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Beware of the Court of Owls
that watches all the time.
Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch
behind granite and lime.
They watch you at your hearth.
They watch you in your bed.
Speak not a whispered word of them,
or they'll send a Talon for your head.
Nursery rhyme for the Court of Owls
Dick wasn't exactly sure what drove him to the Labyrinth. It wasn't that he even liked the place, far from it. But when he was putting on his uniform in his room, waiting for the Headtalon to come and give him an assignment, he had heard it.
The Masters outside of his door were whispering of the Bat. The Bat of Gotham who was now stuck in the Labyrinth.
If the training the other Talons put him through had taught Dick anything, it was that going against direct orders as well as going behind their backs would hurt. So disappearing was absolutely out of the question, unless he wanted to be sent to the cold room. Which he didn't, thank you very much. But at the same time, he couldn't help himself.
So after finishing his mission, instead of going to his room like usual, Dick had snuck on top of the walls of the endless maze that the first masters had created. The maze where the Bat wandered.
He couldn't explain why he did it. It wasn't like him to disobey his great grandfather. But something in his head was screaming at Dick to find, to at least see the Bat. And the Headtalon always told him to trust his instincts. They were the reason his training was different from the other Talons', after all. Those instincts were the reason he was going to be the Gray Son, according to the Masters.
Moving silently, Dick made his way past the room with the screens, where the Masters sat and watched.
(The Masters scared him. A Talon wasn't scared of anything)
Balancing on the walls seemed second nature, felt like warmth from a different time, one with arms around him, protecting him. A time when he could be happy, when he was happy. These feelings were all he had left from before the court. The electrum made sure to steal his memories. The electrum stole a lot of things.
Dick decided to perch on a crossroads of hallways, a specific crevice where the Masters didn't have eyes and no screens could watch him. And he waited. Widening his golden eyes, he tried to catch sight of the Bat. Straining his ears, he could hear him somewhere near. He didn't move at all. He just waited.
And he was rewarded in the end, when finally the Bat was beneath him. To be honest, Dick didn't know what to expect but he was sure he would be faced with a ferocious creature. He was instead faced with a normal man. Which was very weird.
The Bat was the one the Masters feared. The Talons were instructed to stay away from him. But he was just a man. It was very confusing.
The Bat was stumbling around the dark, leaving wet dark red spots wherever he touched (blood, his mind supplied). He was mumbling, but the words were incomprehensible (that was a funny word) and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make them out. Dick leaned forward, closer, like a metal is pulled towards a magnet.
Staying in the dark, he followed the Bat all around the Labyrinth, catching stray words here and there. They didn't mean anything to him. They meant everything to the Bat.
(Hearing the Bat call for his mum and dad felt exactly like when his great grandfather threw his knives at him)
During the next few days, Dick would come and go. He finished his missions. He was allowed to go to the room with the screens to watch the Bat with the Headtalon . He snuck out to see him alone. Time was bleeding together. And eventually, Dick realized he was feeling a weird connection to the Bat.
So he started helping him. Made a noise when the Bat was going straight towards another Talon, messed with the eyes of the Masters inside the Labyrinth, dropped some food that he had snatched during a mission. He would be sent into the cold room if he was found out, for sure. But somehow it didn't matter. And he couldn't stop.
Just like he couldn't stop himself from jumping from his usual perch on the wall when the Bat, bloodied and incoherent, fell on the cold hard white tiles. And he couldn't stop himself from dragging him into a hiding spot. And he couldn't help himself from dropping the power city-wide so that he could move the Bat into his little room without the Masters finding out.
Dick really hated being punished because he didn't follow orders. It always hurt when the Masters or the Headtalon decided to teach him “discipline” and made him fight, or stand still while they hit him, or put him into the cold room. So he tried to be good.
But laying out the few medical supplies he had gathered from a closed pharmacy, trying to stop the bleeding from the cuts on the Bat? It somehow felt more right than everything the Masters and his grandfather told him about his so called destiny.
Somehow, when he took off the mask and saw the face of the man, when he did his best for that man to get better, when he watched the man sleep, or maybe even when he first locked him in his gaze in the Labyrinth. Somehow, something finally made complete sense.
Dick didn't want to lose that. Even if it meant he would hate it later. For now, he would try his hardest to keep Batman safe. No matter the cost.
Bruce was laying down on his back when he came to. Immediately he noticed two very intriguing and concerning things. One, he wasn't wearing his cowl. Two, his head was stationed on something soft.
Now normally, he would have feigned unconsciousness in order to gather as much information as possible. But processing specifically the first of the two circumstances he was currently in, he opted to get up immediately and assess the danger he was in. Besides, the last thing he remembered was running around that damn maze searching in vain for some way out. That situation didn't imply anything good for his present predicament either.
He inspected the place he was in. No bed, completely dark apart from a single lamp in the corner. A few crates filled to the brim with knives, custom made ones. A closet where black suits, identical to the one that was his makeshift pillow, were hanging neatly. A dresser with stacked golden goggles inside.
There were no restraints on him or around him. Even the door seemed completely normal, no bars and no extra security. Looking around he noticed for the first time that next to where he was previously laying was a bottle of water, an apple, some pills and a blanket of all things. What the hell was going on?
Just then, the door that was now behind him opened and Bruce fell into a defensive position. He prepared to fight another one of those things people again. And he did recognise the attire: black suit with golden accents, covering the whole body up to the neck, brown leather sheath filled with knives and a golden owl crest prominent, golden goggles. Though the last part of the uniform was usually covering the eyes but now they were resting on top of the head of a… a child?
Yes, those wide golden eyes, the paper white skin with the faint black veins, the cheeks that still held some baby fat, the slightly open, as if in awe or surprise, mouth. Those all belonged to a little child. A child who was now looking up at him, expression almost entirely unreadable.
Well. Things had just gotten a whole lot more interesting and a whole lot more complicated.