thegoshdarn | (no subject)

(no subject)

Ra's offered to put the League at her disposal. She could have used that against him, taken the opportunity to memorize his strongholds and bring him down. Maybe she should have; it would have given some point to this useless search she got herself into, looking for evidence that Bruce was alive. But she had Tamara Fox to think about, and, if she's being honest, she doesn't trust her own judgement right now.

(She was so sure. A part of her wants to just keep looking for the evidence she thought she could find, but - it doesn't exist. If it had, she would have found it. Her father's dead, again, and she can't bring Bruce back any more than she could have resurrected Jack.)

Instead, she bargains off what she knows to buy herself and Tam out of the entire mess. Tam can go back to her father and tell him that she brought back Timothea Drake-Wayne, and Tim... she goes home. Well. Assuming she can force herself to make the last few steps towards the Manor's entrance. It's more of a struggle than she'd like to admit to not turn around and go to a safe house to just lie low for a while, lick her proverbial wounds, but she supposes she's done enough running already.

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That seemed...plausible. It could have easily been a Titan that showed up to speak to her. Ok so it didn't exactly explain why she didn't say that from the very beginning, but he didn't want to accuse her outright of lying.
"..okay."

She does feel bad for taking advantage of his trust.

Just not bad enough to drag him into a fight between assassins. She flashes him a distracted smile for being reasonable about it. "I'll check in with you later."

At least that part's not a lie. After she's gone over everything she took to remove or deactivate any tracers on them and is (debatably) safe on a plane out of the country with Pru, she does send a message back to the Manor: He threatened to get Damian involved. I'm sorry.

While there is a distinct part of him that's proud of her for stepping up to protect Damian when it mattered, he still throws things across the room when her message comes through. After everything that had happened, she still thought it was a good idea to do this?

After he had calmed down, and Alfred had imparted his usual pointed wisdom, he had to concede that it wasn't exactly out of character, for any of them, to rush into these things in the name of protecting each other, but he was still angry she hadn't told him.

The trackers were useless, but he still went hunting for any sign of her, trying to track her down the way he had before. It was much harder when she was out of the country, but he was determined.

It doesn't take as long as she expected to deal with the Council. Which is surprising, honestly, but they're a much looser association than she'd thought, come together primarily for the sport of hunting other assassins. Not that it's easy, because Christ no - at one point, the core of the Council essentially attacks her, Pru, and the White Ghost all at once, and she ends up blowing up one of Ra's bases.

(She could have done a lot more damage to the League while she had access to their computers, crippled them at least temporarily, but no. She started this to protect her family - even the terrible, incredibly irritating members - and Ra's would no doubt retaliate. No. Instead, she memorizes as much information as she can and builds in a few backdoors she can use when she's ready. When she starts picking the League apart, he won't know what hit him.)

Now... now, she has to deal with the hard part: going home again. She doubts having told Dick that she was going off to protect Damian is going to buy her much leeway from his anger. She's even relatively intact, with only a dislocated shoulder and the usual assortment of cuts and bruises. Leaving on relatively good terms with Ra's al Ghul, who was oddly accepting of the collateral damage to the League, means she's already been treated by some of the best the League has to offer. They even checked on how well she's healing from the splenectomy.

And seriously, leaving on relatively good terms with Ra's al Ghul. She plans to spend about fifteen hours showering after Dick's done yelling at her.

Coming home like this feels incredibly familiar, except this time she has no apologies. She did what she had to do, and she's not sorry. Despite that, she still half-expects Dick to come out and drag her inside before she can even get to the door of the Manor.

Edited 2015-05-30 15:55 (UTC)

Dick's been hunting for any sign of her ever since she went missing, with no success. Things at home have been hectic and the bad guys of Gotham have been taken out rather more abruptly than they usually would - it's probably the most Bruce-like that Dick's Batman has ever been, and everybody's starting to notice.

He doesn't know exactly why she's disappeared or what she's doing, he doesn't know why she didn't just tell him, and he has no way of knowing if she's going to come home safe. He'd thought they were past this, but apparently not.

When the manor's proximity alarms alert him to her presence, he's out the door just as quickly as she expects, almost running to meet her.

"Tim!" there's a lot of relief in that shout, a huge weight lifting off his shoulders. The upbeat town goes away quite quickly after that "Where the hell have you been?"

Well. He didn't beat around the bush any.

She winces at the question. "It's... You're probably better off not knowing." Plausible deniability, or something along those lines.

"Really, Tim?" Dick raises an eyebrow at her "Do you think that's going to work?"

"Not really." But. It doesn't matter. If she doesn't want to tell him, she doesn't have to. The Council isn't a threat. If she drops the Red Robin identity now, it would be extremely difficult to trace anything back to her.

"...I thought we'd gotten over this, Tim..." he sighs, running hands through his hair.

"If it helps, I wasn't all that happy about going, either."

And she. Should probably just stop letting her mouth say things.

"You didn't even want to go!? How does that help Tim!?"

"I... wouldn't have disappeared without warning if it wasn't really important?" Oh god shut up shut up shut up.

"Really? Wouldn't you?" he sighs "I realise I'm turning into a broken record here, but have you any idea how worried I've been?"

She winces again. "I'm sorry?"

This is going well.

"...Let's go inside." he turns away and heads back to the manor, not looking back to check if she was following.

She waits for a second before giving a sigh and following. It's going to be a long day, but she's had longer. Getting Dick pissed off at her was still the better choice than dragging him into it with her or sitting around and hoping no one thought to come after the grandson of the head of the League.

Dick gives himself the walk up to the manor to calm down, counting slowly under his breath with every step. He didn't used to be this angry, he's sure he didn't. He was the one who cracked jokes and kept everybody smiling, clearly being Batman just took it out of you, maybe even Bruce had been cheerier, once upon a time. ...unlikely.

Once they're inside, he stops, turning back to face her.

"So is this how it's going to be? You're just going to disappear and I'll just have to sit around and wait to find out if you're alive or not?"

Tim spends most of the walk reminding herself that running was still the right call. Not a good call, but the right one for protecting her family. Bruce's family.

"I don't... want it to be," she says carefully. Because. She can't promise it won't ever happen again.

"But it might be?" he asks, sighing. "Tim, we're a team, we're a family, how are we supposed to help each other if we don't talk to each other?"

She has to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying something that would just be needlessly hurtful, like sounds like a family to me.

(Because. She's loved her parents, all of them, but Bruce never told anyone the whole of what he was thinking, and she and Jack never quite had room for each other in their lives, even when they were trying.)

About the best she can manage is to stare at him helplessly, because. What can she say?

"...I don't know what else to say, Tim..." he admits finally, he can tell she doesn't think she's done anything wrong and he doesn't know how to make her understand why he's so angry, there's probably not any way they can see eye to eye on this particular case.

"Just... don't do this again for a while, please?"

"Okay."

Not that she can really promise it, but she can at least pretend she can.

"Okay..." he nods slightly. "Go on then, what injuries do you have this time?"

"Nothing too bad. Dislocated shoulder was the worst."

She is, actually, wearing a shoulder brace, but it's tucked under her shirt to avoid awkward questions.

Briefly, Dick laments that they all live in a world where "not too bad" and "dislocated shoulder" go in the same sentence, a sentence uttered by his teenage little sister no less, but they do and he can't really blame her for that, so he doesn't say anything.

"Has it been treated?"