(no subject)
I kind of can't believe I finished this. It didn't look good for that to happen several times.
I have to thank green_postit for putting up with me while I wrote this. She betaed it, hand held, and basically kept me from just abandoning it more than once.
Here is some awesome Tim and Dick art that ravurian made me. YAY!
If you haven't ever read comics, I guess open wikipedia now. Here is a very bad primer I wrote delires. If you ask me more questions, I will answer them. I am here to trick you into loving the Batfamily to serve as your comics liaison.
This story completely ignores Grant Morrison's run on Batman. /nerd out
Oh shit, this is too long for one post! Noooooooooo.
The Inescapable Truth
Gotham never changes.
Arthur wonders why the people who have the financial security to move choose to stay. When given the option of leaving, he exercised it immediately. It wasn't just the personal stuff-the baggage-it was also the bleakness of mid-February when the snow's sooty and black no matter how much falls, it was the belching factories that stand as a reminder of how nothing is normal in Gotham (even the decaying of American manufacturing), it was the beauty of the Art Deco and Nouveau architecture that's a botoxed face on a cancer-ridden body.
Gotham is Eames's primary US base of operations.
That sums the city up perfectly.
Gotham is Arthur's broken heart, his history-a very, very long time ago in his actual experience. He's lived several lives over in dreams, one after the other. He's been so many different people that his files are necessary because he can't be bothered to remember them all. He's been a pirate, a soldier, a tycoon, a sidekick, a mastermind, a killer, a lover. He's deconstructed himself and popped the pieces back together so many times he doesn't bother to ponder who am I?. He's who he is in the moment, and that's good enough.
He's certainly no longer Tim Drake.
But try telling Dick that.
*
It's not actually Dick who calls. It's Alfred, because that's how this works. How they work. There will always be an us, a we, no matter how far Arthur runs, how many times he says, "I'm not that person anymore."
"Master Arthur," his voice is the same-tired, indulgent, stoically judgmental. "I hate to disturb you." He clears his throat. Alfred calls him Arthur, but not out of respect, out of a pathological need to ruffle Bruce's feathers.
Arthur rubs between his eyes. "Is he dead?" He knows that call will come one day. Sometimes, out of nowhere, a shock will go through him and Arthur's heart will speed up-his pulse in his mouth-and he'll think will it be today? Even now.
That's the guilt, of course.
"No." Alfred doesn't sound surprised by the question, because who would be? "It's not that, but not for lack of trying. It's Master Richard. He's missing."
"I seem to recall that someone I know specializes in that sort of thing." He's already got the computer booted, though, clicking through programs, glancing over CCTV feeds.
"One could say there's been something of a falling out," Alfred coughs.
Arthur sits up a little straighter, he cracks his neck. "I see." Oh, does he see. Bruce and Dick squabbling is not unique or even something to really mention, but estrangement causes both of them to act like complete idiots. "There are other people you could call."
"I don't feel that would have been an appropriate choice, all things considered." The weight is right there. Arthur knows it's always hovering in the air waiting, he's never free. Never.
Alfred is calling him home.
*
The first time Eames saw the projection of Dick, his reaction was completely predictable. Dick was in civvies, dressed up for the black tie event they were dreaming. His hair fell over one eye and he was smiling boldly at the projection flirting with him.
"Well, hello, ducky," Eames breathed out, his voice low and sex-fueled.
Arthur almost, almost lost it and snapped at him that's my brother!, he's off limits, never, never think about him!. But he managed to keep the words in, to keep his professional face on. Arthur never loses it-he learned how fatal letting your guard slip can be. Over and over, because some other people never learn that lesson. Dick's eyes skimmed over the crowd until they landed on Arthur and his smile morphed into the jubilant one with teeth. He waved. Arthur blew Eames's brains out, then his own.
Eames knew better than to ask. When you travel through other people's minds you learn the protocol for pretending something didn't happen rapidly or you get blacklisted.
*
The timestamps on the video of Dick's front door indicate he hasn't been home for four days. Alfred would have been sure before he called, of course, but Arthur does the grunt work all the same. He has a system, a progression. First the cameras then the credit cards then the phone calls.
"Yo, blocked number, usually a bad sign," Roy is Roy and doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks about that.
"Roy," Arthur says in his flat, warning tone.
The phone fumbles around as Roy mutters obscenities to himself. "Who's dead? Is Dick ok? Fuck, fuck."
"I'm glad I can still inspire a panic attack with one word," Arthur smothers a smug smile, because this is work, this is Dick, and he's not going to let his amusement at Roy distract him. "Speaking of Dick, when was the last time you heard from him?"
"Oh shit, no. This can't even be happening again." Roy punches something. "You know who snatched him. Shoot him in the ass for me, come on, I'll pay you." He pauses, thinking about the question. "Tuesday, he was mouthing off about some neighbor he was going to bang."
"I suspected an inside job. Jason hasn't ever been exactly subtle." Arthur books two tickets out of Gotham ahead of time: one for tomorrow, the other a week from tomorrow.
"Do you want me to go?" Roy cuts in before Arthur can disconnect. Roy's selfless when it comes to the people he loves. Arthur smiles, Roy sees him as Dick's little brother and for that he'd be willing to go to the mats for him, that's primary. The fact that Arthur's saved Roy's ass enough times over to have it be second nature is secondary.
"No." Alfred called for a reason. Arthur isn't stupid enough, or selfish enough, not to listen. "It's time."
"If you say so, dude, but no one would judge you for not being the bigger man here." Now, that's not exactly true, there are plenty of people who judge him for just that reason. A couple of them whose judgment can be felt from outer space.
"It's Dick," he says and between the two of them that's all the goodbye he needs to deliver before disengaging the line.
*
There was an exact moment when Tim knew the situation was fundamentally untenable. This was not the same moment he decided to leave. He needed to analyze the situation, to decide rationally which path was the best for whom and which priority was paramount before he could even really consider leaving as the best option.
He looked at Bruce dangling a street tough aligned with one of Marconi's shell operations off of a fire escape, and his thoughts started the click click click of puzzle solving.
The truth was, Tim didn't balance Bruce out anymore. Bruce wouldn't listen. Bruce was not going to suddenly listen. Bruce needed someone new, and Tim needed to reevaluate his life.
These thoughts had nothing to do with that thug, of course, that guy had it coming.
*
When Arthur lands in Gotham, Alfred is waiting for him. They don't hug, but Arthur leans towards him, center of gravity tilted slightly and his elbow rubbing Alfred's.
"You look well," Alfred pronounces, his eyes sweeping over Arthur for new tells, a limp or a tight set of his shoulders.
"I know this is match-making, Alfred. He's not going to hurt him." Arthur keeps a grip on his bag and they both stand their ground for several long seconds before Alfred shrugs one shoulder.
"I'm sure you're correct, Master Arthur, but what if you're wrong?"
Arthur doesn't take that personally, Alfred's mission on earth is to patch up irreparable souls. He can't expect Alfred to let him be when Alfred still pokes at Bruce, who's even more of a lost cause.
"Where's Bruce, anyway?" He hasn't been in Gotham for some undisclosed period of time. He knows, of course, but he's curious what Alfred will say.
"It's charming that you pretend you don't know that far better than I." Alfred bustles them out into the face-smacking cold. Alfred laughs, a deep, good-natured rumbled. Arthur tastes chocolate milk, and the smell of sugar cookies follows it. The memory is deep and comes with a perfectly contained picture of the kitchens early in the morning, his suit rolled down over his hips and mask still on his face, another rushed treat before two hours of sleep before school. Alfred's posture stiffens and he reaches two fingers out to touch Arthur's arm.
Arthur looks away towards a frantic smoker lighting up on the curb and Alfred clears his throat. "There's no reason for your hotel reservation, no one's home."
There are three texts on his phone from Babs.
Welcome home.
Scrap that, what are you thinking?
You don't have to answer these. You look good. Better than after Budapest, but broken teeth look bad on anyone.
*
Bruce was always stubborn.
But there was stubborn and then there was stupid.
"This technology is dangerous," Tim told him.
"Your point?" Bruce hadn't even turned around.
"It's not something the US government should have a monopoly on." Tim's cape felt heavy like it did sometimes those days. "Even more than that, what are Luthor's real plans with this new wave of Brainiac tech? The end game must be something to do with Superman."
"There's a redundancy in place." Bruce pulled up a feed from the docks. Tim was being dismissed.
They weren't really arguing about the PASIV or Luthor or redundancies. They were arguing about Jason, about how Bruce was losing focus, slipping away into one of his obsessive spirals that no one-not even Alfred-could stop. It was always someone from outside who reached him when he got like this. Superman, usually.
For some reason that hit Tim in a vulnerable place. Bruce wouldn't listen, after everything, after Tim toughed it out and watched everyone he loved picked off one by one and he never gave up, never stopped trying.
He recognized the impulse as jealousy. And he hated himself. Hated. It was a weakness, an exploitable flaw.
There weren't any words to bridge the space between them, not any either one of them would ever say. Tim flipped through his contingency plans in his head.
*
His rooms have been preserved exactly, the only difference being that his laundry has been done and stored away.
His old organic chemistry textbook is laying face open on his desk, the periodic table poster still hangs over the dresser. He chooses not to feel anything about this. He takes the poster down, though, and wads it into the garbage can. There are fresh towels in the bathroom and brand new bottles of all the bath products he used when he was here last. In chronological years, it's been five years and a couple months. In reality, he's lost count. He doesn't have the record for staying away, and he always knew he'd never beat Jason at that.
Of course, he sees Dick when their schedules align. Dick's in New York, and Arthur swings by when he has time. Dick drops in on him in LA when he's out that way on Official Business. Or when fancy strikes. They don't talk about anything, just small talk, something easy for Dick and easy for Arthur with Dick. They talk about work. Of course, there's always a bat-shaped elephant in the room, but what's new about that?
He stows his things and heads down to the cave. Bruce hasn't rescinded his passwords, of course. He's arrogant enough to believe Robin's going to walk right back in the door any minute and they'll go back to the old patterns without a word about it. The rage makes his stomach acid bubble, the icy hurt he feels as he flips through Bruce's files is worse, so much worse.
There is feed after feed of Jason blowing out cameras, pop pop pop, a wink here, a manic grin there, a flipped bird almost every time.
There's no actual film of Jason snatching Dick, but Jason's too good for that. "Fuck you, Bruce." Arthur says it loud enough for the monitors to pick up.
His phone rings. He hasn't changed the ringtone that was installed by the caller. "My Funny Valentine" bounces around the cave.
"Now is not the time," Arthur snaps down the line. He rubs his forehead and watches the CCTV of Dick laughing as his hair flies around his face while he does a one-handed flip off of a fire escape, so pleased with himself and the night around him.
"When would be the time, then? I believe I've been the soul of patience with you, Arthur. Or can I presume upon our acquaintance to call you Timothy?"
Arthur kicks the chair out from under him and flicks open the holster at the small of his back even though he knows he's alone. "Excuse me?"
Eames sighs. "Do you honestly believe that you could pass through the Gotham airport unflagged? Come now, not even you control the TSA."
"You'd be surprised." Arthur eyes the glass case with one of his old costumes.
"Really, the point is that I would not in any way be surprised, yeah? My point is that your arrival in Gotham has sent a certain frisson through my spider web."
"You talk like a super villain."
Eames laughs and the hair on the back of Arthur's neck stands on end and he's annoyed that the reaction is more sexual than wary.
*
"What are you even talking about?" Kon chomped his fritos and didn't bother to dust the crumbs off of his shirt. "What would you do if you weren't Robin?"
"Maybe go to college. I don't know." This was laying down the groundwork for the choice he'd already made. Kon needed to be eased into this so he didn't take it personally and fly into a snit.
"But what about Batman?" Kon leaned forward like he was making a brilliant argument, which he clearly believed he was. His muscles flexed in his biceps unconsciously, a tell that he was getting anxious. Tim schooled his face and body into reassuring lines. "He needs you."
It wasn't Batman Kon was worried about. "He can take care himself." That was a lie. "Just because I'm not Robin doesn't mean I'll leave you alone to get into trouble."
This was true.
*
His rendezvous with Eames is at the Excelsior. This is one of the many places that drip with memories for him, of Bruce, of Dick, or fundraisers and campaign stump speeches. Eames is ensconced in one of the dimmer pockets of club chairs, near a fire; the kind of place people don't presume to sit unless they know very well that they could buy the place.
"I'm on a timeline here," Arthur says and unbuttons his jacket as he sits down. "Alacrity would be appreciated."
Eames is sitting primly in front of him, his legs crossed with one arm over his stomach, the other holding a heavy tumbler. He takes an auditory breath with a little click at the end of it. "Do you want my help?"
"With what?" Arthur stalls to see what Eames is going to feed him.
Eames laughs, rich, and touches his mouth with a knuckle. "I know him. It would be unwise not to, so I know where he is, and I have no stake in this, so I'll just tell you."
Arthur's surprised that Eames just comes right out and tells him this without preamble.
Arthur spent a lot of his formative years in public. He gets recognized every once in a while, but he's pretty damned good at laughing that off and pretending to be flattered that someone thinks he resembles a former quasi-celebrity. It's not hard, secret identities work because people are too preoccupied with their own daily grind to press too hard in situations like that. Kent's entire disguise is a set of glasses, for fuck's sake.
The wildcard here is Eames, not Arthur's past. "I can find him easily, and I would've already if you hadn't sidelined me with this asinine meeting." He straightens his cuffs for emphasis.
Eames leans forward with his elbows on his thighs. "Thirty odd goons with submachine guns? Awake?" He sits back again, this time in his casual sprawl with his legs wide open. He's dressed in tailored tweed, grey with some heather in the weave, his tie's slightly askew. He produces a toothpick and Arthur almost laughs. "You're good, but those are bad odds, thirty against one. Even your one. Plus, on the other side of the thirty goons is a madman with military-level artillery with no love lost for you."
Which could mean anything. Eames is playing this close to the chest. Arthur wants to pistol whip him and fuck him into submission. They have their waking dynamic, and part of that is never letting the other one get away with making a challenge. Dick will survive in one piece, Jason loves him more than he hates him, but Eames implying that he knows anything about the family is a warning klaxon.
*
Arthur and Eames met during the liminal period when Arthur was no longer Robining but he wasn't exactly not Robin. He was Red Robin and still mostly living with the Titans.
He met Eames the first time behind the mask when the Titans stumbled onto a complex art heist operation in the middle of their primary mission, fucking with Slade. In other words, Eames met Tim. He'd been nonchalant about Tim's fingers patting him down and zip-tying him to a chair. The trill of Eames's laughter had been a shock.
Oh, a lunatic, how novel, Tim had thought.
"Usually I have to pay for dinner before I get this service," Eames rumbled, soft and intimate, just for Tim's ears. "I'm willing to reverse the order if you'd like to catch a bite of Thai later. I know just the place, gorgeous."
This was not anywhere near the first time Tim had been propositioned by a perp. It was, though, the first time someone had asked him on a date and not suggested fucking him in the ass or soliciting a blowjob. It was the first time that the proposition felt laden, gravid, made him half-hard. The first time he found it sexy. He felt in that instant like he understood Bruce from the inside a little better.
"You'll be eating gruel rations at County until your trial date," Tim said.
"It's lovely to see such certainty these days, my dear, but I hardly fucking think so." There was an edge to the words that made Tim pay closer attention to this soft looking man.
He wasn't surprised that the guy got out of the zip ties before the cops showed up when he does his due diligence of a full background on Eames later.
*
Arthur still has conflicted sympathies with regard to his family.
He respects Bruce's value system, for the symbolism if nothing more. Batman is the face of justice and righteousness in Gotham, the good guys don't kill people, they rehabilitate them, incarcerate them to keep them off the street, pontificate at them for the edification of bystanders. Arthur used to believe in this system down to the organelles keeping him alive.
Jason's right, though. The worst offenders should be shot on sight. Arthur doesn't hesitate to take a bead on someone's who's going to do the same to him or someone he cares about-hell-even total strangers he'll never speak to. The axiom is that violence begets violence, but that's nursery talk. The truth is that the bad guys-the truly evil in their hearts psychopaths-don't function like the innocent people they kill, and there's no reforming them.
Arthur's not-strictly speaking-a vigilante, but he understands the impulse. He's not good-natured and idealistic to his core like Dick, whose rational for not killing is a simple because it's wrong said with a lifted brow and cocked head, like anyone in their right minds would just know that.
The thing is, no one Arthur knows is in his right mind.
*
When he'd been Arthur for a couple years, after another flair up of gangland warfare in Gotham that left Bruce with a shattered jaw, Catwoman supposedly dead, and the Cave flooded, Dick showed up at Arthur's house in LA.
Arthur had just spent a year in a dream training as a surgeon. It had been relaxing.
He came home one night after patrolling near the USC campus to find Dick sitting by his pool reading something on his phone with a fond smile on his face. He watched Dick from the shadows of the eaves for as long as Dick allowed him. When Dick turned his face towards him, Arthur felt everything all over. Everything, guilt, longing, love, heartbreak, comfort, exhilaration.
"Hey, bro, how's it hanging?" Dick laughed as he spoke, purposefully ridiculous, like always.
"How's New York?" Arthur perched on the lounge chair next to Dick's and clasped his hands together.
"Oh, you know, about as far away from you as it can be and still be on this continent." Dick raised an eyebrow. Dick didn't say come home with me or why? because he already had and it didn't work. He saved the repetitive head to wall bashing for Bruce. Arthur let the barb go, Dick deserved to be passive aggressive to his heart's content. "Would it be forward of me to ask you to fulfill my wildest dreams?"
"Ouch, that was bad even for you." Arthur had been expecting Dick to ask to be shown around dreamsharing from the outset, but sometimes Dick took a while to get around to having the thoughts Tim knew he'd eventually have.
Dreaming with Dick was like the first time he took out a criminal on his own.
*
Eames has a place up on The Hill, the exact sort of neighborhood he looks like he belongs in, homes built by Gilded Age tycoons with creeping ivy and gates. Arthur knew this, of course. One of the things he's learned over time is how different academic knowledge is from actual experience. He still likes to know everything, but he's also learned to try as many things as possible, too.
Eames's carriage house is now a garage with what is bound to be an armory secreted away in every nook and cranny. His kitchen smells of malt powder and the walls riot with art. The carpets are authentic, and there's some kind of cleverly hidden sound system that pipes soft chamber music room to room.
The entire basement is a high-tech workshop that reminds Arthur of the Tower. He doesn't gasp, because he's a damned good actor, but his heart beats faster and he represses the desire to breathe through his mouth. There are banks of computers. Another whole section of the open room is spattered with paint and covered in canvasses. In the center of it all is something of a scriptorium with vellum and paper in various stages of decay and distress. The room smells like turpentine and-under it-faintly of urine.
"Of course you make your own paint." Arthur eyes that part of the room.
Eames waves his hand dismissively. "Yes, one of my hobbies."
"How is forging a Renoir a hobby?" Arthur follows him to the computer bank.
Eames laughs. "It's endearing that you still pretend around me. You can drop the act any time you desire. I know how much you know."
Arthur doubts it, but he does know that Eames mostly traffics in information and even dreamsharing is something of a lark for him. Coming from money allows for a certain kind of freedom.
Arthur would know.
Eames plops down on a rolling stool-there's only the one, so Arthur remains standing-and boots up a program.
Eames clicks through some files and rambles at him a bit. "I especially appreciate when you pretend to make a mistake. The first time you did that on a job…"
"Was the Kincaid job, I remember. You laughed like a donkey." Arthur watches on the screen as five thugs mill around smoking in front of a warehouse. Typical.
"Eidetic memory, yes, I suspected as much." Eames nods and touches his mouth.
Not at all, but there's no harm in Eames thinking so. He remembers because Eames had a split lip-right in the middle of his bottom one-the whole job and Arthur had a hard time maintaining professionalism by not asking about it. By not licking it, to be completely honest. Split lips…he has a list of those sorts of injury-related kinks.
There isn't much to the planning. They're professionals, after all. Arthur's used to being part of a team.
Arthur strips off his jacket and vest but declines Eames's offer of sleek combat wear. He feels more comfortable in slacks and his boots when he has to use a gun.
*
There were nights when all the accumulated hurts and sharp edges blurred into the thrill of leaping from rooftop to rooftop, a flapping cape or scrap of bright blue in the corner of his eye. There were other nights brimming with shared laughter and popcorn kernels stuck in his teeth. There was the satisfaction of a job well done and the knowledge that what he did mattered.
Heroing was his choice, not something forced on him by circumstance. He owned his costume, his bruises, his scars, and every scrap of respect he'd earned.
*
On the drive across the river, so familiar but discordant in Eames's curvy Jag, Arthur watches the city pass by, memories nested away where they can't tumble out.
"Arthur." Eames's voice is low and intimate in the closed space of the car. That sends one of Arthur's memory stacks over, and he can almost feel Bruce in the space. "Is there something I should know?"
Arthur doesn't turn his face from the lights strobing over the window. "What?" He braces himself.
"Would you like to enlighten me why one of your brothers kidnapped the other? Why this is not the first time?" Eames is being more honest than he has to be-than he ever has been before.
"Middle child syndrome," Arthur answers. His mouth curls up on one side, because it's true. The story of Pandora works because everyone can instantly comprehend the metaphor of knowledge being unrescindable.
"Hm," Eames responds, but he lets it lie.
*
One of the lives Arthur lived for several years, a couple layers down in a dream, was as Eames's neighbor in a small Spanish village. This was an experimental dream where they ran sims of waking up the mark into the top layer and convincing him he was actually awake and that the second layer was a recurring dream he had every night.
Over and over, Arthur and Eames plunged up and down between the dreams. They began to treat the top layer as wakefulness themselves, grocery shopping and calling loved ones to check in. They fell into a codependent relationship of small acts-chess, F1 on television, gardening. It wasn't limbo, but Arthur knows the only difference is that in limbo you don't have a mark along on the adventure.
When they were in the second layer for some months-long stretch, both sunburned and exhausted from a day of hauling trees around the garden, Arthur had become truly unguarded and found himself in a laughter loop over a beer.
"Are you going to share?" Eames asked.
"I was just thinking about what Dick would say if he saw me gardening earnestly." He wiped a dirty hand over his sweat-slick forehead.
"Your brother, yeah?" Eames had replied.
"Yeah," Arthur said, his belly aching from laughing.
He didn't even notice, they'd been in the dream five years and they we so used to each other, their dreamselves, that Eames had lapsed into his real accent and Arthur left all of his notes out, exposed and accessible to anyone.
*
Arthur squats on the side of the building and peeks around the corner to clock the idiots Jason's hired. They're chitchatting about football. He signals Eames with a couple fast hand motions and rounds the corner with his gun up, finger on the trigger and elbow locked. "Put down your weapons. You have a five count."
The men just gape. "You know who you're fucking with, buddy?"
They always ask shit like that. "The question is, do you know who you're fucking with…buddy." The words set four of the guys on their heels and the dumbest one goes for his gun. Eames pops the straggler twice between the eyes before Arthur has to make the choice to do it himself.
Eames falls in beside him with his gun still up, but his finger off the trigger. He sweeps the scene twice and lets his arms drop. "Your soft side will get you killed one day."
"I doubt it." Arthur's voice is the one he grew into, but the tone is one he learned long, long ago.
Eames flashes him a grin. He looks younger like this, in black tactical gear, a black beanie rolled up on the top of his head. Eames spends a lot of time pretending to be a dissolute aesthete, but Arthur knows that he's really in his element in the field, that Eames is an idealist in his own way, that he's not an indiscriminate killer. Eames has a code and sticks to it.
Arthur knows the type.
"Let's go save the princess from the dragon." Eames braces his shoulders against the wall of the warehouse and nods to Arthur to take the door.
*
Eames stole his first PASIV. That was unremarkable, because stealing PASIVs was par for the course.
Arthur noticed him because he stole the PASIV from Slade.
*
Inside, the lights are bright and Arthur takes a second to adjust. He ducks behind one of the ubiquitous boxes and feels Eames crouching at his back.
A voice rattles from the other side of the room. "Baby bird, baby bird. Are you really going to insult me by hiding behind cardboard?"
Arthur immediately stands and steps around the box. He signals to Eames to stay put and holds his gun out to the side.
"You can keep the gun," Jason's maskless, not even wearing a domino. Which means he was expecting Arthur and no one else. "If this had been a plan to lure you into a deathtrap…you can fill in the rest." He's loose-limbed and his face is neutral. The lack of taunting and sneering is almost unnerving.
Arthur doesn't holster the weapon, just lets it slide back into his palm. "You know why I'm here."
"Ain't it a kick in the ass that dad didn't even bother dropping his vital mission to check on Dick because he knew you'd drop everything and come running?" Jason starts to saunter around, his hands in his pockets. Arthur feels nothing, he lets one shoulder drop to keep his center of gravity right to pull on Jason if he whips out a knife or some other projectile. "No? Miss the mark? How about this-how does it feel to be just another fuck up and not the golden boy anymore?"
Arthur knows that if he was normal that would hurt exactly the way Jason wants it to.
Suddenly Jason stills and runs a hand over his face. "Shit. Let's start over."
Arthur pops the gun up so that it's aimed at Jason's face.
"Whoa, slow your roll, kiddo." Jason raises his arms, palms out. "I'm trying to make amends. That's why I snatched Dick. He wouldn't talk to me, so I made him."
"What?" Arthur sights the barrel.
"I'm tired of all this shit. Aren't you tired of it? I fucking know you are because you fucked off to a life of crime. As far as grand gestures go, that was classic. You really showed him." Jason rumbles out a laugh that reminds Arthur of Bruce.
Arthur doesn't bother to say it wasn't like that or you have no idea what you're talking about. The simple fact is, yeah, he's a criminal, but he always was. Vigilantism isn't all that different from what he does now. He peeled away at that rhetoric onion layer by layer. He has rules, kinds of jobs he won't work, but the Fischer job was purely immoral even with the excuse that he was doing it for Dom, for the kids, for all the right reasons.
Cloning is also somewhat morally ambiguous. So is whipping projectiles around in a narrow alley when civilians are present. So are high-speed car chases on crowded city streets. So is training little boys to risk their lives fighting murderous psychotic lunatics no matter how much they begged to be allowed to do so. So is emotional blackmail and withholding affection as punishment.
Arthur lowers his gun. "What's your racket this time?"
"I'm for real, baby brother. Is it that big of a stretch that maybe I miss them, too?" He sounds so genuine, but Jason's a fucking wacko. "Tell your guy to come out into the open. I know all your tells, but I don't know him. I already feel emotionally vulnerable, don't make me start shooting up the place."
"No need to get heated, mate," Eames says behind Arthur.
"You two know each other?" For a split second Jason looks flabbergasted, but then his face falls into his typical shit-eating one. "But he doesn't even have black hair, how's he your type, little bird?"
Jason, as usual, laughs enough at his own joke that no one else has to bother.
*
part 2
I have to thank green_postit for putting up with me while I wrote this. She betaed it, hand held, and basically kept me from just abandoning it more than once.
Here is some awesome Tim and Dick art that ravurian made me. YAY!
If you haven't ever read comics, I guess open wikipedia now. Here is a very bad primer I wrote delires. If you ask me more questions, I will answer them. I am here to trick you into loving the Batfamily to serve as your comics liaison.
This story completely ignores Grant Morrison's run on Batman. /nerd out
Oh shit, this is too long for one post! Noooooooooo.
The Inescapable Truth
Gotham never changes.
Arthur wonders why the people who have the financial security to move choose to stay. When given the option of leaving, he exercised it immediately. It wasn't just the personal stuff-the baggage-it was also the bleakness of mid-February when the snow's sooty and black no matter how much falls, it was the belching factories that stand as a reminder of how nothing is normal in Gotham (even the decaying of American manufacturing), it was the beauty of the Art Deco and Nouveau architecture that's a botoxed face on a cancer-ridden body.
Gotham is Eames's primary US base of operations.
That sums the city up perfectly.
Gotham is Arthur's broken heart, his history-a very, very long time ago in his actual experience. He's lived several lives over in dreams, one after the other. He's been so many different people that his files are necessary because he can't be bothered to remember them all. He's been a pirate, a soldier, a tycoon, a sidekick, a mastermind, a killer, a lover. He's deconstructed himself and popped the pieces back together so many times he doesn't bother to ponder who am I?. He's who he is in the moment, and that's good enough.
He's certainly no longer Tim Drake.
But try telling Dick that.
*
It's not actually Dick who calls. It's Alfred, because that's how this works. How they work. There will always be an us, a we, no matter how far Arthur runs, how many times he says, "I'm not that person anymore."
"Master Arthur," his voice is the same-tired, indulgent, stoically judgmental. "I hate to disturb you." He clears his throat. Alfred calls him Arthur, but not out of respect, out of a pathological need to ruffle Bruce's feathers.
Arthur rubs between his eyes. "Is he dead?" He knows that call will come one day. Sometimes, out of nowhere, a shock will go through him and Arthur's heart will speed up-his pulse in his mouth-and he'll think will it be today? Even now.
That's the guilt, of course.
"No." Alfred doesn't sound surprised by the question, because who would be? "It's not that, but not for lack of trying. It's Master Richard. He's missing."
"I seem to recall that someone I know specializes in that sort of thing." He's already got the computer booted, though, clicking through programs, glancing over CCTV feeds.
"One could say there's been something of a falling out," Alfred coughs.
Arthur sits up a little straighter, he cracks his neck. "I see." Oh, does he see. Bruce and Dick squabbling is not unique or even something to really mention, but estrangement causes both of them to act like complete idiots. "There are other people you could call."
"I don't feel that would have been an appropriate choice, all things considered." The weight is right there. Arthur knows it's always hovering in the air waiting, he's never free. Never.
Alfred is calling him home.
*
The first time Eames saw the projection of Dick, his reaction was completely predictable. Dick was in civvies, dressed up for the black tie event they were dreaming. His hair fell over one eye and he was smiling boldly at the projection flirting with him.
"Well, hello, ducky," Eames breathed out, his voice low and sex-fueled.
Arthur almost, almost lost it and snapped at him that's my brother!, he's off limits, never, never think about him!. But he managed to keep the words in, to keep his professional face on. Arthur never loses it-he learned how fatal letting your guard slip can be. Over and over, because some other people never learn that lesson. Dick's eyes skimmed over the crowd until they landed on Arthur and his smile morphed into the jubilant one with teeth. He waved. Arthur blew Eames's brains out, then his own.
Eames knew better than to ask. When you travel through other people's minds you learn the protocol for pretending something didn't happen rapidly or you get blacklisted.
*
The timestamps on the video of Dick's front door indicate he hasn't been home for four days. Alfred would have been sure before he called, of course, but Arthur does the grunt work all the same. He has a system, a progression. First the cameras then the credit cards then the phone calls.
"Yo, blocked number, usually a bad sign," Roy is Roy and doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks about that.
"Roy," Arthur says in his flat, warning tone.
The phone fumbles around as Roy mutters obscenities to himself. "Who's dead? Is Dick ok? Fuck, fuck."
"I'm glad I can still inspire a panic attack with one word," Arthur smothers a smug smile, because this is work, this is Dick, and he's not going to let his amusement at Roy distract him. "Speaking of Dick, when was the last time you heard from him?"
"Oh shit, no. This can't even be happening again." Roy punches something. "You know who snatched him. Shoot him in the ass for me, come on, I'll pay you." He pauses, thinking about the question. "Tuesday, he was mouthing off about some neighbor he was going to bang."
"I suspected an inside job. Jason hasn't ever been exactly subtle." Arthur books two tickets out of Gotham ahead of time: one for tomorrow, the other a week from tomorrow.
"Do you want me to go?" Roy cuts in before Arthur can disconnect. Roy's selfless when it comes to the people he loves. Arthur smiles, Roy sees him as Dick's little brother and for that he'd be willing to go to the mats for him, that's primary. The fact that Arthur's saved Roy's ass enough times over to have it be second nature is secondary.
"No." Alfred called for a reason. Arthur isn't stupid enough, or selfish enough, not to listen. "It's time."
"If you say so, dude, but no one would judge you for not being the bigger man here." Now, that's not exactly true, there are plenty of people who judge him for just that reason. A couple of them whose judgment can be felt from outer space.
"It's Dick," he says and between the two of them that's all the goodbye he needs to deliver before disengaging the line.
*
There was an exact moment when Tim knew the situation was fundamentally untenable. This was not the same moment he decided to leave. He needed to analyze the situation, to decide rationally which path was the best for whom and which priority was paramount before he could even really consider leaving as the best option.
He looked at Bruce dangling a street tough aligned with one of Marconi's shell operations off of a fire escape, and his thoughts started the click click click of puzzle solving.
The truth was, Tim didn't balance Bruce out anymore. Bruce wouldn't listen. Bruce was not going to suddenly listen. Bruce needed someone new, and Tim needed to reevaluate his life.
These thoughts had nothing to do with that thug, of course, that guy had it coming.
*
When Arthur lands in Gotham, Alfred is waiting for him. They don't hug, but Arthur leans towards him, center of gravity tilted slightly and his elbow rubbing Alfred's.
"You look well," Alfred pronounces, his eyes sweeping over Arthur for new tells, a limp or a tight set of his shoulders.
"I know this is match-making, Alfred. He's not going to hurt him." Arthur keeps a grip on his bag and they both stand their ground for several long seconds before Alfred shrugs one shoulder.
"I'm sure you're correct, Master Arthur, but what if you're wrong?"
Arthur doesn't take that personally, Alfred's mission on earth is to patch up irreparable souls. He can't expect Alfred to let him be when Alfred still pokes at Bruce, who's even more of a lost cause.
"Where's Bruce, anyway?" He hasn't been in Gotham for some undisclosed period of time. He knows, of course, but he's curious what Alfred will say.
"It's charming that you pretend you don't know that far better than I." Alfred bustles them out into the face-smacking cold. Alfred laughs, a deep, good-natured rumbled. Arthur tastes chocolate milk, and the smell of sugar cookies follows it. The memory is deep and comes with a perfectly contained picture of the kitchens early in the morning, his suit rolled down over his hips and mask still on his face, another rushed treat before two hours of sleep before school. Alfred's posture stiffens and he reaches two fingers out to touch Arthur's arm.
Arthur looks away towards a frantic smoker lighting up on the curb and Alfred clears his throat. "There's no reason for your hotel reservation, no one's home."
There are three texts on his phone from Babs.
Welcome home.
Scrap that, what are you thinking?
You don't have to answer these. You look good. Better than after Budapest, but broken teeth look bad on anyone.
*
Bruce was always stubborn.
But there was stubborn and then there was stupid.
"This technology is dangerous," Tim told him.
"Your point?" Bruce hadn't even turned around.
"It's not something the US government should have a monopoly on." Tim's cape felt heavy like it did sometimes those days. "Even more than that, what are Luthor's real plans with this new wave of Brainiac tech? The end game must be something to do with Superman."
"There's a redundancy in place." Bruce pulled up a feed from the docks. Tim was being dismissed.
They weren't really arguing about the PASIV or Luthor or redundancies. They were arguing about Jason, about how Bruce was losing focus, slipping away into one of his obsessive spirals that no one-not even Alfred-could stop. It was always someone from outside who reached him when he got like this. Superman, usually.
For some reason that hit Tim in a vulnerable place. Bruce wouldn't listen, after everything, after Tim toughed it out and watched everyone he loved picked off one by one and he never gave up, never stopped trying.
He recognized the impulse as jealousy. And he hated himself. Hated. It was a weakness, an exploitable flaw.
There weren't any words to bridge the space between them, not any either one of them would ever say. Tim flipped through his contingency plans in his head.
*
His rooms have been preserved exactly, the only difference being that his laundry has been done and stored away.
His old organic chemistry textbook is laying face open on his desk, the periodic table poster still hangs over the dresser. He chooses not to feel anything about this. He takes the poster down, though, and wads it into the garbage can. There are fresh towels in the bathroom and brand new bottles of all the bath products he used when he was here last. In chronological years, it's been five years and a couple months. In reality, he's lost count. He doesn't have the record for staying away, and he always knew he'd never beat Jason at that.
Of course, he sees Dick when their schedules align. Dick's in New York, and Arthur swings by when he has time. Dick drops in on him in LA when he's out that way on Official Business. Or when fancy strikes. They don't talk about anything, just small talk, something easy for Dick and easy for Arthur with Dick. They talk about work. Of course, there's always a bat-shaped elephant in the room, but what's new about that?
He stows his things and heads down to the cave. Bruce hasn't rescinded his passwords, of course. He's arrogant enough to believe Robin's going to walk right back in the door any minute and they'll go back to the old patterns without a word about it. The rage makes his stomach acid bubble, the icy hurt he feels as he flips through Bruce's files is worse, so much worse.
There is feed after feed of Jason blowing out cameras, pop pop pop, a wink here, a manic grin there, a flipped bird almost every time.
There's no actual film of Jason snatching Dick, but Jason's too good for that. "Fuck you, Bruce." Arthur says it loud enough for the monitors to pick up.
His phone rings. He hasn't changed the ringtone that was installed by the caller. "My Funny Valentine" bounces around the cave.
"Now is not the time," Arthur snaps down the line. He rubs his forehead and watches the CCTV of Dick laughing as his hair flies around his face while he does a one-handed flip off of a fire escape, so pleased with himself and the night around him.
"When would be the time, then? I believe I've been the soul of patience with you, Arthur. Or can I presume upon our acquaintance to call you Timothy?"
Arthur kicks the chair out from under him and flicks open the holster at the small of his back even though he knows he's alone. "Excuse me?"
Eames sighs. "Do you honestly believe that you could pass through the Gotham airport unflagged? Come now, not even you control the TSA."
"You'd be surprised." Arthur eyes the glass case with one of his old costumes.
"Really, the point is that I would not in any way be surprised, yeah? My point is that your arrival in Gotham has sent a certain frisson through my spider web."
"You talk like a super villain."
Eames laughs and the hair on the back of Arthur's neck stands on end and he's annoyed that the reaction is more sexual than wary.
*
"What are you even talking about?" Kon chomped his fritos and didn't bother to dust the crumbs off of his shirt. "What would you do if you weren't Robin?"
"Maybe go to college. I don't know." This was laying down the groundwork for the choice he'd already made. Kon needed to be eased into this so he didn't take it personally and fly into a snit.
"But what about Batman?" Kon leaned forward like he was making a brilliant argument, which he clearly believed he was. His muscles flexed in his biceps unconsciously, a tell that he was getting anxious. Tim schooled his face and body into reassuring lines. "He needs you."
It wasn't Batman Kon was worried about. "He can take care himself." That was a lie. "Just because I'm not Robin doesn't mean I'll leave you alone to get into trouble."
This was true.
*
His rendezvous with Eames is at the Excelsior. This is one of the many places that drip with memories for him, of Bruce, of Dick, or fundraisers and campaign stump speeches. Eames is ensconced in one of the dimmer pockets of club chairs, near a fire; the kind of place people don't presume to sit unless they know very well that they could buy the place.
"I'm on a timeline here," Arthur says and unbuttons his jacket as he sits down. "Alacrity would be appreciated."
Eames is sitting primly in front of him, his legs crossed with one arm over his stomach, the other holding a heavy tumbler. He takes an auditory breath with a little click at the end of it. "Do you want my help?"
"With what?" Arthur stalls to see what Eames is going to feed him.
Eames laughs, rich, and touches his mouth with a knuckle. "I know him. It would be unwise not to, so I know where he is, and I have no stake in this, so I'll just tell you."
Arthur's surprised that Eames just comes right out and tells him this without preamble.
Arthur spent a lot of his formative years in public. He gets recognized every once in a while, but he's pretty damned good at laughing that off and pretending to be flattered that someone thinks he resembles a former quasi-celebrity. It's not hard, secret identities work because people are too preoccupied with their own daily grind to press too hard in situations like that. Kent's entire disguise is a set of glasses, for fuck's sake.
The wildcard here is Eames, not Arthur's past. "I can find him easily, and I would've already if you hadn't sidelined me with this asinine meeting." He straightens his cuffs for emphasis.
Eames leans forward with his elbows on his thighs. "Thirty odd goons with submachine guns? Awake?" He sits back again, this time in his casual sprawl with his legs wide open. He's dressed in tailored tweed, grey with some heather in the weave, his tie's slightly askew. He produces a toothpick and Arthur almost laughs. "You're good, but those are bad odds, thirty against one. Even your one. Plus, on the other side of the thirty goons is a madman with military-level artillery with no love lost for you."
Which could mean anything. Eames is playing this close to the chest. Arthur wants to pistol whip him and fuck him into submission. They have their waking dynamic, and part of that is never letting the other one get away with making a challenge. Dick will survive in one piece, Jason loves him more than he hates him, but Eames implying that he knows anything about the family is a warning klaxon.
*
Arthur and Eames met during the liminal period when Arthur was no longer Robining but he wasn't exactly not Robin. He was Red Robin and still mostly living with the Titans.
He met Eames the first time behind the mask when the Titans stumbled onto a complex art heist operation in the middle of their primary mission, fucking with Slade. In other words, Eames met Tim. He'd been nonchalant about Tim's fingers patting him down and zip-tying him to a chair. The trill of Eames's laughter had been a shock.
Oh, a lunatic, how novel, Tim had thought.
"Usually I have to pay for dinner before I get this service," Eames rumbled, soft and intimate, just for Tim's ears. "I'm willing to reverse the order if you'd like to catch a bite of Thai later. I know just the place, gorgeous."
This was not anywhere near the first time Tim had been propositioned by a perp. It was, though, the first time someone had asked him on a date and not suggested fucking him in the ass or soliciting a blowjob. It was the first time that the proposition felt laden, gravid, made him half-hard. The first time he found it sexy. He felt in that instant like he understood Bruce from the inside a little better.
"You'll be eating gruel rations at County until your trial date," Tim said.
"It's lovely to see such certainty these days, my dear, but I hardly fucking think so." There was an edge to the words that made Tim pay closer attention to this soft looking man.
He wasn't surprised that the guy got out of the zip ties before the cops showed up when he does his due diligence of a full background on Eames later.
*
Arthur still has conflicted sympathies with regard to his family.
He respects Bruce's value system, for the symbolism if nothing more. Batman is the face of justice and righteousness in Gotham, the good guys don't kill people, they rehabilitate them, incarcerate them to keep them off the street, pontificate at them for the edification of bystanders. Arthur used to believe in this system down to the organelles keeping him alive.
Jason's right, though. The worst offenders should be shot on sight. Arthur doesn't hesitate to take a bead on someone's who's going to do the same to him or someone he cares about-hell-even total strangers he'll never speak to. The axiom is that violence begets violence, but that's nursery talk. The truth is that the bad guys-the truly evil in their hearts psychopaths-don't function like the innocent people they kill, and there's no reforming them.
Arthur's not-strictly speaking-a vigilante, but he understands the impulse. He's not good-natured and idealistic to his core like Dick, whose rational for not killing is a simple because it's wrong said with a lifted brow and cocked head, like anyone in their right minds would just know that.
The thing is, no one Arthur knows is in his right mind.
*
When he'd been Arthur for a couple years, after another flair up of gangland warfare in Gotham that left Bruce with a shattered jaw, Catwoman supposedly dead, and the Cave flooded, Dick showed up at Arthur's house in LA.
Arthur had just spent a year in a dream training as a surgeon. It had been relaxing.
He came home one night after patrolling near the USC campus to find Dick sitting by his pool reading something on his phone with a fond smile on his face. He watched Dick from the shadows of the eaves for as long as Dick allowed him. When Dick turned his face towards him, Arthur felt everything all over. Everything, guilt, longing, love, heartbreak, comfort, exhilaration.
"Hey, bro, how's it hanging?" Dick laughed as he spoke, purposefully ridiculous, like always.
"How's New York?" Arthur perched on the lounge chair next to Dick's and clasped his hands together.
"Oh, you know, about as far away from you as it can be and still be on this continent." Dick raised an eyebrow. Dick didn't say come home with me or why? because he already had and it didn't work. He saved the repetitive head to wall bashing for Bruce. Arthur let the barb go, Dick deserved to be passive aggressive to his heart's content. "Would it be forward of me to ask you to fulfill my wildest dreams?"
"Ouch, that was bad even for you." Arthur had been expecting Dick to ask to be shown around dreamsharing from the outset, but sometimes Dick took a while to get around to having the thoughts Tim knew he'd eventually have.
Dreaming with Dick was like the first time he took out a criminal on his own.
*
Eames has a place up on The Hill, the exact sort of neighborhood he looks like he belongs in, homes built by Gilded Age tycoons with creeping ivy and gates. Arthur knew this, of course. One of the things he's learned over time is how different academic knowledge is from actual experience. He still likes to know everything, but he's also learned to try as many things as possible, too.
Eames's carriage house is now a garage with what is bound to be an armory secreted away in every nook and cranny. His kitchen smells of malt powder and the walls riot with art. The carpets are authentic, and there's some kind of cleverly hidden sound system that pipes soft chamber music room to room.
The entire basement is a high-tech workshop that reminds Arthur of the Tower. He doesn't gasp, because he's a damned good actor, but his heart beats faster and he represses the desire to breathe through his mouth. There are banks of computers. Another whole section of the open room is spattered with paint and covered in canvasses. In the center of it all is something of a scriptorium with vellum and paper in various stages of decay and distress. The room smells like turpentine and-under it-faintly of urine.
"Of course you make your own paint." Arthur eyes that part of the room.
Eames waves his hand dismissively. "Yes, one of my hobbies."
"How is forging a Renoir a hobby?" Arthur follows him to the computer bank.
Eames laughs. "It's endearing that you still pretend around me. You can drop the act any time you desire. I know how much you know."
Arthur doubts it, but he does know that Eames mostly traffics in information and even dreamsharing is something of a lark for him. Coming from money allows for a certain kind of freedom.
Arthur would know.
Eames plops down on a rolling stool-there's only the one, so Arthur remains standing-and boots up a program.
Eames clicks through some files and rambles at him a bit. "I especially appreciate when you pretend to make a mistake. The first time you did that on a job…"
"Was the Kincaid job, I remember. You laughed like a donkey." Arthur watches on the screen as five thugs mill around smoking in front of a warehouse. Typical.
"Eidetic memory, yes, I suspected as much." Eames nods and touches his mouth.
Not at all, but there's no harm in Eames thinking so. He remembers because Eames had a split lip-right in the middle of his bottom one-the whole job and Arthur had a hard time maintaining professionalism by not asking about it. By not licking it, to be completely honest. Split lips…he has a list of those sorts of injury-related kinks.
There isn't much to the planning. They're professionals, after all. Arthur's used to being part of a team.
Arthur strips off his jacket and vest but declines Eames's offer of sleek combat wear. He feels more comfortable in slacks and his boots when he has to use a gun.
*
There were nights when all the accumulated hurts and sharp edges blurred into the thrill of leaping from rooftop to rooftop, a flapping cape or scrap of bright blue in the corner of his eye. There were other nights brimming with shared laughter and popcorn kernels stuck in his teeth. There was the satisfaction of a job well done and the knowledge that what he did mattered.
Heroing was his choice, not something forced on him by circumstance. He owned his costume, his bruises, his scars, and every scrap of respect he'd earned.
*
On the drive across the river, so familiar but discordant in Eames's curvy Jag, Arthur watches the city pass by, memories nested away where they can't tumble out.
"Arthur." Eames's voice is low and intimate in the closed space of the car. That sends one of Arthur's memory stacks over, and he can almost feel Bruce in the space. "Is there something I should know?"
Arthur doesn't turn his face from the lights strobing over the window. "What?" He braces himself.
"Would you like to enlighten me why one of your brothers kidnapped the other? Why this is not the first time?" Eames is being more honest than he has to be-than he ever has been before.
"Middle child syndrome," Arthur answers. His mouth curls up on one side, because it's true. The story of Pandora works because everyone can instantly comprehend the metaphor of knowledge being unrescindable.
"Hm," Eames responds, but he lets it lie.
*
One of the lives Arthur lived for several years, a couple layers down in a dream, was as Eames's neighbor in a small Spanish village. This was an experimental dream where they ran sims of waking up the mark into the top layer and convincing him he was actually awake and that the second layer was a recurring dream he had every night.
Over and over, Arthur and Eames plunged up and down between the dreams. They began to treat the top layer as wakefulness themselves, grocery shopping and calling loved ones to check in. They fell into a codependent relationship of small acts-chess, F1 on television, gardening. It wasn't limbo, but Arthur knows the only difference is that in limbo you don't have a mark along on the adventure.
When they were in the second layer for some months-long stretch, both sunburned and exhausted from a day of hauling trees around the garden, Arthur had become truly unguarded and found himself in a laughter loop over a beer.
"Are you going to share?" Eames asked.
"I was just thinking about what Dick would say if he saw me gardening earnestly." He wiped a dirty hand over his sweat-slick forehead.
"Your brother, yeah?" Eames had replied.
"Yeah," Arthur said, his belly aching from laughing.
He didn't even notice, they'd been in the dream five years and they we so used to each other, their dreamselves, that Eames had lapsed into his real accent and Arthur left all of his notes out, exposed and accessible to anyone.
*
Arthur squats on the side of the building and peeks around the corner to clock the idiots Jason's hired. They're chitchatting about football. He signals Eames with a couple fast hand motions and rounds the corner with his gun up, finger on the trigger and elbow locked. "Put down your weapons. You have a five count."
The men just gape. "You know who you're fucking with, buddy?"
They always ask shit like that. "The question is, do you know who you're fucking with…buddy." The words set four of the guys on their heels and the dumbest one goes for his gun. Eames pops the straggler twice between the eyes before Arthur has to make the choice to do it himself.
Eames falls in beside him with his gun still up, but his finger off the trigger. He sweeps the scene twice and lets his arms drop. "Your soft side will get you killed one day."
"I doubt it." Arthur's voice is the one he grew into, but the tone is one he learned long, long ago.
Eames flashes him a grin. He looks younger like this, in black tactical gear, a black beanie rolled up on the top of his head. Eames spends a lot of time pretending to be a dissolute aesthete, but Arthur knows that he's really in his element in the field, that Eames is an idealist in his own way, that he's not an indiscriminate killer. Eames has a code and sticks to it.
Arthur knows the type.
"Let's go save the princess from the dragon." Eames braces his shoulders against the wall of the warehouse and nods to Arthur to take the door.
*
Eames stole his first PASIV. That was unremarkable, because stealing PASIVs was par for the course.
Arthur noticed him because he stole the PASIV from Slade.
*
Inside, the lights are bright and Arthur takes a second to adjust. He ducks behind one of the ubiquitous boxes and feels Eames crouching at his back.
A voice rattles from the other side of the room. "Baby bird, baby bird. Are you really going to insult me by hiding behind cardboard?"
Arthur immediately stands and steps around the box. He signals to Eames to stay put and holds his gun out to the side.
"You can keep the gun," Jason's maskless, not even wearing a domino. Which means he was expecting Arthur and no one else. "If this had been a plan to lure you into a deathtrap…you can fill in the rest." He's loose-limbed and his face is neutral. The lack of taunting and sneering is almost unnerving.
Arthur doesn't holster the weapon, just lets it slide back into his palm. "You know why I'm here."
"Ain't it a kick in the ass that dad didn't even bother dropping his vital mission to check on Dick because he knew you'd drop everything and come running?" Jason starts to saunter around, his hands in his pockets. Arthur feels nothing, he lets one shoulder drop to keep his center of gravity right to pull on Jason if he whips out a knife or some other projectile. "No? Miss the mark? How about this-how does it feel to be just another fuck up and not the golden boy anymore?"
Arthur knows that if he was normal that would hurt exactly the way Jason wants it to.
Suddenly Jason stills and runs a hand over his face. "Shit. Let's start over."
Arthur pops the gun up so that it's aimed at Jason's face.
"Whoa, slow your roll, kiddo." Jason raises his arms, palms out. "I'm trying to make amends. That's why I snatched Dick. He wouldn't talk to me, so I made him."
"What?" Arthur sights the barrel.
"I'm tired of all this shit. Aren't you tired of it? I fucking know you are because you fucked off to a life of crime. As far as grand gestures go, that was classic. You really showed him." Jason rumbles out a laugh that reminds Arthur of Bruce.
Arthur doesn't bother to say it wasn't like that or you have no idea what you're talking about. The simple fact is, yeah, he's a criminal, but he always was. Vigilantism isn't all that different from what he does now. He peeled away at that rhetoric onion layer by layer. He has rules, kinds of jobs he won't work, but the Fischer job was purely immoral even with the excuse that he was doing it for Dom, for the kids, for all the right reasons.
Cloning is also somewhat morally ambiguous. So is whipping projectiles around in a narrow alley when civilians are present. So are high-speed car chases on crowded city streets. So is training little boys to risk their lives fighting murderous psychotic lunatics no matter how much they begged to be allowed to do so. So is emotional blackmail and withholding affection as punishment.
Arthur lowers his gun. "What's your racket this time?"
"I'm for real, baby brother. Is it that big of a stretch that maybe I miss them, too?" He sounds so genuine, but Jason's a fucking wacko. "Tell your guy to come out into the open. I know all your tells, but I don't know him. I already feel emotionally vulnerable, don't make me start shooting up the place."
"No need to get heated, mate," Eames says behind Arthur.
"You two know each other?" For a split second Jason looks flabbergasted, but then his face falls into his typical shit-eating one. "But he doesn't even have black hair, how's he your type, little bird?"
Jason, as usual, laughs enough at his own joke that no one else has to bother.
*
part 2