Chapter Text
Duke approaches the receptionist’s desk in the early morning, checking his phone to make sure he’s not too early for visiting hours. “Hi Darlene,” he greets the elderly woman dutifully manning the desk, “Good morning.”
“Oh, Good morning to you too,” she smiles at him, “I'll let Dr. Chukwu know you’re here.”
“Thanks. This is my last visit for a few weeks,” he drums his fingers.
Darlene types away, “I'll make a note dear. Are you going on vacation?”
“No, it's a business trip. Mr. Wayne is taking me to Tokyo. There’s some big conference thing.”
“Tokyo is delightful. I hope you have a lovely time.”
“Mr. Thomas?” Duke looks up to see Dr. Chukwu. She’s a short, stern woman, a real Gotham type. No nonsense, tells-it-how-it-is. Due to their condition, Duke had specifically requested to Bruce that the trust of care of his parents would be placed in the hands of a black doctor, and Bruce had found him a woman who was everything Duke could hope for.
Unfortunately, she can’t actually make his parents better. That’s the no nonsense, tells-it-how-it-is Gothamite truth for you.
“Elaine and Doug have had a very good week,” The doctor tells him as he follows her down the hallways, “We've seen a lot of stability from them, responding very well to the routine and structure of their care. Care providers have been successful in averting episodes using distraction and grounding techniques. It's been 6 days now since their last high alert.”
Gotham Assisted Living Facility specializes in trauma rehabilitation and hospice, and though they don’t say so out loud, they prioritize patients recovering from the effects of supervillain attacks and other supernatural events. Not every hospital would readily treat patients suffering from long-lasting effects that have never been treated before. Nobody they had tried before had wanted to take the risk.
The hallways of the high security ward are blue, and remarkably evenly painted. The kind of thing you only notice when you can see the full spectrum of light. Dr. Chukwu takes the corners at a quick pace, “Elaine is still responding poorly to attempts at communication, verbal and non verbal. Doug has shown some interest in non verbal communication, but does not respond.”
The door of his parent’s visiting room is propped open for him. Duke enters the quaint little sitting space, with its calmly colored plush chairs and neatly arranged throw pillows. His living room never looked like this when he was living with his parents, everything they owned was a very retro yellow or brown. His dad’s style has always been stuck permanently in the late 70s, and his mom couldn’t have cared less as long as there was a couch to prop her feet up on after a long day of work.
Duke walks over to the bookshelf in the visiting room and takes a look at the new titles while Dr. Chukwu takes her leave. He’d need to go book shopping soon. The last time he went was with his father. Maybe Steph and Cas would go with him to dull the pain a little.
A few minutes later, Dr. Chukwu reenters the room, two nursing staff and their patients following behind her. He forces himself to meet his parents eyes, glassy and unfocused, their faces twisted into horrific smiles.
He clears his throat, “Hi Mom. Hi Dad.”
His mom starts to laugh a little. His dad doesn’t react at all. Their teeth are unnaturally bright white - fakes, as the originals had rotten away. The tiny scars at the corners of their mouth from where the incessant smiling had cracked their faces haunts Duke, as did the unfamiliar lines on their faces. They had aged - almost like how Duke felt he was much older now then when they left, they look now so much older now then they had been two years ago.
“I'll come and get you in an hour,” Dr. Chukwu smiles as she takes her leave. Once one of the nurses is finished guiding his parents to be seated on the sofa, she smiles at Duke and says, “we’ll just be in and out, don't mind us,” and they follow the doctor out the door.
Through the wall, he can see a security guard outside the door listening in, but at least it's the illusion of intimacy.
His parents dont look at him, but he can't take his eyes off them. Their twisted faces. The way their eyes twitch. The way clothes hang off their frail bodies. Duke clears his throat, and tries to speak normally. “The doctor said you guys have been doing well recently, that’s good. I’m glad. Myself, I’ve almost graduated highschool now,” he tells them, “I’ll be done for good in three months. Bruce said he’d talk to Luke Fox about getting me a full time position at the Gotham Heights Youth Center. I haven't been back in a while since I started my mentorship with Mr. Wayne. I think I met Luke once, he came and talked with the recruits for a bit. I didn't even piece together that they were the same person until Bruce mentioned it. It's weird that I've worked with Mr. Fox, your old boss, mom. I don't know how much he knows about what happened to you guys.”
“I want to take night courses eventually. I just can't pick a major. The most applicable would be chemical engineering or bioengineering, but also a lot of my work is in the humanities and law, and honestly a part of me wants to take creative writing and poetry.
Duke sighs, “I have to make a decision, but I barely know what my future looks like. Which is ironic, but I can’t even tell you why.”
He looks down at his feet, forcing himself to stop staring. “That's me, I guess. Do you want me to read for a bit again?”
No response. No evidence they even heard him. Which is an improvement from bursting into laughter and trying to attack him, but it still hurts.
“Okay…” Duke sits in the armchair across from them. “Buttercup and Humperdinck are coming up with the letter plan right now, that’s where we left off.”
Duke clears his throat, and opens his book to the bookmark. “Well consider, then, dearest. here he is, off sailing with the Dread Pirate Roberts; he has had a month to survive the emotional scars you dealt him. What if he wants now to remain single? Or, worse, what if he has found another?”
The nurse comes back in at some point and starts typing away at the computer in the corner. His mom hasn't moved an inch, staring at the corner of the room with terrifying, wide eyed intensity. His father moves to sit on the floor and rests his head on his knees, curled into a ball. It's hard to tell if either of them can even hear his voice. Sometimes they have aggressive reactions that seem almost like they can understand him, and days like today they are barely aware of anything at all.
Duke almost prefers the bad days. At least those days are proof that his mom and dad are still THERE.
It’s only been half an hour when his phone starts to ring. He glances at the number and sees Tim’s name, which is a rare occurrence. The nurse glances up at him and he smiles apologetically, “I’ll be just a second”, before getting up and stepping out into the hallway.
“Hey Tim, whats up,” a doctor passes him in the wall and he raises his hand to wave.
“What are you doing about the amusement mile investigation while you're out of the country?” Red Robin says, tersely, “Have you passed it off already?”
“No, I'm putting it on pause. Nothing I've found indicates there being any urgent issue- I've been monitoring it every day for almost a month now and nothing’s changed in the activity.”
Duke can hear Tim’s keyboard clicks over the receiver, “I’m thinking of taking over the case while you're out. Could we discuss details before your flight?”
“I'm with my parents right now, and I'm getting in a cab straight to the airport after this.”
“I’ll drive you instead,” Tim tells him, not really asking, “we can talk in the car, I'll get any relevant files off the computer when I'm at the manor.”
Duke pinches the bridge of his nose, a bad habit he’s picked up from Bruce. “Alright, fine. I’ll be done in half an hour.”
“I'll see you then.”
The receiver goes silent as Tim hangs up on him. Duke turns and takes a deep breath to collect himself as he puts his phone back in his pocket, stealing himself to face his parents again. He shakes off the jitters and opens the door, then nearly jumps out of his skin. His mother is standing directly in the doorway, staring at him.
She has the book in her hand. She is looking at HIM, her eyes are focused. Her lips are pulled into a vacant, eerie smile.
She holds out the book for him. Once he cautiously takes it from her, she goes back to her chair and sits down again, right back to staring at the same corner with the same wide, unblinking eyes. Duke remembers Dr. Chukwu telling him, they have to take special eye drops to rehydrate their eyes now that their bodies don’t tend to blink on their own. The doctor’s tell him there’s permanent damage to their eyes because of it.
Unprompted, his father begins to laugh. His mother is seated expectantly with that terrible smile. She’d looked at HIM. She hasn't laughed once.
Glancing between her and his father, he makes eye contact with the nurse who gives him a reassuring hand gesture. Ignoring the bouts of choked laughter and the sounds of the nurse typing furiously away, he resumes his seat and hesitantly opens the book to find where he left off.
“Ah,” he says, a strange feeling overcoming him as he finds the line and quotes, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
As he reads, after a long, painful wait, his dad’s laughter subsides. He goes back to a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth to occupy himself. He doesn't- Duke has gotten better at figuring out their body language, so alien and unfamiliar, but it was always difficult to tell if his dad was in distress or not. Before the gas, and now especially after. Everything seemed like a bad sign these days. The rocking wasn't bad, it wasn't good either, but it wasn't a bad thing. He had severe brain damage. He'd spent a long time unable to move. The nurses had said it was comforting for him to practice vestibular stimulation.
It doesn't make it easier to watch his grown father rock back and forth on the ground like a terrified child. Duke feels helpless.
But his mother had stared at him, at HIM, his mind keeps repeating, and she’d handed him the book. She’d sat back down. she might as well have told him to keep reading. He's doing SOMETHING, even if he doesn’t know what.
He keeps reading. He chose this book because they'd read it together once. Duke had read lots of books that they'd read together, and he’d never gotten this reaction before. Still, he keeps reading.
Dr. Chukwu slips silently back into the room as he’s reading the final page. “I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand, I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.”
She smiles at him, and speaks to her patients without making eye contact.. “In five minutes we’ll move back to your rooms. Doug, in five minutes you’ll move back to your room. Elaine, in five minutes you’ll move back to your room.” Neither of them indicate that they heard her
She repeats it a few more times as Duke checks his phone. Transitions are important for unregulated patients, which is the kind way to label what his parents are these days. There’s a new message from Tim, “in the lobby whenever ur finished”
The nurses come and collect their patients not long after, and Dr. Chukwu escorts Duke back to the lobby. “How did things go?”
“Really well, I think.” He slings his red jacket across his shoulders, “thanks for everything,”
“Of course. Darlene said we won't be seeing you for a few visits?”
“I'm going with Mr. Wayne to a conference in Tokyo. I'll be back the week of the 15th.”
Chukwu meets his eyes seriously. “Your presence has been really beneficial for your parents' recovery. We’ll be very excited to have you back.” She smiles kindly, “Enjoy your trip, Duke. You’ve earned it.”
Duke finds it hard to speak around the lump in his throat, “I'll come back as soon as I can. Thank you again doctor.”
He gets in the elevator and breathes. He's not going to cry. He's not going to cry.
--
The doors open onto the ground floor and he passes security with a smile and wave. Tim glances up from his phone and smiles his best gala smile when he sees Duke approaching, “Hey bro, car’s waiting out front.”
It’s not until they get in Tim’s car that the vigilante drops the cold grin. Duke can tell he’s beat from the reluctant way he starts the engine of the car. Despite what he’d say if you asked him, Duke can tell that Tim secretly wishes that all cars had auto driving systems like the batmobile.
“When did you get back from the tower?” he asks, conversationally.
Tim doesn’t even check his mirrors before pulling out into his lane. “Monday, late.”
“How's your team?”
“Loud. Crazy,” Tim sighs, “They’re good. I miss them already.”
Duke laughs, picturing the annoyed look on Red Robin’s face as his team goofs off. “Sounds like someone’s secretly a softie.”
Tim waves away the soft jab with a hand, “Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the amusement mile situation.” He’s a bit too much like Bruce, in a lot of ways. At least for Duke, that makes him easier to deal with then the others. Especially Jason.
“I was keeping tabs on shady contractors who are known to take under the table cash for rogues. They were hired by some front organization to demo the old amphitheater at amusement mile, so first I was investigating the demolition books to make sure explosives weren’t ending up in the wrong hands. The thing is, they're not actually bringing the building down just yet, it's been rigged to blow for weeks now and nothing’s happening. Contractors go back every day, check to make sure the explosives are still there, then go home.”
“Have you dug up their books?”
“I have the books, the names and records of every worker who’s been on site, all of THEIR bank statements, and nothing. It's all normal. Except for the fact that it’s VERY not normal.”
“Great. I'll get it all out of the casefile then.” Tim takes a sharp turn, a pensive look on his face.
Duke tries to gauge his thoughts. “Why are you interested anyways?”
Tim hesitates before speaking, choosing his words carefully. “I got a tip from my network. Someone’s in the planning phase.”
Duke raises an eyebrow. “You think they’ll use Batman being gone as an opportunity? Maybe Dick should suit up for a few nights just to be safe.”
“If anything, they’ll wait to be sure Batman's back before they make their move. It would spoil their fun if B wasn't there to try and stop them.”
Duke can see where this is going from the resentment in Tim’s tone. There’s nothing he hates more than someone not taking him seriously as an opponent. “I'll keep him away as long as i can then.”
“Thanks, I'd appreciate that.”
The silence as Tim drives is awkward. After a few minutes, the vigilante sighs and asks the obligatory question, “how are your parents?”
Duke swallows, “good. I mean, obviously not good, but they're not as bad as they’ve been either. The doctor’s say that my coming and visiting them is helpful. Reintroducing them to social structures.”
“Is a recovery plausible?”
Duke is used to bluntness from the bats, but he still struggles to answer with the same level of efficiency. “It’s… the long term effects of joker gas are still relatively unknown. They’ve suffered extreme brain damage and psychological trauma. I mean, we don’t even know where they were for two years until they got picked up off the streets… and I looked everywhere.”
“But their condition has improved.”
“Yeah…” Duke shrugs. He’s saved from having to explain anymore as Tim pulls up behind a cab at the front gates of the airport.
“Have a good vacation,” Tim waves off tiredly, “give Deathstroke my regards.”
Bruce meets him in the airport lobby, wrangling a gaggle of chauffeurs. With a final glance out the window at Gotham, he’s ushered to the VIP lounge, and he prepares to leave the city for the first time in his life.
--
Technically, this isn't a gala. Bruce had made it clear that usual gala protocol did not apply. This was an active investigation with the goal of preventing an assasination. They were undercover. This was espionage.
Duke’s wearing a three thousand dollar suit and is representing the Wayne family name at a rich person social event. They're serving flutes of champagne and shrimp. It feels like a gala.
The Waynes arrived fashionably late as always, but there are still invitees trickling in. There are press figures at every corner, and Dick had been generous enough to give him forewarning that they would be ruthless in trying to corner a Wayne child once they found him. He's found his way up to the second floor and is resting on the sleek, glass rails overlooking the party floor. His eyes grab onto Bruce, who’s making the rounds before the reception starts - congratulating the founders, verbally sparring with other clients and investors, flirting with people’s wives, shaking off reporters like water off a duck’s back.
He closes his eyes and breathes, reaching somewhere down within himself for a calm, center of focus. When he opens his eyes again, the world is bathed in blue and white.
Ghosts and people mingle from past and future lightwaves, crawling around and through each other like ants. There's almost too many figures to pick them out individually, swarming and merging and splitting. Some of the ghosts stay still and leave a brighter afterburn, others are nothing more than blurs of movement.
Light out of the corner of his eye catches Duke's attention, and he turns to see the ghost of a waiter offering him a drink. He catches himself just before replying to the empty air.
In the sea of light below, he looks for the bald head on Pietro Sokolov’s expensive suit jacket shoulders. Their mark is a mingler - hardly leaving behind more than a smudge of light residue for Duke to follow, but eventually he makes his way to his seat as the speakers take the stage. Seat B16. B16 is much nearer to the elevated stage and speaker’s podium than the Wayne’s seats, as is deserved for the chief liaison between Stagg Enterprises and Pacific International Lines. Duke makes a note
Then, the ghost’s head explodes. Duke blinks and the ghosts are gone.
“No thanks,” Duke says to the server who approaches him just before the man can open his mouth to speak. Catching himself, Duke quickly adds, “sorry” and hurries down the stairs to the main floor.
Bruce is across the floor from the staircase, and as Duke descends he’s already attracting attention. “Mr. Thomas! Over here Mr. Thomas!” Someone shouts, overlapping with the cacophony of conversation and other reporters shouting, “Here! Here!”
Giving up hope of making it by relatively unnoticed, he nervously apologizes and speedwalks away from the shouting, narrowly avoiding colliding with a gaggle of suits in his hasty escape. The sight of Bruce makes his heartbeat stop pounding and he tries not to jog embarrassingly as he hurries to his foster father’s side.
B is in full Brucie mode and hardly glances at him as he finishes his story, “- and she said, you’re going to have to pick between being a father and an ‘extreme sport enthusiast’ and I said, can’t those be the same thing? My lawyer did not find that as funny as she did.” The gathered crowd laughs at his joke, and Bruce uses the moment to quirk an eyebrow at Duke and smile, a question in his eyes.
Duke nods and Bruce claps a hand on his shoulder, “well, the reception’s half past the hour already. I really ought to go find the man of the night and give him my best wishes, there’s no way I’ll catch him after his speech with the press hounds off their leashes for the night.”
The group give them a chorus of goodbyes as B steers himself and Duke away, straight into the arms of one of the waitstaff before they’re descended on like vultures.
“Sorry, could I steal you for a moment?” Bruce calls out to the young, black haired girl who stiffens like a statue and looks up at him, awestruck, “You weren’t busy, were you?”
“No sir,” she says in broken, thickly accented English, “I can help?”
“Perfect, do you have a VIP room we could borrow for a second? I need to take an important phone call.”
“Yes sir,” she says, “Follow, sir.”
She cuts through the crowds and ignores the frantic shouting and shoving like she’s cutting through the jungle with a machete, and they march to keep up with her. She takes them behind the coat check desk and into a carpeted hallway, and almost immediately when the door to the party hall shuts the world falls silent.
“Here,” She tells them as she opens one of the doors into a plush lounge room, “VIP room for telephone call.”
“This is great, thank you again. What was your name?” Bruce digs around in his pants for his wallet and hands it to Duke, who takes it hesitantly. “Hisa,” The girl replies, hands dutifully behind her back.
Hisa turns to leave after a beat but Bruce holds out a hand to stop her and says, “Hold on Hisa,” turning to look expectantly at Duke. Cluing in, he opens Bruce’s wallet and sifts through the notes, looking for the 5,000 yen note with the purple lady on it to tip her with.
Panicking when he can’t find it after a few seconds, Duke pulls out a 10,000 yen note and hands it to her quickly so she can get back to her work. “Sorry,” he apologizes, and her eyes widen when she sees it and looks between him and Bruce in shock.
Before she can shake her head and start refusing, Bruce opens the door and steps inside, dialing on his phone. Duke shoves the note into her hand and tries to bow, calling out “Thank you, bye!” and quickly shutting the door behind them.
With the door closed behind them, Bruce keeps dialing in a separate app until his phone flashes a green checkmark. “I’ve deactivated the listening devices and camera that the scan detected. I’ll have to remind Oracle to backdate a system failure to cause all the data collected tonight to corrupt. The electromagnetic barrier is established,” he tells Duke, “what have you found?”
“The hit is earlier than we thought. We have an hour and a half before the assasination,” Duke pulls back his sleeve cuff and taps on his watch until a hologram map of the area lights up, “The bullet will come through an east facing window on the second floor and hit Sokolov here, in seat B16, the right wing.”
“Which of our target locations could the bullet come from?”
“Because of the angle of entry, it’s one of four,” Duke zooms the hologram out and pinpoints the addresses, “Deathstroke will be in one of these buildings.”
“Hn,” Bruce grunts, deep in thought. “Knowing Wilson, he’d likely pick the furthest building, but that’s hardly certain. There’s something off however…” Duke’s phone rings, cutting him off. He blinks at the screen, caller ID reading ‘Tim’. Duke glances at Bruce, who brushes him off, “Take it. I need a moment to think.”
“Tim?” Duke picks up.
“Are you in a good place to talk right now?” Red Robin asks, voice prickly with dissatisfaction.
“Yes, B sweeped it,” Bruce’s brow is furrowed with concentration as he stares at the holographic model of the city, so Duke takes the call a few steps away to give him room to focus. “What’s going on?”
Duke can feel Tim’s stress seeping through the phone, “I’m so sorry about this, and I really wouldn’t ask if it were not life or death, but what is the passphrase sequence for the cave under WE?”
“Oh my god,” Duke cringes, “Are you sure you need to get in? The other caves only have backups of the stuff that’s at the manor.”
“We CANNOT go to the manor right now,” Tim insists. Duke thinks he hears someone saying something to Tim through the receiver, but Tim insists, “No, we CAN’T. Demon brat will rat us out to Bruce in a heartbeat.”
“I thought your Titan’s business was wrapped up?” He asks, hoping that was actually Bart's voice he heard.
The noise of exasperation Tim makes is all he really needs. “I’ll tell you about it later. Do you know the code?”
“I’m pretty sure I remember it, but it’s just…”
“I know, Bruce makes them fucking annoying on purpose to keep Jason out. You’re the only one who actually goes to the stupid team meetings and pays attention to the updated codes - the rest of us stubbornly assume we’ll spontaneously remember them on the spot like the magical child geniuses we think ourselves to be. It’s a Robin problem.”
“Right,” Duke says, “I don’t know about all of that, and that might just be a you problem. But I’ll try to give you the password anyway. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,”
“543g0jk0JE3A2aG29-,” Duke takes a breath, “jfJGId9484Tb8f38fhw3nf949kjska93983fjlalf03.”
By the end of it he’s singing a little, and he hopes both Tim and Bruce don’t notice. He’d come up with a few stupid little tricks (raps) during his training to get up to speed with all the memorization quickly.
Tim is silent for a moment. “One more time for me,” he says, painfully calm, “and I’ll have it, I swear.”
“543. Lowercase g as in gamma. 0, lowercase p as in-” Duke pauses for a second, “Sorry, no. Lowercase j as in-”
From Tim’s side of the receiver there is a horrible metal wrenching noise loud enough to make Duke recoil away from his phone. Bruce’s phone starts going off with an emergency alarm at the exact same moment, and both Duke and Bruce’s eyes meet. “Don’t pick that up,” Duke warns him at the same time Tim shouts at someone on the other end of the phone, “DON'T PICK THAT UP!”
“OKAY! NEVERMIND! I DON’T NEED THE PASSWORD!” Tim shouts hysterically, “THANK YOU SO MUCH, I'M SO SORRY, DON’T TELL BRUCE, BYE!”
Bruce looks at Duke as he hangs up. His mentor seems to weigh something in his head, before sighing. “Do I want to know?”
“We should focus on the mission for now,” Duke decides, hopefully less nervous than he feels. “Red Robin’s putting out the fires. Probably.”
Bruce sighs deeply and rubs his eyes. “The mission,” his voice is raw with exhaustion, “I’ve eliminated the office building. Their CCTV and security records are clean - there is not an inch of the building that could be infiltrated without disabling or modifying a monitoring device. I feel confident Wilson would hardly go to all that tedious effort when there are other options available - The bullet came from either one of the condos or the hotel.”
“Shouldn’t you be able to find any west facing window rooms that are empty or recently booked?”
“That would be a waste of time. A paper trail like that would be a rookie mistake - the room has either been rented for at least a month or belonged to someone else. Deathstroke is not afraid of civilian casualties if it gets the job done.”
“There should only be a few windows that are viable with the angle. That leaves maybe thirty locations?”
“We cannot physically leave the gala or do anything that would compromise our identities. In fact,” Bruce checks his watch, “We’ve been here too long already. It’s time for a solution, Signal.”
His mentor looks at him expectantly. Signal shoves his phone in his pocket and tries to calm himself down, to think slowly and logically. Whatever Kon destroyed in the batcave can wait for when he’s back in Gotham - right now he should be focused on saving Pietro Sokolov’s life.
“We don’t need to go to the locations,” Duke realizes, “Because I should be able to see him from the spot the bullet hits with my telescopic vision. Hell, I’ll be looking right down the barrel of his gun!”
“Exactly. Only thirty places to look.” Bruce claps him on the shoulder and banishes the holograms with the press of a button. “Time to get to work, detective.”
--
Pietro Sokolov would rather be dead. That’s all he can think to himself as he is clinging to the white marble sink in the bathroom of the gala hall, so sweaty he’s struggling not to slip off - being dead would be preferable to ever doing this much coke again.
It’s probably not just the coke he thinks - though he had absolutely overdone it, hiding away in the VIP room for the majority of the night with the rest of the crooks, keeping out of sight of the flickering lights of the cameras - it’s probably the damn Toykyo water, and the damn jetlag, and the damn hangover from the day before too. All he knows is that the smell of sake had nearly made him double over and vomit right onto the waiter’s shoes, before he had rushed to the bathroom and retched for nearly ten minutes straight.
It couldn’t just be the coke, right? There has to be something else that’s making his eyes melt down to his toes and his skin turn to grass? Fuck, what did he take that wasn’t coke?
“Pietro, son of a bitch,” a voice says. He doesn’t lurch up to look at the source of the voice until a hand claps him on the shoulder, “Do you remember me? It’s Wayne, we played golf a few years ago. You had one hell of an arm.”
Bruce fucking Wayne. Sokolov tries to stand up and his knees buckle, nearly crashing him into the billionaire prince’s open arms. “Wayne,” he gasps, “Caught me at a … fuck me, not my finest moment.”
“Wayne, you know this guy?”
“It’s been awhile since we met,” the prince replies noncommittally, looking at Pietro with that stupid confused look on his face. The look on his dumb face pisses Sokolov off, though he’s smart enough not to show it. How does an idiot like that get so damn lucky when geniuses like himself were stuck where he was? Sweating through their thousand dollar suits, holding onto a sink to keep from pissing their pants and collapsing on the tile.
“You need someone to call you a cab Sokolov?” Wayne looks aghast as his hand shifts and touches the bare skin of his neck, “I think you’ve done a little too much buddy. Let’s get you home.”
“I’m fine, thanks for the offer,” Pietro tries to brush him off but truly feels incapable of walking away from the man without misplacing his feet. “I just need to splash some water in my face.”
“Didn’t you already? You’re all wet and cold!” Wayne’s looking really concerned now, and they’re drawing the eyes of other guests.
Sokolov sighs. He supposes a genius like himself can use this inopportune moment to network a bit. “You’re right Wayne, how about you call your driver. We can catch up a bit, what do you say?”
“Well you’re lucky, I’m headed to Zhao Xuegang’s afterparty. I can drop you off on the way there. Where’s your hotel?”
That’s how he ends up in Bruce Wayne’s limo, sipping on a champagne flute that the princely buffoon had innocently offered as if Sokolov couldn’t tell the difference between booze and water. Not only did it irk him to have Wayne looking down on him like this - pitying him, the audacity, Sokolov pities Wayne for being too stupid to realize that he’s nothing more than a pretty face, that he couldn’t be a REAL businessman like Sokolov himself if he tried - it also irked him that floating above Wayne’s head were little singing and dancing devils.
Alright, so maybe there weren’t devils. He was a little high, after all. But a shrewd businessman like Sokolov knew not to dismiss anything as impossible without first seeing the cold hard facts. This man was from Gotham, after all.
He stumbled from Bruce Wayne’s limo after giving the man his contact details (networking under any circumstances, the mark of a true businessman) and grumbled viciously at the bellhops holding open the doors for him. Once he’d made it through the horrifying ordeal of the elevator, all that awaited him was nothing short of heaven (a chance to finally relieve himself) on the other side of his hotel door.
The keycard beeped as he pushed the door open. Inside of his hotel room stood Batman and the Signal. As he swung his head round to the bathroom, he was greeted with the sight of Deathstroke handcuffed on his knees, blood dripping through the cracks of his mask onto to the rim of the toilet.
There is really no other way to put it. Sokolov pisses himself.
“That’s just sad,” The Signal sighs, with conviction, “and really gross.”
--
The sun is rising in the morning as Duke finally collapses into the hotel bed. A year ago, he would have easily said that it was the most comfortable bed he’d ever felt, but after moving into Wayne Manor, well, his standards were definitely higher these days.
Thinking of his bed back at the Manor (and along that train of thought, his bed at Jay’s house, all the foster beds he’d slept in, the motels, and his childhood home) only twists the knife in his chest. Being so far away from Gotham is an unsettling, unnatural feeling. Being homesick feel s so childish, in the face of everything he’s done today - Deathstroke was currently bleeding from a busted lip Duke had given him, while Duke flipped and flopped on a stranger’s bed trying to pretend like he didn’t miss his parents.
What if they needed him? What if they went missing again? What if they suddenly made an improvement and he wasn’t around for them? What if he missed an important moment, something that could have brought them back? What if, what if, what if, Duke wants to smash his head through a wall, because Batman always encouraged his unhealthy habit of agonizing over the what ifs.
Which was exactly why he couldn’t talk to Bruce about this! Duke knew that Bruce was feeling the same separation anxiety about Gotham that Duke was, and would do nothing but encourage that paranoia. Bruce called this thinking ‘creativity’ instead of ‘compulsive anxiety’, and his children were a demonstration of how that style of parenting worked.
Duke knew for a fact that for every bug in Gotham that Bruce had placed to keep tabs on his city, Tim had placed two.
Before they’d parted ways once the night’s investigation had come to a close, Batman had informed him that there were no further leads to pursue in Japan and that they’d be returned expeditiously to the Manor, unless something came up between then and the morning. Duke looked out his window as the morning painted the sky a reddish pink hue, and tried to think of what he was going to do.
Thinking of Tim reminded him of the earlier phone call, and knowing he wasn’t going to sleep anyways, he decides to check up on that situation. A blatant distraction tactic, but Batman would approve of nothing else but diligence in both his follow up investigation and the ignoring of his feelings.
He barely catches a second of the ring tone before Tim has picked up his call. “What’s the situation,” Red Robin’s tone is icy cold, and Duke gets the feeling that whatever is happening in Gotham is most definitely not going the way Tim had wanted.
“In a couple hours B and I will be getting on a plane back to Gotham. Our investigation finished early, so I thought I’d let you know.”
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the receiver as Tim picks his words carefully. “I would really appreciate it if Bruce did not get on that plane. Once he’s back he’ll force me to hand over this operation, and I can’t conceivably see the issues here resolved in under 24 hours.” Bitterly, Tim adds, “He’s under the impression that I still can’t handle a rogue on my own. He’ll be nothing but an obstacle in my mission.”
“Yeah,” Duke breathes, “I know man. That’s why I'm giving you heads up. I know this is an asshole move but... I’m with Bruce on this one. Not the rogue business,” Duke hurries to correct, “But, I gotta come back. I can't just sit here on vacation. I gotta be there for my parents, and for the city.”
“You sound like him now,” Tim says, as if Duke doesn’t already know that, “It’s a city, not a houseplant you forgot to water. In case you forgot, Gotham was surviving just fine without Batman or Signal less than a year ago.”
Duke kind of wants to punch him, a little. “Then I’ll stop pretending to have his interests in mind. I can’t spend this kind of time away from my parents. Not after everything I did to get them back.”
“Four days,” Tim insists, “You’ll live.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Duke grumbles under his breath. He’s pretty sure Tim has gone months without speaking to another human before. The more he argues though, the more he feels like a child throwing a tantrum. Tim is right, he sounds like Bruce, in a BAD way.
Duke thumps his head back against the mattress and strangles down the frustrated scream that wants to escape him. Nobody ever GETS it. Nobody ever BELIEVES him. It’s irrational, it’s really stupid, but it’s always seemed that no one else seems to listen to him when it comes to his parents.
Tim continues to persuade him on the other end of the receiver, but Duke tosses the phone to the other end of the bed and takes a few calming breaths instead.
When he hears Tim go quiet, he sits up and reaches to pick up the phone. “You’ll owe me a favor,” Duke tells him, “and I can only promise to try my best to convince him. There’s no guarantee he won’t slip away if he really wants to.”
“It's a deal. Text me if he gets on a plane.” the phone flashes as Tim hangs up. Duke might need to hang out with people who are his own age and spend less time with Batman, but what’s Tim's excuse?
Duke goes to bed with the same sense of dread he spent two years of his life ignoring. Not knowing where his parents are. Not being able to reach them. Not knowing if they’re safe.
This time he’s between first class satin sheets, illuminated by the sparkling lights of Tokyo outside the ceiling to floor windows, but at the end of the day, it’s always the same. No amount of money can shake the feeling. He supposes Batman wouldn’t be Batman if that weren’t true.
--
The sound of a camera shutter draws a couple gazes across the restaurant to the obscured table by the window.
“You’re aware that I'm not actually hungover,” Bruce states, more of a fact than a question.
“Sure,” Duke agrees, “But I promised Steph. She scares me. I think she sells the pictures to the paparazzi.”
Bruce frowns at this. “Hn. If she wants money she can use her credit card.”
Duke glances at Bruce’s utility watch obviously, and the man obligingly adjusts the subtle setting. Invisible to the human eye, but visible to Duke’s, a small EMP burst ripples out from the device, severing the connections of any local listening devices and causing the tablet the waitress was using to crash mid transaction. Whoops. “How did Bab’s cross examination go?”
“Sokolov gave reliable information.” Bruce talks lowly into his cup, “He’ll be useful as we move forward with this case - if he sobers up, that is. Barbara is still decrypting the files from his computer right now, his memory drive was bloated.”
Duke bites his lip. “How long will that take?
Wayne shrugs, “It may be a couple of days before she’s worked through all the data and has the useful documents sorted out. This is not time sensitive. Barbara has multiple responsibilities, after all.”
“In that case,” Duke takes a deep breath to build up his courage, “Maybe we don’t head back to Gotham right away. I’ve never been out of the country before, and technically I’m still on vacation until Friday…”
Bruce looks at Duke, unimpressed. Duke can feel the back of his neck getting a little warm. Okay, so he’s obviously caught, so much for the easy way. Instead of berating him for his horrible acting, Bruce sighs with intense weariness. “I may be your mentor, Duke, but I am not your superior.”
Duke blinks. “O…kay,” Bruce had repeated this to him before (they were partners, no more Robins was the rule), but he failed to see the relevance.
Uncommonly, Bruce seems almost… awkward as he continues. “There are obviously some conflicts of interest with that statement.”
“Like how you’re legally my Dad right now?” Duke prompts.
Bruce nods. “Precisely. This is an issue that has pervaded many of my professional working relationships, I am aware of that.”
Duke wishes he had his camera out still to record that for Steph.
“Tim is a trustworthy employee,” Bruce continues, unfettered by the ridiculousness of his previous statement, “he can handle any issue of virtually any scale without me - he has handled issues of insurmountable scale without me. But as a son, he is as far from trustworthy as possible. I've encouraged this from him in the past. In many ways, I regret that decision.”
Duke waits for him to finish, but Bruce seems to think that this is a complete statement, and goes back to euphorically sipping his espresso.
The pieces are starting to click together. “So… you’ll agree to stay in Tokyo for a few days to avoid having to mix your fatherly feelings and professional feelings about your son? Because professionally you know Tim can handle things but as a father you want to ground him? You’re literally just going to avoid resolving it?”
Bruce raises an eyebrow at him. Duke crosses his arms, “I'm still onboard with the end result, but your reasoning sucks, man.”
His adoptive father shrugs and adjusts his watch, unphased by the judgemental glare Duke is giving him. “I’ve heard that the Saiho-ji temple in Kyoto is wonderful this time of year. I’m sure the others would enjoy souvenirs.”
Duke has nothing to say to that, his mouth still open is unabashed disbelief. In a fit of petty revenge, he takes out his phone and takes a few more photos of Bruce to send to Steph, at distinctly unflattering moments. In the name of justice, of course.
--
Dick knocks on Damian's door. When Bruce hadn’t come home from Tokyo after the first night, Dick had gone to Gotham and was staying in the manor to keep his baby brother company on Bruce's request.
He would have done it without Bruce’s intervention, because the idea of Damian all alone in the manor with nothing but the ghosts of the past to keep him company tore his heart in two. Technically, the manor wasn't empty, but the occasional presence of Tim only made Dick’s intervention all the more necessary.
Despite living in the same house as the kid though, Dick had still barely seen his brother since he’d first arrived. Robin had spent almost all of his time that he was home sulking in his room.
Finally caving to his nosy nature, Dick knocked on Damian’s door and, after a beat, entered. His brother was seated on the floor with Titus’s giant head in his lap, glaring at his phone like it had personally insulted him. “What's wrong little D?”, Dick stepped into the room.
Damian quickly clicked off his phone and shifted his ire to the intruder. “NOTHING.”
Dick was not an idiot. He’d caught enough of a glimpse to recognize the sight of the Wayne family group chat (excluding Bruce and Jason, for separate but obvious reasons). This morning, Duke had sent more selfies of himself and Bruce, this time exploring the Okinawa aquarium. Of all the photos, this had to be the most unflattering one of Bruce yet. Whatever he’d done to piss Duke off, Dick wanted nothing to do with it.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Damian’s struggled with his insecurities about needing to be Bruce’s favorite child, even if Dick hoped every time would be the last.
Dick sighs and begins a now familiar speech, “Damian, jealousy is a perfectly healthy emotion-”
“I am NOT jealous of Father for getting to bond with Thomas!” The middle schooler explodes, his face going bright red. Titus startles awake with a snort, looking up at his master with as much surprise as Dick is feeling.
That… is not the response Dick had been expecting. It seems he’d misjudged how quickly Damian was adjusting to the newest member of the family.
He’s unable to keep all of the smile out of his voice as his chest swells with pride, “Of course, you're right, I was being silly and overprotective. Say, do you want to go to Batburger for dinner?”
Damian pouts at him. “I do not need to be coddled like a child.”
Dick’s laugh is bright and not forced, for once. “I know that, but I heard they’re doing the Robins promotion again. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky this time!”
Damian shoots to his feet in a matter of seconds, despite Titus’s affronted yelp. “Why didn't you LEAD with this Richard! Every moment we delay the probability of our success becomes slimmer!”
-
It’s one in the afternoon when the airport chauffeur drops Bruce and himself off at the front doors of the Manor, but for Duke’s jetlagged brain, it’s three in the morning and all he can think of is sleeping for an hour before heading back out on his dreaded patrol.
Bleary eyed, he collides with a small obstacle on his way to the door as the driver whisks away their suitcases with a single minded determination. The obstacle grabs his wrist to prevent him from face planting on the manor’s walkway, none too gently.
“Thomas,” the obstacle speaks sternly, “Come with me.”
At first he wishfully assumes that he’s being dragged to bed, but instead he’s pulled into Damian’s bedroom and the door is firmly shut behind him. All sense of proprietary gone from him, Duke drops his backpack on the ground and collapses onto the little Robin’s bed without a second thought. As his body sinks into the heavenly mattress, he hears a disapproving “tt” and feels the mattress dip.
“Thomas, open your eyes. Clearly you are even weaker than I thought.”
He groans and shifts up as the little Robin shoves him over so that they can share the mattress. Robin’s holding a whole bunch of shit in his hands, and Duke finally blinks some of the sleep out of his eyes to take a look.
Damian catches his gaze and displays his treasure with a puffed out chest. “I’ve completed my collection of all officially licensed Batburger action figures at long last, including the limited edition Robin variants, of which less than a thousand combined were distributed.”
Duke’s mouth is agape as he admires the hoard that Damian spreads across his lap. There’s a Batman, Batwoman, Batgirl (Barbara’s era, and Damian remarks that his collection will need to be remedied when they do a Batgirls collection to include Stephanie and Cassandra’s respective eras as well), Nightwing, Red Robin, Spoiler, Signal, Robin, and the three he designates as his newest editions: Each of the four previous Robins.
“Now I can finally add Todd to my collection,” Damian remarks diabolically, “as they would never have previously released a Red Hood model due to his criminal activities.”
The synapses in his brain have begun to fire, and Duke’s mouth forms an o. “I almost forgot. I got you something while I was in Japan! It’s in my bag,” he gestures to the backpack across the room.
Damian watches him with the usual, somewhat disgusted look that he always fixes Duke with as the metahuman stumbles out of bed and towards his bag, digging haphazardly until withdrawing a blur of brown, black, yellow, red and green.
“It’s for you,” Duke reiterates as he presents the son of the demon with his offering. A Shiba Inu plushie wearing a miniature robin suit.
Damian takes the plush offered to him trepidatiously. He stares at it.
“Satisfactory,” Damian says, in that angry, stilted way that Duke is beginning to recognize as Damian’s ‘trying not to smile’ voice. With that, the middle schooler scoops up his collection - including the newest editions, and hauls them back over to their display shelf.
Duke is unconscious on his bed before he’s finished organizing the mantle. If Damian orders Titus to sit on the end of the mattress and to alert him when the metahuman wakes up again, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own.
-
Uncommonly, Jason gets a text from Bruce’s kid. Against his best interest, he deigns to open it.
“I own you at last.”
The picture attached is of Damian’s dumb little action figure shrine and Jason recognizes himself in miniature robin form instantly. He’d heard they’d brought the Batburger Robin promo back, despite his threats of terrorism that had prematurely ended the previous campaign, which implies a level of idiotic reckless greed that is almost admirable. He’s distracted from having to think about how he feels about this by the elephant in the room, or more accurately, the giant stuffed animal that the action figures now surround, as if protecting it from harm.
Demon brat had never really struck him as the plushie type. Wasn’t he too old for that shit by now?
“why is there a dog,” Jason sends back.
“╭∩╮( ͡° ل͟ ͡° )╭∩╮”
He rolls his eyes and sends the middle finger emoji before turning off his phone. Pinching his brow, he turns back to the man he has tied to a chair, bleeding. He had more important things to think about then Batman’s demon child. Like gang violence being escalated in his community by an inflow of military armaments. Like bombs that go off in civilians homes. Like the black market weapons dealer tied to a chair, bleeding, in the basement of his safehouse.
He pats the unconscious businessman on the cheek with a gloved hand and sighs. “What am I to do with you, Sokolov?”