InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Hello, Sweetie!"

fliesbynight (fliesbynight) wrote in newalliance,
@ 2017-03-19 14:44:00

Entry tags:

[event] retro, maria hill, nightwing

Who: Dick, Maria, open to other cave dwellers
Where: Batcave, Gotham
When: Sometime in the future
What: Dick is "dead", and and Maria has a proposition to keep Bruce's oldest from getting bored and being havoc in the house.
Rating: Low, though probably some for Maria's mouth

Dick might still be healing from wounds, but that didn't keep him from being restless. It was also one reason why he tend to recover from broken bones quicker than the average person. He pushed, insisted his body catch back up to his energy level, ate like a horse and even ate any vegetables Alfred proposed, anything to get his body back to where it needed to be. Right now the healing was close, but there was still tightness here and there in areas he knew there shouldn't be, resistance to his stretching. Thus why he was playing on the rings, turning and flipping about on them, forcing his bandaged chest and shoulders to keep him stock still for a moment before lifting his chin some. He released them for an instant, twisting about to recatch them to see who was watching.

Maria Hill made him blink. Because she was out of place. There were only a handful of people who belonged down in the cave, and she was not normally one of the ones who ventured downstairs.

"Oh hi. Come down for the fresh air?" he teased. If nothing else, he recovered quick.

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shield_2ic
2017-03-19 04:55 pm UTC (link)

She didn't have a standing invitation to this place, not the way she did for the rest of the Manor. Over the years, she'd been invited down often enough, usually when there was a particular crisis to be handled jointly with the Bat-clan - either in their capacity on various teams or because SHIELD needed to move more actively in Gotham - but she'd never been welcome to wander freely as the whim struck her. She didn't want to; her tolerance for Batman's vigilante activities notwithstanding, she had her limits, and she was still the Director of SHIELD. What she didn't know about or witness, she didn't have to find a way to justify later, or lie about if she was ever questioned.

This time was different. The invitation hadn't nearly been as explicit, or quite as voluntary as some times it had been, and she could feel it in the vast expanse of the subterranean vaults. This was, however, the best option open to them all, and that made her willing to count the chill in the air to the water and earth around her and not the mood of its most prominent resident - but not it's only one. Not the reason she was here.

It was a subtle noise, and she followed the steady creaks and bumps over to the areal rings. Even wounded, Dick Grayson could move through the air as one born to a particular element. She smiled at his comment. "It's surprisingly refreshing - I expected more in the way of bats," she said. Hands digging into her pockets, she added, more serious, "You're looking well for a dead man."

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fliesbynight
2017-03-19 05:11 pm UTC (link)

He turned easily, tumbling down to land on his feet. "Oh, we try to keep their side of the cave untouched. I can show you the best places to watch them when they go off for the evening, though! It's a sight. Bruce ever tell you that they hated me for a whole two months while I climbed around their sleeping lairs and treated them for white nose? He's not the only one who gets grumpy at having his sleep disturbed."

Yeah, Dick was a lot of things--animal lover was a definite, especially when he was willing to climb around upside on a precarious cave ceiling just to tediously medicate hundreds of hibernating, unhappy chiroptera.

But he knew she wasn't here for bats at all. Well, not actual bats. He mopped at his sweaty hair with a towel, one eye closing as he grinned. "Thanks! Got all the stitches out and everything." Then more seriously. "Thank you. For helping to purge everything from the media. I can't..." Awkwardness suddenly. "Uh, well, that would have been the worse thing. Especially for the kids." Sam, Sin, none of them needed the downfall that could have come about by his identity being revealed without Barbara's and Maria's swift race to kill any image associated to Dick Grayson. And Dick would have been furious if anyone had argued to see it done.

Protecting the family had been way more important than preserving anything else. Even young photos of him with his parents.

"So, what brings you down here aside from the snappy air?" He paced away to find his shirt. Not to necessarily cover his torso. Mostly to cover the bandages.

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shield_2ic
2017-03-19 05:36 pm UTC (link)

"No, somehow that never came up," Maria said a little dryly. Bruce loved all his sons - sometimes over their violent protests - but she was never quite sure that he didn't try to protect them by not bringing them up often to the Director of SHIELD. They might be friends, but she had her job, and in both their worlds, family was something to be protected, even if the could protect themselves. "Do I want to know how bats show their displeasure with a particular person?"

A person who didn't exist anymore. She nodded, but there was no pleasure in her grim expression as her hands dug deeper into her pockets. "It was what needed to be done," she said. They all knew that; for family, those who could and those who could not protect themselves. The world knowing that Dick Grayson was Nightwing was bad enough; the world would just be able to trace certain pathways and connection, and their attention would drift from the Bludhaven vigilante to speculation, and no one needed that. Not Bruce, not Sin, and certainly not Sam. They all knew how to sacrifice themselves for the innocent, and it didn't get more straightforward than this.

The man who'd been unmasked as Nightwing didn't exist: with no name to connect, no life to trace in photos and records, he'd just been a pretty face with dark hair and blue eyes. And then he'd been dead, and the world had moved on.

That was all well and good, except for the part where she was eyeing the man in question, judging the bandages and the not-quite-as-fluid grace he moved with: some lingering pain and stiffness there, which was to be expected. "Have you given any thought to what happens next?" she asked in turn. "You probably could live down here, keep up with the nightly activities: change the color of the uniform, coin a new name, people might not catch on." There was an implied 'or' in her voice.

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fliesbynight
2017-03-19 06:17 pm UTC (link)

Dick shrugged. "Oh, they shriek and..." A small shrug. "Bite."

That was the big question now, and obviously one that had been weighing on him, because he tipped his head back, rolled it forward and cupped the back of his neck, pacing and eyeing his bare toes. "Well... It's a mask forever. I can't visit, not openly. Staying down here... ugh... My complexion." He grimaced playfully, but it wasn't entirely all play. The thought of staying trapped in one spot... It wouldn't drive just him nuts. He would drive everyone else nuts as well. "Or run away to the circus?"

More jests on top of a serious matter. He'd obviously been thinking about it, though. More he was probably waiting for Bruce to suggest to him what could be done, what would favor them at that point. Staying low for a while was just a definite, though, giving everyone time to untangle the media, process how they needed to behave concerning Bruce' eldest adoptee.

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shield_2ic
2017-03-19 09:01 pm UTC (link)

"And they don't carry rabies hardly at all," Maria said dryly. She was aware that there were fewer bats with the disease than popular opinion would have it, but there was still a rather large colony down here.

He bounced, and a part of her heart that had been tied into a knot eased a little. There was something that was profoundly wrong about Dick Grayson still; seeing him bloody and broken had been wrenching, and had made scrubbing away his life an easy call. He'd been vulnerable enough; having someone pry through his past and peel apart his life, find the exact angle to attack him from, would have crippled him, and if they moved from him to the rest of Bruce's family, it would have destroyed that bright light inside him.

And that would have been the worst.

But it left him trapped down here in the darkness, where no camera could find him and start rebuilding that online presence. Except for an alternative. "Circuses are a dying breed these days," she said, but a little gently. "You could come work for SHIELD," she said, and in other times, it had been half a quip, something she'd tossed at him as a lure knowing he'd never so much as nibble. But now that he couldn't be a cop, couldn't even be Bruce's son in public? "We do really nice work with identity creation, have a working environment that involves a Helicarrier, and you get to help save the world on a regular basis. Again," she added as something of an after thought, because it wasn't exactly a new experience for him.

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fliesbynight
2017-03-21 12:10 am UTC (link)

"Heeeey, I wore gloves!" he defended. "... Mostly."

He stopped his pacing when she said circuses were a dying breed, clutching his chest. "Ow! Why you gotta hit so hard?" She had said it gently, but the truth hurt. But he knew that was the case even before he uttered it. Circuses were dying, weren't what they used to be. Not too long ago the elephant that had been like a nanny to him had died, succumbing to age finally in the sanctuary she had retired in. Another thread snapped from a short childhood.

For a moment he peered at her like he did think it was a quip. But then tilt his head, realizing it wasn't. Because yes, it was nice to thank her in person and for her to see how he was getting on, and he'd do the same for her, but Maria Hill was a busy person who found gestures of mere condolence or checking in awkward, even if she had managed better in recent years.

So next Dick was considering swiftly, so in the next five seconds, he held a palm up, leaning back against one of the leg lift machines with his hip and heel, a precarious lean for many. "You know I can't kill anyone ever, right? As in... there's no situation where I would take that shot."

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shield_2ic
2017-03-22 07:36 pm UTC (link)

He brushed it off as a joke, pantomimed falling over, but she'd been around the Batfam and him enough now to be able to tell when there was more bravado to the humor than truth, when it was someone desperately covering pain. She knew how that went, knew better than to push at it, especially now. She didn't have to be terribly sensitive to know that he was losing not just a path to him, but a home he'd once had, right along with losing the rest of his life, whether or not his heart still beat.

There was a part of her that couldn't help but see the parallels with what she was doing now to Fury recruiting her out of the Marines; there was a part of her that hated herself for it. He had very few other places he could go, after all, making this nearly extortion. "You know I have other people who can take that shot?" she returned. "What I don't have," she continued, "is someone with your skills I can trust with my back." Not that SHIELD agents weren't good at what they did, or that she didn't have a solid grip on her people, but everyone agreed: Dick Grayson was uncorruptable. And that was precious and rare in her field.

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fliesbynight
2017-03-23 12:19 am UTC (link)

That was the problem. He didn't regret losing essentially his identity or needing to cloak his ties to the family as best he could, understood and accepted his need to be buried.

It was costly, though. This was his home, his family, his city. Bruce had taken him in when he was just an unruly little circus kid in sneakers hell bent on finding his parents murderers. Bruce had been there when he said his good byes to the circus folk, and yeah, he'd been scared watching that train leave the station with Bruce standing still and silent, a marble statue like his marble home that was so solid in ways that Dick couldn't fathom. He couldn't be that still, and found out Bruce didn't need him to be, showing him a newly built trapeze for him to expend his energy on. He'd learned Bruce didn't say he loved, he instead did little actions to show it, to give proof he was thoughtful of the boy that would flip from his beautiful antique banister... and grew up to be the young man who still flipped from his beautiful even-more-antique banister. And when Bruce didn't have enough words or little comforts to settle him, there was always Alfred, soothing hurts, fussing at him to get back in bed and care for injuries properly. There had been arguments, fights even, but when the circus had left, this was home.

Well, the train was leaving again, and this time he knew staying at home wasn't an option. Not unless he wanted to go crazy downstairs or be constantly hiding from guests.

For a moment, he was still, staring off to one side, just the gears turning behind those intelligent blue eyes. It was weird, but yes, he could stand still, internally processing everything, all the different venues, letting her words sink in, what the pros and cons were. Then he was moving again, as though he'd just been on pause briefly and was pushing himself on his feet, smile playful.

"I'll have some stipulations, you know. I like to be fed regularly, can't sit at a desk for more than an hour, I only want one boss and you're the unlucky one, and Phil can't do his frowny thing at me. It hurts my feels. Have you told Bruce you're stealing me?"

That was a yes. The incorruptible acrobat (because she wasn't wrong--there were rules Dick didn't bend on and had the willpower to stand by) was agreeing.

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shield_2ic
2017-03-23 09:51 pm UTC (link)

They all knew how to sacrifice; they were all very comfortable with the idea of giving their lives for another. This was a different sort of giving his life, and they all knew it: as the saying went, dying was easy while living was far harder. But if there was one thing everyone agreed on, even aside from the incorruptability, Dick Grayson lived. It was impossible to think of him dead or moving slowly, not when he threw himself into everything with so much energy and light. The world would be a darker place without him in it, but maybe he could bring a little of that light into SHIELD.

Fury had recruited her, so long ago, to clean house in an agency that had grown fat and lazy. She had culled through the corruption and petty bullshit, throwing agents out on their ear if it was clear they didn't care about the people they served, cared more about the game of spies than the world they were trying to protect.

She didn't expect Dick to do the same; he didn't need to do the same, not with how hard she'd ridden her agents, watched them all for signs that they were sliding back into the same bloated comfortable bureaucracy she'd come into. But she was Director of SHIELD, and couldn't do the small things that needed to be done, even if she had any kind of talent for them. He did. For someone who had kept the biggest secret identity in the world, he was brightly honest and optimistic. They needed some of that burning through them.

"No donuts," she said flatly. "We can maybe swing popcorn, but you're not allowed to bring in treats so often the agents get lazy. We can get you a standing desk." Or maybe a treadmill desk. She wondered if they made parallel ring desks. "Though you should be out in the field often enough it wouldn't be necessary. Agreed on the ground I don't want anyone else handling you anyways. You'll have to take the frowny thing up with Phil, he does that to everyone who's doing something he thinks is wrong."

She had to grin at his last stipulation. "And no, I thought I had better present it to him as a fait accompli instead of asking for permission." Not that Bruce had the authority to refuse her. Probably.

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fliesbynight
2017-03-24 07:49 pm UTC (link)

His mouth popped open, absolutely aghast. "But.. I want the donuts... My body will go into shock." A thoughtful look. "Worse than SHIELD coffee shock. Besides, I said nothing about sharing!"

"He's going to frown at me," Dick argued. "Because I don't want to wear black or suits. Have you seen me try to tie a tie? It's not pretty." That was a lie, because he could tie a tie very well if he wanted to. He just didn't like them at all so made a mess of them on purpose.

Dick looked thoughtful. "Let's not go with fait accompli. Let's go with two kids saying 'please' at the same time so he can't--never mind, he can refuse that, too. Hmm..." Actually, he was sure Bruce would see what Dick had already thought about. Maria was tough as nails, good at what she did, and she genuinely wanted to keep the world safe. Sure she took some measures neither Dick nor Bruce approved of, but she was the shade of steel gray that barred humanity from wide spread wars at times. She was like them--they did hard, downright mean things and saw the ugliest of people so that normal people could continue admiring flowers, worrying about how their kids were getting along in school, and disliking their jobs. They couldn't be a part of that. They were on the other side of the curtain fighting so as many as possible could enjoy that life.

They also both liked Maria, something that was rare. She could understand them. They understood her. Sometimes they would huff at each other at the semantics of how they went about their saving of civilians, but then they would sit at the bar, fattening themselves on Alfred-made treats, swapping information, and teasing each other. Maria was one of theirs, in on the secret, welcomed into their home, and if she called, they answered.

Which meant if Dick was around her they had a much better chance of making sure Maria stayed around. Maria being around meant a good SHIELD and a happier Bruce. Okay, and a happier Dick. He was pretty fond of the dry-humored director.

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