An Assassin's Guide to Family

Chapter 14: Present

----------------Tim's POV: ------------------

It had been early in the morning when Dick had practically dragged Jason into the bat cave, we came to find that Jason got a pretty severe concussion and would probably be out of the job for at least two weeks, and-by specific order from Alfred- we were to keep from grilling him for info for at least a week to give his brain time to rest up. In other words; no strenuous activities for him.

Of course, that's going to be hard for someone with a brain the size of a peanut but hey, we can only hope for success I suppose.

But this only made Dick's appearance that much more surprising.

Dick shifted uncomfortably in front of me, almost as if I'd yell at him for just existing. I on the other hand was still completely exhausted from my patrol last night. Maybe I was doing the weird death stare thing again. It wouldn't be the first time I'd done this by accident when I was exhausted.

"Hey, Dick..." I said, stretching out the words while I tried to figure out why he was being so weird.

"Hey Timbo, I was just wondering something." I raised an eyebrow, I was too tired to beat around the bush so I stayed quiet while I waited for an answer. It took a minute but eventually, Dick seemed to get the hint. "Right! well uh, actually, I found this cup near Jason last night it had a fresh hot coffee in it and I was wondering if it were possible for you to swab it for some sort of DNA sample?" I looked down at the slightly crumpled cup. The logo from the coffee shop was hard to clearly decipher.

"Is this from the person who hurt Jason?" I asked, taking the cup carefully as I examined it.

Dick shrugged slightly. "Not sure. I know that a girl called me last night..." He hesitated to say more, his eyes staying planted on the cup.

I made a hurry-up motion with my hands as I widened my eyes. "Okay and? Did you get anything about her? was she friendly? Hostile?" I asked, trying to get any information I could.

Dick shook his head. "We didn't talk long enough to get anything good. She tried to claim self defense, then when I asked for her name she tried to avoid it, the only thing she gave me was her villain name and the fact that she was working for the league of assassins. Her name's Orca." A sudden piece clicked in my head as I turned to the cup.

Orca was an enigma within the crime world. She left to many scenes without any clue to her identity, and all the cases were clean. A frustrating puzzle indeed. She was quite obviously a professional. Just recently we saw her on a security camera, her along with a child were taking down a whole mansion of mob people. Grenades and all, the two managed to escape relatively unscathed for the type of situation they were in, they left the rest inside dead. No witnesses could explain what happened after the cameras had been disabled. I would compliment them more if this simple fact didn't make the person in question that much scarier. I suddenly had to be a lot more thankful that Jason was still alive, but as I looked down to this cup I could only wonder: Why?

Jason tried to kill her, usually within that type of group that was practically the brightest of green lights to, in general terms, extirminate the problem, and yet Jason was in a hospital bed proving that this may not be the case for all. What had he done right to have his life kept in tact?

The urge to break Alfred's rule was getting more and more frustrating by the second.

"So can you check it out?" Dick asked, my eyes floating back to his. He looked almost to be pleading. I shrugged, trying to play off the fact that this could actually be a big piece to a problem I'd been looking into recently.

"Yeah, I'll have the results back in a couple hours if you'd like to join me for some coffee while we go?" Dick smiled, his eyes doing that weird thing where they crinkled at the edges.