birds in the wood

Chapter One

Bruce gets the call at 4:13 a.m.

When the phone rings, Bruce is already awake, seated at his desk in sleep pants and a soft turtleneck. He is shuffling through papers, grant proposals and correspondence, with the last echoes of morning prayer ringing in his head. The noise of his private phone is a surprise.

“Hello? This is Bruce Wayne.”

“Bruce. It’s Jim.”

Bruce turns slightly in his chair. “What’s wrong?”

Jim breathes a heavy sigh into the phone. “11-3,” he says. “We need you on the scene.”

“On the scene?” Bruce stands up. He paces to the other side of the room, where his coat hangs over the back of a chair. There he stops. “You have detectives for that.”

“Not the issue.” Jim at a crime scene talks like he’s on police radio, terse and abrupt. “Suspect is barricaded on the premises. We…” He pauses. “I think you have the best chance of getting him out.”

“Me,” Bruce says.

“Suspect is a metahuman,” Jim says. “Possibly a minor. Doesn’t respond to orders. Doesn’t like cops.” He pauses again. “I don’t want any more casualties.”

That gives Bruce pause. What casualties? The suspect, or the police?

“And I’m your best option,” he says.

“Yes.”

Bruce picks up his coat. “What’s the address?”

Jim tells him. Bruce recognizes it immediately. It’s in Bristol.

He hears chatter in the background of the call. Then Jim’s voice again. “ETA?”

“Thirty minutes,” Bruce says. He steps out of his apartment and locks the door behind him.

“10-4,” Jim says, and hangs up.

Thirty minutes to drive from Old Gotham to Bristol is a stretch. It helps that almost no one is on the road. Bruce cuts north and east, aiming for Memorial Bridge. He drives in silence, turning the phone conversation over and over in his head.

Bruce Wayne does not work for the Gotham City Police Department. He does not trust the Gotham City Police Department. He’s seen too much of their work for that. Bruce knows Jim Gordon; he knows that Jim Gordon is perhaps the only person standing between the city of Gotham and a completely corrupt police force. Sometimes, when Jim needs a message passed to the vigilantes that haunt Gotham, Bruce passes the message. Sometimes, he comes back with a message in return.

Bruce does not trust the police. He trusts Jim Gordon. They’ve known each other long enough for that.

Bruce is not supposed to go to active crime scenes.

This is not to say that Bruce doesn’t go to active crime scenes. He has seen many active crime scenes in his life, and he will probably see many more. But if Jim Gordon is calling him, rather than anyone actually employed by the police department, something is very wrong.

Bruce drives a little faster over Memorial Bridge.

He hasn’t visited Bristol since… since he sold Wayne Manor. The wide streets and gated estates—carefully maintained even in the dead of winter—bring to mind a muddled cocktail of memories. The fleeting happy moments of his childhood. The long dark days after the murder. His last fight with Alfred before he left; his first public appearance after he came back. His last day in the manor.

The address Jim gave him is not the house formerly known as Wayne Manor. Bruce is glad.

He pulls through a set of open gates, up to an elegant brick mansion swarming with police. Bruce counts five squad cars and two ambulances. He parks at the far end of the circular drive and walks up. He passes a few stretchers, all of them covered. Paramedics and police officers move in grim circles. Their voices are quiet and subdued.

No one notices Bruce. No one tries to stop him.

He walks right up to the front porch. Jim Gordon stands on the steps, just outside the police tape, smoking a cigarette.

“This is the Edwards’ house,” Bruce says. He’s been here before, at least once, some event in his teenage years—an engagement party, that’s it. For one of the Edwards’ daughters. The memory is neutral. The reminder of the family that lives here is chilling.

“Mrs. Edwards and the kids are gone,” Jim says. “On vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Mr. Edwards stayed behind. He was due to join them in a few days.”

“Was,” Bruce echoes.

“Two a.m., dispatch gets a call. From a member of the staff, who lives on the grounds. He reports hearing screams from the house. Dispatch sends a couple units over to check.” Jim blows a stream of smoke into the air. “Two-fifteen, those units call for backup. Two-twenty-five, those units call for backup.”

He’s building up to something. He wants Bruce to ask—What was it? What did they find? He’s holding back the meat of the case, the actual crime committed.

He doesn’t want to say it, Bruce thinks. He’s shaken.

“Can I go inside?” he says.

Jim nods once. He drops his cigarette on the granite steps. He grinds it out under his boot.

“Come on.”

He ducks under the tape, through the half-open front door. Bruce follows.

The foyer is illuminated, all lights on. The first thing Bruce sees is a white sheet at the bottom of the grand staircase. The sheet is lumpy, but not in a way that suggests a body underneath. It looks more like a pile of something. Firewood, maybe. Or limbs.

The sheet is stained red.

Bruce swallows his horror. He notes the placement of the sheet as they pass, the way the limbs seem to fall on the bottom steps. A police officer stands nearby, writing something down. She looks up as they pass.

They pass another body on the other side of the foyer. Two more in the hallway beyond. These, at least, appear to be one piece. Bruce notes their placement, their positioning, their size. They all look like adults.

The fifth and sixth bodies lie on couches in a small sitting room off the main hall. One is slumped halfway to the floor.

Bruce says, “How many…?”

Jim says, “Seventeen. So far.”

A broad smear of blood paints the wall beside them. The next body is on the floor of the library, and even under the sheet, Bruce can see the head twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Baruch dayan ha’emet,” he whispers. Not a blessing, not a prayer; an acceptance. That is all he has.

“All adults,” Jim says. “Mostly friends of the family. It looks like Edwards was hosting some kind of party.”

Jim leads him around the library and down a side hall, to a small closet tucked under a staircase. The door is open. The hall is well-lit; the closet is dark. Jim stops several yards away and gestures to the open doorway.

“He’s in there.”

Hiding, Bruce thinks. He sets that aside as a possible behavioral cue. “How long?”

“At least since the first units responded,” Jim says. He reaches into his pocket, takes out a cigarette, and puts it back again. “First reports said he fled the scene. We didn’t find him until we swept the building.”

“I’m surprised your men didn’t shoot on sight,” Bruce says.

“Oh, they did,” Jim says. He reaches for the cigarette again. “That got him riled up. Huang almost lost an arm; Ingram’s lucky to be alive. He didn’t maim anyone else, but he didn’t respond to orders, either. Barricaded himself in.”

And you want me to get him out, Bruce thinks. The answer is obvious; Jim wouldn’t have called if he had any other options. Every other path almost certainly ends with the suspect dead. No answers, and another life lost.

“Hm.” Bruce moves toward the closet. “Alright.”

“Radio,” Jim says. He tosses a police radio; Bruce catches it and tucks it into his pocket without turning it on. “I’ll be in the entryway.” He pauses. “Be careful.”

Bruce hums an affirmative. Jim’s footsteps retreat back down the hall; then Bruce is alone.

He sits down on the floor, four feet from the open door. He crosses his legs in front of him.

“Hello,” he says. His voice is calm and even. He speaks clearly. “My name is Bruce.”

He pauses. Something stirs in the depths of the closet. Bruce hears a slight rustle. Then a pair of glowing yellow eyes peer out of the dark.

Bruce does not startle. A metahuman, he thinks. That might explain how they killed seventeen people in two hours. It might also explain why.

“I am not a police officer,” Bruce says. “I work with Commissioner Gordon, but I don’t have to listen to him. I have no power to arrest you, and I will not attempt to do so.”

He doesn’t make any more promises on that front. Someone murdered every other person in this house, and the only current suspect is sitting in front of him. After a certain point, there’s only so much Bruce can do.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he says. “No one else here is going to hurt you. You’re safe now. You can come out.”

The eyes stare at him, unblinking. Bruce stares back. Eye contact is hard for him, sometimes, but the two golden eyes glowing in the depths of the closet look more like an animal than anything human.

Dogs make eye contact to assert dominance. Cats use it as an intimidation tactic. Bruce wonders which effect he’s having.

For a while, neither of them move. Bruce lays his hands flat on his knees and relaxes his shoulders. He deliberately slows his breathing, counting out a meditative pattern. He can sit here all night—or all morning, rather—if he needs to. He is as well-rested as he’s going to get; he won’t need a break for food or water anytime soon. If the person in the closet wants to play a waiting game, Bruce can play. He won’t leave them.

Not while he can do something to help.

The hallway is quiet. If he focuses his hearing down the hall to the left, he can hear faint voices and people moving. The police are still here. Gordon won’t leave until Bruce does, and he’ll keep at least a few officers with him just in case. Bruce is alone with a murder suspect, after all.

Bruce inhales. Holds the breath for six beats. Exhales.

“I have food.” He takes a granola bar out of his coat pocket. He sets it on the floor in front of him. “I have water.” He does the same with a six-ounce bottle of water. “These are for you. They’re right here for you, whenever you want to take them.”

It’s very possible that the person won’t take what they perceive as bait. That’s alright. The offer has no strings attached, but it is also a test. Bruce wants to see how the person reacts.

Something rustles inside the closet. Bruce keeps very still. He doesn’t narrow his eyes, or lean forward, as much as he wants to. Showing interest will reestablish him as a possible threat.

The eyes move. Then they disappear entirely. Bruce blinks. He keeps looking, but the closet is dark. The light from the hallway behind him only reaches the first couple of feet, the baskets and boxes piled haphazardly at the front.

Bruce hears more rustling. The sound of someone breathing fast. Are they hurt? He hopes not, for their sake. If they’re hurt, he has a duty to bring in paramedics, and that won’t be easy or pleasant for anyone.

Before he has time to plan his next move, the eyes reappear. Bruce holds himself totally still. The eyes stare at him—Bruce counts to six—and then they start to move closer.

Bruce holds still. He takes deep breaths and does his best to project calm, even as his heart rate climbs. He’s far enough from the doorway for the person to leave the closet without pushing into his space. If they wanted to, they could run past him and escape.

They don’t. They move slowly into the doorway, rising to their feet with a kind of animalistic grace. The eyes resolve themselves in a sickly-looking face, so pale that they look grey under light brown skin. They have short black hair. Black tactical gear covers a slender body spattered with blood.

Bruce’s heart thunders in his chest. He sits on the floor and looks up at a bloodsoaked murder suspect who doesn’t look a day over fifteen. A teenager, wearing black kevlar and a long, curved knife on each hip. A child, who looks about three minutes away from keeling over and dying.

They are not alone.

A second person—a second child, even smaller than the first—darts out of the closet and presses themself against the teenager’s back. They’re hiding from Bruce, clearly, but even so he can see their pale skin—a healthier shade than the teenager’s, at least—and black hair. They’re wrapped in a blanket. The blanket also has some blood on it.

Siblings? Friends? Bruce’s heart climbs into his throat as he tries to make sense of the sight in front of him. Two children. The only survivors of a massacre in a rich man’s house. One of them the culprit, the other clinging to that culprit in desperation.

There’s a simple explanation for this. Simple explanations are often the truest. Bruce doesn’t like this one at all.

“Please,” the younger child says. Their voice is hoarse, starting to fray. “D—don’t arrest him. I-it’s not his fault, he—h-he only did it ’cause of me—”

They speak with a heavy Gotham accent. From somewhere in the inner city—Park Row, if Bruce had to guess.

The older child stands still as a statue. His eyes never leave Bruce’s face.

“You said you don’t arrest people.” The child’s voice grows more hurried, more frantic, as they go on. “A-and it was self-defense, they weren’t, they—they were going to hurt him!”

“Okay,” Bruce says. The child stops talking immediately. He flinches back behind his protector. “I believe you. Thank you for telling me.”

Neither of them relax. Bruce slides back another foot and stands up, keeping his movements slow and predictable. The teenager doesn’t flinch. The child does.

“Thank you for coming out,” Bruce says. Positive reinforcement. “I know you’re scared. I’m not going to hurt you, and I won’t let anyone else hurt you, either. You’re safe now.”

The child’s mouth twists. They look around the hallway, everywhere but Bruce’s face. “What about the cops?”

Bruce doesn’t grimace. He keeps his facial expression open and encouraging. “I’ll deal with them,” he says. “It’s alright. They won’t hurt you, either.”

Jim won’t, at the very least. Whichever officers are still with him at the scene probably won’t either. Even so, Bruce doesn’t intend to let these children stay in police custody a second longer than they have to. They’ve already suffered enough.

Bruce turns, keeping the children in view, and starts to walk down the hall. The smaller child darts forward to grab the granola bar and water bottle from the floor. The blanket shifts as they readjust their hold.

They aren’t wearing anything underneath.

Bruce looks away. An icy feeling crawls over his skin.

He walks down the hall. The children follow at a safe distance. The little one stays close against the teenager’s side. Bruce watches both of them for any sign of injury, and sees the younger one limping slightly. They don’t have shoes or socks, either. In fact, both children are barefoot.

They’re safe now. They are safe. Bruce will keep them safe. No one else will hurt them, ever again.

“Can you tell me your names?” Bruce says. If he’s going to watch over them, he should know their names. “I’m Bruce.”

“I’m Jason,” the younger child says. He glances up at the teenager, whose face is totally blank. “He, um… I don’t think he talks. But they… they called him Talon.”

The word stirs something deep in Bruce’s brain. A memory. His mother’s voice, soft and gentle, soothing him to sleep.

“They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed…. Speak not a word about them, or they’ll send the talon for your head.”

His father’s voice, too. At the same time? Or later? “Don’t tell him that. I don’t want him hearing those stories. It’s not good for him.”

They called him Talon.

Bruce glances back, at the teenager dressed in all black. He has two long knives at his sides and a bandolier with more knives over his chest. His shirt is torn, but Bruce can see the tight, tactical lines of it. The hood and goggles over his shoulder.

That’s not a name.

At the edge of the foyer, Bruce stops. He leans through the doorway, just far enough to see Jim standing near the front doors. He has another officer with him. Martinez. Bruce relaxes slightly. He knows Martinez. He’s not a threat.

“Alright,” Bruce says. He turns back to the children. “I’m going to talk to the police. I need you to go with me, but you don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to. I won’t let them hurt you.”

Jason moves back behind the teenager. Talon. “Okay,” he says.

Bruce glances at Talon. The teenager just stares at him with golden eyes.

“Okay,” Bruce says, when it becomes clear that the older boy isn’t going to respond. “Come on.”

He leads them across the foyer. Jim’s voice dies away when he sees them, and he straightens from where he’s leaning against the wall. He says something to Martinez, and the man ducks out through the front door. He looks back over his shoulder as he goes. Bruce sees him eyeing the kids.

“This is Jim Gordon,” Bruce says. He stops close to Jim, close enough to speak without being overhead. The kids stop a couple of yards away. “He’s going to help you. Jim, this is Jason, and… Talon.”

Jim’s brow furrows. “Weird name,” he says quietly.

“I don’t think it’s a name,” Bruce says, in the same tone.

“I didn’t think Edwards was into that kind of shit,” Jim mutters. After a long minute, he looks back at Bruce. “Thank you for getting them out,” he says. “We’ll take it from here.”

This is where Bruce should step aside and let the police resume their work. He’s done what Jim called him in to do; he’s helped as much as he can. His responsibility doesn’t stretch any further than that.

He doesn’t move.

“Where are you going to take them?”

Jim narrows his eyes. “The hospital, to start with,” he says. “The older one looks like he’s about to collapse. And… we’ll need to do a rape kit.”

Bruce’s skin crawls. Haven’t they been through enough, he thinks. And then, Do you really think the perpetrators got away.

“And after that?”

Jim’s mustache twitches again. “You know how this works,” he says. “Jason can go to an emergency placement. He’ll be safe there. The older one will have to stay in custody. I can probably get him a bed at Van Derm—”

“Jason said it was self defense. He was trying to protect both of them.”

“I believe it,” Jim says, almost under his breath. He won’t look at Bruce. He won’t look at the kids. He wears an irritated expression like a bulletproof vest. “I don’t like it either. But he killed nineteen people—”

“Allegedly.”

“Allegedly or not—that’s not someone I can release. No matter how justified he was.”

And that’s the end of it. It doesn’t matter what Bruce thinks. It doesn’t matter how much he hates the idea of separating these children. Police procedure demands it.

The law is the law.

“What are you saying?”

Bruce and Jim both turn. Jason looks back at them, wide-eyed and scared, even as the older child steps in front of him.

Protecting him.

“You said—” Jason hones in on Bruce. “You said you wouldn’t arrest him!”

“No one is getting arrested,” Jim says, in the gruff, calm tone that always reminds Bruce he has a child of his own. “We’re going to the hospital now, to make sure you two aren’t hurt—”

“No!" Jason flinches as he interrupts, but he doesn't stop talking. “We’re fine—we’re both fine, we don’t need to go to the hospital.”

His voice shakes. It’s obvious, to anyone who cares to look, that he is not fine. Neither of them is.

“I believe you,” Jim says. “But I still have to check with a doctor to make sure. You don’t have to pay for it. I’ll be there, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Bruce can go with us, if you want.”

Jason glances at Bruce. “You—” His voice is weak. Choked. He sounds close to tears. “You said it was safe.”

It is, Bruce wants to say, you are safe now, I promise. But there are plenty of reasons why an abused, traumatized child might fear the hospital. Many of those reasons are justified.

“Can you tell me why you don’t want to go?” Jim says.

Jason is starting to look cornered. The other boy’s posture is defensive; he holds one arm out in front of Jason. He holds the other at his side.

“He can’t.” Jason tilts his head at the boy in front of him. Talon. “He… you can’t. Please. I’ll go—I don’t care, it’s, it’s fine, I don’t, but he—he’s not—”

The more he talks, the less coherent he is. He shrinks back, and the older boy’s posture locks down further and further. He looks like a cat about to pounce.

“Alright,” Jim says. He holds his hands out, probably trying to signal peace, but the older boy tenses. “He doesn’t have to go. But he can still come along with us, right? If you go to the hospital, won’t he want to go with you?”

Jason starts crying. Gasping, wrecked sobs. “No,” he says, “no, please—”

The older boy pushes him back and pulls a knife.

“Whoa!” Jim pulls his gun. He doesn’t aim to kill, but he aims for the child, and before Bruce has time to think, he’s standing between them.

A gun at his back. A long, curved knife at his front.

“Bruce,” Jim says. His voice is just shy of a command.

“Jim,” Bruce says quietly. “Put your gun away.”

“He has a knife—”

“He feels threatened.”

The boy is not aiming to attack either. He holds a defensive position, with the knife almost at his side. His yellow eyes click between Bruce, Jim, and the gun.

Bruce holds his hands out.

“Talon,” he says. The boy’s eyes snap onto him. “I need you to put the knife down.”

The boy stares at him. Looks past him, at Jim.

“Jim,” Bruce says.

Jim curses. Bruce hears him holster the gun and back away.

“Alright,” Bruce says. “Jim put his gun away. Can you put the knife down now?”

No answer. No change.

“Talon,” Bruce says. “Please.”

The boy lets the knife drop to his side. He starts to relax. His posture unwinds like a ball of string. He steps forward.

Bruce holds still.

Still watching him, the boy walks forward. He walks up to Bruce, into arm’s reach. Then he stops. He kneels.

He takes the knife in both hands, his narrow, greyish-pale hands, and lifts it up. He offers it to Bruce. He tilts his head back.

Jim curses again.

Bruce stands very still.

Kneeling is a sign of submission. Surrender. Tilting his head back, baring his throat—that shows vulnerability. Offering the knife…

Bruce crouches down. The boy watches him, still holding his head back. Bruce reaches out—very slowly—and puts his hand over the handle of the knife.

“Talon,” he says. “I am not going to hurt you.”

He grips the knife. He picks it up and sets it behind him, almost out of reach. The boy lets him. He doesn’t look like he’s breathing, and Bruce wonders how scared he is, behind the veneer of calm.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he says again. “Do you understand?”

The boy watches him for a long, quiet moment. Then he draws the other knife and slits his own throat.

“No!”

Bruce can’t stop it. He can never stop it. He’s too slow, too small, he’s on his knees in a dark alley watching black blood gush between his fingers—

Black blood?

Bruce blinks. He’s not in the alley. He’s in the Edwards house. The body in his arms is small, much smaller than him, and the blood staining his hands isn’t blood at all.

It’s black.

Bruce is distantly aware of Jim, yelling into his radio, cursing a blue streak behind him. And the other child, Jason, watching everything with wide eyes.

“Don’t look,” Bruce croaks. No child should see this. “Don’t look.”

Jason doesn’t look away.

The body in his arms is cold. The yellow eyes are blank. Black blood covers Bruce’s hands as they cover the wound. As he hopelessly tries to stem the bleeding. The boy slashed both of his carotids. His pulse is gone. His skin is cold. He’s already dead.

There’s so much blood.

Bruce closes his eyes. “Shema yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai e-chad.” He couldn’t stop this. Another life lost, another child tortured to death, and he is helpless to do anything but speak. “Baruch sheim k’vod malchuto l’olam va-ed. Adonai—”

The body stirs in his arms.

Bruce startles. He opens his eyes, and the words fade to a soundless refrain as he looks into yellow eyes.

The eyes look back. And then they move.

The boy picks himself up from the floor. His neck is covered in black blood, the same substance that coats Bruce’s hands, but he moves with energy and grace. The wound is closed. There is no scar. Bruce pulls his hands away, and the boy kneels across from him, looking into his eyes.

He’s alive.

“Jesus,” Jim whispers.

Bruce looks back at him. “You saw,” he says. His voice wavers.

Jim nods. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Nods again.

“You can’t take him to the hospital,” Bruce says.

This isn’t a metahuman ability. There are people with healing factors, of course, some of them powerful enough to survive fatal injuries, but this—the golden eyes, the black blood, the way the boy slashed his own throat without even blinking—all of it points to something else. Something worse.

They called him Talon.

“You can’t put him in the system,” Bruce says.

“No,” Jim says. His voice is hoarse.

The boy watches them. Jason watches, too. His eyes are wide, scared, but not shocked. Maybe he already knew the older boy had a healing factor. Maybe he knows more than that.

“Let me take them,” Bruce says. “They’ll be safe. I can keep them safe.”

Jim shakes his head. He fumbles for his pocket, takes a cigarette, and lifts it to his mouth with trembling fingers.

“You’re not licensed,” he says. He takes out a lighter. He doesn’t light it.

“Not as an emergency placement. As protective custody.”

“Shit,” Jim mutters. “Shit.” He shakes his head. “Okay.”

Bruce stands up slowly. His hands brush against his coat. The black blood flakes off like dried glue.

The boy stands with him. When Bruce turns toward the front doors, the boy moves in tandem—two steps back, one step to the side, at Bruce’s left shoulder. Bruce knows that position. He held it once, ten years ago and half a world away, when he stood behind the Demon’s Head.

This is something else. This is something more than abuse, more than assault, more than murder. This is something that Bruce does not understand. It is the edge of something very dark and very deep.

Bruce takes a deep breath and steps forward.

“We’ll stop at Leslie’s,” he says.

Jim nods. “I’ll get the paperwork through.” He flicks his lighter open and lights his cigarette. “The hell with it,” he says under his breath.

“I’ll…” Bruce reaches into the future and finds nothing but worry. Getting the children to Leslie’s clinic, keeping them calm, that will be hard enough. He doesn’t know what caring for them will look like. He’s never had a child in his house before. Now he has two. “I’ll keep them safe.”

Jim meets his eyes. “You’d better know what you’re doing,” he says.

Bruce looks back at the boys. The older one—the Talon—alert and attentive, his throat caked with black blood. Jason, just behind him, clinging to his arm.

“I know,” Bruce says.

If he gets this wrong, he will answer to something much worse than Jim Gordon. Of that, he is certain.

⁂