InsaneJournal

Current mood:	sore
Current music:	Lys Guillorn: "Little Wren"

*looks up*
Oh! Hello! Yes, I'm here, and everything is all right. Especially since you guys have been leaving me *wonderful* feedback. Seriously, so awesome, and I'll be doing my best to respond to every last comment just as soon as things slow down a little over here. Jack and I've had some health... oh, let's just call them Issues and leave it at that, but we're doing okay. In other news, I've got one small and two hefty-ish sequels to 'A way so familiar' written, and as soon as I clear the decks a bit, I'll be posting. I guarantee: absolutely none of you have asked for any of them!

*laughs*

Right this second, I'm 45,000+ words into a completely different story, which Jack tells me is one of the most disturbing things I've ever written. Well, we'll see. Here's how it starts:



The anomaly closes behind him with a sigh and something like a pop without the fun of it. It makes him need to yawn and force back a pressure headache -- there. Gone.

Just like his past.

Jason smiles and checks his pockets reflexively. It's not like he can go back to his base to fill them if he comes up empty on knives or zip strips, but it feels good to do. A nice way to start the night...

Or end it, judging by the sky. Time's different in this universe. He'll have to remember that --

He's not likely to forget.

He heads toward downtown and revels in the fact that it's the real Gotham, with all the buildings still where they should be, all the broken-down tenements still standing for another... oh, call it two and a half years. He revels in those, too, and takes the time to break a few faces --

And ribs --

And collarbones as he goes. Leisurely-like. Nice and easy. Right about now, Bruce is settling in the Cave after *his* night, maybe thinking about the Jason Todd who'd lived and died -- and stayed dead. Maybe thinking about doing the sort of things to the criminals of this world that Jason does as a matter of course.

It's not that he hasn't thought about going to him -- all it would take was one quick DNA test and Bruce would probably be some variety of all over him, even if he *did* manage to control what he'd liked to call his baser urges. He *could*, and he could explain to Bruce what he already knows, deep down where the kid in him has always lived. It doesn't work his way. It never has, and it never will.

He could *show* Bruce, teach him all the nasty little tricks he'd picked up from Talia's happy fun gaggle of assassins, and then they could *take* this city.

He could do it, and he knows himself well enough to know that a part of him wants it, oh -- more than anything. More than fucking *air*.

It's just that that isn't what he's here for. It's not the *plan* -- and, he knows, it's a damned *good* plan. Something happened to Bruce long before Jason was born, something fucked-up and fucking horrible, and that makes him need people. Trained people, hard people -- who are still soft enough to make a space for him, to need *him*.

And right now... well, he's *not* as needy as he's going to get, and it may be a cheap trick to weight the dice, but it's a damned effective way to make sure you win the toss.

Jason has no intention of even coming *close* to a loss for this --

And that means letting Bruce stew for a little while, letting him live with the mistakes he made with Jason, and who knows? Maybe he'll beat himself up some about fucking up with Dick, too.

And in the meantime... well. Jason is going to pull the rug out from under Bruce's great big boots.

Before *Bruce* knows there's a rug there to begin with.

*

The nice thing about bearer bonds and carefully crafted false identities is that they lead to having a nice, hefty chunk of cash on hand. Nothing like what Bruce has on tap, but more than enough to buy the old, beat-up gym from a woman with a seriously Gotham lack of interest in asking questions, and more than enough to stock it at speed.

There's a part of him which wants to move on to phase two *now*, but the rest of him knows that the week it takes to get the gym and the loft above it to where he needs it to be is just a drop in the bucket of the time he *does* have. The bucket isn't the *ocean*, but still.

When he's done sweeping away dust and getting the windows to let actual sunlight in, he feels like he might just have himself a home. There are things he still needs -- weapons and the like -- but his *night-time* labors had given him a line on a nicely independent agent who *will* get him what he needs. The money will run out eventually, but by then he'll have moved to a whole different phase of his plan.

It might even be the *Bruce* phase --

No, he's not thinking about that just yet. He has other things to do. He dresses for the night and gets moving, taking the freshly-painted bike -- black will just have to *do*, thank you very much -- and giving himself a solid two minutes to wish for something better. He *could've* brought one of his own bikes through the anomaly -- hell, he could've stolen one of Bruce's -- but the *one* anomaly leading to this particular universe let out on a rooftop, and getting a bike down from there would've attracted way too much attention. He's being *subtle*, which means that this old Harley is both more and less than good enough for his purposes. It's nowhere near cherry -- lessening the chance of too *much* attention being paid to it -- and it's nowhere *near* cherry -- lessening the chance of him being able to beat a speedy retreat should he have to do so.

Still, it gives him that grown-fucking-man feeling which usually means he's about to do something immature, but still feels damned good. He's *not* going to fuck up tonight. He has so much information on his target --

He's never *had* a target with this much information available before. Honestly, he thinks he might be a little *giddy*. And all he has to do is *turn* the little fucker. In the direction -- so he'll think, anyway -- that he *wants* to go --

And now he's feeling paranoid. All Drake has to do is to go to Bruce or Dick -- the way he's *itching* to do right now -- and tell them that a scary man calling himself Jason Todd is climbing in people's windows at night and it's game over. Just --

No. No.

He'd known that was a possibility from the jump, and he's got a handle on it. In the end, Drake's just a kid who knows too much. And if he *doesn't* make the right decision, he'll be a kid with the kind of head injury which doesn't lead to trustworthy narratives.

Jason smiles to himself and picks up a little speed, only slowing down when he's a few blocks away. And... it's late. Dawn's coming soon, but Drake has parents who live nice, rich leisurely lives -- that much would've been clear by the neighborhood. Drake *himself* might not be sleeping --

And now he's just wasting time.

He hits the rooftops, and gives himself exactly *one* moment to rest his hand against the roof of *the* townhouse, to get the kind of feel for the place which means nothing to every part of him except for *that* one --

And then he's checking the windows. A piece of intel he *hadn't* had, because Talia's hack of Bruce's files was limited to things which didn't touch directly on the -- family.

Little stalker *freak* of a pretender --

Jason pastes on a smile when he finds the right window, taking in the neat decor, the empty -- and neatly made -- bed, the clutch of shadows near the desk. Oh, really.

Jason makes a come-on gesture, and Drake steps out of the shadows... while holding a phone with his finger very *clearly* hovering over the one. Well. Jason tugs off his domino and tosses his hair, raising an eyebrow --

Drake drops the phone *and* his jaw. Point to not changing all that much since his last -- and hopefully *last* -- trip to Ethiopia.

And now Drake's shaking his head, backing off, going to pick up the phone again -- but still looking.

"If I wanted you dead," Jason mouths, as carefully as he can, "you'd *be* dead," he says, and gestures for Drake to open the window.

He gets a frown for his trouble, something that looks more thoughtful and calculating than freaked, which... he can work with that. This whole *plan* --

Later, later.

Drake opens the window and Jason swings inside, clenching and unclenching the fist he was using to hold the line -- he'd broken two of those fingers a couple of months ago, and yeah, still feeling it. Yay, adulthood. And...

Up close, Timothy Drake is a scrawny little *nothing* of a kid. Barely five feet tall, and... he looks like a pair of wide blue eyes on a stick. They're not even *pretty* blue eyes --

"Who -- who are you," he says, quiet, but not a whisper. The parents are *deep* sleepers, then.

"Who I *look* like, dumbass --" No, be nicer. At least for now. He turns the smack he was aiming at the back of Drake's head to a grip, forcing the kid to look up. "You know who I am."

"You're too old," he says, flat as anything, even though he *looks* like he's feeling his heart try to pound right out of his chest. Fine. Let the kid play it hard.

"Funny things happen when you bounce between universes, kid. In *my* world, I crawled right up out of the grave and had me a couple of years of adventures."

"Years -- I. I'm sorry, but that's very difficult to believe --"

"My name is Jason Todd. I used to be Robin with Bruce Wayne, who is Batman. You -- well, your name's Tim Drake, and you've been following all of us around for oh, say... four years?"

The blush *takes* the kid's face, and his eyes are back to being wide as hell. Improvement.

Jason nods. "Yeah. Like that. Get some good pictures tonight, did you?"

He fidgets -- and stops. "I still can't -- I mean, you could be. Um. A shapeshifter. Or something --"

"Who knows as much as *I* do?" Jason shakes his head and lets himself grin a little. It makes the kid swallow. Good. He tugs a little more on Drake's hair. "All right. *Let's* get more personal. Pretty soon after I kicked here, you started thinking about going to *Dick*. About telling him something about going back to Bruce and being Robin again," he says, watching Drake's eyes widen a little more and not thinking --

Not thinking about that one *night* when Bruce had tracked him down after he'd broken Drake's arm and tried ever so fucking *hard* to put things in *perspective* for Jason, tried to make him -- fucking *make* him -- see Tim fucking Drake as something other than what he was.

Something *better*. But not right now. Oh, no. Right now -- he's still *just* a stalker, and -- "And you've got one fuck of a hard-on for Dick, don't you?"

Blush, and man, scoring points just shouldn't be this *easy*. *He'd* had a lot more fucking armor when he was Drake's age...

But then, he hadn't had this nice, soft life. Jason shakes him a little by the hair. "Yeah. It's been years, hasn't it? You wanted him before you even knew how your dick worked."

Drake -- tries -- to turn away --

"Nuh-uh. It's talking time, now --"

"What. What do you want," he says, and his voice is flat and *almost* even. Almost -- heh. Robin.

"Well, that's just the thing, kid. You're *needed*," Jason says, and raises his eyebrows. "It's time for you to step *up*."

"Step... I don't. I don't understand," Drake says, but his eyes say he's lying. They're wild now, tracking back and forth, searching that brain of his...

And a *big* part of Jason wants to *really* yank on his hair, to tell him to use that so-called detective brain he's supposed to have -- fucking A. A kid like *this* figured out the secret? Jason shakes it off internally --

"Um. Jason. What are you... saying?"

Turn, turn, turn. "Batman's all alone now, kid. You can't tell me that escaped your *notice*."

"Well. Yes, but. I think... won't Dick come back? Now that -- why aren't *you* going to Bruce? He needs someone, he's -- he must be so -- ow --"

All right, that was too hard a yank. Stick to the plan. "The anomaly I walked through isn't there, anymore, but there will be others. Things are *real* damned unstable -- and some shit's due to go down here that'll make a dead Robin look like *nothing*. Are you listening to me?"

A wince -- and a nod. Drake's focusing hard now, listening -- and probably looking for the lie. All right.

"In some ways, I'm in my own past right now, and you ought to know all *about* how things like that usually work out -- judging by what you've got on those bookshelves --"

And he has to stop, because, if anything, that was the deepest blush *tonight*. For the books? Really? No, more.

"In *any* event -- I can't risk Bruce or Dick finding out about me until things settle down a little bit more and I know I won't be changing things too much for the fucking fabric of spacetime to handle. But there's *you*," Jason says, and smiles.

It makes Drake shiver and swallow like Jason is the scariest damned thing he's seen in his life, and -- yeah, he can work with *that*, too.

"In my world -- my *timeline* -- you start training to *be* Robin in a little less than six months --"

"I don't -- I can't. I'm not --"

"Stammer *later*, kid --" And tell me all about how that could be so honest when you know it's what you want more than any fucking thing else -- no. "There's no time for that, here. No time to *waste*."

"You. You want to start. Training. Me?"

Jason smiles a little wider and lets go of Drake's hair, reaching into his pocket for the little slip of paper with the address of the gym on it. "Memorize it. Flush it. And be there tomorrow after school."

"I can't -- I mean. It's not. I'm not *ready* --"

"No, you aren't. You're a pathetic fucking *excuse* of a kid. But you can *be* ready -- and you will be."

"I --"

"Unless you *want* Gotham to go to hell?"

Drake blinks at Jason more times than he feels like counting, paper held between his fingertips... he turns it, looks at it, scans it what feels like a hundred times in a second.

Score. "And keep your mouth *shut*," Jason says, and moves to the window --

"Jason, I -- um."

He should just leave. He *has* his exit line, and --

And he has it.

He goes.

*