Summary

Alfred makes breakfast. Talon makes a mistake.

Chapter Three

“You live here?”

Jason shuffles to the far side of the bench and stares out the car window. He cranes his neck to see as much of Wayne Tower as he can. “How rich are you?”

Bruce doesn’t answer. Jason doesn’t seem to mind, entranced by the tower’s glittering exterior. Bruce pulls into the parking garage that wraps around the lower levels. He winds his way up.

“This is crazy,” Jason says, seemingly more to himself than anyone else. “My whole block could fit in here.”

What block is that? Bruce thinks, but he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t think pressing for information will endear him to Jason, and he wants to keep whatever scraps of trust he might have earned.

“It’s a very old building,” Bruce says.

“Yeah,” Jason says, “I know that.”

Then he’s quiet for a few minutes, as Bruce parks the car and helps the children out. The parking garage bears the same architectural style as the tower, all swooping arches, angles reaching upward, and glittering light fixtures. The hallway to the elevator is even more ornate, with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on the city from eighty feet up.

“Whoa,” Jason whispers.

Talon winces when they step through the doors. It’s a tiny motion, hardly more than a twitch, at the corner of Bruce’s eye. When he looks over, he sees the boy squinting. His pupils are dilated, shrunk to tiny black spots in a sea of gold.

The light bothers him. Bruce notes that for later. There’s not much he can do about the lighting in the hallway or the elevator. He guides the children in and selects his floor, one of the private floors far above the rest. He has to enter a passcode to get there.

There’s another passcode just outside the elevator, to access the little sitting room that Bruce thinks of as his front porch. Then another code on the front door, plus a traditional lock, and here it occurs to Bruce that his security—meant to keep intruders out—might look more like a prison keeping them in.

“This is not meant to trap you here,” he says. “The security system alerts us to people trying to break in. Not people leaving. You can leave whenever you want. It won’t tell me.”

It is probably not a good idea to tell the children in his custody, children he promised to protect, that they can leave whenever they want. But the alternative—letting an unspoken threat hang over them, treating them like prisoners—turns his stomach too much to consider. They are not prisoners. He wants them to have autonomy.

“Sure,” Jason mutters. “I bet you say that to every…” He stops, just inside the doorway. “Holy shit.”

Bruce looks at his apartment with fresh eyes.

The front door opens on the main living space: a wide, open room with a high ceiling, meant for entertaining, though Bruce has never actually used it for that. A large television hangs on the wall to their right, with couches and plush chairs arranged around it. At the back of the room is a smaller radio nook, bracketed by bookshelves.

“You have books?” Suddenly Jason is halfway across the room. He limps as he heads for the reading nook. Bruce blinks. Behind him, the Talon makes a short, high-pitched chirping noise. He sounds distressed.

“Yes,” Bruce says, a little thrown by the sudden noise and enthusiasm, “but most of them are in the library—”

“You have a fucking library?”

“Language, please,” Alfred says. He steps out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a rag. Jason swivels toward him. The kitchen is across from the bookshelves, towards the west side of the apartment; apparently the distance is enough for Jason.

“Who are you?”

“Alfred Pennyworth.” Alfred tucks the rag into his apron. “And who might you be?”

Jason narrows his eyes.

“Alfred, this is Jason,” Bruce says, before things can escalate. “And… this is Talon.” He steps away from the door and gestures at Talon, who lingers behind him. Talon is squinting again.

“A pleasure to meet you both,” Alfred says.

“And this is Alfred, my adoptive father,” Bruce says to Jason. Alfred would never identify himself that way, but it’s true. Bruce is less and less willing to avoid saying things that they both know are true. And adoptive father is more straightforward than any of the other ways Bruce could possibly explain their relationship to Jason.

“Oh,” Jason says. He still looks skeptical.

“I’ve just finished preparing breakfast,” Alfred says. “The dining room is this way, if you would follow me.”

Jason gives him a narrow, suspicious look, but the smell of eggs and toast is heavy on the air, and the allure of food must be stronger than his fear. He crosses the room to follow Alfred through the kitchen.

Behind Bruce, Talon makes a long, low warble.

“Are you alright?” Bruce turns to him, confident that Jason is safe with Alfred.

Talon lowers his head. His eyes are still half-closed, and Bruce thinks of the bright lights on the wall, the lamp across the room, the north-facing windows around the corner.

“Here—” He crosses the room to climb the stairs, up to his study.

Talon follows him.

The study is dark. Bruce knows it well enough to find his way. He counts three drawers from the edge of the built-in shelves and roots through the drawer until his fingers meet leather.

Glowing yellow eyes watch him from the door.

“Here,” Bruce says. He takes the sunglasses from their leather case and holds them out.

Talon takes them. He holds them for a few seconds, and then a few seconds more. Bruce frowns.

“Those are for you,” he says. “You can wear them. If you want. I think they might help your eyes.”

Talon tilts his head sideways. Then he lowers his head and slips the sunglasses onto his face. His eyes dim.

“Good,” Bruce says. He doesn’t know what to say after that, so he doesn’t say anything. He walks back to the living room. Talon follows him.

The kitchen, Alfred’s domain, connects the living room to the dining room on the other side of the apartment. They don’t use the dining room too often; like the living area, it was designed for entertaining, and these days—

“Talon!”

Talon darts through the kitchen in a blur. Bruce hurries after him, into the dining room, where Jason is seated at the long table.

“Where did you go? What did you do?” Jason says, half to Talon, half to Bruce.

“To get sunglasses,” Bruce says. “Just to get the sunglasses, that’s all. He—I think he’s sensitive to light. I thought they might help.”

Talon, of course, says nothing. The glasses over his eyes make his face look even more blank than before.

“Yeah, okay,” Jason mutters. He gives Bruce one more suspicious glare before he turns to Talon. “You can’t wander off like that,” he says, quieter. “’Specially not with him. We gotta stick together.”

Alfred stands by the kitchen door, a safe distance from Jason at the table. He raises his eyebrows at Bruce.

“Crime scene,” Bruce says in an undertone. “Jim called me. They were…”

Again, he falters. Again, he searches for a way to describe what he saw in that house, and again, he comes up empty.

“They were victims?” Alfred says, equally quiet.

“They were hiding in a closet,” Bruce says. He repeats the facts, what he knows for certain. He can’t touch the other things yet. “They were covered in blood. They were scared of me. They were scared of the police. They…” He hesitates, because there is no easy way to say this, but he has to. This is Alfred’s home, as much as it is Bruce’s, and Alfred deserves to know. “The older one. Talon. He killed every other person in that house.”

He killed himself. He knelt to me and he offered me the knife and when I wouldn’t take it he killed himself.

“I think it was self-defense,” Bruce says, “but I can’t prove it. If you’re uncomfortable with that—with having them here—I understand—”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Alfred says. “Were they victims?”

Bruce looks at them. Jason, seated at the dining room table, talking with his mouth full of scrambled eggs. Talon, standing next to Jason’s chair, picking pieces of fruit off of Jason’s plate and eating them. He thinks of them limping through the hall, flinching away from him and Jim. He thinks of the blood.

There was so much blood.

“Yes,” he says. “They were.”

Alfred nods. “I suspected as much,” he says. “I doubt you would have gotten involved otherwise.”

“They wouldn’t be safe anywhere else,” Bruce says. The same thing he said to Leslie. “They wouldn’t be able to stay together. And. One is a metahuman.”

Or something like a metahuman. Something with black blood and golden eyes and the vital signs of a corpse.

“Are they siblings?”

“Biologically? I don’t know,” Bruce says. “But, well…”

Talon snatches a strawberry from Jason’s plate and pops it in his mouth. His lips twitch, fighting back a smile, as Jason says, “You can’t just take all the good ones, you gotta eat the berries and the bananas together—”

“I see,” Alfred said. “Well, if that’s settled, I must insist that we sit down to breakfast. Your food is getting cold.”

When Bruce sits down, across from Jason, Talon moves to stand behind him. When Bruce tells him he can sit down, Talon doesn’t seem to understand. Alfred pulls out a chair for him, Bruce repeats himself, as gently as he can, and at last the boy perches on the edge of the chair. He looks very tense.

“It’s alright,” Bruce says. Positive reinforcement. “Thank you for sitting down.”

Alfred puts a plate in front of them both, and then sits down himself. They are, finally, all eating breakfast.

Good, Bruce thinks. This is good. The children are eating. After this, he’ll set them up in one of the spare bedrooms, and they can sleep. Make sure they have water. Sealed bottles. He doesn’t want them drinking from the tap.

Talon pokes at his food. He picks up a blueberry between two fingers. He eats it.

“What is this?” Jason holds up a strip of bacon from his plate.

“That is bacon,” Alfred says.

“Doesn’t taste like bacon.”

“It’s turkey bacon,” Bruce says.

“Oh, gross,” Jason says. “D’you have any normal bacon?”

“No,” Bruce says. “Alfred doesn’t keep it.” At least, not in the kitchen. He suspects that Alfred might have a stash of non-kosher food somewhere else, but that’s Alfred’s business. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that. Fuck off.” Jason pulls his plate closer.

“Language,” Alfred says.

Jason rolls his eyes.

Bruce opens his mouth to say something about listening to Alfred. A choked noise stops him. Talon sits back in his seat, one hand pressed to his stomach. From where he sits, Bruce can see behind the sunglasses. The boy’s eyes are wide.

Scared.

“Talon?” Jason says. “Are you—”

Talon turns in his seat and throws up onto the floor.

“Oh my,” Alfred says.

Talon gags and retches again. Black bile dribbles over chunks of mashed fruit. Talon slides out of his seat and hits the floor just in time to heave again. Nothing else comes up.

“It’s alright,” Bruce says. “Don’t move.” He goes to help Talon up. He looks ready to collapse—

“Sorry,” Talon croaks.

Then his entire body goes rigid. He ducks his head down, low to the ground, straight into the vomit.

“Stop!”

Talon freezes. He holds himself still, almost prostrate in a puddle of acid bile, almost touching it. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe.

Bruce can see him trembling.

“Talon—”

“Leave him alone!” Suddenly Jason is there, between Bruce and the Talon, clutching a butter knife. “It’s not his fault, he’s sick—”

The Talon whines. He grabs the leg of Jason’s pants, trying to draw him back. Jason pulls his foot away. Talon flinches.

“I’ll kill you,” Jason snaps, and there are tears in his eyes, and Bruce has no idea what to do. “I’ll fucking kill you—”

“None of that,” Alfred says, rounding the table with a towel and a cup of water. He sets the water on the table, drops the towel over the vomit, and crouches to help Talon up. The boy flinches from his touch, but doesn’t fight back. He lets Alfred take his arms and move him into a standing position. “We do not threaten each other with bodily harm.”

“Sure, just do it,” Jason says, his lips pulled back in a snarl.

“I’m not,” Bruce starts, “I’m not going to hurt anyone—”

“Master Bruce, if you would kindly remove yourself,” Alfred says. He sets Talon down in a chair. “I have the situation well in hand.”

“Master,” Talon croaks.

Now Bruce freezes.

The Talon draws his shoulders up. He lifts his head. He still has the sunglasses on. Bruce can still see the dim glow of his eyes.

“No,” Bruce says. “No, that’s—” That’s wrong. Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call anyone that. “Don’t say that. I am not your master. No one is.”

Talon slides out of his seat again. Bruce steps forward to catch him. Talon’s skin is cold to the touch. Black veins stand out under his skin.

Talon doesn’t flinch when Bruce catches him. He doesn’t try to get away. He just stands there, almost limp in Bruce’s grasp. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe.

A faint, shrill sound escapes his throat. Peep, peep, peep. He sounds like a bird.

Bruce’s stomach twists. The boy won’t talk, won’t say a single word except for sorry and master, but he will make noises. Wordless, animal noises. That was allowed, wherever he came from. He couldn’t talk, but he could make noises like a bird.

Bruce tastes something bitter.

“Jason,” he says. “There’s—”

There’s a spare bedroom on the upper floor of the apartment. It isn’t ready for guests. The bed doesn’t have sheets, the shelves and cabinets are bare. But the door has a lock.

“There’s a spare bedroom. Upstairs. At the top of the stairs on the right. Do you think you can take Talon up.”

Bruce draws his hands back, slowly, making sure that Talon can stand on his own. Black veins branch across the boy’s face. They weren’t there before. Bruce wonders if the black bile is like the black blood he saw earlier, if it’s all the same substance. He feels sick.

“Fuck you,” Jason snaps. “I’m not taking him to your fucking bedroom—”

“It’s your bedroom,” Bruce says. He doesn’t look at Jason. He can’t. If he gets stabbed with a butter knife, so be it. “The door locks. No one will hurt you. Please.”

Please get him away from me before he does something all of us will regret.

“Okay,” Jason says. “Fine.” He takes Talon’s hand. He leads him out of the dining room.

Bruce turns to Alfred. “They need water,” he says. “They need sheets. And towels. The room isn’t ready.”

“I took the liberty of making up the bed, after your call,” Alfred says. “There is an extra cot as well, should they prefer to sleep apart.” He turns away, gathering the bowl and the cup. “I will bring them water.”

“Sealed bottles,” Bruce says. “They’ll—prefer that. I think.”

Alfred doesn’t agree or disagree. He goes back to the kitchen.

When he crosses back through the dining room, Bruce is still standing over a towel and a puddle of vomit.

“I didn’t tell him that,” he says. “I swear. Alfred. I didn’t tell him to say that.”

“I hadn’t thought that you did.”

“He.” Bruce swallows. “He must have learned it somewhere.”

He thinks of the Talon kneeling in front of him and a knife clasped in greyish hands and black blood coating his fingers. Master, the Talon said. The Talon—the child called him Master.

Alfred is steady, a rock in the roiling ocean of the last few minutes. “I see now why you brought them here,” he says.

“They didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Bruce says. He feels numb. All he can think about is the Talon. Kneeling and holding the knife and sliding it across his throat—

“You did a good thing,” Alfred says. “But I think it will be some time before our lives return to normal. Such as it is.”

He knelt and he gave me the knife and he thought I was going to hurt him and I didn’t know—

When Bruce looks up, Alfred is gone, and with him the bottles of water. A rag towel from the kitchen lies on the floor. Next to it, a plastic bucket and a mop.

Bruce kneels down on the floor and starts cleaning up the vomit.

⁂