Forty Thieves // By Sister Wolf

Title: Forty Thieves
Author: Sister Wolf
Author e-mail or LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/sister_wolf/
Rating: R
Spoilers: Catwoman 33-36 and the Legacy storyline.
Summary: Solitaire, n. Any card game that can be played by one person.

By the time that Ra's Al Ghul's thugs threw Superboy into my cell, I'd taught myself thirty different variations of solitaire. Two for every day I'd been a prisoner.

"You can't do this to me! I'm a superhero!" the kid yelled down the hallway. The only answer was the fading echo of the guards' boots. He slumped against the cell door, pounding at it weakly. Oddly weakly, based on what I'd heard about his powers. I squinted and caught a glimpse of a silver-colored collar around his neck-- some kind of power-nullifying device, probably.

Giving up on my latest game of Klondike (which I was losing, naturally), I asked, "So, do you know any interesting card games?" Ra's Al Ghul had apparently been feeling generous, in the first few days of my captivity, and had given me two decks of cards and a book of solitaire variations. The man was all heart. After fifteen days, I'd have given my left nut to never, ever have to play another game of solitaire in my life.

"Huh?" Superboy stared wildly around the cell until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The only light in the cell came through the barred opening in the door, so there was barely enough light for me to see the cards. Glaring at me, he demanded, "Who are you?"

"How did you get here? What's the situation outside? How many men does Ra's Al Ghul have guarding the exit?" I shot the questions at the kid rapidfire, hoping to confuse him enough that he'd forget that troublesome little question of identity. Superman's kid probably wouldn't be too thrilled to find himself cellmates with the Cat, after all.

"I-- um. I don't know." The kid rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, admitting sheepishly, "I didn't see much of anything before the really huge guy knocked me out. And when I woke up I had this on me," he said, tugging at the collar, "and they were dragging me down the hall out there."

"Well, that's not especially useful." I was getting seriously sick of being stuck in this cell, but even I wasn't crazy enough to attempt to sneak out from Ra's Al Ghul's little dungeon unless I knew exactly where I was going. Especially not when he had fucking Bane running security for him.

The kid sighed loudly. "This has been the worst month ever."

"Really? I'd have to agree, but, well-- probably for very different reasons."

This whole mess had started when I'd been captured by the Collector, who wanted me to find some ancient stone wheel in the desert. To add insult to injury, he put Kai, my most detested enemy, in charge of making sure I didn't escape. On top of that, I got to baby-sit Brother Umberto, the drunk historian, through a set of deathtraps straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Then, when we finally found the damn wheel, Kai tried to kill me (again), and this time he actually managed to knock me out, embarrassingly enough.

And then, as the crowning event in my month of shit, we all ended up as prisoners of Ra's Al Ghul. Stuck in a cell for two weeks with nothing but solitaire to keep me occupied, and I was seriously starting to go crazy from the sheer boredom. I wasn't sure how the addition of a de-powered Superboy was going to affect the situation, but at the very least it probably wouldn't be boring.

"Hey, shove over," Superboy said, gesturing at the only piece of furniture in the room-- my cot. I narrowed my eyes at him before collecting my cards and moving over to give him room to sit down. Bossy kid.

"First of all, my girlfriend broke up with me, and she won't tell me why."

I nodded and made a vaguely commiserating noise. Damn. I'd been hoping that he wasn't straight. So sue me, the kid was cute. And probably only a few years younger than me. I'd hardly be breaking any laws at all. Pity.

"So I was following her, just to make sure she was okay, when she and Ba-- I mean, her mentor, got on a plane to come here. And it was totally lucky that I managed to overhear the name of the place that they were going to, dude, cause that plane was way faster than I can fly. I ended up hitching a ride on a jumbo jet to make it across the ocean. Then I managed to trail them here without any of them noticing, which I was pretty proud of, cause her mentor's a seriously scary guy. But then I ended up getting hit over the head and thrown in here before I could even-- y'know, help her out or anything. Dude. This sucks."

Superboy lounged on the cot, fiddling absently with one of the buckles on his leather jacket. Black leather jacket, spandex, and gloves-- not exactly the most appropriate clothing for the desert. Admittedly, my catsuit wasn't much better. But at least the mottled grey of my costume blended into the sand, unlike Superboy's bright blue and red. Superheroes, for some reason, seemed to feel the need to dress like flying exclamation points. Well, except for the Bat... he just had to be different, I guess.

"So how'd you end up in here?" the kid asked.

"Wrong place at the wrong time. You know how it goes." There was a commotion somewhere in the distance. I stood up and walked over to the barred window in the door to see what was going on, remembering just a few seconds too late that the brighter light by the door would give Superboy a clear look at my costume. A grey spandex catsuit, with a hood that covered my head and most of my face, topped with little cat-ears. Kind of unmistakable. Crap. I winced and turned around to face him.

"Holy shit! You're Catboy!" the kid yelped, jumping to his feet.

I growled, "That's the Cat, not Catboy." Pet peeve of mine. Silly, perhaps, but-- who would want to hire a thief with as juvenile a name as Catboy? Sounded like something a sidekick would be called. And there already was a Catman, so that name was a no-go. "Congratulations on your impressive powers of deduction, Superboy."

"How did you know who I-- no, never mind, that doesn't matter. I'm gonna have to arrest you, dude," he announced, looking determined. The wince and quiet "ow" that followed indicated, I was fairly sure, that he'd attempted to use his powers and found them blocked by the collar.

"Arrest me? What, you're a cop? I think you mean capture. And if it hasn't escaped your notice, we're already prisoners. Perhaps we should wait on the capturing until after we're out of this mess," I suggested.

"Hmm. Um, that's a good point. I won't try to capture you, for now. But after we get out of here, all bets are off." He crossed his arms over his chest and attempted to loom. It was kind of cute, really. I'd been loomed over by the best-- there was no way that a superpowered teenager was going to intimidate me, not after facing off with Batman.

"Fair enough. I'll plan on quaking in my boots later," I said with my most pleasantly threatening smile. "But before you bring me in, sheriff, you might want to check if I have any outstanding warrants or wants."

"What do you mean? You're a super-villain. Everyone knows you're a jewel thief. Of course you have warrants out for your arrest."

I held up one hand, counting points off on my fingers. "One, not a super-villain. I'm pretty sure you have to attempt to kill one of the 'good guys' in order to be a super-villain. Two, I am not just a jewel thief. I steal things that are much more valuable than diamonds. And three, no, I don't have any warrants or wants. I did a little favor for Uncle Sam a while back, and I had my record cleared as payment."

"Seriously?" Superboy looked impressed.

"Seriously."

"That's kinda cool-- wait, no, it's not! You probably stole stuff for them."

"Uh-huh. Why else would you hire a master thief?" I asked, sitting down on the cot. "Listen, there's no point to us arguing over this. You're a hero, I'm a villain, whatever. In the meantime, you want to play a card game?"

Superboy sat down, looking suspicious. I sighed. "I promise that playing cards with me isn't part of a nefarious plot to steal the Crown Jewels or something, okay?"

"Okay," he said with an embarrassed grin. "So, um, what do you want to play?"

"Anything but solitaire," I said, shuffling the deck.

***

Superboy snuffled against the back of my neck, muttering something in his sleep.

Two prisoners, one cot, and neither one of us was willing to try to sleep on a stone floor. The only reasonable solution was to share the cot, which would have been fine, except for the fact that Superboy was a snuggler. Seriously, it was like trying to sleep with an aggressively friendly octopus. He radiated heat, seemed to have a natural instinct for spooning, and smelled really good. I rolled my eyes and told my libido to go take a cold shower or something.

"Mmmmm." Superboy pulled me closer and started nuzzling the back of my neck. Even through the spandex, that felt way too good. Gritting my teeth, I tried to squirm away. I was already turned on, dammit, this was just plain unfair. I could hear his breathing change as he started to wake up. Boy, was he going to be unhappy when the buxom blonde in his dream turned out to be male and, well, me.

"Stop wiggling," Superboy muttered, his voice fuzzy with sleep.

"Fine. Stop molesting me."

Superboy yawned, pulling me closer and rubbing my stomach with his free hand. Something other than the buckles on his stupid jacket was poking me in the lower back. I squinched my eyes closed and reminded myself that the kid was straight, and it would be wrong to take advantage of him when he was half-asleep and horny. And I might be a thief, but I'm not a complete jerk.

His hand started sliding southward. I bit my lip and decided not to stop him-- I was pretty sure that encountering my dick would be enough to shock him all the way awake.

As it turned out, I'd guessed wrong. His hand didn't even pause, just molded itself to my hard-on and started rubbing with short, teasing strokes. The tight spandex of my catsuit was going to get seriously uncomfortable soon if he didn't stop doing-- just that, oh yeah, right there...

"Ah--" I cleared my throat and tried again. "You should-- ah-- you should probably stop that." Way to be assertive, there, Tim.

I could feel him smile against the back of my neck. "Why?" he asked, sounding much more awake now.

"Uh--" His thumb stroked that spot right below the head of my dick, and I briefly lost track of my argument. "Um. Girlfriend," I managed, in a slightly strangled voice.

"Ex-girlfriend." His hand left my dick with a final teasing caress. I manfully resisted the urge to whimper. Propping himself up on his elbow, he continued, "And yeah, I like guys too. Why limit myself to just one sex? That whole either/or thing never made much sense to me, dude."

"Oh." I guess I'd seen the 'S' shield and immediately assumed he was like a younger version of Superman-- white-bread, boring, and incredibly straight. So much for assumptions.

I rolled onto my back, frowning up at him. "Okay, fine, but you seem to be forgetting the real problem here."

"Which is?" he asked, flicking at one of my nipples with his fingernail.

"Hero," I said, poking him in the chest. Pointing at myself, I added, "Villain."

He blushed. "Um, I've always kind of had this problem with being attracted to bad boys." Nuzzling at one of my ears, he breathed hotly through the spandex, "C'mon, don't you wanna corrupt me?"

Oh, to hell with it. I'd worry about whether this was a good idea later.

Someone, somewhere, had put some serious thought into teaching Superboy the fine art of making out. That, or he simply had an impressive natural talent. We were wrapped around each other, legs entwined, the cot beginning to squeak in protest against all the rubbing and grinding and thrusting, when the part of my brain that always remained conscious of my surroundings, no matter what I was doing, noticed a sound that really didn't fit in a desert dungeon. The thunder of rushing water.

"Wait, hang on," I gasped. Superboy growled under his breath and continued biting at the side of my neck-- apparently, there was some vampire mixed in with the Super. "I think I hear something."

Why the hell would I be hearing water under a desert? The answer came shockingly quickly, as water started pouring under the cell door. "Holy shit!"

"What?" Superboy followed my gaze to the door. "Fuck!"

Our imminent death had definitely killed the mood. Superboy pounded on the door uselessly while I pulled out one of the tools of my trade that Bane and his henchmen had missed when they searched me. A tungsten alloy wire was hidden in a compartment sewn into the leg seam of my catsuit. I could have escaped at any time-- but playing hide-and-go-seek with Ra's Al Ghul, his army of followers, and Bane just hadn't appealed to me, somehow. Also, Ra's Al Ghul had promised that he didn't intend to kill me. I guess leaving me in a locked cell while the complex flooded had just been an oversight. That lying son of a bitch.

"Door's padlocked on the outside, but it should be relatively simple to pick." I paused. "Superboy. You can stop hitting the door now."

This kind of lock would be dead simple to open, normally-- but this definitely wasn't a normal situation. I had to open it by feel using a foot and a half of wire, from a bad angle, while cold water rose around my knees and started creeping up my thighs. Not to mention the de-powered superhero who was currently having a little melt-down right next to me.

"This was so stupid. I mean, even for me. What the hell was I thinking, following them here? Like Batman would be thrilled to have me helping out."

My hand jerked and I lost half a minute of progress with the tumblers. "Would you do me a favor and shut up until I-- wait. Batman's here? So the girl you followed must be--"

"Robin."

Hoo boy. That put a different spin on things. My relationship with the Bat family is... weird, would be a good description for it. 'Full of sexually ambiguous tension' works too. Batty had never quite forgiven me for turning him down when he asked me to give up the criminal life and join his little crusade. Possibly laughing at him hadn't helped. The really kind of creepy part was that I wasn't sure if he'd been asking me to be his partner... or his partner. The thought of all that brooding obsession being focused on me made all my run-the-hell-away-now instincts scream bloody murder. And as for Robin, well... every so often I gave her the 'sorry, wrong gender' talk, but it never quite seemed to sink in.

"Well, hopefully they're off fighting Ra's Al Ghul and saving the world or something. Now keep quiet while I pick this lock, or else we're both going to end up drowning in the middle of a desert." I was fully underwater by the time I managed to finally, finally get the damn lock open. I surfaced long enough to grab a lungful of air and tell the kid to follow me. Of course, I wasn't entirely sure where the way out of the complex was, but anything was better than staying in that deathtrap.

We surfaced in the corridor outside. To my surprise, Brother Umberto hailed me from the next cell down. I'd have figured that two weeks without booze would have killed him, but he was still alive and kicking, so I set about freeing him. To my vast displeasure, the next person to call my name turned out to be Kai. I was all for leaving him there, but Superboy refused to move another step until I freed Kai, too. Damning myself for a fool, I unlocked his cell, and we headed for the exit under a temporary truce.

After all that, the break-out turned out to be relatively simple-- there didn't appear to be anyone around but us prisoners. We climbed up a huge elevator shaft and out into the sunlight. Nothing around us but miles and miles of sand and the remnants of Ra's Al Ghul's compound. A brief search of the compound netted us a jeep that looked to be on the verge of falling apart, but, hey, it still ran, and beggars can't be choosers.

Predictably, Kai tried to kill me (again) and take the jeep for himself. I dealt with some pent-up frustration by kicking the crap out of him. That guy never seems to learn. I knocked him out, tied him up, and left him next to the elevator shaft. Superboy, of course, expressed concern about leaving him there to die.

"Trust me, kid, I'm going to take great satisfaction in telling the authorities exactly where to find him," I said, checking my knots carefully. Kai would probably manage to escape before the cops got there-- but there was no sense in making it easy for him.

"My name isn't kid." Superboy sounded pissed off.

"Huh?" I looked up from checking my handiwork, noticing Brother Umberto tactfully stepping away. "Look, I'm sorry, but it's just a little bit awkward calling you Superboy all the time."

"My name is Kon," he said with a sort of dignified stubbornness, and for a second I felt like I was getting a glimpse of what he'd be once he grew up.

Shaking my head, I stood up and dusted off my hands. "Take a walk with me."

I led him to a crate of the proper height and had him sit down. As he looked on in confusion, I slid the heel of my left boot off to reveal a secret compartment. The jewelers' loupe and lockpicks hidden within were still intact and dry-- my boot maker was definitely getting a Christmas bonus this year. "Hold as still as you can while I try to open the lock on your collar, okay?"

He looked betrayed. "Why didn't you take the collar off before?"

"Because I'm sure Ra's Al Ghul has this rigged so that it'll set off an alarm the moment it comes off."

"Oh."

He held still while I worked on the lock-- a nice challenging one, but certainly not beyond my capabilities-- but the moment it came off, he launched into the air with a yell of pure joy, spiraling above me into the pale blue sky. I shaded my eyes, watching him until he was just a speck in the distance.

I figured I'd seen the last of him, then, and turned to collect Umberto and start up the jeep.

I'd just finished loading all the supplies I could scavenge into the back of the jeep when I heard a footstep on the sand behind me. It couldn't be Umberto, he was already asleep in the passenger seat. I spun around, ready to fight whoever it was.

Superboy-- Kon-- grinned at me. "Hey. Sorry for running off, but I had to fly around some. It was driving me crazy not having my powers, dude."

"I can imagine," I said, remembering endless games of Solitaire in my gloomy little cell. "So, I guess this is goodbye. Say hi to Robin for me-- no, on second thought, don't."

"Um." Kon rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and looked bashful. "So, I was wondering-- you want to have dinner together?"

I blinked. Unless I was sadly mistaken, a superhero had just asked me on a date. This was becoming a recurring thing with me. Was it my costume? My compact but muscular body? My way with a lockpick? I bet Slyfox never has this problem. Of course, Slyfox is also an idiot, so...

Kon was still waiting for an answer. "Oh, um. Sure. Look me up when we get back to the States."

"I was thinking more like tonight." Kon held out his arm and hovered slightly above the sand. "Superboy Express, at your service."

A quick calculation: on the one hand, two days of driving to get back to what passed for civilization around here, on barely-there roads, in a jeep without air conditioning. On the other hand, a brief flight with a superhero, followed by a shower, a change of clothes, dinner, and energetic sex with a guy who could probably pick up small cars with one hand.

I opened the door of the jeep and threw the keys at Umberto. "Umberto! You know how to get back to civilization?"

He blinked at me, puzzled. "Yes, of course, I memorized our route--"

"Good. Take the jeep, Umberto, I've got other plans. Good luck, and don't take this the wrong way, but I hope to never see you again."

"The same to you, gatto grigio. Godspeed."

I took a deep breath as I turned to face Kon. This would be my first time flying, as long as you don't count almost falling to my death a few times.

Rising into the air, I realized that flying was nothing like falling. "Cool," I hissed under my breath.

Kon grinned at me. "It's awesome, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said, grinning back at him like an idiot, despite my best attempts at a poker face.

"Wait till we get some altitude, dude." He paused, looking a little uncertain. "Hey, what's your name, anyway? I mean, I told you mine. Unless it's a huge secret or something."

I hesitated, biting my lip. There wasn't any way to link Tim Drake to the Cat, not any more, and it wasn't like I had an uncommon first name anyway. It was just the paranoid habit of years on the run that I was having problems getting past.

"Hey, don't worry about it. I'll just call you by irritating pet names like kitten or pussycat--"

"It's-- I'm Tim."

"Tim." Kon grinned and kissed me quickly, once, twice, and then again, more deeply. We were both breathless by the time I ended the kiss.

"C'mon, Kon," I said, wrapping my arms around his neck, "Let's go flying."