Chapter Text
Mid-evening of the third day of the expedited court hearing into the WE-LexCorp patent dispute
Tim’s invention – Damian’s analyser - beeps. It, too, has completed it’s analysis. 99.9% certainty non-earth origin. 99.9% certainty Kryptonian origin.
It beeps again.
99.9% certainty non-earth origin. 99.9% certainty Kryptonian origin. 99.9% certainty Kryptonian canine-equivalent material.
Wait, what?! Bruce blinks, only decades of training saving his jaw from dropping, what the hell?!?
On the other side of the courtroom, nestled in his seat behind his team, Luthor sits back. Relaxes from the almost-standing position he’d shifted into when the first analyser results pinged through; the anticipatory, avaricious gleam dissipating from his eyes as smoothly and quickly as the crossing of his legs as he settles himself more comfortably in his chair. Touches an innocuous decoration on his tie pin. The gems on his cufflinks flicker from red to green. A trick of the light. (A deactivation of some sort of technology, some weapon he was wearing no doubt… Bruce, confident in his mastery of watching without seeming to, seethes at the implications. His face, the slightly anxious, careworn expression of Edward Malone, never even ripples.)
Luthor might have been willing to pick a techno-weaponry assisted fight in the middle of a courtroom in the middle of Gotham for a fresh sample of Superman’s DNA… but he isn’t, apparently, willing to do so just for old canine fur.
Because the sample is indeed non-terrestrial. Is indeed Kryptonian.
It is also, indubitably, one of Krypto’s shed dog hairs.
And Tim’s device proves it. Bruce can see the faint smile cracking on the lips of one of the Metropolis SCU officers, though the woman’s gaze remains stalwartly and resolutely anywhere but on Luthor. No wonder they were willing to offer a sample from their own collection, if it were to be this sample. No wonder they were willing to bring it to Gotham, to offer it up – ostensibly for the court case, but in reality to test the two tender options side by side – for use.
Small wonder, then, that Luthor had stood down whatever his plan was. The risk of incurring the JLA’s wrath? The Bat’s? on his own home turf? For a sample of dog hair? No. Not worth it. Bruce knows Luthor is many things, but he is not a fool.
But the turn of events also, Bruce realises, opens a realm – a veritable wealth - of possible refutations to Vicki Vale’s latest postulations: Tim, Bruce recalls, had taken advantage of the surge in available uncommitted WE charity funding precipitated by the success of … one of his many business deals. Or the successful marketing of one of his inventions… (uncomfortably, Bruce realises he doesn’t know which. Tim had been handling WE so completely that Bruce himself doesn’t know which.).
Anyway, he’d taken the opportunity to establish a series of animal shelters in Gotham.
At the time, it had irritated Bruce – rather than animals, the funding could have gone to Gotham’s people. Or, failing that, to the Mission – but he’d known better than to pull the project, or insist Tim do so; Damian would have had conniptions if he found out his Father had defunded animal shelters (and he would have found out.)
So he’d let Tim have the shelter project, had half-expected (half-hoped) the establishment of the charity to be the opening move of an attempt by Tim to build a better relationship with Damian. To be a better big brother, to be the big brother Damian so richly deserved. To generate some sort of common ground to get past the …continuing minor apathy (Bruce hadn’t know about the slavery)… Damian expressed towards him. To be the bigger person, take the first step and extend the hand of brotherhood.
Well, extend the hand of brotherhood again, anyway. Extend it now that Damian had move far enough past his League upbringing to have a hope of actually taking it. (Rather than kicking it, and the sibling who offered it, off a dinosaur.)
But that reconciliation hadn’t happened. Bruce isn’t even sure if Damian even knows about the shelters, let alone that they were Tim’s initiative. Tim is the only one of his children who routinely reads the WE press releases, and word of the shelters opening never passed Tim’s teeth. At least, not in his few, stilted conversations with the family or Family around that time.
At least, it hadn’t before word of Damian’s view of Tim’s enslav-… of Tim’s ‘place’ in the family and Family had passed the younger boy’s own teeth. In full, florid detail, nothing stilted about it.
Full, florid detail that has yet to be fully addressed, though Bruce knows he’s certainly made a start on it. His mind shies away from the recollection of that car trip. Of that conversation. No. Stop. Focus. Focus on the here and now. Focus on salvaging WE, on protecting his youngest.
The shelter project had been an unexpected Public Relations boon to WE some months after its establishment when Superboy had gone on record with Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet, talking about the Gotham shelters in particular, about animals in general, about playing fetch with Krypto. About meeting Krypto for the first time when he was an adult dog, and the benefits of rehoming those adult animals unfortunate enough to need it.
Bruce doesn’t know if Tim put Kon up to it or not, but he’s grateful for it now. Grateful for the shelters, and Superboy’s soundbite both.
Because that soundbite, coupled with Damian’s known preference for animals over people, will be enough for WE’s PR department to build a narrative of a lost Krypto, a visit to a shelter by a Wayne scion with a soft spot for animals… then Damian’s realisation that the dog was superpowered, the return of the animal to a Super, Krypto’s ‘Happily Ever After’ … and the convenient availability to Damian of Kryptonian canine hair samples that could plausibly have been used to develop and refine the DNA analyser technology. Certainly, to the level that it is currently demonstrating its clear capacity to do so.
99.9% certainty non-earth origin. 99.9% certainty Kryptonian origin. 99.9% certainty Kryptonian canine-equivalent material.
Bruce hides a grin. ‘Canine-equivalent’ would only be known, would only be an assessment that could be made, a conclusion that could be drawn, if previous non-humanoid canine-equivalent samples had been tested.
Tim has, in his conscientiousness, in his attention to detail - in his meticulous testing of both humanoid and non-humanoid non-terrestrial samples - saved them again. This time, probably unintentionally. Probably.
Bruce knows he’s grateful, knows he should be every bit as grateful for his third child as he tells himself he is… but he can’t quite shake his apprehension. His certainty that things are not over yet in this courtroom. In this saga. Even though Luthor had obviously been expecting a sample from Superman, or Supergirl. Powergirl, maybe. Or some other useful non-terrestrial hero, not a kryptonian pet.
Because one simple fact still stares Bruce in the face. One small, inescapable detail.
Because the fact is…Bruce hadn’t known about the nature of the proposed sample either. Hadn’t known it wouldn’t be from Clark. And that seems like something the JLA – and by extension Batman himself – should have been aware of…
The armed robbers who burst into the courtroom obviously aren’t aware of it, either. But then, nor are they apparently aware of the level of protection even this lesser sample warrants. They are face down, disarmed, and with arms handcuffed behind them before Bruce – Edward Malone – even finishes standing, though. Such a pathetic attempt.
So pathetic that, if he hadn’t already triggered it when Luther had started (and aborted) his move, Bruce wouldn’t even have bothered with triggering the alert at all. Not for that.
It was clearly hastily planned and fundamentally opportunistic. A slap-dash attempt, one that didn’t even register as all that alarming. Just some guns waved in the air, and an attempt to snatch and grab the samples. The Metropolis SCU guards are efficient, effective, and fast in their management of these situations. The threat is over before Bruce can even deactivate the alert he triggered when Luthor began to fiddle with his accessories…
No, the threat is well and truly ended before it even really could begin. Luthor is still in his chair, looking on with – if anything – polite boredom. It’s possible that rather than a separate interested party, this is a half-hearted ‘Plan B’ of Luthor’s. Designed for enactment if he can’t – or chooses not to, as it were – go for the sample himself. Bruce finds he doubts even that at least a little bit, though, it’s just too pathetic and too poor an effort. Too easily derailed.
In fact, to Bruce’s trained eyes it is clear that Luthor is now obviously ready to go with his well-rehearsed ‘I am but a scared innocent bystander and traumatised fellow victim’ performance. (It’s one he’s honed to a fine art over the years; as convincing in its own way as Bruce’s own ‘Brucie’ act is. A skilled, facile trompe l’oeil production that has successfully served to divert all suspicion from the man – and his nefarious activities - for decades. No wonder he’s bored. Or plotting something else.)
But when the court reconvenes after security and the police clear the would-be thieves from the room (and the Metropolis SCU techs carefully reclaim what’s left of the laserknife split sample from the two devices) the judge - very obviously done with the whole business - states the bleedingly obvious.
The devices are manifestly completely different. There is no patent infringement. The case is dismissed.
There is no patent infringement. Wayne Enterprises is free and clear.
Bruce feels himself relax. Though he’s too skilled to let his shoulders drop from the tense hunch he’s adopted for the Edward Malone role, for the first time in weeks, Bruce feels he can breathe again.
Wayne Enterprises is free and clear.
Looking up as he leaves the courthouse, he spots – is allowed to spot – a flicker of scallop-edged cape on the rooftop opposite. There and gone again. Batman.
Dick knows, then. Bruce clamps down the smile that threatens to break across his face.
Dick knows, and will doubtless be pleased. Now he gets his finger stripes back, gets to hang up the cowl once more, give the pointy ears back to Bruce.
Wayne Enterprises is free and clear.
They can almost certainly even make the swap tonight; with Luthor having thought better of committing to whatever attack or stratagem he had planned, there is enough time to make it to the downtown penthouse that serves as a secondary Cave and there are backup costumes for all three of the Manor residents there. Heck, there’s even spare kit for Stephanie and Jason, though neither tend to use it. (Bruce shies away from thinking about how many iterations out of date the costume is that they have in storage there for Tim. What new tools and armour he has added to his uniform that they don’t know about …)
Wayne Enterprises is free and clear.
In the car, peeling off Edward Malone like the ill-fitting suit the character is, Bruce permits himself a small, relieved smile. All is well. It’s the ideal outcome. Better, it’s the first thing that has gone unequivocally right since his return to earth from his most recent endeavour in interstellar space with the JLA. He turns the steering wheel, directs the car towards the Penthouse.
It’s at least one problem down. Maybe several. Now, the patent is clear. Now, the Edward Malone identity is established as a scientist working for WE. Now, with the pressure of time from the court case off the back of his youngest, Damian can balance his studies with being Robin… (With due time and attention given to some intensive and supported reflection about slavery and indentureship and family and Family, of course. All of which will be easier now that the pressure to learn the biosciences as quickly as possible is lessened, at least a bit.)
And while the Batsignal is on, painting its usual harsh yellow gleam dully against the smog-clouds of Gotham’s nights, Bruce knows that’s only because he triggered the alert. If it were anything else, Dick would not have been waiting above the courthouse. Damian’s – Robin’s – tracker would not be moving at a steady clip across the city, clearly aiming for a rendezvous on the Penthouse roof.
It’s good to know the plan worked, and the alarm he sent through Cyborg’s promised gap in the communications dead zone around the courthouse made it out to the Family, though he isn’t looking forward to dealing with the ‘Damian has been kidnapped’ plan that has – given how the Signal is lit and his youngest is already moving across the city – already almost certainly been put into action.
Still, the putative inconvenience of that gives him a good negotiating start point with Cyborg and Superman both about trust and technological compatibility.
Trust.
He’s still a little bitter. Not about the sample being from Krypto, no, not at all; that was a stroke of absolute genius and one he would have suggested himself if he hadn’t been distracted by - mired in - the plethora of other WE tasks that Tim has left him to in the wake of his departure.
(Bruce gives himself a little shake, frowning at his own subconscious. It’s not a departure, not really, nothing so final. In the wake of Tim’s temporary absence. Just like what Dick had done at a slightly older age, like what Jason had maybe considered – before his ill-fated trip to Ethiopia had changed the course of his life and with it, everyone else’s.
No. Bruce is not bitter about the sample stratagem. He’s irritated he didn’t know about it in advance.)
He wonders, absently, if it was oversight; if the JLA is just so used to him being several steps ahead that they simply assumed he was aware. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption normally, but he’ll still have to go through the information sharing protocols. And do so both effectively, and subtly enough that there’s no damage to the Batman mystique. He is after all, as other members of the JLA so often observe, the ‘contingencies guy’.
It's a task for another day.
For tonight, he has the comfortable assurance of his eldest’s presence; on the screen in the dashboard of the car Dick’s tracker blinks briefly on the top of the penthouse, then goes dark. He’s gone inside then, probably changing out of the Cape and into the finger stripes with alacrity. Jason’s tracker shows him in the Narrows, and Bruce frowns. If he’s not moving towards the Cave or the penthouse, if he hasn’t called in – even when the BatSignal is lit – he may be in some kind of trouble. They all prioritise the Signal. That Jason hasn’t (that he can’t?) means that the Narrows will be the first port of call for the rest of them once they assemble. Bruce is nearly at the penthouse. Damian will be there by the time Bruce and Dick are both kitted up. It won’t be a long delay.
Though he doesn’t have a tracker on his wayward third son (doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t even know if he’s in Gotham) the lighting of the Bat Signal may just maybe also mean that Timothy lets himself be put into play. Tim usually – not always, but usually – contacts them (or at least, Oracle) if the situation is dire enough for the Signal to be lit. His conversation with Dick suggested that that wouldn’t change.
Bruce finds himself desperately hoping that that’s the case. If that’s the only way he can get some face time with his wayward third son, he’ll take it. Though he knows that if Tim knows the trigger for the Signal was Damian’s fake kidnapping – if he deduces from the scraps and clues left behind that Damian has used (modified) a plan from the data stick Timothy himself left them and that despite the activation of the Bat Signal there is no risk to either the Family or Gotham – Bruce knows it’s likely they will see neither hide nor hair of their wayward missing third child.
But Tim is thorough. It’s likely he will check, he will make sure.
And then they can all of them go to Jason’s aid. If Jason needs it. Red Robin works well with Red Hood; Jason being in trouble is likely to be cause enough to ensure Tim will work with the rest of the Family to help him. If Tim’s even in Gotham.
Under his breath, Bruce curses anew his lack of trackers on his wayward third offspring.
As if on cue, the Signal blinks off. The dull glow of refracted neon street light shifts the relatively crisp-margined yellow to a dismal, smeary morass. Bruce allows himself a faint grimace; Dick doubtless spoke to Commissioner Gordon on the roof of the Police Station before heading over to the courthouse to loom in Bruce’s visual field. His oldest isn’t subtle, but he’s more than capable of reassuring the Commissioner (and any other officers in the rooftop vicinity) that the Bats’ investigation into the kidnapping of Damian Wayne – likely to happen in collaboration with the police themselves – will be underway promptly.
Bruce frowns. Alfred is the first line of ‘enquiry’ (of obfuscation) in this plan, the one who will be speaking to the Police as the ‘witness’ to the abduction and who will be giving the agreed cover story of being the ‘responsible adult’ present and looking after Damian when the kidnapping occurred (Bruce himself will be ‘away on WE business’, and Dick ‘having a weekend trip with old friends’). While it had been initially set up that way to allow Bruce to be Malone in the courtroom undisturbed, the resolution of the patent infringement case now has the unexpected benefit of freeing him up to get into the Batsuit and out into his City.
Alfred’s thespian skills will buy the entire night’s worth of time for the three of them to patrol the city, to re-establish their teamwork. To just… be.
No grinding and unending biochemistry study for Damian. No scalloped cape and limiting of dramatic gymnastics for Dick. And for Bruce? The company of the eldest and youngest of his sons, with a high probability of time with his second (even if his static position in the Narrows means it’s a rescue) and a chance (however remote) to see his third….
It’s shaping up to be the best evening Bruce has had in weeks.
So it’s with a spring in his step that he enters the penthouse, slips into the backup Bat Family headquarters hidden within it. At his entrance, Dick turns around. Movements quicksilver and comfortable, his eldest is grinning freely, though with a hint of worry for Jason poorly hidden in his eyes. The free movement of his hair, the domino mask on his face is obviously a comfort. As apropos and perfectly matched to him as the slim, lightly armoured unitard he has already pulled on, his personal and personalised iteration of the BatSuit already discarded across the workbench behind him.
As the door seals behind Bruce, Nightwing – and it is Nightwing, there’s no hint of the Bat – speaks, rattling off his report with ease and rapidity.
“I didn’t stay with the Commissioner on the roof very long. Just enough to find out that one of the Wayne boys had been kidnapped and that guy who witnessed this is an older man – a ‘long-term employee’ turned ‘close family friend’, whatever – that was with him at the time. Anyway, the witness was downstairs in the precinct main offices being interviewed, though he wasn’t being treated as a suspect at this stage. Apparently, his ‘close and cordial’ relationship with the Wayne family is measured in decades.” Dick smiles, eyes crinkling as he found the humour implicit in describing Alfred’s relationship with the Wayne family as merely ‘close and cordial’, though Bruce is sure his son is inwardly irritated at the grandfatherly butler being referred to as merely a ‘long-term employee’ turned ‘family friend’.
“So anyway, they’re calling it a ‘snatch-and-grab’ out of a car in one of the better parts of Gotham Heights; Gordon said the two were returning home from a restaurant, based on what they’re getting from the witness down in the offices. The old man says that while he was a bit stunned after they were run off the road, the Wayne kid put up enough of a fight at the time that he – the witness - could collect himself and get away, but not enough to prevent ‘Bruce’s kid’ himself from being taken. According to Gordon, this old employee is ‘visibly distraught, but holding it together’. Or at least, he’s doing so well enough that Gordon offered to let me speak to him myself before he sent him off to Leslie or the hospital to get checked over by the medics. Naturally, I declined and told them to get his ’minor scrapes and bruises’ seen to instead. I even did it in the proper Batman growly voice, so he’d know I was serious.”
Dick’s faith in Alfred’s acting skills is total and deserved, as is his confidence in Gordon’s ability to prioritise: If the commissioner pulled a person into the station to give a witness statement, the likelihood they are hiding or downplaying major injuries – and getting away with it - is vanishingly low. The butler is almost certainly absolutely fine.
“I mean, I could have gone and pretended to speak with Alfred, but I was a bit more worried about Jason. And where he is, and why he didn’t pull off his bit of the kidnap plan. Given how good he’s been about showing up for Bat things recently. Well, mostly.” Dick frowns slightly, and Bruce knows Jason’s raging insistence that they leave their third brother alone – and his relative paucity of contact with the family and Family since leaving with the Outlaws after that particular confrontation – still obviously weighs heavily on his oldest son’s mind.
Given that Jason’s tracker hasn’t moved from the Narrows, Bruce is confident that Alfred staged the car crash himself after the kidnap plan went live upon Bruce’s signal from the courthouse, which just supports Dick’s point even more strongly; Alfred is an excellent offensive driver, well able to stage a crash and walk away from it if – when – Jason failed to show.
And it was to be Jason, or rather another – any other - alias of his but absolutely not Red Hood who was to be the kidnapper.
Definitely not Red Hood. The repeated and protracted episodes, the sheer scope and profundity of the violence of Red Hood’s actions towards a child - towards Tim (both as Robin and Red Robin) - are not widely known within greater Gotham.
(Though awareness of Jason’s repeated attacks on Tim is, unfortunately, nowadays widespread knowledge within the hero communities that both inhabit: An annoyance to Bruce, who would have preferred things to be kept ‘in house’ within the Family and family. Not least so Jason could be supported and rehabilitated without being so judged. Tim has recovered from his injuries, so it’s not really a concern. Anyway, Bruce’s two middle boys work well together now, so it’s really not anyone’s business outside of the Family what one might have done to the other.)
Regardless, the Red Hood identity – for all that Bruce dislikes that alias - has a child-protecting, kid-rescuing, human trafficker-busting reputation within the wider Gotham community that is far too useful to burn the ID on kidnapping a billionaire’s teenage offspring. No matter how biotech savvy the PR department at WE is hyping him up to be.
Even if Jason was willing to burn that citizen goodwill and community reputation.
Bruce finds himself frowning. Jason’s absence is not the only change to the plan, though it is the most concerning. Especially in view of his tracker not moving.
While Bruce can absolutely see the justification for changing the kidnap to occur from a vehicle rather than from within a building when Jason didn’t appear to play his part, they’d originally intended for the kidnap to be from an ice cream parlour rather than a restaurant per se and it’s an odd distinction for Gordon to make. He’s usually much more precise than that.
But, Bruce supposes, the key issue was that Damian’s kidnap was to occur while he was well outside the putative safety of his home. Having Damian go missing from Wayne Manor (let alone having him be ‘kidnapped out of his bed’) would prompt far too much forensic scrutiny of the Manor and invade Damian’s privacy on far too great a scale to be tolerated. Besides, though Bruce doubted even the police of the GCPD would be able to find evidence of the Family’s ‘nocturnal activities’, it was better not to risk it.
Especially when a simple police search of Damian’s bedroom desk and study materials would reveal the vast discrepancy between someone frantically learning about basic biochemistry… and someone actively inventing an entire field of science based on it.
It would also reveal exactly which category Damian would fall into. No, they could not afford that. (And they couldn’t even pretend that Tim’s old room was Damian’s; while the mess and clutter that Bruce could clearly remember routinely filling Tim’s desk and floor space was certainly indicative of his habitual inventive creativity and his penchant for non-biological mechanical engineering... Somehow in the time between when Bruce went missing into the Timestream and the time when he thought to once more open the door and look - well after his return though it had been - Bruce had been discomforted to realise Tim’s room had somehow been converted into a bland, soulless guest room. A room that, while it might once have been Tim’s space, very obviously wasn’t his space anymore.)
He didn’t know how – or even when – that had happened. Whether it had been while he was in space on the most recent JLA mission (a recency which he hoped was the case) or whether it had happened weeks, months, years earlier.
If it had maybe even happened while he was lost in the TimeStream… and he simply hadn’t noticed even after he was rescued (a latency which he feared.)
How had he not noticed earlier that his third son was spending vast amounts of time outside the manor? That his third was determinedly avoiding his younger brother instead of being the bigger person, yes, absolutely, he’d noticed that. He’d noticed Tim doing all of that avoidant activity… steering clear of the manor but certainly still feeling at home there, or so Bruce had thought.
But apparently not and how had Bruce not noticed? How had he not noticed that his third son had simply … moved out? More than just staying in Gotham proper during the working week to make things easier for WE (but keeping his room at the Manor). Making the Manor his home even as he held a downtown pied a terre for convenience… no, instead Tim had just… gone ahead and left.
How hadn’t he noticed just how bad things were with his third Robin? How hadn’t he noticed how frayed and tattered the relationship with his third Robin – with his son - had become? That Tim could walk out of Wayne Enterprises and vanish and that Bruce and Dick wouldn’t even know where he could have vanished to.
That they wouldn’t even know where he lived when he was in Gotham. Because it wasn’t at the Manor, and the state of what had been his room very obviously meant it hadn’t been for some time.
No. Stop. Focus.
Damian’s kidnapping plan is, obviously, underway. From a car rather than a building, from a restaurant, rather than an ice cream parlour, true. But it’s underway and that buys them at least a night of free movement. Which Bruce knows is good, because Luthor is still in town, he doesn’t know where Tim is, and Jason’s tracker hasn’t moved from the Narrows.
While most meals Damian ate were prepared by the very butler – the ‘family friend, employee, whatever’ – that had taken him on his putative excursion that evening, not everything was within Alfred’s culinary capacity. That was a good excuse, a clear and plausible alibi. That’s what they had gone with for this kidnapping plan…
And to kill two birds with one stone, that was also why the outing was supposed to be for ice cream. A dessert run, a treat.
A special excursion for a young boy during trying, stressful times. Very normal. Very run-of-the-mill. (The PR department at WE had been insistent on trying to make Damian – the face of WE’s New Direction - as relatable, as likeable, as possible. Especially as he was also being marketed as ‘the greatest Wayne mind of a generation’ and ‘the intellectual heir to Thomas and Martha Wayne’. And ice cream runs were normal. They were run-of-the-mill treats. Even if neither Bruce nor Alfred had ever taken Tim for one…)
Damian liked ice cream. That was very relatable. But there was a particular restaurant that made a particular Mahalabiyeh dessert that he liked even more and Bruce figured this substitution was likely what had happened. He didn’t blame Damian for it, not really. Modifying his putative treat into an actual personal pleasure was probably the most reasonable way to go about things anyway.
Especially since he’d probably not go there again if he was ‘too traumatised after the kidnapping’. Though given that they’d had to improvise after Jason’s no-show and stage the kidnapping from the vehicle, it was no longer the case that the association with the restaurant would have to be seen as all that traumatic.
Still, even if it cost him his favourite dessert place, the kidnapping was an excellent way to have Damian become quite reclusive. To keep him away from the press. Why, any reporter who pressed for an interview or comment from a traumatised sixteen year old freshly rescued from being kidnapped was churlish at best, and would be pilloried at worst.
And Vicki Vale was too canny to let herself be trapped like that.
It was a good plan.
Now if only they could figure out what had happened with Jason…
Slightly Earlier That Evening, on the Roof of the Gotham Police Station.
“Have you seen enough then, Commissioner?” The softly feminine voice is steel.
“Turn it off,” Gordon’s voice was quiet, defeated, his answer indirectly affirmative, though his nod at the question was shallow. Grunting, Harvey Bullock worked the heavy lever. The Signal was clunky to illuminate, and no matter how often they greased the gears on the stiff switch, turning it on - and off - was always hard.
Gordon liked to think of that as a metaphor for calling on the resident vigilantes for help.
A metallic thud, and the rooftop was once more plunged into the shadowy half-light washing in from the streets below.
“Is that how the Bat usually approaches kidnap cases? With that degree of dismissiveness?”
It wasn’t, and Gordon knew it. But he didn’t have to voice it, didn’t have to tell her that. Didn’t have to damn the new wearer of the Cape any more than he would have the old.
“Is that how the Bat usually responds to the snatching of the offspring, however troublesome, of one of Gotham’s most prestigious families? A family that in all probability funds the Bat’s vigilante activities?”
“You don’t know that.” Gordon’s rebuttal is automatic. Immediate. Nobody knows that, not provably.
And Gordon doesn’t want to know it. He certainly doesn’t want to prove it.
But there are a lot of things tonight that Gordon doesn’t want to know. That he doesn’t want to have seen. And they go far beyond any questions that might threaten his plausible deniability about how and where and from whom the Bat gets the money for his toys.
He doesn’t want to have seen how little the Bat had seemed to care about the abduction. How pithy and insincere the platitudes the vigilante had mouthed had been. How disinterested he’d been in the details of the kidnapping.
Gordon doesn’t want to have seen how easily the Bat had been willing to waste those precious first few hours of the chase, hours that were well known to be the most likely time to get the abductee back.
Gordon doesn’t want to have seen at all how it looked like Batman didn’t care about this victim. Like he wasn’t moved by the case.
How it looked like the Bat had seen the schism in the Wayne family as it played out across boardrooms and stock markets and newspapers… seen it, and very firmly picked a side.
And it wasn’t the side of the abducted teenager, the one who’d been pulled from a car after a celebratory meal with old friends and colleagues at a restaurant. The one who’d vanished utterly, leaving a traumatised old man – the kid’s friend who’d kindly agreed to drop him off at his accommodation – shaken and frightened, but resolutely sitting in a cubicle in the police station downstairs. Ready to tell the Bat everything he knew or had seen.
And Batman had turned the offer down. Disinterested, disengaged, distracted.
“Well, this has been one hell of an end to a celebratory graduation dinner.” The woman’s voice was, if anything, even colder than before.
Turning, her shoes scored a soft click with each step on the Police Station rooftile as she walked away. Her chic grey party dress – oddly not out of place at all against the Gotham skyline, for all that it had clearly been worn to mark a special occasion – swirled against her knees, making her look almost like one of the rooftop shadows herself.
As she reached the heavy fire door leading to the roof access stairwell, Tam Fox paused and glanced over her shoulder at the two policemen hunched next to the extinguished Bat Signal.
“I’ll be taking my father to Gotham General for medical attention now. You know how to contact us if the Police want further information or to do another witness interview.”
Behind her, Gordan and Bullock were left standing, silent and defeated.
Grimly aware that this kidnap was theirs to solve, that it seemed likely there would be no … extrajudicial assistance…forthcoming.
Not from the Batman anyway.