Only Talon! Dick one-shots

61. Death and a Talon pt 2

Marvelworld913 wanted a pt 2 and although it wasn't planned I'll see what I can do

So we left off with Dick having his Talon-side activated by Slade who gets fucking murked, Damian and Bruce see him do all this and before they can do much Dick steals the batjet and leaves 

Months were flying by and yet the only clues Bruce had found of his son's whereabouts was the discarded Batjet. That alone had taken him two weeks to find thanks to the tracker being disabled. When he did find it, he quickly found it had been wiped of any flight data and after searching the area, he figured out that it had been placed there for him to find. 

To think that in that one moment of being given the right set of words, Dick had vanished into thin air. He wouldn't allow the disappearance to go on forever without a conclusion but if felt like he'd never get all the dots to make the connections necessary. 

He involved everyone he allowed into Gotham to hasten the developments. Barbara and Tim worked hard together to find some scrap of evidence, some CCTV that wasn't wiped but whenever they thought they had a lead it ended up dead. They were exhausting all their resources trying to find Dick and nothing was being found out other than the base information they had at the beginning of the investigation: Dick was a Talon, Slade did something to activate him and his murder may have been one motivated by his kidnapping of Damian rather than a direct order from the court. That meant they didn't know if this was a greater scheme to have Dick return to The Court of Owls or if Slade just tested his luck a tad too far.

Damian had been hellbent on getting the acrobat back. A debt was being left unpaid as Dick had been the one to help find him when and the longer it took to pay it, the more guilty the teen felt. If he hadn't been kidnapped that night, if he had gotten away sooner, if he'd fought back better then none of this would've happened. Dick wouldn't have been there to be activated and they wouldn't be spending all of their free time trying to find him along with protecting a city that was left high and dry without its vigilante defender. Nobody knew what to tell him to ease the heavy weight of guilt. He wouldn't listen. 

Safe to say, everyone was ready to find their missing bird but hope was beginning to dwindle at the same time. There were only a limited number of times you could strike off the few leads you had before the thought of giving up became ever more tempting. They wouldn't. They would always look for him although it slowly became more of a horrible hobby than a priority. After all, there were people out there who they could help now. They couldn't spend all their time finding someone who potentially would never be found.

That was until one Tuesday night. 

Red Robin was out to investigate Gotham, trying to figure out all the places a secret organisation would hide. It was pretty much fruitless. A task to make him feel useful because there was nothing being done and no headway being made. He didn't mind the busy work and there was always the possibility of finding a needle in a haystack. It was a low one and it could take hours but there was always a possibility. That was worth it. 

It was only until Dick disappeared that he realised how much levity he brought to the family. He was warm and bright whilst also spending much of his youth battling with his anger issues so you knew when he said he understood how you felt, he truly did. He was a safety net they could all trust. Red Robin wondered if he knew that. He would when they saw each other again if he didn't already.