Chapter Text
Jason never regretted not living in the manor anymore. For one, he got dragged there often enough for dinners or Dick’s ridiculous ‘family bonding nights’ or crashing after patrol, and two, his apartment building was a very quiet reprieve from the chaos of his family. It was shitty, don’t get him wrong. A run-down building in the Narrows didn’t lend itself to a very pretty apartment. But Jason didn’t need pretty. He needed a place decently close to Crime Alley that wouldn’t have people bothering him, where he could sneak in and out easily, and where he could hide guns. And Jason was very much okay with the building he had been living in for the past year. If he had gotten his way right after he started to break through the influence of the Lazarus pit, then he’d have been living on his own for longer than just a year, but Jason had somehow let himself be convinced to live at the manor until he was eighteen. Somehow. (It was Dick. Dick gave him the Older Brother Puppy Eyes—objectively the worst kind of puppy eyes—and before he knew it, Jason found himself right back in his old bedroom, two doors down from the teenager he had just tried to kill.) Then when he finally hit eighteen, he forcibly removed himself from the manor before even Dick could notice he was moving out. Tim probably knew he was doing it, Bruce knew better than to try and stop him, the little demon probably didn’t care either way, and Alfred had helped him pack while making him swear on his second life to come back for at least a weekly dinner. And while those dinners were the definition of chaos, Jason kept his promise to Alfred and then some. But he did always return to his silent apartment the next day—his upstairs and downstairs neighbors off at work and the apartment across the hall still empty—and unwind in the peace and quiet before patrol.
And then, he came back one day with his jacket slung over one shoulder, just to find a young man trying to budge open the door across from his, two large boxes in his arms and another one on the floor next to him. Jason raised his eyebrows.
“Hey, need any help there?” he asked, causing the man—who was only slightly shorter than Jason, maybe a few inches—to look over at him in surprise. Jason expected the slight wariness that entered the man’s eyes, this was Gotham and Jason knew he cut an imposing figure, but it was accompanied by a grateful smile splitting his face as he took a step away from his door.
“That would be great , thank you,” he said, adjusting his grip on the boxes in his hands. Jason walked over and found that the guy had managed to get the key into the lock, but hadn’t been able to turn it. As he unlocked the door and pushed it open, he heard the guy sigh behind him. “Why is moving such a pain in the ass? Or is it just these doors that suck?”
“Both,” Jason answered wryly. “But hey, rent is cheap. Isn’t that the only reason to put up with shitty doors?”
The guy laughed, and for some reason, it made Jason pause. It wasn’t often that he made people laugh. If he did, it was a rare occasion that his family wasn’t annoying the shit out of each other, or it was a little kid that Red Hood was trying to get to trust him. Most people were put off by Jason, intimidated by him. It was oddly refreshing. Jason had been certain that if anyone moved in across from him it would ruin the peace of his apartment, but he was now deciding to withhold that judgment just a little longer. At least it was someone near his age.
“Makes me wish I had given in and asked my dad for money, but fuck that,” the guy laughed again, and this time Jason joined in. It was the same sentiment he had thought when he bought the apartment with his own money. The guy walked into the empty, dusty apartment and dropped the boxes on the floor with a groan. Then he straightened up and turned to Jason with his hand outstretched. “I’m Percy.”
As Jason shook Percy’s hand, there were a few immediate things that he noticed. Percy was built, for one. Not quite as much as Jason, there was less overt muscle and a whole lot more lean muscle, but Jason knew that lean muscle was not to be underestimated. Most of his family fought with lean muscle. His t-shirt and blue jacket worked to make most people skim over the muscle, but Jason wasn’t most people. Percy’s eyes were scanning him too, with irises that seemed to glow with a sea-green intensity, but his grin was lopsided and easy-going for someone moving into a more crime ridden area of Gotham. His handshake was strong too, calluses on his fingers pinning him as someone that either worked with his hands or fought a lot. For his sake, Jason hoped it was the first. Fighting a lot in Gotham never really landed anybody in a good position. Despite the fact that everyone did it.
“Jason,” he returned. “I live across from you.”
Percy’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Really? Guess we’ll be seeing more of each other then.”
“Guess so,” Jason shrugged. “Where are you moving from? Inside Gotham or outside?”
“You’re not gonna pull some ‘we aren’t fond of outsiders’ thing, are you?” Percy asked, chuckling. “I’d hate to break some unspoken taboo.”
“I don’t know,” Jason raised his eyebrows, scanning Percy a little more blatantly, “you don’t really give off the ‘I grew up in Gotham’ vibe. Might have to kick you out.”
“I’m sure the Gotham vibe has its perks and all, but I’m a New York kid through and through, I don’t think I can hide that.” Sure enough, as Percy spoke, Jason caught the hints of an accent in his voice. Percy walked past Jason to grab the other box that was still in the hallway. Something about Percy was making Jason keep an eye on him, but he couldn’t place a finger on what it was. At least Percy being his neighbor meant that keeping an eye on him should be relatively easy. Especially if he ended up needing to place a bug anywhere.
“New York, huh?” Jason asked, watching as Percy dropped the other box onto a small table and started to rip off the tape. “What made you leave?”
Percy pursed his lips. “Nothing made me leave , I guess. I mean, my mom is still there and she rocks. But my best friend is going to Gotham University, and I had no other plans. Also, this way she can physically drag me to classes if she has to, so she liked the idea of going to the same school.”
“University?” Jason couldn’t help but be a little surprised. Most people didn’t move into this part of Gotham if they were coming for school reasons. He had been trying to avoid the thought that most people (especially parents) would heavily advise their kids to not live alone in fucking Gotham when they were—at the oldest—twenty. And Jason would eat his helmet if Percy was twenty. But with Percy living on his own, in this part of town, to go to Gotham University? It's like he was trying to make Jason want to follow him to and from campus just to make sure he didn’t get mugged. Percy didn’t even seem remotely worried, giving Jason a crooked grin as he started pulling picture frames wrapped carefully in bubble wrap from the box.
“Yeah, one of the points my friend used to convince me was that Gotham U actually has a good marine biology program,” he said. “Annie is studying architecture, and she’s practically been talking in her sleep about the architecture of Gotham. Are you in school?”
Jason nearly laughed. Him? Legally dead Jason Todd? Well, okay, he wasn’t legally dead anymore. Bruce had fixed that, even if it took months of coming up with some story that explained why he was considered dead for two years, and Jason had to admit that he liked this outcome better than living with a fake identity since all of Gotham knew the face of the little Wayne who died. He could go to school if he wanted to. But he was one of the reclusive Waynes for a reason, so much so that some people actually believed that he was still dead and his return was the lie, whereas others thought he had never died in the first place and it was all fake. Being a cryptid in a city of weird people was kind of fun, honestly. People rarely recognized him if he wasn’t with one of the others, and that’s how he preferred it unless he was bribed to go to a gala. Employees at Wayne Enterprises kept up the secrecy too, which was one of the reasons he was okay helping out there. Really, though, it was a good thing he didn’t particularly care about higher education. Getting a degree might be nice, and Jason did enjoy his old English classes, but...right now that wasn’t his priority. When you die for the first time at not even fifteen, school really isn’t the most pressing thing anymore. But he couldn’t laugh outright at Percy’s question, it was a reasonable assumption given his age. He was almost impressed that Percy didn’t assume he was older.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head to hide the slightly bitter amusement in his eyes. “College wasn’t really my thing, although I’m sure my old man would be thrilled if I changed my mind.”
“What do you do then?” Percy turned away from Jason to start setting up frames along the small kitchen island counter.
“I’m a mechanic,” Jason answered. He was, it wasn’t a lie, he just didn’t work full time. He also sometimes helped with security at WE, but that wasn’t something he was just going to tell a stranger. He went into the mechanic shop occasionally and helped if the other guys were too overworked, but he wasn’t technically on the payroll. He didn’t need the money anyway, it was just nice to help out and work with his hands. It was an easy explanation to give, though, it made people accept the calluses on his hands and the scars along his fingers and wrists with little more than a small wince of sympathy. “I’ve always been good with cars.”
“Oh, that's cool!” Percy said, sending another grin over his shoulder. This was the most a stranger had smiled at Jason since before he had died. It was...weird. “I’ve never really gotten cars, y’know? I’ve got some friends, though, and they’ve got a running competition going on who could hotwire more cars. It’s been going since I was...fourteen, I think?”
That time, Jason didn’t even try to not laugh. “Seriously? How old were they ?”
“Oh, uh,” Percy thought for a moment, furrowing his eyebrows. “Fuck, which one was older? It was...oh!” He lit up, snapping his fingers. “Travis is a year older than me, which means he would have been fifteen, and that means Connor would have been thirteen.”
“Thirteen? Damn,” Jason felt a bit of respect for the kid, and couldn’t help but wonder what he could do now if he was hotwiring cars reliably at thirteen. Jason hadn’t progressed too far past tire theft by the time he was adopted. Percy laughed.
“Yeah, they were menaces,” he said, but it was the same tone that Dick used when he was talking about Jason, Tim, Damian, or Duke. Whatever these kids did, they were still close with Percy. Jason wasn’t quite sure what significance that story could hold, but the jury was still out on Percy, and so he filed it away in his brain. It was then that Jason realized he had spent fifteen minutes standing in the doorway to Percy’s apartment talking with him. How did he spend that long in a conversation with someone he wasn’t related to? Deep down, he knew it was because Percy wasn’t scared of him, which was both a point in Percy’s favor and a reason for Jason to keep an eye on him. But it was nearing noon, and if he wanted to rest before patrol, he couldn’t let himself get caught up in the life of his new neighbor.
“Well, it’s been great to meet you, Percy,” Jason said, “but I should head out. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.”
“What? No way, man, if anything, I took up your time,” Percy waved him off. “You were just helping me get into my own stupid apartment. See you around, Jason!”
“Definitely,” Jason said, waving slightly as he ducked out the door and pulled it shut behind him. Then he stood in the hallway and took a breath. Percy was not the type of person to move into this part of Gotham, not unless he was either incredibly oblivious of the danger, or hiding something. And one conversation wasn’t enough to clue Jason in to which one it was. Percy wasn’t threatening , not like Jason knew a lot of people saw him as. He was bright, and the only indication that there was any other side to him was the calluses on his hands and the slight glint of small scars on his wrists. Jason couldn’t see more due to his jacket, but he would be surprised if the scars stopped there. Percy had the energy of a very sweet guy, one who chose to be nice to people even when he didn’t have to be.
So why was Jason’s heart beating ever so slightly faster?
“You’re kidding ,” Percy groaned, flopping back onto his new couch. Annabeth laughed from the small IM projected from his ‘phone’. The Hephaestus cabin still couldn’t find a workaround to give demigods cell phones, but they were able to make small phone-like portable Iris Messages. They still had the downfall of being not incredibly private, but they made messaging still so much easier.
“You knew this, Percy, we talked about it.”
“I know, but it’s so much more unfair now that I’m actually in my apartment.” He pouted, knowing that didn’t work on Annabeth. She just rolled her eyes.
“You’re taking care of the more run down part of the city. It would be infinitely more suspicious if I were to live there, and you know it. Women don’t live in that part of the city by themselves,” she said. “And you know we can’t just live together.”
“I know,” Percy sighed. “Too much of a connection.”
“Don’t worry, Percy, we’ll see each other every day anyway,” Annabeth said, smiling fondly despite the exasperation in her eyes. “Are you all settled in?”
“Yeah, got all my stuff in only two trips with Mrs. O’Leary, and I got some furniture,” he said. “It’s kinda shitty, but I had to install it myself so I couldn’t get anything really good.”
“And food?” Annabeth asked. When Percy didn’t answer right away, she narrowed her eyes. “Jackson. Food?”
“I swear I was gonna go food shopping!” Percy defended himself. “I was all ready, I had the list and I had the things I was gonna make this week, and then I leave my apartment and I go the back routes to avoid getting mugged just like Jason told me, and then the next thing I know I’m by the lake and the fishes need to talk! I can’t just ignore them when they’re so happy to see me!”
“You need to go shopping or I’ll tell Sally you—wait,” Annabeth paused. “Jason? When has he been in Gotham?”
“Oh, uh, not our Jason,” Percy said, flushing a bit. “My neighbor across from me is near our age, and we run into each other a lot.”
“You mean you actually have a friend and you didn’t tell me?” Annabeth asked, acting more affronted than Percy knew she was. Percy made a ‘so-so’ gesture with his hand.
“I don't know if we’re friends ?” he said. “We’ve never actually hung out besides talking in the hallway for a few minutes. But he seems nice. Doesn’t seem to trust me, but I think that's just a Gotham thing.”
“Well you’re eighteen and living on your own in one of the worse parts of Gotham, so that makes sense,” Annabeth thought out loud, “and with how you carry yourself, it’s not obvious that you can hold your own if you get mugged. Which is good for not inviting questions about why you can fight, but it might make people think you’re a bit naive about Gotham.”
“Isn’t that what we were going for?” Percy asked. “I can’t be up to anything if I don’t know anything.”
“Exactly, yeah, it just also might make people watch you for a bit to figure out if you’re actually naive or not,” she said. “Have you seen any of the bats?”
Percy shook his head. “No. I haven’t really left at night, trying to keep a low profile, but I’ve been watching out the window. I thought I saw Red Hood a few times on the roofs, but if I did, the guy is really good at blending in.”
“Maybe I’ll see them more from my apartment, I think the rest of them tend to stay around that area more,” Annabeth mused.
“Do you want my help moving in?” Percy asked. Annabeth smiled.
“Would I ever refuse unpaid labor from someone who owes me about a thousand favors? I should be getting there around ten in the morning. Do you remember the address?”
“No, but I still have the paper you wrote it down on,” Percy replied, grinning. “I’ll be there.”
“Good, I’ll see you then,” Annabeth said. “The sooner we get settled with school, the sooner we can work on our real problem.”
“If I believed that we were lucky in any way, I’d say that it was good luck you had wanted to go to Gotham University before all this happened,” Percy sighed. “But since our luck sucks, I can’t wait for everything to go wrong.”
“It’s not luck, Percy,” Annabeth said, shaking her head. “It’s my plan. And it’s going to go right, I just know it.”
“I know, Wise Girl. I’ll just feel a lot better once we have a route and can get the others here.”
“I know,” Annabeth’s gaze got softer. “And we will. This is a pretty big wrench in our original plans for Gotham, but that’s all it is. It is something that we will fix , and then we can get back on the plan. This isn’t a quest right now, and hopefully it won’t be.”
“Has Cabin six gotten a floor plan yet?” Percy asked.
“We’re working on it,” Annabeth replied. “Or, well, they are. I’ve been packing. But they’ve roped some Hephaestus kids into helping and so we’ll have those before we need them.”
“Good,” Percy said, trying to relax into the cushions. “I should get something to eat. I’ll see you tomorrow, Annie.”
“See you, Percy,” Annabeth responded in kind, waving slightly before reaching out and swiping through the Iris Message, leaving Percy in the silence of his apartment. He sighed. Even when he was twelve and the subject of a manhunt, he never considered himself a criminal. Even when he was indirectly or directly responsible for quite a bit of property damage. And even now, knowing the plan that he and Annabeth and a few others were carefully putting together...he still knew that he was doing the right thing. He was not a criminal.
But damn, was he not looking forward to actually committing an act that could be considered thievery. Even if what he was ‘stealing’ was a person.
“Anything new?” Jason could hear Dick’s voice as he walked into the cave, his helmet tucked under his arm. It had been a quiet night of patrol, and so he should have figured that something was going to be wrong in the manor. He hadn’t heard of any new cases that the rest of the family was working on, but he had been pretty focused on a smuggling ring trying to form in his part of the city. Tim’s sigh was the answer.
“Nothing. No news reports, no facial match, no record,” he said, his voice placing him at about four hours of sleep. He barely glanced up as Jason entered. “Hey Jason.”
“Hey runt,” Jason said. “What’s the case?”
“The newest Arkham patient,” Tim answered, pinching his nose. “It’s like he came from nowhere.”
“Oh, yeah, he seemed weird,” Jason said. “Didn’t he not resist at all?”
“Yeah,” Dick sighed. “Well, it would have been hard for him to resist seeing as he passed out pretty soon after we arrived, but...he was weirdly calm after waking up. He seemed unconcerned that he had been taken to Arkham, even after the fiasco that was whatever he did.”
“You’re still thinking meta?”
“What else? And he still won’t give a name, so…”
“Blood tests?” Jason asked. Tim scoffed.
“Who do you take me for? They came back weird. I’m working on it.”
“Weird?” Jason repeated, frowning. “How do blood tests turn out weird ?”
“I said I’m working on it,” Tim rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Until then, we just have to hope he lets something slip to the psychiatrists he’s been talking to. At least he doesn’t seem violent.”
“That’s definitely a good thing,” Dick sighed. “It means that if he decides to cooperate, we can probably let him out of Arkham with no issue. I really hope we can.”
“You know if it was still up to us, I’d be saying we let him out now , right?” Jason said, trying not to actually get upset when it had been a very calm night. “I still don’t like that you guys brought him to Arkham in the first place.”
“The police showed up to deal with the gang, we couldn’t just take him to our holding cells here,” Dick defended. “And even if we did, then we’d all feel bad trying to figure out what’s up with him. We just need to know he’s not a threat, and then we can tell Arkham, and they can let him go.”
“He’s a kid , Dick,” Jason said, motioning towards the picture up on the screen. “He doesn’t even look Tim’s age yet! And he’s in Arkham !”
“I know, Jason. I don’t like it either. But the facts right now are that he somehow managed to choke out an entire gang using only their shadows,” Dick said, “and we need to make sure he won’t do that to innocent people. We know exactly how dangerous kids can be, we can’t assume anything.”
Jason sighed and crossed his arms. “Well the last two dangerous kids we encountered ended up a part of the family. So we might as well skip Arkham and just tell Alfred to get a room ready.”
Dick laughed. “If that’s how this ends up, I’ll welcome the new little brother. Until then, though, we do our job. And unfortunately, for now, that means he stays where he is until we know he’s not a threat to innocent people. He’s not with the real criminals, either, he’s on the other side of Arkham. He’ll be okay, Jason.”
While Jason continued to frown at the screen, Tim leaned forward onto the desk. He narrowed his eyes at the picture of the new patient. The kid really did seem young, even with his haunted dark eyes and seemingly perpetual frown. According to the nurses, he was perfectly polite to them, despite his dour demeanor. The boy’s black hair fell messily into his eyes, and he was so pale that Tim could almost see his veins through his olive-toned skin. Tim frowned and began to type, trying to figure out what went wrong with the DNA test.
“Alright then,” he muttered, the discussion of his brothers behind him fading to the background as he focused solely on this potential meta. “Who are you?”