Chapter Text
Six Years Ago
"Good afternoon, Master Bruce," Alfred said, pulling back the blackout curtains.
Bruce groaned and rubbed his face, but propped himself up against the headboard. Alfred was always trying to get him to rest more; if he was waking him, it was for something more important than a Wayne Enterprises board meeting.
There was a stack of four newspapers on the breakfast tray. That made it… Saturday? Right, because the Arkham breakout had happened during that awful dinner with mayoral candidate… Smith? Carpenter? One of those occupation names.
After the second cup of coffee, his brain reluctantly kicked up the relevant information: mayoral candidate Samuel Cooper, who was so obviously in the mob's pocket he hardly needed Wayne money for his campaign. More immediately relevant, Alfred had woken him to get ready for a Martha Wayne charity gala he was supposed to be hosting. Right.
Bruce reached for the stack of newspapers, but Alfred put his hand on top of them. "Alfred?"
"Before you read the papers, Master Bruce… if you recall, you had a date scheduled for Friday night to go to Haly's Circus with Miss Holly Vanderhees."
Bruce blinked. Yes, he had asked the heiress out to maintain his playboy facade, but he also had a reputation for flaking on commitments at the last minute. "Did she not take it well?"
"No, she was quite gracious. However, there was an incident at the circus that night." Alfred stopped arranging the napkin on the tray and looked Bruce in the eye. "A tragedy. Mary and John Grayson of the Flying Graysons fell to their deaths."
That was a tragedy, but not one that warranted Alfred's careful tone of voice. An accident that killed a couple wouldn't bring up Bruce's own grief unless…
Hadn't there been three Flying Graysons?
Bruce took a moment to breathe before he asked, "How old is their son?"
A flicker of pain crossed Alfred's usually impassive face. "He was eight."
Was? "You said Mary and John fell."
"Young Dick Grayson was taken to the Willowwood Orphanage, but he ran away late that night. He was struck and killed by a semi-trailer."
It had been raining hard last night when he'd returned Scarecrow to Arkham. The driver probably hadn't seen a distraught child in the road. At least… at least the death would have been instantaneous. At least the child was no longer in pain.
Bruce forced himself to eat. He'd had nothing but protein bars for days, and no amount of training would stop his body from cannibalizing his muscles if he didn't feed it properly. He forced himself to read articles with titles like "Fall of the Flying Graysons" and "Orphaned Grayson Dies in Car Accident—Negligence or Suicide?", knowing that he'd have to listen to worse gossip at the gala tonight.
Batman couldn't be everywhere at once. He couldn't prevent every tragedy, he and would only drive himself insane if he tried. Still, as Bruce traced his finger traced over a picture of a little boy with black hair and blue eyes standing between two parents who loved him, he couldn't shake the feeling of failure.
Now
"Modern art, eh?" Harvey Bullock said, gesturing to the painter's studio, and particularly the corpse pinned to the wall with throwing knives.
Batman disagreed. "Not modern. This is very traditional."
"Could be right. The potstickers are—"
"Antique throwing knives, professional grade. The grooves are filled with mercury for steadier flight."
"Yeah. What about the symbol?"
Batman couldn't stop his voice from going a shade colder. "It's an owl."
Bullock snorted. "No wonder they call you a detective. You don't think it has to do with that old wives' tale about the C—"
"No."
Bullock actually took a step away and raised his hands. "Okay, okay, a man can ask."
Batman realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax his jaw. Bullock had no way of knowing that he'd already investigated that myth as thoroughly as it could be, or that the deceased himself had accosted Bruce Wayne at a groundbreaking ceremony a week ago ranting about that very same myth. "There is no Court of Owls."
Bullock looked like he wanted to push back on that. You can't prove a negative. Lack of proof isn't proof of lack. Instead he shrugged, "Then the perp wanted us to think it existed."
The victim, too. It's real. It's all real, Mr Wayne. Stop the New Gotham initiative, or the Court will come for you.
There was always opposition to new development. Bruce had done everything he could to ensure that the New Gotham redevelopment initiative came with rent controls and affordable housing guarantees to prevent gentrification, but that just pissed off the property investors. Still, he'd expected the opposition to come in the form of political pushback or regulatory challenges, not two dozen throwing knives. Judging by the knives' precise placement, it had taken hours for the man to die.
Now that Batman's nose was growing numb to Bullock's odor—bad cigars, bad coffee, stale sweat and gunpowder—he could smell something else, stronger than the acrylic paints. Linseed oil. It was used as a paint thinner, but not in such concentration. He removed one hanging painting; the smell was coming from the wall. "Give me your matches."
Bullock gave him a look. "In here? Half this shit is flammable; I even put my cigar out."
Batman just stood with his hand out until Bullock handed one over. He struck the match on the wall and immediately the message appeared in flame: Bruce Wayne will DIE tomorrow.
Bullock snorted. "Right." Batman turned to look at him. "Come on, the guy's got the best security in the city. Maybe the entire eastern seaboard. Whoever it is would have an easier time assassinating the president. Still, we'll give his guys a heads-up like we usually do, offer to help like we usually do, get turned down like we usually do."
Batman looked back at the victim. He'd known someone was coming after him, someone who would torture him and leave him to die slowly. Yet instead of running, he'd spent his final hours preparing this warning.
"I want to know as soon as you have any more information on the John Doe."
"Sure, sure. I'm sure the commish will give you a call when they're ready to autopsy. You know, you could always—" He realized he was talking to no one and sighed. "Nevermind."
24 hours later
"Breathtaking, isn't it?" Bruce asked leaning on the rail to look out the windows from the original Wayne Tower's observation deck.
Mayoral candidate Aaliya Lincoln said, "Very impressive, Mr Wayne. But I didn't come here for the view."
Bruce looked over his shoulder and realized she was a good ten feet back, closer to the elevators than the windows. Her arms were crossed, body language closed. "Alderwoman Lincoln… are you afraid of heights?" She shrugged. "Why would you agree to meet with me here, then?"
"When it comes to serving Gotham, Mr Wayne, there is very little I won't do."
"Even if it scares you?"
"Especially if it scares me. Do you think I've gotten this far in my campaign without collecting my share of death threats? A third of my campaign funds are going to private security."
Bruce frowned. "The police should be providing—"
"Who do you think I need to be protected from? The head of the police union recently called me 'an angry gorilla who would get good policemen killed'."
"Patrick Koch has said some awful things, but Commissioner Gordon can arrange for the protection you need."
"Mr Wayne, I know that you're friends with the Commissioner, and I appreciate the concern, but believe me when I tell you that the police are a greater threat to my safety than the mafia, drug gangs, supervillains or the shadowy cabal you warned me about." She took a couple of steps forward and gestured to the view. "Now what was it that you wanted me to see?"
"I know you have concerns about the New Gotham initiative. I'd like to talk to you a bit about my vision for the future of the city, Alderwoman Lincoln. Just beyond the Queen Consolidated towers, in your district, is a devastated area—"
Ms Lincoln snorted.
Bruce blinked. Usually politicians let him get further into his pitch than this. "Did you have something to add?"
"First of all, it's Alderperson Lincoln. I don't see any reason to use gender-specific political titles. Second, I already saw your gala speech."
"I didn't think you were able to attend."
"I didn't; I was at my daughter's school play. I saw recordings, though. That little model you had where you can look down on the city like a child playing with blocks. Not that I expected anything else: your family has been doing it for generations. Take this tower: looking down upon Gotham and protecting it with your rings of stone 'guardians'. Spotting areas of so-called devastation and making plans to fix them without ever really seeing them. When was the last time you visited that 'devastated area'?"
Bruce frowned, not used to being called out this way by anyone but Clark. Certainly not by politicians with warchests as depleted as Ms Lincoln's. "I haven't."
He'd visited some of the sites for the new buildings, but not all of them. They all fit into the same pattern: a bubble in the property market had driven up property taxes, driving out the low-income residents; property developers had jumped on a hot new neighborhood and started building luxury condos; the bubble had burst, leaving partially-constructed buildings and bankrupt developers. So the buildings were left to flood with standing water and slowly collapse on themselves, a zone of devastation where there had once been a thriving working-class neighborhood.
"Visit the site in my district." Ms Lincoln reached into her jacket. The Wayne security guards tensed, then relaxed when her hand came out with only a paper flier. "Come to the community meeting about it. Convince my constituents that building another skyscraper is the best use of that area, and I'll support the development, either as alderperson or mayor." She brushed her Ghana braids behind her shoulder and turned back to the elevator.
"Ms Lincoln, I—" Bruce began as the elevator door opened and a figure in head-to-toe black sprang out. "Get down!"
Small. Fast. The assassin moved like one of their throwing knives, spinning through the air and hitting their target with devastating results. Within seconds all three bodyguards had slammed into walls or floor hard enough to split their skulls. The one who had managed to draw his gun had been rewarded with a knife through his hand.
Bruce tried to intercept the assassin, but Ms Lincoln was closer. She threw her briefcase at them and dove for the dropped gun, coming up on one knee in a practiced two-handed grip. Her hands were remarkably steady. The assassin spun into a back handspring, delivering a knockout kick to her chin before she could get off a shot.
The assassin twisted to face Bruce and stilled. Bruce examined them. The assassin was—small. 5' 1", 105 lbs, slender build. Those flips hadn't just been for style; they needed the additional momentum behind their strikes to take out professional bodyguards a hundred pounds out of their weight class. The lines on their cowl suggested a stylized owl, emphasized by the round yellow lenses of their goggles and the metal beak on its nose piece. The bandolier across their chest still held five antique throwing knives of the type that had killed the John Doe in the painting studio; a sixth was held in their right gauntlet.
" Bruce Wayne ," the assassin said in a raspy voice. A voice that seemed, for all that, young . " The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die. "
"Wait—" Bruce said, and flung himself to the side to avoid a thrown knife. "Who are you?"
The assassin cocked its head to the side, bird-like, and then it sprang into motion. Bruce had intended to fight clumsily to protect his identity: take a few strikes, make his own hits look lucky rather than trained, let himself be knocked off balance a bit. He abandoned that strategy as soon as he took a glancing palm-strike to his left side and felt two of his ribs break. That shouldn't—shouldn't have been possible .
He kicked out at the assassin's solar plexus to get a bit of room, but his opponent went into a deep back bend and came right back up holding a long dagger. Bruce struck full-force at the mandibular nerve in their neck with his left hand; the assassin blocked and stabbed him through the forearm. As soon as the assassin yanked the blade free, Bruce started a mental countdown for when he'd be incapacitated. Training and willpower could overcome a great deal, but not physics: unless he found a way to stem the blood loss, he would pass out.
Not that he would survive even that long, if he didn't fight this assassin with everything he had. Close combat ought to favor Bruce as the larger opponent, but the assassin was impressive at slipping holds; pinning him was like trying to grab a razored spinning top. Bruce finally got an arm around the assassin's throat in a sleeper hold, though he couldn't control their arms. His hold automatically tightened at the burst of pain from the assassin stabbing him in the brachial arteries in both his upper arms; it was tight enough to crush the assassin's windpipe.
Except it didn't.
Enhanced. Had to be. Meta? Some type of Venom? That's how the assassin was keeping the upper hand in close combat: Bruce had 120 lbs on the assassin, most of it muscle, yet the assassin was still stronger.
As if to prove that point, the assassin slammed Bruce, still clinging to their back, into the center of one of the observation deck's windows. Bruce felt the unbreakable plastic flex behind him and hold, protecting him from a 200-story drop, but the impact made every one of his injuries send up fresh pain signals. At least the throwing knives were still lodged in his upper arms, or he would be unconscious from arterial blood loss already. The assassin stepped away, then rammed him into the window again, this time slamming his head back into Bruce's chin; it stunned him long enough for the assassin to slip his grip.
The assassin allowed Bruce to regain his feet. They didn't have a single scratch and didn't even seem winded. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce noticed a throwing knife wedged between the edge of the window pane and the frame. When had—
" Bruce Wayne. The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die. " The attack started as a forward hand-spring before twisting into a two-foot strike to his abdomen. Bruce couldn't have countered such force even if he weren't stunned by pain and blood loss; all he could do was brace his abdominal muscles to protect his organs. He slammed through the unbreakable plastic at the edge of the window pane, where there was no flex and the throwing knife had weakened the seal that kept it in place.
Bruce was falling, and his city rose up to meet him.