The Truth // By Lyn

Around one thirty am, Tim woke up on the couch to his cell phone ringing and realized he hadn't meant to fall asleep in the first place. His neck ached and he rubbed it absently as he sat up, fishing the cell out of his pants and flipping it open. "Drake."

"Hey." It was Grayson and they were long past the point of having to introduce themselves. "Doing anything?"

Tim looked at the TV. The tape had ended and rewound itself and now the screen was playing snow. The light and the noise shifted in dissonant patterns, muffled and arrhythmic, casting shadows on the wood tones of Tim's apartment. He rubbed his eyes. "No."

"Then get down here. The red lady wants to see us both." Grayson was doing that drawl thing he did, elongating vowels like they tasted good in his mouth. He was probably leaning against a wall somewhere and smirking. It was a mode of expression he employed when he was feeling relaxed if not necessarily safe, trying to have fun with something that wasn't actually very much fun at all.

He groped around until he found a Styrofoam cup on the coffee table, drank it and made a face. The coffee was cold. Tim took another swallow. "About what?"

"Not sure." Grayson was lying. He thought he could deadpan his way out of every situation, and he hadn't realized yet his voice filled in the gaps when he was omitting information. "But it seems worth scrubbing off that cucumber facial mask and heading to the office for."

"Cucumber /melon/." Tim stood up and his back cracked in protest. Not as young as he used to be, although thank god not as old as Grayson was. Too many chases after people who could run ten miles per hour more quickly than Tim had been taught a human could run. Too many fights wrestling creatures into submission because their skin could deflect bullets. Too many late nights spent on the goddamned couch. Tim drained the coffee cup and tucked the phone up on his shoulder so he could straighten his tie. "I'll be at the bureau in half an hour."

"See you then." Grayson paused. "Drake?"

"Yeah?"

Grayson hesitated again. "Whatever this is, it's probably not... Nothing. I'll see you at the office." Grayson hung up. The hum of the dial tone reverberated in Tim's ear.

Tim sighed a little, scrubbing one hand through his hair. He had given up on neat a few weeks ago and presentable was becoming further and further a stretch. A year ago, three weeks ago, he would have managed a quick shower, changed his shirt before going in to see his supervisor. The impulse was still programmed into his muscles; he had learned the proper way to dress for professional situations as conscientiously as he did everything else. It wasn't like Grayson and his legendarily rumpled suits, which, in Tim's opinion, were the product of a lifetime's willfully honed obliviousness. It was just that these days if Gordon wanted them at one-thirty and the morning and Grayson had called him up to lie to him, Tim could give a good crap about a clean shirt.

He glared at the TV. It buzzed with white noise until Tim found the remote and the snow shrunk down to the size of one pixel and disappeared.

--

Grayson met him outside of Gordon's office with a cup of coffee and his eyebrows raised. "Were you sleeping on the couch again?"

"Yeah."

Grayson looked like he wanted to say something. And for a moment, Tim wondered if Grayson was going to give him a little talk, maybe tell him he should be taking better care of himself, warn him about becoming so involved in your work you became a scrap of skin wrapped around a cause. Grayson could say all that in a kind, calm, worried voice and Tim could call him on being the biggest hypocrite to be born in five hundred generations of saucer chasers and maybe the tension hanging between them lately would disappear, be swept off in a vacuum to make way for all that cleared air.

But Grayson just turned towards the door, drinking his coffee. Tim's eyes flickered to the motion before he looked away.

If Barbara Gordon's office was larger than other Assistant Directors it was only to make it more easily wheelchair accessible. If she had ever dreamed it was a sign of favoritism, she probably would have turned it down. It was dark though, in the way mahogany lended itself to being dark and a carpet meant to provide a contrast only exacerbated the problem. Gordon was typing furiously on the computer when her secretary led them in, her hair tied up off her neck in a messy knot. It showed off her neck and did something sharp to her cheekbones. She usually wore it like that when Grayson was around.

"Hello, boys," she said without looking up. Tim and Grayson sat in their usual places in front of her desk. "Thank you, Dinah. Would you close the door behind you please?"

Dinah left with a final click of the door and a wink in their direction, and Gordon looked up for the first time since they entered the room.

"This doesn't leave here," she said.

Neither of them reacted. It wasn't the first time they had heard it.

Gordon put her hand on her desk, fingertips touching at a professional tilt. "These documents were recovered at roughly eleven forty five tonight. After serious discussion with my supervisors," She paused slightly, her lip curling, casting a glance at Tim so there would be no question what the discussion had been about. "It was agreed that considering your extended and personal involvement with the case, you should be allowed to see them. If it is ever to be made public, the bureau will deny everything and make itself considerably clear that it is not," another pause, this one purely for effect, "Overjoyed. You understand?"

Tim kept his face immobile. He could feel his heart rate rising, a pulse fluttering in his neck where the artery was close to the surface and the skin was thin.

"Ma'am," said Grayson, almost gently. When he wasn't doing his best to get himself fired, Grayson talked to Gordon with a sort of respectful tenderness that could only mean he was a little in love with her. Not that Grayson was going to get fired anytime soon. He had the impenetrable job security of a high level agent who was a strong cup of coffee away from going rogue. The most dangerous thing the FBI could do was release him as a free citizen with no obligations to the state. Tim, as a relatively sane man, had no such guarantees. His head felt a little light.

Gordon stared at both of them cat-eyed for a moment before pursing her lips slightly and pushing a manila envelope over the desk. Grayson got it first, opened it and gave it a perfunctory glance. Wordlessly, he passed it to Tim.

Tim looked down at a surveillance photo of Stephanie Brown's corpse.

**

They had met on a case before she even joined the bureau. It was personal to her and she was 'helping the law along' as she put it, which Tim had persuaded her against. It had been attraction at first sight, at least on her side. She was accepted into the academy and had worn him down with her own powers of persuasion, and somehow Tim had ended up in love.

The night she had graduated (not top of her class - her supervisors' reports were cautious about her enthusiasm for detaining perps, but close) they had made pasta in her tiny apartment and discussed Tim's latest case and fucked on the kitchen table and Tim's life had never before harmonized into such an effortlessly perfect amalgam of all its components.

"It's not her," he said.

Gordon blinked. "Agent Drake?"

"The abrasions on the right shoulder." Tim swallowed slightly, getting his bearings. Superficial damage reports were second nature by now, comfortingly reassuring like practicing scales. "Note the discoloration -- that could only have been achieved if the impact had occurred before death. As evidenced in my report, Agent Brown suffered no such injury the night of her disappearance. Besides." Tim stared at Gordon levelly. "As I also wrote in my report, before she vanished, there was a bright light that most probably would have caused first or second degree flash burns at the very least given Agent Brown's proximity to the source. The body in question is not disfigured in such a manner. It's not her, ma'am."

Gordon was completely expressionless and they could have tried to stare each other down for who knows how long until Grayson said, brightly enough for him, "Okay. Thank you, ma'am. Let's go, Drake."

Tim got up, followed Grayson out the door and into the hallway. He didn't pause to look at Gordon. Outside her office it was fluorescent and sterile, and there was a thrumming sort of pain in the right side of Tim's head that reminded him of power lines.

He trailed after Grayson until he passed the coffee machine. Tim stopped and reached for a cup and Grayson pivoted on his heels and came towards him.

"So," Grayson said, bouncing just slightly. Grayson always simmered with a low-level energy and it was bubbling out the cracks now that he was excited and trying to hide it. "You don't think it was her."

Tim couldn't look at him. He concentrated on the coffee pot percolating. "That's what I said."

"Right," said Grayson. He must not think it was her either. "So you thinking some kind of clone? I didn't see a brand, but at that angle..."

Tim felt his throat tightening up, "I don't know."

He snuck a glance over at Grayson, who was sagging slightly in astonishment. "Are you kidding me? You said in there-"

"In there I said that the body wasn't Steph's. That's all I know. I'm not about to go ahead and make assumptions-"

"Oh come on!" Grayson said incredulously. "How much more do you need to know? You know it wasn't Brown, you saw the abduction-"

"I didn't see an abduction!" Tim tried to breath for a second, unclenching his hand around his cup. The Styrofoam creaked slightly. "I didn't see an abduction. I saw a light and I heard a scream and then Steph was gone. That's what I told the agents in charge of the case because that's all I know. Do you get that?"

Grayson clenched his jaw. "How much is it going to take before you take your head out of your ass and see the truth?"

It had been a long, long three weeks and Tim felt something unspool from his chest he was powerless to stop. "Grayson, I'm sorry about what happened to your parents. But I'm not going to sit by and let you turn my girlfriend going MIA into your Exhibit B at the next UFO convention."

For a second Grayson looked like he had been punched. Literally winded, blown onto the rocks out from sea. But then he straightened up again, gathering his old me-against-the-world mentality that for the past few years had been us-against-the-world although maybe Tim had changed that just now. "So that's all you have to say? That's your official analysis, Drake? You're willing to let this one rot as an R-File and chalk it up to perfectly explainable causes that won't ever be explained?"

Tim dumped out his coffee. He wasn't going to drink it. "You've been doing your own investigations behind my back, Grayson. Tell me if there's anything you think I need to know."

Grayson looked startled. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose. It made Tim think of when he used to wear his glasses more; when they had first met Grayson had looked up from his desk, distrust picture-perfect behind the frames. "So you're the one they sent to spy on me," he had said, and been right. Tim had been sat down in a room with Gordon and large unknown men lurking in the shadows and told in business management terms that he was going to keep an eye on Richard 'Batty' Grayson because he was a bright practical kid with an MD and perfect for the job. But any plans they might have had for him derailed roughly seven minutes into the partnership. Tim had discovered something about Dick Grayson that meant like it or he was not going to betray him. Something staggering and yet only a shade away from being obvious, just a matter of letting your eyes unfocus and the old crone in the picture turned into a beautiful woman.

"I don't give up," Grayson said as he left, and the accusation mingled with the bitter coffee smell in the room.

**

Tim did not go to his apartment right away. The longer he worked with Grayson the less it felt like a home anyway and more like a place where he kept his things while he was off on weekly excursions to Iowa investigating women who manipulated pheromones and plant toxins. And lately every room was a place Steph wasn't, somewhere where her laughter didn't bounce off the walls and the light didn't catch her hair. Walking around DC at night did not rank as a brilliant idea but he was armed and trained and in a stormy mood.

He hated when he got into a fight with Grayson; a real fight not just a debate. Mostly because they both had the same slate stubbornness that meant the only thing that would pass for an apology was one of them saving the other's life. And Lord knew they had enough opportunities to do that over the years: the psychotic clown with his acid-burned smile, the sewer-dwelling mutant disfigured so he resembled the penguins he called family, the hormone secreting phantom that fed on fear. Tim's realm of probability had been stretched like saran wrap since partnering with Grayson, but Grayson had never produced his golden ticket, the ultimate proof of his theories, the little gray men scrawled all over his psyche. What Tim had eloquently shredded with Occam's razor in the past, he couldn't in good conscious dismiss out of hand anymore. But he still wasn't willing to follow Grayson down that rabbit hole yet, especially if it was Steph they were chasing.

It hadn't been that tough to guess Grayson had been gathering his own information. Tim didn't exactly mind, in part out of wearied resignation and in part because he had his own ways of figuring out the important things his partner tried to keep from him. Grayson was upfront about a few of his sources, the harmless ones mostly. Some of them, like the Lone Titans, were a little too harmless. Tim liked them, but not enough to go to one of Gar's barbeques. But there was always the lingering image of Deep Arrow lying lifeless on the street, his corpse as desperate and enigmatic a symbol as his warnings had ever been. Sometimes Grayson would casually but firmly kick Tim out of his office but not before Tim notices the letter 'A' scotched taped on the window. Grayson had contacts he didn't want Tim to know too much about, maybe to protect him, maybe because Grayson's paranoid little brain didn't think he was ready yet. But in the eternity of the last three weeks, Grayson had been vanishing for long gaps of time and the shadows under his eyes matched Tim's own. He was digging deep.

And that would have been fine, if it were for Tim's sake. If it was meant to make up for all the offhanded stinging little comments about the unprofessional nature of his relationship and Tim's waning dedication to the job. It would have been better if Grayson really hoped to rescue Steph, but Tim was pretty sure he knew better. He had spent the last three weeks shut down in the numb safe-mode of shock, searching every lead, pulling every string he knew, trying to find Steph so he could fix her and bring her home. She could have been delivered to his doorstep in the morning and he wouldn't have cared just as long as it meant having her back. But Grayson, Grayson just wanted to find out what happened to her.

He had loved Steph. Maybe not as much as he should have. Maybe he hadn't always been honest with her and maybe there were things that were always going to come first, but Tim had loved Stephanie Brown enough that it tied it up in knots before she was even gone. It had been three weeks of interviews and manhunts, of being nearly accused of murder himself, of self-enforced sleeplessness and that enraging sense of futility. And nothing. No leads of any kind other than the grainy snuff-film quality photo of Gordon's. The part of him that graduated med school and took pride in being methodical and rational, which was maybe most of him, wanted to accept her disappearance as permanent, show her the respect she deserved by giving her the dignified finality of death. He wanted to grieve for his loss and move on.

But he wasn't stupid, and he knew that the years working with Grayson had rubbed off on him. He was smudged with the man's fingerprints, marked and altered. Tim was a doctor and he recognized the symptoms: an increasing scorn and suspicion of other people's motives, the tendency to draw inward and bury himself in the pursuit, a compulsion for answers that scorched the edge of his vision and made everything else seem small and irrelevant. He never stayed up past midnight watching highly suspect alien autopsy videos before he met Grayson. He never thought the word truth should be capitalized. He couldn't just dismiss things anymore, and this case in particular he couldn't let lie. Steph's disappearance hadn't set off a switch; it merely drew attention to a slow, inexorable pull that had been going on for some time now. And Tim had no idea which way to turn or how much the choice was his to make.

Maybe the light was leading him home, but maybe it was just meant to warn him about the rocks ahead.

**

Grayson was waiting for him on his apartment stoop. Trenchcoated and hunched over, for a minute he looked liked a particularly malevolent vulture before unfolding and smiling sheepishly at Tim. "You forgot your beer."

Tim sat down next to him. "I did?"

Grayson nodded gravely and handed him a bottle. "Good thing I picked up a six pack at the store," The line between his eyes smoothed out when Tim untwisted the cap and took a swallow.

Yeah," Tim said hoarsely. "Thanks." He picked at the label. It was a Sam Adams, wet with condensation. Adams had been a maltster, not a brewer, and he had driven the family business into the ground. Some people only had a talent for revolution.

They sat there for a while on the steps not talking and drinking beer like it was summer and they were much younger, like life was willing to wait around and the shadows in the corner only had the substance they chose to give them.

"I couldn't find out anything," Grayson said quietly.

Tim nodded. "That's okay."

"I know..." Grayson said. "I know how hard it is." He did know. Maybe Grayson knew better than anybody.

Tim ran his finger over the mouth of his bottle. "You never liked her."

"I didn't really know her," Grayson corrected mildly.

"No," Tim assented. "You didn't." Grayson had only met Steph once or twice out of a tacit agreement between the three of them. They all knew the truth and they all knew there was no way to make it not hurt, but at least they could make something comfortable out of it.

Grayson took a long pull from his beer. The lamplight and Grayson's light sheen of sweat turned the exposed arch of his throat golden, trembling and delicate like a piece of foil or an insect's wing. Tim's hands clenched and unclenched.

"But I know what she meant to you," Grayson said finally. "And I should have said I was sorry a while ago."

For a moment Tim felt uncomplicated tenderness for the man, undammed the old knowledge and let it wash over him. He was bound to Grayson irrevocably, unconditionally; they were twined together like old Chinese legends about red thread. Grayson's cause was his cause, no matter what he did or didn't believe. They were in this together, united by a drive for perfection and knowledge and something greater than the sum of their parts. Separately they were worse than useless, together they could defeat the darkest things that crawled out of Grayson's nightmares.

Grayson was all he had. Grayson was all he ever wanted.

"Thanks," he said again, and let himself touch Grayson's arm. Grayson looked startled for a minute then leaned into his hand, and Tim understood what he had to do.

**

First he got Grayson drunk. It wasn't his proudest moment, but Grayson would ruin everything and Tim figured it was his turn to protect him for once. It was never very hard to nurse a beer and let him talk, and after Grayson had had four and Tim hadn't finished his first bottle, he offered to let Grayson crash on his bed. He did not elaborate on where he would be sleeping.

Grayson leaned against Tim heavily as he helped him into the apartment, humming something Tim didn't recognize. He was all long, hard lines where Stephanie had curved, different calligraphy for very different characters. Grayson's breath was a little beery against his cheek but in a sweet way, and Tim felt himself blush and hated it.

After Tim had dumped him on the bed and taken off his shoes, Grayson reached forward and cupped a hand around his face. Tim nearly recoiled but forced himself to stand still.

"Hey," said Grayson. He was grinning, wide and unguarded and oddly boyish. Grayson never spoke about his childhood before his parents' disappearance, but it must have been happier than Tim's.

Tim squeezed Grayson's wrist. "Hey."

"Hey," Grayson said again, drawing it out this time like he was introducing a brand new idea. His thumb stroked Tim's cheekbone.

Tim swallowed a mouthful of molasses-heavy air. "Go to sleep, Grayson."

Grayson nodded thoughtfully, let go of Tim and curled up on the bed. When Tim paused to look at him as he was turning off the light, Grayson was breathing evenly, the familiar tension lines reformed on his face in sleep. He looked exhausted and vulnerable in the shell of his suit, disillusioned and unprepared.

Tim locked the door behind and took the key. The drive headquarters didn't take long at all at three o'clock in the morning.

Technically he didn't have code-word clearance for where he was going, but at this point all the secretaries were a little fuzzy as to what his status was in the first place, and all it took was a few well-placed smiles. He was buzzed in without a backwards glance as the secretary and the guard turned back to their respective magazines.

It was the kind of place that demanded twenty-four hour on-call staff who had to handle so few visitors they thought it was a desk job.

The hallway was long, wide enough for only single file, dingy like an overexposed photo. It smelled of cheap disinfectant and the dust it hadn't found. The fluorescent light above his head flickered sporadically as Tim came to the door.

No one knew why they were called the R-Files. R could stand for a lot of things -- ridiculous, retarded, really a waste of time. There were dozens of jokes.

Tim reached for the doorknob.

"Are you sure that's what you really want to do?"

The voice was like the bottom of a fish tank, like the bottom of the ocean. Like it hadn't been exposed to sunlight for years. But Tim had a lot of experience not panicking at unexpected noises and he turned around slowly. This man had never hurt him before, he reminded himself, and if nothing else he still had his gun.

Tim didn't know his name. He suspected the information was more heavily classified than anything that could be found poking around Roswell. Tim had always thought of him as the Lurking Man when he thought of him at all; he had a way of disappearing into corners despite his size. He was different from all his peers Tim had met: younger and dark-haired, tall and strongly muscled, flat blue eyes and huge scarred hands you could imagine wrapped around an arm or a throat. He detached himself from the wall in an easy liquid motion, his mouth a slash in a stone face.

"I think it is," Tim said. His palms were sweating and he knew he sounded more nervous than alert.

"You won't find the answers you're looking for," the man warned. His voice was neutral, almost calm.

"But I'll find leads. There's a way to the truth in there."

The man's lip quirked. "He's gotten to you."

"Maybe. Maybe I just didn't know I had this in me until I met him."

He shifted, and Tim automatically reached for his gun before he got control over his instincts. The man watched this, giving off faint amusement. "Do you know why you were paired up with him? Not to spy on him, but the real reason."

Tim kept a firm grip on the doorhandle. "No."

"Because Grayson needed someone." It was remarkable how he could express contempt without moving or changing inflection. "And you need to be needed. That's why you became a doctor. It's certainly why you joined the bureau. You need to feel useful to people. Once you two became wrapped up on each other, you couldn't be a hindrance to serious business."

Tim squeezed the words out at evenly as he could. "Looks like your plan backfired."

"Did it." He didn't even shift on his feet.

"Are you going to try to stop me if I go in there?" Tim said. His upper arm was starting to ache.

"You'll leave the building uninjured," the man said. "But we'll stop you before you can really get anywhere like we always have. You know that. If you go back now, we'll consider this a side effect of grief and let you and Grayson continue your little chases."

"I don't think I can," Tim said. It was the most honest thing he had said in years.

The man took a step forward, not intimidating in the way he meant it to be. "Think about it, Drake. Think about what you're doing to your career. Your reputation. You'll never recover from this, you'll be branded just as crazy as he is. Think about that. No support, no help, no sympathy. Just you and Grayson following some absurd notion of a truth you'll never find. You'll die alone and afraid, for nothing. Is that what you really want?"

And god help him, Tim thought about it.

It was an odd sort of feeling, either zen or an overdose of oxygen, but it made him nearly want to smile. "I believe," Tim said, and walked into the room behind him.

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