Work Text:
Derek ignores the first tap at the window, but when it repeats – tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap – he finally turns, and nearly falls off his chair with fright.
The Red Angel is perched on the other side of the glass. When he meets Derek’s eye, he tilts his head to the side like a crow regarding a morsel of food, then slides open the window that Derek is certain was locked shut.
“May I come in?” he asks.
“I – yes, yes!”
As soon as the word is out of Derek’s mouth, the boy slips over the sill, quick as liquid mercury, and closes the window behind him.
He’s young. Only a little bigger than the Wayne boy, but with a quiet confidence that no living child that age possesses. He looks smaller than he did that night, and more bird-like too, like perhaps he inherited something from the mean and ragged crows and pigeons that fight for scraps in the Alley.
He holds himself like he might, at any moment, take flight.
The edges of his winged cape are tattered now, and the sight of it fills Derek with shame. He never meant for it to go that far. It didn’t seem possible that an angel could be hurt by human hands. By human desperation.
Perhaps they should have known that their aching hearts would tear at the boy in a way no bullet has ever managed.
“I heard you wanted to talk to me?” the child-angel prompts.
Derek nods.
“Wanted to apologise,” he says. “I’m sorry we all grabbed at you like that. Wasn’t fair of us, so many people asking so much, and you just a kid. We didn’t want to hurt you –”
“You didn’t.”
“Didn’t mean to scare you, either. Or give you all our worries.”
The Red Angel doesn’t quite frown, but his forehead crinkles in a way that makes it clear he doesn’t agree.
“I’d help all of you if I could,” he says.
“The Alley’s a big place with a lot of problems,” Derek says, “and you’re all alone.”
The boy shrugs. “Batman and Robin help sometimes.”
Derek snorts derisively, and for a moment the angel’s face flashes with a grin that looks so much like Kit’s that the grief wells up inside his lungs like a flood. Derek breathes deep, and that leads to a bout of coughing, and then there’s a silence.
“You were asking me to protect someone,” the angel prompts.
“Oh, I can’t ask that of you now,” Derek insists. “I’ve got no right –”
“Tell me?”
The curiosity of a child’s high voice. He died before his voice even broke. Before he ever had a chance to become grown.
“The Alley boy that Wayne took in. You know him?” The angel nods. “He used to be a street kid I’d see around. I did what I could for him – less than I ought to have, I’m sure. I know he isn’t in the Alley any more, but –”
“I can’t make promises. But I’ll keep an eye out,” says the child. And then, after a moment: “Batman will keep an eye on him as well. When he’s not in the Alley.”
Derek breathes a sigh of relief.
“You’re a good kid,” he says. “I know you can probably see I’m a sinner, but – if that boy lives a full and happy life far away from here, and I played any part in helping him get to it, then that’ll be the best thing I did that lives past me.”
The boy’s eyes are the blank white of a ghost, but the weight of his gaze is as solid as the chair Derek sits on.
“Is there anything you need?” he asks. “I have test strips, Narcan –”
“I’m on prescription stuff now,” Derek waves him off. “Save it for someone who needs it more.”
“I try to help whatever person it is that’s in front of me,” the kid says. And it had to be a kid, didn’t it? That kind of idealism doesn’t live ‘til adulthood, not in these parts. It had to be a soul who died too young, so they could carry that hope for all the old cynics like Derek who lived far too long.
“Hey. Kid?” Derek reaches out, but he stops short of touching. He isn’t going to make that mistake again.
“Yes?” the angel turns.
“Do you know what it’s like, where she is? Do you remember being there?”
The boy hesitates, then steps forwards. He touches the back of Derek’s hand, as light as a feather, and something in Derek’s chest trembles.
“I’ve heard people say that the eating’s good and the heat is on.”
Derek punched someone for saying that to him, once. It was a week after Kit’s funeral, and it felt like an accusation, a condemnation for the life he had never been able to provide for her. Even later, it felt like a curse – she’s gone to the good place. Not somewhere you’ll ever see.
But in a dark apartment, with an angel in the body of a child looking down at him, it almost sounds like something Derek could believe he deserves.
“You take care of yourself,” he says, ignoring the way his voice cracks. “We don’t deserve you, you know.”
“It’s not about deserving,” the boy insists. “It’s about what’s right.”
And then the window opens again, with a flash of cold, and the angel-boy perches on the fire escape with the grace of a songbird. He closes the window behind himself, and the last thing Derek sees as he goes is a flash of tattered feathers the colour of dried blood, as red as a Gotham sunrise.