Chapter Text
Gothamites are used to turning a blind eye to certain things. Survival instinct, polished by many experiences.
If something strange is going on, the smartest option is to just get out of the way. You don’t go to investigate, you don’t snoop around, you don’t even try and see if you can help.
This is not Metropolis. Curiosity is something that gets you Darwined out.
So, no one pries too deep into what happened to the Bats. No one even talks about it much.
And, to be honest, no one really wants to think too much about it. It still hurts.
Of course, everyone has some basic idea of what happened.
Robin is dead. Was murdered. Nightwing lost his mind.
Joker is dead, pieces of him still being occasionally found, almost six months after the event (whatever it actually was).
Common assumption is that Nightwing was responsible. Before or after he completely broke. (After, they hope – because the idea of someone, the idea of Nightwing, of all people, killing someone (even Joker) like that…)
Batman has become more brutal, ruthless, without his birds beside him.
Recently, there has been rumours of a new Robin’s appearance, a smaller Robin, a new one still unsure.
But nothing has been confirmed yet. They are just rumours.
Like the rumours that Nightwing, now completely insane, haunts the cemetery, vanishing when anyone gets near enough to see.
There are also rumours that Nightwing now kills people who enter the cemetery at the wrong time or gets too close to him, but most tend to ignore those rumours – Batman might be more than a little off balance after whatever happened to his birds, but he won’t allow that.
All the same, not many people visit the cemetery these days. In Gotham, you learn pretty fast not to tempt fate. Keep your head down. Stay out of the way. Stay in at night.
There were celebrations, at first, when it first became clear Joker is dead. But now the first excitement has died down.
The clown’s death is not the relief they all would have said it to be if asked before.
It… Well, no one is mourning for that bastard, but…
Not worth it, is the consensus. Not worth Robin’s life, Nightwing’s sanity. Not worth Batman turning into the spirit of vengeance he was rumoured to be in the early days, before he got his birds.
It’s hard not to feel that dead or not, the clown won.
……………………………………………………
No one is out on the streets, on the night of the storm.
Bruce and Tim go to the cemetery, trying, as always, to coax Dick home. As always, they fail.
Tim tries to pretend he isn’t crying as Bruce finally leads him away. Nowadays he no longer asks Bruce or Alfred whether Dick will get better. Bruce doesn’t want to think too much about what that silence means.
He knows they have to find some way, they have to bring Dick home, but everything they try seem to just make things worse.
And when the Titans tried to visit… Bruce really doesn’t like to think about that day. (They understand, at least as much as a group of teenaged superheroes can. Wally still keeps visiting, sometimes, keeping out of the way, just to make sure Dick is…well, not alright, but at least no worse).
Tim can sometimes – not often, but sometimes - coax him out. Bruce has the disturbing idea that Dick occasionally mistakes Tim for a younger Jason, and that Tim is okay with the mistaken identity if it means Dick will at least stay by him a little while.
Bruce’s attempts… Well. At least Dick no longer tries to attack on sight, now that he has promised he won’t force him away from the grave. From Jason.
It would almost have been better if Dick was attacking because he blamed Bruce for what happened. At least that would be…somewhat rational.
But Dick is beyond thinking rationally now. All he wants is to stay near his owlet, and whoever tries to take him away is the enemy.
Some birds mourn by staying beside their lost one and starving themselves to death. Talons don’t die of starvation, or of exposure to the elements.
Dick has barely been eating anything for the past months (the few meals Tim has persuaded him to try hardly counts), unless he is hunting vermin at night the way he used to on the days right after he ran away from the Court. Before Jason. Before his owlet.
His face – going by the few glimpses Bruce has been allowed to catch of him – is gaunt and ashen, and Tim says he looks almost like a corpse himself.
But he’s still strong enough to fight off any attempt to take him away by force. The Court honed its weapons too well.
As of now… Bruce hates to admit it, but as of now their best chance would be to wait till the nights get cold enough to send the Talon into hibernation.
They could get him home… And after that? After he wakes up?
Bruce doesn’t have an answer. Batman is supposed to have contingency plans for everything. For everything. Unfortunately not quite everything. Not for this.
Oh yes, he does have a worst case scenario plan, for the event Talon is out of control – a plan he made too long ago.
The cryopreservation chambers are there, are preset.
He knows that will soon be the only option. That will likely be the kindest option. Given Dick is obviously torturing himself… Maybe the only relief he can offer the boy…
He doesn’t want to think about it. Though he knows he will have to, soon. The nights are starting to get colder.
………………………………….
Batman and the nestling leaves.
Talon heard them call out, heard them trying to imitate the chirps and hoots, their voices distorting the sounds almost beyond recognition.
Some dim memory tells Talon that it once found these attempts amusing, endearing. That it once used to coo over how cute the nestling’s bumbling chirps sounded.
But that was before. That was when it had its owlet. That was when Talon had a name.
The Bat and the nestling still call it by that name, but it does not, cannot, answer to that anymore. Talon lost the right to that name when it lost its owlet.
Out of long habit it voices the chirps again, the call to its owlet. Of course, there’s no answer. There will be no answer. Talon failed. The owlet is gone.
The recorded voice plays again. “Hey Big Bird, I know you’re busy but… maybe call me back? Please?”
Talon is afraid it might forget what the owlet looked like.
Sometimes, in the dreams – Talon doesn’t sleep much, but sometimes there are half awake dreams it slips into – it can see the owlet, see him smiling.
But there’s always the fear that the face would grow blurred, fade, like the memories of another life, another time, of a cheering crowd, hands holding his as they stepped out into the air…
Then too, Talon had a name. And then the hands were gone, and the watching crowd changed and…
Talon can’t remember those faces anymore.
It can remember the end. Remember the blood, the sawdust soaked red, twisted limbs, eyes open as if in surprise…
It can’t remember the smiles. The smiles belonged to the boy who had a name.
Talon doesn’t want to forget its owlet’s face.
Can’t let it melt into the image that won’t leave, a much too small body on a table, the feel of crushed bones as it gathered the broken owlet into its arms…
Talon shudders, dropping to its knees beside the grave. Beside its owlet.
It should have been there. Should be down there, with the owlet. Or better still, should be down there instead of the owlet.
The voice. Can’t lose it. Can’t forget what he sounded like. Even if the voice was meant for the boy who had a name.
…………………………………
Talon doesn’t react to the storm. Thunder sounds in the distance. Coming closer, part of its mind judges.
No effort is made to get under shelter. That doesn’t matter anymore. Can’t leave the owlet alone in the storm. Won’t.
No matter what the Bat says. No matter even if the nestling calls.
And anyway… Talon doesn’t deserve the nestling. It couldn’t keep its owlet safe. It shouldn’t be trusted with a nestling.
Maybe the Bat shouldn’t be trusted with a nestling either, but there’s no one else, no nest parents, to take the baby bird in.
The owlet… The owlet brought home the nestling. The owlet would’ve known what to do. Talon doesn’t. Talon should never have been trusted with them.
The raindrops begin to fall. Talon puts the phone away within its suit, away from the rain.
It can’t lose the voice. Can’t lose the owlet’s words. Even if it deserves to.
…………………………………….
There are things that can afford no logical explanation.
Events that make no sense, and will never make sense, unless the observers have the ability to see the whole of the multiverse at a glance and comprehend the whirling chaos of possibility.
In the midst of those chaos, denizens of several worlds fight a battle.
One of them, a boy with too much power, a boy driven mad by power he was not and might never have been capable of wielding, lashes out at reality.
The repercussions are not felt in one world alone.
The repercussions will never be fully pinpointed or documented, not by the participants of the struggle.
Most of them will not even remember there was a battle at all. That is how these things go.
But one repercussion of that blow, one of the ripples racing away from a mad child’s ranting, it reaches and touches multiple realities. Racing through them.
A ripple that would send chaos through some worlds, tragedy through others… and in a few, salvation.
………………………………..
Jason wakes up much faster than he normally does.
An instant transition between asleep and awake, not the slow lazy emergence he likes.
The bed beneath him is not as soft as he is used to. And stretching, his hands strike against something hard and cold.
It is the cold that brings back the memories, and Jason screams.
The cackling laugh of a mad man. Green hair and white face speckled with blood, his blood. Metal against his limbs. A count down. Calling out…
Jason screams and screams. Especially when the present pushes against the past once more and tells him where he is.
………………………..
Talon is curled up against the cold marble of the headstone when he hears – senses more than hears – the screams.
The cries reverberating through the ground.
Half drowned out, even this close by, by the rain and the wind and the thunder. But not drowned out enough to be hidden from a talon’s senses.
Not enough to hide from the Talon whose voice it is.
………………………..
Jason… Jason is Robin. Robin doesn’t panic. Can’t panic.
Even if he can still feel the eyes of a mad man on him, still hear the count down. Even if he can’t lie to himself anymore about the fact that he is in a coffin. In a coffin. Buried. Buried. Buri-
Stop. No panicking. No. Be Robin. Bruce wouldn’t panic. Dick wouldn’t panic.
(Some part of his mind winces at a memory, a memory of calling for them, calling and never being answered, but he manages to push that away. No time for that. Not now.).
Okay. Coffin.
The… The clown buried him alive? That…that doesn’t quite sound right. Because it doesn’t hurt. And it had hurt such a lot, last thing he remembered.
He has the confused impression that a long time has passed since then.
A blurred memory of being somewhere else, a memory of Somewhere Else that is rapidly fading, no matter how much he tries to hold on to it.
Doesn’t matter. Don’t let it matter. Not till you’re out of here.
He feels for his utility belt. Not there. Of course not there. The clown wouldn’t have let him keep it.
Wait, he…he isn’t dressed in the Robin suit. Just a suit. The kind of suit he had to wear for the parties he couldn’t wiggle out of attending.
The kind of suit…the kind of suit, in the movies, they bury people in.
No. not thinking about it. Not going there. Okay? Just…just not going there. Not now.
Okay. So. So no Robin suit. No utility belt. No communicator. Nothing…nothing that can help. Not even a flare. He’s here, here in the dark and there’s…there’s dirt above him and…
The panicked hatchling warble escapes his lips again. A reflex. Calling for his brother.
He didn’t answer, last time, a memory taunts. He wouldn’t answer. He was seeing it, but he wouldn’t answer.
He always does, though. Always. Always. Please. Okay. Calm down. Got to calm down.
What’s he actually got?
Nothing.
No, don’t be like that. Don’t. You’re Robin. Robin’s always got something. Always. So. So what. What now. No utility belt, that is what he keeps coming back to. No uti-
Wait. No utility belt. But a belt. A regular belt that goes with the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit.
A regular belt with a heavy metal buckle.
………………………….
Talon is not sure whether what it hears is real.
Sometimes…sometimes it hears things that aren’t there. Sometimes the waking dreams start that way, hearing a chirp or a warble, turning to answer it.
Sometimes Talon gets lost chasing the voices that aren’t there, and it suspects one of these days it won’t be able to come back.
That is fine. Coming back…there’s nothing to come back to. Not with its owlet gone.
The nestling wants it to come back, but nestlings just don’t know better.
Talon shouldn’t come back. Shouldn’t be trusted with nestlings. Not after its owlet called for it and Talon was away.
One of these days Talon will get lost chasing the owlet’s voice, and that will be just as well.
And now, hearing the owlet’s voice coming from the ground, from the tomb, Talon thinks maybe this is the day.
Maybe this time the owlet wouldn’t tell it to wake up. Maybe this time no matter how much the nestling or the Bat calls, they won’t be able to pull Talon away from the dream, from its owlet.
……………………………………..
Jason is trying very hard not to think about how much air a coffin can hold.
Once, once back in the early days, Talon and Batman hunted a bad guy who liked to bury people alive.
They wouldn’t let Jason come with them, Batman wouldn’t even allow Jason to see the files, but he had finally found the reports on the Batcomputer.
About how the bodies were found. twisted in the coffins. The coffin lids gauged with clawmarks. Nails broken, fingers bloodied to the bone as the victims tried to dig their way out. The way he is trying now.
No. no, just shut up. He doesn’t have to do it with his hands, he’s got a belt buckle to work with. That makes all the difference. That does. He knows.
There’s…there’s air in the coffin. He is trying to slow down his breathing, trying the meditation tricks Bruce taught him.
He can make the air last long enough. He can. He will. He is Robin.
He doesn’t realize he is still making the chirps.
…………………………
Talon knows the voice can’t be real. The owlet is gone. The owlet can’t call to it anymore.
Talon wasn’t there when the owlet called out, and now the calls have ceased. Talon won’t hear it again, not for real.
This is just another of the waking dreams.
The Bat tells it – last time pleaded with it – not to go into the waking dream, tells it to stay with them, please, just stay with them, Jason wouldn’t want this…
The Bat can’t command it. Even if the Bat has stopped trying to command long ago, and now only pleads. Which hurts. But not as bad as staying away from its owlet. Nowhere near as bad.
And now its owlet is calling for it from under the ground. And it doesn’t matter whether the voice is real or not, any longer.
Talon will not – cannot – disobey that voice.
………………………………..
The lid of the coffin is hard.
Jason can’t really see what he is digging at, it’s dark, oh God, it’s so damn dark, but he prays it’s not metal.
He tells himself it is not. If it is, he’s dead anyway, so he might as well pretend it is wood.
And…and he can feel it giving way, okay? Just a little, just a start, but he can feel it. The air…the air will last long enough.
He thinks for a moment that he hears Dick’s voice, hears the warble calling for him, answering his call.
But Dick isn’t here. Dick is away with the Titans.
That’s okay. That’s okay. Jason can do this. Robin can do this.
………………………
The ground is softened by the rain. It gives way under Talon’s hands. Not quick enough, though, not easily enough.
There’s a shed. Close by. Too close by.
The human who used to guard the place used it before. Now the human doesn’t come here anymore, acknowledging it as Talon’s place to guard.
But the shed is still there. And there are things still in there. Things to dig with, dig into the ground better and faster than even Talon’s hands can.
Talon is not sure just when it left the grave or how it got into the shed, but then it is digging again, tearing the ground away, away from its owlet, its owlet is calling for it and Talon won’t stay away.
Not again. Never again. Please. Never again.
Talon doesn’t feel the rain or the cold anymore. There’re only the owlet’s cries, and the dread that the cries will stop again, the way the waking dreams always stop and leave Talon alone again.
Some part of Talon knows the cries will stop, they always do, that they aren’t really there.
Doesn’t matter. It will keep digging, keep digging till it reaches the owlet. This is what it should have done anyway. Should have done long ago.
Get to the owlet. And if the voice fades out like the voices always do… Well. Talon can just stay there. Stay in there with its owlet.
And maybe, maybe this time it won’t have to come out of the waking dream. Please. Just…let it stay with its owlet.