Summary

Bruce makes a phone call. Alfred makes dinner. Talon makes a request.

Chapter Eight

A sudden noise startles Bruce out of his thoughts. 

He looks up. That was a voice. That was Jason’s voice. He sets the file aside, ready to leap to his feet, but he doesn’t hear anything else. No sound from Alfred, or Talon—nothing to indicate danger. 

For a few seconds, the library is silent. 

Then Jason’s voice. “H-he—uh—”

Bruce shifts onto his feet. He leaves the family archive and turns the corner to the rest of the library. He moves in silence. 

“Ah,” Alfred says coldly. “Here, stand up—” Then his voice softens. “Oh, don’t worry, lad. It happens.”

“He didn’t,” Jason says. His voice shakes. “I mean, I—I’ll clean it up. It was an accident. He didn’t mean to.”

“Of course not,” Alfred says. 

Bruce moves through the stacks. He stops two shelves over from the reading area. He stands, listening, out of sight. 

“I’ll clean it up,” Jason says. 

“If you’d like to help,” Alfred says, “you may take these to the laundry room with your dirty clothes. And make sure Talon has a wash. Your new clothes are in your closet, remember.” 

“Okay,” Jason says. He takes a deep breath. “Okay. C’mon.” 

Soft footsteps leave the library.

Bruce waits two more minutes. 

Alfred sighs. Bruce hears him moving, and then another set of footsteps on carpet. The library doors swing open and shut. Only then does Bruce step out from the stacks. 

He doesn’t know what he expects to find. Another puddle of vomit on the carpet, maybe, but nothing seems out of place. Alfred’s yarn and lopsided knitting sit on a table next to the armchair. The blankets are gone from the couch. So is Jason’s book. 

There’s a dark spot on the couch. 

Bruce moves closer. There is a dark spot on the pale brown upholstery of the couch. At first he thinks it’s water—spilled from the bottle he gave to Talon. Then he takes another step, and he smells it. 

The door opens. Bruce turns to see Alfred, coming back with a series of spray bottles and a roll of paper towels. 

“What happened?”

Alfred gives him a particularly unimpressed look. 

“We may need to monitor Talon’s water consumption, as well as food,” he says, rather than repeat the obvious answer. “And schedule regular toilet breaks throughout the day.” 

Bruce says, “He didn’t drink that much.”

“He had water at breakfast,” Alfred says. “He seemed to enjoy it. In fact he’s had free access to water since yesterday morning, by our own deliberate efforts.” 

“By our own…” Bruce shakes his head. “So why hasn’t this happened before?”

Alfred sprays down the stain with the first bottle. The smell of soap mingles with the rank, metallic smell of urine.

“Jason seems to have taken it upon himself to look after Talon,” Alfred says. “If there was an accident while they were alone, do you think he would come to us for help?”

Bruce wishes he could say yes. He’s talked to Jason. He thought they were making progress. Jason looked him in the eyes, just a few minutes ago, and said Yeah, he can read. But Bruce was here, listening. He heard Jason’s reaction to the accident.

He heard Jason’s voice shaking. 

“We will not speak of this,” Alfred says. 

“I have to tell Leslie.” 

“To the children, M—” Alfred’s voice catches. “Bruce.” 

The missing word jars him. Bruce thinks of the last time he heard that word—Talon, kneeling on the floor, shaking, over a puddle of black vomit. Talon, still and cold to the touch.

Sorry. Master. 

“Right,” Bruce says. “Of course.” 

Alfred covers the stain with paper towels. He soaks up all the liquid, scrubs it down and gathers the towels into a small trash bag. Then he sprays the couch again, this time with a solution of vinegar. 

Bruce imagines Jason trying to do this, alone, with water and soap from the bathroom, or maybe with nothing at all. Jason, alone, trying to care for a teenager years older than him, because he can’t trust the adults around him to help. 

He can’t trust anyone to help.

Bruce knew this. Of course he did. He knows how violent trauma tends to affect children. He knows that it has been at least eleven months—probably longer—since Jason had a safe, stable adult presence in his life. He knows that Jason is still adjusting to his change in circumstance. He knows that Jason is still processing the idea that he might be safe here. 

Bruce knows this. The thought still weighs him down. 

⁂

The phone rings ten times and goes to voicemail.

“You have reached the office of Dr. Leslie Thompkins—”

Leslie picks up in the middle of the automated message. 

“Bruce. Hi.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine. If you didn’t call, I would have.” A faint shuffling noise. “At some point. Jason’s blood work should come back tomorrow.”

“Good,” Bruce says.

“That’s his CMP,” Leslie says. She pauses. “I requested an STI panel, too, but those results won’t be back for a few weeks.”

“Oh,” Bruce says. 

He didn’t think of that. He knew what happened to Jason, but he didn’t really think about it—he didn’t want to think about it—and he didn’t even realize—

“Well, it’s been a couple days,” Leslie says. “How are they doing?”

Bruce takes a breath. He counts to four. He breathes out. 

“They’re settling in,” he says. He paces across the room, to the window. “They’re not… happy, but…”

“You wouldn’t expect them to be.”

“No. They’re doing well, under the circumstances. They’re eating….” Which brings Bruce to the reason he called in the first place. “Talon seems to have some digestive problems. He threw up the first meal he tried to eat.”

“That’s not surprising,” Leslie says. “Who knows what his diet was like before.”

“He’s not malnourished,” Bruce says, half in question. 

“He doesn’t look malnourished,” Leslie says. “But I can’t say for sure without a blood test, which is… not an option for him.” She barks out a short laugh. 

Bruce thinks of black bile on the floor of his dining room. The way it dripped and rolled and dried into a flaky crust. After a few minutes, all he had to do was sweep it up. 

“Has he thrown up again, since that first meal?”

“Not that I know of. He—had an accident, though. Today.”

“An accident?”

“He may have poor bladder control,” Bruce says. “Or he may be used to a much more tightly controlled environment.”

“Oh,” Leslie says. 

Then a pause. Bruce doesn’t know what else to say. Leslie must be thinking. 

“But he has been drinking water?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything strange about his urine?”

Bruce frowns. “I didn’t see it.” He thinks of the stain, already soaked into the couch. “The smell, maybe. It smelled… metallic.” 

“Huh.” 

“Does that mean something?”

“I don’t know.”

They don’t know anything. Talon is a medical mystery—a mystery they don’t have the tools to solve.

“You said blood tests aren’t an option,” Bruce says. “Why?”

“Well,” Leslie says. “Because it’s not blood.” 

Bruce’s neck prickles. 

“What?” 

“It’s too thick,” Leslie says. “It’s heavy. It doesn’t… move right. I had to use the lowest-gauge needle we have just to get a decent sample, and even that….” She laughs again, with a distinct lack of humor. “It’s black, for God’s sake. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not human blood.” 

Bruce thinks of black blood gushing over his hands. The way it pooled on the carpet and dripped off the sleeves of his coat. The way it dried. It flaked off his hands as if it was never there. 

Not human. If not human, then what?

“And you won’t send it to a lab,” he says. 

“If I send it, I have to label it,” Leslie says. “I have to know how to transport it. I have to know what to say when the lab asks me where the hell it came from.”

“A suspect in an ongoing murder investigation,” Bruce says, half to himself.

“A metahuman. Someone who may not be human.” 

“We don’t know that,” Bruce says. He thinks of Talon, stealing pieces of fruit off of Jason’s plate—Talon, clutching a blanket around his shoulders—Talon, curled up on the couch. “He’s—”

“He’s a person,” Leslie says. “Yes. He has thoughts, and feelings, and he deserves compassionate care. I agree. But is he Homo sapiens sapiens?” A pause. “I don’t know.” 

Bruce feels dizzy. He moves to his desk and sits down. Then he stands and paces back to the window. He needs to move. 

“There’s a chemistry lab here,” he says. “The research and development lab. We have a centrifuge.” 

“I can’t send it to you, either,” Leslie says. “Unless you want to drive over.”

Bruce glances at the cabinets along the wall of his study. “I don’t need it.” 

A silence.

Then Leslie says, “Bruce Thomas Wayne—”

“The vomit,” Bruce says. “When he threw up. I took a sample of the vomit. It looks like the blood. What I saw… it looks the same.”

“Of course you did,” Leslie says. “Sure. Put a vomit sample in your centrifuge. You might as well.” 

“Are you being sarcastic?”

Leslie breathes a long sigh into the phone. “I don’t know.” A pause. “I don’t know. Maybe you’ll find something.”

“I’ll let you know if I do.”

“And I will call you when Jason’s results come back. Was there anything else?”

Bruce thinks back over the last two days. Talon and Jason in the library. Talon and Jason eating breakfast. Talon, last night, crouched on the chandelier, kneeling on the floor. Watching him with bright golden eyes. 

Jason, yesterday, clutching a butter knife like a dagger, glaring at him with tears in his eyes. 

“No,” Bruce says.

⁂

He finds Alfred in the kitchen. The boys are with him, sitting around the island, so Bruce pauses in the doorway. Jason looks up at him. He looks startled. Bruce wonders if he interrupted something. 

“I’m going down to the lab,” he says, to Alfred. 

“After dinner, you mean,” Alfred says. 

Bruce pauses. He wasn’t thinking about dinner. Left to his own devices he probably wouldn’t plan to eat. He’s not hungry, and he has work to do. 

Alfred has made it his life’s work to ensure that Bruce is never, under any circumstances, left to his own devices. 

“Right,” Bruce says. “Of course.”

He takes a seat at the island. Jason sits across from him, and Talon sits next to Jason, in the same seats they had this morning. They’ve changed clothes.

“The chicken is just cooling,” Alfred says. 

He takes the lid off the slow cooker on the counter. A rush of steam lifts into the air. A plate of tortillas and several bowls—rice, avocado, black beans, chopped lettuce and tomato, cilantro—are laid out on the island.

“This is yours,” Alfred says. He sets a plate down in front of Talon: a single tortilla with small servings of rice, avocado, and plain cooked ground beef arranged in piles on the plate. “If you can keep this down, you may have another helping of applesauce.” 

Talon looks down at the plate. He lifts a hand to poke at the avocado.

“With your fork,” Alfred says. 

Talon ducks his head and dutifully picks up his fork. 

Jason and Bruce get empty plates. Bruce piles lettuce, tomato, and avocado on to make a salad. Jason watches him for a moment. 

“Help yourself to anything you’d like,” Alfred says.

“Okay,” Jason says. 

He takes a tortilla, and some chicken from the pot, and rice, and beans, and avocado. 

He’s eating, Bruce thinks. Both of the boys are eating. They have not refused food. In spite of fear, suspicion, uncertainty, they both prefer to eat when they have the chance. 

Jason takes a spoonful of tomatoes, a generous helping of cilantro, and begins mashing them together with his fork. He glances up, sees Bruce watching him, and stops. 

“Sorry.” 

“You don’t have to apologize,” Bruce says. “What are you doing?”

“It’s dumb.” Jason looks down at his plate. “I’ll stop.”

“No,” Bruce says. Then he stops. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to scare Jason, but almost everything he says seems to scare Jason. “It’s not dumb. Are you… mixing them together?”

It’s an easy question. Yes or no, and Bruce can tell the answer just by looking, so maybe Jason won’t be so afraid of it.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “I just. I don’t know. Thought they should go together.” He shrugs. “Like salsa.” 

“Do you like salsa?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. He takes a breath. Hesitates. 

Talon puts his fork down. He looks down at his plate. Most of the avocado is gone, but the rest of his food is untouched. 

Jason looks at Bruce. “Do you have any? Salsa?” 

“I’m afraid not,” Alfred says. “But we can certainly get some. What kind do you prefer?”

“I like pico de gallo,” Jason says. He pronounces it with an accent. “And um, salsa verde. If it’s not too spicy.”

“I will add those to my grocery list,” Alfred says.

Talon picks up his fork. He starts eating the ground beef. 

“Do you speak Spanish?” Bruce says. Jason lifts his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says. Again, he hesitates. “Do you?” 

Bruce tilts his head. “Enough to get by,” he says. “You probably have me beaten.” 

Jason looks at him for a long moment. Bruce looks back. He wonders what Jason is seeing. 

Talon puts his fork down. It clatters on his plate. Talon looks down, and he is very still, but Bruce sees his chest rise and fall.

He’s breathing. Talon does not need to breathe—Leslie mentioned that, and Bruce has seen evidence of it—but he can. He still has something like a respiratory system. What’s the trigger?

Talon’s chest rises and falls. He makes a short, choked noise. 

“Come on,” Jason whispers, “come on, please—”

Talon turns in his seat. Alfred opens the cabinet under the sink, grabs a bucket, and slides it over just in time to catch a stream of black bile. 

Jason makes an aggravated noise. Talon gags and heaves again. Nothing much comes up. 

“He’s not trying to make a mess,” Jason says, with a furtive look at Alfred. “He just—”

“I know, lad,” Alfred says. “It happens.” But he sounds disappointed. 

Jason glances at Bruce. “He’s not trying to cause trouble.” 

“I know,” Bruce says. He stays very still. Talon is still in his seat; Jason looks nervous, but not terrified. He hasn’t threatened anyone. All things considered, they’ve improved a lot since the first time Talon threw up a meal. 

Talon hasn’t moved much at all. He sits turned away from the island, leaning forward, with a blank look on his face. Bruce wishes he would talk—that he could understand the thoughts running through Talon’s head. Is he scared? Sick? Disgusted? Tired? It’s impossible to tell. Talon just sits, looking down at the bucket.

“Talon,” Bruce says. 

Talon lifts his head. He looks across the island, at Bruce, and then bows his head again. Don’t do that, Bruce thinks. 

“He’s sick,” Jason says, and there, in his voice, is a hint of terror. “He—I know he doesn’t seem like it, but—he—” 

“I know,” Bruce says. I know what happened in the library. He doesn’t say that. It won’t help anything. “It’s alright. Talon, chum. Do you want to eat more?” 

Talon looks at the countertop. He sits still. Bruce waits, watching for any movement, any hint of an answer. 

Alfred slides the bucket away and washes his hands in the sink. 

“Yes,” Talon says.

It’s a clear answer. The same answer he gave last night, when Bruce said I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t have to be scared. Do you understand? 

Bruce doesn’t know if he believes it. 

“Are you sure?” Jason says softly. 

Talon nods. He picks up his fork—holding it gingerly between his fingers—and he starts eating his rice.

Jason looks across the island at Bruce. He hunches his shoulders up, and Bruce sees a little of the old terror. Then Jason looks away. He picks up his fork and starts mixing together ingredients on his plate. 

They eat. Alfred sits down with them. He keeps the bucket nearby, next to the kitchen sink. It doesn’t smell like much of anything. Talon eats his rice in small bites, without stopping—which is worrying in its own way, but Bruce doesn’t tell him to stop. He doesn’t want to be misinterpreted. He doesn’t want to cause another wave of panic and terror and defensive aggression. 

He keeps quiet. He eats his chicken salad. Jason folds his food up into a burrito and eats it with his hands. 

When the rice is gone, Talon sets his fork down. All that’s left on his plate is the tortilla. 

Jason leans toward him. “You okay?”

Talon tilts his head. He looks down at his plate. He doesn’t answer. 

Alfred sets his silverware on his plate and moves to take it to the sink. He takes Bruce’s plate with him. As he passes, Talon looks up, and glowing eyes track Alfred across the kitchen. 

“Ap…” His lips close, and he works his mouth for a few seconds before he tries again. “Applesauce?”

He speaks. For the second time, Bruce hears his voice in the light of day. Rough, dry, unpracticed, but he speaks. It makes something in Bruce’s chest lift. 

Alfred raises his eyebrows. “Well,” he says. “I did promise that, didn’t I.” 

“Yeah,” Jason says, quiet but steady. “An’ he kept the rice down.” 

“Yes,” Alfred says, with a searching look at Talon. “So it seems.” He moves toward the refrigerator.

Talon had applesauce at breakfast, too. He kept it down then—at least, he didn’t throw it up immediately. He liked it enough to request it again, to ask for it, to speak. It’s a flash of personality from behind the blank, silent mask—a sign of who he might have been, before everything. A sign of who he might be again. 

“Can I have some?” Jason says, as Alfred pours out the applesauce. 

“Of course,” Alfred says.

Bruce is done eating. He slips out while Alfred is distracted, reminding Talon to use a spoon. He goes through the living room and back up to his study to get his key card, tape recorder, and a small glass vial. 

Jason and Talon are eating. They aren’t quite as scared. Jason is willing to ask questions; Talon is willing to speak. All things considered, they’ve improved a lot in the last thirty-six hours. But there are still questions, a lot of open questions, and Bruce intends to find answers.

⁂