Chapter Text
There is a legend. Have you heard it?
No, you’d know if you had. Everyone does, around here. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.
It starts with the greatest assassin in the world.
The thing who was once a man named Dick Grayson nurses a bottle of scotch as he stitches the gaping wound in his side from where Batman got him with a batarang (pretty sure that’s not the actual name, but it’s what they should be called). The scotch isn’t necessary for pain, not with the shit the Parliament did to him, but he likes it anyway, likes the way it burns on the way down.
“Ay tu, Diri, Diri, Diri, Diri, so kerdjan?” he hums, tying off the end of the string and threading the needle again. “Čhorra romnya, čhorra romnya, murdardjan…? ‘Naslyi voj laši, ke na čumidjasman…’ ”
The bathroom door opens. Looking down at him, framed by the kitchen’s light, her fluffy hair giving her a halo, Selina Kyle blinks. “Not that I don’t appreciate your singing, but I would appreciate it if it wasn’t at two in the morning in my bathroom.”
He pulls up the energy for a conversation. Makes himself pout. “But my bathroom isn’t big enough to do my stitches in, Selina.”
Selina puts her hand on her hip. “That is truly depressing.”
“Isn’t it?”
She looks at him for a moment before sighing. “Alright, let me help, you’re bleeding on my toilet.”
She settles down next to him, letting him stretch out so his feet are balanced on the bathtub. Her hands are fast, but steady, reaching the wound with much more ease than he can manage.
“What’s the song?” she asks, and he takes another swig of her scotch.
“Don’t know the name,” he answers.
“Romani, right?” Selina asks, tying off the third stitch and preparing for the last.
“Yes.”
She looks up at him. She doesn’t entirely know why he’s always so closed off about his heritage, his past, whatever life he has or had outside of knives and blood and claws, but it’s easy to gather the answer from the frustrated tilt to his jaw.
“What’s the song about?” Selina asks instead of pushing.
He gives her the start of a grateful smile and leans his head back on the wall. “Ay tu, Diri, Diri, Diri, Diri, so kerdjan? Hey you, Diri, Diridiridiri, how can it be?” He glances down at Selina, then closes his eyes, head still on the wall. “How can it be that you killed your poor wife?”
Selina chuckles. Returns to his stitches. “And how can it be?”
“She didn’t love him enough,” he explains, quiet. “She betrayed him. Muri romnyi sas aba šukar, mudjardjomla, te na žal mandar. My wife was beautiful, I killed her, so she wouldn’t be unfaithful.”
Selina gives him a long look. He keeps his eyes closed, but she’s sure he notices.
He just goes back to humming his song. “‘Muri romnyi sas aba šukar, mudjardjomla, te na žal mandar… Devla, Devla, buninav aba, jaj te merav…
…so me kerdjom murra romnyasa…
…ay, romale… ay šavale… šunen aba so pecisajlem?’” the mother named Mary sings to her child as she wraps his hands in dancers tape, calming his urge to wriggle and squeal.
The boy named Dick wriggles anyway, but keeps his hands still, clearing his throat to sing along for the end of the verse.
“You two are adorable,” Dick’s father interrupts, “but would you please stop singing about murder before our routines? It’s making Eitri nervous.”
“Eitri is capable of emotion?” Mary asks with a big gasp, and Dick laughs. She takes his face in her hands and nuzzles. “Eitri is jealous of our beautiful singing voices, right, Tati?”
Dick’s Tati sighs, but he’s got a fond smile on his lips. “Come on, songbirds, our routine’s soon.”
“Yes, come on, Robin,” Mary calls, pulling her robin to his feet and spinning him around. “Let’s go fly for these songless fools.”
Dick dances up on his feet, earning his hair an affectionate ruffling from both his parents, before they all go out to perform, standing proud with red breasts puffed to the sky.
They fly. They fall.
Bruce Wayne watches.
Bruce Wayne leaves.
Dick hides up as high as he can go. He has blood on his hands and his knees and in his mouth. He closes his eyes and curls into as tight a ball as he can go and sings to himself, ay, tu, Diri, Diri, Diri…
From up high, he sees a lot. He sees Haly doing his best to soothe the others, sees him sending up the Romanova twins to deliver food to Dick wherever he’s managed to curl up, sees him talking with the men in black suits and white masks.
They’re speaking English, because they’re in America. Dick can’t follow very well, but he gets some of it. There’s a barter, something happening too soon, recent events being useful. Haly tells the masked men that they’re going to have to figure something out, since whatever it is that they’re bartering over is too high.
Oh.
Dick spreads out a little, so he can tap his fingers on his thigh in thought. He can’t stay here forever, because the Romanova twins know where he is, and he doesn’t think he wants to go with the men with masks. He likes faces more than he likes masks.
But he can’t stay in America, because he barely knows English. So he needs to wait for the masked men to leave, stay with Haly’s Circus until Mexico at least, and start a life there.
Yeah. He can do that. He can abandon Haly and Eitri and the Romanova twins and Raymond and Raya.
He can be alone. He can stay high.
But he needs to move, to get away from where the Romanova twins know he is, where they can get to.
Dick gets to his feet properly, starting towards the food area. He knows that they have air vents over there, and he can wiggle into one of those and be close enough to get food. Yeah, that’ll work. That’ll work. That--
There’s a fwomp from behind him.
Dick freezes, turns around slowly. The creature crouching behind him tilts their head. It’s an owl, or a man, or some mutated thing in between.
Dick squeals, scrambling back, before his wrist is snatched by the creature.
“I will not harm you, owlet,” they say.
“You’ve already been harmed, by your parents’ murderer,” they say.
“Do you want to stop anyone else from being harmed by him?” they say.
Dick tilts his head.
His head is slammed into the ground as the Talon throws him down again, pressing against his chest with its claws until he can’t breathe.
“Again,” the masked judge sitting by the wall says.
“Again?” Dick demands, pushing the Talon’s claw off him and crawling to his feet. “Again? How many again until I--”
He’s thrown to the ground from a slap across the face, clawed talons leaving gouges in his cheek, blood dripping on the ground below him. He blinks down at the drops.
“You will go again until you can lay a hand on the Talon,” the judge explains. “Now, again.”
Again.
Owlet. Dick doesn’t know that word.
Again.
The Talon called him owlet, like it was a name, or an address of some kind.
Again.
Piglet, a baby pig. Ow, not a word. Let, ow. Owlet.
Again.
He swallows, tries to bring to mind the night he and his father spent copying the noises of birds, of owls. The Talon smacks him to the ground, but before it puts its claw on his neck to cut off his breathing, he makes a sound, one that a baby bird had called out when yelling for its mami.
The Talon freezes. Dick reaches out and grabs its ankle in the moment of hesitation, scrambling to his feet and doing his best to take it with him. The Talon kicks him off, but doesn’t continue to attack.
Dick turns to the judge. Spreads his hands. Challenges, “Again?”
“Don’t do that,” the Talon tells him, in their room that night.
“So? What?” Dick asks.
The Talon looks across at him. It’s sitting against the wall, one leg stretched, mask off to reveal its scarred head. “Talk back. That’s why you were hit.”
“That’s why you hit me,” Dick corrects.
The Talon shrugs.
He manages to climb up into the fixtures inside the roof from the bathroom, explore like he always does when moved to a different place. He crawls through the darkness, mapping out the layout of this place, and pauses when he recognises one of the judge’s voices.
“I believe…” it starts, and he freezes overtop of it, pressing his ear to the floor beneath him, “that the new Talon should be a,” a few words he doesn’t recognise, “than an,” another unfamiliar word. He frowns and tilts his head a little further. “It made the Talon pause. With a sound.”
The voices fall silent, and it-- he -- licks its lips and strains to hear what they’re saying better, lower lip caught in his teeth.
“Did it, now?” a judge asks.
He’s sat down in a desk chair, hooked up to a machine, the Judge on the other side of it.
“Lie to me,” they say.
The scratches on its cheek itches.
He rolls as he hits the ground, catching himself on his knee in time to catch a fist to the face.
“Guard your face,” the Talon says, moving his hands up to his cheeks. “Like that.”
It hits him again, only getting his forearms. “That’s it, owlet. Again.”
“I’m twenty-four?” he lies.
The machine beeps. The Judge tilts their head as its hand lights up in pain from the clip on its finger. It flinches back.
They click their pen. “Again.”
It wakes up in its room with the knowledge that something is wholly, terribly wrong.
“Shh, owlet, calm,” the Talon whispers, rubbing its hand up and down his back. “You’re okay. You’re alright. You’ll adjust.”
He blinks, over and over again to try and get the world to return to the colours he’s used to, to the distance and the light and the darkness and everything the way it’s meant to look, the way his eyes see things.
“What did they do to me?” he whispers. “What did they do to me?!”
“Owlet, owlet. Look at me. Look at me.” The Talon grabs his face, so that he’s staring at it.
“What happened to me?” it sobs.
“You want to kill the man who murdered your parents, don’t you?” the Talon asks. At its nod, the Talon brushes its hair behind its ear. “This is what needs to happen. This makes you stronger.”
It blinks at the Talon, dark lashes fluttering, just slightly obscuring its slit pupils.
Hit. Block. Dodge. Hit. Fall. “Again.”
Lie. Lie. Beep. Shock. Click. “Again.”
Wake. Pain. Fall. Breathe. Think.
It touches the back of its shoulders, where raven dark feathers flare. “Again?”
There’s a man tied to a chair. His name is Anthony Zucco. He has slicked back hair and cigarette burns on his fingers and fear in his eyes.
It holds a gun. They don’t like guns, but it is the most efficient way to murder someone, and so it must learn how to use one. Its finger is on the trigger.
“Kill him,” they demand.
The man’s name is Anthony Zucco. He works for the mob. He murdered…
He pulls the trigger.
“Again.”
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The Talon is on the ground in front of it. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time it didn’t beat the Talon down to get there.
The Talon knew what was going to happen. Had been doing its best to put distance between them, but last night it had been cold and neither of them can survive in the cold anymore.
It’s not holding a gun. It’s messy, so they don’t like it, and it already knows how to use it, so it doesn’t. Just stands there with hands shaped just slightly inhuman clenching by its sides. It has feathers on the back of its shoulders and eyes with slit pupils and sounds are too loud and smells don’t exist and there’s blood on its hands and its knees and in its mouth.
“Kill it,” the Judge says.
It doesn’t leap, because it doesn’t need to. It doesn’t rush, because it doesn’t need to. It just kneels down, pushes the Talon to the ground and braces its forearm against its throat.
“Owlet,” the Talon gasps. Its chest is moving fast, up and down, up and down, like it’s panicking or like it’s laughing.
It presses harder, stopping any more words from leaking out, speeding up the death at its fingers.
The Talon’s heartbeat flickers under its fingers, radiates up its arms, into its chest, slowing and slowing, and when the Talon’s eyes turn glassy the heartbeat is completely calm and a relieved smile is on his face.
The thing that is now a Talon sits back on its heels.
Blood drips from its claws as it rips out a mayoral candidate’s throat.
Wind pushes against the jacket thrown over its arm as it leans against the outside wall, waiting for its target to start home. It’s a cold night. It never works well on cold nights.
It closes its eyes. Its feathers are continually ruffled by this shirt, not tight enough to flatten them but not loose enough to avoid them entirely. The lights are strange, bright and reflected too much inside, dark and fogged too much outside, but it's easier to see in the night, at least. It tunes its ears into the classical music behind it, the light chatter, the clinking of dishes, the footsteps approaching.
It opens its eyes. A man with too much deliberation in his drunkenness stumbles up to it.
He has dark hair. Broad shoulders. Piercing grey-blue eyes.
He draws his eyebrows deep over them. “Have we met?”
(A hundred thousand universes find them staring at each other, tragedies and arguments and parenthood and death and life and love hanging in the space between them.)
“No,” it tells Bruce Wayne, a fake smile showing its teeth. “But I’ve seen you in papers.”
Not a lie, technically, just not referring to newspapers.
“Ah.” Bruce Wayne brushes off his jacket, leaning forward and bracing himself on the wall beside it. “I suppose it’s only fair I ask your name, then.”
It doesn’t have a lie to offer, just an excuse when its target walks out of the door.
Blood splatters across its legs as it presses its toe against the rapidly beating heart bared from the torn open chest of a reporter.
Rain batters its face as it holds its target off the ground, sticking his shirt to his rapidly rising and falling chest. It’s an intimidation mission tonight, to make sure that this voter sways the public in a specific direction.
“You can’t hurt me,” he blusters, despite the waver in his voice. “You can’t hurt me. He won’t let you.”
It tilts its head. “He?”
Confidence flickers in its target’s eyes. It must be nice, being able to have that confidence in anything but itself.
“The Batman,” he says. “He’ll protect me. He protects everyone.”
It nods in acknowledgement, glancing up at the signal blaring yellow against the rain clouds in the sky.
“Maybe,” it allows. “But how is he supposed to protect you from something he can’t see? How can he protect you from this?”
It turns the target around, presses him against the wall, flicks out a knife and carves a line down his spine, across his shoulder blades. Not enough to hinder, not enough to damage, just enough to hurt.
Footsteps, strangely familiar in their deliberation, quiet but not quiet enough. By the time the Batman seeps into the alley, it’s hidden up high, looking down on its target standing with his arms crossed, drenched by the rain.
“Are you okay?” he asks its target.
The target blinks. “Why are you here?”
The Batman tilts his head. “Just passing by.”
Of course. Because he sees everything but what they don’t want him to see.
The target sighs. Rubs his hand over his shoulders, where blood is starting to pool, hidden in the black of his jacket. “I’m fine.”
The Batman nods. Leaves.
It rubs its hand over its shoulders, where its feathers are flattened by its suit.
Blood seeps from its nose onto its teeth as it slams the head of state’s head into the wall, twice, thrice, her husband already dead on the ground with his neck dribbling onto the floorboards.
Her heartbeat stops. It drops her to the ground, wiping its mouth to clear the blood and turning towards the door--
The head of state’s daughter stares at it, barefoot and in her nightgown, a plush bird clutched tight in her arms. She’s got her mother’s curly hair and her father’s bright eyes.
“Mama?” she calls. “Mama?!”
There’s blood on its hands and its knees and in its mouth. It has claws and feathers and eyes that aren’t its own and it isn’t its own and it knows the sound a baby bird makes when calling for its mami but doesn’t remember its own and it wants-- it wants--
It wants.
“Hey, hey, stay there,” it instructs the owlet, “stay there, sweetheart, I’ll come to you. You won’t be hurt, I promise.”
It keeps its hand under its nose to staunch the blood, picks across the room until it can crouch down in front of the owlet and smile at her. “Hey. Let’s go somewhere safe, okay? Do you think you can come with me? We’ll… We’ll go to the police, and tell them what happened, and they’ll take care of you, alright?”
The owlet nods. She’s got tears bubbling out of her eyes, but when it tries to wipe them away, blood smears across her cheek.
She lets it pick her up, settle her on its hip.
“Ay tu, Diri, Diri, Diri…” it starts, trying to stop her from wriggling. She stills, and it keeps going, even though it can’t remember where the words came from, “Ay, romale… ay, šavale…”
“My name’s Maya,” the owlet says. “What’s yours?”
It doesn’t know. But somewhere, deep down, it catches something to accompany the song.
“Robin,” it introduces.
It finds an abandoned apartment and falls backwards onto the floor, hands that have been shaped into something inhuman resting on its stomach.
Maya’s parents were murdered in front of her tonight. She’s six in a month.
It swallows. It remembers something, a promise, from the Talon that used to be.
Do you want to stop anyone else from being harmed by him?
The Judges. They’ve harmed Maya. They’ve harmed a lot of people. It’s supposed to stop people from being harmed. That’s what the Talon before it wanted. That’s what it--
It wants--
It rolls over onto its knees, buries its head into the carpet and moves its hands to the back of its neck. Its breath is heavy and fast, and its thoughts are the same, and it can’t breathe and it can still taste blood.
It screws its eyes tight, buries its head in its arms until all it can hear is its own heartbeat, hummingbird fast in its chest.
It remembers pain. It remembers blood. It remembers the smile on the past Talon’s dead face.
It needs food, so it slips a wallet out of someone’s pocket and follows its ears to a market.
There’s a lot going on. Sounds and tastes and decorations and music and talking and cooking and spice and sugar and salt and--
“Do you wanna borrow my headphones?” a woman about its height asks. “I’ve got earplugs, so you can use them if you want, if you stick with me.”
It blinks. “Why?”
She smiles. “It’s a bit overstimulating, right? Here, try.”
She hands it headphones, and because she seems to want it to, it puts it over its ears.
Everything dulls. It sighs and closes its eyes for a moment before nodding to her.
She nods. “Pretty good, huh?” She studies it for a moment, drifting towards the Turkish stall, before asking, “Where’d you get that?” She taps her nose.
“Oh, I just tripped,” it lies.
She looks at it. “No, you didn’t. Look at me. Hey, look at me , okay? You don’t deserve to be hit by people that are charged with your care. You don’t deserve to be hit by people who are meant to care about you. If they loved you, they wouldn’t deliberately hurt you, okay? Whoever they are, leave their ass, and stop lying to cover it. Do you get me?”
It blinks a few times. “Va, razumiv. I mean, yes, I, uh… I understand.”
It gets a notebook. Writes down everything that it can remember and everything that it knows and sketches every slip of a face that it can replicate. It writes down the numbers that it knows, the motivations that it can deduce, the people that they know about.
It’s not just the Judges, though. They answered to others.
They trained it how to intimidate. They trained it how to lie. They trained it how to kill.
What more could they have expected?
It decides on a relatively simple plan. Kill one Judge to show that it can and will, go around the rest until one of them is disloyal enough to give it the names of their superiors. Kill all the superiors, and in the chaos of the sudden lack of leadership, take out the rest of them.
Simple.
It swirls its cocktail glass, watching the little dates swish this way and that. It’s a Wayne gala tonight, one that it knows most of the Judges will be at, and it will be so easy to murder one of them while all the rest are unable to intervene.
So easy.
It needs to do this. It needs to protect people like Maya.
It wants…
“--again,” a familiar voice finishes, and is met with raucous laughter from the group around them.
It wants.
It puts the cocktail glass down. Sheds the tight suit jacket and hangs it over a chair. Slinks through the group until it finds the Judge and punches them across the face.
“Woah, woah!” the crowd yells, but they all back up, expecting some drama, surely, that can be resolved by drinks and camaraderie.
The Judge grabs at their nose, stumbling back and catching themselves before pushing back up to try and swing back.
It ducks under their arm and elbows them in the middle back, hooking their feet out from under them so they fall on their face.
“Get up,” it tells them, backing up just a little to give them more room. “Again.”
They stagger to their feet, drunk or confident or stupid. They try to swing.
It wants Maya to never have to cry from fear again.
The Judge slams into the ground.
“Again. ”
It wants for there to never be another person forced to be a Talon.
Some of the surrounding crowd try to grab it, and it takes them down in the time it takes for the Judge to get up. It kicks them down but follows after, straddling their chest and slamming its fist into their face.
Again.
It wants the Court of Owls to burn to the ground, strength turned to ashes turned to dust.
Again.
It wants everyone who was meant to care for it broken or dead.
Again.
It wants to be able to want.
The skylight shatters, glass raining down on everyone around it and the Judge. It glances up, raising a hand to protect its eyes and frowning at the shadow that lands next to it.
It looks back down and sighs in annoyance, before looking up at the Batman with as scared a face as it can manage, hand going limp in the Batman’s grip. “What-- What happened? What did I do? Oh, God, what did I do?”
The Batman’s grip falters, and it uses the moment of weakness to rip it free and tear its claws across the Judge’s throat. It stands, swipes the Batman’s grappling gun, and shoots up through the skylight, blood trailing along behind it.
It finds another apartment. Dumps the grappling gun a few blocks away and climbs in through the window. Grabs its notepad and--
Grabs its notepad and flicks to the page with the Judges’ names and--
It killed a Judge.
Fuck, it killed a Judge. It’s disloyal. It’s a monster. They cared for it. They gave it food and shelter and made it stronger and it killed them and they’re going to hunt it down and it deserves it and--
It hisses through its teeth, buries its head in its hands and shakes and shakes and it can’t think and it can’t fucking breathe.
It rips off its shirt, tugging on the chest plate underneath, pushing it up over its head until there’s nothing to stop its chest from panting, panting, panting.
It curls up, head to knees to chest. Shakes and shakes and shakes.
“Yes, come on, Robin. Let’s fly for these songless fools.”
Anthony Zucco’s blood pooling out of his head, seeping onto his clothes.
The Talon’s relieved smile.
It happens to sit in on a group of people advertising themselves as abuse counselling. They don’t pressure it to talk, and don’t turn it away. They talk about things they call affirmations.
It likes the sound of them.
“My name is Robin,” it tells a Judge as it presses a knife further into her skull.
“I am not your Talon,” it informs another as it holds him further under water.
“And you do not control me,” it finishes, gently resting the Judge on his bed and grabbing out its notepad, a little hysterical at the new list of names. The Judges call it the Parliament - the Court controlling the Court. Controlling it. For the first time, it can see the strings. It can free all the little owlets, the fledglings like Maya, like it was--
There’s a slight hiss of the safe opening.
It leans out of the bedroom doorway, looking down the hallway. The woman with her arm in the safe stares back.
“Sastipe,” it calls.
“‘Sup,” she calls back. “You aren’t Mr. and/or Mrs. Powers, right?”
“No, I’m, uh…” It glances behind it at where Mr. and Mrs. Powers’ corpses are next to each other on the bed. “They’re dead, yeah.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
She slowly moves her hand back, sweeping the jewels they keep in the safe with it, until they’re falling into the bag against her hip. It nods and clears its throat, wiping its gloves down on its thighs.
“You disable the electric alarms on the door?” it asks.
“I came in through the window,” she answers.
“Mm. Yeah, so did I.”
“That’d be why it was unlocked.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
It clears its throat. Steps out of the bedroom and closes the door gently behind it. “They wouldn’t happen to have any identification stuff in there, would they?”
“Uh, they’ve got some passports and stuff, sure, but it’s mostly jewellery and heirlooms and shit. Got, like, an owl brooch…”
“Oh, can I have that? The brooch, and the passports?” It raises its hands, palms out. “Please?”
“I mean, sure.”
It smiles and jogs over, feet quiet on the carpet, and lets her pile everything into its hands. It doesn’t really look like anyone anymore, but the ID should be enough to start gathering the Parliament.
“Hold this for a sec, would you?” the woman mutters, dumping her bag in its hand so she can use both of hers to close the safe. “Thanks.”
She grabs the bag back off it. They stand there in awkward silence.
“So… are you? Doing something? After this?” she asks, in a way that really says that she doesn’t want to say that, she just has no idea what else to say.
“Uh, not really,” it answers, because it also doesn’t know what else to say.
She bites her lip, cringes through asking, “Do you wanna… grab a drink? Or something?”
It gets some whiskey. The burglar who identifies herself as Selina gets a martini. And sushi, which doesn’t seem like it would taste good, but she seems hungry.
“So you want attention,” she deduces, wiping her nose with her chopstick hand. It wrinkles the nose at the lack of hygiene. “To cause panic with your next move and yada yada.”
“I don’t--” It takes a sip of its drink to avoid that messy want.
Selina gives it a look, but settles. “Your notepad, you have a list. That’s your targets, right?” At its tentative nod, she continues, “Big people in high places. Hard to get through their security.”
“What do you care?” it returns, cautious.
“I don’t, I’m just making conversation.” Selina grabs a piece of sushi with her chopsticks and points it at it. “You’ve got a kitten left in a cardboard box in the rain look about you, it makes me sad.”
It rolls its eyes, but reaches across to grab a piece of sushi for itself. “Well, what’s your suggestion on how to draw attention, then?”
“First, stop stealing my food,” she jokes, before adding, “And second, get yourself a brand. No one’s going to know shit about who’s doing what if you don’t get out of the black catsuit.”
“Kettle, pot,” it notes.
“Yeah, but I’m Catwoman, the cat suit is my brand, kitten,” Selina corrects. “Get your own.”
I don’t know how to do that, it doesn’t say, I don’t know how to have anything be my own.
It steals some paint. Gets a cheap airbrush. Dissembles the suit, chest plate and subtle interlocking armour spread across its floor.
It’s borrowed Selina’s spare phone, and has a photo up on it: a robin red breast. Red on the chest, white surrounding it, black everywhere else. It maps well to its suit, and it’s distinctive enough to separate it from the rest of the Parliament.
It’s--
It’s making it its own.
It’s making him his own.
It - he - sits back on his haunches, staring at the vandalised suit with something else’s eyes. He - it - presses its hands to its mouth, stifling the panic building in his throat.
He can’t-- It’s not meant to-- It wants-- He wants--
Selina opens the door with a cat on her shoulder and her hair still wet from what must have been a shower. She raises her eyebrows when she sees him, then frowns when she takes in the state it must be in.
“Oh, kitten,” she breathes.
“I don’t know what to--” He stutters to a stop, claws digging into its arm. “I didn’t have anywhere else-- I don’t have-- anyone--”
“Baby, baby, it’s okay,” she interrupts, reaching out to touch its face. “You’re okay, I’m here, uh, come in, I’ve got-- No one else is home.”
“Nais tuke,” he manages, “Thank you, thank you…”
“Don’t worry about it, kitten,” Selina answers, pulling him gently into the apartment and letting him sit on the couch. “Jesus, what happened to you? Fear gas?”
He pulls its knees up to its chest, wrapping its arms around them, burying its head in them. “Na. No. Just-- I just--” He’s sniffling, he realises belatedly, even though its eyes can’t produce tears. “Ni razumiv-- I don’t… understand…”
“Hey, shh, shh, what don’t you understand?” she asks, fluttering her hands around its head.
“Anything! I don’t understand anything! It’s all so confusing, Selina, ni razumiv!” He pounds its hand against the couch. “I don’t-- Why-- How--”
Selina’s paused, when he peeks an eye open at her, something terrified on her face. “Oh, God,” she whispers. “How old are you?”
He frowns. Wipes its nose. “Na džanav. I mean… I don’t, uh…”
“Know,” Selina finishes, something hard in her face. “You don’t know.” Her eyes flicker from side to side, across its features. “Someone took that from you, didn’t they? That’s why you’re hunting them down.”
Yes, yes! it wants to scream. They did, they took everything from me, and it was wrong! I deserved better!
You’re not allowed to deserve, some other part of him hisses. You’re theirs, everything you had was theirs first.
“Ni razumiv,” it sobs.
“Hey, kitten,” Selina returns, threading her fingers in its hair, thumb brushing the feathers spreading next to its ear, across its cheekbone. “Your name is Robin. You’re your own, okay? You are a person, and you don’t belong to anyone. The only one to control you should always be you. Whatever happened to you… whatever was done to you… you didn’t deserve any of it.”
Robin sucks in a breath, unable to manage a word out, so he just makes to grab Selina’s hand on his face.
He visits Maya. She’s living in foster care, now, with trauma counselling twice a week.
She spots it outside her window and gives him a gleeful wave, massive grin straining her cheeks.
Robin gives her a little wave back, and she giggles.
For Maya, he tells himself, loitering around the party he’s called, champagne flute in hand and mask over its face. The suit is stiff, starched within an inch of its life, trapping the heat around him in the warmth of the night.
It lies like they taught him to, infiltrates like they taught it to.
For the Talon, he reminds himself, raising his glass and calling for a toast. The Parliament is made of peacocks, of monsters who bathe in the luxury afforded to them for their crimes, who fluff their feathers and show off the blood on them when given the chance.
“For the Parliament of Owls,” it says, and thinks, for me.
Everyone drinks. He just lifts the glass to his lips.
The woman with a black-glitter dress is the first to start coughing. The others follow suit quickly. It looks down at its glass, swirling the champagne around in it.
“You know,” it starts, “for people that deal in blood, you’re all awfully complacent with your drinks.” He tilts his glass to the side, letting the poisoned champagne pour out, loosening its grip until the glass shatters against the floor.
“Who--?” the man closest to him chokes.
He takes a sharp breath in, glancing up at the security cameras in the corner in the room, and sets his shoulders. He’s prepared for this one. “Miro nav si o Robin,” it introduces, pulling his tie over his head, undoing the top button of his shirt. “My name is Robin.” He shrugs off his jacket, leaving it over the back of a chair, slowly rounding the table, a claw screeching along the surface. “Your Talon, thousands of nights ago, called me an owlet. It… He promised me that I would be able to help people. Protect them from the harm that had already been done to me.” It reaches the end of the table, and flicks its claw so there’s a satisfying shkk when it falls off the edge of the table. “You know what I did in return?”
It blinks, slow, eyes dry but tightness in its throat.
“I killed him,” Robin says. “And he still called me owlet.” He tilts his head to the side, nodding to the writhing bodies on the floor. “Chavvi cherrikel, in my language.” He smiles, fangs in his mouth. “I killed him for you. Because I was a sword, and I couldn’t control where I was swung. But I can now.”
“You’re-- fuckin’-- crazy--” one of his victims manages, purple in the face.
“Ay, but you made me,” Robin returns, before swinging its arm out, gesturing to the room. “All of you.”
It sucks in a breath, pulling the chair at the head of the table back, and looks back out over them. “Ando gav bi zhuklesko shai piravel o manush bi destesko. In a village without a dog a man can walk without a stick.”
It lowers itself into the chair, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back, head tilted at its victims. “T’aves baxtalo, all, to the land of the dog.”
(Bruce Wayne finds the room empty but for the corpses. Later, he’ll look at the security footage, hear the speech, but now, he just slowly starts around the room, taking note of the shattered glasses, the fragments of what might once have been masks. It takes him a moment before he notices the words carved into the table, slow and methodical:
NO MORE JUDGES.)
“You need to go clubbing,” Selina decides. Robin’s in her kitchen, doing its best to follow the instructions in the recipe he’s been given while she drapes herself across the couch with a migraine patch on her forehead and a heat pack on her stomach, generally bemoaning her existence.
“Clubbing?” Robin asks. He guesses she doesn’t mean the violent kind, since she’s got opinions on that kind of habit.
“Yeah. It’s like… dancing. But in a place with loud music and flashing lights and alcohol and stuff. It’s fun. What kids your age should be doing.”
I’m not a kid, he almost says, but he doesn’t really know, so he doesn’t. Just focuses on exactly measuring the three tablespoons of flour it needs for the - it checks the website - cupcakes that Selina wants.
“Fuck periods,” Selina groans, and Robin gives her a worried look. It knows the technicalities of what she’s going through - the uterus shedding the internal lining it had built to cushion a baby that she doesn’t have, discarding the wreckage the same way it might discard said baby - and knows that if it was a biological function of its own, the Judges - judges - would have permanently stopped it before it even started, and he’s willing to agree with them.
Pain, blood, and nausea Robin can deal with. He understands those. He categorically does not understand the cravings, mood fluctuations, migraines, and that’s scarier.
(It doesn’t understand a lot of things about Selina, but it keeps coming back, cooks cupcakes when she asks him to. He doesn’t really understand that, either.)
“You have danced, haven’t you?” Selina calls over.
Yes, Robin almost says, before pausing. It knows it has, the same way he knows his song, but he can’t remember. He can never fucking remember.
Robin grabs a fork, mixing the ingredients in the metal bowl. Offers a non-committal, “Maybe.”
Selina scoffs. Robin doesn’t think it’s frustration at him, even with the moods, so he doesn’t say anything at all.
“You know,” Selina says, later when it’s pulling boots on to leave, “you’re a lot quieter than you were.”
“So? Uh…” It rummages for the translation, “What?”
“When we met,” Selina explains. “At the Powers’ place. You were… bubbly. You’re not now.”
Robin frowns. “...Should I be? I can…” He searches for some excess energy to use in conversation, but Selina’s shaking her head in what translates to no.
“You don’t need to be,” she promises, that hint of protectiveness in her voice that she sometimes gets when Robin says something wrong. “I like you subdued as much as I like you bubbly. Just curious, is all.”
Robin tilts his head to the side, confused. “Well, I don’t… need anything from you anymore. So I don’t need to pretend, right?”
Selina blinks. She’s got silver painted on her lashes, dashed across her eyelids. “You don’t need to pretend, kitten,” she agrees.
Robin finds Selina on the way back to his own apartment, blood still dripping from his claws, and slows as it spots her on the opposite building.
The Batman braces himself against a lifted section that leads down to the rest of the building, trapping Selina between him and the wall, but she doesn’t seem to mind, if the way she arches up into him like she wants every part of them to touch, not just their mouths, is any indication.
Well.
Robin blinks a couple of times.
That’s something.
It’s snowing, as it tends to in December, and Robin grumbles, tucking further into his scarf. It’s wearing its suit, since it’s got the best insulation out of any of his clothes, but he’s thrown a lavender sweater and thick jeans overtop, along with a puffy jacket and knitted scarf, half thrown over his hair and half protecting his face.
“You always did strike me as a snow person,” Selina jokes with a smile. Her cheeks are flushed with makeup and cold.
“I’m going to grow wings and fly up and fight the clouds,” Robin groans.
“Hey, that was a joke!” Selina cheers, grabbing its elbow with her hand. Her mitten has toe beans on it. “Come on, I promise it’s worth it.”
“The body’s all slow,” he mutters.
“Your body,” she corrects, lightly but with concern in her tone. Robin hums.
There are lights up around the buildings, flashing bright colours, inflatable models of a little fat man dressed in red, sometimes with oddly smooth reindeer, sometimes trapped in chimneys. It’s a little weird. Robin’s eyes don’t really take in the lights very well, having to constantly adjust to the brightness with flashing, but Selina likes them, so he stays quiet.
“I’ve forgotten the fat red man’s name again,” he tells her, because she was scandalised when she realised he didn’t know.
“Santa,” Selina answers. “Or Saint Nicholas, but that’s older. Father Christmas.”
“Christmas is the holiday,” Robin recalls, frowning to try and remember entirely. “You put lights up in trees and Santa breaks into your house to eat your food and give you things. He sleds.”
“He has a flying sleigh,” Selina corrects, laughter in her voice.
“Does he have dogs?” Robin asks. “To pull the sleigh?”
“No, he uses reindeer.” Selina points out the very dog-like inflatable deer standing in front of the inflatable sled with Santa in it. “There’s Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, and Rudolph leads all of them.”
Robin frowns. “Vixen?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that not a sexual thing?”
“Oh--” Selina throws her head back and laughs, but doesn’t answer the question, just pulling him along behind her as she turns into a shopping centre, weaving through the crowd. “Come on, come on, we’re almost there now. Get in the Christmas spirit, kitten.”
Robin gives a confused little laugh at the turn of phrase, letting itself be pulled along behind her until they come up at the bookstore and Selina calls, “Heyo, Ms. Guerrero!”
“Sastipe, Selina!” someone calls from the other side of the store.
Robin freezes, drawing Selina to a stop with him. He knows his slit pupils have dilated into circles, that his body language is giving him away, but-- but someone else knows--
“Hey, come on,” Selina whispers, dragging it towards the voice.
She’s stacking books. Older, worn lines on her hands and her face, dark eyes sparkling like the night sky. Her hair’s tied up behind her and pushed out of her face with a patterned headscarf. She has the same dark hair as Robin, the same tan skin.
“Good to see you, Selina,” she greets. “And a friend, too?”
“This is Robin,” Selina introduces, gesturing to it. “Robin, this is Ms. Guerrero.”
There’s a script for this. It knows how to introduce itself to people. It knows what it’s meant to do.
He sticks out his hand as if to shake. The wool gloves hide his claws. “Lachi tiri divés, rawni.”
Ms. Guerrero’s eyes go wide for a moment, then soften as she smiles, taking its hand in both of her own. “You’ve not met another Romani kinchni before, have you, chavva?”
Another.
Another Romani kinchni. Like it’s-- Like Robin’s--
It has inhuman hands and feathers on the back of its shoulders and eyes with slit pupils and sounds are too loud and smells don’t exist and there’s blood on its hands and its knees and in its mouth and--
“Nai,” he says with a smile. “I’ve not met one of us.”
The night marking the new year isn’t snowing, but has rain coming from the heavens in icy-cold sludge. Robin’s an idiot for being out. Meeting Ms. Guerrero had had him passed out for six hours on a heat pad and out of action for an extra day and a half. But.
Maya’s struggling to stay up. She wants to watch the midnight fireworks on her adoptive parents’ television, and they’re begrudgingly allowing her to with how certain she is she wants it. It’s cute.
“That’s not creepy at all,” Selina says from behind him. “Watching a little girl in the middle of the night.”
“Her name’s Maya.” Robin lets Selina swing down beside him in a feline movement, settling on the edge of the building and pulling out a pair of bottles from her satchel. “She’s been hurt. Her parents were murdered.”
He uncorks the bottle she hands him. Takes a long swig and calms at the burn sliding down his throat. When he looks over, Selina’s watching him, contemplative silence.
Her eyes flick up to meet his. “You’re the one that killed them, aren’t you?”
Everything goes silent. Grey. Staticky.
Dissociation, Robin recognises. He’d heard about it, when he went and sat in on another session of that abuse counselling. The woman with shaky hands had described it as being out of your body, just a little too far to the left.
It can’t feel pain, not with what it is now, so that won’t ground him. It’s constantly so deep in flight or fight that having something thrown at him won’t help either.
Muri romnyi sas aba šukar, he sings to himself, voice distorted in his ears. Mudjardjomla, te na žal mandar…
He keeps going until he can hear his own voice, even if the static hasn’t fully subsided. Selina’s got panic in her breathing, in her rushing heart, in the voice she calls his name with. Robin holds out a finger for her to pause and downs as much of the bottle as he can in a gulp.
“Va,” he says, looking at Maya rushing to grab some popcorn before the countdown begins. “That’s part of it, isn’t it? Part of… I’m my own, so my actions are my own too, right?”
Selina gives him that pained look. “I don’t-- Yes, obviously, but…”
Robin smiles a little at how hard she tries. “It’s okay. I know I’ve not done good things.” He looks out over the horizon. “That’s what the new year’s about, right? Promising to be better.”
Selina slowly turns away. “Yeah. There’s a new year's resolution for you.”
“To be better than the men that made us,” Robin offers with a smile. It feels nice, smiling. “To be our own.”
“Free,” Selina sighs, taking a long sip.
Robin frowns a little at her. “Isn’t this meant to be a… romantic time? I thought you and the Batman were…” He lacks the word, just tangles his fingers together instead.
Selina gives a derisive snort. “Yeah, well.” She takes a drink.
Robin doesn’t quite know how to deal with this. Offers, “Well, to a new year without him, right?”
Selina blinks, then smiles. “Yeah.” She raises her bottle. “To a year of our own, without men like Bruce fucking Wayne.”
Robin gives her a smile in return, clinking their bottles together as the fireworks boom on Maya’s television.
Then he frowns. “Wait, Bruce Wayne?”
He takes to doing his job when Bruce Wayne is definitely at parties. Sometimes the galas overlap, but most of the time at least one of the judges is on their own. It’s a simple system, almost boring. Schedule, break in, kill, find an abandoned apartment to sleep in.
Sometimes he can’t manage to breathe. Sometimes static creeps in and he’s just a little too far to the left. Sometimes he wants to beg for forgiveness, finds itself drifting absently, waiting for orders.
He goes to Selina’s. Settles into the corner of Ms. Guerrero’s bookstore. Explores shopping centres and markets.
“Which one do you want?” the market stall owner asks as Robin drifts his fingers across the necklaces on the table.
Robin swallows. Selina’s given him some money, cash from whatever it is she stole last night, and he can buy any one he wants. This isn’t a need. This is… an aesthetic desire. At most.
He hovers his fingers over them all; the series of pendants marked with symbols of the zodiac variety, the opal teardrop pendant, the beaded bracelets, the sphere of amethyst, the necklace with a shining cage trapping a jagged cut of quartz.
He pauses over the simplest of them: a simple silver chain with a flat silver pendant, the silhouette of a bird in flight.
“This one,” he says. “I… I want this one.”
It’s late February. Cool but not cold. Drizzling with sporadic fat drops.
The judge’s name is George. Robin thinks that’s important, that’s what makes revenge become justice. Being better. Letting George be a him where he’d made Robin an it.
Bruce Wayne’s not at a party, but that doesn’t really matter. This is the last one.
Robin smiles at the thought, giddy. This is the last one.
George is wearing a button-up and slacks, tie there but untied. He’s panicked, of course. He knows he’s the last one just as well as Robin does. He’s upped the security around his house, refuses to leave. It’s a valiant effort.
Robin only has to take down one guard. Drag her down and cut off her breathing until she passes out, but it knows how to kill just as well as it knows how not to. Leaves her resting against her post, hat pulled low over her eyes. Grabs his grapple and shoots upwards. There’s a guard on the balcony outside the bedroom and a guard in the hallway, so Robin delicately triggers the alarm on the opposite side of the house and waits a few moments before swinging back to the balcony and stepping inside the bedroom.
George is staring at the wardrobe mirror, panicked eyes wide. Robin steps to the side so his reflection separates from George’s. “Sastipe!”
George doesn’t scream, just startles, gasping wildly and scrambling for the door. Idiot.
Robin jumps the bed and grabs George’s wrist before he manages to open the door. “Hey, hey, no.”
George gasps, gasps, gasps. “Why do you want to kill me?”
Robin raises his eyebrow, but honestly answers, “Because there’s a little girl called Maya whose parents are dead now. If my memory serves…” He lets the you ordered that go unsaid.
“You’re the Talon,” George realises.
“You’re really not that smart,” Robin realises.
And that’s…
Something about that’s…
…freeing. Knowing that, that adoration Robin’s always had in the back of his brain, the one that says you owe them, they knew you, they’ve always known you, is silenced. Because there’s no intelligence to what happened, just hatred.
Robin touches his necklace, the flying bird.
He takes a breath. They’ve never known you.
You don’t owe them anything.
“George, tell me something,” Robin says, conversational.
“What?”
“The Talon, the one I killed. What was his name?”
George’s eyes go wide. “I don’t--”
Robin slams his palm into George’s face. A satisfying crack , George stumbles, hands on his face. Robin puts his hands on his hips. “Again. Until you can tell me.”
“I don’t-- I didn’t have access--”
Robin kicks him in the chest. Lets him collapse to the floor this time. “Again, George, I know that’s not true.”
“I don’t…”
Slam. “Remember?” Robin offers, “Care? Again.”
“I don’t know!”
Crack. “Yes, you do. Or you did, at any rate. Come on, again.”
He doesn’t feel the weapon clip his side, but he does hear the squelch when he moves. He frowns and touches the wound, watching the blood drip off his claws. That’s inconvenient.
He flicks his eyes up to the Batman, standing on the balcony.
(A hundred thousand universes, trapped in the space between them.)
He tilts his head to the side. Batman mirrors him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells him. The Batman just hovers a hand closer to his belt.
“Well,” he decides with a shrug, taking his foot off George’s chest, “when in Rome.”
The Batman’s fast. Strong. Damn good at what he does, but he’s clearly been traditionally trained. Robin’s always been taught just by needing to survive, has become stronger by replacing weakness, has better eyes.
The Bat kicks him hard and he slides, slamming into the wall and rattling the desk on top of him. He grabs the pistol pinned underneath and levels it forward, steady, practised.
He doesn’t like guns. But they are the most efficient way to murder someone, so he knows how to use one. His finger is on the trigger.
The Bat is frozen. Knows his aim is good enough to get him in the face, under the mask. He has white lenses on his eyes, spikes on his gauntlets, a symbol on his chest.
There aren’t tears in his eyes, because his eyes can’t make tears.
“God,” he whispers. “How much I loved you.”
It pulls the trigger.
The gun hits the floor just a second after George’s body.
Robin’s knees follow a second after that.
He slams both hands on his mouth, eyes burning but unable to release the tears, chest rising, falling, rising, falling, rising, falling, over and over and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.
There’s a high keening sound from somewhere, and it’s only when he tries to respond that he realises it’s coming from him. His chest is rising, falling, rising, falling, rising, rising, rising, rising.
The Bat takes a step forward and Robin scrambles back, landing on his butt and barely catching himself in time to avoid bruising. There’s that keening, still, but it’s catching on the panic in his chest and George’s heart has stopped and--
He did it.
The keening turns into laughter, panic to hysteria.
“Oh my God,” he manages, around his giggles. “I-- God, I--”
He’s picked up off the floor by his collar, and the Batman growls, “What did you do?”
Robin flicks his eyes across the Batman’s face, still unable to keep his laughter in. “I killed him! I killed-- I did it! Look, he’s-- I did it, that’s all of them! I need to-- I don’t need to do anything anymore! I can do whatever I want! Isn’t that… She’s safe now! I’m…”
Everything fades very quickly as he finishes, “I’m safe now.”
Static crawls in, scraping its way into his vision. He sinks in the Batman’s grip, until he slips out and falls onto his ass, staring out at the blood pooling on the floor. He curls his knees up to his chest.
He calls out, that little animalistic sound of an owlet begging for its mami.
He hears the rustling of the Batman grabbing something out of a pouch.
“Go on,” Robin says, resting his forehead against his knees.
The Bat grunts something that seems like a question.
“I’m done now,” Robin explains. “You can kill me. Just…” He turns his head, keeping his eyes closed, but making sure his voice is clear. “Prohasar man opre pirende. Sa muro djiben semas opre chengende.”
He doesn’t think Batman understands him, but that’s fine. It’s not really for him, anyway.
“I don’t kill,” the Batman says.
Robin shrugs. It’s not really surprising, in this staticky haze. “I die here, or I die in Arkham. Here you can at least make it quick.”
Silence, and not the staticky kind. Robin blinks his eyes open, and finds the corners of the Batman’s mouth turned down.
“I’m going to go to Arkham, not Blackgate,” Robin elaborates, since the Batman seems confused. “Since I’m… not entirely a human anymore. I know that. And there are lots of people in Arkham who can be paid off. Lots of people I’ve hurt with money to pay them off.”
It would be nice, Robin reflects, to be able to tell Selina goodbye. And tell Ms. Guerrero to stop picking out books she thinks he’ll like. He moves his hand to touch the bird hanging from his neck. Mutters to himself, “Ay tu, Diri, Diri, Diri…”
Maya’s safe now.
Robin twitches his head with the sirens swirling up from the street. “You should hurry. Police are here now, the guards must have called in. Are you… Catwoman’s not on good terms with the cops, don’t know if you are. Three cars, by the sound of it, which would make… three dozen people, including the guards.”
Silence. Robin stares up at the Batman, claws playing with his necklace.
Batman watches.
Batman leaves.
And Robin’s free to tell Selina goodbye, wound in his side that needs stitches and static fading to that song…
…Ay tu, Diri, Diri, Diri, Diri, so kerdjan?…