Chapter Text
Pru isn’t wearing the damn mask.
“This is really unnecessary,” Tim says into the commline. “It’d be a lot easier on both of us if you’d just—”
“Left or right,” Pru says.
Tim sighs. “Right. Are we seriously—”
“I told you before,” Pru says, “I’m not joining the capes-and-tights crowd. And I don’t think they do the masks and fetish gear thing in Bogotá. At least, not during the daylight hours.” She turns right at the corner and passes an old man who gives her shaved head a suspicious look. She sneers right back at him and then lowers her voice to mutter into her commline, “I’m less conspicuous as is.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” Tim replies. “You being inconspicuous, I mean. Also, it’s not fetish gear, it’s protective. And Colombia actually has a long history of luchadores, so as long as you’re sneaky I really think you could get away with the mask if—”
“Just gonna remind you,” Pru says, “that I am doing you a favor right now. If you don’t back off, I’m dumping the mask into the nearest bin, along with everything else you sent me.”
“Okay, okay, no mask this time. Also, speaking of equipment, are you sure you have everything?”
“I have two Glocks and a machete,” Pru says. “Also some grenades. And a flamethrower. Forgot to pack the napalm though.”
Tim ignores this. “Did you remember the gloves? And the glass cutter? And have you tested it already?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” she says, rolling her eyes. Her inventory currently includes gloves and the glass cutter in a touristy little backpack along with the domino mask, a grappling hook she’ll never use, and some other stupid gadgets Tim sent her. She did pack two small handguns as well, but they’re loaded with rubber bullets.
“Uh huh,” Tim says, sounding unconvinced. “What shape did the auto-setting on the glass cutter make?”
Pru rolls her eyes. Like most of the things Tim sends her, the disc-shaped glass cutter seems more like an overly engineered toy than a practical tool. The manual setting let her guide the cut herself. When she set it to automatic, she had to input a diameter and then the device cut her a perfect circle.
But no need to tell Tim that. Instead, she says, with exaggerated annoyance, “What is this, nursery school? Are you going to test me on colors next?”
Tim sighs. “You didn’t check the equipment I sent you,” he says, sounding indignant. “I send you a care package with some of the best tech on the planet and you don’t even test it. Also, left at the next intersection.”
That makes her grin. It’s reassuring that Tim sometimes can’t tell when she’s lying to him over the commline. He acts like he always knows exactly what’s going on, and his ability to ferret out the truth is impressive enough that Ra’s al Ghul calls him detective with genuine respect. But he’s still not quite as good as he pretends to be.
The stop sign at the intersection says PARE. Involuntarily, Pru’s brain offers up parry as a possible pun, which is further proof that working with Tim is eventually going to drive her insane.
When she first agreed to this, she thought she knew what she was getting into. She’d seen him work with the League of Assassins, and she thought she understood how he operated.
But back then Tim was all business. Entirely focused on his mission to find his missing father. Since the Batman’s return, he’s loosened up. Pru initially thought this was a good thing, because she’s an idiot. But Tim, when not intensely stressed out, is actually an annoying teenage boy who makes lots of dumb references and occasionally blindsides her with some truly terrible wordplay.
She made the mistake of wearing a domino mask when she was trying to run down a Spider in Mexico. Her Spanish had been pretty rudimentary then. Navigating the city was easier with Tim translating for her over the commline and monitoring the video feeds in the mask.
For some reason, all the stop signs in Mexico said ALTO, and Pru made the mistake of mentioning to Tim that one of the signs said high. Without missing a beat, he replied, “Did you say hi back?”
This is, to date, probably one of the worst jokes she’s ever heard in her entire life. She still gets kind of mad when she thinks about it.
But her domino mask is hidden away in her bag, which means Tim can use it to track her location but he can’t piggyback into the cameras to see what she’s seeing. So she’s probably safe from dumb sign-based wordplay, at least for now.
She keeps walking, expecting him to say more, but the commline stays silent. “What shape does it make?” she asks, because she’s bored and feels like irritating him.
“What?” Tim asks, sounding distracted. “Actually, can you give me one second? I need to check something.”
She rolls her eyes and keeps trudging until she reaches the next intersection. Tim stays silent, but she thinks he’s probably still on the line.
It’s an early weekday afternoon in Bogotá and in Gotham. Tim should be at work right now, but Pru doesn’t think that he is. There are always interruptions when he calls her from Wayne Enterprises, and he tends to default to nearly incomprehensible corporate speak while he’s in the office.
He’s probably at his Nest—because of course a dork like Tim had to give his HQ a bird-based name—which means this is one of his rare afternoons off. The fact that he’s choosing to spend it stuck on the commline with her is proof that he’s either a workaholic, a masochist, or both.
Normally, he inputs the address into her mask so that the directions appear on screen, a text overlay complete with arrows pointing her in the right direction. But Pru is sick of wearing that damn thing, and his excuse for not just giving her the address is absolute bollocks. Admittedly, she did get horribly lost that one time, but that was in Venice. Everyone gets lost in Venice.
But he decided to be stubborn about the mask and withheld the address as leverage. Then she decided to be stubborn right back, and now they’re both stuck playing a dumb game of Follow the Instructions as some sort of stupid compromise.
She should feel more irritated with it all—the multitasking, the micromanaging, the blatant manipulation—but just this once it’s a relief. She and Tim have talked on the commline a few times since she arrived in Bogotá, but it always felt stilted and stiff. This is the first conversation that’s felt normal since Buenos Aires.
It’s also relaxing to talk to somebody in English. Pru’s been picking up Spanish as fast as she can and she’s getting pretty damn good at it. But all the practicing sometimes makes her feel like shooting herself in the head by the end of the day.
“Back,” he says. “Keep going straight.”
“What shape does it cut?” she repeats.
“What shape—oh. A circle.” There’s a beat of silence and then he adds, “I am ninety percent sure it’s a circle.”
“What’s the other ten percent?”
“I’m pretty sure you already know,” Tim says, his tone wry. After a moment, he adds, “It should be the right one. I mean, a lot of people have been in and out of the Nest this week—we had another Arkham thing, long story—and the others don’t always put things back properly when they borrow stuff. If they return it at all. But I’m pretty sure the one I packed will cut a circle.”
“So you’re saying there’s a non-zero chance you sent me equipment that will cut a bat-shaped hole in the glass,” Pru says.
“It probably won’t,” Tim insists.
“Why would you even have that? What’s the point?”
“It’s about making a statement,” Tim says. He sounds like he thinks this is obvious. “The symbol means something. If you find a bat-shaped hole in your window, you know exactly who came by to visit. And probably why as well. The boring one’s for when we need to be a little sneakier. Or when it’s better if people don’t know that we’re the ones doing the breaking and entering.”
“So it’s literally just for dramatic effect.”
Tim ignores this, which means she’s right. “We can double-check the glass cutter tonight after you do recon,” he says. “If you’ve got the wrong one, you can still use it manually if you end up needing it. We don’t want anyone thinking this is a Batman-approved op.”
Pru sincerely wishes she could make the sound of rolling her eyes audible. “Seriously? Let’s just get this over with now. It’s a smash-and-grab. It literally couldn’t be easier. Or more boring.”
“Today’s just a reconnaissance run,” Tim says firmly. “Scope out the place first, confirm that Marchand’s out for the day. And then maybe, if we’re absolutely sure the apartment’s empty—”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Pru asks. “He’s stuck to the same schedule all week. And it’s not like anyone else is gonna be there. He’s a loner. Your intel said as much, and he hasn’t interacted with anyone except service workers and his marks since he got here.”
“Just because we haven’t seen him with people doesn’t mean he doesn’t interact with them. Our surveillance efforts have been...less than comprehensive.”
That sours her mood. The fact that it’s taken them nearly a week to track Marchand back to his home base is honestly embarrassing.
According to Tim, Marchand’s not his real name, and there’s a chance his French accent might be fake too. On paper, he’s mostly a mystery. In person, he just looks like a boring, weaselly guy around Pru’s age, early-to-mid twenties probably. The only thing interesting about him is his reputation: he’s already made a name for himself as a bright, young up-and-comer in the exclusive world of international art thieves.
The only actual crimes Pru’s witnessed have been way less exciting than the elaborate heists Marchand’s known for. She’s seen him pickpocketing tourists in La Candelaria and stealing from clubbers in Zona Rosa, and he might have been casing out the Museo del Oro a couple of days ago. But that’s it.
It’s all so petty and small-time that Pru’d peg the guy as a nothing more than a low-level con artist with decent sleight of hand—except for the fact that she can’t keep track of the slippery bastard. She’s never once managed to tail him for a full day or follow him back to wherever he’s been staying. He’s easy to find when he’s playing at being a tourist or partying, but when the night’s over he just disappears. Pru knows people with League training who aren’t as difficult to keep track of as him.
Tim complained the first few times she lost him. He even called in Lonnie, his pet hacker, to try and keep track of Marchand via traffic cams and surveillance footage. When Lonnie failed spectacularly as well, Tim was forced to admit that Marchand might be better at keeping a low profile than they initially thought.
When she first started trailing him, Pru assumed that she was here to prevent a heist or something. Tim, in typical fashion, only explained himself last night when she managed to bump into Marchand at a club and planted a tracker on him. And Tim still hasn’t been very forthcoming with the details.
“Why exactly are we trying to rob a thief again?” she asks. “This isn’t really my kind of thing. Or your kind of thing either.”
“It’s a favor,” Tim says.
“I know—”
“I mean you are doing me a favor, and I am doing someone else a favor.”
That’s not what Pru expected. “Who are you doing this for?” she asks.
“Left at the light,” Tim says. “And it’s kind of a long story but—wait a second, I need to take this, but just turn left and then go straight. I’ll be right back.”
There’s an abrupt silence over the comms, like Tim’s switched lines or maybe dropped the call entirely. Pru sighs and follows his directions.
She doesn’t mean to check both ways before crossing, but her instinct is still to look right first, instead of left. She hasn’t set foot in England in years, and she’s gotten used to the fact that nearly everyone else in the world drives on the wrong side of the road. But the habit is still ingrained. She can’t quite shake it no matter how much she travels.
She doesn’t know this part of Bogotá well, but it looks like she’s heading into one of the nicer neighborhoods, which is boring.
When she first arrived, Tim thoughtlessly reassured her that the city was a lot safer nowadays than it used to be. This was hilarious because 1) Pru is a League-trained assassin and therefore automatically one of the most dangerous people in any city that she visits, and 2) Tim’s from the crime capital of America, so his perspective on safety is hopelessly skewed.
Based on her one short visit to Gotham, Pru’s pretty sure Bogotá’s got it beat on all the metrics that matter: better food, more interesting scenery, fewer homicidal clowns.
It’s springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, but Bogotá is close enough to the equator that seasons don’t seem to matter much. This high up in the Andes, the weather’s mostly been cloudy and cool enough that she can wear her favorite jacket and enjoy the breeze flowing down from the eastern hills.
She’d like to see more of the city’s seedy underbelly, but she’s mostly been stuck in the old historic district of La Candelaria because that’s where Marchand’s been hunting the last few days. Pru’s sense of direction is not the best, but the area’s become familiar enough that she’s starting to recognize streets based on the graffiti covering most of the walls. And she can always orient herself if she runs into a few obvious landmarks: Bolivar Plaza to the west, the candy-cane-colored cathedral of St. Carmen down south, and the little park dedicated to journalists up near the northern border of the neighborhood. Everywhere else, she still has to rely on the map app on her phone to find her way around.
She feels a spike of irritation when she realizes that she really has no idea where she is now. With Tim feeding her directions, it’s easy to stop paying attention. Without her phone, she probably wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the apartment she’s renting.
She’s never really had to worry about finding her way around strange cities before. She’d always just followed Z and Owens, trusting that they knew exactly where they were going, and they always had.
She pushes that thought away. She doesn’t need to be thinking about them right now.
The commline cuts back on just as she reaches the next intersection. “Stop,” Tim says, sounding tense.
Pru freezes. She doesn’t mean to—unthinking obedience really isn’t her style—but Tim’s tone screams danger. “What? You said to keep—”
“Turn around. We’re aborting the mission.”
Pru doesn’t move. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sending you to a safehouse. You can’t go back to the apartment.”
“All of my stuff is there! Also, once again, what the fuck is going on? And don’t say you’ll explain it later.”
“Pru—” Tim stops. He’s probably realized that her tracker’s not moving anymore. After another moment of silence, he says, “It’s the League.”
That explains the strain in his voice now. Pru feels some of the tension drain out of her. “What about them?”
“They’re here.”
“In Gotham?”
“No, your here, not my here.”
That doesn’t sound right. “In Bogotá? But our intel said—”
“My intel just got updated, courtesy of Lonnie. They’re in Colombia.”
Pru can’t help rolling her eyes. “Colombia. The massive country that I’m currently in.”
“It’s not that big,” Tim says, proving once again that Americans have absolutely no sense of scale.
“Where, exactly, are they?”
There’s a long pause and then Tim admits, “I have confirmation that League assassins were in Medellín—”
“Medellín is hours from here!”
“Not by plane,” Tim says. “And this intel is a few hours old, but I’m just now getting it. Pru, you need to turn back. We can’t afford—”
“Even if they’re heading for Bogotá, which we don’t know, they’re probably focused on their own mission,” Pru points out. “There’s no reason to think that they’re here for me.”
“Pru,” Tim says, and he’s using his stern Red Robin voice now. The one she used to think was his real voice back when they first met. “This is serious. The League doesn’t take kindly to defectors. If they find you, they’ll kill you.”
Pru sighs. “You said assassins, as in plural. If they’re high level enough to make you this worried, then they aren’t here for me. They’re working on something else.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” Tim insists. His voice has taken on a familiar stubborn edge.
Pru would honestly rather face a team of League assassins than try to argue with Tim when he gets into one of these moods, but this is beyond ridiculous. “Look, I’m practically there already, right? Even if you think the apartment’s been compromised—and I have no idea how that could even happen considering how paranoid you are about this shit—but even if it’s been compromised, there’s no way the League knows I’m here for Marchand. Which means they have no idea I’m on my way to his place right now, correct?”
Tim doesn’t answer, but that just means he’s trying and failing to come up with a rebuttal. “Listen,” Pru says, “how about this. I go to Marchand’s and break in now. No wasting time on recon. We get this mission over with, and then I’ll flee the city if you want me to. No arguing or anything.”
It’s a damn good offer, coming from her. She almost never suggests a compromise, although she’ll usually accept one if Tim argues for it long enough.
But to her surprise, Tim says, “No. It’s not worth the risk.”
“That’s not your fucking call,” she says. “I’m here, I’m the one supposedly in danger, so I should get to decide. And I say I’m going.”
“How?” Tim asks. “You don’t have access to the tracker signal. I do.”
She feels her blood pressure spike. Feels her pulse pounding in her neck. That’s normal, it always happens when she’s in a rage, but it hits differently now. Reminds her, always, of having her throat cut and feeling her blood gush out. It makes her feel sick, and that makes her even more furious because even her anger’s been poisoned by the memory of that moment.
She knows that if she puts the mask on now, it’ll be too late. Tim will have scrubbed the data away. No coordinates, no destination, no clear path forward.
He always fucking does this. He likes to pretend that they’re working together, like colleagues or partners or something, but nine times out of ten, he calls the shots. And he doesn’t even have the decency to admit it. He just makes sure to arrange things so that they go his way. Withholding Marchand’s location is just the latest in a long string of little manipulations that are slowly driving Pru insane.
But just because he has the intel doesn’t mean she’s got nothing. She bites back about ten different insults and twice as many threats, and then says, “I am trying to do you a favor. In case you forgot, I don’t give a fuck about this guy. I’m supposed to be hunting down the Council of Spiders and you’re supposed to be helping me. So either we get this over with now, or you can piss off and I’ll deal with the Council on my own.”
“You can’t take on the whole Council by yourself,” Tim says. When Pru doesn’t bother responding to that, he sighs and then adds, “Fine. Keep going forward.”
Pru still doesn’t move. “Are you going to work with me or not?” she asks. “I’m not putting up with that shit you pulled last time. I’m on the ground, I make the decisions. If you get intel, you tell me about it. You don’t decide on your own.”
Tim is silent for a worrying amount of time. Finally, he says, “I’ll let you take the lead on this one.”
The fact that he’s framing this as a one-time concession, instead of just agreeing with her, is infuriating. But his voice has gone cold now, and Pru knows that they’re teetering on the edge of another massive argument.
She doesn’t say anything. Just starts walking forward again, knowing Tim will see her movement on his computer screen.
The rest of the journey is quiet, the frosty silence only punctuated by Tim’s clipped instructions. He’s obviously angry now. So is Pru. The tension on the commline is familiar.
It’s Argentina all over again.
Pru’s still not sure whether she should consider that operation a success or a failure, although she knows Tim’s got a definite opinion on the subject.
At the time she’d thought they made a good team. Tim was an expert on finding people. He’d found evidence of Bruce Wayne’s trip through time when no one else was even looking. Having him working alongside her, lending time, expertise, and resources to her hunt for the Council of Spiders—all of that should have made her job easier, not harder.
But Tim’s help comes with a lot of restrictions.
When she first arrived in South America, she’d thought the trade-off was worth it. Her Spanish had been nearly nonexistent and having Tim occasionally jump onto the commline saved her from conducting interrogations via Google Translate. Instead, she’d had his voice in her ear, translating in real time and supplying the appropriate word when Pru’s limited vocabulary failed her.
But having Tim on the commline meant that Pru had to adjust the way she did things. She had to be a lot gentler extracting information from people when he was listening in, and she had to put up with a lot of unsolicited advice about her interrogation style. Apparently, always starting off with threats of bodily harm was not only wildly unimaginative of her but also severely limited her options for the rest of the conversation.
“Sometimes you want to start out with the good cop routine and then switch to bad cop,” he’d explained once. “If you start with the threats, there’s no way your subject’s going to let their guard down. But if you start out sympathetic, you can work that angle for a bit. If they don’t respond, you switch to scary and give them emotional whiplash. Sometimes that’ll freak them out more than if you just started in with the same old boring threats everyone’s already used to.”
When she expressed surprise at him encouraging her to mildly terrorize her interrogation subjects, he’d just said, “Pru. My mentor literally dresses as a bat. Scaring people is a big part of our whole thing.”
That seemed like a good sign. She can’t imagine ever getting along with most of the superhero crowd, but she thought she could probably find a way to get along with the Bats. Or at least this one specific Bat.
Things didn’t start going downhill until she finally gave in and put on the domino mask.
Tim claimed the mic in the mask was better at picking up other people’s voices than the one in her comm—which, to be fair, made sense—and tapping into the mask’s camera allowed him to do some lip reading as well.
She’d thought that was all he’d use it for. But he immediately got distracted by things he could see on his screen. He started asking her to go look at this or that. Sometimes forgot to ask and just told her to hold something up to the camera. She had to keep reminding him that she wasn’t a fucking video game character that he could control from behind his computer screen.
He’d always apologized. And then usually did it again five minutes later.
Complaining didn’t seem to faze Tim much, so Pru did her best to rein in her rapidly fraying temper. Tim being a control freak wasn’t exactly new. She’d known that when she agreed to work with him.
Then they’d actually found a member of the Council, and Tim nearly let the fucker get away.
The Spider was a mean Wolverine-wannabe named Recluse. An American who boasted advanced combat skills and a set of poison-tipped ceramic claws that could make a grown man drop dead in seconds.
Pru hadn’t managed to track down his location but one of her interrogations got them the next best thing: his target.
It’s only been about a month, but Pru’s already excised most of the details from her memory. The target was a rich, corrupt prick. Standard scumbag with cash, criminal connections and a security team that looked more like a small militia. That last part was probably the reason the Council was interested in taking him out. He was a difficult target, and the Spiders love a challenge.
So Pru was stuck staking out the target’s home—which Tim insisted was a lair, even though it just looked like a fancy mansion to Pru—and waiting for Recluse to attack. Their intel said this was probably imminent but they had no guarantee of that. It might be that night, or it might be a week from then. Meaning Tim couldn’t fly down to help out. He had too much to take care of in Gotham and couldn’t afford to spend a week in South America on a moment’s notice.
This was where his participation became more of a hindrance than a help. If she’d been on her own, Pru would have let Recluse carry out his attack. He’d wear himself out dealing with the security team, possibly taking some damage in the process, and then Pru could swoop in while he was trying to escape. Maybe even tail him a bit, let him think he’d gotten away, and then catch him when his guard was down.
She’d mentioned as much, framing it as more of a joke suggestion, just to see what Tim would say. He dismissed it out of hand, like she expected. Letting the scumbag and his security team get killed was a big no-no in the Good Vigilante Handbook. So she agreed to wait for Recluse to show and then intervene immediately before he had a chance to do any collateral damage.
It was exactly the kind of dumb plan a vigilante would come up with. And if Tim had been there to lend her a hand, maybe she could have pulled it off. But she’d been on her own with only rubber bullets, per Tim’s rules. And the security team—well, they didn’t have those same compunctions.
Pru had privately planned to take a wait-and-see approach. Watch the fight unfold from a safe distance, and if she found a good opening, she’d take it. She wouldn’t let Recluse have all his fun, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to jump in as quickly as Tim wanted her to.
But when it came time for her to hunker down on the outskirts of the target’s property, Tim stayed on the commline with her.
That wasn’t normal. Usually, he only stuck around when she explicitly requested it. But this time, when she tried to get him off the line, he insisted on staying. Said he wanted to see how things played out. Said he might be able to help if the attack happened that night, even though he was in an entirely different hemisphere.
That’s when she realized she’d fucked up. She’d accidentally reminded him that she was still fundamentally an assassin, even if she wasn’t killing anyone at the moment. So he’d decided to stick around and keep an eye on her, just in case.
A stupid mistake on her part. She’d kept wearing the domino mask in a blatant attempt to mollify him. He’d already gained access to the security cameras set up in the target’s mansion. He’d be watching her whether she wore it or not. But she thought the gesture might help him forget her little slip up.
Predictably, things went to hell once Recluse finally showed up. The security team had been pretty damn competent, but nowhere near good enough to stop the Spider. They wouldn’t have stood a chance if Pru hadn’t burst in out of nowhere, guns blazing. The resulting chaos was confusing enough that Recluse, untouchable until then, did take a couple of hits from the security team. But that only made Pru’s job even more complicated.
She needed Recluse alive. Watching him bleed out from a dozen bullet holes would have been deeply and viscerally satisfying, but you can’t interrogate a corpse. So Pru needed to stop him, but not kill him, and not let anyone else kill him, and also not let him kill anyone either. While also trying not to get shot herself, since the security team immediately assumed that she was another attacker.
Fucking impossible. Tim, maybe, could have pulled it off on his own, but she sure as hell couldn’t. She’d tried. She really had. But everything was already hectic before someone set off a grenade and lit half the goddamn mansion on fire. After that, it was officially a shitshow.
Recluse’s target managed to slip away in a helicopter during the ensuing confusion. Some of the security personnel were less lucky. A few of them got nicked by Recluse’s claws and were already dead or dying by then. Recluse himself hadn’t been looking so hot either. The last time Pru saw him, he’d been covered in blood that she thought was mostly his own. Which meant she still had a chance to salvage this complete clusterfuck.
She lost sight of him briefly but she had a trail of bleeding bodies to follow, and she knew she could still capture him as long as she stayed out of range of his killer claws. A few well-placed rubber bullets and he’d be down for the count.
Then Tim started spitting out directions over the commline, and she hadn’t even thought to question it. There was an urgency in his voice that wasn’t worth arguing with and she’d stupidly assumed that he was leading her to Recluse. Maybe he’d seen something on whatever was left of the smoldering surveillance system or heard chatter from the security team over the radio.
Instead, he led her to a locked bathroom door that she had to kick down. Inside was a woman cowering and holding up her arms to ward Pru off. When Pru let out a very expressive, “What the fuck,” the woman started crying and saying something in rapid Spanish. Pru hadn’t understood any of it, but Tim had been in her ear, calmly responding in kind.
She’d realized by then that she’d been diverted. And the more time Recluse had to make his getaway, the smaller her chance of actually catching him. Her best bet was getting Tim to track him down for her again, which he probably wouldn’t do if she left a random civilian in potential danger.
So she repeated everything Tim was telling her, reciting the words verbatim while ushering the woman through the burning building. Afterwards, when her adrenaline ran out and they were both safely outside, Pru finally slowed down enough to understand what she was saying: mostly variations of you’re okay, you’re safe, i’m here to help, it’s okay, it’s okay. Or something close enough. The words hadn’t really seemed to matter as much as the repetition, the long stream of reassurance that Pru can’t imagine was convincing coming from her, a blood-spattered, gun-wielding woman repeating the words by rote in a rough, ragged voice. But it seemed to work.
She’d expected Tim to have more directions ready for her as soon as she got the crying woman to safety. If she hurried, she might still catch Recluse before he got too far.
But that hadn’t been necessary, according to Tim. He had been tracking the Spider through the security system cameras and he’d passed that information along to the local military. They already had Recluse in custody.
And Tim hadn’t understood why Pru was angry about that.
“I wanted to catch that bastard. He’s one of them. One of the Council of Spiders.”
“He’s been caught,” Tim said.
“Not by us.”
“The important thing is that he’s off the streets,” Tim said, slow and infuriatingly patient. “I know not being able to interrogate him ourselves will slow down our hunt for the others, but this is still progress. It’s our first real success since Amsterdam.”
Probably everything would have been fine if they’d just left it at that. But then Pru made the mistake of asking about the woman she’d saved. She’d been frustrated and annoyed, and she wanted to know what was so important about this random civilian. Did they need her for evidence or something? Was she an informant or a witness?
Tim had paused for just a little too long before he replied, “Well, she was a witness to a traumatizing amount of violence, yes.”
“But who is she?” Pru demanded.
“One of the household staff. I saw her on the security cameras.”
“You—” And Pru couldn’t even articulate why that made her angry. Because of course Tim had sent her back to find some nobody, even though saving her life meant letting a Spider slip through their fingers. Of fucking course.
She’d tried to argue with him using logic, because that seemed like the kind of thing he’d go for. She’d pointed out that if Recluse had gotten away, he’d have probably killed more people. Surely that risk outweighed saving someone who chose to work for a sociopathic scumbag.
Tim really hadn’t liked that. “We don’t sacrifice people in immediate danger for the sake of hypothetical future victims. We also don’t sit and quiz people on their life choices before we decide they’re worth saving.”
“But we also don’t let monsters like Recluse run free. Stopping him should have been the priority.”
“He did get stopped.”
“But he might not have! And I should have been the one to make the decision since I was the one onsite.”
And Tim had said, voice harsher than usual, “Pru, if I left it up to you, you’d never save anyone.”
She’d been growling with frustration by then. “Because that’s not what I’m here for. You knew that when we started working together. I’m not one of your little superbuddies. Saving people isn’t my thing. I’m here to hunt Spiders. That’s it.”
“You agreed not to kill anyone,” Tim pointed out. “And letting someone die…” He’d paused again, for longer this time, and then said, “You know I can’t work with you if you do that. This can’t just be a revenge quest.” When Pru didn’t respond, he’d said, “Pru, we talked about this,” in a voice that suddenly sounded far too weary for someone his age.
And she’d answered, too late, “I know, I know. Good-guy rules. No killing, no letting people die. I fucking know, okay?”
And she’d done what he asked of her. Made herself scarce and didn’t try to break into the local prison facility to interrogate Recluse up close and personal. Instead, she retreated to Montevideo and then continued north into Brazil. She’d been in São Paulo, struggling to comprehend Portuguese and waiting for Tim to contact her, when Lonnie sent her what looked like the automated translation of an internal prison report.
Recluse was dead. Killed inside his maximum security prison where he should have been safe.
The report didn’t give any specifics on who was to blame for the kill, but it was still obvious. Only the League of Assassins could pull off something like that. And they had plenty of reasons to want members of the Council dead.
She’d expected a confrontation after the report. Expected Tim to call her, to want to talk about it. Possibly to throw around some accusations even though Pru knew he was tracking her and she’d been more than fifteen hundred kilometers away when the murder took place.
But he hadn’t said anything. For weeks, she’d been left on her own, trying to find new leads on the Spiders and failing miserably. All while trying to ignore the slowly growing conviction that she’d fucked up irreparably. That Tim was out looking for the Spiders on his own, because she was too volatile to work with.
She already knew that Tim didn’t trust her completely—he’s not an idiot and he knows what she is—but she did think that he’d trust her enough to catch a Spider on her own.
In retrospect, she should have known better. Tim sending her to save that woman was a move with multiple motives. It kept the woman safe, yes, but it also kept Pru from getting her hands on Recluse herself and strangling the life out of him.
Admittedly, she’d thought about it more than once. At length and in gory detail. But killing Spiders would mean losing Tim’s help, and he was currently her best shot at catching all of the bastards.
When he’d finally reached out again, asking her to do him a favor in Bogotá, she’d jumped at the chance. She needed something to do. And if he’d been withholding information because he didn’t trust her, not because he had no leads, then this was a fast and easy way to get back into his good graces. Do him a favor and then press him hard for more intel on the Council of Spiders.
But now everything’s falling apart again. She should have known that this mission would go as badly as the last one. She and Tim may have a common goal, at least for now, but they’re still too different to ever really get along.
There’s still some tension on the commline when Pru finally reaches Marchand’s apartment building. Tim sounds coolly professional when he says, “The tracker’s still stationary. It hasn’t moved since he got here last night.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Pru points out. “This guy goes through more wardrobe changes than your crowd. He must have left behind the jacket he was wearing last night.”
“Maybe,” Tim says. He’s being a lot less argumentative than Pru expected.
“Look,” she says, trying to keep her tone conciliatory. Or as close as she can reasonably manage. “Let’s just go for it. Quick smash and grab, and then I’ll go wherever you want me to. Unless you want to calm the fuck down and help me get past the security system, in which case there will be considerably less smashing.”
Tim sighs. “No smashing necessary. Lonnie hacked the system. The cameras are already looping footage.”
The exterior of the building didn’t look any fancier than the others on the block, at least to Pru’s eyes, but the lobby’s sleek and austere in a way that screams money. The far wall is dominated by a big bank of elevators, each one private and assigned to a specific floor.
Apparently, all the pick-pocketing Marchand’s been doing really is just for fun.
“The tracker’s not precise enough to pinpoint which floor is his,” Tim explains. “But Lonnie went through the building’s leasing records, and the ninth is the most likely candidate.”
“So you’re not sure you’re sending me to the right place?” Pru asks, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.
“Again, I wanted to do a recon run first,” Tim says. “We could, in fact, still do that.” There’s a hopeful pause. When Pru doesn’t respond, Tim adds, his voice suddenly bleak, “We’re really going to just barrel in there. We are seriously just going to—”
“Yes, please, I’m sick of all this sneaking around shit.”
Tim groans. “Okay. If you walk into someone else’s apartment, just play dumb and we’ll pretend the elevator system is broken.”
The elevator stops at floor nine. For a moment Pru thinks that it’s gotten stuck. The doors don’t open immediately, and she’s not sure what the safety protocol is when the elevator opens up directly into an apartment instead of into a hallway. But then Tim makes a little aha sound in her ear and the doors start to slide open.
“Are you inside?” Tim asks. “I think that should have worked.”
“Yeah,” Pru says. “Not sure if it’s the right place, though. It’s darker than my grave in here.”
She waits a moment to let her eyes adjust before realizing that there’s no reason to go sneaking around. If it’s this dark in the daytime, there must be blackout curtains on the windows. That means she should be able to move freely without nosy neighbors accidentally catching sight of her.
She’s feeling along the wall for a light switch when a lamp at the other end of the room clicks on.
Marchand’s sitting on a sofa, his amused face half-lit by the light, and he’s holding up one hand to display something small and black pinched between two of his fingers.
It’s the tracker.
“Pru?” Tim says into the commline. “Everything alright?”
“Well,” Pru answers. “Looks like you got the right floor after all.”
Afterward, she finds herself panting in the middle of the living room, surrounded by opulence, knuckling blood off her split lip and grinning wildly. Tim, for once, stopped asking questions as soon as he realized what was happening and stayed quiet while she took care of the problem. That’s rare enough that she finds herself feeling much less irritated with him all of a sudden.
“I assume you’ve taken care of Marchand?” he says once her breathing evens out.
“Yeah,” she answers, and she can hear the grin in her own voice. Can’t quite suppress it and doesn’t really feel like bothering. “Quick question: how do you say ‘I want to buy lye’ in Spanish? Quiero comprar—”
“Very funny,” he says, refusing to take the bait.
“I swear it was self-defense. I had no choice.”
“Pru,” Tim says, sounding exasperated now. “Please tell me you haven’t left him too concussed?”
“Not even a little bit,” she says, relenting. “Chokehold. I didn’t even batter his brain.” She pauses, thinks about it for a moment, and then adds, “Well, I did punch him in the face a few times.” When Tim sighs, she says, “What? He’s a slippery little bastard. It took me a while to pin him down.”
“Have you—”
“Yes, he’s been secured. I’m not an amateur.”
“And you weren’t wearing the mask,” Tim says. “He’s seen your face. This is a complete disaster.”
Pru rolls her eyes so hard she’s in danger of spraining something. “Who fucking cares. He’s not gonna call the police about this. He can’t afford to. I know you don’t have visuals, but this place is like an Etsy extension of the black market.”
There’s art on display everywhere. Marchand’s apparently the kind of person who likes to admire his own handiwork. Pru recognizes a few stolen items from reports Tim shared when she first got to Bogotá. Paintings, sculptures, ceramics—all of it artfully arranged throughout the apartment.
Well, it had been, anyway. Before the brawl. Possibly she shouldn’t have tossed Marchand around so much, but it’s too late to do anything about that now.
“We’re not here to steal a really old-looking vase, are we?” Pru asks, glances at ceramic shards littered across the floor. “Because that one is...not in the best condition.”
“We’re here to steal a medallion. Just the medallion, Pru.”
“There’s literally an old-timey sword,” she says. “With gems all over the handle. At least let me keep the sword.” Her phone buzzes in her pocket. When she checks it, she finds a picture of an intricately designed gold medallion that looks like something out of a pirate film.
“There’s also a catch,” Tim says, ignoring her. “You can’t touch the medallion.”
“I can’t touch it,” Pru repeats, curious in spite of herself. “Why’s that?”
“We have reason to believe that it’s covered in a highly deadly contact poison.” There’s a pause and then he says, “Please tell me you actually brought the gloves along.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got ’em.” She’s already pulling them out of her bag. “So we’ve got an apartment stuffed to the gills with stolen treasure and all I’m taking is the biohazard.”
“Yes,” Tim says.
“And we’re not going to report this guy to the authorities or anything?”
“Not at the moment,” Tim says. “The situation is kind of complicated. I’ll explain later.”
Pru’s heard that one before. Still, she feels good enough post-fight that she doesn’t bother trying to pry the truth out of him. Eventually, she finds the medallion locked up in a glass case that thankfully protects her from a painful, frothy death by poison. Once that’s secure, Tim makes her loosen the restraints on Marchand enough that he’ll be able to wriggle his way free once he wakes up.
“So, am I leaving behind a calling card or something? A nice little note telling him to give up his criminal ways and start walking the straight and narrow or else?”
“No,” Tim says. “You were never here, this never happened, and after you deliver the medallion, we never talk about this again. Also, what are you wearing?”
She feels both her eyebrows shoot up of their own accord. Then she grins. “This something you have in common with your old man? Lady burglars get you all hot and bothered?”
Tim sighs explosively. “No, I meant are you covered in blood and wearing that very recognizable purple jacket?”
She’s got a little bit of blood on her t-shirt which isn’t currently visible because it’s covered by her purple jacket.
When she doesn’t immediately answer, Tim sighs again. “Please put the jacket in your backpack, steal one of his coats, and cover your head with a hat or a scarf or something.”
She’s still in such a good mood that she doesn’t even argue with him. At least not until she’s into her second hour on public transportation and Tim’s still insisting that she has to take a circuitous route in case she’s being tailed. There’s not a lot she can do about it besides complain since Tim still hasn’t shared the address of her destination.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Tim wasn’t dipping in and out of their shared commline. Something about reviewing footage for a case. It leaves her riding the TransMilenio around the city with nothing to do but stare out the bus windows.
She doesn’t like this part of traveling. Having nothing to do, nothing to occupy her mind except her own thoughts. Normally she’d be listening to music right now, but her mp3 player’s back at the apartment she’s been renting with Tim’s money. The apartment she apparently needs to abandon because there might be League Assassins on the other side of the damn country.
She focuses on the conversations happening around her, eavesdropping as best she can, and tries to pick up new phrases. That’s enough to keep her occupied until Tim finally announces that she’s reached the right neighborhood.
Chapinero seems to be one of the swankier parts of town, at least judging by the apartment building Tim has her sneak into via the service elevator.
She lets out a long, low whistle when she makes it inside the apartment itself.
“You’ve been holding out on me.” The place is nice. Obviously expensive, although it doesn’t have any ostentatious displays of wealth like Marchand’s apartment. The interior design is minimalist and dull, like something out of a magazine. “This is a hell of a lot nicer than any of your other safehouses.”
That's when she remembers the reason she had to rent an apartment in the first place. Tim told her that he didn’t have any safehouses in Colombia.
“Here’s the thing,” Tim says. “This one’s not actually mine.”
She’s about to ask him who it belongs to when she notices the photos. There are big expensive landscape shots of mountains and beaches on the walls, but scattered across the room are little standing picture frames filled with smiling faces that Pru recognizes.
Bruce Wayne and his kids.
“I’m in Batman’s fucking safehouse,” Pru says, her voice suddenly high-pitched and horror struck.
“It’s not a safehouse,” Tim answers. “I mean, it is safe. And it’s a house. Or an apartment, anyway. But it’s not for, uh, the night job.”
“I’m in Bruce Wayne’s vacation home,” she says. This comes out less horrified and more bewildered.
“It’s more for business,” Tim says, oblivious. “Wayne Enterprises has lots of holdings in South America, and Bogotá is one of the leading—”
“Is there any difference in security between a safehouse and whatever this is?” Pru asks. Tim mentioned something about disabling security when she entered the apartment building, but she hadn’t really been paying attention.
“Not enough of one to matter,” Tim admits. “So, the thing is, I’ve taken the cameras offline temporarily, but the system resets itself every couple of hours. So unless you want to end up on surveillance footage in the Batcave, you’re going to need to disable the cameras manually.”
“Uh huh,” Pru says. “And how many cameras are there?”
“Normal ones? Maybe a dozen. Extra bugs that B planted himself? No idea.” There’s a long pause. “You could think of it as a training exercise?”
It takes her nearly an hour to find them all, and she has to put the damn mask on again so that Tim can help her locate the last few.
“This really is good practice,” Tim says forty minutes into it. “If you can find all of B’s bugs, you’ll have no trouble dealing with anyone else’s stealth surveillance efforts.”
It is, in Pru’s opinion, way too much work to do for a one-night stay. According to Tim, that’s how long she’ll be hiding out here. “We’re adding smuggling to our list of crimes,” he says, sounding upbeat now that he’s effectively gotten his way. “You’ll be out of the country by tomorrow night. I just need to talk to a couple of people. It’ll be arranged by the time you wake up. For now, just relax and get some rest.”
“I relax by listening to music,” Pru says, her voice petulant. “You made me leave all my stuff at the other apartment. Including my—”
She stops then, because the apartment’s speakers kick in and start playing a song.
There are four drum beats before the rest of the instruments kick in—guitar, electric bass, marimba, keyboards—but the vague sense of familiarity becomes outright recognition long before the vocals start.
“A little on the nose, don’t you think,” she says. Over the speakers, Siouxsie Sioux is crooning, “Dear Prudence.”
“It seemed appropriate,” Tim answers over the commline, sounding entirely too pleased with himself.
“I was named after this stupid song,” Pru says. She doesn’t mean to. The admission just slips out.
“Your parents were fans of the Beatles’ version? I find it difficult to believe that they were into post-punk.” After a moment, he adds, “Could have been worse. Sadie, Martha, Maggie Mae...lotta girl names in their catalog.”
Pru doesn’t answer. Doesn’t want to admit that he’s dead right.
“How about you?” she asks, shifting the focus. “Your parents big Dickens fans?”
“If you’re trying to set up a Tiny Tim joke, don’t bother,” Tim answers. “I have unfortunately heard them all before.” There’s a pause and then he adds, “I’m actually not sure who I’m named after? My dad used to tell different stories depending on who he was trying to impress. So I might have been named after my great-grandfather who came to America from England or maybe an old Coptic pope or—yeah, actually, I’m pretty sure those stories were all bullshit. My mom swore they named me after their favorite James Bond actor.”
Pru laughs outright. “Are you kidding me? Timothy Dalton? Nobody’s favorite Bond is Dalton. He was so bad he almost killed the franchise.”
“He did not,” Tim says, sounding offended. “The gap between the Dalton films and the Brosnan ones had to do with a court case. It wasn’t because of—”
“This is rich,” Pru goes on. “This is just insanely appropriate.”
“How so?”
“You being named after James Bond? You’re not seeing the connection here? I’ve been hauling around a bag full of dumb gadgets all day.”
“That hardly qualifies me for Bond status,” Tim says, sounding affronted. “Also, they’re not dumb.”
“Why are you so offended? It’s nearly a compliment.”
“Is it though?” Tim asks. “Because I sort of enjoy the movies—some of them anyway—but Bond’s always a complete total asshole.”
“Yeah,” Pru says, grinning. “Like I said: suits you perfectly.”
“Wow. Okay, first off, rude. Secondly, you are way more of a Bond than I am.”
“How—”
“British,” Tim says promptly.
Pru makes a small noise of disgust. “That’s like me comparing you to John Wayne because you’re American. And I’m not some posh wanker. No queen and country nonsense over here.” Even as she says this, she realizes that her accent sounds more pronounced now. Years of international travel have smoothed away parts of it, and too much time spent with Americans has her sometimes defaulting to asshole instead of the more viscerally satisfying arsehole. But when people bring up the place she was born, her voice always betrays her, dredges up the way she used to speak when she’d never set foot on foreign soil.
Tim, oblivious, continues, “You cause property damage everywhere you go. Really attached to your guns. You can fly a helicopter. You—”
“License to kill,” Pru says, trying to trip him up.
“Used to be part of an organization that sent you to kill people,” Tim acknowledges, unfazed, “but then you went rogue.”
Pru feels a pang then, but pushes through it. “Bond never went rogue.”
“He did. Multiple times. There was the time he was trying to track down drug smugglers in License to Kill. And the time after he’d been captured by North Korea in—”
“Oh my god,” Pru says, “I am not Bond.”
“Why are you so offended? It’s practically a compliment. Also, I just realized that you’re definitely the Bond in this relationship because you’re running around the world and having adventures and stuff. Whereas I am but a humble quartermaster, sitting at home and playing with my ‘dumb gadgets.’”
Pru snorts. “Of course you’d want to be Q.”
“I literally just furnished you with quarters,” Tim points out.
“This is the stupidest conversation we’ve ever had,” Pru says. “And after the amount of time we’ve spent on the commline together, that’s really saying something.”
“Actually, just to circle back to the name thing again,” Tim says. Pru immediately groans. “What? I just think we need to settle on a code name for you. It’s against protocol to—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Pru says. “The answer is no.”
“But Pru—”
“I will hang up on you,” Pru says. “Actually, I’m going to do that anyway.”
“Okay, wait wait wait—” Tim says. “Just one more thing. Look, I know that you think I’m being...overly cautious.”
“Overbearing,” Pru corrects. “Insanely, irrationally—”
“Just listen, okay? I know you don’t like doing things this way. But so far you haven’t crossed paths with any League assassins since you defected. And I think it would be best if we kept it that way. I’m only being pushy because I know that if I don’t, you won’t take any precautions at all. You never do. You wouldn’t even wear a mask to hide your identity while you broke into Marchand’s apartment. And—”
“So what?” Pru interrupts. “Marchand’s not a threat. He isn’t a fighter or a killer, and he’s not going to report me to the authorities. He can’t do that without potentially exposing himself.”
“Which means,” Tim says, “that if he does decide he wants revenge, he’s probably not going to go the legal route. I know you don’t think some random art thief could ever be a threat to you, but—I just think it would be smarter to avoid making enemies whenever possible. You already have enough of those. And believe me, you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of a revenge plot. I can tell you from personal experience that it is not fun.”
He sounds horribly earnest and incredibly stupid. Pru is currently on a revenge bender. Pru’s life, right now, is entirely dedicated to vengeance. And she’s never worried about picking a fight with the wrong person and ending up dead. She already knows that’s probably how she’s going to go, and she’s not going to waste time worrying about the inevitable.
But none of that is anything that Tim would understand. Tim’s world isn’t hers. Never has been. It’d be stupid to pretend otherwise.
So she rolls her shoulders back, trying to let go of the lingering tension in her muscles, and just says, “You worry too damn much. I’m not going to go looking for trouble, okay? I won’t leave the apartment for anything other than a quick smoke.”
She expects Tim to have something to say about that. Every single time she’s ever lit up near him, he’s tried to give her a lecture on life expectancy and lung capacity.
She used to smoke a lot when she was a teenager, mostly just as a way to stave off boredom. She had to quit when she joined the League because she couldn’t have survived the training with a habit like that. But she’s picked it up again in the last few months.
She should probably stop, but nowadays it’s one of the only things that calms her down when she’s stressed. The doctors who regularly stitched her up back at the Cradle warned her against it too, but only as a passing aside. Medical personnel in the League don’t really care much about your risk of cancer. It’s assumed that you won’t live long enough for something like that to matter.
It’s kind of funny, because she sounds like a long-time smoker now. By all accounts, the doctors who reconstructed her larynx did a phenomenal job, but her voice is nothing like it used to be. It’s lower and harsher now. The slightly raspy tones of someone with a lifelong addiction to nicotine.
She sounds like a gruff, grizzled future version of herself that she never thought she’d become because she never counted on living long enough for any of her bad habits to catch up to her.
She’s bracing herself for another lecture from Tim, but to her surprise, he just says, “Please do not. I’m serious about the risk. Pull the batteries out of the smoke detectors if you really have to, but please stay inside until I can get confirmation that we’re clear. This property is owned through a series of shell companies, but it’s still possible Ra’s could have found out that it belongs to Bruce. If anyone comes looking for you, we don’t want to—”
“Tim, it pains me to say this,” Pru says, “but you are greatly overestimating my importance here. The League isn’t going to come after me. I really doubt they care.”
“I can recite a long list of dead defectors that would argue otherwise,” Tim says, sounding tired now. “Just do this for me, alright? Please?”
Pru sighs. “Yeah, sure. I’ll just stain Bruce Wayne’s ceilings instead.”
“Thanks,” Tim says, sounding far too sincere. “I’ll have everything else figured out by tomorrow. For now, just stay out of sight.”
“I promise to stay inside and be good,” Pru says, rolling her eyes. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
After he signs off for the night, she does another sweep through the apartment just to be sure she didn’t miss any surveillance equipment. Then she puts on her jacket, pockets a pack of cigarettes, and double-checks to make sure she hasn’t got anything of Tim’s on her. At least half of the stuff he’s sent her probably contains some kind of tracking device.
Then, satisfied that she’s bug-free, she heads out into the night.