Where In Bludhaven AU | Damian Edition

[runstheworld]

Fic: A Visit To The Principles Office
In Which Carmen and Damian Hang Out

★
"Obviously you're aware that Ducati only made five hundred of its original Superleggera V4 line," Robin observes in the flat, scrutinizing tone that she's coming to learn is typical of him, as he crouches near where she herself is knelt on the paved surface of the Batcave's motorpool, watching her like a miniature gargoyle. "With an additional five hundred for its hundredth anniversary."

Once, Carmen wouldn't have thought she'd enjoy Robin's company as much as she does; while undeniably amusing in the short term, his aggression and penchant for putting on airs of disdainful superiority would've gotten tiresome to be around before long. Yet the more she spends time with him — and she has, in fact, spent a great deal of time with him, as he seems to have declared himself her de facto guardian and chaperone whenever Batman and Nightwing are absent from the Batcave going about what she presumes are their everyday, unmasked lives — the more she can't help but grow a little attached. Beneath the carping exterior, she's begun to discover a variety of deep passions and hastily-masked insecurities, all buried alongside the seeds of interests she half suspects that Robin doesn't even quite recognize himself.

He likes to be smart, for one thing. He likes it when the people he perceives as adults treat him like an authority in his own right. And he's almost insatiably curious about things he doesn't yet know, as if determined to push himself to mastery in every pursuit he might ever come across.

He's fun, in other words. Once she'd gotten a handle on what makes him tick — courtesy of a few helpful hints dropped by Batman, in addition to her own observations — it hadn't been so very hard to accommodate to him. He's comfortable around authoritative women who treat him like a prodigy. Given that Selina's never mentioned much about interacting with him, Carmen has her suspicions that whoever it is that lingers on his mind when he talks to her, it's someone whom she'll likely never know or meet. That's enough for her, really. She has no intention of asking.

She shifts slightly, regarding the various pieces of the disassembled chassis surrounding her on the cool, slightly gritted pavement. "Well," she remarks lightly, "More like nine hundred and ninety-nine, now."

Robin snorts, his brow furrowing into a thunderous look, but he looks away quickly enough that she knows he's trying to hide amusement at the wisecrack, rather than scorn. "And technically, nine hundred and ninety-nine forever," he insists. "It's not a status that can be reclaimed. You may be able to reassemble it, but it won't have been built by Ducati anymore."

"The Ship of Theseus might disagree with you," she says pleasantly. "Pass me the handheld trace detector, please."

"The Ship of Theseus is about replacing parts, not deconstruction and reconstruction."

"That's why I said might," she teases, not missing a beat. "The detector, please?"

Without further objection, Robin passes it over, still watching as she methodically begins to sweep the various parts, checking each one in turn before setting it carefully aside into the space she's reserved for the pieces she's already finished examining. "The unfortunate but necessary sacrifice of such a unique vehicle," he eventually concedes, as his tone mellows into something just slightly more serious. "Given the circumstances."

A fitting pronouncement of a lot of things about her life of late, Carmen reflects, and doesn't let it show on her face. "Lee has a way of eliciting those," she says instead. "As you've seen firsthand."

Even now, she's conflicted about the awareness that Robin was the one with his boots on the ground at the site of her now-destroyed safehouse, conducting the preliminary investigation into what had transpired. It's hard to guess what Batman might be thinking even in her most insightful of moments; on this specific topic, she can't even begin to imagine what would've possessed him to allow a child to stand alone on the front lines of that manner of catastrophe. From what little she's been able to piece together, Robin had insisted on taking charge of the scene, and no one had seen fit to dispute him. She can understand him wanting the responsibility of leadership in that scenario, and the solemnity of the authority that would come with it. She's just not altogether sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to let him.

She could ask him, maybe. She could ask Nightwing, too. For the most part, though, she tries not to bring it up, and tells herself it's for reasons other than the fact that the humiliation of what Lee had inflicted on her that night still chafes something awful.

"Your amateur detectives sent over Jordan's casefile," Robin says eventually, leaning just a little harder on the word amateur than strictly necessary. "I've isolated a number of recent incidents that match his various known modus operandi. However —"

"The plural is modi," she interjects without looking up, and doesn't point out that Zack has never flubbed his Latin a day in his life, amateur or not. "Modus is singular, modi is plural."

"His various known modi operandi," Robin repeats, as if pretending he didn't hear her. "However, when it comes to the signature, the profile is less detailed. More unhelpful."

She sets aside another few pieces, careful not to let the surface of the pavement chip or scratch the paint. "That's not surprising," she agrees. "ACME's internal profiling would've occurred exclusively while he was still their top agent. And the crimes they have attributed to him on file were all influenced by me in some way — either to mimic me as a means of surpassing me, or…"

She pauses, but before she can find the words she wants, Robin finishes the sentence for her. "Or because he was manipulating you as a pawn to commit his crimes for him," he says matter-of-factly.

Again, something like humiliation prickles down the back of her neck, but she makes herself settle it back with one of the breathing exercises Suhara taught her long ago. "That's right," she replies, for all that it rankles to admit it. "He named the objects, but left it to me to choose the method. And in that case, the only commonality was value — his aim was to sell it all to finance a criminal empire to fill the vacuum left by mine."

She doesn't say after he killed me. She's not quite sure whether that's for Robin's sake, or her own.

"In other words, the ritualistic element is you," Robin concludes. "He has no unique identity. He's fixated on you because everything he does will be adjudicated as relative to you, whether he likes it or not."

And there's something in Robin's tone when he says that — something he tries very hard to flatten out and breeze past, but that gives her pause nevertheless. Everything he does will be adjudicated as relative to you has a ritualistic sort of cadence to it, itself, as though it's not the first time Robin has dwelt on such thoughts, or mulled over such a phenomenon.

And why shouldn't he? Doesn't he appreciate a feeling like that all too well? Don't they all, in some shape or another, find themselves subsumed in the long shadow of the Bat and desperate to break free into the light where they can finally cast their own?

Nightwing certainly knows it. She's heard it in the subtleties of his interactions with Batman, never disrespectful but not always reaching deferential — how he's learned to pull his tone into that of a joke so that his natural penchant for humor can soften over the chafing.

I don't need your permission.
You don't need to tell me.
I've got it under control.

And yet she's not in Nightwing's custody right now, is she? She always comes back to the Cave in the end. And suddenly she can imagine, all too clearly, an interaction between Nightwing and Batman that doesn't look so different from the one she'd had with Lee in Geneva when she'd told him his time with VILE was through —

What do you think you're doing, locking me out? We're partners!
Failed?! I've proven I can steal anything, anywhere, anytime!
Your rules bore me, Carmen. You want the game to be over? Then it's over.

The ritualistic element to Lee Jordan's crimes is her, and there's no escaping the fact that she had a direct hand in making him that way. And if she's picked up on the power dynamics around the Batcave in the relatively short time she's been convalescing among them, there's no question that an investigative mind as capable as Robin's will have long since made the connection of those similarities between herself and the Bat as well.

"I gather you read about Delphi?" she remarks at last, setting aside her work to look over at Robin properly — no avoiding it, not this time.

Unsurprisingly, he nods. "You engaged in a series of thematic crimes revolving around young male prodigies throughout history. Tutankhamun in Egypt. Picasso in his childhood home of Barcelona. Alexander at Delphi in Greece. You baited Jordan to number himself among them."

"I did," she concedes, because there's no denying it. "What I'm sure you also noticed is that Lee's personal trajectory maps closely to my own. A young ACME detective who set records for their number of cases solved, full of ambition and outgrowing their present role. I thought he'd end up like me. A protégé of sorts."

"You placed expectations on him to follow a destiny you ordained," Robin says, and oddly doesn't sound at all sympathetic to Lee's position in the way she might otherwise have expected from a remark like that. "He didn't meet them, and was delivered the crushing failure of consequences. Also at your hand."

"Credit where credit is due, Zack and Ivy caught him the first time," she points out. "But the second time, yes. I led them straight to him."

And now she's crouched on the floor of a motorpool in a cave beneath the surface of the earth, meticulously checking each and every component of a limited-edition motorcycle to be certain that Lee Jordan hasn't put a bomb somewhere in it. Consequences follow in all directions, without exception.

Robin studies her quietly — and then, to her surprise, shifts from crouching like a gargoyle to sitting flat on the ground in a manner that reads almost companionable. At the very least, it implies that he's relaxing in a manner he hadn't been before. Or maybe just settling in for what he knows will be a long discussion. "Nightwing may still harbor the belief that Jordan can be rehabilitated out of his madness," he says reflectively. "It's his nature to seek to draw individuals away from their destructive propensities."

At first, she almost thinks Robin is referring to her. But then, a memory resurfaces: going too far is not something Robin struggles with, to put it mildly, she recalls from one of her conversations with Batman over chess, and suddenly a myriad of pieces fall into place all at once — loose ends she's come across in trying to figure Robin out that all abruptly tie together with what she's observed about his own interests in this case.

She thinks of how, for all the sniping and banter between himself and Nightwing, Robin had still been the first to go out of his way to vet her when Nightwing's interest in her had likely begun to be apparent. How he's been accompanying Nightwing on patrol not because he needs supervision, but perhaps to ensure that he's not left alone with his emotions and a city full of crime to vent them on. How he may well have taken charge of the investigation into her destroyed safehouse not for his own glory, but to keep Nightwing away from it — and to ensure that Nightwing could race to the Cave and see her, instead, without feeling conflicted about shirking his own responsibilities.

They're siblings, she realizes, and not just as a de facto family that naturally descends from shared relationships to the Bat, but through a bond forged between them in its own right. Robin likes to be smart, and he likes to be acknowledged, and he's deep in the shadows cast by the several predecessors who've tread the same path before him — but he has what Lee Jordan hadn't. He has Nightwing, believing the best in him the way he believes the best in everyone.

(Nightwing had believed the best of Carmen Sandiego, hadn't he? And just look at the state of that master thief now.)

"What do you think about that?" she prompts, and Robin blinks at her for an instant before catching himself, schooling his face back into as relaxed of an expression as she's ever seen him wear. He'd expected her to voice her own opinions, clearly. She'd surprised him with caring more about his.

"I think he's the obvious target," Robin answers with a significant look. "Jordan's previous endeavor involved capturing and threatening your father as a means of manipulating you through him. Psychologically, he needs to imitate your signature as a means of proving his ability to surpass you, which is why he's never bothered to develop one of his own. That means the likelihood that he'll repeat his previous methodology is high — he has no reason to evolve, lest that growth cause him to appear too dissimilar to you, and thus rob him of the emotional satisfaction of being better than you at your own game. He'll try to manipulate something of significance to you again. You've signaled few things of significance in Bludhaven, outside of Nightwing. Therefore, Nightwing is the clear choice."

It's hard not to be proud of Robin, hearing a well-reasoned conclusion like that. Even her idle discomfort at having the topic of her father brought up can't entirely quell the smile of approval that flits across her lips. She doesn't try to hide it, either, as she flashes it his way.

"He is the clear choice," she agrees, but slowly sobers as she considers the chessboard Lee had left in the bistro for her to find, and its two missing pieces that he'd taken as message and trophy both. The black king had initiated the trap when it'd hit the board — that's a clear statement in itself. The black queen had been missing, and thoughts of the interplay between those chess pieces and their relative power mingle with the color association.

But the white knight had been missing, too. And was that "knight" for Nightwing, or...something else?

She draws a breath. "But he's not the only one," she finishes, brushing the palms of her hands on her skirt to clear them of sweat and dust both before reaching up to adjust the tension in her ponytail. It's an absent gesture. Idle. Fidgety, almost. She doesn't bother to try to disguise it; maybe that's a mark of her own level of comfort with Robin, herself. "I've been in contact with the founder of the Pennyworth Foundation — Dick Grayson. With all that he's been doing for Bludhaven of late, he fits the profile of Lee's threat as well. A white knight associating with the black queen. And as you said, it wouldn't be the first time Lee targeted a civilian in all this."

Robin coughs, hastening to clear his throat in the wake of it. "I'm familiar with Grayson," he says when he's finished regaining control of his voice. "Are you saying you've pursued romantic interest in him?"

She casts him a look. "I'm not two-timing Nightwing, if that's what you're asking," she replies flatly. "I've met him a few times. He's admirable. And cute. And he offered me a job. A job that it's entirely possible will be rescinded, for that matter, now that I've gone off the grid following this business with my safehouse."

"Doubtless Nightwing will inform him," Robin tells her, which comes off less reassuring and more just conclusive. "That would make logical sense. Obviously, since I presume he's the one who put you in contact in the first place."

This time, she's the one whose sidelong look turns more scrutinizing. "Oh? That's a curious assumption to make," she remarks. "What makes you say that?"

Robin huffs again, rapid. "Who else would have facilitated it?" he points out, a little too quickly. "You agree you have few ties of any relevant significance to the city. And while you could certainly have approached him on your own terms, you're aware of your own reputation. He has no reason to trust you, given your relative positions. You're too careful to take that chance without an existing way in."

"So you conclude that because Nightwing is the only person in Bludhaven with whom I have an acquaintance, he must also be the link between myself and the Pennyworth Foundation."

Robin levels a look at her. "Am I wrong?"

"No, not at all. It's just curious that you seem largely unconcerned about my intentions toward the unsuspecting civilian, despite how those intentions might have a direct effect on Nightwing," Carmen observes, still watching him significantly. "To the degree that you naturally assume he'll act as an intermediary between the two of us even while being a possible rival for my affections."

"Because he would," Robin insists. "It's how he is."

"And of the two available options, you clearly favor my continued attachment to Nightwing, despite your previous insistence that his romantic liaisons disgust you. Why so suddenly interested?"

Robin's shoulders hunch. "No particular reason," he insists, a flash of his previous sullenness showing through. "I'm gathering information related to the matter at hand. Anything could be relevant. That's all."

In other words, he's retreating back to the safe haven of detached observation again. But more importantly, he's gone there because she'd set him off-balance, and if she doesn't give him space to catch himself and find his footing once more, she's likely to drive him away. He'll suddenly claim he has business elsewhere, and leave her to her work alone, and disappear into the shadows to keep watching her from a safe distance, outside the perimeter of where she can continue to make him uncomfortable.

And she doesn't want that, she finds. Not just for the sake of her own continued company, either — but because she likes the progress she's made at drawing Robin out of his defensive curl when he's in her proximity, and she'd miss it if it were to be set back now.

"Well, I do like them both," she says at last, and shifts to sitting herself, with her body slightly angled toward Robin but not so much that she's engaging head-on — affording a sense of intimacy without direct confrontation. "But for the sake of your research, there's no question where my choice will land when the time comes to make it. Sometimes a crush is just a crush. Butterflies don't necessarily have to go anywhere."

Robin stays quiet for a long moment, his masked eyes fixed on an invisible spot on the pavement somewhere roughly between his knees. "Why did he connect you?" he asks at last, and she can't decide if he sounds defensive or wounded or somewhere in between. "With Grayson. How did that happen?"

"He was trying to sway me away from a life of crime," she answers gently, opting for a soft approach until he's willing to show her more of what's put him into his present hedgehog-like state. "The topic of philanthropy came up. He mentioned the Pennyworth Foundation, and said he could put me in touch with Mr. Grayson. I was as surprised as you are, frankly. I can't imagine someone in his position would want much to do with me, if not for Nightwing putting in the good word."

"So it was his idea," Robin mumbles. "He's reckless in his idealism. Stupid. It's dangerous. He barely even knows you."

She doesn't press harder on that, for all that she's tempted to. If Robin is at war with his thoughts, then she's intent on giving him the space to fight out the battle and arrive at his own conclusions before she makes any attempt to draw them out for her own benefit. Instead, she keeps sifting through the pieces of the Ducati, making steady methodical process towards being able to reassemble the motorcycle. It'll feel good to have it at her disposal again, even if only in theory. Even if only contingent on whenever Batman agrees to release her, or Nightwing opts to sneak her out under his own recognizance.

Eventually, she waits him out long enough, and curiosity wins out over inexplicable turmoil.

"...How did Grayson act? Toward you," Robin says at last, seemingly uncertain.

"I'm not sure what you mean," she tells him truthfully. "He was receptive. Generous. Willing to hear me out."

But then, after a ponderous moment, she continues, "Though I admit it puzzled me that he didn't seem very interested in the reason I was there. I'd assumed I would need to work to overcome my reputation, so I was prepared to be met with skepticism. But it almost felt as though the thought of being suspicious of me had never even crossed his mind. Even with a recommendation from a reputable hero, it's odd that he was that…"

That...what? Friendly? Open? Charming?

"It's like he expected me," she finishes slowly. "Like he expected…me. Like we were already close before I even set foot through the door."

And thinking back on it, that feeling had been — almost mutual, hadn't it? Not in that she'd known what to expect, but in how easy it had been to talk to him, how taken she'd felt by his smile. In the moment she'd thought it was just his natural disarming charisma. That was the most reasonable explanation, wasn't it?

"He'll target Nightwing," Robin says suddenly, abruptly jarring her from her thoughts. "Jordan. He better fits the profile — a hero he's likely to project himself on and see as a parallel to your previous seduction of himself."

"Seduction?" she repeats, her eyebrows raising almost to her hairline in her incredulity, and doesn't dwell on how Robin has just veered their conversation at breakneck speed away from the topic of Dick Grayson and back onto matters of business.

"He refused to follow your principles, so you rejected and ultimately betrayed him," Robin continues rapidly. "He doesn't care what attachments you form, fundamentally. He cares whether they're able to succeed in an area where you made clear he failed. What you hold over him is the fact that you're the greatest thief in the world and he isn't. Therefore, if you cease to be a thief for any reason —"

"Then Nightwing robs him of his chance to beat me and succeeds in making me change my outlook, when I refused to compromise on it for Lee."

"I'll brief him," Robin says brusquely, pushing up to his feet and coming around to the side where she's been stacking the parts she's finished clearing, evidently intent on busying himself with beginning to reassemble them in tandem with her own work. "On these findings. He'll hear me out. He — might listen."

But Carmen's hands still over the remaining parts, and she can't help but turn a searching look toward the caped boy at her side, aching to understand these new and seemingly mercurial changes in emotion. "You're worried," she says, keeping her voice soft. "Are you willing to tell me why?"

"No," Robin answers immediately, shoulders hunching again. But again, she waits him out, and before long he reluctantly adds, "It's better if you don't get involved."

She props her chin on one palm, giving him a wry but gentle look. "You mean aside from being the focal point of this entire affair to begin with?" she points out, not without a touch of irony. "Why are you worried Nightwing might not listen to you? From what I've seen, he values your word higher than just about anyone."

Robin keeps working, his masked eyes on his labors. "Because I know a way to find Jordan," he says at last. "One that will work."

It doesn't take a genius to sense the unspoken remainder of that thought. "But?" she prompts.

"Batman wouldn't approve," Robin replies immediately, as if he'd been explicitly waiting for the alibi of being asked.

It doesn't take a detective to read between the massive, gaping lines of that remark, either. "And would Nightwing approve?" she says, cocking her head with open curiosity and letting him read her body language for what it is.

"Complicated," comes the succinct reply.

She thinks a minute, mulling over the way this shift in the conversation has begun to unfold not unlike a chess match in itself. "But you think it's a good idea."

"I think it's a dangerous idea," Robin says bluntly. "But it would take certain decisions out of his hands. Which might prove to be for the best."

"In other words, not so dangerous that you're not willing to risk it, if the circumstances are right."

Robin's lips flatten into a thin line. He breathes in, long and slow, and lets it out again not unlike the way she'd done herself before. He stares at his hands, and she can sense the simmering disquiet radiating off him. But just as she's weighing out whether to nudge at him again, or try to prompt him to share his thoughts, it finally seems to reach a breaking point and bursts free, seemingly almost without meaning to.

"How do you remain so dedicated to your principles in the face of someone like Jordan?" he blurts out, pointedly not looking at her. "Don't you ever think it would be better — justified — to just — to know for certain he could never —"

"Of course," she interrupts evenly, driving a wedge into the morass of his thoughts. "I'd argue that's the very purpose of principles to begin with — because it's perfectly human to see the most direct solution and want to believe that it's the best."

"I've heard that before," Robin says sullenly. "Next you'll say that you have to be better than them or else you risk becoming them."

"Actually, I was going to say that I think principles are like manners," she corrects him lightly, prompting him to glance up at her in a mixture of surprise and disbelief. "It's easy to be good when you're at your best. Manners, like principles, act as guardrails. They remind you of the right way to act when you're at your worst, and tempted otherwise."

Robin's lips tighten. "And you don't think it's worth accepting a lesser evil for the sake of the greater good?"

"Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil," she answers, and then adds after a moment, "Name that quote?"

It works; Robin can't resist a challenge, no matter how idle or middling. His nose scrunches beneath his domino mask, and after a short interval, he finally ventures, "Macbeth."

"Close. Jerry Garcia."

Robin casts her a withering stare. "The ice cream?"

"That would be Cherry Garcia, thank you very much," she replies, parrying his disdain with breezy dismissal and an equally nonchalant wave of her hand. "I'm telling Nightwing we need to start buying you some albums. You've never listened to the Grateful Dead?"

"My grandfather would've argued that dead is dead, regardless of adjective," Robin retorts, and it takes her a solid minute to realize he's making an attempt at humor right back. The relief hits her in a rush; wherever his mood had been spiraling to, she seems to have managed to tease him out of the tailspin.

"Your grandfather listened to a lot of American rock bands, did he?"

"No," Robin says, and shoots her a smug look. "But being as old as he was, he probably would've called them albums, too."

"At least I'm old enough to have a driver's license," she replies, gesturing toward the scattered pieces of her motorcycle in indication. "And to own a limited-edition motorcycle formerly built by Ducati, soon to be rebuilt by Gotham's own Boy Wonder."

"By the heir to the mantle of Batman," Robin corrects without missing a beat. But then he seems to think on it, his gaze flicking askance before he offers up almost like a peace offering, "and by the world's greatest thief. I'm not doing all the work by myself."

"Perish the thought," Carmen says, charmed and amused in equal measure. "I'm almost finished scanning these. Then we can talk about the modifications I have in mind, before we start reassembling her."

That piques Robin's interest. "What kind of modifications?"

She smiles. "How long does it take for the Superleggera V4 to go from zero to one hundred?"

"Trick question. You didn't specify miles or kilometers."

"Very good," she says. "Do you know both?"

"Approximately two and a half seconds to achieve one hundred kilometers per hour," Robin replies, sounding smug. "One hundred miles per hour is roughly double that. Around five seconds."

"Right again, Boy Wonder. Unless, of course, it happens to be my model. In which case my enhancements have taken it closer to four."

Robin studies her, clearly scheming behind the white lenses of his mask. "So, because I'm assisting in its construction —"

"You can't drive it, no."

"I know how!"

"And they say I'm the one out to break the law," Carmen teases. "The answer is no. But since you are an equal partner in building it, I'll make you a deal: it stays mine until you earn your driver's license. The day that happens, I'll give it to you."

Robin tips his head to look at her, incredulous — but possibly a little hopeful. "You'd just give it away. A Ducati Superleggera V4. Just like that?"

"Consider it a token of my esteem for adhering to principles," she says, and motions him easily back to their work.


★ ★ ★