sideshow 02i: 'of all that you have been'

A/N: OH HI. This update is very late! Plus side...less wait until the next one?

Warning for potentially disturbing abuse of healing factor after Richard sits up.

Dick has a slot monitoring Richard at four in the afternoon, so he showers and changes back into costume, because it's armor for the soul as much as the skin.

Kori is sharing the monitor booth with Danny when Dick gets there, and he very firmly sends them both on their way—Kori turns and invites Danny down to the gym with her for telekinetic target practice. She's volunteering to be the target. It's a kind gesture, Dick knows, treating Danny as a warrior worthy of being a training partner, and a friend she can trust to use his power against her.

Tamaranean culture is weird. And Kori has more patience for the little snot than most of the team.

Dick flicks one of the side monitors on after a bit, tuned to the gym, to see how the sparring is going, and finds Joey down there too, doing strength training. Every so often he puts down the weights to fling a cheerful comment on the practice session across the room. Danny seems to be shouting back, but there's no audio so Dick only catches Joey's side of the conversation.

This counts as a distraction, and he reluctantly shuts the monitor off.

Richard is pretending to be a very attractive corpse again. His total lack of animation is starting to seem more normal, which almost makes it creepier. Dick doesn't want to know these things about his own face. It's bad enough knowing as much as he does about how his actual self acts when brainwashed.

After about fifteen minutes, Nightwing starts singing to himself. It's a concentration technique that you can't use as often in hero work as he did in the circus, because so often waiting for your moment is paired with stealth, or with other people liable to be annoyed, but he's found that singing quietly occupies just enough attention to keep the mind from wandering, while leaving enough free to do things like watch monitors without getting lost in thought.

He starts with a few old favorites, then starts going through recent radio hits. Those kinds of songs are designed to be easily memorable, but getting the verses and not just the refrain, let alone getting them in the right order, without ever having paid close attention, is a valuable memory exercise.

He thinks Batman would probably consider pop songs a useless thing to waste brain space on, except Riddler isn't the only themed criminal out there and you never know what piece of weird trivia will come in handy, so unlike Sherlock Holmes and his deleting of irrelevant facts, Bruce just tries to know everything at all times.

Which is ridiculous, but what about him isn't.

About a quarter hour after he's moved on to seeing how many of the lyrics to the new U2 album he retained, their prisoner sits up ramrod-straight, as though at some sound. There's no hint of surprise, though, only businesslike movements as though in response to a prearranged signal.

Richard doesn't set his teeth or hunch his shoulders to brace for pain, which would have given his lone witness some warning. The corners of his eyes wrinkle in an expression of vague concentration as he wraps his left hand around his right wrist and…crushes.

They put really good cuffs on him. The wide kind that should probably be called shackles, super-reinforced to hold all kinds of enhanced beings, and definitely not easily opened with a basic key, let alone the kind of improvised pick that can unlock basic cop-issue cuffs. Just in case of some hidden reserve of super-strength, or a scrap of wire they might have missed when frisking him.

They didn't use the self-resizing ones you have to put on someone like Gar who can shrink, because it didn't occur to anyone they might need to, so once the Talon's hand and wrist are broken so that his hand folds up grotesquely, impossibly small, it slides out of the shackle in one smooth motion, following immediately on that first horrible crunch.

Richard takes a second and a half to calmly realign the ruined bones of his right hand before setting it aside on the cot like a discarded tool, laying his left hand sideways against the wall, curling up, and neatly mashing his left wrist with his right heel. There's still not a hint of flinching. You'd think he was cracking a walnut.

Nightwing manages to shake himself into motion, having lost almost four seconds to shock. Even this self-destructive, wrongheaded kind of escape attempt is an attempt, and must be taken seriously. Especially considering last night's vanishing bruise.

Richard has his left hand free now, and is concentrating on his left ankle. Dick doesn't really want to know what he plans to do to it.

He turns on the intercom down to the gym. It's on the same level as the holding cell, both of them kept separate from the team's living spaces, with only one set of blast doors that can close between. "Starfire, Jericho, I need you at the containment unit. Danny, hang back to support them. Do not open the cell door, just stand ready. I'll get there soon."

Trusting the team to follow orders, he doesn't waste time monitoring their progress once they acknowledge, just flips another intercom switch and hopes Vic hasn't gone off to eat dinner or something. "Cyborg?"

"Here," Vic confirms, thank God.

"Subject Strigiform seems to be making a breakout attempt."

"Of course he is. Tower on alert level orange. Should I lock down the floor?"

Richard has gotten his feet free and has turned his attention to the cell door. "As soon as the squad I just sent down there is past the last set of doors, yeah. Keep in mind we don't know how he got in here in the first place; only accept my override codes if you find me on the cameras, going down at that specific access point. I'm heading after them." He doesn't have his field equipment, and no time to get it; as soon as Vic acknowledges the directive, he's gone.

It takes Nightwing all of six minutes at a dead run to get from the top of the Tower to near the bottom. Vic's lockdown is probably effectively keeping the prisoner contained, but it means Nightwing has to input several passcodes at each sealed blast door to get between sections, more than doubling the time it takes him, and at this point he's pretty sure he'd have been better off jumping from the roof and authenticating his way in the front door.

If that's even possible at this alert level; he can't remember, which means either he needs to review the emergency protocols more carefully or he is really short on sleep.

(He napped not five hours ago. Study time it is.)

By the time he makes it to the detention level, everything's already happened.

When the stairwell door unseals, Jericho is lying facedown to one side of the hall near Richard's cell, whose door hangs open, very still. Danny Chase is sitting against the base of the opposite wall, left arm visibly broken and probably dislocated, and he looks up and offers Nightwing a weak, shocky smile. His freckles are standing out like blood on chalk, but he's conscious and not noticeably bleeding, so he's not the most urgent case.

"Hey, Chief." When Danny doesn't use your real name or an awful over-familiar nickname, it usually means he's remembered you're in the field and he shouldn't, or he feels guilty about something. Since they're in the Tower, and the only intruder already knows Dick's identity, it has to be guilt.

Joey's pulse is steady. A little weak, but not fading or thready. There's a knot rising on the side of his head.

"Did you open the cell?" Nightwing demands, kneeling to check the unconscious Titan over more carefully. He gave express orders not to open it, but he's learned not to assume that means anyone actually listened.

"Of course not! He was already out when we got there!" Danny says, raking his hair back from his forehead in the way he does when he's genuinely upset. "He—threw part of the door mechanism in Starfire's face, then he saw Jericho and it was like he forgot the rest of us were here. Just attacked him, full-out. You could tell he knew what his power was, too, because he wouldn't look straight at him, or touch."

If Nightwing had to lay a bet based on the data he has, he'd say that burst of aggression meant Richard was frightened of Jericho. It aligns with his reaction to Wally, whom he believed to be someone who might choose to humorously blow up his head. (Which Wally definitely could do, but of course he wouldn't.)

They can't have had a previous encounter, since Joe would have mentioned it, but considering Richard's concerns about being surrendered to Deathstroke, Joseph Wilson may feature somehow in his 'backstory.'

Pupil dilation not totally normal, but not unevenly blown in a way that says Jericho's likely to be dying, either. Bones all seem okay. Dick lays him out as comfortably as he can and moves on to the next stage of triage.

Danny keeps talking as Dick examines the broken arm to make sure he's not bleeding to death internally from a punctured artery or anything. "Starfire hit him like a load of bricks while he was distracted taking Jericho out, and had me restrain him telekinetically while she called it in, except he played dead and then moved when I—wasn't paying close enough attention because I thought he was still unconscious." Danny's getting some of his color back in the form of a blush. Dick doesn't have time to deal with the unchecked verbosity that goes with being embarrassed while also in medical shock.

"And broke your arm?" he asks, as he finishes tying the kid's plaid shirt into a rudimentary sling. They've got good medical facilities available and field conditions do not apply; he'll leave setting the bone and reducing the shoulder for professionals with pain meds.

"Yeah," Danny grates out through the pain of getting the arm settled into its support, "and held me hostage for about ten seconds, then threw me at Kori and ran."

"And she chased him," Nightwing concludes. "Danny. Which way?"

Danny points with his good arm. "That way. He moved like he wanted more space, so if he's feeling for air currents they're probably back in the gym by now."

Dick nods. Sounds solid. "Stay put," he orders, because even with his shoulder still dislocated and in the early stages of shock Danny is very much the type to trail after the action trying to help, especially because his powers work at range.

Kid's been doing field work since he was six; he doesn't have anything approaching a healthy sense of self-preservation. Dick waits half a second for the nod of acquiescence. And runs.

The blast door cutting off the part of the floor containing the secure cell from the part containing the gym has been punched through—Dick's pretty sure that was Kori, suggesting Richard ducked through just before Vic got the thing sealed. Which is odd to say the least, but maybe Vic hesitated to seal three teammates in with an enemy of unknown power and intention. Or maybe Richard just escaped his cell that fast.

Dick gives himself a brief run-up and leaps, somersaulting through the gap Kori left at face-height, curled into a ball. It's faster than climbing, and considering the high odds of sharp broken metal edges and who he is, it's safer too.

The sound of fighting reaches him as he races down the rest of the corridor. Kori is their single most powerful physical fighter, good at melee and range, and he's not precisely worried about her, but she's also alone with his evil twin, so he's not exactly not, either.

Nightwing bursts through the door at the end of the hall, which was left ajar, and Richard is in fact in the gym. It's not terrain that favors him—in addition to the fact that the high ceiling gives his flying opponent an advantage, she's familiar with it, and evasive action amidst the gymnastics equipment can only get him so far.

He's using one of the metal poles intended for bench-pressing as an improvised staff; none of the weights are on it but since Nightwing signed off on the equipment order he knows the chrome-plated steel bar is twenty pounds in its own right. Richard's recently crushed hands appear to be gripping it just fine, but he's not a master of the weapon and Kori knows how to meet staff-fighters even if she weren't fairly resistant to damage from petty things like steel bars.

"Richard!" Nightwing shouts, not as a kindness now but because it would be too weird to call him Grayson, and he's not quite asshole enough to call him Talon. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The distraction is only momentary. But it lets Starfire land a heavy punch to Richard's face. His jaw and cheekbone both crumple, and there's another thing Dick never needed to see his own face do.

Apparently immune to shock and pain, Richard uses the momentum of his head being punched with bone-breaking force to power a dramatic flip out of Kori's reach, which ends in a coiled crouch, from which he unfolds into a lunge straight up to bring the twenty-pound bar up inside her guard into her diaphragm, just under the notch of her breastbone.

This is enough of a blow to send even Kori stuttering through the air, gasping for breath, and Nightwing's charge forward to fill the gap loses momentum to his need to leap wildly sideways to safety when Richard spins and throws a pair of ten-pound weights with a discus-spin hard enough to crack bone, straight at both where Dick was going to be in a second, and the easiest place to dodge to.

Richard doesn't go for the kill. Because it would take too long, without weapons, or because it's too late to end pursuit by killing the people who knows where he is, or even because he prefers not to, Dick can't say, but instead of lunging after Kori while she's vulnerable, he turns away, trying to use this moment to keep running.

And then rises, quite abruptly, into the air, limbs spasming in reaction, as though gripped by a giant hand.

Starfire has settled to the gym floor, raggedly recovering her breath, one hand at her breast. Nightwing's back on his feet and in a ready stance.

And a red-haired twelve-year-old with his arm in an improvised flannel sling, sliding in the half-open door with his good arm outstretched, the fingers curved in a grasping gesture as he telekinetically holds their fugitive in place.

A green gorilla ambles in behind him, so at least reinforcements must have made it down, and he didn't leave Joey alone on the floor with a head injury.

"Danny," Dick says. "I told you to stay put."

"I screwed up, man," Danny says. "Had to make up for it somehow."

"You are the least obedient secret agent ever," Dick tells him.

"Yeah, that's why I'm a superhero now." Danny pushes his glasses up his nose with the back of the hand still holding Richard in place, and gives Dick a condescending look. "And what would you losers do without me, huh? Yo, Wingman," he adds, twiddling his fingers to turn Richard in the air to face them. "I'm not letting you pull the same trick twice, stop struggling."

"Agent Chase," Richard says. It's totally flat, but it's probably intended as a greeting. His jaw and cheekbone have somehow dragged themselves mostly back into shape, but are still slightly askew. There's no swelling, but the lividity of blood leaking under skin is bright across his face.

"I quit my job, actually," Danny says, with a lot of swagger considering how badly the person he's addressing injured him less than ten minutes ago. "That's Mister Chase to you. But I don't think we've met? Or if we did, you were in a mask. I never forget a face."

"Yes," says Richard. If he noticed that last part was a joke, he doesn't show it. If his helplessness bothers him, he's not giving anything away. "You were older."

Danny screws up his face thoughtfully and Kori interjects, strangely gentle, "Who is he, Richard?"

An eyebrow, but Richard answers. "Agent Daniel Chase. Owlman's inside man with the CBI."

"Who—what? Hey, I'm no one's inside man! I'm a spy, not a—"

Nightwing makes a chopping gesture. "Calm down, Danny. He thought the Flash was a homicidal pyromaniac, no one's going to assume this reflects on you. But you say he's younger than you expected?" he asks Richard.

Sharp nod.

He shared his confusion. On the issue of Danny's age. Obliquely, that constitutes a question. Which means Richard does trust him, at least a little. Dick honestly wishes he had an answer, even if he hasn't forgiven Richard for hurting his team—he can't claim he'd have done any differently if their positions were reversed.

"I don't know why," Nightwing tells Richard baldly, rather than ignore his curiosity.

"Hey, Chase," Changeling jokes, "are you actually an adult who got de-aged for spy work?"

"If I was, I would've told you ages ago." He would have, too; everyone on the team hassles him about his age sometimes. Especially Gar. Easy smirk aside though, the kid is looking kind of gray in the face.

"Starfire, are you good to hold him?" Dick asks, and she nods, flies up and takes Richard's wrists from behind, in a firm, careful grip stronger than steel. She seems more sympathetic now than yesterday, and doesn't seem to be holding a grudge about taking a steel bar to the diaphragm, though her eyes on the back of Richard's head are watchful. Danny sags with poorly hidden relief.

"Okay, does anyone have cuffs on them?" Nightwing asks. He should have grabbed some, but he was in a rush and hoping to keep Richard from getting half this far.

Gar, the only other new arrival, does not, and when Pantha turns up in the hallway behind him a moment later they send her for a pair. She prowls off looking irritated, tail lashing, but she goes, which is more than she would have done a month ago.

Meanwhile, Richard the Talon continues to hang in Kori's grip. The injury she gave him earlier has finished healing itself, and apart from a drop of blood at the corner of his mouth where his cheek must have been cut on his teeth and leaked, there's no sign he was hurt.

"What was the point of this?" Dick asks him, before awkward silence can settle over the trashed gymnasium. "Where were you trying to go?"

"Away," says Richard. Dick's not sure whether that's sullenness or scorn he's seeing, threaded into the blankness.

"But what for?"

"I told you what I think of cages."

And—it makes sense, in an odd sort of way, the assertion that for all the cleverness and discipline and capacity for depth he's displayed, Nightwing's doppelganger would hurt himself and others in the struggle to break free of a trap merely in order to escape being trapped. When he tried to kill Wally he was acting in fear for his life…but maybe, Dick thinks, he's actually been hinting all along that he would rather lose his life than his freedom. You could say he warned them.

"You're not…a very complicated person, are you," Nightwing asks. It's mostly rhetorical, but he does want to hear what reaction it gets.

"I haven't been a person terribly long," Richard says, and there's no expression and not really any tone, but Dick can tell this may be honest but it is also sass. He's not as scared of them now as he was the first time, thought Dick suspects he is still afraid, and in spite of everything that's oddly heartening. "It's enough work without trying to be...complicated."

"Oh, so now you're admitting you're some weird clone?" Changeling rolls his currently simian eyes.

Dislike pulls at Richard's face. "No."

"So what are you?" Starfire asks. She's holding Richard close against her, now, both his wrists in one of her hands but his weight supported by her other arm looped around his waist from behind, sparing him the pain of his full weight on twisted shoulders for however long it takes Pantha to run her errand. It's a kindness she wouldn't have bothered with a day ago.

Dick doesn't know if that's the pity of his story, or merely that she no longer considers him frightening, even having seen him disable two of their teammates in a few seconds.

"I am Richard Grayson," their prisoner intones, no less intransigent on that point than he's been since they first captured him.

"Dude, we've been over this," Gar says. "He is Richard Grayson."

The provocation that got so many informative reactions out of Richard earlier, in his cell, is much less use out here, in this situation. "Gar, stand down," Nightwing says. "We're probably not even the only two people in the world with that name. I can share." He doesn't like it, particularly, but as long as Richard isn't insisting he's a fake it seems unkind to push him on the subject.

'Richard Grayson' is easier to share than Nightwing would be, since both names really are pretty common.

He wishes he knew what Richard does think Nightwing is, though. It might make more sense of this escape attempt.

"What do you mean you weren't a person?" Danny asks, narrow eyed and still nastily pale, and Dick really hopes Pantha gets back here with those cuffs soon because Joey and Danny both need proper medical attention.

Any further conversation is suspended, before Richard can make any response, as the great black wings of Raven's soul-self unfold out of the air.