Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the officers come to grab him, Tim leaves the Manor exactly like any Bat should: fighting every inch of the way, tranqed to the gills, and bound in three different sets of cuffs, a straitjacket, and a muzzle.

Even with all of that— and with Tim holding back because he cannot blow their identities by pulling out the right hook that can knock Rogues on their asses in less than five seconds —it still takes over a dozen full-armed men to haul him out of the Manor and into the shiny truck with ‘Arkham Asylum’ printed on the side.

“This is for your own good, Tim,” Dick had said, voice and expression exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, “I know you won’t thank me for it, and probably never will, but you need help, Timmy. Help I don’t know how to give. So please, Tim, please just let them help you work through this, this delusion you’re stuck in. Please.”

Tim, still muzzled and still fighting, could only give Dick a betrayed look in answer. The last thing he saw as he was finally dragged away was the sight of Dick staring down at him from the top of the banister, the Demon Brat smirking in satisfaction at his side.

Tim is dumped unceremoniously into the back of the truck and locked into the dark padded cell. He struggles for a bit, trying to loosen the many pairs of cuffs, before slumping down, resigned to having to bide his time before he can escape.

If Tim were any sort of optimist, he’d be sitting tight and waiting for someone to come check him out of Arkham. Wait for one of his friends to realize something is wrong and swing by Gotham to check in on him. Tim, though, is very aware that he’s burned all of those bridges.

Steph’s already tried, demanding to know why Tim hasn’t been answering any calls. Saying how she’s worried about, how she knows he’s hurting, how he should take a break. How did Tim answer this honest concern? By snapping at his friend and pushing her away. Steph just huffed and told him she was going to be on a girls’ training trip with Babs and Cass, total blackout. ‘Maybe you’ll get your head screwed on by the time I’m back.’

Cassie had come by town, too, looking to offer support as someone who understood. Offering a lifeline and a level of understanding that no one else really could. Offering to bear a pain that they’ve both had to carry since Kon and Bart… since Kon and Bart. 

(and if that didn’t just feel like a dozen knives to the chest? batman was still out there, waiting to be found, but Kon and Bart were gone. dead and gone and never, ever coming back. and there are things tim has never done, lines he has never crossed, but if he lets himself stop and contemplate, it scares him how easily he can see himself leaping across those boundaries just for one more day; one more hour; one more minute with Kon and Bart.

in the past six months, tim has gained a new level of understanding for mr. freeze.)

Either way, Cassie had come to Gotham. 

Cassie had tried to help Tim. 

Cassie hadn’t believed him. 

Cassie was off to join the Teen Titans. 

And Tim was alone.

His dad was dead. 

Steph, Cass, Babs, and Cassie had left Gotham.

Batman was stuck who knows where at who knows when.

Bart was gone.

Kon was gone.

Robin had been ripped away from him and offered up to the Demon Brat without even a moment of hesitation.

“I think Damian needs it more,” Dick had said.

‘And I thought we had a no-killing policy!’ Tim had wanted to scream right back, ‘I thought we were meant to be better than the criminals we fight! So why the hell are you giving Robin to the psychopath that still hasn’t gone a full twenty-four hours without an attempt on my life?!’

But Tim hadn’t said that. He had just slammed the door on his bedroom and began packing a bag. There was nothing left for him in Gotham: no friends, no family, no purpose. And no answers. If he wanted to find out what had happened to Bruce, he needed to go and figure it out on his own.

It’s a shame that Dick hadn’t gotten the message.

Tim gave another few tugs at the cuffs before giving up again. 

He face-planted into the cushioned floor and thought. Cassie, Steph, Babs, and Cass likely wouldn’t check in on him again for months. Bruce was missing. Kon and Bart were gone. The Demon Brat would sooner slit his throat than help him escape. Dick wasn’t going to discharge him until he got cleared by the Arkham docs, and considering that it was Arkham, which hasn’t had a competent doctor grace its halls since Harley and Crane joined the Rogues’ lineup, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Which left him with only one last hope: Alfred.

In normal situations, sitting and waiting for Alfred was both the obvious choice and the answer to everything. Unfortunately, Dick had sent Alfred packing to Europe on a full-paid three-month vacation, the first vacation the butler had gotten since a mugger stopped Martha Wayne in Park Row and demanded she hand over her pearls.

Tim couldn’t afford to wait three months. Bruce couldn’t afford to have Tim wait three months. Which meant Tim only had one choice.

He had to escape Arkham Asylum.

*****

The rattling of the cell doors echoed throughout the halls as the crazies he’d been living with for the past two weeks hooted and hollered loud enough to wake the dead.

(It was him. They woke him up from a kickass dream. He’d been in space, and he hasn’t seen the stars in two weeks. Ancients, he could not wait until Jazz gave them the all clear and they could blow this popsicle stand.)

“Fresh fish!” he heard someone cry, “Fresh fish still on the hook!”

That caught his attention. Between the days spent locked up in here and the crash course he got from Grandpa Walker, Danny had picked up a bit of prison lingo, as outdated as some of it was.

‘Fish’ was a new inmate. ‘Fresh fish’ was a first-time inmate. And sure enough, when Danny stood up and glanced down the hall, he saw a group of guards struggling against someone in cuffs and a straitjacket and a muzzle. Still on the hook, indeed.

“Ready to meet our new roommate?” Sam asked.

“We don’t know they’re dropping them off in here,” Tucker pointed out.

“They’re shorter and leaner than usual, so they’re probably on the younger side like us,” she shot back, “We’re the only cell with an opening on this block, and we’re probably the first choice to put a fiery inmate in. You know, ‘cause we can put them in line without pulling a Joker and killing the poor schmuck.”

“But what if they’re hostile?”

“Oh no,” Danny deadpanned, “A hostile person. Whatever shall we do? Whoever shall protect us?”

Tucker snorted. “Okay, fair.

“Back away from the door,” a guard boomed, interrupting them.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker all took a few steps back and waited for the door to clamber open, shooting the gorillas in uniform unimpressed glares. As soon as it was swung out of the way, the five grappling guards shoved the bound figure in and slammed the door shut.

“Fucking bastard,” one spat, “The fuck did you learn that shit? Ol’ Brucie Wayne sure as shit didn’t teach you to fight like that.”

The figure jumped up, taking a stance like they were going to rush the cell door and the measly bars wouldn’t be enough to hold them back. The guards, either too cowardly to stand their ground or too underpaid to care, just ignored them and left, returning to their posts and/or rounds around the myriad of CRIPA violations stacked into a trench coat and masquerading as a prison for the mentally insane.

Finally, the figure decided that the guards weren’t coming back to set them loose, and so turned to glare at them instead. Danny’s eyes met an ocean of icy fire, and his breath caught in his throat.

“Are you sure about this, Danno?” Dad asked, his voice a bit staticky over the phone, “Meeting a powerful, not-too-friendly entity on their own turf doesn’t sound like the best idea.”

“I’m sure, Dad,” Danny answered, touching down in the quiet, empty park, “There’s no way in hell I’m letting Sam and Tucker enter a city-wide lair without permission. If it goes south for me, I can just fly away and let Jazz finish her extra credit project on her own.”

“Do you want me to stay on the line, son?”

“Nah, I don’t know if she’ll take that as a sign of disrespect. I’ll call you back after, does that sound good?”

There was a sigh on the other end. “If you’re sure, son. Love you, bye.”

“Love you, bye.” Danny hung up, took a spot on a bench, and waited.

It took a few minutes, but eventually, a feminine figure appeared on the bench next to him. 

“My King,” she acknowledged, bowing her head in his direction.

“Lady Gotham,” Danny said, nodding back. 

The ghost in front of him was very different from the one he had met at his coronation last year. Rather than the mysterious silhouette that teased Dorothea like a sister and flirted at Frostbite like an old flame, a woman wracked with sorrow sat at his side. She wore a vintage black cocktail dress with a full skirt, elbow-length black gloves, and a spider-web black mourning veil. The only pops of color were the white pearl necklace barely visible through the veil, and a silver bracelet delicately holding up a dozen black stones.

“For whom do you mourn, my lady?”

“One of my knights, My King,” Lady Gotham answered, “He is not of your kingdom, yet he is gone all the same. Sir Nightwing shall rise to take his place soon, with a new bird as his squire. But I worry for the squire Sir Batman left behind. I fear that soon someone will try to clip my Robin’s wings, and I know not what to do.”

“I am sorry to hear that, My Lady,” Danny said sincerely, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Lady Gotham looked Danny over consideringly. He wasn’t sure, but he thought for a second that he saw a flash of her smile before it was gone.

“No, My King. But I thank you for the offer. Why do you seek me out on this night?”

“As you well know, my sister is currently living and studying within your haunt,” Danny began, careful and conscious about his words, “And she has requested my and lovers’ assistance in her coming project.”

“Which is?”

“Her psychology professors have long claimed they would only offer extra credit if the student shut down Arkham Asylum. My sister and her friends have taken this as a challenge.”

Lady Gotham threw her head back and laughed.

“My King, if you, your lovers, and my young scholars successfully root out that tumor of an institution, I will let you all roam my streets until the end of my days. Be welcome.”

Danny felt a wave of amusement-consideration-acceptance roll over him, and he rose from his seat and bowed to her. “My thanks, Lady Gotham. Are there any Rules you would like to implement while I and my lovers are in your haunt?”

“Besides the usual courtesy, I only have the one.” Lady Gotham tilted her head and let the mourning veil fall so that she could look him in the eye. “Never harm one of my knights.”

“Understood, My Lady. I shall see you soon.”

And with that, the city ghost dematerialized and Danny pulled out his phone.

“What’d she say?!” Jazz insisted, picking up on the second ring.

“We’re golden.”

His sister whooped in delight, and Danny could hear a few cheers going on in the background.

“All right, people!” Jazz said to both him and the group of psychology majors that had joined her in her crazy endeavor, “Plan Arkham Anarchists is a go! Let’s destroy a defunct asylum!”

Another grunt from the boy standing in front of him pulled Danny out of the memory from the beginning of summer. Without a second thought, he was reaching out to pull the muzzle off the vigilante and gesturing to Tucker for a bobby pin.

“So, what are you in for?” Danny asked, once the straps of the muzzle fell open and he began picking at the lock on the first set of cuffs, “Last I checked, Gotham wasn’t in the habit of arresting their vigilantes, even if they do have to be at least a little crazy to do what you do.”

The boy went deathly (ha!) still and turned his ice-blue eyes to stare at Danny. 

“I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re obviously delus– craz– misled if you think I’m a vigilante.”

Sam, Tucker, and him all snorted.

“Yeah, sure. Like we haven’t done our research into the local vigilante population before we shipped ourselves out here,” Tucker said, “Pro tip: domino masks conceal nothing but the color of your eyebrows, and you can still get accurate reads from facial scanning software even if you have one on.”

“Plus, even if that didn’t give you away, Lady Gotham’s blessing is aaaallllllll over you. That type of magic couldn’t be concealed from an ecto-slime, let alone us.” Sam pointed out.

“I’m not magic, though?”

“Never said you were. It’s Lady Gotham’s blessing, not yours. But you’re dodging the question: what’re you in for?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Oh, easy. We’re here to shut this place down.”

Whatever answer the boy was expecting, that obviously wasn’t it. “Come again?”

“My sister’s a psych major at Gotham-U,” Danny explained as the first set of cuffs clicked open. “Apparently, there’s a Professor Ernest who prides himself on flunking over eighty percent of his students. Jazz and a bunch of others petitioned for a regrade, and if not that, then extra credit. Ernest was an asshole and said he’d only award it to a student who successfully shut down Arkham. We’ve been gathering data for them for… I’d say two weeks now?”

“Seventeen days,” Tucker corrected, “You will not believe the amount of malpractice, corruption, and general misconduct that can happen in such a short time. Bright side is, though, we’ve gotten through almost that entire bullet list.”

“What’ve we got left?” Sam asked.

Tucker pulled out his PDA and checked. “Incite another inmate into causing a prison riot, steal a gun from a security guard, trick somebody into prescribing us a superfluous medication, and break out.”

“Nice!” Danny exclaimed, opening up the second pair of cuffs. “So, again, what’re you in for?”

The vigilante sighed. “Long and short of it is… my… boss? Legal guardian? Whatever. B went missing recently. Everyone thinks he’s dead, but I know he’s still alive. He’s just… not in a situation where he can get back to us, right now. And I don’t have the proof to show that he’s not dead, so nobody believes me. They all think I’ve gone mad with– that I’m not processing my grief properly and instead lying to myself. But I know he’s out there somewhere, I know he’s alive. B… B is alive. They think I’m grieving, that I’m in denial, that I’ve lost it. But now he’s all I have and he has to be alive.”

Danny, Sam, and Tucker all silently looked on as the other boy walked himself right into and straight out of two mental breakdowns and half a panic attack. The only sound other than the vigilante’s heavy, gasping breaths were the click and the thud as the final pair of handcuffs opened and fell to the ground.

“I just need to stay focused,” he finally said after collecting himself, “Keep looking. Find the answer. B is out there somewhere. And he wouldn’t give up on me, so I can’t give up on him. I won’t let him down.”

“Hm. Well, I don’t think I need to tell you that you sound like a bit of a fruit loop.”

The boy laughed as Danny loosened the arms of the straitjacket. “Yeah, that’s fair. I know how I sound, but it doesn’t make the words any less true.”

“Yeah. Would this ‘B’ possibly be one of Lady Gotham’s knights?”

The boy shrugged out of the straitjacket and looked at Danny. “...yes?”

“‘Kay, cool, cool, cool. So. He’s definitely alive alright.”

The boy’s look turned to one of complete astonishment. “You believe me?”

“I mean, yeah? Lady Gotham said that one of her knights was ‘not of my kingdom but gone all the same.’ Have any other members of your vigilante gang gone missing recently?”

“No, not that we haven’t accounted for.”

“Then your guy’s alive, for sure. Granted, he’s probably stranded Ancients-know-where in the Infinite Realms and can’t get back, but he’s alive.”

The vigilante boy blinked a few times before collapsing to his knees in relief.

“I knew it,” he rasped out, voice close to cracking.

“You good, man? You need a minute?” Tucker asked.

“Yeah, a minute or twelve would be nice,” he said, voice tired and oh-so-small.

“Tell us when you’re good and ready to help us start a riot,” Sam said. “I say we grab the pointiest stick we can find and poke at the Joker. That’ll get us started nice and easy.”

“Yes, but would it get other people involved, or would it just be us against the Joker? I’ve told you, Sam, if we want an honest-to-goodness prison riot, we need active participants, not just one poor sod who wants to fuck around and find out.”

“You say that as if any self-respecting Gothamite wouldn’t take the first available opportunity to choke out the Joker. Also, why do you say that like you’ve been in and/or caused a prison riot before?”

“Because I have,” Danny said with a shrug.

The vigilante stared at him for a moment before nodding his head. “Alright. Quick question before you implicate me any further: have any of you committed a crime that would warrant a spot in Arkham or somewhere similar?”

“Nothing they can prove,” Tucker said.

“Just the general protesting stuff. Loitering, trespassing, the occasional bout of eco-terrorism, you know how it goes,” Sam answered.

“Due to federal law declaring my species non-sentient, I cannot be held accountable for any of my actions,” Danny said cheerfully.

“Well, none of that’s worse than a duffle bag full of severed heads, and Alfred still gives Jason an open invitation to family dinners, so how bad can this really be? You know what, sure, I can work with this. You good for including one more in that prison break?”

Danny smiled. “Hell yes. Nice to meet you, I’m Danny. She’s Sam, and he’s Tucker. What can we call you?”

“I… I don’t think Robin really applies to me anymore. Just call me Tim, for now.”

“Nice to meet you, Tim. How comfortable are you with faking a few psychotic breaks and getting a general prescription for Benadryl?”

Chapter Text

It, in total, takes four days to escape from Arkham.

Tim, frankly, has got it the easiest. Tucker, Sam, and Danny’s past seventeen days in the institution have been nothing but clear, cold efficiency in establishing whatever reputation they felt necessary to complete their ‘100% Evil Prison Speedrun’. 

They’re not the Top Dogs by any means. They’re still too new to Gotham and too baby-faced to be on the same level as the Joker or Scarecrow. But when a guard comes to their cell at noon and the four of them are escorted to the mess for lunch, they don’t get any shit from the faceless masses, Sam waves happily to where Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are sitting together, and Danny steers them straight to the table that Killer Croc is occupying all by himself.

“Waylon, my man, how’s it going?” Danny asks cheerfully, gently pushing Tim down into his seat before dropping his tray opposite the definitely-murdering, maybe-cannibalistic villain, “Did you settle on what color you wanted to make that needlepoint design you were talking about?”

Killer Croc growled a bit, though it was more thoughtful than menacing. “Doing a checkered mosaic stitch. That way, I can do both colors and make it look like the scales have texture.”

“Sounds cool! Can’t wait to see it.”

“Have you always been a fan of embroidery?” Tim asked. The first rule of being a Bat, as taught to him by Bruce, was ‘ always have at least five contingency plans.’ The second rule, as taught to him by Dick , The Traitor, was ‘when the five contingency plans fail and you find yourself freefalling, be prepared to roll if you can’t land on your feet.’ It was this ‘fuck it, we ball,’ ethos that Tim utilized as Sam silently traded her pitiful Salisbury steak for Killer Croc’s plastic cup of cantaloupe.

“No. Was my go-to hobby when the shrinks made me do arts and crafts therapy. Shrinks got the last laugh, though. I actually like it now.” Croc grumbled before turning back to Danny, “It seems you picked up another stray, Little Demise.”

Danny grinned. “Yep! You know I like ‘em a little feral, Croc-o-man! And Timmy here came in fighting six-ways-to-Sunday. How could I resist?”

Killer Croc grumbled again, the sound rumbling out from his throat. He picked up his dinner roll and pointed at Tim’s still-untouched Salisbury steak.

“Trade?” Croc asked.

Tim glanced at Sam, who was making her way through Tucker’s portion of fruit, Croc’s cup already consumed and set to the side. She shrugged.

Well, when in Rome…

Tim passed over the meat, taking the dinner roll with a soft ‘thanks.’ He ate his lunch in silence while Croc tried to do the same, with little success. Danny kept a stream of chatter flowing directly at Croc, with occasional inputs from Sam and Tucker. Tim just watched the mess hall as he chewed, sizing up the other inmates until his choice was made and he bumped shoulders with Danny to get his attention.

“Oh, you decided, then?” Danny asked.

Tim nodded his head a few degrees to the left. Danny, Sam, Tucker, and Killer Croc followed the motion, landing on the short man talking animatedly to what could only be some of his goons.

“Hm. Reasoning?”

“I’ve got the physical advantage, but due to the fact that he’s two inches taller and almost twenty pounds heavier than me, it won’t look like I do.”

“Any powers we should watch out for?” Sam asked.

“To my knowledge, no innate meta abilities or anything similar. But if some guard’s smuggled his tech in, that could be a problem.”

“Why, what’s it do?”

“Mind control.” The three teens stiffened at his reply. Tim wasn’t completely sure, but for a second, he could’ve sworn that Danny’s eyes flashed a glowing, unearthly green before returning back to normal.

“If it’s tech, then I should be able to wipe it from here.” Tucker pulled– of all things –a personal digital assistant out of his prison jumpsuit and began tapping away at it.

“What is this, 2004?” Tim couldn’t help but ask. “How the hell is your tech so out-of-date? You couldn’t have smuggled a cell phone in, or something?”

“Firstly, anyone who relies solely on a cellphone for anything is weak and will not survive the winter,” Tucker said, still tapping away, “Second, do you know how shit cellphones are for customization? I’ve upgraded this thing so many times, I can, have, and will continue to hack into the Pentagon with it. Third, Lexcorp phones are shit, Apple can eat my entire ass, and Wayne Electronics are literally programmed to shut down once you step foot on Arkham Island. Android’s the only thing that even remotely works, and even then, it’s got nothing on my baby. Speaking of, the scan is done and you are good to go.”

Tim nodded and rose from his seat, calmly making his way over to the other table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Tetch?” he asked, standing before the man who was still talking excitedly with his goons.

The man cut himself off and glanced up to smile at Tim. “Hello, my dear fellow! You seem to be new here. How are you enjoying your first day at our humble abode?” he asked amicably.

“Eh, it’s not the best, but I’ve got a feeling it’s about to get a lot better.” And without any further warning, Tim’s arm shot forward and punched the Mad Hatter square in the jaw.

“Ravens and writing desks!” the man exclaims, but Tim cuts him off quickly.

“That’s for Summer Reyne,” he says, thinking of the latest ‘Alice’ that Tetch had nearly sold. Eleven years old, blonde hair, blue eyes: the perfect target for the sick man in front of him. He, as Robin, had held Summer’s hand throughout the entire checkup from the EMTs and had rode with her in the ambulance to Gotham General. 

“Oh, did you know the little doll?” Tetch sneered, “She was such a horrible Alice. Not suited for the roll at all. I had to add laudanum to the tea cakes to get her to stop breaking into hysterics. Little Alice got a lot more… palatable after that.”

Tim pulled him out of his seat by the back of his collar. Before the goons could even react enough to set down their cutlery, Tim’s other hand settled firmly against the back of Tetch’s skull, and he began slamming his face into the table.

“That’s for Brooke Felide,” Tim said, pulling him back up before slamming him down again, “That’s for Flora Goldfinch. And Rosa Lopez. And Marcie Bronstein,” he continued, every name accompanied with another slam into the table.

By now, the goons had gathered their wits and leaped into action. Tim let the two closest push him off Tetch, but dodged the incoming punch and countered with a rounding kick to their knees. The two goons tumbled to the floor below, and before Tim could figure out what to do about the three men circling behind him, he heard one get judo-flipped into another. Tim spun around, grabbing the elbow of the third and throwing them into the growing goon pile, getting an approving nod from Sam.

“I take it the creep’s got it coming?” she asked acidly.

“Pedophile and human trafficker,” was all Tim had the chance to say before he was dodging another goon and throwing them atop the growing hill of henchmen (Hench-hill? Hill-men? Puns were always more of Dick’s The Traitor’s thing than his).

“Ah,” she acknowledged, throwing the last goon on the pile, “I should’ve known. It’s always the fruitloops who are into mind control.”

They shared a nod of solidarity before the sound of guns being drawn shifted their attention.

‘Right on time,’ Tim thought, slowly raising his hands and giving the guards a shit-eating grin.

Sam matched the grin and turned to face the guards. “Gentlemen, and Mx. Ingram, how can we help you today?”

“C’mon, Manson. Just stay civil and come with us to the docs,” the head guard said calmly, “You don’t got a record of unprovoked violence. We can just pin this on the newbie’s bad influence, switch him to a different cell, and have you back to your boys by dinner. How’s that sound?”

Tim soaked in the guard’s words. Hm. It seemed Sam and the others had a bigger reputation than he first thought if the guards were willing to negotiate with them to ensure cooperation rather than running the risk of making them angry. Interesting.

Tim kept analyzing the guards as Sam took a few steps forward. He watched as they all reacted, shifting their guns from him to her. A few fumbled to remove the safety, and in that moment, something caught his eye.

‘Oh shit,’ he thought, ‘That’s a problem that needs to be solved immediately.’

Sam strode forward despite the guards’ guns. She kept the shit-eating grin on her face and wrapped her arm across Tim’s shoulders. “Thanks, but no thanks, Ingram. You see, the three of us actually like our new roommate. He’s feisty, he’s fun! And we were getting so bored before he showed his pretty little face. And you don’t want Danny, Tuck, and I to be bored, do you?”

“We don’t want you to get a thirst for causing trouble, either,” Ingram said.

“Trouble finds us, we don’t need to seek it out,” Sam said, “And I would hardly call this unnecessary. Tim here just wanted to make a good first impression, that’s all. And it sounds like the man had it coming. Mind control, pedophilia, and human trafficking? Ugh. Didn’t even have the decency to do something fun or unique, like Harley and Ivy did.”

“I don’t play your little power games, Manson. I just make sure no one gets killed in the fallout. And Mad Hatter’s broken nose and settling concussion says all I need to know. And what I need to know is that he—” Ingram swung their gun back on Tim. “—is trouble with a capital T. So do us all a favor and come quietly to the docs.”

“Is there a different game you like to play?” he asked.

“What?” Ingram scowled.

“I was just wondering if there was a different game you and your boys like to play in your downtime?” Tim explained, “Blackjack? Rummy? Crazy Eights?”

“Unlike you and the other patients, we don’t get rec time,” Ingram explained slowly, “Though I’m sure you can find a few others willing to play a hand later.”

“Oh,” Tim said, “So there isn’t some secret underground poker tournament amongst the guards?”

“No,” they answered, tightening their grip on their gun.

“Okay. Then why does that guard to your left have a deck of cards in his pocket?”

Ingram blinked. “Excuse me?”

Tim leaned a bit into Sam’s hold and pointed at the man standing two spots left of Ingram. “When he pulled his gun, I saw them nearly fall out. Now, interesting thing. I was about nine or so when Mad Hatter made his big debut. Baby’s first big Gotham Rogue. And because I was nine, I was in the exact age range the news said Hatter would target. I was a paranoid little kid, and if you’ve got kids, you know how it goes. Everyone and their uncle has a Rogue to scare the kiddies with when they don’t do their chores. And little nine-year-old me was convinced, convinced, that the Mad Hatter would steal me away in the night.”

“Is there a point to all this?”

“Getting there,” Tim insisted, “So kid me decided that if I was prepared enough, I could foil the Mad Hatter’s evil attempts to kidnap me. I was determined to know absolutely everything about the Mad Hatter so I wouldn’t be caught off guard when he inevitably came to take me to Wonderland. And you wanna’ know the most interesting thing little nine-year-old me was able to dig up? The Mad Hatter’s infamous hats? Those weren’t his tech’s first configuration. The first functional design of the Mad Hatter’s mind control were these sheets of circuitry, about the size of playing cards, with the famed 10/6 on the one side.”

“So I guess what I’m really asking here,” Tim concluded, staring straight at the now pale guard, “Isn’t ‘why do you have a pack of cards?’ but rather, ‘how much did Jervis Tetch pay you to sneak in his rudimentary, but still functional and most importantly less recognizable tech, and how are your coworkers going to react when they find out you were trying to help him escape?’”

In an instant, Sam’s arm dropped from his shoulders and she darted forward. She gripped the guard’s wrist tight enough for him to drop his weapon, which she caught before plucking the deck of cards from his pocket and sweeping his legs out from under him.

“Mind control. It’s always the fruitloops with mind control,” she lamented, opening up the deck’s box and sliding a card out. Sure enough, there was the metal sheet with 10/6 on one side and a symphony of sleek tech on the other.

“Manson,” Ingram warned, slowly extending their hand.

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you loud and clear, Ingram. Loud and clear.” Sam closed the deck back up and switched the safety on the gun before passing both weapons to them. 

“Thank you. Johnson, Cooper! Take Mays up to the boss’s office and fill him in about the double-crossing. I want him in the GCPD’s hands before two. Manson, Drake, docs, now!”

“Ooo, I’m Drake now, not ‘newbie’?” he asked, allowing himself to be grabbed and shuffled away.

“Watch it. You might have saved us a breakout, but you still caused this in the first place. Taking into account this is your first offense, and first lock-up in general, we’re willing to extend a bit of goodwill.” Ingram gave them a hard look. “Don’t push it.”

Tim just shrugged his shoulders and followed Sam and company out. Before he was shoved out of the mess hall for good, he caught Danny and Tucker’s eye. Danny shook his head, but Tucker gave him a thumbs up, patting the rolled-up sleeve of his jumpsuit.

Tim nodded back. Steal a gun from a security guard? Check.

*****

Waylon let out a low, deep laugh as Tim and Sam were taken away.

“You sure know how to pick ‘em, Little Demise! Dinner and a show?! Ha! Don’t get that every day in the slammer!”

“That’s a right shame, too. I think we could all do with a steady source of enrichment. Why, back in my freshman year of high school, we would—”

Tucker tuned Danny out as he regaled Killer Croc with some of Dash vs. Danny’s greatest hits. He continued to eat, ‘accidentally’ brushing an empty fruit cup to the floor. When he was sure no one had eyes on him, he bent down under the table, grabbed the gun from his sleeve, and tucked it into his boot, pulling his pant leg down to hide it. 

Tucker then sat back up with the plastic cup in hand, cool as a cucumber. 

“—and then because my half of the haunted house was ruined, by no fault of my own might I add, I had to eat Dash’s underwear right there in the cafeteria,” Danny concluded.

Tucker snorted. “That’s a lie and you know it. It was totally your fault because you couldn’t be bothered to do something more creative than ‘advanced bedsheet ghost’ or ‘get the literal Spirit of Hallowe’en to do it for you’.”

“Shut up, Tucker,” Danny said, shoving him lightly, “I didn’t hear any objections from you at the time, so no rubbing it in now. And I doubt Frighty would mind.”

Considering the last time Tucker saw Fright Knight he was all but begging to let him join them in Arkham and unleash Soul Shredder on anyone who looked at them funny, Tucker also very much doubted he would mind Danny waltzing in and demanding his assistance in creating a spooky-scary haunted house.

Before Tucker could come up with a rebuttal, the call for seconds came around and Waylon stood up and joined the line. Tucker waited for Croc to be out of earshot before he bent forward to whisper, “And speaking of knights, should we tell Lady Gotham’s squire that our break-out party of four is actually a break-out party of five?”

Danny made a strangled noise before he checked to make sure the coast was clear and whispered back, “Not until we’re alone. If he doesn’t wind up in solitary, we’ll break it to him tonight.”

Tucker nodded, thinking hard.

Technically, technically, they did not need to break out anyone from Arkham. It was just a goal on Jazz’s list to see if it could be done. Jazz and her gaggle of undergrads made it very clear that not every item on the list had to be completed for them to collect the data they needed. Unfortunately, Tucker and his datemates weren’t no quitters. Jazz’s list was getting completed in its entirety, and that meant they were breaking somebody else out of this shithole.

He guesses Tim would count towards that goal, but they had already made plans and deals with another inmate before he came along. And considering those deals included treatment by Frostbite in the Far Frozen for said inmate swearing off crime for good, they were going to hold to their end of the bargain. 

“We just have to explain everything to him clearly and delicately,” Danny said, “And if Tim isn’t okay with it, we’ll just point out that he’s in no position to throw stones. Besides, what’s he gonna’ do? They’ll be healing in the Ghost Zone for months, at the very least. It’s not like we’re handing them a bazooka and dropping them in the middle of the street.”

“I guess,” Tucker allowed, rising from his seat, “But maybe we should let them meet and see what Tim thinks. If he says they’re trying to pull a fast one and won’t really quit the criminal activity, we leave ‘em.”

“I guess,” Danny echoed him, “If you’re already getting up, grab me another roll, please.”

“You got it,” Tucker said, walking off to join the food line.

He really, truly hoped that Tim would take the news well. Because if Tucker had to continue suffering through meals like this, he wouldn’t be able to stick with the plan.

‘I’m this close to starting that riot here and now,’ he thought, scowling down at the Salisbury steak, ‘Ancients, I would kill for a trip to Nasty Burger right about now.’

*****

Tim was ushered into a waiting doctor’s office, where a woman in a white lab coat introduced herself as Dr. Julie Knapp and gestured for him to take a seat.

“Hello, Mr. Drake. Do you know why you’ve been called in today?”

“I’d imagine he has something to do with Jervis Tetch’s broken nose,” Tim said sarcastically.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, exactly. Tell me, Mr. Drake, are you prone to violent outbursts like that?”

“No,” he said icily.

“Hm.” Dr. Knapp wrote something down on her notepad. “That’s surprising. You seem quite skilled in physical combat. And you didn’t hesitate to use violence when representatives from Arkham came to collect you.”

“That might have something to do with the fact that I didn’t want to come with them.”

“Was your legal guardian not properly notified of the proper pick-up time?”

“I wouldn’t know. Dick,” Tim spat the name with as much venom as he could muster, “Didn’t have the balls to tell me I was being shipped off here in the first place.”

“Seeing as you reacted how you did, I’m not surprised Mr. Grayson was hesitant to inform you,” Dr. Knapp said, jotting another thing down as Tim’s nails dug into his palms.

“Sure, that’s one way to describe it,” he muttered darkly.

Dr. Knapp glanced up at him. “Now, there seems to be a… filing error in regards to your records. Tell me, Mr. Drake, are you currently on any prescribed medication?”

“No,” Tim said.

“Have you ever been officially diagnosed with any mental health disorders?”

Tim snorted. As if any vigilante would sit themselves down in front of a psychologist and learn healthy coping mechanisms. Nope, it was Kevlar and grappling hooks all the way down. “No.”

“Are you currently taking any other medications such as allergy or sleeping meds?”

“Benadryl,” Tim said, “As a slight sleep aid."

“Hm. We do not currently have any here at Arkham. Would there be another medication you are willing to substitute?”

“Laudanum,” Tim said sarcastically, still thinking of Tetch’s words from earlier.

To his astonishment, Dr. Knapp just nodded and wrote that down too. “I’ll make a note of it and have a proper dosage delivered. Excuse me, Mr. Drake, but my own lunch break has just begun. Might we continue this tomorrow?”

Dumbstruck, Tim could do nothing but nod as Dr. Knapp signaled for the guards to take him back to his cell. Before Tucker or Danny could ask how his day had went, Tim grabbed the wadded-up straitjacket and screamed into it.

“That bad, huh?” Tucker asked.

“My doctor just prescribed me a fucking opiod, that hasn’t been in popular medical use since the sixties might I add, without a second thought, and dismissed me from an intervention without even asking why I attacked the Mad Hatter or any promises not to do so again. What. The. Hell?!”

“Yep, that checks,” Danny said, “Did they claim that there was a ‘filing error’ with your medical history, too?”

“Yes!” Tim shouted, throwing up his hands in disbelief, “What the fuck’s that all about?”

“Tim, what’s the name of this facility?” Tucker asked.

“Arkham Asylum,” Tim answered, a little confused by the shift in topic. 

“The full name,” Tucker insisted, pulling out his PDA, “As in, the name they slapped on this place when it went from hospital to full-on looney bin?”

“Amadeus Arkham named the place after his mother, didn’t he? So it’s the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum, I guess? But everyone in Gotham just calls it ‘Arkham’ or ‘Arkham Asylum’.”

“The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane,” Tucker said, “Make no mistake, this place is a prison first, mental health facility second. If you don’t have a criminal record and a court order, you aren’t supposed to be here.”

Tim sat up. “Wait, you’re saying that I… that The Traitor shouldn’t have even been able to cart me off here in the first place?”

“Nope,” Danny said, “Sam, Tucker, and I all landed ourselves in Arkham at the end of May. Tucker checked himself in, I had my parents attempt to check me in, and Sam hammed it up with some of the undergrads to make it look like she was a kidnapping victim being thrown into Arkham for ‘safe keeping.’ Someone should’ve called the DA’s office to ensure that our positions as new transfers were approved by the courts. Even if we had criminal records, we would’ve had to have been tried as adults if we landed here instead of juvie. But seeing as we’re still here nearly three weeks later…”

“Trust us, this whole thing’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Tucker said, brushing over Tim’s look of shocked disgust, “There’s a reason we agreed to help Jazz and her friends bring this place down.”

“Hey, I recognize that look of horror!” Sam exclaimed, being shoved into the cell, “Are you talking about the abuse of solitary confinement or the lack of a court-mandated legal library?”

“The intense psychiatrist-approved drug culture and the obvious and intentional miscommunication with the courts, actually.”

“Ah,” she said, sitting down next to Tim. She ruffled his hair a bit and said, “Don’t worry your pretty little hero brain about it. We’ve been documenting Arkham’s misdeeds and mapping out everything nice and pretty for the Gotham-U students. In a few days’ time, we’ll be out of here, and they’ll have all the ammunition they need to blow this place out of the water.”

“I get that, I just…” Tim made a wounded sound and leaned against her, “I’ve been helping B lock the Rouges up for years. All this time, I thought they refused to reform and better themselves because they didn’t want to, and that Arkham was your average shithole with lax security. But this is just— I could never have imagined that it was this bad. I can’t imagine a houseplant, wait, no, Ivy’s in custody. I can’t imagine a pet rock getting the proper care and attention here, let alone a volatile criminal like Harley Quinn or Edward Nygma.”

“Well that’s a perfect segue if I’ve ever heard one,” Danny said, “Okay, we agree that Arkham is the exact opposite place you want to go if you need actual, genuine help with your mental health.”

Tim nodded as Sam ruffled his hair again in some form of reassurance or comfort. “Yeah.”

“And I know you haven’t had any personal experience with it, but do you trust us when we say Arkham’s physical medical facilities are just as shitty as their psychological ones?”

“It tracks,” Tim agreed.

“Okay, so. What if I told you that there is someone currently in Arkham who, although has a criminal record, has never killed anyone and whose both physical and mental well-being would vastly improve upon receiving medical care that no one in Gotham could ever provide? And that Sam, Tucker, and I could connect them with a medical professional who could provide said medical care, but in order to do that, we would have to break them out of Arkham?”

Tim snapped his head up, catching Danny’s anxious look. Tucker and Sam both seemed to have stopped breathing and were waiting for Tim to give his verdict.

Tim’s mind flashed to a million different knee-jerk reactions brought about by both his experiences behind the mask and from his background of growing up in Gotham. All things that wanted him to scream ‘no!’ to whatever the trio was selling. He then contrasted that with the last twenty-four hours and the carelessness of Dr. Knapp and the dozens of other Arkham workers who have grossly mishandled Tim’s and countless others’ cases. All of which made Tim want to hiss out a fierce and venomous ‘yes!’

He decided to cut the difference and let Danny keep talking.

“You have fifteen minutes to convince me of whatever it is you’re trying to say before I cut my losses and break out on my own.”

Sam and Tucker relaxed as Danny nodded. 

“What do you know about Mary Dahl?”

Chapter Text

Tim is so thrown by the name that for a moment, for one concise moment, he thinks they aren’t even talking about a Rogue. It isn’t until Danny continues to explain and name-drops Love That Baby do the stars align and it all clicks.

Mary Dahl, a.k.a. Baby-Doll, was a villain from before his time. She first popped up on the radar when Dick The Traitor was in his awkward transition phase of being too old to truly be Robin, but not yet settled into his identity as Nightwing. Baby-Doll’s case was one of the original Boy Wonder’s last, and her story was equal parts peril and sheer, unparalleled tragedy.

Tim had read the case files, just like all the others. Diagnosed with systemic hypoplasia at the age of five, Mary Dahl hadn’t let her condition halt her dreams of becoming a professional actress. By the age of seven, she was already starring in a few toothpaste commercials, and by age ten, she had been picked to play the titular character in Love That Baby, a 1950s-set sitcom best known for its beloved main character and its bold stylistic choice to air solely in black and white during an era of TV that was littered with over-the-top, experimental HD affects.

After ten years and eighteen-and-a-half seasons, Mary Dahl quit the show at age twenty, essentially sinking the already-dying project. Dahl appeared in a few more productions, including a floundering live showing of Macbeth, before returning to the network in a last-ditch attempt to restart her old series. Unfortunately, the company that produced Love That Baby had been bought out and absorbed into a larger corporation, and the new execs wanted nothing to do with what they saw as a cash cow milked dry.

Mary Dahl made a few more reappearances in the public eye— the occasional unsuccessful project here, a lawsuit settled out of court there —but from the ages of twenty to twenty-nine, she was essentially a ghost in the wind. The beloved, most celebrated sitcom actress of an entire decade up and vanished without a trace.

And then Tod Baker went missing.

And then June Winthrop.

And then Brian Daly.

It wasn’t until the shoot-out at the Gotham Republic Theater and the kidnapping of Tammy Vance did Mary Dahl officially slide into her new role of ‘villain’. By then, it was obvious that Dahl was after her former cast members, and Dick The Traitor had switched with the final actor to thwart Dahl’s ‘birthday party’.

Dahl was caught, sentenced, and then released a few years later. She made an honest attempt at making a quiet, lawful living before she was seduced back into a life of crime by Killer Croc. The two’s whirlwind romance spanned a jailbreak, six months, and multiple successful robberies. Tim had been about ten, then. Jason had just been starting out as Robin, not yet cleared to fight along Batman’s side (though Tim himself had already begun running the streets of Gotham catching pictures of the city’s nightlife). Baby-Doll and Croc were finally captured by B and Babs at the Gotham Nuclear Power Plant, where Baby-Doll had rigged the place to blow, ready to take out Gotham, Batman, and herself along with it.

Now, Tim was not one to forgive domestic terrorism easily. But it truly said something about a person when their two most heinous crimes were unsuccessful suicide attempts.

Tim realizes, all at once, that Danny, Sam, and Tucker are silently staring at him. He shakes his head and refocuses, forgetting about the case files and narrowing in on the present situation.

“So you cut a deal with Dahl?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Danny says, “Don’t get me wrong, I’d spring Waylon in a heartbeat. But he’s still, ya’ know…”

“Got a few life sentences still on his docket?” Tucker asked.

“Yeah. That,” Danny admitted sheepishly, “Mary was sentenced to ten years with parole. She’s been here for a little more than seven, with no marks on her record. By all means, she should already be out.”

Tim groaned and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Is this more fuel for the ‘burn down Arkham’ fire, or did Dahl just have a shit lawyer at her parole hearing?”

“She never got a parole hearing,” Danny said, “At least, that’s what she says. Her records say otherwise, but Tucker ran the files against the news and other public records. And considering that the presiding judge was sipping piña coladas in the Bahamas on the day of her trial…”

Tim’s groan deepened and he felt a headache begin to build behind his eyes. “This entire ordeal is going to be my villain origin story, I swear to God.”

“There, there. You can’t fix what you don’t know is damaged,” Sam consoled him, bumping her shoulder against his, “It’s what you do afterward that makes the difference.”

“Yeah, well,” Tim muttered, “That doesn’t make me feel less like shit now. You mentioned a medical facility of some kind? One that Dahl has agreed to be placed in?”

“My primary care physician has contacted a few specialists and they’ve all agreed that Mary’s condition would vastly improve if she had access to the treatment they could offer. She would have to remain within the facility and be monitored by both the doctors and therapists on hand,” Danny explained, “Treatment could last anywhere from a few months to a few years, which would let her serve out any remaining sentence time, if necessary.”

“And the staff there, they’d be able to handle a Gotham Rogue?” Tim asked.

The other three teens laughed. 

“I’m sure Mary is more than capable of handling herself, but I highly doubt she could take on a band of Far Frozen doctors,” Tucker said with a smile, “Though, after she’s patched up and in better shape, well… all bets are off, then.”

Tucker and Sam shared a knowing look while Danny chuckled some more. Tim just sighed again. If they wanted to be cryptic and dodgy, then so be it. He wasn’t exactly in a good place to judge and/or fly into a flurry of Bat paranoia. Nor has Tim forgotten the whole ‘Lady Gotham’s blessing’ or ‘government has declared my species non-sentient’ stuff from their initial introduction. The second he is able to, Tim is going to break out the yarn and corkboards and dive head-first into a questionably-legal investigating binge.

Well, after he’s got B back. Then there shall be an overly invasive investigation. Maybe he could even convince Bruce to crack into the Justice League: Dark’s references and see if Tim’s associates were a band of faeries or something.

For now, though, there was still the question of Dahl.

“Is there room in our timeframe for me to speak with her?” he asked.

“Neither of us will be getting rec time today, but I think we should be cleared for tomorrow,” Sam offered.

“Then tomorrow it is,” Tim agreed, “Let’s see whether or not Baby-Doll’s got a better explanation than ‘I didn’t mean to.’ ”

*****

Tim grumbles and groans the next morning as the guards come to escort him to breakfast.

Tim, Tucker, Danny, and Sam stayed up late into the night talking. It had started with just a debrief of what had happened once they had been split up, and then slowly shifted to Tim asking about their other exploits in Arkham. The trio in turn had asked him about life in Gotham and compared it to what they had heard from Danny’s sister. Once that had run its course, they just… talked. About anything and everything. 

Tim learned that Tucker was making a ROM hack for Doomed and that he had almost unbelievably bad luck whenever he played single-player online. He found out that Sam grew most of her own food and that she had a Venus flytrap named after the Venus de Milo. Danny had apparently made an invaluable discovery about one of the remaining purple-back gorillas and was credited with potentially saving the species from extinction.

“Hold it, hold it!” Tim said with a laugh, “You’re telling me that in the years of the two gorillas living out their days in captivity, no one had the bright idea to check if one had a dick or not?”

“I mean, they tried,” Danny said, “But purple-back gorillas are one, extremely territorial, and two, keep their genitalia almost completely hidden unless they are in the process of mating. Zoologists had never been able to safely get close enough and check the gorillas’ genders. And if they just shoved the two gorillas into the same enclosure, there was a very likely chance that one would just have flat-out-killed the other. Hell, that almost happened anyway, but Tom was able to woo Delilah eventually.”

“Danny gets sent updates from the researchers sometimes,” Tucker said, pulling out his PDA and showing Tim a couple of pictures of two adult gorillas and a pair of twin babies, “It’ll be a long, long road to recovery, but with care and attention, they’re hopeful that the species can make a full resurgence.”

Tim smiled at the pictures, laughing as Sam picked up what seemed to be a long-running debate about the ethics of captivity-lead species restoration vs. reservation-lead.

He had nodded off sometime during Danny’s info-dumping on Sagittarius B2 and how the space cloud would taste like raspberries if someone managed to fly to space and eat it. It had been bubbly, excited gushing one moment, and then deafening banging against the cell bars the next. With less than four hours of sleep in his system, Tim had determined that ‘no caffeine’ was being slapped onto the ‘Reasons Arkham is the Definition of Horseshit and Deserves to Burn’ list.

After they had all finished gulping down their lumpy oatmeal, they were ushered back to the cell for count time. Danny and Tucker passed Tim a clean jumpsuit from their little pile of fresh-folded laundry, while Sam ducked into their small corner bathroom to change. Tim switched outfits with the fluid practice only a vigilante could have, and then Sam rejoined them, ponytail redone and pulled back tight. The four of them hopped onto their bunks, careful to sit straight and be visible. There was a bit of jilted conversation as they waited, but whenever a guard would lumber past, they would all fall dead silent and stare icily ahead. 

Around noon, when all of the other convicts were either making their way to the mess hall for lunch or to the yard for some fresh air, Tucker grabbed Tim’s hand and pulled him down the hall and into a small rec room. The harsh fluorescent lighting glared down at them as Sam grabbed a book from a bookshelf and Danny pulled a 3D puzzle out of a plastic bin on the ground.

“Give us a holler if you need anything,” Tucker said, checking his PDA before carefully placing it back in his jumpsuit, “We’ll leave you to your talk.”

And with that, Tim was abandoned in front of the bookcase with something tugging at his leg.

“Excuse me, mister,” a high, cherubic voice said, “Can you help Baby get a book?”

Tim followed the voice downwards and saw what appeared to be a young girl, about kindergarten age, with a small fistful of his pant leg. She had a button nose and golden hair curled into ringlets and tied back with ribbons. Large, innocent sapphire eyes blinked up at him, and a simple kick of her feet and cock of her head gave a complete air of child-like innocence.

“Of course, Ms. Dahl,” Tim said, looking up at the bookshelf, “Anything in particular you’d like?”

“Poetry, pretty please,” she said, giving him a winsome smile.

“Well, alright,” Tim said, grabbing two books from the shelf, “Would you mind if I joined you? I think a bit of calm and quiet would do me some good.”

“Oh yes, some quiet is always nice after a big day. And you had a big, big day yesterday. Punching that meany Mad Hatter.” Dahl puffed up her chest and blew a raspberry. “Such an awful bully, Hatter is. Always trying to give Baby trouble.”

Tim felt ice shoot through his veins. “Has he ever—”

“Nuh-uh,” she said, quick to shake her head, “He’s tried, but Crocy has always set him straight.”

“That’s nice of Mr. Waylon to do,” Tim said, relieved.

“Yeah.” Dahl’s tone drifted from pleasant and sunny to considering and wistful. “He’s a good friend.” 

Just as quickly as it dissipated, her childish act was back in full force as she climbed onto the sofa and started jumping up and down in excitement. “Now c’mon, what’d you get Baby? What, what, what?!”

“Here,” Tim said, passing her the book he had grabbed for her, “And let me know if you’d prefer something else. It doesn’t seem like a large selection, but there’s got to be at least one book in this hellhole worth reading.”

Dahl looked down at the copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and stared at it for a bit before giving a nice, deep laugh.

“Ha!” she chuckled, voice dropping at least half an octave. Her smile morphed from one of a mischievous child to that of a sardonic adult. “You had me worried there when you grabbed that,” she said, nodding down at the collection of nursery rhymes and other children’s poems, “But I guess you’d already heard about me from the others?”

“Eh, kind of. My lovely roommates have said that they’ve already struck some sort of deal with you, but I first heard about you from Ba… from B.”

“Oh,” Mary Dahl said, expression falling, “Then might I express my condolences? It must be hard to lose a father like that. Let alone two in such a short period of time.”

Tim jolted in his seat, looking at Dahl in alarm, though he tried to keep that from showing on his face. “I believe there’s a misunderstanding, ma’am. Though my father, Jack Drake, has recently passed, I assure you, Bruce is perfectly fine.”

Dahl gave him a reassuring look and reached out to pat his hand. “It’s alright. I know. Something’s happened to Mr. Wayne, hasn’t it?”

Tim shook his head. “No, no, he’s fine. He’s fine. Bruce is fine.”

Dahl sighed. “Look, Tim—might I call you Tim? Regardless, child, I know. I know that whoever is making appearances on TV every other night and doing interviews with Vicki Vale isn’t Bruce. Let’s just say the two of us have… a connection.”

Tim blinked a few times before collapsing back onto the sofa with a groan.

‘How does he keep doing this?’ he internally griped, ‘What is that, three? Three villainesses B’s seduced? First Selina, then Talia, and now Miss Mary Dahl. Fucking Christ, hasn’t he learned not to put his dick in crazy yet?’

Dahl must have caught his expression because she just cackled. “Oh, not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. Mr. Wayne has the habit of writing letters to the Arkham inmates. Most don’t write back, but he and I have had a steady correspondence for years now. A new letter every Thursday, like clockwork. And then, a few weeks ago, they stopped. And though I may be years out of practice, I’m still an actress. I spotted that phony the second he had his first teleconference.”

Tim let her words sink in before pivoting into a more truthful lie.

“You’re right. Bruce is… he’s missing. And my broth— and Dick fucking Grayson thinks he’s dead. But I know he’s still alive out there. Somewhere. But it feels like I’m the only one who does. There isn’t even a dedicated search party or anything! Because keeping things quite so Wayne Industries stocks don’t plummet is so much more important. It’s like everyone who’s ever claimed to care about Bruce said ‘Well shit, guess the bastard’s dead’ without even a body to justify it! And they all think I’m crazy for saying, ‘Hey, this is weird! Maybe hold off on declaring my dad dead without solid proof?’ ”

Dahl gave him a sympathetic look. “Oh, sweetie. Would you like a hug?”

Tim nodded before he was even aware enough to think the question through. He felt a small, solid form burrow into his chest, and he hugged the woman back tight.

“And it’s just,” Tim sniffled, suddenly blinking back tears, “I know it’s only been a few weeks, but I miss B so much. And then the Demon Brat comes in and takes my place, and I’m still so mad at Steph for the bullshit about her coming back to Gotham. And, and Cassie, Cass, Alfred, and Babs aren’t here, and Kon and Bart are gone, and I just…” he trailed off again, rubbing at his eyes. “Even if I am wrong, is it so bad to hope that the one person who still cares about me is still alive? That he’s fighting just as hard to come home as I am to get him back?”

“No,” Dahl insisted, stepping back to look up at him, “Not at all. By the sounds of it, something isn’t adding up. Even if you don’t see hide or hair of your dad, you can’t declare a missing person dead until at least seven years have passed. It’s been what, a month? A month and a half? That’s not very long at all. You are not crazy for having hope in this.”

“Yeah, well. Tell that to The Traitor. That’s the whole reason he threw me in here.”

Dahl blinked up at him, the words processing in her mind.

“You’re in Arkham,” she said slowly, “Just because your brother thought…. you know what? No. No, this is not a conversation you should be having with me. Kid, do you got an attorney? A manager of your parents’ wills? A legal guardian that isn’t off his rocker?”

Tim thought back, contemplating the question. “Um, Alfred? But he’s in Europe somewhere right now. Lucius Fox is more in charge of Wayne Industries than the Wayne estate. The board of Drake Industries, I guess? Maybe?”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“July 19th.”

Mary Dahl gave a sharp nod. “Good, good. That’s barely a month away. Tim, listen to me. The second you turn eighteen and are no longer legally bound to Grayson, contact a lawyer and file a lawsuit. File several lawsuits. Do not contact your so-called ‘family,’ do not let yourself be swayed by appeals to nostalgia and empathy, and do not let up. You just find yourself a vicious shark, and sue.”

Tim looked down at the serious expression on Mary’s face, knowing that she meant every word she said.

“Sue for what?” he asked.

“Anything that’ll stick,” Mary exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air in exasperation, “Slander, libel, withholding your funds and resources, withholding your right to an attorney, withholding your right to a fair trial, unlawful imprisonment in an institution for the mentally insane! If you can pin probable cause for a papercut, sue for damages from that, too! Make it clear, loudly, publicly, and legally that you will not tolerate what has been done to you. And don’t just stop at Grayson. Sue Wayne Industries, too.”

“Why? Lucius hasn’t done anything to me,” Tim insisted, “And I don’t want to do that to Bruce. Whatever The Traitor has done to me, he’s had nothing to do with it.”

“Let me guess: you feel like no matter how bad Grayson’s treated you, your dad’s always been there? Always been that light in the dark, sticking by your side? I bet this Lucius is a family friend, one who’s always been good to you and who’s treated you like an intelligent equal rather than an inexperienced child?” Tim nodded at her words, Mary nodding knowingly back. “That’s what I thought. Kid, let me tell you something it took me almost fifteen years to learn: inaction isn’t a sign of innocence, it’s a sign of guilt. It doesn’t matter how nice a person might be, if they stand by and do nothing while you’re treated like this, they ain’t worth shit!”

“But Wayne Industries, really?”

Mary collapsed back onto the couch and sighed. “Yes, really. Listen to me, Tim. Listen to me! Do not make the same mistake I did.”

“What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

She sighed again and started to explain. “When I was ten years old, I landed my first, and so far only, major acting role. I was the Baby of Love That Baby. I was so happy to be doing the thing I loved. And I was good at it! The show was such a success that the studio wanted to kick up production. They were adding on new seasons by the hour. More seasons… and less time to film them. Most shows don’t dare to try and film more than one season of television in a year. Love That Baby averaged two. And I, being the titular character, didn’t get to have breaks. I wasn’t like Tammy and Brian, who would have a week or two off-set and get to go to Disney World, or something. I practically lived in that studio.

“But I didn’t mind it at the time,” she continued sadly, “That crew was my family. Tod and June were my second parents. I loved them. I loved everyone, from Lacey in makeup to Jerod the caterer to Benson the cameraman. But they didn’t love me back. I was a nuisance. A brat. A little toddler who threw tantrums when she didn’t get enough screen time. The other actors, at least, only tolerated me at best. And nothing made that clearer than that stupid birthday episode.”

Mary’s face went murderous and her fists clenched in anger. 

“It was my actual twentieth birthday, you know? Ten years of the show, eighteen completed seasons, and the first birthday I ever got off. Tod told me to come back to the studio once I was done celebrating. Said that the crew had a surprise for me. Told me to get into the outfit laid out in my trailer and meet everybody on set. When I finally got there, there was a beautiful birthday cake laid out for me. I climbed up, Tod lit the candles, and right when I went to blow them out, my face got slammed into the cake, lit candles first,” her entire body shook in anger at the memory, “I ran off crying and didn’t even know the cameras had been rolling until screen tests a few weeks later. I marched down to the producers’ office that day and made an ultimatum: either they pull the episode, or I walk. They aired the episode. I walked.”

Tim reached out his hand and placed it on her shoulder, trying to comfort her like Sam had comforted him. 

It was Mary’s turn to sniffle and rub at her eyes. “Some time passed, my attempt at Lady Macbeth was a bust. I drifted for a bit, but hey! If I didn’t have my show family, I at least had my actual family, right?”

Tim just wordlessly started rubbing at her shoulder, already guessing where this was going. 

“Nope!” Mary crowed manically, “My parents split town with most of my paycheck the second I turned eighteen. And the icing on the cake? They turned down a stem-cell therapy treatment on my behalf when I was thirteen. It would’ve meant years of surgery and most likely thousands of dollars, but I would’ve been normal and healthy. Oh, but they didn’t care about that. If I got the treatment, I would’ve started growing. And then who would be Baby? Who would make them their millions?”

Mary let out a broken laugh before she leaned into Tim’s side. “All I had left was the funds in my Coogan Account. But it was more than enough. I sued my parents, my manager, the studio, and the producers for everything I could. By the end of it, I was a very, very wealthy woman. I tried to live a normal life, but, well. The window had closed on the stem-cell treatment. College wasn’t exactly friendly to a woman like me. And I studied, and trained, and auditioned, but nobody wanted me. Nobody was willing to cast Mary Dahl. If I got offered a part, I was always, always type-casted as Baby-Doll. I was coming up on my thirtieth birthday with nothing but a dead career, no friends or family, and more money than I could ever use in a lifetime. I started thinking long and hard about when I had ever been truly happy and if I could ever achieve that happiness again. I think you know where it went from there.”

Tim gave her arm another squeeze. “Can I give you a hug?”

Mary nodded and Tim pulled her in tight.

“I’m sorry that ever happened to you,” Tim said softly, “The treatment that Danny, Sam, and Tucker are offering, do you want to take it?”

“More than anything,” she said.

“And you’re really set on giving up on crime?”

“Yes.”

“Then the five of us are going to get out of here,” Tim said, “Stick close to the four of us over the next two days, alright? We’ll be free soon, I promise.”

Mary scoffed. “I really should be the one reassuring you, kid.”

“Nah, you’re fine. Talking about your feelings is supposed to be healthy, or something. I wouldn’t know.”

They sat like that for a little while longer until a guard threw open the door and ordered for Tim to follow him to the doctor’s office.

“Can I take my book, at least,” he asked.

“Sure,” the man said, “Just get moving.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Tim agreed, “Goodbye, Ms. Dahl. Thank you for the enlightening conversation.”

“Buh-bye, Mister Poetry Man,” she said in her Baby-Doll voice, “I hope that docs are nice today!”

Tim rolled his eyes and waved goodbye, letting himself be taken away.

*****

Mary kept waving and smiling until there was no one else in the rec room except for the three teenagers bickering in the corner. The moment she was (relatively) alone, she threw her book down and punched at the couch cushions.

The poor kid! Orphaned twice over in less than three months, fair-weather friends and family gone to in the wind, and thrown in Arkham by his so-called ‘brother’ to top it all off!

“False face must hide what false heart doth know,” Mary muttered darkly.

The nerve of Dick Grayson! There was no justification for ever putting someone in Arkham. Especially when they were doing something as normal as grieving a fucking parent. Even if Bruce Wayne was truly gone (and after talking to Tim, Mary had her doubts. Six weeks to declare a missing person dead? She had half a mind to claim that Grayson had offed his father in an attempt to steal the Wayne fortune and now he was just getting the other heirs out of the way), the Arkham lock-up was a horrendously disproportionate response. Was Grayson even aware that the first stage of grief was denial?

Mary shook her head and cracked open the Bard’s comedy to try and distract herself.

‘July 19th,’ she thought, ‘Tim Drake has to escape Arkham and evade the authorities for a little over a month. The GCPD will be cake, so long as he plays it smart, but if Grayson really had something to do with Bruce’s disappearance, that could mean trouble.’

Mary’s eyes shifted from the book sitting in her lap and back to the trio of teenagers. They were laughing, now, with Tucker gesturing wildly as his partners barely held themselves upward. Looking at them, she couldn’t have imagined that they were sitting cozy in one of the most notorious prisons in the world in the crime capital of the country.

‘It was good that they’re looking out for each other,’ Mary thought, a small smile growing on her face. But then her mind turned back to the fourth kid locked in the facility, and she felt the anger seeping back in. 

Mary hated anyone who took advantage of inexperienced kids, especially those who were supposed to be looking out for them. Even if Tim was so close to legal adulthood that he could taste it, Mary shared the opinion of J.R.R. Tolkien: no one was truly an adult until at least thirty-three years of age. It should be the state, not a few teenagers, conducting a full investigation of Arkham. It should be a team of successful, well-established medical professionals reviewing the inmates and calling for reform, not a handful of college students fishing for extra credit. The country should have improved the facilities, cracked down on corruption, and given out the necessary funds to the asylum years ago, rather than laying it at the feet of one generous billionaire.

Mary Dahl may not be the most stable or influential of people, but if no one else would look out for these kids, then goddamnit, she would.

Just as Shakespeare wrote: ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce!’

And if the world kept insisting upon giving all its problems to children to shoulder, then Mary will show it just how fierce she can be.

*****

Tim returns to the cell a half-hour after rec time ends with a bottle of prescribed opioids in hand. He tosses the orange capsule to Sam, who removes the loose brick and hides it away with the stolen gun.

“Get prescribed a superfluous medication? Check,” Tim says with a grin. The others share in his smile as they strike another goal from the list.

“Now,” Danny says excitedly, “How’re we going to start a riot?”

Chapter Text

Tim’s third day in Arkham dawns bright and bold as he takes his book of nursery rhymes and broods over it while he eats the dry, cream-cheese-covered bagel that the cafeteria workers had laid out.

“Ah’ think your new stray’s broken, Little Demise,” Croc says.

“Nah, he’s just not fully functional without his morning coffee,” Danny says, poking Tim in the side of the head, “And considering Arkham’s complete lack of caffeine….”

“If you keep doing that, I will bite that finger off,” Tim warns, frown deepening as he flips through the pages again.

“You get the point,” Tucker says as Sam walks over with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. 

“Harls, Ivy, meet Tim Drake. Tim, meet Dr. Pamela Isley and Dr. Harleen Quinzel. Tim’s gotten roped into our little side project,” she explains as the women sit down, “And again, sorry we can’t tell you more, but…”

“We understand, Sam,” Ivy says easily, “Can’t be charged with perjury if you don’t know the crime.”

“Hiya!” Harley says, sticking out her hand right between Tim’s nose and the open book, “Nice ta’ meetchya! I’m Dr. Harley Quinn, but youse can just call me Harley. Or Harls, if it suits ya’. But not Harleen! Full-naming just makes me think of the nuns. Eugh!”

Harley gave a full-body shudder before sticking her wide grin back on her face. Tim gave a small smile back and shook the offered hand.

“Tim Drake, and back at you. Is it true that you and Ivy broke up, or was that just Vicki Vale spewing the same tabloid bullshit and calling it journalism?”

Ivy bristled a bit at the question, but Harley laughed, not offended in the slightest.

“Youse got experience with Vic’s way with words, don’t’cha?” she asked.

“Yep. There’s only so many times a guy can make headlines before you start a bingo card,” Tim said with a chuckle.

“Don’t I know it,” Mary piped up, jumping up onto a seat, “I much prefer Miss Gleeson’s work. Much better researched.”

A noise came from Croc that sounded like a more animalistic version of Bruce’s grunt. “Mornin’ Dollface.”

“Good morning my Croccy-Woccy,” she cooed, sliding a plate of breakfast sausage towards him, “I grabbed the last serving. Chicken, your favorite!”

“Hm. You two are on much better terms than we are with our exes,” Ivy observed.

Tim snorted. “Okay, I have to ask: did you actually date Two-Face, or was… or was The Traitor just pulling my leg?”

“No, I dated Harvey Dent, Gotham’s youngest ever DA. And then my lovely little rose almost solved the Two-Face problem before it could even begin,” Ivy said easily.

“If only,” Harley lamented, leaning her head against her girlfriend, “If only.”

“If only, indeed,” Mary giggled before turning to Tim, “What’s got you scowling like that? The poor book hasn’t done anything to you.”

“I’m just frustrated. I got a random nursery rhyme stuck in my head a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to find any sources for it. Nothing in any of the books from the Wayne library, and certainly nothing online,” Tim admitted.

“Which one?” Mary asked.

“The Court of Owls poem,” Tim says.

He gets nods and small exclamations of recognition from Ivy, Harley, Mary, and Waylon, but Danny, Tucker, and Sam just look at him with confusion.

“The what?” Sam asks.

“The Court of Owls poem,” Tim says again, thinking that she might not have heard him. “You know, it’s one of those nursery rhymes no one realizes is super creepy until way later in life. Kind of like not knowing ‘Ring-Around-a-Rosie’ is actually about the Black Death.”

The other three teens just continued to stare blankly at him.

“You’re messing with us,” Tucker said, “You have to be. Otherwise, Sam would’ve been all over that in her folk literature phase.”

“What, no I’m not. Kids would always jump rope to it during recess,” Tim insisted. “Maybe you just know it by a different name. It starts with ‘Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time.’”

“‘Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lyme,’” Harley added.

“‘They watch you in your hearth,’” Ivy continued.

“‘They watch you in your bed,’” grumbled Croc.

“‘Speak not a whispered word of them,’” Mary said.

“Or they’ll send The Talon for your head,’” all five Gothamites finished together.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker just continued to stare at them.

“What kind of cult bullshit—” Danny started to say before Tim cut him off.

“Wait, you’ve seriously never heard that before?” Tim insisted.

“No!” the trio cried.

Tim blinked a few times as that sunk in. “Huh. Well, I…. huh. I guess it’s good to get an outside perspective.”

“You said the whole thing had a dark hidden meaning. What meaning is that, exactly?” Tucker asked.

“Oh, it’s just about a secret shadow society that’s supposedly been ruling Gotham for centuries,” Tim waved away, “One that probably has more truth to it than I initially thought if no one outside of Gotham even knows the little nursery rhyme that warns people to shut up or else.” Tim cracked the book back open, ignoring their concerned looks. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are we really just going to leave it at that? Really? Nothing to add? Anybody? Going once, going twice… Well, okay then.” Danny asked before shrugging and turning to Croc when no one spoke up. “How’d that checkered mosaic stitch turn out, Waylon?”

The eight of them finished their breakfast over soft conversation. Eventually, they were once more returned to their cells for count time. Today, though, rather than heading off into one of the rec rooms, the four teens made their way to the prison yard.

It didn’t take five minutes to discover the intel they needed and determine that the riot was a no-go.

“Joker’s still in solitary?” Danny asked Croc after they had made a couple of circuits of the yard without seeing the clown.

Croc grumbled out a ‘yes’ and they all groaned.

Looks like they’d have to wait and see again tomorrow.

“Well this sucks,” Sam says with a sigh, pulling off the top layer of her prison uniform to reveal a white tank top underneath. She then started doing a few stretches and rolling out her shoulders. “Think we could get a pick-up game going, or something? I’m kind of in the mood for baseball.”

“Puh-lease. As if someone would be dumb enough to let Harley get her hands on a bat,” Tucker countered, beginning his own stretches, “We’d be better off with basketball, or something.”

Tim was about to suggest kickball instead when a familiar tug on his pant leg had his eyes moving downward to a panicked-looking Mary.

“Tim, kid, you have to hide. Now.”

“Why, what’s going on?” he asked, crouching down to her level.

“The guards say you’ve got a visitor. Tim. Tim, it’s Grayson.”

It felt as if an ice-cold bucket of water had drenched him head-to-toe. Tim couldn’t think beyond the white blankness of panic that overtook him; couldn’t hear over the blood rushing to his ears and the pounding heart trying to beat right out of his chest. He tried to take a few steps away from where the guards were just starting to fan out and search for him, but for some reason, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

Why was breathing so hard?

Why did he feel as if he just lost a footrace to Bart?

Why did the mere mention of Dick, his brother, The Traitor make Tim feel like… like this?

A touch of wet cold on his wrist snapped Tim back to the present. He didn’t know where Danny got that shard of ice from, but he wasn’t complaining as the sharp contrast between the freezing ice and the hot rush of blood kept him grounded.

“Sorry,” Danny said, placing the ice in Tim’s hand, “I know you’re not supposed to touch someone who’s having a panic attack, but I think you’d rather not be, ugh, you know…”

“Yeah. I just… shit,” Tim swore, taking a slow, steady breath in, “I can’t see him. Even if I wanted to see him, which I sure as hell don’t, he’ll see through me in an instant. He always can.”

“Visitors only get one registered hour. Even if the Arkham cronies let him stay until he sees you, visiting hours end at three o’clock,” Tucker says, quickly checking his info through his PDA, “That’s a little over three-and-a-half hours to dodge Grayson. Think we can do this?”

Tim found himself nodding. “Yes. Not like we have a choice, but. Yes.”

“Okay, Danny, Tuck, and I will find Ivy and distract the guards. Tim, are you good to head back to the rec room from yesterday and hide out with Croc and Mary? We’ll send Harley to check in and update you when we can,” Sam promised.

“Or the three of us can stick with you, if that’s what you need,” Danny proposed, offering Tim a hand up. When Tim first fell to the ground, he wouldn’t be able to tell you.

“No, stick in the yard and make it look like I’m still out here with you,” Tim said, mind slipping into Robin mode like a well-loved jacket. He pressed the ice to his wrist again and tried to keep his consciousness in the present. “The Traitor won’t expect me to be with Waylon, but he would expect me to make nice with the inmates in my age group. Stick around here and try to run out the clock on visiting hours as fast as you can.”

Sam, Danny, and Tucker all made sounds of agreement, and in the blink of an eye, they were off, dashing over to Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, loudly proclaiming that they simply had to play hide and seek right this very minute. Waylon stayed where he was, pulling Tim behind him. He leaned up against the building’s edge, his large frame completely blocking him from the guards’ view. After a few minutes of small talk with Mary, Waylon picked Tim and Baby-Doll up with ease and slipped back into the asylum, silent as a shadow.

“Didn’t know you could be that sneaky,” Tim complimented as he was set down on the rec room couch.

Croc scoffed. “How many times do you hear a crocodile when they’re out on the hunt? I can be sneaky when I need to be, Spitfire.”

Tim chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Just keep an eye out in case Dick… in case The Traitor —”

Mary bopped him on the nose and tutted. “Now, now. None of that. Your friends are having a grand ole’ time burning that bridge before Grayson can cross it. Just keep your mind here in the present, will you? Oh, I know! Tell me some of those nursery rhymes. That’ll keep that worried little brain of yours occupied.”

“Really. That’s the best distraction you can think of?” he asked, giving her an unimpressed look.

“I’m not the one who’s been reading it all day,” she countered. “Come on, how does that one with the crows go? ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth’ ?”

“Firstly, it’s magpies. Secondly, it’s got a few different variations, so it depends on who’s reciting.”

“Well, how’d the book write it?”

Tim sighed, recognizing that the conversation wasn’t going to be dropped until Mary got her answer. 

“One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth,” he dutifully began, “Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.”

“I thought it went up to twenty,” Mary said idly once Tim didn’t continue for a bit.

“I’m not recounting all twenty verses,” he grumbled.

“Jus’ humor her, Spitfire. Else she’ll be breaking out the waterworks soon,” Croc grumbled from his spot in the opposite armchair.

“So?”

“So,” he drawled, “You know she’s an adult, I know she’s an adult, she certainly knows damn well that she’s an adult, but your mind sure don’t. Two seconds of tears, and you’re beating yourself up to give in ta’ the baby, and shame on you for dare causin’ her an ounce of grief.”

Mary gave a cherubic smile and Tim relented, knowing in his heart that Waylon was correct.

“Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a surprise you should be careful not to miss. Eleven for health, twelve for wealth, thirteen beware it’s the devil himself. Fourteen for love, fifteen for a dove, sixteen for the chime of a bell. Seventeen for the angels’ protection, eighteen to be safe from hell. Nineteen to be safe from a crime, twenty to end this rhyme.” Tim gave half-hearted jazz hands at the end of the poem, and Mary applauded.

“Yay!” she cheered, “Good job, Timmy! Now do another one.”

Tim, recognizing when he’s beaten, cycled through a few other rhymes and kept himself distracted. He played with the ice shard (which somehow refused to melt; adding that to the mental interrogation corkboard) and recounted the most obscure ones he could think of.

It was when he was about half-way through Cock Robin that some guards shoved open the door and peered inside the rec room.

“Is Drake in here, Croc?” they called, looking apprehensively at Waylon. With the couch’s back facing the door and Tim sprawled flat across it, they couldn’t see the teen frozen stiff in anticipation.

“No. Now scram,” Croc snapped, “You’re botherin’ me ‘n Dollface.”

“Uh-huh,” Mary said in her Baby-Doll voice, “Mean mister guardsmen bothering us. All this hullabaloo about one lousy big kid. Phooey! Just let the big kid hide if he wants to hide.”

“And I say shove him in a Vegas showgirl outfit and make him do the Macarena if that’s what the honorable benefactor wants,” one guard sneered back, “Those rich types like Grayson are always looking to make a few quick donations. Think I might be able to take the wife and kids to Disney if I’m the one dragging Drake back. I know he, Fenton, Manson, and Foley have been hanging off you like limpets. So I’ll ask again, Croc: where is he?”

Waylon rose slowly from his chair, stalked forward, leaned carefully over the couch to further hide Tim from view, and slammed his hands on the edge of the couch’s back. Tim couldn’t see the guards, but if that had any amount of self-preservation or common sense, they’d be cowering away from the vicious glower settling on Croc’s face.

“I. Said. Scram!” he snarled, teeth bared, “Or else I’ll show you exactly how I deal with annoying little bugs like you. And trust me, it ain’t pretty.”

And then Waylon did something Tim had never seen before in all his years as Robin.

He smiled.

Tim blamed it on the countless rhymes he had just been cycling through not even two minutes beforehand, but for whatever reason, the only thing that popped into his head when he saw that starved, ferocious grin of a predator was, “Never smile at a crocodile. No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile. Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin. He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin. Never smile at a crocodile.”

The guards must have been just as shaken as he was, because they apologized and fled the room at once. Croc held his defensive pose over the couch for a few more moments before he pushed himself off and collapsed carefully onto the floor.

“Breathe, Spitfire,” he commanded, “That look wasn’ for you. It’s never gonna’ be for you. Ya’ too tiny to make a full meal outta’, and much too entertainin’ besides.”

Tim, still rattled, could only squeeze his eyes shut and take in shallow, shaky breaths. Croc simply reached out, tucked Tim’s fingers tighter around the unmelting ice shard, and slowly began to speak.

“Solomon Grundy, born on Monday,” Waylon grumbled out in a clear, steady cadence, “Christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday.’ C’mon, Spitfire. What’s the next part?”

Tim took another breath before saying, “‘Took ill on Thursday, grew worse on Friday.”

Croc nodded. “Died on Saturday, buried on Sunday.” 

“That was the end,” the two muttered together,  “Of Solomon Grundy.”

Mary looked curiously between the two of them before her eyes settled on Croc. “Where’d that come from?”

“Grundy says it when he needs remindin’ a’ who and where he is. Sometimes we gotta’ sit in the sewers all day sayin’ that stupid poem back and forth,” he explained, “If it wasn’ for the fact that he tastes like tree bark, I woulda’ eaten him by now.”

“Well, it’s a good thing ya’ haven’t!” a voice cuts in. Tim, Mary, and Waylon all look up to see Harley standing at the door with a plate of food in each hand and another balanced precariously on her head. “Otherwise youse wouldn’t have known that little trick, now would ya’? Oh, ya’ like chicken, right?”

Harley passed one plate piled high with chicken strips to Croc, and the other, more nutritionally balanced plate to Mary. She then forced Tim to nudge over, plopped down on the couch, and handed him the plate from her head.

“Bone apple teeth,” she says in the worst French accent Tim has ever heard, “Your little friends are having fun givin’ Big Brother Schlong the run-around, but my sweet lil’ prickly pear figured the cafeteria might be a problem. So, ta-da! Steal-away lunch, courtesy of one Harley Quinn.”

“Oh, thank you,” Mary says, picking up a fork and stabbing at her salad, “Have you got any nursery rhymes for us? Poor Tim might be running out.”

“Maybe. Ugh, how does it go?!” Harley thinks to herself a bit before snapping her fingers in realization. “Oh! I think I can jus’ fill in the rest a’ the blanks. A-hem. ‘I’ll tell you a story a’bout Timmy-a-Nory, and now his story’s begun.’”  

She punched Tim lightly in the shoulder and continued. “‘I’ll tell you a’nuther, ah’ Tim and his…brother.’” Here, Harley became truly aware of what she was saying and cringed. She hurried through the ending verse. “‘And now their story is done.’”  

Tim, in a frazzled combination of stress, amusement, and sheer astonishment at the brazenness of it all, could only throw his head back and laugh like a madman. Mary snickered next, then Croc, and then Harley. In ten seconds flat, all four of them were wailing like loons.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just… Jesus Christ, if that doesn’t just say it all,” Tim sputters, “You got another innocent-sounding rhyme that will completely devastate me on a fundamental level?”

“Nope! Not unless youse got a real interesting relationship with owls.”

“No, not owls” Tim agreed. Robins and Bats on the other hand…

“Then I’ve got another! ‘A wise old owl lived in an oak.’”

Tim bit into a chicken strip and let the words wash over him. He tried to force his thoughts away from Dick The Traitor, and instead to more pleasant things.

‘You’re in the Titans Tower with Kon, Cassie, and Bart,’ Tim thought, the unmeltable shard of ice flipping effortlessly around his fingers, ‘Bruce is safely off-world with the Justice League. Steph and Cass have promised to meet up at the movies later. Kon says he’s got a surprise, and there it is: Joker strung up like a piñata. Bart hands you a crowbar and says ‘You’ve got five minutes.’’

Tim can’t help but smile at the image. ‘It is a lovely morning in the Titans Tower, and you are a horrible, horrible Robin.’

*****

Tim’s day fizzled out from there.

Even though visiting hours ended at three, the group stayed in the rec room until five. By then, once visiting hours were officially good and over, Mary and Harley slipped out to check the dinner crowd and see if any unwanted callers were still hanging around. 

Once they returned and confirmed that there was no Wayne-associated anyone in sight, Tim and Croc joined them for dinner. The second Tim set his plate down at the usual spot with the others, Danny, Sam, Tucker, and Ivy began regaling him about the many methods they used to keep Dick The Traitor occupied.

(If Tim wasn’t mentally and emotionally exhausted, he would’ve insisted on knowing where and how Tucker got a rubber duck and a bag of confetti balloons. But in hindsight, it was probably better that he not ask.)

Once that was done, Tim got dragged away to receive a lecture from Dr. Knapp about pulling disappearing acts, and a condescendingly soft berating about how his brother ‘cared about him’ and ‘only wanted the best for him’ and a not-stated-but-heavily-implied ‘Don’t you fucking dare do this again. My monthly bonus is on the line here. I will drag you in front of Grayson myself if that’s what the rich, legally sane man wants.’ By the end of it, Tim was shown back to his cell with the others and sullenly listened to the trio make quiet conversation until he fell asleep.

But as shitty as Tim’s third day in Arkham ended up, his fourth began with equal and opposite levels of marvelous potential.

It started, of course, when he, Sam, Tucker, and Danny walked into the mess hall to see the Joker at a corner table, surrounded by four armed guards and a cluster of goons. Tim wasn’t the only one to begin almost vibrating in excitement, and after yesterday’s overload of his ‘flight’ response, he was eager to indulge his ‘fight’ one.

Danny bumped his shoulder with Tim, who checked that the coast was clear before slipping him the orange capsule of laudanum pills. Danny immediately grabbed a few of the opioids, slid them into his pocket, and shoved the capsule back to Tim’s hands.

“I’m calling in my cheat day,” Danny said, turning to Tucker, “I think I could probably do all of this without, but I’m not leaving it up to chance. And besides, playing fair is for people not fucking with mass murderers.”

“Got it,” Tucker said, giving a thumbs up, “I’ll mark it down. Shame, though. Almost went the full checklist without ‘em.”

“Without what?” Tim asked as Danny slipped away. Though he knew he probably wouldn’t get a full explanation until they were out of Arkham and away from the dozens of surveillance cameras, he still had to ask.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam said, “I still think we should worry about you. How’re you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Tim insisted.

“Ah. I see,” Sam nodded, “You’re like Danny before his first May Day celebration with Dora.”

“I’m what?”

“Oh, you know. The type to refuse to rely on anyone and who insists they’re okay despite every evidence to the contrary. The ones who refuse to communicate their needs under the misconstructed belief that they are a burden upon the people who care about them if they dare ask for help. The ones who will unironically, forgive my John Mulaney quote, ‘Keep all my emotions right here, and then one day I’ll die.’ ” Sam sucked in a breath between her teeth and shook her head. “Take it from someone who knows: not even death can free you from your ‘inconvenient feelings’. They’ll just build until you explode and go on a draconic rampage. Quiet literally, if you’re our friend Dora.”

“Fuckin’ shoot me through the kneecaps next time, why don’t ya?” Tim snarked, “You already clocked me and my regular afterschool activities within five minutes of knowing me. I thought the fact that I was at least a little unstable and emotionally dense would’ve been implied.”

“He’s got you there,” Tucker agreed, nudging them forward in the food line, “Ancients know Danny was a dense little shit when we were fourteen. But now he’s evolved into a semi-self-aware little shit! Talk about growth.”

“Oi! No spreading lies and slander about your beloved boyfriend,” Danny said, popping back beside them as if he never left.

“That was quick. Did you actually sneak him the pills, or were the goons and guards too much?”

“Two crushed pills stirred into his apple juice, and two sprinkled onto his food,” he confirmed “We should be good to go.”

They got their food and headed to their usual table, taking turns to peek at the Joker out of the corner of their eye. Sure enough, the Clown Prince of Crime ate his meal none the wiser, and when breakfast was over and they were returned to the cell for their final count time, the four teens got ready.

They had all been sure to wear their street clothes under their jumpsuits, ready to blend in and get lost in the crowd of the city. Tim took the capsule of opioids, saved another four just in case they had to try this again, and flushed the rest down the sink. Danny pulled the loose brick from the hidey-hole, grabbed the gun, and immediately removed the magazine and double-checked that the safety was on.

“Tim, would you like to do the honors?”

“I would love to,” Tim said, taking the gun and immediately checking the safety out of habit.

“Well then, boys,” Sam said, throwing herself up on her bunk, “Let’s get on with the show.”

Pressed, jittery silence reigned as they sat and waited for the guards to walk through and take the usual headcount. Tim breathed and tried to relax his mind a bit, snapping immediately to the nursery rhyme game from yesterday.

‘Little Robin Redbreast, Sat upon a rail; Niddle noddle went his head, Wiggle waggle went his tail,’ he thought tensely as the cell door rattled open, and the four of them began making their way to the yard.

Mary met them there and dashed off to her position once they all gave a nod. Harley and Ivy gave smiles of encouragement and tried to wave them over, but Tim ignored them in favor of sitting next to Croc and waiting. 

He didn’t have to wait long, because soon the Joker was making his entrance. The cluster of goons had multiplied from breakfast, with an unordinary amount forming a protective ring around their boss. Though the clown’s usual manic grin was still plastered on, his gait was shaky and haphazard, as if the man was drunk.

Or high. 

Or woozy from opioid-induced drowsiness. 

Honestly, either worked.

Tim waited until the guards left the Joker with his goons before getting up and slowly slinking toward him.

‘Little Robin Redbreast, Came to visit me;’

“Joker,” Tim growled, pushing through the ring of goons, “We’ve got a score to settle.”

“Oh, I don’t think I know you,” the Joker laughed, “But I’m not in the habit of stopping young, inspiring minds from speaking their truths. What’d’ya got for me, kid? A dead daddy? A crippled mommy? Who’s ole’ Joker hurt so bad you want revenge? Who am I gonna’ send the matchbox of your remains to?”

“Fuck you,” Tim said coldly, pulling up his shirt and grabbing the gun, “And fuck you again for killing Robin.”

Unless they’ve been around and are somewhat knowledgeable about firearms, most people don’t know that a gun can still be fired even if the magazine has been removed. Some very specific criteria must be met for this to be the case: first, the gun has to be semi-automatic, and second, it has to lack both an internal lock and a magazine disconnect. If both of these things are true, then the gun with a removed magazine will have a single bullet loaded in its chamber and will not have any safety mechanisms stopping it from firing.

The pistols issued to the prison guards in the state of New Jersey met both of these criteria.

Tim got the satisfaction of seeing the Joker’s eyes widen in alarm as he pulled out the gun from its hiding place, removed the safety, and fired the single bullet in the chamber directly into the air. He then surged forward, shoved the gun into the clown’s hand, pushed him to the ground, and ran the other way screaming, “Joker’s got a gun!” The man himself was too woozy by the drugs in his system to react properly, and so Tim was able to get away before he actually tried to do anything.

In seconds, the attention of every guard and prisoner in the yard was squared directly on the Joker.

‘This is what he whistled, thank you for my tea.’

Waylon pulled Tim behind him, growled a soft, “Stay here,” and then pushed forward in an attempt to grab the weapon away from the dazed Joker. Danny, Sam, and Tucker also rushed forward, punched out a goon or three each, and then rushed back when Croc, Ivy, Harley, and dozens of others joined the fray. The guards descended next, most of them making the surprisingly rational decision to pull batons and billy clubs rather than guns, as they didn’t want to fire indiscriminately into the growing crowd. With the shouts and growing mayhem, Tim, Danny, Sam, and Tucker snuck through the now almost completely unguarded gate and to the door of the rec room where Mary was waiting for them.

“Ready to descend?” Mary asked, leading them down twisting and turning hallways, telling them to duck or stick tight to walls and corners as they passed security camera after security camera.

“Descend what? I don’t see any stairs.” Sam said, taking a quick look around. They had ended up in the kitchens, which the cooks had evidently evacuated if the abandoned, uncooked hamburger patties thawing in the sink was any indication.

“You know the fun thing about old mansions-turned-asylums?” Mary asked, cracking open a door to the pantry and shoving a rolling cart of potatoes to the side, “There are plenty of nooks and crannies that nobody knew to seal away.”

Behind the potatoes, in the corner of the room, was a small wooden door about two feet wide and three feet tall. Mary pulled the door up to reveal a small, rickety dumbwaiter.

“You sure that’s safe? And that we’ll all fit?” Tim asked, eyeing Danny, who was almost as tall as Bruce and weighed a good one-hundred-sixty pounds, minimum.

The other boy just chuckled. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage. But if Mary says this is the best escape route, then I trust her.”

“Okay,” Tim nodded, breathing deeply and taking a moment to calm himself as Sam climbed in and started lowering herself down.

‘Little Robin Redbreast, Sat upon a tree.’

“Your turn, Tim.”

‘Up went the Pussy-Cat, And down went he.’

The dumbwaiter was cramped and dark. He couldn’t be more relieved when he felt it hit the bottom. Tim emerged from the wooden frame to find himself in the back-ends of an open cavern. A few dozen yards away, the cavern met with a pool of water. Farther out of the mouth of the cave stood the glittering skyline of Gotham, standing tall and proud against the waterline.

“I think this used to be a small harbor or something,” Sam said, pointing to a few planks of rotting wood tied together across some equally rotted wooden beams. “Food would come in from the boats and the servants would send it on up to the kitchens.”

“I wonder if it’s still in use,” Tim questioned aloud as a soft thunk and a handful of swears told him that Tucker had just joined them.

“I doubt it,” she said, “All the better for us.”

“How are we going to escape, anyhow?”

“That, I can cover,” said Danny. It took all of Tim’s training not to jump at the sudden voice.

“How’d you get down here so fast?” he asked as Mary made the final trip and stepped out of the dumbwaiter.

“That is a conversation not fit for an insane asylum,” Danny said, “Though I hope, after everything, that you both believe me.”

“You haven’t given us reason not to,” Mary said, joining them.

“And let’s keep it that way. Now, have either of you seen Frozen 2?”

Before they could answer the seemingly nonsensical question, Danny’s eyes and hands glowed a bright blue. He methodically moved them through the air, and before their very eyes, a canoe of solid ice manifested in the water.

“Let’s get going before someone truly catches on,” he said, creating icy paddles and offering them to everyone in the group. Before they could even grab them, the sound of muffled voices echoed from the open shaft.

“Quickly, now,” Sam said as Danny stomped his foot and made a small pier for them to hop into the canoe, “We’re wasting daylight.”

“From this angle, we’ll be paddling downriver. That’ll help a bit, but I’m still worried about being seen. Are you sure we’ll be able to make it?” Mary asked as she slid into the boat.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Danny said, giving a wolfish grin, “I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve.”

“Then let’s blow this popsicle stand.” Sam took her spot in the canoe and offered her hand to help Tim in.

“You good?”

‘Down came Pussy-Cat, away Robin ran.’

“I’m good,” Tim agreed, “Let’s go.”

They pushed away from the ice pier and through the mouth of the cavern. As Tim took in his first breath of fresh air in days, he couldn’t help but let out a small, joyful laugh.

‘Said Little Robin Redbreast; Catch me if you can.’

*****

They spend a few hours paddling down the Sprang River, occasionally resting and letting the current carry them for a bit. Every once in a while, they’d hear a helicopter or see a ship with a searchlight on it, most likely looking for them. But every time they thought one was close enough to get them in their line of sight, Danny would just reach down, touch his fingers to the boat, and turn it and its inhabitants invisible.

“Okay, what the hell?!” Tim demanded once they could see the shoreline, about a mile away from the Miller Harbor marina. “Are you a meta, or what?!”

“Or what,” Danny said, “Look, I promise I’ll explain things as soon as I can. Can you just trust me a little while longer?”

“I broke out of Arkham with you, of course I can,” Tim scowled, “But I want answers.”

“And you’ll get ‘em,” Tucker said, grabbing Mary and Sam, “Now, though, you might want to hang onto something.”

“Hang onto wha— ah-ah-at!?” Before Tim could truly register it, gravity vanished out from under them. They fell through air that was thicker than it should’ve been; as if the atmosphere had mixed with Jell-O and become as stiff as it could be without truly solidifying. All around him, in every direction, sprawled a vast, unending emptiness of green.

Just as quickly as it had appeared, the green void was gone. Tim lurched out of the canoe, and stumbled to his feet once the boat landed back on solid ground. He whipped his head around to see a familiar city skyline surrounding them.

“Took you long enough,” came a smooth, steady voice, “I thought you’d have been back here hours ago.”

He turned to find the source of the voice, eyes widening as he landed on a young, red-haired woman. She was tall, six-foot-five at least, and had well-toned arms peeking out of the sleeves of her t-shirt. She carried herself with the self-assured confidence of a brawler; of a boxer that could waltz into an underground fighting ring, climb up on the ropes, claim they could lick any sonuvabitch in the house, and mean it.

“Danny….” she groaned, once she caught sight of Tim and Mary, “The write-up called for one extra escapee, not two.”

“What can I say, Jazz? Us Fentons are over-achievers,” Danny said, giving the woman a shit-eating grin.

The woman just groaned. “Great. Now I’ll probably have to order another pizza. The poor delivery boy has to come all the way from the Bowery, too. Ugh! You owe me tip money, little brother.”

“Or, novel thought, you can order pizza from a place not located in the neighboring city district.”

“And serve my guests subpar food?” She uttered the idea as if he was suggesting to poison them.

As the two siblings devolved into bickering and Mary started staring down Sam and Tucker in an attempt to get some answers of her own, Tim took in the view from the rooftop patio. As the slowly setting sun lit the sky alight with golden reds and pinks, he spotted the street signs at the corner and felt his blood go cold.

“....fuck,” he swore, “Guys….”

“And furthermore, cold leftover pizza is a preferable breakfast food, and so it'd be an easy option for breakfast if multiple people stay over—” the redhead continued over him.

“Guys.”

“Did your boy toy open up a portal to Hell?” Mary asked Sam and Tucker manically, “A different dimension? Another planet? What was that?”

“Guys!” Tim shouted, finally drawing their full attention towards him. “I need to get out of here. Now.”

“Look, Tim, I know you’re probably worried about Arkham search parties, or the cops showing up—”

“I wish I only had to worry about the cops,” Tim said, shaking his head, “Is there somewhere else I can go? Another apartment or dorm, or something? Because if he catches me in his neighborhood, he’s going to kill me.”

Before anyone could so much as ask, the door to the roof’s stairwell swung open with a bang. Tim was simultaneously startled and not surprised in the least to see Jason Todd standing there, breathing hard, with the meanest glower he had ever seen.

“I thought I made it clear, Pretender,” Jason spat, his eyes taking on an unnatural green glow that was almost identical in color to the void from before, “That you and the other Bats are to stay the fuck away from Crime Alley.”

Chapter Text

For the longest time, Jazz had her life planned out to the minute. She’d apply and get accepted into every Ivy League school, attend her favorite pick, graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and/or biomedical science and/or criminal justice, get her master’s and PhD or graduate med school, and then Dr. Jasmine Fenton would become a driving force of innovation in her field of choice. Jazz had never been quiet about this ultimate life plan, nor the dozens of other steps in said life plan whenever someone gave so much as a shred of interest. There was always room for nuance, of course, but by and large, Jazz knew exactly how her life was going to go.

And then the summer before her junior year of high school, Jazz’s little brother had an interdimensional wormhole opened right on top of him. This did not necessarily change Jazz’s plans, per se, but it did make things a little… messier.

The first year after the accident was the most uncertain. The first month where she thought her brother would die— where her brother did die —was perhaps the scariest month of her existence. Nothing had frightened her like seeing her brother splayed out on a hospital bed, heartbeat dangerously low, body periodically seizing as his nerves experienced phantom electric shocks. She had thought, as Danny had slowly recovered, that the worst was behind them and things would return to normal.

She had been wrong.

Danny was released from the hospital with time, but something had evidently, fundamentally changed. Her little brother was jumpier than he had been before. Jumpy, and wary. He didn’t roll his eyes at Mom and Dad’s silly inventions anymore, nor did he whine and drag his feet whenever it was his turn to help clean up in the lab. But worst of all, he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong.

Danny had shut her out.

If anyone asked at the time, Jazz would’ve rolled her eyes and said something about teenagers attempting to distance themselves from the familiar to further develop their personalities on their own. Or maybe she would’ve insisted that the Fenton parents were so embarrassing, Danny was just trying to remove himself from everything Fenton as an act of social survival. Or perhaps she would’ve simply shrugged and cited good ole’ teenaged rebellion.

There were a million complicated excuses Jazz could’ve given in that hazy two months of Danny shutting her out. But the truth of the matter was very, very simple: she was hurt. She thought that she and Danny would always have each others’ backs. That they shared an unbreakable bond forged in the fires of mortification of having Jack and Maddie Fenton as parents. To think, even for a short while, that that was the single thing she got wrong in her life’s plan…. Jazz is pretty sure it would’ve hurt less if someone tore her heart out of her chest and crushed it beneath their foot.

She admits, in hindsight, that she had grown a bit paranoid about Danny’s behavior and what had caused it. She’d been all over the place, worrying herself to death about his sudden drastic drops in grades, his constantly missed curfews, and the seemingly unending trouble at school. Her one solace had been that Sam and Tucker, thank the Ancients, had been there to support him.

It reached a breaking point when their parents had their last, genuinely big fight. Mom had gone straight to Aunt Alicia’s, Dad hot on her heels and ready to grovel and apologize. Danny had spent that entire weekend worried out of his mind about the state of their parents’ marriage and convinced that it would end in a bitter divorce, and Jazz, to her shame, was more focused on being wrong about something rather than taking the time to reassure her little brother that it would all be fine. Or, at the very least, driving it into his thick skull that if there was a bitter divorce case on the horizon, it wouldn’t be his fault.

After that, Jazz had been able to take a step back and determine she was much too close to the situation. She and Danny both needed an outside perspective, someone who could advise and assist them without the unspoken mess that is the Fenton Family drama. Someone who was also, preferably, a professional who knew what they were talking about.

Jazz doesn’t know if she’ll ever forgive herself that she let that professional be Spectra.

As traumatizing as that spectral hack turned out to be, and as horrible of a number said hack pulled on the Casper High student population, she did get her wish. Jazz found out what was going on with Danny, and, with a bit of work, they’d been able to come back together. It did feel, though, like she’d traded one source of stress for dozens of new ones.

Jazz’s concerns went from wondering ‘Why was Danny missing curfew?’ to ‘Will my parents kill my brother when they inevitably find out about everything?’ . Suddenly, she went from looking for reliable therapists who had good reviews from teen patients, to distant, far-flung relatives that could house them for a night or two. Now, she was ranking cities not by how good the college, but rather by size, average rent price, and how likely they were to ask questions about two teenagers living on their own. Jazz’s college savings account was mentally reorganized as escape funds. She broke her closet down to a handful of good outfits, sold the rest to thrift stores, and made room for go bags for when the time came. She started training up her hand-to-hand using the Fenton V.R. headset and refreshed herself on gun safety and handling despite the fact that she was a horrible shot.

And that wasn’t even including all the ghost bullshit. So, so much ghost bullshit. Danny tried to keep her out of the ghost fighting, in the beginning, before she got it through her naïve, heroic, unselfish, stupid little brother’s head that she was going to help. 

Jazz spent almost all of her junior year of high school and most of the following summer sharpening her skills and preparing for the shoe to drop on her and Danny. This all went out the window, of course, when a fucking high-heeled boot stomped down on the entirety of Amity Park.

An ecto-ranium contaminated, asteroid-shaped, world-ending, high-heeled boot.

Ancients, what even was Jazz’s life?

Her parents’ technology was able to track the Disasteroid (and she still protests at that ridiculous name. Seriously, Tucker, that’s what you settled on?), and with its ecto-destroying properties, every resident of Amity could feel its approach. 

But outside of Amity Park?

(Jazz knows now that the rest of the world does not have the technology to track ecto-anything, even ecto-ranium, the element that is wholly anti-ectoplasmic by nature. She knows now that it was nine parts ignorance and only one part malice that kept Amity Park isolated and dealing with the literal end of the fucking world on their own. She knows now that a single, solitary town whose only claim to fame is being a tourist trap is not likely to be listened to when it speaks of an asteroid larger than the one that killed the dinosaurs hurtling towards Earth.

Jazz knows all of this, and yet she’d still like to have five minutes alone with the world leaders, the Justice League, and whoever allowed Vlad Masters permission to launch satellites into space—just five minutes. Five minutes won’t solve all of her problems, but at the very least, it would be very, very cathartic.)

Vlad revealed himself as Plasmius and tried to bargain complete and total control over the town in return for his help, but then he almost fucked it all up, wasting their missiles on the wrong asteroid, and then wasting even more precious time forcing their father to fly him out into space only to get drained by the ecto-ranium. When Dad had come back alone, Jazz could think nothing other than that Vlad more than deserved that long, long flight home.

So Amity and its residents were left to deal with it. Her brother, her parents, her friends, her town, and her were left to deal with it. Danny came up with a plan, because of course he did, and Sam, Tucker, and her all vowed to help, because of course they did. The plan went to shit, as plans are wont to do, and then Danny pulled through and saved the day, as he’s wont to do. 

As long as Jazz exists, she will never forget the sight of Danny rushing out of the Ghost Zone with every ghost he’s ever met and thousands he hadn’t, all desperately working together to turn the entire planet intangible. Never will she forget the Disasteroid getting closer, and closer, and closer to Earth until it phased straight through the North Pole, rushed through the planet, and then popped out of their base in Antarctica. The brigade of ghosts pushed through their exhaustion and held the intangibility for another two minutes, making sure that the asteroid was fully out of Earth’s orbit before they all dropped from exhaustion.

And then her little brother decided ‘fuck it, I just saved the world, there is literally no better time to do this,’ and revealed himself, not only to their parents but to the entirety of Amity Park that had come with them to the South Pole to help.

And their parents….

And Jazz’s parents had been okay with it.

The victory party lasted a whole week, and it took almost that long for Jazz to stop getting whiplash. It was just good news after good news after good news; positivity overstimulation at its finest.

First and foremost, Danny introduced Dani, later renamed Ellie, to them. Jazz was ecstatic to have a little sister/cousin/niece/whatever in her life, and plans were made to get the girl a legal identity. After that, they somehow all got back to Amity Park, and from there, it was a rush of names and faces as Danny called over ghost after ghost, friend after enemy after frenemy. 

Frostbite and his people were some of the first to greet them, bowing to Danny with a cry of ‘An honor as always, oh Great One!’ before the chief pulled Danny into a tight hug. Many genii locorum made their brief introductions before rushing back to their cities, desperate to ensure that they didn’t fall to ruin in their brief absence. Pandora ruffled her brother’s hair and called him ‘little warrior.’  

More ghosts came and went. Dad started bonding with the Box Ghost and getting some questions answered about the Ghost Zone. Mom clocked Walker and dove head-first into a sudden, completely unexpected reunion with her father. Queen Dorathea gave a quick speech about the eternal loyalty of her and her kingdom before rushing off somewhere with Sam and another ghost, Poindexter. Tucker got grabbed by a few Egyptian ghosts in royal regalia, and they were chatting intensely in the corner. Valerie and Skulker had somehow entered a brawl over who between the two was a better hunter, with Dani cheering Valerie on. Jazz just stuck by Danny’s side, smiling and nodding as more and more ghosts came to speak with him. That is, until, a tall cloaked figure came up to the pair.

“Hello, Danny. It is good to see you again. I have need to speak with you and your sister, if you don’t mind.”

“For you, Clockwork, anything,” Danny smiled. Jazz didn’t even have time to question before the ghost was slamming his scythe into the ground and shouting.

“Time Out!”

Suddenly, the world went still. There was no movement, no noise. Just an eerie, serene stillness that stopped the world in its tracks.

“You, Miss Jasmine, are currently on the brink of a panic attack,” the ghost, Clockwork, told her bluntly but not unkindly, “Take as long as you need to process your feelings and recent events. Time will not move forward until you inform me that you are done.”

He pulled something out of his cloak, setting it gently in her hands. Danny reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “Jazz?”

She sniffled and gave Bearbert Einstein a tight hug.

“I’m sorry. I know this is…. so, so stupid, but it just doesn’t feel real. A week ago, the world was ending, and today, we’re safe, Mom and Dad know your secret and are okay with it, Vlad’s gone, and I’ve got a little sister. I just…. it doesn’t feel like I’m allowed to be this happy. That things can be this good.”

“How do you think I feel?” Danny asked, “You think I haven’t had nightmares about Mom and Dad learning about Phantom? That I haven’t woken up in a cold sweat with ‘molecule by molecule’ ringing in my head? If I wake up tomorrow to see that the Disasteroid is still coming, or that the damn thing is just a Nocturne-induced nightmare, I’m going grab you, Sam, and Tucker, and you’re going to help me kill an Ancient.”

Jazz giggled a little manically at his words. “I’ll gladly help if that’s the case, but I don’t think it is. Is it, Mr. Clockwork?”

The man smiled, even as his form rippled and shifted into that of a hunchbacked old man. “No, Miss Jasmine,” he agreed, “This is very much reality.”

“Good,” Danny said, smiling giddily back, “I still can’t believe it. It finally feels like my life can go back to some semblance of normal.”

“Ah. Now that, Danny, is a fantasy. Your life is anything but normal,” Clockwork said, shaking his head fondly, “But if the context here is less ‘ordinary’ and more ‘stable,’ then I assure you, it will take some work and a bit of time, but stable your life will be.”

“Good,” Danny said again, “That’s a relief. Stable, yeah, stable sounds nice.”

“I still can’t believe I made so many emergency plans for nothing,” Jazz mutters.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say they were for nothing,” Clockwork rebuked, form rippling and shifting again, this time into a toddler. “In fact, with every resource you gathered, every thread you pulled, every route you mapped, you were contributing to more and more good futures. With your work, no matter what happened with Jack and Maddie, there was over a ninety-five percent chance that you and your siblings would’ve been just fine. That wonderful mind of yours is going to take you very far in life, and is what’ll help you become an amazing—”

“Lawyer? Psychologist? Neurosurgeon? Professor?” she asked in excitement.

Clockwork just threw his head back and laughed heartily, his form returning to its original state. “That, Miss Jasmine, is entirely for you to decide. You’ll be happy and content with either of those choices, I assure you.”

Jazz pouted a bit before shrugging her shoulders. “Yeah, alright. Guess that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

“Clocky’s a bit of a bastard like that,” Danny said, “He always insists that you have to do the hard parts on your own.”

“And speaking of hard parts,” Jazz said, “I think we kept the rest of them waiting long enough. Clockwork, if you please.”

The ghost nodded and slammed his scythe into the ground again. “Time In.”

Sound and movement returned to the world again as if it had never left. Clockwork bowed and turned to go before saying over his shoulder, “And don’t take the incoming announcement too hard. I assure you, Young Danny, you’ll be just fine.”

“What announcement?” Danny asked as the other ghost vanished from sight, “Clockwork! What announcement?!”

There were cheers and shouts as Valerie threw Skulker to the ground. “Ha!” she crowed, “Take that, you fucker! I’m the ultimate huntress now!”

“Yes, congratulations, Fierce One,” Frostbite said, applauding with a spattering of others, “My compliments on becoming the Royal Hunter of the High King.”

“The what?!” Valerie asked.

“The Royal Hunter of High King Phantom, of course!” he said lightheartedly, “Oh, were you not aware of our ghostly custom? Many positions are gained through conquest or direct combat. King Phantom himself earned his position when he defeated Pariah Dark, thus making him the High King of the Infinite Realms. Rest assured, even though you are not yet a full ghost, you and your fellow humans are all more than liminal enough to serve in the King’s Court.”

Danny and Valerie just blinked stupidly before shouting in unison.

“I’m what?!”

*****

“Laptop?”

“Check.”

“Raincoat?”

“Got it.”

“Phone charger?”

“In my purse.”

“Blaster?”

“Both lipstick and wrist. C’mon. Stop worrying. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, we know, sweetie,” Jazz’s mom said, her voice close to cracking. Jazz just knew she was hiding watery eyes behind the safety goggles. “We’re just not ready to let our little princess go just yet.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stick closer to home? The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a lauded psychology program,” her dad offered.

“And as the closest public university, it’s also got a good seventy-five percent of my graduating class. We’ve been over this, I don’t want my college experience to just be high school two-point-oh.”

“And it wouldn’t be,” Mom tried to reassure, “The campus at UIUC is plenty large—”

“Mom. Dad,” Jazz stressed, “I am an adult. Legally, now, not just mentally. I have bested every warrior in Pandora’s Labyrinth save for Pandora herself. I have developed my core and gotten a moderate handle on all of my powers. The only reason I haven’t mastered them is because I am not yet a full ghost and because we still can’t find a teacher for me that isn’t a maniac with a god complex. You two have raised a smart, competent, strong young woman, and that young woman is telling you to trust her and let her go live her life.”

“Oh, we do trust you, sweetie,” her mom said, pulling her in for one last hug, “Just give us a little grace. This is our first time doing this, after all. If you ever have kids, you won’t want to let them go just yet either.”

“Yeah,” Jazz agreed with a sigh, “I see you holding yourself back, Dad. Go on and get in here.”

Dad sniffled and swung the both of them off their feet, crushing them in a strong embrace.

“Take care of yourself, Jazzie-pants,” he says, kissing her brow, “Give this city hell. And remember, if you need anything, we’re just one phone call away.”

“And don’t be afraid of calling up your cousins, either,” Mom agrees, “With Troy just starting off in high school, Stephen and Joyce might need your advice even more than you’d need theirs.”

“I’ll keep in touch,” Jazz promises, squirming out of their hold, “I love you, bye! Pass it on to Danny and Ellie!”

As Jazz waved at her parents until they went out of sight, she took a moment to reflect.

Despite the whole debacle of Danny being the Ghost King, Clockwork’s words rang true, and stability slowly but surely eked back into their lives. But not before chaos had a good chance to throw everything upside down first.

Post-Disasteroid (and Jazz will reiterate that it’s a stupid name, but alas), Amity Park called a town-wide meeting where Danny broke down everything he knew about ghosts, and Frostbite and Dorathea filled in all the gaps. And there were a lot of gaps.

To be fair to her brother, Danny didn’t get much of a chance to sit down and review ghostly politics, culture, and history when he was fighting for his life. By the time Danny had become acquainted with ghosts who didn’t have it out for him, he had grown so strong that many assumed he’d been dead for decades, if not centuries, and would be aware of the social customs. Frostbite and Dorathea were just as shocked to learn that Danny hadn’t even had his powers for a full year as the residents of Amity Park had been learning that they were liminal.

That little tidbit, of course, was the rhino cuddled up with the elephant in the room.

While Danny’s status as king had the most long-term implications, the revelation that the people of Amity Park were all at least somewhat ghostly was what many people focused on. But once that pill was swallowed, every other world-shattering revelation went down easy. It took over a year, and a laundry list of shit to handle, but with Danny’s coronation, Jazz finally felt as if the world had been set right.

After her life got a little disrupted thanks to Danny’s…. everything, she’d been able to get it back on track and have a successful senior year. College applications were sent out, scholarships were applied for, and a couple of campus tours scheduled.

She’d looked out of state, both for the novelty and because she wanted to truly make a name for herself without the Fenton chaos following her. The Ivy Leagues had been the first on her list, and she had gotten accepted into Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. But Harvard, Brown, Penn, and Columbia had waitlisted her, and Yale had been a flat rejection. They were unfortunately very stingy with scholarships, too, so Jazz was still hesitant to commit. Even so, she and her family took a road trip east for Christmas break, letting her get a feel for the campuses and determining if physically being there helped her narrow it down any. She’d just finished up at Princeton, feeling completely ambivalent towards the institution, when Gotham was brought up. Mom mentioned having a cousin in the city and that while they were there, they might as well check out Gotham University. Jazz figured why not, and told her dad to head to Gotham. 

It was one of the best decisions Jazz had ever made.

That magical connection she was looking for at Princeton, Dartmouth, and all the others? She got it within the hour of stepping foot in Gotham. 

The city was louder, larger, and bleaker than Amity Park by a mile. There were daily Rogue reports alongside the daily weather, and most citizens could list the active supervillains by current activity, levels of damage, and fashion sense. It was the only place where someone tried to mug Jazz within the first ten minutes of being within the city limits, and also the only place that let her keep the jackknife of the sucker who tried.

Jazz was in love.

Her application was sent, the dozens of Wayne scholarships covered the entirety of her tuition, Lady Gotham gave the go-ahead, and fast-forward a few months and there she was. Jasmine Gabriella Fenton was officially a college freshman.

Parents chased off and GAV pulling out of the parking lot, Jazz picked her last bag up off the curb and made her way inside. She had lucked out on dorm placement, and gotten one of the newer buildings with AC, good elevators, and a dining hall attached. The one downside was that the bathrooms were communal, but eh, you couldn’t win them all.

Jazz unpacked a little and waited for her roommate to arrive. Unfortunately for her, she had applied late and hadn’t had time to search for a roommate online, instead forced to have one randomly assigned. She had just finished setting up a novelty Dumpty Humpty lamp when she heard the lock click on the door.

“Oh, hey,” said a shorter young lady with tan skin, dark black hair, and the most gorgeous brown eyes Jazz had ever seen, “You must be Jasmine.”

“Jazz. I, I prefer Jazz,” she said, “And that must make you Mia! Need any help?”

“Actually, yeah. If you don’t mind propping up the door and hauling boxes.”

“Not in the slightest,” Jazz assured her, “Always happy to help. And by the way, I love your hair.”

Thankfully, she and Mia really hit it off. Jazz learned that they were both majoring in psychology, that Mia’s parents were from Puerto Rico though she and her siblings were born in Gotham, and that she was fluent in four languages. Mia, for her part, initially worried a bit for Jazz, thinking that the bubbly girl would get chewed up by Gotham and spat back out. At least until Scarecrow attacked their freshman orientation and Jazz, completely unaffected by the fear toxin thanks to Frighty’s training, took down half-a-dozen goons and the Rogue himself before any of the vigilantes could even get there. After that, the girl decided that there was no more reason to worry over her scarily competent roommate than there was to worry about Batman.

The two had similar class schedules and mingled with others. Eventually, Jazz and Mia met the third and fourth members of their little group in Psych 221. It started when they were told to gather in groups of three or four for a project, and she and Mia paired up with two other girls they occasionally saw in office hours.

“Well, while we’re waiting for the TAs to pass out the work packets, we might as well get to know each other, right?” one of the new girls asked, “Hi, I’m Piper Coleman, she/her pronouns. I’m majoring in psychology and I’m from Metropolis.”

“Hi, I’m Jazz Fenton, she/her pronouns. I’m also majoring in psychology, and I’m from Amity Park, Illinois,” Jazz said, trying to break the ice just like the hundreds of others in the lecture hall.

“Oh,” the other girl looked a little surprised before her smile got wide. “I might just have to change groups, then. Don’t want to get dragged down by a fuckin’ F.I.B.”

Mia and Piper both looked affronted at the girl’s words, but Jazz just snorted. “Interesting vocabulary. By my guess, you must either be an Iowegian or a cheese fucker. Which one?”

Her smile got even wider. “A cheese fucker, and proud of it. I’m Briar Miller, she/they from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Looks like we’re three for three on psychology majors.”

“Mia Ortiz, and make that four for four,” Mia interjected before giving Briar a hard look, “What was with the hostility? I thought Midwesterners were supposed to be nice.”

“Oh, we’re plenty nice,” Briar confirmed, “But we have to take the occasional potshots at the F.I.Bs that invade our lakes every summer and single-handedly double our vehicle accident rate.”

“And I have to hold my own against the ignoramus that carries a picture of their favorite cow in their wallet,” Jazz said with a nod, “I’m fine, Mia. It’s all in good fun.”

“I might regret asking, but who or what is a fib?” Piper asked.

“It stands for Fucking Illinois Bastard,” Jazz and Briar answered in unison. Briar then elaborated, “Or Fucking Illinois Bitch, if preferred. We don’t misgender, even if they are a F.I.B.”

Mia just gave a pained, but accepting expression, and Jazz reminded herself to ask if she was also an elder sister. “Fine. If you say it’s all in good fun, then fine. Let’s just get the project done with. When do you all have free time?”

They ended up nailing the project, and the four of them began to form a little group. 

Said group expanded a bit after the Student Org Fair where they walked around the college’s rec auditorium, perusing the dozens upon dozens of tables set up for each club. They were just gathering around a map, trying to figure out where the table for the book club was when Jazz spun around and shot out her hand, catching a boy’s wrist.

“Were you trying to electrocute yourself?” she barked, eyes going down to the circuit board, “First rule of live wires: never touch one without insulated gloves. Or, better yet, never touch one, period. Especially not the one connected to the Ancient’s damned resistor. Ohm’s Law, stupid, ever heard of it?”

“Ah, no, actually,” the boy blinked. He gently set down the circuit board and backed away from the table with his hands raised. “I just always thought robotics was cool, and my school didn’t have a club. Didn’t know it would kill me or anything.”

“No. Sorry. It probably wouldn’t have killed you,” Jazz said, slowly forcing herself to relax, “I’m just a little paranoid about those types of things. My parents are scientists, you know.”

“Oh, totally. My parents are both in the Goonion, and even though I have absolutely no interest in a life of crime, I’m a lot more knowledgeable about that sort of thing than even most Gothamites,” the boy explained, shaking out his hands and pushing his bangs out of his face, “The name’s Noah.”

“Jazz,” she said, offering a hand which Noah shook, “Want to find a book club with me and my friends, or would you rather find a new way to electrocute yourself?”

“Book club sounds more up my alley. But I actually got separated from my neighbor. Mind helping me find him first?”

Mia, Briar, and Piper all agreed, and soon they were searching the stadium floor. The entire time, Jazz felt a subtle prodding at the back of her skull, almost as if something was trying to reach out. It wasn’t until Noah’s loud cry of ‘Cal!’ that she realized what that prodding was.

In the middle of one of the basketball courts, the gymnastics club had a beam set up. And on that beam was a young man with brown hair and wiry muscles demonstrating flips and handsprings to the delight of the growing crowd. Jazz stared at him, heart hammering in time with the twauk-tauk of the bar. She watched his movements intently, mentally cataloging the alien grace he displayed. It wasn’t until he ended his little show with three consecutive back handsprings into a dismounting double full twist that Jazz caught sight of the golden eyes and everything slotted together.

You see, Jazz’s decision to go to Gotham University, of all places, earned more than its fair share of raised eyebrows, even from the other residents of Amity Park.

It was much too out-of-the-way and home to one too many vigilantes for one. For another, it was equal but opposite levels of crazy to Amity Park. Thirdly, Gotham, like Amity, had a genius loci and people feared whether or not Lady Gotham would welcome Jazz and Consul Amity would let her go.

But the reason Jazz was so confident in her choice to attend Gotham U— beyond the full ride; beyond the phenomenal psych program; beyond her genuine love for the city —was the ectoplasm levels. Gotham had the highest ecto-energy signature on the entire East Coast. Perhaps the entire country (bar Amity Park). And Jazz needed that level of energy.

The other Amity Parkers didn’t get it. They were liminal, yes. They needed extra ectoplasm to get through the day, yes. But they weren’t Jazz. They weren’t the blood of the Ghost King. They weren’t the disciple of Praetor Pandora. They didn’t have the rarest core in all the Realms.

The people of Amity Park were liminal. But they weren’t Liminal.

And as Jazz looked deeply into the unblinking golden eyes, she knew all at once that the man before her was.

He stared and stared and stared, ignoring Noah and the others around him before he simply bowed his head and said, “I am honored and ready to serve, my princess.”

“Hoh boy,” Jazz said back, mind racing. It looked like they could forget about that book club.

*****

Golden-eyed, cat-like, Liminal Cal apparently had a liminal wife and daughter who did a very good job of filling in the blanks.

“I don’t know who my dad pissed off before he died, but whoever it was decided that it warranted a braindead assassin to finish off the bloodline,” Casey ‘please just call me Case’ told Jazz, Noah, Mia, Piper, and Briar over tea that night. After Cal’s declaration at the Student Org Fair, he had completely blanked out, refusing to speak unless directly told to by Jazz. It was only two hours of persistence that had him rattling off an address on the edge of the Narrows, where a frazzled twenty-three-year-old woman met them with her two-year-old daughter in hand. “Cal didn’t know he was being sent after a newborn. It made him shut down.”

“My duty is to get rid of evil people,” Cal recited robotically, “Children are not evil.”

“No, honey, they aren’t,” Case said, squeezing Cal’s hand. The two shared a deep look before turning to watch where Sarah was coloring on the carpet.

“May I ask how this happened?” Piper asked, gesturing to Case and Cal. “Good for you, but it seems a little…”

“Rushed,” Mia finished, taking a sip from her cup.

“Well,” Case said, blushing, “It started with six months of being on the run and dodging the additional assassins that were sent when Cal didn’t finish the job.”

“They were underwhelming. I had beaten them once before to gain my position, I could easily do it again.”

“Then it took another six months to get our identities hammered out and for my new identity to make contact with my dad’s business and establish ownership.”

“I spent that time as primary caregiver to Sarah and learning how to be less weapon and more human,” Cal said, “I have achieved significant progress in the past two years.”

“Yes you have, and I am so proud of you,” Case agreed, squeezing his hand again.

“During that time, I of course realized that I loved Sarah. And that I loved Casey in an entirely different manner. And I then acted on that love,” Cal explained, “The wedding was right before the school year. My wedding gift to Case was the chance to live vicariously through me.”

“I didn’t get to finish my bachelor’s. First because I got pregnant with Sarah, and then because I obviously can’t leave the house much with a bounty still on my head,” she sighed, “From what Cal can remember, he never got to attend school. I thought it would be good for him.”

“Hold it, hold it, hold it,” Noah interrupted, “If you’re on the run, why are you using your real name? Wouldn’t it be smarter with an alias?”

Cal shook his head. “Aliases are tricky for me. I was called so many things before. Too many. If I’m not Cal, then it doesn’t feel like me. I slip back into some…. bad habits.”

“May I ask what names you used before?” Briar asked, pouring both herself and Cal another cup of tea.

Cal’s gaze went vacant and his eyes glossy as he firmly recited, “Pablo Luciano. Gothamite. Houdini Reborn. No. 2006. The Escapist. Ta— Tah—.”

“Sorry,” Case said, “For whatever reason, some details are buried.”

“Including who even wants Case and Sarah dead in the first place,” Cal growled, frustrated, “It's there. I know it's there. It's like an optical illusion: the second I try to examine it head on, it disappears.”

Mia, Noah, Piper, and Briar all shot him sympathetic looks. For her part, Jazz just sipped her tea and tried to determine if Sam would need bribing to ward the apartment.

“And may I ask why my husband bowed and called you princess?” Case shot back, looking intently at her and not at her husband who was still blinking out of his daze.

“Oh, that’s simple. I’m the sister of the Ghost King. Cal’s a Liminal: a human who’s had enough contact with death that they are now closer to the dead than most people. When, and possibly if, Cal ever dies, he will become a ghost and live under the rule of my brother,” Jazz explained nonchalantly. 

“....what?”

“I’ve noticed so far that anyone born and raised in Gotham is at least slightly liminal, but Cal is liminal to a much higher degree. He’s not as liminal as me, my parents, or my brother’s partners, but he’s definitely on par with their graduating class. That means liminal enough that he might develop his ghost core, and a few ghost powers. Definitely above the threshold to be affected by the Anti-Ecto Acts. Though I think any Gotham native passes that last threshold.”

“What?!” Case, Mia, and Noah shrieked.

Jazz sighed and set down her mug. “Let me grab my laptop. This’ll be easier with the slideshow.”

All things considered, everyone took the life-changing revelations fairly well. 

“And you’re sure you’re fine with us knowing?” Noah asked one last time as Jazz forwarded him the slideshow.

“Of course. Besides the fact that this could be life-saving information, it’s not like we’ve ever tried to hide it.” Quite the contrary, in fact. Harriet Chin had sacrificed her entire life’s work trying to publish her story about Plasmius in the Milwaukee State Journal. Her parents had spent their entire careers attempting to get their discoveries taken seriously by the scientific community. Amity Park had tried so hard to be believed when the Disasteroid came. The only people treating ghosts like a state secret were the Guys in White.

“Good, because my mom is getting sent this immediately, and she is probably going to update the Goonion safety regulations,” Noah said, nodding to himself, “And maybe clue in a few of the bosses. This could probably explain a fair few things.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, honestly. Mia, Case, Cal? You three doing alright?”

Casey and Mia both gave thumbs up, while the latter gestured at her phone and excused herself to keep on the call. Cal, for his part, was almost unbothered.

“I already knew I had accelerated healing. Guess this liminal thing makes more sense than continuous healing from some shady organization.”

Jazz nodded in agreement before turning to the two odd ones out. “Piper, Briar. How are you two doing? I know this can be a lot, even if it doesn’t directly affect you.”

“Okay, I guess,” Piper said, “I mean, it’s not really that different than all of you having the meta gene. Which, if you did, then twinsies.”

“Am I seriously the only baseline human in the group?” Briar groaned, head in their hands, “This is so unfair.”

“Just because I’m liminal doesn’t mean I have powers. At least, none that have made themselves known,” Mia pointed out, slipping back into the room, “But hey, maybe if you stick around Gotham enough, you’ll get ‘em, too.”

“You think so?” they asked excitedly.

They all laughed at their expression, and Jazz let herself relax. 

It felt like she had found a really good group of people.

*****

They all finally got to the book club just in time to see a majority of the members fleeing the room.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” one fleeing student said, “They haven’t stopped going at each other’s throats for the past half hour.” Whatever was said next was cut off by the sound of deafening shouts only slightly muffled by the closed door. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Now more intrigued than ever, Jazz and her friends cracked open the door to find a tall, muscled, dark-haired man and a petite, well-dressed, African-American woman who looked five seconds and a handful of choice words from killing the other.

“Have you even considered the argument for dramatic irony?” the man demanded, looking down at the girl who was at least a foot shorter than him.

“Do you even hear yourself? Of course I have,” the woman shot back, “But a literary device cannot carry a story on its own. Although Emma is a masterpiece, just like all of Austen’s works, the titular character and her observations of society were often times more tedious than they were clever. Paired with her cringe-inducing actions, it is obvious why readers would feel a disconnect from such a protagonist. Although characters making decisions that the reader does not agree with is standard in fiction, when most of the story is driven by second-hand embarrassment, it is clear to see why Emma is the worst of Austen’s works.”

“That’s the point, that’s the point, that’s the entire fucking point. Emma’s bad-faith interpretations, misguided actions, and mean dialogue are meant to showcase her growth by the end of the story. To completely disregard that because you feel a little uncomfy is just…. I can’t even have this conversation right now. Have you even read the entire book?” the man asked.

His question was met with an offended gasp, and the squabbling got worse from there. Jazz was just stuck there wondering how the hell she kept meeting more and more Liminals (yes, the capitalization was deserved) unsuspectingly.

While the woman was undoubtedly Liminal, she felt more natural than either Cal or the other man. Hers seemed peaceful; serene, almost. As if she had had that level of ecto-energy for her entire life. In contrast, the man’s Liminality seemed very, very new. It was still settling, and despite his obvious power (he almost felt more ghost than human), it had yet to lull enough to solidify and start developing a core. Jazz could almost feel the ectoplasm churning and bubbling right beneath the surface. And based on the glowing green slowly pooling in the man’s eyes, if he didn’t soon release some of that pent-up energy, there could be dire consequences.

Finally, Jazz and the arguing pair are pulled from their own words when the man rounds on their group and demands, “What’s the worse Austen novel? Emma or Northanger Abbey ?”

They all shared a look before beginning to hem and haw about the question.

“The premise of Emma is much more unique—”

“—I thought Catherine was a very funny protagonist—”

“—Mr. Knightley was certainly the better love interest over Henry Tilney—”

“—but that’s more a matter of taste than what makes the better book—”

“I don’t know, I haven’t read either.”

“—I think it really depends on what you’re in the mood for—”

“I always thought Pride & Prejudice to be the worst one, honestly.” Everyone in the room turned to look at Briar as they unashamedly gave an absolute dogshit take. “It’s still good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s super overrated.”

That, at least, shocked them into silence long enough for Jazz to suggest, “If you really can’t come to an agreement, why don’t you just fight over it.”

That made the man pick his jaw up off the floor, consider the circumstances, and then turn to the girl and ask, “Have you been to O’Malley’s Gym? Best two out of three boxing matches?”

A fire sparked in the girl’s eyes as she similarly composed herself and said, “You’re on.”

*****

As Jazz suspected, nothing soothed spectral entities like a good brawl.

The man, Todd Peters, won in the end and made the girl, Sierra Westfield, admit that Emma was superior to Northanger Abbey. Though the minute she was done proclaiming the novel’s virtues, Todd pulled out a business card, complimented her right hook, and told her that Red Hood was always hiring.

“He gives a lot back to the community, and is actually funding my and tons of others' education,” Todd explained to a contemplative Sierra, “I could’ve gone full-time if I wanted to, but I’m not in any real rush to get my degree, which is why I’m only a part-time student right now.”

“As much as I would love to say yes,” Sierra said, somberly giving the business card back to Todd, “Half of my scholarships are dependent on me not participating in crime until after graduation.”

Todd snapped his fingers. “Drats. Oh well. But the offer won’t be going away anytime soon, so if you change your mind, feel free to contact me.”

“Maybe not you directly, if we’ll be shouting at each other like that every time we see one another. Speaking of,” Sierra turned to their group camped out in the bleachers and cried, “I am so sorry about earlier. Our yelling probably completely destroyed any chance of us joining the campus book club, and ruined your night.”

“Yeah, even if the literary goddess Jane Austen needed to be defended, that wasn’t a good look,” Todd admitted sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jazz dismissed, “I think I have a slideshow that might help explain a few things.”

“And hey, we can always make our own book club, if the Gotham U one kicks you out,” Mia proposed, “I think I’d rather have fun and passionate conversation like you guys than not.”

“I’d be down,” Todd agreed, “How about we head to BatBurger and hash this book club out? My treat.”

There were rounds of agreement from that, but as they exited the gym, Jazz hung back and asked him, “Are you sure? We’re a big group, and I’ll warn you, I eat a lot.”

Todd just smiled and said, “To quote our goddess Jane Austen, ‘There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.’ In other words: yeah, I’m sure. You all seem cool, and I’d be down to feed you, even if it does cost me my wallet.”

“Okay, Isabella,” Jazz teased, “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “There’s no way you could possibly eat more than my old friends. If my wallet can survive Wally’s diet, it sure as hell can survive yours.”

“Alright, alright,” Jazz says with a laugh, raising her hands in surrender, “Lead the way, good sir. To BatBurger!”

*****

With the formation of their book club, their friend group was well and truly set. Cal and Case hosted most nights, as their apartment was much larger than any dorm, and this way Case wouldn’t have to be so isolated. Jazz showed Todd and Sierra the slideshow, and while Sierra freaked out a bit before taking it in stride, Todd spent a solid hour staring off into space trying to digest the information. Eventually, he meekly asked for a copy of the slideshow and associated information and agreed to Jazz’s offer of receiving monthly Ecto-Dejectos to try and clean up his core.

Time passed quickly between class, book club meetings, the occasional friendly spar to blow off steam, the odd-houred Rogue attack, and the necessary ghost knowledge and culture lesson. Before Jazz even knew it, she was wrapping holiday gifts for her friends, meeting with her academic advisor to confirm that she had aced all her classes for the semester, and getting picked up by Wulf to go and help Danny plan his first Winter Truce as king.

And then second semester rolled around, and with it, the absolute hell that was Psych 222.

Minus Todd who was majoring in English and minoring in drama, Jazz and all of her friends had to take Psych 222, the second class in the sequence after Psych 221. As her, Mia, Piper, Noah, and Briar were all psychology majors, and Cal had picked up a psychology minor (“Honestly, I might as well with all of you leaving me out”), it was a required class. It also just so happened to be a prerequisite for many, many later classes, so there was no chance to push it off.

This wasn’t the problem. No, the problem was that with most of the Gotham University psychology department having been targetted and attacked by Scarecrow over break, the entirety of Psych 222 had been delegated to Professor James Ernest’s purview.

Now, two of Gotham’s most notorious Rogues had both, at one point in time, taught psychology at Gotham University. While Dr. Quinn had only stayed for a few years before transferring to Arkham, Dr. Crane had been a beloved, tenured professor who was only forced out of the university when a jealous rival fabricated evidence suggesting that his experiments studying fear were unethical. Although no current students of the university had been taught by either doctor, sometimes one of Jazz’s professors would share tales of their own time as a student.

The general consensus was that, at least as teachers, Dr. Quinn and Dr. Crane were a delight. 

The same could not be said for Dr. Ernest.

Despite the horror stories, Jazz tried to approach class with an open mind. She took diligent notes, asked thoughtful questions, attended office hours, and always did the readings. She thought, no, she knew she had a wonderful handle on the material. When the first midterm essay rolled around, she easily finished and submitted the paper early. Which was why she was completely and utterly floored when she got it back a week later with a big sixty-seven inked on the top. She felt a bit better when Professor Ernest showed a graph of the grade distribution in class and revealed that the highest score anyone got was a seventy-one. Even so, Jazz wanted to know what she had done wrong and went to Professor Ernest for clarity.

“Miss Fenton,” he had begun with an impudent half-smile, “While your arguments were sound and your wording engaging, you didn’t draw enough from the required source material. Might I advise reviewing your copy of ‘Pondering Psychology’ before the next exam?”

Jazz blinked in confusion. “But doctor, isn’t that from the list of optional additional texts? I didn’t think it was required.”

The half-smile went from impudent to pitying. “I’m horribly sorry about the misprint on the class list, but I assure you, it very much is required reading.”

Jazz thanked him for his time and when the second midterm rolled around, she was sure to check out a copy of the textbook for her and her friends to share. It wasn’t until Piper asked for the book that they all noticed a very interesting detail.

“Holy shit, Ernest wrote this book.”

“He did?!” Mia exclaimed, maneuvering the text in her hands and checking the cover. “She’s right. Wait, the chapters for this unit are four through seven, right?”

“Yeah,” Briar said, looking up from her copy of the rubric, “Why?”

“Check the title for chapter six: the Virtues of Compliance. Isn’t the topic for the essay cooperation vs. compliance?”

They all shared apprehensive looks.

“Surely Professor Ernest doesn’t want us to just parrot his arguments back to him. Right?” Noah asked, unsure.

They all shared looks again before tentatively rewriting their essays to back Dr. Ernest’s claims, sure to cite his textbook as the main source. Jazz felt queasy when her grade for the second midterm was over twenty percent higher than the grade for her first. It wasn’t a good feeling, having to cater to a teacher’s ego just to pass a class. And based on the posts on the student forums for Psych 222, many felt the same. But Jazz was willing to suck it up and get the grade.

And then, three weeks before the final, Dr. Ernest announced to the class that he ‘highly recommended’ that they check out a research paper that could ‘give some extensive insight’ into their upcoming paper regarding nature vs. nurture. The research paper, of course, was written by him, distributed by him, and blocked by a $150 firewall.

Complaints were sent to the board immediately, but the university’s hands were tied. Professor Ernest had only recommended the text, he hadn’t claimed it was a requirement to pass. But the students knew the truth. They went to the forums, decrying Ernest as a blackmailer holding their GPAs ransom. That they, broke college students that barely had twenty dollars between themselves, couldn’t afford such a ridiculous expense. The outrage built and built until someone proposed an idea.

‘Wht if we just dont buy the paper??? He cant fail us all lmao’

That was the spark that lit the subsequent forest fire. Every last student, down to the last, boycotted the paper. At one point, one student got a pirated copy and submitted it to the forums where they all took glee in tearing each and every argument to shreds. Most of those arguments were carefully recorded and compiled, and all two-hundred-and-seventy-one students enrolled in Psych 222 turned in a detailed, well-researched, well-cited paper explaining why nurture trumped nature every time.

Professor Ernest was incensed, but he realized he had been duped. A completely failed class would reflect worse on him than on any of the students, and so he reluctantly gave everyone a D, awarded a few of his favorites an A, and handed out F’s to those who he believed instigated the entire ordeal.

Jazz got a D, like most of her peers. She recognized when she came to college that the classes would be harder. She recognized that she most likely wouldn’t graduate with a 4.0. She knew that there was going to be a point where she’d just have to accept the bad grade and move on. But she knew this was bullshit. Bullshit of the highest degree.

“Professor Ernest!” she called, “Professor Ernest!”

“What, Miss Fenton?” he barked, “If this is about your final grade, then save it. I couldn’t care less about what an inconsequential girl like you thinks could change my mind.”

“Dr. Ernest,” Jazz began, “I sincerely believe that I have worked hard in this class and that this grade does not fully reflect the effort I have continuously put forth. Is there any way you would consider a regrade?”

“No,” he said flatly, “And unless you want me to lower that grade, you won’t ask again.”

“Then perhaps would you consider offering some extra credit?”

At that, Professor Ernest just laughed. “Sure, sure. I’ll offer extra credit. Here’s your assignment: shut down Arkham Asylum. Now if you excuse me, Miss Fenton, I have more important things to do than continue to waste my time indulging you.”

The doctor walked off with a huff, but Jazz couldn’t help but smile.

Shut down Arkham Asylum?

Now that she could do.

*****

With the second semester concluded, Jazz, Piper, and Briar all had to move out of the dorms. There was a bit of a kerfluffle about where they were going to stay to complete their extra credit project, but then Todd offered up a floor of apartments in Crime Alley.

“The building’s completely protected by Red Hood,” Todd explained as he helped them move in. Noah, Mia, Sierra, Cal, Casey, and Sarah, despite being Gotham natives, were also getting room in the apartments so as to better coordinate their efforts. “The boss man said he fully endorsed your efforts and to go ham.”

With a base of operations set up, they hammered out an intricate list of plans to test the competence of Arkham as an institution. That, however, was the easy part and they were left with the much trickier task of figuring out who would be their person on the inside.

“If any of us get held in Arkham, it’s automatic expulsion,” Cal confirmed, triple-checking Gotham U’s website on school regulations. “Whoever we send in can’t be one of us.”

“Well I wouldn’t trust an untrained civilian in there, especially not alone,” Sierra said, “The Rogues in Arkham aren’t just your average thugs. They’re monsters. Whoever we send has to be good in a fight.”

“Maybe we can ask some of your coworkers?” Mia proposed to Todd, leaving the question open.

Todd immediately shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to them. Especially not with the Joker in custody.”

Jazz thought quietly before she said nonchalantly, “My brother could probably do it.” They all looked at her like she was insane. “What? He might be a bit of a brat, but he’s one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Let him go in with Sam and Tucker, and he’d treat it like one big escape room.”

They all considered that for a moment, thinking hard.

“That would let us easily test if Arkham would hold a minor,” Piper hesitantly said.

“And he’s the fucking Ghost King, as earned by conquest. It’s not like he’d be hopeless in protecting himself,” Noah agreed.

“Add in his partners, and the chances of him going insane by proximity go down by sixty percent,” Briar offered.

“So we’re in agreement, then?” Jazz asks, “I see if my brother, his girlfriend, and his boyfriend want to go to Arkham?”

There were tentative agreements, and Jazz smiled and whipped out her phone.

“Hey, little brother. Do you, Sam, and Tuck want to have a little fun this summer?”

*****

The trio shipped themselves out to Gotham a few days after Casper High let out for the summer. Jazz got Sam to ward all of the apartments, figured out the communication system with Tucker, and gave Danny a giant bear hug. They all got together to run down the plan with the trio, and then they were off, with Tucker and Danny checking themselves into the institute while Todd and a few of his work friends helped Sam fake a desperate kidnapping.

Tucker sent updates as often as he could, but it evidently wasn’t often enough if the whole extra inmate was anything to go by. Jazz started to scold her brother, ranting about having to order another pizza to accommodate, when the door to the roof slammed open, with a ragged Todd standing there, breathing hard.

“I thought I made it clear, Pretender,” he spat, green slowly pooling into his eyes, “That you and the other Bats are to stay the fuck away from Crime Alley.”

Jazz’s eyes widened as the young inmate who escaped with her brother started to prattle out excuses.

It was very, very evident to Jazz that she was being subjected to learning some very private information about her friend. Especially when the escapee took a hesitant step back and tried to plead ‘Jason, it’s been a long day and I didn’t even know we would land in the Alley. If you want to crush my skull in, at least wait until tomorrow.’ She didn’t even know Todd was an alias, for fuck’s sake. It was very obvious to her that Todd (Jason?) wouldn’t have allowed half of this information slip passed if he was in his right mind. But judging by the ever-glowing green eyes, he very much wasn’t in his right mind. 

No, right now Todd was a brooding Liminal whose ecto still hadn’t fully settled. A Liminal with all the traits of a protection spirit who was perceiving an active threat right in the heart of his territory. In the heart of his lair. His lair that he had only very recently been able to tuck his people safely away to.

And Todd had said ‘you and the other Bats.’ Lady Gotham was a generous hostess, but even she wouldn’t forgive the obvious violation of her one and only rule. If Jazz didn’t want her friend to be Ended by the genius loci, she had to defuse the situation fast.

“Todd,” Jazz said, picking him up into her arms. “Sh, sh. It’s okay. It’s okay. Shhhhh.”

He sputtered and flayed a bit, but Jazz just kept talking him down like a twelve-year-old would a horse. Eventually, Todd’s anger was replaced with embarrassment as he realized his circumstances and blushed crimson, ecto-green eyes fading back to blue.

“Jazz, set me down. Please,” he pleaded, sounding pained.

“Hm. No."

“Jazz.”

“Sorry not sorry, Toddy. My little brother worked really hard to break him out of an insane asylum. I don’t want to send you to jail just because you want to throw him off a building instead.”

“How are you…. you know what, nope, I’m not going to question it,” the boy said, “Please continue squeezing the League-trained crime lord so he can’t kill me.”

“Oh, I will,” Jazz assured, “Hi, I’m Jazz Fenton, Danny’s sister. If you could please follow me down to my apartment, I believe there’s a slideshow that can help explain a few things.”