Chapter Text
Jason might be completely lost when it comes to sign language but at least Titus doesn't care that Jason has watched the exact same video tutorial six times in a row.
Titus, Damian's gigantic and arthritic Great Dane, is thirteen years old. The dog seems completely content to spend hours flopped on the suitably-huge dog bed in the sunny spot between the couch and the library's window seat. Titus gave up on using the also-large carpeted stairs to help him get onto the couch a bit before Jason made it to the house, as Damian tells it, but no one has had to tell Jason why the stairs haven't been moved. Cass and Stephanie both use the dog staircase when they want to get onto the couch using gymnastics instead of sitting down on the couch like someone from a normal family.
Jason frowns at his laptop. It's still hard to believe that it's his laptop, just like he has a bedroom in Wayne Manor and a not-quite-officially-adopted family. His dad's court case to maintain custody isn't expected to go on for much longer. Even if Bruce Wayne wasn't the one willing to adopt him, Jason's dad has spent a good portion of Jason's childhood in prison and the times that he was home weren't great.
Jason starts the sign language video for a seventh time more out of habit than hope he'll understand it this time. The cheerful woman who posts free sign language lessons online doesn't know or care that he's still trying to figure out a way to commit all of the subtle motions to memory. She won't wonder if being confused about sign language means that he's pushing himself too hard and that he should take it easy. She won't decide that Jason should focus on schoolwork and everything he thought he wanted and take a break from Black Bat. She won't ask questions about why Jason has trouble separating patrol-specific signs from American Sign Language when no one else seems to have any difficulty.
Jason glances across the library. Damian is working at an oversized desk, luckily, because either of his twin stacks of books might break one of the spindly end tables in the front parlor that Alfred reserves for guests that he wants to leave quickly. Everything in that room is delicate and thinly cushioned. It's also very easy for Alfred to make it uncomfortably bright or dim. There is a much more comfortable receiving room for people that haven't made Alfred feel suspicious or annoyed. The library is for family.
As Jason watches, Damian finishes underlining a section of a thick textbook about comparative animal anatomy. Damian seems satisfied with that bit of studying because he closes that textbook carefully, sets it onto the stack of books closer to the door, and then opens an accounting textbook to a bookmarked page.
Damian glances up when Jason doesn't look away. “Yes?”
Jason shrugs. “Still trying to figure out how you keep it all straight.”
Damian considers the question for a couple seconds before answering. “I find it simpler to break larger tasks into smaller pieces. Alternating between different topics makes it easier for me to feel that I've made progress, especially when my little side project may only bear fruit in time.”
“The forensic accounting one?” Jason asks.
“Precisely,” Damian agrees. “I only regret leaving business school because it would make this and a couple other investigations far easier. Animals are much better company than most business majors, however, so it's only an occasional regret.”
Jason has asked about the accounting project before. Damian has explained his general goals and research approach but he won't let out a single detail more. Cass knows all about it and won't talk about it. She's not the chattiest of them by any means, even compared to Bruce, but Cass won't give him a single clue about the project she's working on with Damian.
When Jason asked Stephanie, she'd shrugged the question off. She hadn't been annoyed that Damian and Cass weren't letting her into the project at all. She'd told Jason that if she could help, they would ask her, but it was probably something that required the kind of poker face that only worked for people raised by assassins. Jason had gotten so distracted with confirming that “joking” assassin references about why Damian and Cassandra were only to be approached with great caution after a fight with Scarecrow or Mad Hatter weren't actually jokes at all to get Stephanie to tell him more about her guesses about the project. The next time he'd asked her, she'd been ready, and she wouldn't tell him a thing about it.
Jason could ask more about the project. Damian wouldn't be offended, and he wouldn't be at all annoyed that Jason pushed a little more, but Damian can politely avoid topics as well as Bruce and Alfred. Unless Jason asks about something Damian will tell him about, the conversation won't go anywhere.
“Well, good luck with it,” Jason says.
Damian smiles slightly. “Thank you.”
Damian doesn't wish Jason luck with his studies. Damian doesn't know that Jason is studying, though. Jason has only been practicing sign language in his room. Everyone is willing to help but Jason feels self-conscious when everyone else can see what he's doing wrong well before he can figure it out. He understands patrol-signs and maybe that'll be what he stays with for now.
Jason shifts so that sitting against Titus is a little more comfortable. The dog's muffled groan seems approving. Jason starts the tutorial for the eighth time and decides that this time he's going to focus on how the instructor changes between signs so fluently.
Damian moves two more books to his finished stack before Jason gives up on sign language halfway through the short video and trades his laptop for a novel.
The fully-furnished apartment had been advertised as open-concept with clean lines and modern styling. Tim had decided on the apartment from the photographs alone and the walk-through had only confirmed his thinking. The apartment looks like it came straight out of one of the magazines his mother only bought to mock. She'd come back from the airport with a tiny smile on her lips and an interior design magazine covered in red scrawls. She'd liked to tell Tim how someone could undo the awful damage done to a historic property or put a little life back into the soulless thing.
This apartment is white and beige and perfectly boring, just as he wanted when he put his funds and a false identity to use when leasing the place. The blandness of it makes it far easier to pick out the abnormal with little effort. It also gives very few clues about what his own motives and stands out as an unusual choice for a sixteen-year-old to choose or afford.
Tim makes a show of frowning at the irregular spot on his apartment's kitchen smoke detector. He takes his time studying every aspect of the impressively discreet button camera. The tiny lens is visible but all other pieces of the surveillance device are completely hidden from view.
Tim pulls the smoke detector off the wall and moves the smoke detector around a few times while pretending that he's having trouble finding the latch. He knows that the added camera isn't in the main battery compartment but he takes the time to open the compartment and search carefully. There wouldn't be enough room and it would be far too likely for him to discover the sabotage. When he opens the back casing, he finds the expected power supply and broadcast chip.
If the League of Assassins had installed the camera, they would have sent someone clever enough to hide the lens in one of the recesses built into the device. An especially clever assassin would have made sure that the lens had no chance to glint in the light. This is not one of the two cameras that he'll let Ra's al Ghul keep in place, though, looking over part of his living room and nearly half of the kitchen. This one is far more local and a reminder that he's not the only one playing a dangerous game.
The Court of Owls keeps making assumptions about Tim. They assumed that he wouldn't find a relatively subtle camera. They assumed that Tim wouldn't have had his own video surveillance wired into his apartment before the previous tenant ever moved out. Talia had been kind enough to task one of her own Gotham-based agents with putting together more than enough cameras for Tim to watch as everyone else tried to gain an advantage. It left him dependent on her good will until he could make his own arrangements but so far their goals align. Betraying Tim to her father would put her in danger and not give Talia or Ra's any great advantage.
Tim destroys the Court's camera with a meat tenderizer. It seems an appropriate touch when Tim is doing his best to walk the line of interesting enough to partner with an elite organization but young and impressionable enough to not be a danger.
He drops the pulverized remains into his nearly-empty trash can on top of two takeout containers and several filters filled with coffee grounds. The hallway is empty when he steps out of his apartment to drop the remains down the trash chute.
The Court has one camera in the hallway. He hasn't let on that he knows about that one yet. So far, he's inclined to let them know when he's in the hall. They have no reason to suspect that the fire escape outside his window is a far more interesting target for surveillance. He hasn't let any cameras on the outside of the building stay in place for more than a few hours. Sometimes, he made the destruction look like an accident. Sometimes, he doesn't try to be subtle. All of the destroyed cameras were angled so that they would look in through the apartment's biggest windows. It's reasonable for anyone to assume that he cares about his privacy inside his apartment instead of his most useful way of sneaking out unnoticed.
The last excess camera dealt with, Tim steps back into his apartment and locks the door. He added a few extra precautions to the door that aren't quite at the level Black Bat would have been able to command. He needs to play his part a while longer, though, and that means a dangerous-enough young man who isn't enough of a threat to eliminate or lock out. He has the alliance of the League of Assassins but no appearance of command.
Tim looks over the sealed box on his kitchen counter with the caution that a bomb would merit. With the enemies that he's made, a bomb is only one of several possibilities.
The box appears to be the unopened packaging for an espresso machine. The only thing out of place is a handwritten note resting on top of the box, held in place with a closed butterfly knife for a paperweight. The writing appears to be Lady Shiva's and the sentiment is unremarkable enough that it seems that it could be her work. It is also placed precisely that the Court's now-destroyed camera and Ra's's limited view of the kitchen would not have been able to catch an image of the box or the person who set it on his counter. The Court of Owls hasn't hinted that they know that Lady Shiva is in town or that Tim is one of her few students to survive training under her.
Timothy –
Plan for the future.
That's it. If she had written more, he would dismiss it out of hand, but that cryptic message is the only thing on the sealed box promising to hold a bright red coffee maker.
Tim's phone vibrates.
Commendable caution, Timothy, says the text message from Talia. Shiva and I agreed that one can go too far toward utilitarian. Having a single extravagance is more understandable to observers than eschewing personal touches entirely. It also might give you an idea about what you might prefer to have when you are no longer playing a part.
Tim doesn't bother to look around the apartment and its expensive furnishings. The cameras that he left in place from the Court of Owls wouldn't have been able to read the note.
Tim opens the box carefully and finds precisely what the box's picture shows. It's a bright red coffee maker that can make espresso and froth milk and do all sorts of things that seem more trouble than they're worth. He will hardly let someone else into his apartment to clean up after him and the standard coffee maker is far easier to keep in good order.
Tim looks from the shining bright red machine to the plain drip coffee maker that had come with the apartment. The beige plastic blends in perfectly. The bright red is more of a risk than Tim would have chosen when it resembles a certain bright red helmet that he keeps in a grungy apartment under close surveillance and under a different false name. Talia knows what she's doing, however, and Tim has enough information about her that this would be an odd way to undermine him at this stage.
Later that evening, when Tim walks out of his apartment with a portfolio under his arm, the beige coffee maker is stored in one of the cupboards under the counter. The red coffee maker stands out in the apartment as one of the only points of color in a sea of beige and white. He wonders what Ra's al Ghul will think of it.
“I could have majored in business,” Damian murmurs. His lips barely move but Cassandra is close enough to hear him. He hardly wants to share such thoughts with the rest of the fundraising committee, a joint effort between the Wayne Foundation and several other philanthropic groups.
Cassandra raises her shoulder slightly. “You like veterinary medicine, though. You don't like business.” Her voice is just as quiet and her lips barely move.
Damian frowns. “Quite true.”
Cassandra touches the back of his hand gently. That's as much affection as either of them care to show in public. “Okay if I talk to Mr. Harrison?”
“Go ahead,” Damian says, pleased that she's developing a rapport with one of the Wayne Foundation board members. The old man's passion for Puccini convinced Cassandra to give opera a try. She has become very fond of emotional and dramatic stories with beautiful music and translations she can ignore at will. Harrison is very pleased that she and Bruce occasionally stop by his box to watch an opera with him.
Cassandra has been attending all meetings about a new joint effort to make the arts more accessible to everyone within Gotham. She has been an impressively firm voice in favor of making all art available and not assuming that people in Gotham's rougher neighborhoods would have no interest in ballet or Shakespeare or opera. Damian started out attending to be sure that her voice would be heard. Now, he mostly sits in the back reviewing anatomy unless someone has a question that is easier for him to answer.
He could have stopped coming entirely but he has been trying to cross paths with Maximilian Corwell for nearly two months. Corwell was a part of this fundraising group until he abruptly stopped attending meetings. Damian's first casual conversation with the man hadn't seemed to alarm the man. Damian had planned just how he might try to lead the conversation for a second attempt but the man abruptly stopped attending nearly all public events before Damian had the chance. Corwell has been missed at several recent business events and even at his country club. Damian can't decide if he spooked the man or if something else happened.
Damian reluctantly takes a seat at the conference table when it's time to begin. He'd just as soon watch the group from further away but there is still an open seat even when he joins the committee. Five minutes after the meeting is called to order, someone knocks at the meeting room's door.
Damian looks up to find a man he hasn't seen in person for years.
“Pardon the interruption,” Montgomery Beauregard says diffidently after the chairwoman opens the door. “My good friend Max Corwell asked if I would be able to bring him a copy of the minutes. Something came up tonight and he won't be able to make it.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Monty,” the chairwoman says. “If you have the time, you could do more than get a copy of the minutes.” She nods to the open chair next to Damian. “We aren't so formal that we can't accept a drop-in!”
'Monty' accepts a copy of the minutes and the seat beside Damian's. He turns to face Damian with a smile that seems all too appropriate for his occupation.
“Montgomery Beauregard, but please call me Monty,” the lawyer says with a smile that makes an impressive pretense of sincerity. He holds out his hand.
Damian considers the hand and nods in greeting instead. He doesn't have a reputation of being warm or particularly caring and he won't change that for a man that had never answered questions about just how much his employer had known about Janet Drake's death and Jack Drake's assault. Beauregard never even admitted just who had employed him the day that he tried to gain custody of Tim Drake, not even when Commissioner Gordon had asked very pointedly. Beauregard's early knowledge of Tim Drake needing a guardian is one of many unanswered questions about the night Janet Drake was killed.
The man's smile falters. “Ah. I suppose we've met.”
Damian says nothing more. He has no interest in publicly discussing anything about Tim when he doubts that Beauregard will provide any useful information.
The chairwoman looks between them curiously but moves on without comment when neither of them continues the conversation. She calls the meeting to order and it proceeds as usual. When Cassandra speaks, people listen. Damian likes that far more when Beauregard isn't one of the people listening to his little sister.
For the first time in his life, Tim walks through the secure door at the bank of the generic lobby in downtown Gotham.
They redecorated after the first and second time that Tim took pictures. The lobby's current muted blue walls and dark blue carpeting don't give the space any more personality than the dark brown chairs upholstered in vinyl and sleek wooden end tables and a counter.
The steel door at the back of the lobby closes behind him with a quiet thud and a lock clicks into place.
Ahead of him, Max Corwell smiles. “Hope you're up for some stairs, Tim.”
Tim's smile is just as empty as Corwell's. “Of course, Mr. Corwell.”
Max's smile sharpens to something meaner as he heads down the steep cement staircase lit only with bare industrial bulbs above them. “Oh, please, call me Max,” he says with feigned cordiality. “After all, I hear we might be colleagues.”
Tim's false smile remains pleasant. “If you insist, Max. I certainly hope that the Court will be interested in my proposal.”
“You didn't say just what it is you're offering,” Max says as he opens the door at the base of the stairway to reveal yet more cement. The hallway is large enough for five men to walk abreast and high enough that Tim would have to jump off of the wall to reach the bare bulbs studded along the ceiling.
“I haven't.”
Max stops. He's not a very tall or muscular man. When he tries to loom over Tim, he pales in comparison to far more threatening people, but Tim politely pretends that someone with only words and a minor fortune to his name could be interesting.
“I could help you, Tim.”
Tim pretends to feel uncertain before clutching his portfolio as if the sheaf of papers gives him resolve. “I'd rather do as the Grandmaster said.”
Max doesn't have a retort. He turns away and leads Tim down the long hallway that must go on for at least a block before the first branching hallway. Max moves on without giving Tim any time to study the first break in the monotony. At the next intersection, Max stops in front of an elaborate wooden door. Tim has a moment to see lights at least eighty yards down an unlit tunnel but then the door opens and Max leads Tim into an elaborate room that wouldn't be out of place in Wayne Manor, other than the two masked men at the doorway.
The men in black stand almost completely still and do not seem to notice Tim as he walks into the room. Both are dressed all in black from their stylized owl-like masks to their armored boots with the round yellow lenses of their mask as one of the only breaks in color. They look like the masked people he saw the night his mother was killed and the night that the Joker killed him. They don't move and don't seem to be an active threat so he moves on to the rest of the room.
The walls are all paneled in oak with all the fussy wainscoting and crown molding Tim might expect in a mansion's most elaborate receiving room. The cement floors are mostly covered with a large ornate rug but the edges of the rug are rumpled but not creased, suggesting the rug is moved often. The open area near the doorway looks at a dais with a long, curved grey table with seventeen chairs spaced evenly on the other side. Sixteen of the chairs are identical, upholstered in grey velvet but otherwise unremarkable at a conference table. The chair in the center is more elaborate and looks a little more like a throne.
The center chair is occupied by a man in an elaborate owl mask and an otherwise unremarkable dark grey suit. Three other chairs are occupied by people in matching and simpler white owl masks, two men and one woman, all in formal business attire. None of them are people that Tim can recognize yet.
Max pulls a white owl mask out of his suit pocket and puts it on before shallowly bowing to the man in the throne.
“Grandmaster,” Max says. “As requested, I bring Tim Drake to present his bid for entry into our Court.”
“The seat you might yet fill has been empty for years, Timothy Drake,” the grandmaster says slowly. “Perhaps, should you intrigue us, it will finally have an Owl and our numbers will again be full.”
Tim lets his eyes slowly track over the row of chairs as Max takes his seat. From the way that the people in masks are spread out, he imagines that seating is strictly assigned. “Which seat would that be?”
The Grandmaster's mask hides most of his face. It's still easy to tell when the man smiles. “The one your father would have taken, if not for your mother's weakness.”
Tim doesn't have a mask. He doesn't need one. He gives less away than every person sitting at that table even as he lets them see hints of the false emotions that seem wisest to display. Uncertainty, confusion, just a trace of fear... and then the false emotions fade away to leave only the true nonchalance.
The Court of Owls might decide to kill him. He might not have another two minutes yet to live. He survived Ra's al Ghul and everyone else that either decided he was more useful alive or too difficult to kill. Worrying won't make him safe.
“I didn't know my parents well. I do not remember much about my life before the League of Shadows and the Lazarus Pit that brought me back.” There's no need to mention the part where no one seems to know how or why he'd crawled out of his own grave, or how Ra's al Ghul had found him before Batman. No one here knows enough about Lazarus Pits to gainsay him. “I do know I have skills that could help with some of your long-term planning.”
“You know our plans?” the grandmaster asks.
“I can guess,” Tim says simply. “You collect people with money and influence. You also deal with anyone who might stand in your way or threaten your group.”
“And what do you suggest, then?”
Tim opens the portfolio slightly and nods to the table in front of the grandmaster. “If I might show you?”
“Talons,” the grandmaster says. “Watch carefully.”
The men behind Tim immediately straighten. Tim has spent far more time than he'd like with assassins behind him. They don't feel as dangerous as Lady Shiva or Ra's al Ghul's elite guards. He still pays attention to when they might do more than stand on guard as he walks forward.
Tim spreads several sheets of paper out angled so that the Grandmaster can see them easily. The Owls in the other chairs turn to look but don't approach.
Tim puts a few more papers on top of the detailed Arkham Asylum schematics once the man has had time to look them over. It isn't hard to find guard rosters but the level of personal detail about just which guards will be on duty during his planned window should catch the man's attention.
The Grandmaster considers the papers. “I have my Talons. Why would I ask such a thing of an Owl?”
“Most would-be Owls offer money or property, I think,” Tim says. “I don't know what you expected my parents to offer but I suspect it was related to a couple sudden changes in their business plan.” And something else, Tim knows, but he won't even hint about how much he might have heard. They had asked something that his mother completely refused without hesitation. He will let them wonder just how much he remembers and how much he might have discovered.
“You have little access to the Drake companies or wealth,” the Grandmaster agrees.
“I think your Talons require clear directions. Even with all of this information, I don't think they could remove a source of chaos from Gotham. After all.” Tim slides the Joker's Arkham record a little closer to the Grandmaster. “If the Joker hadn't grabbed me, years ago, your Talon would have.”
The Grandmaster sits back. “If nothing else, Timothy Drake, I am intrigued. Do you have a formal proposal written out, then?”
Timothy sets the last few papers from his portfolio in front of the Grandmaster.
The blank owl mask doesn't give anything away but the man's body language speaks volumes about interest and greed and smug assurance of his own safety. “I agree. Return in one week at the same time to tell me of your success. Someone will meet you in the door to bring you here.”
Tim slumps his shoulders before pretending to catch the sign of weakness. He wants to be interesting enough to draw in but not dangerous enough to keep the man's guard up. “Thank you, Grandmaster.”
When the Grandmaster dismisses Tim, Max Corwell stays behind with the rest of the gathered Court. The Talons stay in their place, too. If they hadn't been on their guard earlier, when Tim approached the Grandmaster, he might have thought they were statues.
Tim lets his footsteps ring through the bare concrete hallways and doesn't explore the long hallway with unusual doors set into the wall at regular intervals. If everything goes well, they'll give him a tour soon enough. First, though, Tim has a job to do.