable. “Keep airborne. Head for the door.”
“I’m gone.”
Her feet sent the flimsy plywood door flying.
“Right behind you!” she could hear renegade yell.
“Live to fight another day huh?” she asked, as she collapsed on the street, remembering all of Jason’s lectures on the subject.
“Oh, I think we’ll just do fine today.”
The machine gun appeared from nowhere. She tried, but at 100 rounds a minute she was doomed. And the next thing she knew there was a dagger in her shoulder.
“You...son of a…son of a…” her thoughts were for Carie. Oracle would do her best, but would they let her keep Carrie?
“I’m no one’s son.” Renegade hissed at her. “Join me.”
“No.” the voice was soft and came from behind her. “This ends now.”
Batman? He wasn’t a part of this. That was her last thought, before she passed out.
****
He was as quiet as ever. When he’d been a kid, he could never stand it. That was why he’d talked all the time. Something his successors had kept up. You’d think Bruce would get the hint.
Exploding the trashcan at him was simply for kicks. He was correct about that. This would end now.
A taser from Kord industries dealt with the bat gun. The rest was a question of pinning the cloak. Restricting the movements. He knew Bruce. He knew his style, his strengths and his weaknesses.
“This is over.” Bruce muttered pinning him.
“No. Not nearly.” He had torn the cowl off. Exposing Bruce to the rain.
“I guess,” he continued. “We should keep this even.”
The shock in his eyes was even better than Jason’s had been outside the café.
“Oh. God.”
“No.” Dick Grayson stood, gazing at his former mentor. “Wanna guess again.”
“You cannot possible imagine…I refuse to believe this ruse.”
“But you do.” He kept his voice sing song. “Why else did you go to Metropolis? To Star City.”
“It’s not possible.”
“No it really is.”
“Dick.” The voice was firm. He smiled
“Yes.”
“How did this happen?”
That’s a can of worms he doesn’t want to open yet.
“That doesn’t really matter much does it? Not to me.” He spotted the batarang where it had fallen. “Here. That’s fingerprints. And here’s blood and even some tissue.” He drew the batarang across the back of his head.
“Check it. You’ll find it’s me.”
“I won’t believe.” He found the detonator.
“Yes you will. You’re a creature of science Bruce.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He smiled, mischievously.
“You’ll find out.”
The explosion provided good cover for his escape.
****
The shoulder wound wasn’t as bad as it looked.
He carried Steph to Bat mobile and set the autopilot for Oracle. He had no idea how he was going to explain this to her.
Dinah meets him at the door, and promptly takes Steph from him.
“They’re upstairs.” She says, and is gone before his brain can even formulate the word who?
It’s everyone. Oracle at her computer with red eyes. Jason’s arm around Marie, even through neither is a massive fan of physical affection in public. Tim balanced nervously on a sofa. Alfred hovering with a tray of drinks.
“Run these.” He tells Oracle holding out the batarang.
The others stand silent waiting and ultimately, it’s more than he can bear.
“Renegade is…”
“Dick Grayson.” Jason finishes the sentence for him. “He turned up at Maz’s. I saw him as he was leaving. Oracle ran the voice print we got from the Black Mask through her database.”
Marie’s hand finds Jason and she squeezes it while he says it, her eyes never leaving his face.
“What…” Tim swallows and licks his lips, before finishing the question. “What are we going to do?”
All eyes are on him. They need an answer.
“This changes nothing.” He said softly. “We bring in Renegade.”
And help him if we can is what he wants to say, but can’t.
TBC