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vermillioncrown · 9 months

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ands snippet: duck tolling and retrieving

as teased yesterday, the snippet on how vivienne meets tim, and how tim gets involved with the bats in this 'verse. tim accidentally noses his way into bat business and makes a mess. vivienne is the collateral and is not happy about it.

(tim is 11, jason is 13, dick is 18, bruce is early 30s and ros&vi are mid 30s)

if you guys spot cursed aughties teen fashion/styling choices -> @rozaceous and i made choices okay

===

In a rush of sudden, sobering clarity, Vivienne stands up from the table. "I need to make a call." She glares down at the preteen across the table and adds, "Don't run. You won't like it if I have to chase you down again."

Her captive audience nods, long bangs flopping comically with his vigorous motion. Wide baby blue eyes, looking at most 100 lbs sopping wet, still clutching his skateboard in a death grip—Timothy Jackson Drake would pass as a commonplace patron of Robinson Park. Innocuous. Benign. But the trouble he's caused her over the past month…

Right. That's why it was on sight for her as she was driving off for lunch break. But it's also a reminder that she doesn't often let her temper get the best of her, despite the naysayers at the office. She's curt and all business, and the type of work that's under her purview doesn't tolerate carelessness. Every action is carefully considered and executed to the best of her ability.

And this fucking teenybopper, this little skater boy, almost ruined everything.

Even so, her reaction was admittedly…rash.

"So, I might have done something rash," she says as such to Ros as soon as her girlfriend picks up the phone.

"You’re lucky I’m in between clients and you have ten minutes until I’m at Marius’s place.” Despite the snappy comment, Ros isn’t mad. Little chuckles come out naturally with her exhales as she walks. “Which closet do we need to clear out now? Can you fit everything into the car?”

“What? I’m not keeping a child in a closet!”

“—what?”

“—huh?”

Vivienne stops. Finds herself at a loss for words with the complete overshoot of the conversation’s trajectory.

“Go on—you have me piqued. Why do you have to put a child in a closet?” She pauses for dramatic effect, letting Vivienne stew. “Which, by the way, is not where we put children.”

“Okay, this phone call was…kinda rash, then,” Vivienne admits.

“Well, you’ve got me now, no take backs.”

“Okay, fine—I saw him.”

“Him?”

“The Termite.”

“…no. Nooooo, Vi, don’t—he—he’s still whole and healthy, yes?!”

“I’m already in a fucking metric ton of hot flaming garbage, I’m not adding homicide into the mess!” Vivienne hisses. She glances back through the crack of the door, view to the table clear where Drake—the Termite of her life, as they’ve been calling him for the last three weeks of this debacle—is still sitting like someone glued him to his seat. “…it could be aggravated assault if his parents catch wind.”

“Vi, I was joking, please tell me you’re joking.”

“He’s fine. Just rumpled from some. Um. Manhandling.”

Ros doesn’t say anything for a minute. But Vivienne knows her well enough to know that she knows Vivienne well enough to know exactly what happened.

Weeks of internal investigation, legal red tape, forced paid leave, all devices checked and wiped…it all forms the toxic legal mire that’s export control and proprietary information being so blatantly compromised. Important projects due for a midterm review halted. Possible lawsuits if collaboration was involved with certain data. The budget—

Forget the corporate throat-slitting some of the other D-Suites and ladder climbers are trying to leverage with this incident—annoying but ultimately, being the equivalent of Lucius’s favored workplace poodle means he’ll swat away all detractors. She won’t lose her position and it’s not like she cares to climb any higher.

But the indignity of the damage done from the harebrained plot of a fucking kid, to her—

That he targeted her and her device for some incomprehensible reason and fucking managed—

It’s like someone knocking on her front door, her opening to answer it in good faith, and they rush in to pee on the carpet before anyone would have the wherewithal to stop them.

What is anyone supposed to do in that situation? How is someone supposed to feel after that?!

She saw him ditching class at the skate park, like he didn’t have a single worry in his little puffball bobblehead brain, and admittedly lost her shit. He’s lucky she only scruffed him—she could have strung him up by his oversized crew neck sweater sleeves and tied him into a knapsack instead.

…a fucking emo kid skater boy, with the quintessential TWLOHA crew neck, managed to hack into her fucking laptop. The audacity.

“…That’s aggravated assault, yes.” Ros’s voice breaks through the current wave of anger.

Vivienne lets out a frustrated whine in response. They both let the situation sink in for a moment as they consider their next moves. It takes more than a minute but the mutual silence is productive.

“Well, he must be terrified out of his goddamn mind right now,” Ros brings the conversation back, tone forcibly casual.

“You’d immediately fall for his ‘I’m baby’ wet eyes if you were here,” Vivienne says. The quipping grounds her, brings her back to focused assessment.

Ros laughs and it makes her feel better immediately. “Considering Kevin fears for his immortal toad-shaped soul every time you breathe around him and you actually like him, the Termite might count himself lucky to escape with life and limb intact.”

Huh. That…might be the play here.

“Of course, just a talking-to, and then I’ll send him on his way,” Vivienne promises. “Being that he nearly got away with what he did, I don’t think he understands that he’s bitten off more than he can chew. It’s only fair that someone tells him.”

“Yeah, it could be worse next time—skipping grades straight to Yale,” Ros agrees.

“All Yale, no Yob.” Vivienne’s chest feels lighter. It’ll be fine. “Okay, thanks for picking up. I’ll see you tonight?”

“Won’t be too late. Oh, and I’m sending the cavalry with the expensive lawyers your way.”

“Oh Jesus, no—”

“—bye!” And Ros hangs up.

Vivienne looks at her phone. She has…twenty minutes to an hour to impart the fear of god and federal-level criminal repercussions without outwardly threatening a twelve-year-old. In a public, if secluded, restaurant.

At least she asked for private seating?

Whatever, she’s worked with less. Vivienne rolls her neck, hears the satisfying crack, breathes in deep, and puts her Workplace Smile on before making her way back to where she’s left the Termite.

===

“You vibrating the car isn’t going to make us go faster,” Dick calls out peevishly. “Are you auditioning for the Flash?”

“Shut up, Dickiebird. I’m worried about Aunt Vi,” Jason snaps back. He does stop shaking his leg, though.

Dick’s worried, too, which is why he’s trying to concentrate on the road—traffic picks up earlier on Fridays, and he doesn’t need to add a car accident on top of extracting Aunt Vi from a possible lawsuit, on top of the information security compromise she’s currently dealing with. Jason’s obnoxious frosted tips keep distracting him in the periphery every time he turns his head, looking out the windows like he can mentally will the car to teleport.

Why the hell did Aunt Vi egg Bruce on to let Jason do that to himself? And why the hell did Aunt Ros not stop either of them?

…if Aunt Vi goes to jail for murdering a kid, justified anger or not, none of these questions will be answered, and though Aunt Ros is a deft hand with Bruce she’s not the one that wrangles the Batman.

Jokes aside, he’s not as worried as Jason because Aunt Vi’s not the type to get violent, even if her demeanor is like a psychic aura that inflicts fear based on proximity. It’s not like she beats people up, even at her workplace where her subordinates scuttle like little bugs around her. She doesn’t even swat at Bruce when he’s pissing her off, despite having the stones to jab her finger into his chest plate as she reams him out for fucking up the Batmobile’s suspensions again.

But she’s usually in control or a position of power. She’s never been made to lose her cool; at least, not while Dick’s been around to see or hear about it. This is the first time she’s been brought this low—even when Bruce was bleeding out all over her that night, Aunt Ros performing first aid on panicked autopilot, Aunt Vi was coolly deciding their next move to get Bruce to safety unnoticed. She had no qualms plucking the control fob for the Batmobile from him and told him to, “Sit the hell down, boy—that car’s more mine than His Dark Grace’s, with the amount of man-hours I’ve put in.”

(And he did sit the hell down at that tone.)

Little Timothy Drake did a number on her; Dick can’t help but feel guilty for not nipping it properly in the bud when they first met. He’s still not sure what to make of the kid. It’d be easy to write him off as an obsessed thrill-seeker, one of those nuts on the conspiracy boards he checks every so often…but what he did goes beyond the risk and effort for those types. From Aunt Vi’s recounting and Bruce’s investigation, it’s most likely that Timothy swapped her USB dongle for a fake one—a ducky—when he was visiting Drake Industries on the day she was meeting with the Drakes themselves. From that, he brute-forced connected to her laptop and was able to hold her device hostage unless she heard him out.

Aunt Vi’s never the type to let herself get pressed. She immediately shut it all down and turned her everything over to WayneTech’s IT department, which then got their internal affairs department involved. If only that was the end of that—she explained, with forced patience to Jason’s naive questioning, that she might also be in trouble with federal regulations because of the type of projects she has her hands in and what data might be compromised from the incident. And then because she’s private sector, IP laws and proprietary rights might be involved as well. So, the legal department was now involved as well as law enforcement.

“But you didn’t give the hacker anything?!” Jason was indignant on her behalf.

“Doesn’t matter. Compromised is compromised. I’d be facing federal prison if I didn’t report it and something got traced back to me.” She looked exhausted, despite being two weeks in on her forced paid leave while Lucius Fox put out fires on her behalf. “This is serious shit, Jason. Can’t just yell or punch it away.”

It took a few days for Bruce and Dick, off the books, to establish with high confidence—based on scant security footage, careful questioning, and timetable corroborations—that a kid literally walked into the meeting room of his parents’ company, plugged something in, and walked right out. The laptop has already been scrapped by IT so they couldn’t trace the connection to confirm. But there was enough circumstantial evidence, along with hints that Timothy knew their identities when they met, that this was some desperate attempt to get into contact with Gotham’s nocturnal denizens.

He sure has what he wanted, now. Bruce looked into everything—him, his parents, their dealings, contacts, family friends, family history, his nannies, hired help. Janet and Jack Drake, with Drake Industries in a bit of hot water, started arranging discreet shipping services for certain families with points of contact in Gotham. Likely, something about that situation spooked the kid into asking for help in all the wrong ways.

Thing is—Aunt Vi’s collateral. There are a few things she’ll admit to hating with a passion: unnecessary collateral (with that, wastefulness), ungratefulness, and cockroaches dead or alive. What she’ll never admit to hating: Dick’s hair (he’s working on it, it just needs a little time), being caught off-guard, and needing to ask for help. Here, she’s their collateral, caught off-guard in the worst way, she needs their help, and this could have all been avoided if they took a direct approach earlier. Aunt Vi doesn’t do upset well, so she gets angry. And she doesn’t like getting angry, so it makes her angrier.

She doesn’t have an outlet right now. All she has had to do for two weeks was to sit with her anger and think. She’s really good at thinking hard, and even better at acting decisively when she’s done.

Oh jeez…last Bruce heard from Aunt Ros, the kid’s still alive. Dick prays it stays that way.

===

They pull into the valet parking lot of the restaurant given by the address. Both him and Jason give it a once over, make eye contact, and come to the same conclusion: it’s too nice of a place for Aunt Vi to lose her shit in. Homicide is looking less likely with each passing minute. As for Timothy’s mental state—jury’s still out on that one.

It takes a bit of name-dropping to get the maître d' to lead them to the private dining parlor where Aunt Vi and her victim are seated. The main dining room isn’t too busy at the moment and none of the patrons look perturbed. That means no yelling or hysterics thus far. When they reach the parlor and the maître d' smartly dismisses himself to get more waitstaff, Dick can finally see the situation. Jason sucks in a breath through his teeth.

“Early dismissal today?” Aunt Vi dabs the corners of her mouth with the serviette before facing them. Yikes—she has that smile on. “You two must be hungry, then. Come sit; keep Little Timothy company.”

Dick doesn’t know a single kid over the age of seven that would tolerate being called ‘Little’ the way Aunt Vi does. Contrary to that, Luke’s his age and bitches non-stop about Aunt Vi condescending him, yet he’s the first to ask “how high?” if she orders everyone to jump (he also takes everything she says as gospel, but that’s neither here nor there). In the same way, Timothy looks like a bug subjected to the sun under a magnifying glass, writhing and dying under her considering gaze. Not that he’s actually dying at the table—it’s just the terrified misery on his face, and the way he squirms without showing signs of wanting to bolt. It’s like he can’t bring himself to even think of fleeing.

Aunt Vi, on the other hand, is back to her regular polish and cool affect. Lipstick without a single smudge, hair pinned, business wear tailored to the millimeter. She looks untouchable and far from the wanness of just a few days ago. That smile, in particular, means nothing good for the recipient. It’s not a happy smile; in fact, it’s not a smile at all—the expression is the socially acceptable version of a predator baring their fangs before going for the throat.

Nonetheless, he and Jason immediately take their seats. It should seem like the two of them are flanking Timothy on Aunt Vi’s behalf, but it feels more like ‘her half of the table’ and ‘their half of the table.’ Dick catches her once-over of both him and Jason, the micro-expressions of judgment before flattening, and then she reaches over to baby Jason.

“You’ll like this,” she says like it’s a foregone conclusion, neatly cutting up a portion of the fish on her plate and placing it on Jason’s. “If not, there’s another dish that’ll sit well with you until dinner.”

“I’m not being starved,” Jason protests, but he immediately picks up his fork and eats what she puts on his plate.

“And you”—Dick freezes when she turns to him—”eat a fruit and get some sunlight. Did you find your true calling as a ninja turtle up in New York?” She says ‘New York’ with the typical Gothamite sneer that’s now noticeable after being back in town.

Her comment, however, makes his face immediately heat up out of his control. But he still tries to do what he came here for; if it wasn't for Bruce's literal cracked ribs, Dick wouldn't bother being 'delegated'. “Uh, Aunt Vi, B sent us to help you out?” The way his voice cracks at the end makes him want to wince.

Jason snickers and Dick kicks him from across the table.

“No need. It’s Little Timothy that needs your help, rather,” she says, turning her gaze onto the kid in question. He looks at them with the comically bug-eyed expression that combines the remnant of fear, incredulity, and quiet awe. “If you’ll tell them what you told me?” She gives him an expectant look.

Timothy rattles off on command. Thankfully, they’ve been looking into the Drakes recently, otherwise the deluge of information that spills out of him would be a mess to keep up with. Most of what he says has been covered by their investigation, some bits add more context, and it turns out the Drakes’ lives are in more danger than their outside perspective showed.

And damn, does this kid get around.

“Very good,” Aunt Vi stops him. “I’ll leave it in your capable hands,” she tells Dick—who feels himself automatically straightening his posture—and then looks down at her watch. “Lunch ran later than I wanted. Make sure Little Timothy gets home. He could do with more supervision.” She gets up from the table and pushes in her chair, grabbing her handbag from the console table by the parlor door. “Feel free to order more if you’re hungry, it’s on my tab. And Little Timothy”—the kid snaps up at the address—”remember to tell your parents.”

“Y-Yes, Ma’am!”

The three of them wait until the clacking of her heels disappear once far enough into the main dining space, and both Dick and Jason turn towards Timothy. He shrinks back at the sudden attention.

“I’m really sorry,” he blurts out, looking miserable and contrite. “Ms. Yang said I caused a lot of trouble that could have made things worse for me, and I really didn’t mean to—”

“—kid, it’s fine—”

“—I just needed help,” he ends his verbal vomit on that browbeaten note.

Dick and Jason give each other discreet looks.

“We know, we’re gonna help,” Jason says. “It’s taken a bit of time, but we have a plan, okay?” He then peruses the spread on their table. “We should get dessert.”

“I’m down,” Dick says with a shrug. “And then let’s get you home, Timothy?”

“…Tim,” he mumbles.

“Tim—pick whatever dessert you want, and I’ll take you home, alright?” Dick coaxes the kid. “Don’t want your parents to worry.”

Jason perks up. “Right…wait, what did Aunt Vi want with your parents?” He gives Dick a quick look. “Thought she just told us to ‘handle it.’”

The distress that was slowly ebbing away with Aunt Vi’s departure suddenly wells up again on Tim’s face. He looks completely beside himself.

“She, uh, some—something about an internship? At WanyeTech.” Tim doesn’t look like he knows enough details to explain. “Which is really cool, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know what—” he clams up again. It’s apparent he has no idea what to make of anything and looks to be giving himself a huge headache with trying to detangle his thoughts. “Aren’t I in a huge boatload of trouble? I already messed up with the laptop, what if I mess up on this internship?” His hands grab at his hair. “I don’t think I’m allowed to say no if I’m being offered an internship like that?”

“Sixth graders don’t get offered internships,” Dick says slowly. “And why do you even know about them?”

“My parents talk about them a lot,” Tim explains, tone still miserable and panicked. “And I know—so maybe I’m still in trouble and Ms. Yang is going to set me up to get in trouble because she already knows—”

Jason’s expression says it all: ‘Forget I asked.’

Dick agrees. Whatever Aunt Vi did to lecture poor Tim Drake—she now lives as a rent-free boogeyman in his mind. Come what may, that’s not his business anymore. As long as Tim’ll make it life and limb intact, that’s all Dick is able to handle.

===

end summary:

tldr vivienne points out exactly the shitload of trouble tim's hacking could have gotten him into, especially because he got caught. she's also dissecting his whole plan and ripping it (and his fragile preteen ego) to shreds the entire time.

bc tim actually is a smart freak and vivienne's been around enough of these smart freaks to know you can't ignore them, the 'internship' is more like summer camp + keeping tim out of trouble + her fixating on his thought processes and going "no. wrong. do better."

the hacking investigation does go away, was hairy for a bit

he ends up following her around like a little duck, coupled with the ducky and his last name, ros nicknames him 'duckie', he doesn't end up caping in this 'verse. runs comms and ops, tho

dick to luke fox: lol aunt vi's replaced you

dick, later: i did not mean to make a 17yo start beefing with an 11yo

#verm bits #on ands #phd-verse #folie a deux #roz is the one that decided to give jason frosted tips #every one of these teenage boys will go through a phase and there will be photos to blackmail them later #dick has an unkempt mullet rn and ros and vi bitch about it at night #''that fucking hair'' ''i want to shave him'' ''he can do what he wants but the split ends--that boy...''#it's great bc everything about ands is an inversion to the main 'verses #or there are overarching bits that show up one way or another in the different AUs #korvin gets tim w a ducky #tim gets vivienne w a ducky #vivienne makes it an awkward lunch #vs korvin's awkward birthday lunch

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