Chapter Text
Jason watches Tim get changed into his gear and thinks to himselves, "You know, I'm starting to suspect the bodies to people ratio in this room is real fuckin low."
"Oh yeah, his body language is allll different now," Replies Jury, his second self.
His third self, Judge, tells Jury pointedly, "You're exaggerating. We aren't familiar with how he behaves around civilians. The hesitance, caution, and awkward finger guns can easily be accounted for by secret identity habits."
"Hmm, nope, vibes are too off, I don't buy it. We're definitely watching them swap out right now."
Tim finishes tugging on his gloves, and cracks his knuckles, "Right, so, what's the plan?"
"For fuck's sake, he can't even remember our conversation on the ride over here!"
"Test it."
Executioner gives Tim the same choice he gave him before, "It should be nice and simple. One of us goes in and stirs shit up, the other bags whoever makes a run for it out the back door. I've got a shiny new tranq gun I could snipe with from the roofs, but it really doesn't matter who does what or how. Your pick."
He tilts his head, considering the problem anew, and then entirely reverses his prior choice, seemingly without realizing it, "I'll go ahead and kick down the door. You're better with sniping than I am, and you've got a better idea of who's most important to grab."
Externally he gives no sign of his confusion, simply nodding and telling him, "Lets get moving then."
Internally, in the imaginary courtroom of his mind, The Jury waves his arms emphatically, "See?! That's not normal! He's like us! We finally have someone we can fucking well talk to about this shit, and it's even someone we really like!"
"I am not up for gambling our safety and dignity on this. There's still every possibility we're wrong. He could just have memory issues, or be humoring us like we were humoring him."
"I'm not up for outing ourselves either, but I do think Jury's right about this one," Executioner thinks, climbing onto the rooftop, "Thing is, it just makes too much sense. The way he has that hard break between his vigilante and civilian life, the fact that Cass has trouble reading him sometimes, the multiple times he's given us contradictory opinions on trivial stuff, it all fits too well now that we've seen something obvious."
"But if he is split like us, why hasn't anyone else noticed? Surely Dick or Bruce should have figured this out first?"
He positions himself by the air conditioning unit, and waits, "I dunno. Why hasn't anyone figured us out? It's not like Jury's shy about showing off our crazy when he's in the driver's seat."
In their mental courtroom a curtain falls away from Exhibit A (a fuzzy memory picture of making a nightwing suit in a basement in New York) and then Exhibit B (a foggy image from a dreamlike angle of their confrontation with Bruce and the Joker right before it all blew up in their face).
"Okay, first of all, my life choices are great, and you're welcome for experiencing them! Second of all, we're talking about the guy whose life story includes The Fake Uncle Debacle. Why the fuck would he have told anyone? And why the fuck wouldn't we be the first to figure it out? We're the only ones with actual experience here."
"Point conceded. I still think it's a dogshit idea to confront him about it. There's no way that ends well for us even if we're right."
"All the more reason to ask! Or, Hell, why not introduce ourselves to him instead? If he's gonna be a piece of shit about it, much better to shove it in his face now and get it over with!"
"I know this is a foreign fucking concept to you, but the rest of us prefer not to deliberately sabotage our best relationships!"
"Right, right, you prefer to sabotage us instead and force me to rot in failing - sorry wrong word - failED-"
"Okay, nope, stop, shut the fuck up, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, we have more important things to be focusing on! Namely, you know, the fucking gun I'm trying to aim! We can regroup afterwards and think of something later, it'll be fine."
* * *
The next afternoon, Tim wakes up and tries to figure out who he is. His memories of Ives and Bernard and high school are all pretty clear. There's a massive mystery bruise on his arm. He's already buzzing with anxiety. He can't remember how the bust went last night.
He's Civil today then. Cool.
He gets up, and pours himself a cup of the coffee Kayfabe made for him last night. It's a part of the growing network of little bargains and compromises they have with each other. Kayfabe makes the coffee; Civil cleans the pot. Kayfabe doesn't put his often bloody, always grimey suit in the same basket as the cotton shirts; Civil refrains from burning it. Civil secretly records some of his conversations with their friends; Kayfabe refuses to listen to Bruce's pleas to make his mission reports more concise.
That last provision is frighteningly necessary these days. The holes in their memories keep getting bigger, and they overlap with each other less and less frequently. Civil's honestly not sure how much longer they can keep this up, but he's trying to stay positive and cheerful about it all, which is why he's taken to thinking of the reports as reading the morning newspaper.
Speaking of, today's paper is pretty short, which isn't too surprising considering how simple the plan had sounded. Mission success, good team cohesion, only injury was from taking a pipe to the upper arm - wait. What? Jason covered the back? Did they argue? There's nothing marked down about a change of mind or disagreement... Maybe Kayfabe decided it wasn't worth risking Bruce or Jason overreacting to a mention of that?
He checks his personal paper notes, but there's only a request for the new netflix password and to get more protein powder at the store. Hmm. That's worrying, but if Kayfabe didn't feel it was worth mentioning, he'll trust his judgment. Jason must have insisted on using his new toy after all or something.
Still, he better write it down just in case.
* * *
"I'm not exactly eager to get betrayed and rejected again."
"Look, yes, I admit that there's a serious risk in telling him we know about his brain sharing whatever, and I don't like that either! But the thing is, it's absolutely what's best for us-"
"Completely untrue."
"And even if you don't agree!" Here they all feel Jury decide to be a touch manipulative about it, "It's definitely what's best for Tim..."
Judge glares at him from across their mental space. His irritation plays counterpoint to Jury's building smug satisfaction as the silence stretches and Judge fails to give a rebuttal.
"Fine. I'm in."
Executioner wanders into the kitchen and opens the fridge, "Awesome. Two questions then. First, we need to eat something: do we get takeout, or cook eggs?"
"Takeout."
"Eggs. Takeout isn't on a time limit and I don't want to waste the cash."
"Experiencing good flavors is not a fucking waste!" Jury snaps, "But I can accept eggs. We're hungry now and I don't wanna deal with other people looking at us."
He takes out the eggs and starts cooking, "Second: How do we want to do this?"
"Anonymous letter?" Jury suggests.
"Going to come off as blackmail."
"Anonymous love letter?"
"We missed our chance for stupid shit like that in high school; I'm not gonna stoop to it now."
"Blackmail letter but we're blackmailing him into getting eight hours of sleep and making out with himself in the mirror for us?"
Judge bangs his helmet against the podium, "Absolutely fucking not!"
Executioner snort laughs, "Okay, I appreciate the thought, but serious answers only please Jury."
"God you people are no fucking fun, uhhhh, hand him things in pairs of two until he gets the message?"
"That's... not the worst plan."
Executioner frowns, "I'm a little worried that veers too far into mimicking Two-Face's shtick at him. Might give him the impression that we're threatening them with arrest or assuming one of them is evil or something."
"You tragically have a point. We also don't even know how many of him are in there; twos kinda only work because of Two-Face," Admits Jury.
Judge asks, "Is making it non-threatening even an option? I mean, lets not go out of our way to make it feel like blackmail, obviously, but he's not stupid. Amnesia that bad is dangerous; if we choose to leverage that, we'll destroy him. Factually speaking, our knowing about this vulnerability is a very real threat to his safety. His right to prepare and defend himself is, you'll note, the only reason I'm willing to tell him at all."
The eggs finish cooking and Executioner scoops them onto a plate with the mental-emotional equivalent of a sigh, "You're right. Couching it in something pleasant like gifts is probably the best we can do."
"YES! Alright, operation affection gifts is a go!! I say we start with two boxes of chocolates."
"Executioner, could you go get us a dictionary? Cause clearly we need a refresher on the word subtlety!"
* * *
"Hey, you want a mint?"
Kayfabe blinks, "Uh, sure I guess? Why?"
Jason hands him two small, round peppermint candies with a shrug, "Bought too many, don't wanna carry them around."
That feels weirdly like a lie? Jason's a Bat, he is almost by definition made of pockets, how the hell does he not have room for two mints?? But on the other hand why on earth lie about two mints???
Kayfabe waits until he's back at The Theatre and down in The Nest's laboratory to unwrap either of them. He does so carefully, with tweezers, so as to preserve any fingerprints on the wrapper before moving on to analyzing the candy itself for foreign chemicals.
Jason wouldn't poison him. However, mind control and shapeshifting are things that exist. Also, there's a distinct possibility that Jason would discretely hand him two samples of the newest party drug on the assumption that he wasn't stupid enough to immediately shove them in his mouth. Unlikely, but it would be unbelievably embarrassing to accidentally dose himself like that.
The machine beeps and prints out its results, showing that instead of normal mint candy it was actually a nefarious concoction of... completely normal mint candy. Huh. This suggests that somehow Jason might have given him candy with no ulterior motive. Almost as though he was just being nice.
It sounds like a pipe dream on its face of course but, would it really be too much to think that maybe, just this once, someone he likes simply likes him back and wanted to be kind? Surely not everything has to be some kind of weird ass test or code or judgey 5-D chess manipulation strategy?
He stares at the mint, contemplating.
Yeah, fat fucking chance! He's gotta be missing something, this is Jason after all, he of plans within plans, convoluted and full of theatrics - even by their standards.
Kayfabe sighs and leaves Civil a message noting that Jason's definitely scheming something, and possibly scheming against Tim specifically.
He'll probably be delighted. Civil considers it a treat to watch Jason work through Kayfabe's recordings and reports. A vicarious extension of their joint time watching him as a kid, when they were just one person still... Or, he guesses, when Civil was alone? When the mask was still just a mask and the act still just an act? It's hard to delineate these things.
In any case it's a little harder to appreciate the elegance of Jason's plans when actively trying to disarm the bomb he set to distract you with so he could get at his target. Forest for the trees kind of thing he supposes. Not that Jason's done anything like that in a very long time.
Kayfabe can admit he might just be feeling snippy about it cause it's not the simple affection he wants. Also the body needs food and sleep and a bath. Also also Civil has another goddamned meeting in the morning for something or other that's important cause of something or other else, so he's got to account for him waking the body up early again too.
Given the choice between handling Civil's business world bullshit or risking it all in grand stunts of messy heroism, Kayfabe would pick his lot in their shared life every time. Not least because he gets to be closest to Jason and all the other bats. Actually talk to them at length and fight with them and stare at Jason's thighs from two feet away as opposed to through photos and cowl footage.
He decides that focusing on that is just going to make him feel more and more bitter about whatever minty machination Jason's got that involves pretending to be overly friendly to him. Best to ignore it. Off to sleep, off to dreams, off to jerking back into consciousness and then scrambling to figure out what the fuck Civil was doing and what his lines are and why he's been called up to preform again.