Chapter Text
“--every once in a while I’d look at it just to remind myself she was real and Camp Half-Blood hadn’t just been my imagination.”
The van rolled up to the manor with the air of a confidence Tim felt was undeserved in comparison to its age.
The cleanly printed Delphi’s Strawberry Service rang alarm bells in Tim’s head as a front especially in comparison to how banged up the van actually looked.
The back ramp opened and the familiar sound of a wheelchair descending made Tim feel guilty for a moment before turning to analyze the man emerging from the van.
Black, gray-haired and bearded with a kindly face that reminded Tim of the mentor figures in Dick's favorite movies. This was the so-called Chiron, Annabeth's mentor and guardian at the moment.
He rolled the chair up the ramp with a pleasant expression as Tim tried to keep his face clear of suspicion. Chiron has a trail, a clear, very legal trail following a substitute teacher willing to remain for a whole year in certain schools who is dedicated to his students and ran a strawberry farm/summer camp fusion for dyslexic children. He also had a profile similar to that for the past hundred and ten years in France and England, the U.S.
It was suspicious, Mr. Chiron Brunner was everywhere, every when and Annabeth spoke of him like he put up the stars. The pattern of bringing in dyslexic and ADHD children to summer camp/strawberry field and even year round. Every state inspection came clean, every source of wealth perfectly legal, every parent who sent their child to that summer camp/summer work camp was always happy to send them straight right back.
He counseled the children of famous people, of the middle class and the poor. He taught them, trained them like he's trained Annabeth to be a fighter worthy of going up against the League of Assassins trained fighter and win.
Until proven otherwise, Chiron Brunner was a threat in Tim's mind, and he wouldn't stop until he was either confirmed to be that threat and locked in either prison or removed from his position of influence or was confirmed to be nothing but a teacher running a summer camp with no ulterior motives to make an army of killers.
“Mr. Wayne, and Mr. Drake-Wayne, a pleasure to meet Annabeth's biological family after all this time.” Brunner said, his face warm, but Tim could feel the same way he felt when Cissie was truly in a temper. An archer looking for where to sink the next arrow into a warm body that would soon turn cold.
“We are,” Bruce said, and he's in War Brucie mode. “Her family.”
Brunner smiled and Tim glared at him, eyeing the sleekness of the chair which had been custom-made for the man even Babs hadn't had a chair so clearly made for her no matter how much they spent on it. The wheelchair had been completely made from scratch and customized to the nth degree.
“Please, come in.” Tim said, smiling his fuck with me and see what happens smile. Brunner kept the same placid serene smile on his face and rolled into the manor with the same confidence the bang up van rolled into the cul-de-sac of the driveway.
Brunner was distinctly unimpressed by the surroundings, simply taking it in as Bruce led him to the 'sitting' room which functioned more as a cutthroat contract room when board members demanded to talk in private in Wayne Manor believing they were entitled to it.
They always came out of the room with less than they first came in.
Tea had already been poured and a tray of fresh pumpernickel bread laid out with grace as they settled into their respective positions. Brunner by the fireplace, Bruce in front of the window and Tim between them both.
“You understand,” Bruce began after taking the first sip of the tea. “I do not appreciate the role you have played in keeping my daughter away from me.”
Brunner raised an eyebrow. “I am the one who bought Annabeth that phone, the one who has your personal number to call in event of her death. I do not keep her locked up in a cage or whatever you have convinced yourself of. Annabeth has gone to schools working with our campers for the past five years, never missing a class as to recently but always turning in her work. She is a B+ average student and has decided what to do with her life far sooner than most and has never strayed from such a goal. You would do well to appreciate the role I've played as guardian and mentor as to which she found you unfit to continue.”
“Let me guess, she wants to die in a quest?” Tim said acidly and Brunner frowned.
“She wants to be an architect.”
Oh, Tim thought. He exchanged a look with Bruce, both trying to hide their surprise that Annabeth had even thought beyond dying at an early age.
“Granted, her musings of burial have increased as she has claimed Percy as her friend and perpetual questmate, but I don't doubt that in time, she will figure out that it is not her death she must be wary of but his.” Brunner threw out with the most casual of attitudes. Like he expected this to happen, like he had memorized behavioral patterns and expected this to happen.
“Do you study psychology, Mr. Brunner?” Tim prodded. “You seem quite certain of Annabeth's thoughts.”
Brunner smiled thinly and the grief behind his eyes couldn't be faked unless it could be. Something to look into ”I've seen too many of my students prepare for death as such only to learn it was not their death they must've prepared for but the one they love. Poor Achilles, far too young, far too late did he learn of what the Fates had woven for him before his parents laid together.”
Okay, immortal or insane, what's it today?
“You're that old?” Bruce inquired, not concealing his skepticism. “That must be over three millennia.”
“Longer still,” Brunner replied. “Many do forget my father was Kronos himself, and I am as old as Zeus himself. I have trained many and will do so until one day my students will have no need of me anymore. Only then will I fade into the petty dust we call the cosmos and become student once more instead of teacher.”
“Poetic.” Tim muttered. “Is that the reason you train children?”
Brunner's face hardened and Tim was relieved they were finally getting somewhere.
“It is not my choice,” Brunner said and thunder rumbled threateningly throughout the house and Tim looked behind Bruce to the window uneasily. That didn't feel like normal thunder and from Bruce's side-eye Tim understood Bruce thought much the same. “The monsters of sins past seek the children of the gods to take upon their revenge since the di immortales are inaccessible to their vengeance. They seek the young, the undefended and kill them for a crime that is not their fault. It is my duty to keep them alive, I do not do it for the praise or because I believe it to be right, but because I seek only to see them age before my eyes and not bear witness to more death as I have for the past three thousand years. Your daughter and sister is prolific, she has wanted a quest since she arrived, has sought to trick Death and to walk into his embrace with a smile on her face. Do not dishonor her so by blaming this on me.”
Bruce leaned forward and Brunner met his gaze evenly as Tim’s phone buzzed with a notification. He tapped the screen to find Dick had asked if they had any cereal at the Cauldron safe-house and sighed. He turned it back off and turned his attention to the conversation.
“You are her guardian, self-proclaimed and all. So, I must ask, how do I get her back?” Bruce asked intently. “How do I get Anna Elizabeth to stay?”
Brunner looked sadly upon Bruce and said: “Accept, Mr. Wayne, that Anna Elizabeth is dead. She will not return to you altered but at the core the very same like your second son. She has not been hidden and raised like your youngest. Annabeth Chase has been born from your actions and a long year on the run from those you call friends and those who would see her dead. Your miracle has been given by the love she holds for Percy and nothing else. You will not hold her as you wish.”
Bruce glowered at Brunner, but Tim could feel the truth in the man's words. Tim knew next to nothing about Anna Elizabeth beyond the galas when he saw her across the room. He somehow knew even less about Annabeth Chase who was determined to make it through a month and three weeks for a friend she had known for three months before vanishing into the afternoon sun. All he knew was that she was there, and Bruce wanted her back in Gotham with them.
“Then we give up?” Tim demanded. ”Is that what you want?”
“No, I believe it is good for Annabeth is she returned here, even for a month to learn what it is to be mortal once more. I have often worried about her ability to socialize and make true friends with those she did not spend the whole year with. I find you a suitable temporary guardian for her until she gets fed up with being safe and seeks to do something reckless and harrowing instead.” Brunner said pleasantly and Tim wanted to punch him.
All this and he couldn't have started off with that? Asshole.
Brunner sighed, and gripped the handles of his wheelchair as though he intended to stand and Tim yelped as he actually began to. His torso rose from the chair, and he rose and rose and rose until Tim's attention was dragged back to his lower half. The lower half of a horse.
“Holy Centaur Batman.” Tim choked out as Bruce rose, hand already curled in a fist and on a hairpin trigger.
Chiron sighed, his back cracking as he did so. He walked forward (trotted forward?), hooves clopping on the wooden floor somehow making the scene more surreal compared to everything else in the past twenty minutes.
“A bit of proof.” Chiron, and this was Chiron, trainer of heroes and ancient ass horse before them. “Annabeth says you are suspicious people and I tend not to disregard her advice seeing as her mother is the goddess of wisdom.”
Tim laughed, a bit high and hysterical. Annabeth's knife was one thing, but it could be brushed off with a bit of doubt. This was a full on half-horse in his sitting room that was on none of the Justice League Dark's files and when Tim hunted them down they were going to have words as to what exactly their budget was going towards if this wasn't being recorded.
“How did that chair hold-” Tim waved at Chiron's bottom half helplessly. “— that? I can't imagine it doing it without magic.”
Chiron shrugged and holy fuck he was taller than Superman. ”The Hephaestus Cabin is quite fond of competing against the markets and for my favor in many cases.“
He said it with all the fondness Bruce used to tell the story of Jason stealing his hubcaps and Tim kind of wanted to smash the wheelchair to pieces and figure out how exactly it worked.
Tim's fingers twitched towards the wheelchair, but Chiron sunk back down into the wheelchair and Tim couldn't rip his eyes away as the horse half of his body was slowly swallowed whole by the machine. Tim imagined something like that to hide all the gadgets he wanted in and felt a bit delirious with the possibilities running in his mind right now. How many explosives would he be able to carry? Enough to burn down a League of Assassins base if push came to shove.
“Don't hurt her.” Chiron said as he gripped the wheels of his chairs. “Or there will be nothing to protect you from the wrath of her best friend, loyal siblings and Athena herself.”
“I don't,” Bruce said, “want to hurt her again. Once was enough, and I don't think I can bear doing it again.”
Tim shot Bruce a confused look, but Bruce met Chiron's gaze with more vulnerability than Tim had seen out of him in months.
“I should hope not. Mr. Wayne, Mr. Drake-Wayne. I'll see myself out.” Chiron, the mythical and immortal centaur, said and wheeled himself away.
Tim waited until the door opened and closed before whirling around to Bruce who looked guilty as hell.
“What do you mean not hurt her again?” Tim demanded and Bruce closed his eyes.
The whole story came spilling out and Tim felt nauseous afterward.
Two days after Jason's death when Bruce had pulled himself out of the fugue state he had descended into he found that Annabeth had known about Jason leaving, had even helped him a little by distracting Bruce for the hour it took to get to the airport, although apparently it hadn't been intentional.
They had gotten into a fight, as much as you could call it a fight between a seven-year-old and a grown man as Annabeth pleaded that she hadn't known anything and couldn't have stopped Jason. She had brought up the spiders which had snuck into her room every night for some reason or the other and Bruce had snapped. Had hit her hard enough her cheek had swelled within the five minutes it took for him to snarl that it was her fault Jason was dead and maybe if she were more responsible and less caught up in the imaginary than he'd still be alive.
Four hours later, Annabeth was gone and there had been a spit out tooth in the sink of her bathroom. A hammer was missing from the shed and no one could find her anywhere in the good parts of Gotham City.
That's when Batman's rampage in Gotham had truly begun.
But Tim could only ask one question. “How could you do that?” he demanded, horrified. “Why didn't Dick or Alfred stop you from doing that? God, Bruce, what the hell.”
“Dick wasn't there, he was in space, didn’t make it until two weeks later. Alfred was downstairs and—I don't know. I don't know, all I know was she was there and Jason was dead and everything went blank afterwards. For the past six years I've tried to reconcile the fact that I did that, and then she shows up and ignores it like it never happened except she ignores all of us too and focuses on Damian.“ Bruce sounded shattered and Tim simultaneously wanted to comfort him and step away from him.
“Does Jason know? Does anyone know?” Tim demanded and Bruce shook his head.
“How do I bring it up, Tim? I hit your sister, but I promise I won't do it to you? I was so…afraid when I brought you on. Afraid of doing it again I could hardly bear it. But here we are, got lectured by a centaur and forced to confront our past sins and the way we view Annabeth.” Bruce sighed and dragged a hand over his face. “If you need some space I won't blame you but, try to keep this between us, please. If Annabeth didn't bring it up it's because she doesn't want to until she feels ready.”
“You better not be lying.” Tim warned. “If you lie I’ll tell Dick.”
Bruce flinched as he met Bruce's gazed and hurried away feeling hot tears well in his eyes as he fled to his room in the manor.
“Fuck,” he said as he slammed the door shut. Tim sank to the floor, back flat against the door. “Fucking hell.”
Well there goes my childhood pedestal again, Tim thought hysterically. Shit, how did Annabeth stand to be here after all that went down?
She didn't, a voice reminded him, she left the moment she felt she completed her promise to her friend and booked it immediately after.
Tim took another breath and then slammed his fist on the floor with another furiously uttered “fuck!” before freezing.
He couldn't do that. For all he groused about the demon brat, he couldn't do that, not when he was still afraid sometimes of his parents doing it, although there had only been threats, allusions over text instead of any real action.
Tim took a deep breath and dug his palms into his eyes. He'd figure it out, he'd wait for Annabeth to come back, because she would, come back. He hoped she'd come back to help them figure out the fucking mess that this had become. For now, Tim was going back to his friends and staying there until he felt safe enough to not blurt out what Bruce had done to everyone in the family just to see how they'd react.
With clumsy hands he pulled out his phone and sent a text to a number that had no name attached to it.
TD:
Come back soon.
Please
(562) ###-####:
Give me until September.
Tim sighed and began creating the contact for it. He picked a candid photo that had her in the background and zoomed in on that, promising himself to take better pictures of her.
His phone chimed again.
ABC:
Don't feel guilty about anything
before your time
remember the order of events?
TD:
Can't I feel guilty though?
ABC:
About me?
No, fuck off.
The only person allowed to feel guilty about this is Bruce and Alfie if we're pushing it.
TD:
You and Jason use the same pet names for him
ABC:
Who do you think I learned it from?
Take care of yourself.
Don’t worry about me.
And pretend nothing ever happened it’d work better for all of us in the long run.