thoughtformed | (no subject)

[Long slow breath in, long slow breath out.]

Practice. And friends. Come over here.

[He doesn't wait to be invited twice, scooting over and helping himself to a hug around Tim's shoulders, staying way away from his legs. Or he'd scooted over right into Tim's lap - Tim wasn't a large person, but Dick was... still skinny, and small, if starting to head slightly into the gangly. Anyway.]

[Eventually, he gets his breath a little back in control.]

It's not the midnight thing, right? With the... I know it's not, with Wally. But with the others.

No. Their phone service was terminated, not made unavailable; the devices themselves were detectable right up until Vigilance auto-wiped the memory.

[Tim's arms wrapped around him, if a little awkwardly, though he let go when Dick's pulled himself together. He knew what he was inviting when he told him to come here.]

Besides, there's only been one case of a double disappearance on the Midnight Channel, and it gave us back-to-back broadcasts. With someone in there right now...

[Oh, Dick was pulling himself together, but he wasn't letting go quite yet.]

Okay. That's at least... good. Not for Katniss Everdeen, I miss, but...

[He swallowed, then, quieter.]

If they're taken from here someplace... that's hard, they'll all help each other, right? Somehow?

... Somehow.

[Feeling Steph gone, freshly, that level of optimism is foreign to him, but he can't tell Dick anything else, whether he believes it or not.]

[Dick sighs, and gives a small nod against Tim's shoulder.]

[It takes him a little more clinging before he finally disengages, flopping down cross-legged in front of the wheelchair, looking up.]

Tim. What do we do about this place? [He bites his lip.] What have you tried?

Without Bruce's budget, everything I can think of takes years. Or the kind of all-or-nothing risk that...

Well, I've watched three or four people take it so far and wind up with 'nothing.'

What did they do?

[He's going to file away the budget thing for later. And start earning money asap, because Tim sounds like he has ideas, and, well, you can't get anywhere with those without the resources.]

Massive break-ins or intrusions. Populist uprisings or riots. Terrorism.

Not great methods, but to get past island security into the areas where they keep their data and tech...

I've been trying to find a method with a little more,,, finesse.

[Dick shudders.]

Yeah, less loss of life would be preferable.

Do we even know that the tech that keeps us here is operating on the island?

For certain? No. But they've got fairly extensive underground facilities that are harder to break into than the Batcave. Something is there.

[Dick chews on his lower lip.]

How close have you gotten? Have you tried to set any portion of Vigilance against their systems? If you've tried more than once, how quickly do they seal up the gaps?

... do they retaliate for trying?

Jail sentences, mostly. Maybe releases - there's a sharp statistical increase in the odds of release within three months of a major incident if you're involved but I think it's actually a separate factor leading to a correlation.

Unfortunately, the Vigilance codebase is secure enough that I can't use it like that. If I crack something on my own I can upload Vigilance remotely and rope it into the network, but it's not a hacking tool.

I've made two runs at the system, both some time ago. Their encryption takes more processing power to crack than I've got available - for all my data-mining, it still took nine months to wind up with some out-of date procedural information.

[Dick nods, absently, processing the information. Then he shifts to fire up the holo-display on his wrist computer, switching it so Tim would be able to read the display, and starts showing the parameters.]

Will this help?

... It's better than what I've got. I don't think the change will be revolutionary, but every little bit counts.

And I can do much with it, too. I can set it up to manage the resources most efficiently, and see where that can get us. Or me.

[Yep, he's ready to take the fall for this one on his own. Since he's the one who hasn't had previous offenses and so is likely to get off more easily.]

Don't rush anything. At this point...

Look, getting home is important. But being in a position to keep everyone here safe has to be priority number one.

[Dick's eyes shoot back up at Tim, dark and hard, and his mouth flattens in a line that would have made Batman proud.]

But we can't, can we. We cannot keep anyone here in any state they prefer at all. People go, people get changed, people get manipulated. Nobody is even remotely safe, no matter what we do.

So while making sure we don't harm anyone is a priority, I think we should focus on what is possible to do. Like getting everybody off this island.

[There are many ways to hurt and upset Dick. But there are none that reach as deeply - and are nearly as likely to skew his perspective - as losing people. And this place has taken away his family, once again.]

... We don't actually know if that's possible.

[The admission is a difficult one to make, visibly so, but it's important. He believes in the possibility, and he believes in the risk, but it could be for nothing.]

We'd have to have that information, whatever it is they're hiding, before we know. And I don't want to throw away what we've built to get that.

Yes, we do know, because people go. away.

We do not have anything actually built here that works, Tim. There's nothing to throw away. How don't you see that?

... You don't have the baseline yet. We don't know how they go away, or whether anyone here has control of it. All we have are theories.

Meanwhile, every time the island panics, we enforce the law. We keep looting and rioting to a minimum. And we're in a position to collect data, refine our theories, and come closer to figuring out what we can do without risking what we've built.

I know what this place looked like three years ago, compared to how it looks now. manpower, resources, organization - this is the best we've ever had it. This is the safest people have been. Doesn't mean it's good enough, but we can't afford to risk it all in a single shot when we don't even know what's on the table.

Do you like to be hurt like that all the time, Tim?

Don't you see? We're just. Mice in a cardboard box, kept for somebody's entertainment. We've made it a neat and nice cardboard box, but it's still nothing more! Any moment, any of us can be taken away, or squashed down, just because somebody whims it.

Is that what you want of your life?

Dick.

[The tension in his voice is audible now, face set, unhappy. If he wasn't confined to a wheelchair his reactions might be very different, but this is what he has.

Which, after all, is something like the point.]

You're right. What you're missing is that we don't know what's outside the box.

And? When did that even stop people from finding out? Did it stop Columbus? Did it stop, heck, anybody venturing outside their village to find out what's beyond the next ridge, what's down the river! That's what makes us human, that we try to find out anyway!

[The breath he takes is almost a sob, as he curls in on himself tighter, chin tucked in between his nees.]

If they're out there, they'd want us to find them.

Dick. I am trying to find out. But I can't throw away the rest of my responsibilities to do it.

[Watching Dick fold up on himself like that makes Tim quieter, more patient, even as he can feel his pulse beat angrily against his throat, can feel the jump of his veins.]

I hear you, big brother. I want what you want. But the others who tried... they weren't rushed and they weren't careless, and they still failed. I owe Steph and the others too much to take a blind risk. If we fail, if we're released or imprisoned... who's hunting for them then?