Hanging Work
by Lucy Gillam

This was not, Dick Grayson reflected as he hung upside-down over a case of diamond bracelets, the brightest thing he'd ever done.

Not that the store was much of a challenge. The security system at Baylor's Fine Jewelry was almost pathetically easy to disarm. The cameras took a single snip to disable, and no one would even know until morning. The actual alarm system was even weaker. A suspicious mind might think that perhaps they wanted to be robbed, and start wondering about their insurance coverage and the current level of business.

Not that he'd ever think such things.

No, the part that wasn't particularly bright was hanging upside-down, over a case of diamond bracelets, in Gotham, on a night when he had no reason to think Batman would be otherwise engaged.

It was his first job in Gotham in over six months, since his last meeting with Batman. Since then he'd contented himself with week-long trips to other cities, and he hadn't thought too closely about why. So far, Batman hadn’t interfered or tracked him, but the schedule was getting a bit wearing.

So...it wasn't entirely bright. In fact, it was probably brilliantly stupid. But Selina had admired these bracelets, and he was three weeks behind on her birthday present -- and if he actually paid money for one, he'd never hear the end of it.

He wasn't going to let Batman interfere with that, even if it meant risking a confrontation. Even if it meant being looked at the way Batman had looked at him on that last rooftop.

He'd been remembering that look during every job he'd pulled since then, and it was tangled in his head with what Batman had asked him five years ago, about his parents and how they would feel about his chosen career. Sometimes he felt as if he were watching an argument go on in his head entirely without his own involvement, between the imagined disapproval of Batman and his parents, and Selina's encouragement and support. It rarely was a real issue, but sometimes...

He remembered an argument they'd had when he was fourteen, just before he really began working, when she had suggested he think of a name to go with her own moniker. He'd only ever had one nickname in his life, and he'd made the mistake of mentioning it.

"Oh, but it really is perfect! Cat and bird, can you imagine?"

He could, all too well. What he couldn't do was explain to her the ice that formed in his stomach when she suggested it, or the way the faint, disapproving specter of his parents howled at the thought of using his mother's name for him as a criminal alias.

Or the sense that, however he had deflected Batman's question, they would have wanted him to use his gifts and training for nobler purposes. They might not have reacted exactly the way Batman had implied – his father had been a good man, but there were things in the family history that did not bear too close an examination – but they'd had other things in mind when they taught him how to hang just so from a line.

Instead, he'd simply asked why he needed a name while he was climbing through air conditioning systems, which had earned him a sigh and a remark that he really was taking all the fun out of this.

Dick adjusted the lenses on his goggles to check for an alarm system on the case and made a light noise of disapproval. He sighed and began setting up the mirrors on the bracelet case. Someday, people would learn that horizontal lasers weren't really that effective.

The new T-lines were a vast improvement: great flexibility, good texture. The old ones had frequently left vivid red marks on his skin as he slid along them, to the point that costume design had become a constant choice between the thinness required for flexibility and the thickness required for protection.

And frankly, he had enough costume issues as it was. Or more to the point, his mentor did. They'd been arguing about that one since he was sixteen.

"Yes, black, very practical, but really, it lacks style, don't you think? Hardly memorable."

"Aaaaand we're back to not wanting people to remember me."

He almost had the last mirror in place when he heard the faint whistle in the air above him. He caught himself on the case just as the T-Line was severed, managing to pull off a graceful landing.

The same could not be said for the final mirror.

"Well, that set off the alarm," he said without turning around. It was just the surprise that had his heart beating faster.

"That was the point."

"Really?" Dick turned towards the shadows where, as near as he could guess, the object and the voice had both come from. "And here I thought it was to drop me on my head." He was proud of how light his voice was, that it didn't betray the slightest nervousness.

"That was a side benefit." The Batman finally stepped into the faint light.

Dick sighed dramatically. "Yeah, but now I'm going to have to run, and you're going to have to chase me, which, okay, is fun, but really, there are only so many variations on the theme we can enact." Including ones that end with you in jail, and could you try not pushing the man's buttons for once, Grayson?

"I told you what would happen if you stole in this city again."

Dick felt a burst of anger and pushed it down. It was stupid to be upset that Batman was changing the rules when no one had said what the rules were in the first place. "So, what? Now you drag me to the nearest police station? Leave me hanging from the ceiling? If you're going to do that, I'd avoid the middle supports, there. They won't hold my weight."

"You could always turn yourself in."

Dick pretended to consider the idea. "It has novelty on its side, but I can't say I like the--"

Okay, someday he would figure out how a man that big moved so damn fast. He barely had time to flip over the cases before Batman was occupying his previous airspace.

Right. "Look," he said, "I get it, okay? Me thief, you crime fighter. I'm a bad person and I shouldn't be doing this, but you've known that for a really long time, and we've had this conversation, and--"

A blunt object that Dick would have bet his haul was bat-shaped hit his midsection, knocking him over and stealing his breath.

"Or," he wheezed, pulling himself up, "I could just keep my mouth shut." Apparently the talking part of the encounter was over. Time to leave.

Dick was trying to decide which direction to go when the ground made the decision for him, pitching violently up and to left. He turned just in time to hit the glass case with his shoulder instead of his face, and it occurred to him that this would have been a much simpler way into it in the first place.

"What the…" He'd seen some pretty hyper security systems, but never ones that caused the ground to move, and oh, look, was that a beam coming down towards him?

A faint grunt sounded in his ear as Batman first landed on top of him, and then rolled the both of them out of the way of the falling beam. When the dust had almost settled, Dick found himself pinned to floor under something only slightly less heavy than the beam would have been. Of course, the beam wouldn't have been staring down at him from behind a mask.

Of all the ways he had pictured ending up in this position, this was not one of them.

They were there for a very long moment, and Dick was just noticing that, this close, you could almost see the man's eyes through his mask when a faint, high-pitched scream came from above them. Both men looked up, and then back at one another.

"Apartments above us," Dick said, and a second later both were moving.

The condominiums above Park Plaza were being marketed as a new haven for the rich and stylish after the plague had tainted Babylon Towers. Fortunately, many of the units were still being remodeled and upgraded, and thus were empty. Dick had been grateful for this earlier in the evening, as it had made his progress into the store easier. Looking around at the destruction outside the store, he was grateful now for another reason.

The plaza itself was a chaos of broken glass and dangling wires, the floor jutting unevenly up in more than a few places. The escalators down to the ground level still stood, but chunks of concrete were missing from the walls of the atrium.

"Holy… What happened? Was this a bomb or something?"

"Earthquake," was the grunted reply.

"Earthquake? In Gotham? Since when do we… Never mind. I'm guessing the elevators are out. There's a private stairway at the back of the plaza."

Finding a clear path to the stairway was easy enough. At least, it was until the ground began to move again.

"Watch it!" Dick pulled Batman to the side as a chunk of the atrium wall fell, crashing and embedding itself in the spot of floor where the Bat had been. "You know, you should consider a mask with better peripheral vision."

Batman merely resumed running.

"You're welcome!" Dick called after him before following.

Batman already had the door open by the time Dick reached him. Dick chose not to ask how he'd gotten thought the fairly sturdy lock.

What could be seen from doorway was bad enough. Although pieces of the stairs still clung to the wall, huge gaps could be seen all the way up. As if to reinforce the badness, the shriek again reverberated down, this time recognizable as a child's voice. "See, if you hadn't cut my line, this wouldn't be a problem."

Batman pulled something that looked like a small gun from his belt and shot it up into the stairwell. Dick heard the unmistakable "thunk" of metal embedding itself in concrete, and turned to see Batman testing the strength of a T-Line.

"I should go first," he heard himself saying. Before Batman had a chance to object, he added, "I weigh less than you do, and I'm better on narrow surfaces. Anything that's still unstable will be less likely to collapse. If you go first and fall, I don't have a line to get up."

Batman said nothing, but with painfully obvious reluctance handed over the rope.

Making the necessary adjustments to his goggles for seeing in the greater darkness of the stairwell, Dick swung out. He used the line to get to the first intact chunk of staircase, then began flipping upwards, using the line only occasionally for support.

"That scream--" flip "--couldn't have come--" twist, push off wall "--from more than one or two floors up." land on the hands, bounce off quickly "The insulation isn't great here--" grab the doorframe and steady "--but it's not that bad."

As soon as he opened the door to the first floor of condos, Dick could hear childish sobbing. Turning into the hall, he threw the rope down to Batman. "Watch the fourth outcropping; it's ready to come down," he called, and began running towards the sound.

The hallway was slightly more intact than the lower floors, but there were still gaps. The doorframes, however, were all standing, and Dick had to resist the impulse to break down every door in order. The need to act now was one that Selina had spent years training out of him.

"You have tunnel vision. Probably comes from always aiming at a pair of hands, but you don't notice other things around you, and someday going for the obvious is going to get you into big trouble."

Dick forced himself to follow the sound. He'd almost reached the corner when he heard Batman reach the doorway and start after him.

"Mommy!" The sound was coming from further down the second hall.

"That's it, kid," Dick muttered. "Just keep talking." A few more whimpers led him to number 312 just as Batman caught up. Without a word, with barely a look, the two men faced each other and hit the door with their shoulders, shattering the wood around the lock and sending the door into the room. The childish voice shrieked again, then settled back into sobs as Dick took in the scene.

The apartment inside was as devastated as the plaza below. Furniture was toppled throughout the room, and several chunks of both the ceiling and the floor were missing. Dick wondered if he could look down one of them and see the jewelry store. They had to be almost right above it.

None of which mattered as much as what was in the center of the room. A girl who could not have been more than six was kneeling next to a toppled bookcase, and it took Dick several moments to realize that there was an adult pinned under it.

The little girl looked up at them. "Mommy. She won't wake up."

Dick looked to Batman, who was already kneeling beside the woman. He didn't exactly cut the most comforting figure in the world, but the children of Gotham knew he was a Good Guy, and any reassurances should probably come from him instead of some random guy in goggles.

"Pulse is steady. We should move the bookcase together so it doesn't jar her."

Right. Dick knelt beside the little girl. "Hey, honey. What's your name?"

"Julie," she sniffled. A faint moan came from the mother, some mumbled words that might have contained her daughter's name.

"Okay, Julie. We're going to help your mommy, but we need you to stand…" Dick looked around for the safest spot. "Right over there in that corner, okay?"

Julie nodded solemnly, and padded over to the corner. Her pajamas had circus tents on them, and Dick smiled.

The woman under the bookcase moaned again, this time clearly regaining conscious. Dick took his place at the corner opposite Batman, and together, they lifted the bookcase free. A few small knickknacks fell to the floor as they lifted, and Dick kept the thought to himself that it was lucky the family didn't keep actual books on their shelves.

"Ju…lie?" The woman on the floor struggled to sit up.

Batman looked down towards the woman, then back to Dick, who nodded to indicate he could finish settling the shelves. It took some doing -- the case was heavy, and the floor too uneven to trust -- but eventually he got it settled on its side out of the way. He was just turning around when a delighted "Mommy!" and the sound of small feet made him turn instead to scoop up Julie before she could run onto broken porcelain.

"Easy, kiddo," he said, setting her down by her mother. He looked at Batman questioningly.

"It looks like a mild concussion. No apparent back injury."

"Any ideas on how we should get them out? Somehow I don't think leaving them here would be the safest thing." Sirens were already wailing in the distance, and Dick was trying very hard not to think about what the rest of the city must look like.

As if to taunt him, the building rumbled around them, and the floor lurched. Sharing a wordless glance with Batman, Dick scooped up Julie. "Stairwell it is, then. How strong's that line of yours?"

Dick started down first, Julie wrapped around him in the iron grip only small children and the occasional alien superhero could manage.

"Just hold on," he told her, lowering them both carefully down the stairwell. It was going to take a bit of a swing to get them to the doorway, and there would be some balancing to do, but as long as Julie held on…

"Are you Batman's helper?"

Okay, letting go of the rope now would be a bad thing. "What?"

"My daddy says Batman must have lots of people helping him 'cause he couldn't do all that stuff by himself. Are you his helper?"

Dick smiled over her shoulder. "I guess you could say I am." Tonight, anyway.

Getting Julie's mother down was a bit trickier. She didn't have any broken bones, but she was still too woozy to trust her grip to either one of them or a rope. In the end it took two lines, three handoffs, and a few minutes during which Dick was extremely grateful that he had no fear of heights to get her to the plaza.

Getting them both outside was easy enough. It was amazing how much easier it was to get out of a locked building when you didn't have to worry about alarms.

The city was burning.

Dick removed his goggles, hoping that somehow the scene would look better. It didn't, of course. It looked worse.

"Good God," Julie's mother said beside him. "How… What… Where do we even go?"

"Follow the fire engine lights," Batman answered. "There will be emergency personnel there. They'll be able to help you." He sounded far surer than the situation warranted, but Dick supposed he was trying to be helpful.

She nodded and took Julie's hand, starting towards the nearest flashes of red lights. Julie waved as they walked away.

Dick watched them until they were around the corner, then turned to Batman. He couldn't see the man's eyes through his cowl, but there was no mistaking the downward turn of his mouth and the slump in his shoulders.

Dick took a deep breath. "So," he said, "where do we start?"

Batman frowned. "What?"

"Where do we start? I mean, there are probably more people in the building, but is there somewhere else more critical we should go first?" And I swear to God if you ask me why I'm doing this I will hit you which would be dumb because a broken hand wouldn't do either of us much good right now.

Batman looked at him for a moment, then nodded and pulled something off of his belt. It was a T-line, just like the one he'd used earlier in the stairwell. "You know how to use that." It wasn't a question.

Dick grinned. "Since I was eleven."

Batman's helper. For tonight, anyway.

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