Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

      Even at 10:30 in the morning on a Wednesday, Outlaws was bustling. Conrad stood in the small alcove near the entrance and blinked lingering sunspots from his eyes as they adjusted to the dark, not wanting to step down the short set of stairs onto the main floor until he’d had a chance to scan it properly. He’d learned his lesson about that the time he’d headed in without a second thought and nearly crashed bodily into his own fucking father heading to the bar. Management swore they didn’t hold the resulting gunfight against him, but Con wasn’t going to push his luck on it.

      Confirming there was no one in the crowd who’d start throwing punches or lead if they caught sight of him was straightforward and easy. Trying to pick out who he was actually there to meet up with was harder. It’d help if he knew who he was looking for. Or rather, what they looked like.

      It wasn’t like the Boss would be wearing his Red Hood gear just so he could pull it off in a revelatory dramatic flourish. Not in the middle of a crowded dining establishment, at least. Even his love of theatrics wouldn’t take him that far. So he wasn’t looking for the Red Hood, he was looking for Fred. Or whatever Fred’s actual name was. Tall, broad, black hair, white stripe. Unless he’d dyed out the stripe or was wearing something to keep it concealed. Or was stuffed into one of the darker booths and was letting his friends keep a watchout for his arrival, or...

      Well, regardless, he couldn’t see anyone who might be the Boss. He might’ve actually gotten here ahead of them, which wasn’t impossible, theoretically. Immensely out of character for the Boss, but it was 10:25 and they were supposed to hook up at 10:30, so there was still time toturnaroundandleaveandgetonabusandmovetothewestcoastandchangehisnameandworksecurityataweedshop-

      Conrad took in a deep shuddering breath. Or he could get a drink. This was a bar. Bars had alcohol. And 10:30 wasn’t too early to grab something. You served booze at brunches, right? And 10:30 was brunch time, so there’d be nothing wrong with Conrad ordering something to just… gently and tenderly body-slam his nerves into submission.

      Conrad headed down the steps towards the bar, his consciousness riding a surfboard of Zen atop a tidal-wave of anxiety and terror. Fred was lucky he was hot. And Robin. And his Boss. It was the only thing keeping him from noping the fuck on out of all of this.

00ooOoo00

      It was a two-fold problem, see. The first problem was: His Boss, the Red Hood, son of Matches Malone, hottest piece of ass he’d ever had the privilege of scoring, and former Robin, was going to demask. For him. For Conrad. Like that wasn’t the most insane thing someone had ever proposed they do for him. Like people hadn’t bled and maybe even died to keep the secret of the Robins’ identities. And now it was just going to be handed out to some random Gotham City thug just because he was halfway competent at his job and sucked a mean dick.

      Yeah, sure, okay, a good portion of the anxiety was undoubtedly coming from a childhood of having the lesson “Never Try To Find Out Who Someone (you aren’t actively trying to kill) Is Behind Their Mask” literally beaten into him. He still instinctively flinched whenever he found himself brushing against the various clues and threads Fred had left behind, mostly unwittingly, that could point to who he really was. There were the phantom voices of his parents berating him every time he didn’t turn his head when the Boss took off his helmet or deactivated the whiteouts of his mask to look at him with his actual eyes.

A mix of green and blue, though the green had been fading over the past few weeks. The last time he’d seen the Boss’ eyes, they’d been a vivid light blue. The color of calm waters in the sunlight. Calm waters from pictures or television showing places far far away from Gotham, at least. Gotham waters were never that kind of blue unless something caustic had been poured into them.

      Additionally, there was a good chunk of anxiety from the fact that, well… This hadn’t been Batman’s idea. He’d agreed to it, sure, but only after they’d gone several rounds of ‘spirited debate’ as Fred had put it. Not ‘they’ as in Conrad and Hood, holy fuck god, no. ‘They’ as in the extended clan of bats and birds that circled around the Bat like one giant brightly colored flock of ass-kicking. There’d apparently been some big semi-coincidental gathering of them the night before, overlapping events bringing them all together in “The Cave” at the same time.

And god help him, Conrad couldn’t stop thinking about The Bat Cave as some sort of wood-paneled office with Gotham Knights paraphernalia tacked to the walls, a big-screen with video games playing and CCTV camera popups in the corners, and maybe a pinup of a big-titted (wo)Man-Bat hung up next to a dart board or something.

He’d gotten fucked over the desk of more than one self-proclaimed ‘man-cave’ in his time, alright? It was impossible for him to take the term seriously anymore.

      And what did Gotham’s sprawling vigilante menagerie do upon all convening in the same space? Apparently try to guilt-trip the fucking Batman into letting one of their SOs into the big secret.

      Hood had (according to his own self-report) kicked it off by saying it was best to just get it out of the way because it was only a matter of time ‘before he puts my favorite brand of chewing gum together with something he remembers from when he was eight and unravels it all in the middle of a firefight or something.’ And also, ‘He spent maybe five hours with you before figuring out Matches Malone was the Batman, it took him literally three seconds without my helmet to figure out I used to be Robin, and I give it a couple of weeks before he works the rest out too; so I’d rather that happen under controlled circumstances.’

      See? Nothing to do with the fact they were fucking whatsoever.

Hood had told him, just a week earlier, that ‘pushing the Bat to let me induct my boy/girlfriend into the secret identity club’ had only happened once before. Technically four times, but ‘the other three times didn’t count because the SOs in question were already dressing up in spandex and kicking people in the face before the relationship had even gotten to that point’. Which just made the whole situation even more bizarre because it suggested the two (equally unsettling) scenarios of him either somehow getting the entire set of former and current Robins and assorted Batfems onboard with him knowing, or that they already considered his Crime Alley street-watch activities to be equivalent to swinging around buildings in Kevlar and a cowl. Which they very much were not, thank you very fucking much.

      Batman had given in. It hadn’t been his idea, that was the thing, just one he’d been pushed into. He could change his mind. Easily. At any moment he would remember what a terrible idea it was to let someone blood-related to a statistically improbable percentage of Gotham’s Hench/Goon community know all their names and faces and god knows what else. The Batman could come for him in the middle of the night over this. Sure, the Bat didn’t kill, but there was a lot of things you could do to someone that wouldn’t kill them.

      But that thought just lead his mind to the other thing that was making every nerve of his body twitch with the need to flee the country and think seriously about becoming an Australian beet-farmer. The final set of texts the Boss had sent the night before, almost a full hour after arranging the time and place for the grand reveal.

[[Hey, gordo.]]

[[I tried to get them to fuck off, I swear, but some so-called friends are getting real annoyingly insistent that they get to sit in on tomorrow’s little get together.]]

[[They can all either ignore or dodge bullets, so my standard counter-arguments are useless.]]

[[We could try to meet up at a different place, but one of them can see through walls and they’ve made it clear that if they’re not invited to wherever we wind up, they’re just tearing the roof off the joint and inviting themselves anyways.]]

[ [I tried, babe. ]]

[[ I promise they’re nice. ]]

[[ Nicer than me, at least. ]]

[[ (I’m the Bad Boy of the group.) ]]

[[ They’ve just chosen the worst fucking time to decide to be protective. ]]

[[ I’m bringing along a few bang-bangs, just in case they get to be too much and we need to skedaddle. ]]

      So along with everything else, there was also going to be at least two or three capes in attendance.

      Fiercely protective capes.

      Who’d want to make very sure that their friend who’d died once already wasn’t about to get hurt by whatever random asshole he just hooked up with.

      Capes who could undoubtedly wipe the floor with him without breaking a sweat one-on-one, let alone three-on-one.

      Fred was damn fucking lucky he was so pretty. And also Robin.

…and also his Boss.

      That last thing more than all the rest, honestly. It was really the only reason he walked up to the bar instead of ducking back out the door and power-walking away before someone spotted him.

This was a terrible idea. It would paint a giant target on his back. It would piss off the Bat. It went against every life lesson he’d been raised with. It was a single long arm reaching out from the endless depths of Gotham’s costumed bullshit to, in one swift inescapable motion, drag him down into the murky waters he’d successfully avoided all his life. There’d be no getting out after this. Not ever.

      But… It was Fred who wanted this. It was Robin’s idea. The Boss’ choice. His Boss’ choice.

      And gods above help him, but he trusted his Boss.

      Sure, most of it was very likely just whatever weird mental conditioning, mind-twisting bullshit the goddamn fucking Hench Imprinting had done to his brain, but that didn’t make the trust any less real. After all, it was Robin. His Robin. If he couldn’t trust the guy who’d crane-kicked him off an alley wall hard enough to leave a scar as the opener for his Scared Straight speech, there’d be no one left he could trust.

      So he trusted Hood when he said this was the right thing to do. He trusted his Boss would have his back and would keep him safe from the swirling storm of bats and birds that felt like it was spinning ever closer. That this meant he wouldn’t be getting left behind once Fred got his shit together and got himself an appropriate partners, that Conrad would still have a platonic place at his side, kicking ass and taking names and doing whatever the Henching equivalent was for morally grey crime-lord/vigilantes. That this decision wasn’t the start of his whole life going to hell.

      It scared him to realize he trusted Fred this much. That he was capable of trusting anyone this much.

“Trust is a weapon,” he could hear in his mother’s voice, irritable and scowling at whatever no-name would be-Rogue lay behind the paperwork she was going over, “to trust someone is to hand them a dagger they could stab you with at any moment. A dagger that will unerringly aim for your heart every time. You can only trust family, son. You can only dare to trust family.”

Sure you could. Right up until you were caught kissing another boy, and everyone knew how that would end up.

Fuck her. Fuck them. Fuck all of that.

      …He’d been standing at the bar for a fair bit by now, hadn’t he? Sure, he wasn’t doing a full flag-down wave at the bartender or anything, but even with as busy as it was, Conrad figured he would’ve gotten to put an order in by now.

      Oh right. He was “incognito”. Fuck.

      When he’d gotten back home the day before, the Gremlins were in an uproar. Cousin Connie had gone viral. Poor video quality aside-

Not to mention the completely spontaneous decision amongst Crime Alleyers that no one was going to divulge ‘The Crime Alley Kid’s’ identity. Even guys he knew would sooner kick him into traffic seemed to be in on it for whatever fucking reason.

-there could be no mistaking who all those videos and memes were about for anyone who actually knew him.

      He'd walked in to Alvero pulling out a full on presentation of their communal favorite picks. In listicle format, uploaded to his YouTube channel and everything. The Gremlins provided additional commentary as he went through them for Conrad’s edification.

What did it mean that the TV-headed people’s screens were playing remixes of Robin’s attempted assault on him while they fought the toilet-bowl people? The Gremlins assured him it was a compliment, but Conrad knew better than to trust those innocent faces when they said it.

      Regardless, it’d been less than 36 hours since the whole confrontation at the Lucas Trent Center had come to an end and “#CrimeAlleyKid” was still trending in Gotham, filled with memes, hot-takes, and endless speculation about his – Con’s – identity. Getting recognized in public and the fallout of that was the last thing he wanted when hanging out with an unmasked Hood. So he’d thrown on the loosest pair of jeans he owned and one of the Boss’ oversized sleeved hoodies he’d somehow wound up with after one of his impromptu sleepovers before heading out the door.

      With his arms and chest covered and the hood up to cover his hair and obscure his scar, there weren’t any of his usual visual signifiers on display. He was as nice and anonymous someone with his shoulder to waist ratio could be. It was comforting, but it did make it a lot harder to get people’s attention. Conrad didn’t know if it was the intimidation factor that came from having bare muscles flexing that made people pay attention, or if it was the lust factor, but it never failed to disquiet him to rediscover just how much he relied on being attention grabbing in his day-to-day life.

      Just as he was debating whether it’d be worth rolling up his sleeves or unzipping the hoodie and trying again, someone pushed between bodies to squeeze up at the bar next to him and shot him a grin. “Having trouble getting their attention? I could give a shout for ya if you let me buy your first round.”

      Conrad turned to glance over at the stranger, then blinked and turned the glance into an extended look. Mentally, he flipped off the universe for being an utter bitch and its absolutely horrid sense of timing. The new guy looked like Tucker if he’d ever gotten a tan and exchanged blond flowing locks for short red hair gelled up in spikes. He had the same lean corded muscle, the broad shoulders and visible veins that ran down his forearms. The same lazy grin that poorly concealed a promise of bad decisions eagerly made. Even the playfully lewd wink he threw was of the same style.

      Con took it all in, not wanting to be unappreciative of the gift the universe had offered him. Low-slung buckled jeans, solid boots suitable for anything from roof jumping to ass kicking. And a tank top so tight it was sinful. Conrad gave an admiring cock of the eyebrow even as he grinned apologetically and shook his head, “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, man, but I’m already waiting for someone.”

      “Oh yeah?” Tall and Lanky leaned against the bar, spine curved with a hint of self-assured predatory grace as he gave a casual look across the bar before turning back to Con with the expression of a street-kid circling in on an unattended purse. “Well, it looks like he doesn’t care to even bothering to show up on time. Whereas me, well. I’m right here.”

      Conrad smirked and just shook his head. He’d been on both ends of this exchange too many times to even begin taking offense. “Doesn’t matter, tiger; he’s more than worth waiting for.”

      Tall and Lanky leaned into Con’s personal space, close enough for his bicep to brush against the fabric of his hoodie, “Aww, don’t be like that. What’s he got that I don’t? I promise, whatever it is, I can-“

      Conrad grabbed Tall and Lanky by the wrist and jerked him down and in to pull the guy’s ear level with his lips. His voice was still as chill and silky as before even as he let a hint of growling undercurrent in, “I don’t care what you got. I’d burn the world to ash for my man. And if you don’t back off and go find someone else, I’m going to start with you.”

      There were a lot of ways T&L could’ve reacted to that. Good natured acceptance, probably the best outcome. Sulking resignation wouldn’t be unexpected and would count as a high compliment in Conrad’s admittedly skewed book. He could even try and throw a punch, always the most fun outcome to any social interaction. What Conrad hadn’t expected was for the guy to let out a sudden unintentional burst of laughter loud enough to pull attention from those immediately around them.

      “Holy shit, damn. Okay, I can see why the asshole likes you.” Tall and Lanky’s entire sleazy bar predator demeanor burned off like morning fog, just leaving the predatory grace and deadly self-assurance behind. The baring of someone dangerous. The baring of a Cape.

      Oh fuck him, the guy’s a Cape, Tall and Lanky owns a formfitting outfit of leather and Kevlar and he wears it while beating up people like Conrad. Probably owned color-coordinated weapons to match. Fuck.

      “Come on,” the Cape slapped Conrad on the shoulder and jerked his head towards the nearest staff-only door, “everybody’s waiting out back. Red wanted to do this someplace you could get all your shouting out without having to worry about civilians overhearing anything they shouldn’t.”

      He grinned and Conrad had to fight back the urge to punch the smug ass right in his face. He couldn’t go punching the guy. For starters, he was a friend of the Boss, so that would be rude. Also, he was a Cape, and all sucker-punching one of those earned you was them taking it personally when it came time to beat you down. Not that logic did anything to stop the flash of anger that rushed through him, though. Asshole.

      Sure, yeah, Conrad slept around. Conrad had always slept around. He’d never made a secret of it. Shit, he’d always been incredibly upfront and open about it in all of his relationships. It was part of the whole ‘So, you wanna make this thing we got between us kinda serious’ spiel. Warning potential partner: My life-damage has left me with an uncommonly casual attitude towards sex. My line between Buddy and Fuck-Buddy is blurry to nonexistent at the best of times and I seem to be incapable of existing without somehow making it uncomfortably horny for everyone around me. If that’s going to be any sort of problem for you, we need to cut this shit short before it has a chance to go any further and hurting you.

      And yeah, he’d put himself on a temporary fucking-around time out while he and the Boss hashed out exactly what the whole thing between them would entail, but Fred knew that shit was temporary. Hell, he’d been surprised that Conrad had offered it at all; he’d certainly never asked him to. What had Tall and Lanky expected him to say? “Oh shit, sure, you’re hot. Fuck that guy I’ve been crushing on hardcore since I understood what crushing was, fuck the fact that he's about to do the vigilante equivalent of gifting me both his class-ring and his letterman jacket, let’s go have a messy naked make-out session in the back alley!”?

      He wasn’t sure which would be worse: If Fred had told his friends about his new boy being both a figurative and literal man-whore and now T&L didn’t trust Conrad to keep it in his pants for even five fucking minutes; or, if Fred hadn’t told them anything and this is just what his buddy considered an appropriate test of character for any rando his friends started dating.

      Or, a portion of the very back of his mind muttered, he was freaking the fuck out over a dozen different things at once and was about to bite someone’s face off in response to something he’d usually be laughing alongside TaL over.

      At least the guy didn’t try to maintain conversation over the dozen overlapping ones they push through, undercut with atonal screaming that sounded like it might be one of Aborted Radium Bastards’ songs.

But not one Con recognized. Their bassist must’ve made that early parole if they had a new album out.

      Tall and Lanky exchanged nods with the mountain of off-season muscle guarding the staff-only door and they were let through without so much as a blink at Conrad following after. Given the level of Gotham-appropriate paranoia the management had, Con wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone who wasn’t staff just wander into the back without at least a quick check-in first.

      A suspicion grew. “Hood doesn’t own this place too, does he?”

      TaL laughed again. He had a strong hearty laugh, no instinctual sanding off of its rough edges like most Gothamites did – no one from the city ever wanted to give the impression their laughter was somehow out of their control. “It’s the name, isn’t it?” He wasn’t looking behind, so he couldn’t see the confused look Conrad gave him. “But nah. Red has a soft-spot for the place. Cuz of the name, of course, but also the whole general vibe. We’d always meet up here when we had to plot inside Bat territory and wound up helping the owners out of a few scrapes just by being our sparkling delightful selves.”

      Conrad frowned to himself. That made it sound like these ‘friends’ were part of a full on supergroup the Boss had been (still was?) a part of. One he’d never heard of. That was what he got for never paying attention to cape shit outside of Gotham. Robin had been part of a group, hadn’t he? Young Titans, or Teen Justice or something. They kept changing the name; maybe every time they changed out Robins? That’d follow. Maybe Fred was still hanging out with some of the others from his iteration of the group, but who would those be?

      Tall and Lanky pushed open the door at the end of the hallway and ushered Conrad into the alleyway where, waiting for them, was-

      “Holy fucking shit, you’re Starfire.”

00ooOoo00

      It was a good thing T&L was the first out the door into the alleyway, because Conrad froze in place. One foot stopped an inch above the top of the steps in midair. He blinked, but the figure that looked like Starfire remained, hovering several inches off the ground, and giving him a two-fingered wave with the same hand that was holding the coffee cup she was drinking from.

      “I am indeed, Conrad-Friend. Hello!”

      She looked like she’d stepped (floated) off the cover of a fashion magazine, wearing designer sunglasses and something that was half hat and half headwrap done up around her normally ankle-length hair. The few stray locks that fell free shimmered and subtly shifted like slow-motion fire. Between the poofy sweater and skintight jeans, there was much less of the burnt orange-toned skin on display than there’d been on the poster of her Aiden had hung up on his side of the bedroom. The one Conrad could never bring himself to take down.

      Conrad blinked and forced the rest of his brain into a reboot. His foot finished stepping forward and he let out the breath he’d been holding. The part of his mind that hovered between hyper-vigilance and well-trained perception clocked the rest of the individuals in the lineup waiting for him before he’d finished consciously noticing them. There was a big guy. Fucking huge guy, honestly. Even among the Gotham underbelly where every third individual seemed to be juicing with some variation of Venom, he’d stand out as just needlessly large. Between the blocky unfinished cast to his features and the odd way the light reflected off skin so white it rivaled Doctor Quinzel’s coloration, Conrad couldn’t help but think of him as a marble statue that’d been abandoned before final completion. In turn, Big Guy regarded Con with an open friendly curiosity that did nothing to lessen the impression Con had that he was, bar none, the most dangerous individual he’d ever encountered.

      He had a good running up from the woman next to him, though, somehow lounging against thin air as she examined him with the same exacting glare he’d gotten from the newest Robin just two days before. He suspected he was receiving the same ‘D-, Barely Passable’ score from her too. Honestly, she looked like Starfire and TaL had a love-child. The lean whip corded muscle build and height of the one combined with the endless cascade of red hair and self-assured stance of someone confident in their ability to kill every single person in a half-mile radius if need be of the other. She was wearing casual urban wear in a way that just screamed it was under protest, and if there weren’t at least half-a-dozen killing weapons hidden underneath, he’d kiss Black Mask on the lips.

      Tall and Lanky had taken up position by Starfire. He’d given her a fist bump when he approached, using the motion to pass along a folded up bill with the air of someone who’d come out on the wrong side of a bet. The alien princess (because that was a phrase Conrad would have to start using in his daily life now) secreted it away in the baggy sleeves of her sweater with a smug little smile.

      And between the two pairs… A blinding Robin Grin, sitting on an unfairly handsome face. Black curls with a white stripe, broad shoulders, and the lounging pose of a boneless jungle cat. All wrapped up in a simple leather jacket that strained over a broad chest and arms and jeans that’d be loose on anyone else but were barely holding it together under the strain of his thighs and leaning against the Boss’ distinctive motorcycle that Con had ridden too many times by now not to instantly recognize.

      Conrad’s eyes stuttered and darted past his face, once, then twice. Instinctual terror stabbed in his gut, ignored with almost spiteful intensity.

Fuck his family. Fuck all of them. They didn’t get to ruin shit for him a decade after he’d escaped. Their rules didn’t apply to him, they never had.

      Conrad steeled himself and looked, properly looked, at the unmasked Red Hood.

      …He...

      He knew that face.

      Conrad hadn’t expected to actually know the face. As far as he knew, he’d never met any of the Malone kids in person before Zachery. Sure, everyone acted like he knew everyone in Crime Alley, but there were nearly a hundred thousand people crammed into that thin strip of misery and want. But somehow he knew that face, recognized it in an instant, even. He’d had it staring at him from the fucking fridge for years.

      His mom had cut out the front-page photo from the day after the official adoption. She’d laminated the damn thing even and hung it up where all the kids could see it at least once a day. A reminder that no matter where you started, you too could claw and cheat and connive your way into whatever position you wanted, even into the inheritance of one of the richest men in the world. You just had to have the will to do whatever it took.

“Even suck dick?” That had been Derick, not Aiden for once.

“You are reading too much of the tabloids.” Their mother scoffed. “A man with that much money? He wouldn’t need to adopt his toys just to keep them. He could keep a dozen and no one would know. Mansion basements are deep, no matter who builds them. But even if the child is, would that be such a shame? That boy will never again know want, he will inherit billions. You say that’s not worth sucking a dick? More the fool you then, child. No one’s dignity should have so high a cost.”

Maybe that’d been her issue with Ned. Conrad hadn’t been getting anything out of it.

      That face had stared out at him with the strained smile of someone who wanted to be anywhere but in front of the cameras for years. He’d caught it on television, seen it at newspaper stands, still saw it smiling from above the distribution desk whenever he ducked into the Park Row library branch. It was different, the shapes had shifted with age, but he’d already learned what the changes were based on him as Robin, and so…

      He was grinning like an idiot, even as the words came out with a stunned gut-punch of air. “Jason Todd.”

      The Boss grinned and started forward. “Conrad Nolastname.”

      It made no fucking sense.

      Jason Todd was – how did that one infamous article put it – a diamond, fished from the raw sewage runoff and rubbish of Park Row’s rough.  He quoted Shakespeare during interviews and got bitingly sarcastic if the reporter involved expressed any amount of surprise. He had opinions on 1800s literature. He was described as a ‘practical jokester’ and Bruce Wayne had said on more than one occasion that the greatest gift the boy brought him was ‘making me laugh, multiple times a day’. He was irreverent, he spent his free time volunteering at the dozen different charities he’d convinced his adoptive father to open, he once did an entire interview in-character as a 1920s railroad hobo. He’d been a cinnamon roll, too precious and pure. And also, he was dead. Murdered during a kidnapping and extortion plot gone wrong. The death of the One Who'd Made It Out had been a rusty shiv into the heart of Crime Alley.

      It made perfect fucking sense.

      Jason Todd was an asshole. He didn’t give a shit about high society, filled the scandal sheets by acting like a normal teenager even when dressed up in a fancy suit, and made his distaste at the wasteful extravagance of Gotham’s glitterati explicitly known. He was a firebrand, able to turn any interview topic into a rant about the homeless, the poor, and the addicted. He was an ass-kicker. He’d foiled a kidnapping on live television by kicking the attempted abductor right in the balls with the exact same maneuver the Second Robin had used on Two-Face not a year later.

      Jason Todd had died, far from home, under unclear circumstances for uncertain reasons. Uncomfortably close to when the Second Robin stopped swinging past his bedroom window and Batman descended into police-levels of needless brutality.

      Red Hood was Jason Todd. With his constant references to dead white authors, his detailed disparagement of Gotham’s elites, and the way he’d been enacting every issue the young kid had championed for with bullets, explosives, and primordial-curse fueled rage.

      And… if Fred was the Red Hood was the Second Robin was Jason Todd, then that could only mean…

      Conrad’s legs went out from under him. He was dimly aware of his ass hitting the cold wetness of the alley asphalt. The Boss was approaching. Fred. -Jason-. Jason was approaching. His face popped into Conrad’s field of vision, Robin Grin dimmed down to almost manageable levels. “Hey, Radd, tio. You alright there?”

      Conrad looked up in a daze and said the only coherent thought left in his mind, “Fuck me, Boss; the butts really do match.”

      “Hah! Six seconds from seeing Jay to figuring it out,” Tall and Lean crowed from somewhere up above, “who had six seconds in the pool?”

      “Oh yay. Me am the win!”

00ooOoo00

      Conrad finally had his alcohol in the form of a giant mug of some IPA imported from a city where you don’t have to boil the water before drinking it. He’d yet to touch it aside from slowly turning the mug around in his hands and watching the coaster underneath it spin lazy patterns across the table.

      “I think my dad wanted to adopt you after that kidnapping attempt. He took video, and played it over and over. And not for ‘tell me what Fredrick did wrong when trying to grab the brat’ reasons like usual, but because he wanted us to know what proper self-defense looked like. He said you were ‘wasted on Wayne’ and spent like a month trying to find someone other than himself to blame for not grabbing you after your dad got nailed in prison.”

      “Hah! I would’ve liked to see him try. Creepy ass bastard, always knew he was a rat. I’ve always been certain he’s the reason Willis got grabbed for that shit in the first place.”

      “Honestly? Probably.” Conrad tipped to his side and let himself slow-motion fall against Jason’s side. He spent a few moments soaking in the warmth of his body heat before being taken over by something that might’ve been smothered giggles or choked off sobs as the released stress bubbled out of him.

      “Hey,” Jay lay his head to the side, the unfamiliar feeling of hair against Con’s instead of polished metal it’s own sensation to savor, “You doing alright?”

      “Going through a lot. Trying to process. I just can’t believe I’ve lived the last decade of my life in fear of someone who once asked a television reporter, in all apparent earnestness, if buffalos have wings.”

      Tall and Lanky, who’d introduced himself as “Roy”, reached across the table to give him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “In the biz, we call that the Brucie Blue Screen. Honestly, you got past the nonverbal stage faster than most do.”

      “And with barely any shouting!” Princess “Just call me Kori” Starfire nudged him gently from his right with an encouraging smile. Fre Jason slung an arm around his shoulders from the left, offering nonverbal support and grounding as Conrad processed it all.

      “It’s just the layers of misdirection, you know? Man goes out and creates an entire meme tying together his identities that is one hundred percent true but done in such a shit way that if anyone actually does figure out the truth and tries to tell people, everyone will just assume that they’re internet-poisoned meme-trash. It’s twisted.”

      “Sick.” The lean deadly one agreed. Artemis, she’d said her name was. Just Artemis. Yes, that was her real name. Yes, like the god. No, she wasn’t actually the god. (Not for lack of trying, Roy had said under his breath, though not unkindly.) It was the first thing she’d said in direct response to him, though she might’ve been too distracted digging through the Know Your Meme page for “BRUCE WAYNE IS BATMAN CONFIRMED THE BUTTS MATCH!!!1!!!1” to have noticed.

      “They’re outlining anatomy that can’t be seen through either the cape or the suit. Is that really the entirety of the joke?” Artemis scowled at her phone like she expected it to apologize to her.

      “Is Reversed Un-oh of what you are think is happen. That are foundation of the Ha-Ha.” Bizz (‘Bizz or Z, both is fine. Me no mind.’) looked out into space philosophically for a moment as he chewed before nodding, “Also there is butts. Butts also foundation of the Ha-Ha.”

      “You wanna know the worst part, babe?” Conrad looked over at – and again, it could not be emphasized enough – Jason freaking Todd, and cautiously nodded. “There’s subtle padding and bracing added into the suit in the ass region so that if someone ever does manage to catch a picture during the point-five seconds per night his ass isn’t covered by an SUV worth of cape, the butts will in fact not match.”

      Conrad just looked at him blankly for a moment before slowly shaking his head in horrified awe, “That is just… Absolute evil…”

      “And that’s why my ‘mentor’ spent an hour only semi-verbal and another two hours ranting when he was finally told. God, I wish I’d had a recording of it.” Roy had made finger quotes around ‘mentor’ with enough force that ketchup from the french-fries in his one hand splattered across the table. Conrad frowned slightly at him as something ticked in the back of his mind.

      Hesitantly, he squinted one eye shut and lifted a finger to block the man’s eyes. Then, after a moment, put up a second finger to block out the red hair as well.

      “Oh… Shit.” He could feel the Boss’ proud-slash-knowing smirk. Roy arched a questioning eyebrow and even Z looked over, slowly chewing an entire half of a burger at once.

      “You were the archer on the Young Titans team, the one with the speedster name who wasn’t a speedster. So your mentor was-“ Conrad broke off. Even if no one was looking in their direction and management weren’t the sorts of hide microphones in the booth, that was still no excuse. Instead, he mimed Green Arrow’s distinctive goutee and eyemask. “-and you were another ‘play your cards right and you could get adopted by a rich idiot and drain his accounts try’ example for my parents; Roy, as in Roy Harper, which means your mentor would’ve had to be…” The guy’s eyes shot to Jason’s with both eyebrows raised in a silent ‘the fuck, man?’. His Boss’ shoulders just shook with silent laughter as Con resisted the urge to groan into his hands yet again. “Are there any American billionaires who aren’t part of this whole…” he waved a hand at the table in general.

      “Pretty sure it’s just the three.” Jason replied easily.

      “Sometimes four, but only if the one’s stock is doing extra well.” Roy added, still looking between the two of them with a faintly disbelieving expression.

      “What the fuck, Bo- J-Jason.” Fuck, it felt weird having an actual name, much less being encouraged to use it. “That’s two of the,” he pointed up above, making a little circle with his finger, “the biggest of Big Tables I know, now. This can’t be good opsec. How the hell is the Bat okay with any of this?”

      Jason shrugged easily, burger in one hand, drink in the other, “I mean, are you ever going to tell anyone?”

      Conrad bit back a shudder, “Fuck no.”

      “Well, there you go, then.”

      Con narrowed his eyes as he looked over at the Boss. “It can’t be that easy.”

      The heat of a sunbeam nudged against him from the other side. Starfire grinned at him when he turned to look, “Apparently, the most recent former bird spoke highly of your ability to keep a secret.”

      “Kori!” Jason hissed over his head. She just smiled brightly and batted long eyelashes in return.

      Conrad groaned and put his face in his hands. “That fucker. He promised he’d never talk about that shit.”

      Jason snorted, “And aside from the big bad Bat, he hasn’t. Just that you’re practically the only person he’s never fucked that his scrawny paranoid ass still trusts to keep mum about this shit.”

      “And that he’s somehow convinced that you’d go, and I quote, ‘to extremes’ to proactively protect peoples’ identities.” Roy’s voice and demeanor were casual, but his eyes were sharp as they watched him. Shit, all of their eyes were sharp. And watching him. Even Artemis.

      “So, Radd,” Jason said as he slung a casual arm back over his shoulders, “in the interests of starting this relationship with full openness and honesty, I’ve got to know. What the hell happened between the baby cuckoo bird and you?”

      “Keeping in mind he already spilled the beans first. Just not to us.” Roy added.

      “And because we are now the best of friends!” Kori added, giving him puppy eyes.

      Artemis snorted but didn’t stop watching him with the faintest trace of interest. She didn’t even react when Bizz reached over to grab some of her unattended fries.

      Conrad leaned into Jason’s comforting grip and sighed. “Okay, okay. I don’t know how it all looked from his end, but no harm telling the story now.” He gave a rueful grin upwards at the Boss, and a slightly dubious one at the rest of the table. “Not like I have to worry about it getting me pulled into cape shit against my will or anything.”

      “The fact you had multiple ‘That time I met Robin’ stories strongly suggests you’ve been pulled in with ‘cape shit’ since the beginning, Raddical.” There was a trace of amusement in Artemis’ voice that Con ignored. Alright, how to tell this. Honestly, it’d be easier if the other Robin was here instead. Conrad hadn’t even been there for half of it…

00ooOoo00

A Little Over a Month Earlier…

      Tim took the last steps down into the cave with a half-jump, using the momentum to swing himself over to the evidence table to drop off the backpack of case files he’d brought upstairs the night before to work on after patrol. His feet were light, his energy levels were high, he was feeling… Good. Good, actually. Not terrible, or tired, or horrible, or worn down, but good.

      It might be the weather; three solid days of sunlight he’d actually been able to get out in. It might be one of those rare alignments of cycadean rhythms and brain chemistry that temporarily had everything lined up just right to passably imitate a functional human brain. It might be some sort of dimensionally-phased being piggybacking on his limbic system and mentally manipulating him into a more positive attitude so he’d venture out into public more allowing it to spread. It might be because his date with Bernard the day before had gone really really well.

      In the end, it was just one of those mysteries he could never hope to actually solve, he’d just have to enjoy the effects while they lasted.

      Tim vaulted over one of the safety rails with one hand, bypassing the stairs up to the Batcomputer entirely. Bruce was hunched over the keyboard, intently focused on multiple windows that rapidly flickered open and closed fast enough it could pass as some sort of panopticon-flavored mp3 visualizer.

       Steph was perched on the console next to him, legs swinging and tapping idly at her phone as she either planned out the night’s patrol routs, or matched candy gems. It was always hard to tell the difference at a glance with her. No one was supposed to be up on the consoles like that, but Bruce’s only reaction to her presence had been to place his usual coffee mug to his left out of reach of her swinging feet instead of the usual right.

      “Hey Steph, B. This a new case we’re opening up?” Tim wasn’t in the habit of (openly) reading over Bruce’s shoulder, but he’d made no effort to minimize anything when he heard Tim enter the cave, and the way his shoulders squared and his eyes squinted in focus told Tim that this was a new case just beginning to gestate. Something that’d be all their problem soon. Something serious. Like child murder cults. Or aliens. Or invasions by evil alternate versions of themselves.

      Shit.

      Creating a false cult whose followers would sacrificed kidnapped children to non-existent aliens in order to distract the Batclan is exactly the sort of thing an evil alternate version of himself would do, too. What would be the signs that the cult was a false front be? Maybe-

      “Nope!” Steph said cheerfully, Bruce’s aura of stoic grimness struggling visibly against the pure bubblegum cheer she was radiating. “B’s just researching Todd’s new online boyfriend because he thinks the guy might be a creeper.”

      Bruce didn’t give a long-suffering sigh, but it was there in spirit. “An individual has been engaging with Jason’s online presence at an abnormally high rate while engaging in textbook information-extraction behavior, in addition to several troubling comments they’ve made about their background that suggests a high level of entanglement in Gotham’s Rogue community.

      “Given that Jason appears to have skipped any form of confirmation about the individual’s identity, I’m taking it upon myself to confirm that this isn’t an infiltration attempt by one of his competitors or a Rogue before it has a chance to progress any further.”

      Bruce’s eyes didn’t flicker off the computer screens once while he spoke, fingers never stopping their movement. Behind his back, Steph just shook her head and silently mouthed “New Online Boyfriend.”

      Tim shot her a tight smile in agreement and shook his head as well. Bruce had tried to keep it from him, but he still remembered the absolutely intense deep-dive he’d performed on Bernard when the two of them had first started dating. And the deeper intense deep-dive he kept doing for the next few months. And probably still went back to just to be sure every few weeks since.

      At least he wasn’t trying to hide this potential love-interest background check from the family. Baby steps. They’ll take whatever improvement they can get out of the man.

      “So who’s this guy trying to honeypot the infamous Red Hood?” he asked, leaning on the back of the Batchair and resting his chin on Bruce’s head while examining what he had up on the screen.

      There was… A lot, actually. Over a dozen personal profiles, most of them featuring mugshots, most of them labeled with variations of “Known Associate of” Riddler, Two-Face, Penguin, Scarecrow, even a few for Joker. Facial similarities and last names along with ages allowed Tim to sketch out a rough but worrying family tree in his mind.

      “Huuuuh,” he said after putting it all together, “So are we looking at a Deathstroke situation, or is this more of a Spoiler scenario?”

      Bruce didn’t answer, while Steph stuck her tongue out and (after quickly looking around for anything free on hand Bruce would let her lay her hands on) mimed throwing something at him. Tim obligingly kickflip dodged out of the way of the non-existent projectile.

      Steph considered the profiles on the screen, “I think it’s more of a Catwoman situation, personally.”

      Bruce gave a neutral grumble, which Tim had down in his mental ‘Batgrumble To English Dictionary’ as being equivalent to an eyeroll. Steph continued on, ignoring him, “I mean, from what I’ve seen so far, he seems like he’s allergic to shirts, struts around in skintight jeans, and spends most of his time performing grey-market crate lugging and warehouse guarding. Again, usually without a shirt.”

      “Huh, yeah. That does sound like Jay found himself a Catwoman. Or Catman, I guess.”

      “Oh nah, this guy’s not nearly tall enough to be a Catman.”

            Another grumble from Bruce. This one stood for ‘A snort of laughter, but one given under protest’. Steph grinned proudly.

Tim continued to read openly over his father(figure)’s shoulder, skimming what information he could as windows opened and closed as fast as Bruce’s well practiced hands danced across the keyboards. Whatever he was looking for amidst the wider family had been discovered, or deemed unfindable, because all the windows closed up in rapid sequence, and a new series of folders were accessed and new information loaded.

      Tim squinted as what looked like scanned report cards and transcripts popped up on the screen. Park Row Elementary, Gate Jr. High, Pinkney High. Crime Alley schools. Unique information… Series of articles about deplorable conditions at Park Row Elementary. Gang fights in the parking lot and playfield at Pinkney High. Some brief mention of a mass brawl that left half the football team out of commission for a game.

      The Martha Wayne Foundation had plans to provide funding to renovation of the Park Row schools in another five quarters, but if they shifted out the new cancer-screening ward for Gotham Provincial Medical (which had gotten a new cancer center just five years earlier), that could be moved up as early as-

      “Wait! That picture!”

      Bruce tilted his head ever so slightly at Tim’s sudden outburst, then pulled up the window that he’d just closed. Tim stared intently at the face in front of him. Steph twisted around at the waist to see the screen and let out a single sharp “Hah!”. She shot a teasing grin his way, though he pretended not to notice. “G’damn, was this dude genetically designed to attract ex-Robins or something? Because mad respect to that bioengineering genius if so. Not exactly your usual type, Timmers.”

      This picture wasn’t a mug shot like most of the others had been. This looked more like it’d been taken from an employee ID. The ill-fitting cheep uniform was what you’d expect from one. As was the carefully plastered neutral expression. He had a broad nose, lightly flattened. Wide round cheeks that’d make him look boyish except for the strong chin. Skin was somewhere on the darker end of Hispanic or the lighter end of African with a scattering of dark freckles. Tightly curled brown hair with a reddish tint where it caught the light cut into a low mohawk. Sharp brown eyes. A ragged scar that drew a slightly curved line the length of a knuckle right in the middle of his browline. It was an incredibly distinctive face, a very memorable face.

      “I know that guy.”

      Batman lifted his hands from the keyboard and fully turned in his chair to look at Tim with what most people would call an unamused glower, but what Tim knew as a look of expectant curiosity. Steph put her phone aside with an expectant grin.

      Tim turned his eyes from the screen to Batman. “That guy, I’ve met him before. I told you about it. That thing with Two-Face a few years back, you remember?”

     Batman frowned slightly. An actual frown, this time. “I remember. Though your incident report was sparse on detail about the individual in question. You hadn’t even given more than a vague description at the time.”

      Tim winced at the unspoken accusation, “He was wanting to get as far away from anything Rogue or Hench related as possible at the time. I hadn’t wanted to tie him back into the case, especially since we’d gotten everything we needed already.”

      Batman’s brow furrowed slightly and he shot a slight glance back at the profile (“Conrad Lupu – Known Associations: Lieutenant/Hench for the Red Hood Gang”) then back at Tim. Tim sighed. “Yeah, okay. Point taken. I’ll go and write up a proper-“

      “Verbal report now. You can use the transcription for the written report later.”

      Batman hated using transcriptions of verbal debriefs in place of written reports. The differences in language and communicative style made his teeth ache or something. Tim took the offer as the olive-branch he’d clearly meant it as and rested himself back against the nearest bench as he quickly organized his thoughts.

      “Alright. Red Robin, giving a debrief on the incident on hashtag-fill-this-date-in-later involving the capture of Robin-dash-C by Two-Face’s organization, focusing mainly on the involvement of the henchman self-identified as ‘Conrad’ in Robin-dash-C’s escape and neutralization of a potential identity leak.” He glanced at Batman who just gave a small nod to continue. Steph was leaning forward, looking like shed love nothing more than some popcorn and a soda to complete the experience.

      Tim sighed. If he was quick about this, hopefully he’d be able to finish before anyone else got down and this got any worse.

      “Alright. So, this is how I remember it going down…”

Chapter Text

 Tim Drake wasn’t dreaming. You had to be asleep to dream and Tim was pretty certain he wasn’t asleep. But he was pretty certain he wasn’t awake, either. Instead, he seemed to be floating within an ocean of memories, getting buoyed along by currents of thought in a semi-lucid state.

 “I think I might’ve been drugged.” he said to Batman through the him that existed in the memory he was passing through. Batman responded with a “Hrnmm.”* (*Batman Noise to English Translation: I agree with your statement, but have nothing to add.) from where he was standing at the BatComputer, pulling up profiles and maps for the night’s activities.

 He explained the mission. Or had explained the mission. Or was explaining it now. The events from several different points across the last few hours seemed to be playing out over and around each other. The exact sequence didn’t matter; the case did. Tim had brought it to Batman’s attention. Or Batman had already known. Or Oracle had brought it both of theirs. Didn’t matter. What mattered were the bank robberies.

 Five of them over the last two weeks. Well, technically seven, but they were just concerned with five. The other two had already been dealt with on the days they happened. They’d been easy to notice, what with the bombs and the hostages and demands and the weird masks and all the rest of the set-dressing people seemed to think was mandatory when running a bank job in Gotham. Tim always critiqued (in the privacy of his own head (where actual criminals wouldn’t overhear and get ideas)) that if you actually wanted to rob a bank in Gotham, you’d be as casual and low key about it as possible and just let it get lost in the background noise of whatever attention-grabbing chaos was happening elsewhere that day.

 Well, it seems someone had taken him up on it (which meant it was time to refocus on mental defense training (were the chances that they’d gotten the idea from reading his mind high? No. Was he still going to do a deep dive into the depths of Soundcloud for new terrors to leave as psychic landminds? Yes.)) because the other five robberies, well, nothing about them had grabbed their attention. Nor Spoiler’s attention. Not Huntress’, or the Question’s, Ragman’s, Oracle’s, or any of the rest of the ever-shifting population of costumed pseudonyms that filled the Gotham nights.

 They were quiet robberies. Middle of the day. Quick, efficient, and simple. A casual note slid to the teller, the flash of a gun from the customer and a few others stationed throughout the (always small) branch office. They’d get passed a low-six-figures worth of billage, and then they’d be on their way without a single shot getting fired or anything else that might’ve alerted the rest of the bank something had even happened.

 Tim paced through the lobby of the most recent robbery that’d happened just earlier that day. You really couldn’t tell anything was wrong aside from a faint tenseness to the furthest teller’s shoulders. Why had this robbery managed to raise an alert when none of the others had? The cameras, Batman explained from where he was gesturing at the schematics for the bank’s layout on the main monitors. Someone on the night security team had installed a program to bump up the quality of the footage and then rout it from the bank to his personal laptop so he could keep an eye on it from his other security job across the city he’d been doing off the books. Which meant that there was footage getting run through the internet where Oracle’s creepy-assed Big Brother spyware could access it that was of a high enough quality that her even creepier-assed facial recognition programs could be run on it.

 Which is how they got an alert from Oracle that four of Two-Face’s crew had been at the 45^th and Atlantic branch of the First Gotham Bank. Batman was pulling up profiles on the Batcomputer while Tim continued to float amongst the customers, paying attention to the ones that now had glowing profiles hovering over them. “I’m serious, Batman, pretty sure this isn’t a dream.”

 “Keep track of the symptoms and any unique features of the hallucinations you’re experiencing. It’ll help narrow down possibilities if we need to apply an antidote or neutralizing agent.” Batman rumbled while at the same time listing off suspects’ names and details, using the same mouth for both conversations. He was halfway pleasant about it, so it wasn’t likely to be anything Fear Gas derived, at least.

 Tim paced around the man who was lounged against the customer counter, filling out a check with gibberish while letting his jacket hang in just the right position to flash his gun to the teller behind the third window. Antonio Zammit, moving amazing well considering Tim could still hear the sound the man’s femur made when he snapped it twice over earlier that year. (The guy had been shooting at an unarmed teenager, he refused to feel guilty about it.) Still, Tim made a mental note to find out what physical therapist he was using, because they were apparently a wonder-worker.

 Over there was Julie Jenssen, leaning against the wall right near the entrance and fucking around on her phone while keeping the camera pointed directly at the teller in the third window. The thin scar that traced up her cheek to nick the corner of her brow from a batarang Jas- Robi- his predecessor had thrown (as a distraction (she’d somehow flinched into)) twitched in time with the faintly heard beat of whatever music was playing in her earpods.

 Leonard Jaffe would be the one at the first teller window, currently in the middle opening an account with fake credentials. He was easy to spot; six foot seven, three hundred solid pounds, and with an overlapping burn and knife scar across the right side of his face that left him looking like a discount mirror-imaged Two-Face. The knife attack had ruined the man’s eye, though, so instead of Dent’s bulging bloodshot one, he had a solid black marble with a little skull-face painted on it in place of the iris. Two-Face switched between loving or loathing the man depending on some factor Tim had yet to pin down. All of that meant all of the bank’s security and extra staff were all very focused on the first teller window (despite how Leo had been nothing but unassuming and polite throughout the entire process (for the first time ever in Tim’s experience with the man)) and not paying a trace of attention to the third window like they should’ve been.

 As for the final member - lounging against the counter at the third window, wearing a smooth oily smile on his face and a suit jacket casually unbuttoned halfway so the teller could see the butt of his gun - Tim didn’t need a wavering computer screen of information superimposed over the man to recognize him. He stood out, what with his slicked back black hair and (fancyish, if off the rack) suit and his affected north Jersey accent (that only occasionally slipped into his actual lower Gotham one). He made every effort to come off as a Cool & Dangerous Mobster straight out of the 1930s, but to Tim he’d always looked more like someone who’d gotten rejected at a casting call for a Turkish Gomez Addams for being way too creepy and not nearly enough kooky. ((‘Romanian Gomez Adams’, a voice dictated over the scene, sounding suspiciously like Batman in educational lecture mode. ‘That’s 400 miles to the north.’) Which, yes, okay, Tim knew that, he’s just saying. Man’s only half Romanian. The rest is all south of the Sahara, and if you average the distances- Not important.)

 Tim really couldn’t be surprised at finding the guy here. Anytime you ran into Harvey Dent, he was going to be there. Checking your bindings while Two-Face monologged about his latest death trap, calling in reinforcements on the radio when the inevitable mass-brawl broke out, directing people loading up trucks with money and weapons as the warehouse of the week went up in flames and Batman and Dent had their climatic showdown on the roof. Never standing directly behind Two-Face, but always behind whoever was directly behind him. Never the right-hand man, but always the right-hand’s right-hand. Mykola Lupu. Smug asshole and life-long loyal foot soldier for Gotham’s own ex-DA.

 “Now let’s not be making anyone’s life more difficult than it needs to be, alright sweetheart?” (There were two main types of people who fell in with Two-Face. The wild and rowdy hooligans who followed “Harv” (always one short step away from becoming extras in a Road Warriors knockoff). And the cocky wannabe mobsters and smug murderous political lackeys who hung off of Mr. Dent. (Tim vastly preferred the Road Warriors types. (They didn’t make him want to punch them in the face just by talking half as much.)))

 “If you just strut those pretty legs of yours into the back and get this bag filled up, the most you’re gonna have to deal with is getting kept behind for an hour, two at most, filling out paperwork so the Feds will replace all the money. Try and be a bitch about it and it’s gonna become a whooole fucking thing. We’re talking shoot-outs and hostages and a whole bunch of extra hassle. And assuming you make it through it all without having your pretty little brains splattered all over the place, you’re still gonna be here till midnight dealing with the police and the paramedics and whoever else wants to stick their nose in. So ask yourself, sweetheart: Is someone else’s money really worth any of that?” He ended with what would’ve been a charming smile from anyone else, flashing his too-white teeth.

 “None of these robberies have any of the usual signifiers of Two-Face” Batman proclaimed as he swept past Tim with a needlessly dramatic flare of his cape. “There’s no symbolism of duality to be found in the banks, their history, their locations, or any other aspect of the jobs we’ve checked so far.” He paused, halfway through the teller counter and glared up to where the hacked/boosted security camera was set in the ceiling. Then glared across the bank and started off towards one of the shadowy corners the camera couldn’t see. “None of the dates the robberies took place on involve the number two, there’s only a single instance of one in the street addresses. The amount of money stolen appears random. And they’ve taken the trouble to hide their association instead of broadcast it as is their usual MO.”

 The bank had started to fade inward from the walls, revealing the comforting stone and harsh floodlights of the Batcave. “Yeah.” Tim chewed on his inner cheek as he pondered. “Plus Two-Face is still up in Star City for that big organized-crime moot thing they got going on, so would he even be involved?”

 Batman paused (partially overlapping the bank manager who remained oblivious to both the robbery taking place and the vigilante noclipping through him) and turned to look at Tim with a stony neutral expression. Stony to 99.99% of the population, at least.

 “You know? The one Intergang’s holding?” More silence. “Cassie wasn’t able to make it to this week’s YJ meetup cuz she was busy helping the Arrows out with it?” Even more silence. Tim finally just shrugged “I’ll be perfectly honest, B. It didn’t even occur to me that you might not already know. If nothing else, I would’ve thought Ollie’d would’ve given you a heads up.”

 Batman continued to glare at him (or dream-slash-memory him, who was standing on the Batcave’s floor, not Not-Quite-Dreaming him who was hovering a few feet above it) for another few seconds before turning back to the screens. “We’ll deal with that later. We have more important things to focus on.*” (*Batman to English Translation: Someone’s getting chewed out for this, but it wont be you.)

 Batman frowned up at the monitors as he continued. “The main question we need to answer is what the ever-loving fuck is he doing here?” Tim blinked. Batman’s voice had shifted at the end there. The Batcave was starting to stretch and tear at the edges too. There was a cliff coming up, fast, and beyond it there was only a deep and bottomless abyss. No more memories after 35 more seconds, right as Batman started to go into the night’s plans. “Robin, you’ll be performing surveillance at-” And that was where everything cut off like someone had taken a pair of scissors to the film strip of his mind. There was still a bit of time left before that, though.

 Batman hit a few more keys and a map of Gotham sprung up with several locations lit up. “Oh fuck me.” he said as he gestured at one cluster of lit up locations. “Kid, if you wanna wake up and say psych, now would be a real great time.” Tim was pretty sure that wasn’t what Batman had said either. Plus, Bruce never had such a strong Crime Alley accent before.

 “Shit!” Batman exclaimed as he zoomed in on a building on the edge of the Tricorners. One story of retail (only two of which were money laundering fronts for Two-Face, surprisingly enough), and five stories of apartments that had maybe half-a-dozen civilian tenants with the rest housing members of Two-Face’s sprawling organizations. “Just… Shit. It’ll be okay, just- Fuck.”

 Batman was fading into the shadows as the currents pulled Tim higher into the roof of the cavern. Through the stone above him, he could see a rippling light, like the moon through water on a night-time dive. The final thing he heard before he breached the surface were the squeaking hinges of a door opening and closing at the same time, layered atop each other like a poorly sound-engineered effect. Then he breached the surface into the light.

----

 Robin was, to be bluntly honest, kind of offended by what he awoke to. As heir to the world’s foremost legacy of getting kidnapped and tied up in all sorts of places, he felt comfortable preemptively declaring this to be one of the most underwhelming he’d experienced. The walls had promise: Steel beams with solid wood paneling between them from back in the day before everything became particle board. Good industrial ceiling too, all dropped conduits and ventilation shafts only a toddler could hide in, and unshielded florescent lighting that buzzed and flickered subtly. Then there was the rest of it.

 Robin was sitting in a chair (strapped into a chair, by what felt like far too solid metal bindings for comfort. He’d have to deal with that later) staring directly at a rickety folding table of brown linoleum decorated in floral patterns of a slightly darker brown. A Mr. Coffee from the 1990s sputtered away on top, surrounded by a dozen mugs, every one mismatched and featuring its own unique collection of chips and cracks. A counter against the wall boasted a microwave with three buttons and a dial, a sink with exposed piping running to the floor, and piles of boxes of teas and instant coffees, most of which held sticky notes proclaiming ownership and various threats against those who’d steal from them regardless. There was even a framed faded poster of a street full of people all running in the same direction with “TEAMWORK” emblazoned across the bottom.

 It was a break room. He was seriously being held captive in some fricking two-bit villain’s break room. Oh, his Yelp review was going to be scathing. On that note, he needed to run the “So You’ve Been Kidnapped And Tied Up (Again)” checklist from the Unofficial Robin’s Guide (don’t tell Batman) (by D. Grayson)

Blindfold: None. Obviously.

Gag: None. For now. 50/50 whether one would appear the moment he started sassing.

Arms: Bound to the chair by built in manacles that wrapped around his forearms from just below the elbows to just past the wrist.

Hands: Technically free, but with limited mobility because of the manacles. Also missing his gloves, which meant he was also missing the lockpicks hidden along the inner seam. Not that he would’ve had enough mobility to use them.

Waist: Utility belt missing. Sucks hardcore, but not unexpected. Even the out-of-town yokels know to take the utility belt. They don’t always remember to, but no such luck this time.

Legs: Also bound in the same style of manacles, from just below the knee to just past the ankle. These manacles were also built in to the chair.

Feet: Boots still on. No further bindings. Flat against the ground, which meant the chair had been adjusted (or built) at just the right height for him.

Chair: Steel. Uncomfortable. Bolted into the floor hard enough he wasn’t sure he could get it to so much as wiggle even if he threw all his weight against it.

 Two-Face’s gang had way too much experience in keeping Robins tied down after the past decade and change. It wasn’t fair that not only did Robin have to deal with people who were wise to every trick he’d ever pulled against them, but were also wise to every trick Dick and Jas-- his predecessors had ever pulled as well. Not to say he couldn’t get out of it. It’d just take maybe 40 minutes. With no one in the room the whole time, because no way he could hide what he was doing in this getup. And he might have to dislocate a shoulder or something to get the right angle.

 Robin knew he wouldn’t be getting the chance, even before there was a sudden clap of hands and an all too familiar oily, self-confident Jersey accent oozing around him from behind. “Ah good, perfect timing, son! Looks like the numbers boys’ had their calculations down exact! Hope you’re lucid as well; we’re on a tight schedule thanks to your interference.”

 Mykola Lupu looked smugly proud as he came around the chair Robin was bound to to examine his prize. “Ah, look at you, sonny. Alert, aware, and already scowling like a champ. Magnificent. How’re you feeling?”

 Robin debated just hocking a loogie right into the asshole’s face, but wasn’t feeling up to getting pistol whipped so soon after regaining consciousness. “Gotta say, Mike, the accommodations are a real disappointment. Especially love the thirty year old Mr. Coffee there, it really screams Triple-A Rogue Threat.”

 The man just tsked and turned to sort out whatever he’d been carrying on the table. “The mouths on you Robins. Such disrespect. None of my kids would ever have such backtalk. What kind of father even raised you?” None whatsoever. That’s what made him such a driven independent asskicker. And once he was out of these binds, he was going to kick that ass so hard.

 Mykola turned, and Robin’s blood turned to ice at the sight of the small unmarked tube in the man’s hand. “I think it’s well past time to find out, so we can have a discussion about how he’s failing you as a father.”

 Robin masks were kept on with adhesive, these days. A good strong one that resisted the usual high velocity/high impact lifestyle that came with the position. The fact it could also hold up to your standard grunt’s attempts to pull it off was a bonus. To get it off, you either needed to soak your face in hot water for about half an hour under the shower, or use some of the specialty dissolver that Batman kept in stock in the cave. And which Robin kept stocked in a small, single use application tube that was hidden against the underside of his utility belt’s buckle. At least, that’s where it should’ve been.

 Tim rocked backwards as Mykola approached, hard enough that the chair would’ve gotten topped back on the floor if it hadn’t been bolted in place. “The hell! Two-Face already knows who we are, asshole!” If his legs were free, he’d be kicking the guy in the nuts, but they aren’t, so all he can do is glare while his bind blanks white with static.

 “Oh sure, the Boss knows, but he’s never seen fit to let any of the rest of us in on his little secret.” Mykola Lupu grabbed Tim’s chin in a strong bruising grip and jerked his face up. “It’s his prerogative and all, but it really makes my job more difficult, you know?” His brown eyes glinted with bit-back malice. “I mean, if it were just up to me? I would’ve put a bullet through your skull the first time we had one of you tied up like this, but that’s not how Mr. Dent wants things done, so that’s not what we’re doing here today. But since you stumbled across one of my little side hustles and not his, I figure it’s only fair to finally let myself in, yeah? Maybe figure out a way to keep you shitstains from disrupting everything in a way that wont upset the Boss.”

 Tim tried to twist his head free of the man’s grip which only earned him an even tighter hold on his chin and upper neck with enough force he could feel it in his jawbone. “Easy there, son. Don’t want you flinching and getting any of this in your eyes. I honestly have no idea what it might do, but I think we can both agree you’re better off with your eyesight intact, yeah?” That grip was going to leave bruises. Tim was going to have to use extra concealer for the next few weeks. Either that, or skip out on school (easy) and any time with his friends (not easy), or else have to go through a whole new round of everyone acting squirrely and failing at their attempts to be subtle when asking if he feels “Safe at home”.

 Fuckit. Tim hocked a loogie with all the force he can muster, but the only response he got was a small ‘not mad, just disappointed’ sigh. Not even a flick or motion to brush it off before the dissolver was being squeezed out across the top of his mask.

 For one of just a few times in Tim’s life, his brain went blank. Just a white terrified static as his mask pulled off with an anticlimactic pop and bared his face to Two-Face’s Number Three. Not everything lost, what was left of his mind raced to say, not yet. Gotham is lousy with dark-haired blue-eyed caucasian children running around. Who could distinguish any particular one from any other? It wasn’t like the Drakes were front page fodder more than once every few years, after all!

 But no. There was a dawning look of realization in Mykola’s eyes and a horrible nasty grin slowly spread across his face until he broke out in a laugh halfway between triumphant and disbelieving.

 He turned around to the table and back, pulled himself together, and launched into some long-winded wannabe-villainous monologue like he thought he was an actual Rogue or something and honestly, Tim didn’t have the fucks left to give to even pay attention to it. It was only after it was all done and Mykola left the room that-

  “Tim.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I’m with the Big B on this one. I also refuse to believe you just ‘zoned out’ during someone’s monolog instead of using it as an opportunity to create an impromptu psychological profile of the guy; possibly while playing Scrabble against yourself with the words he was using.”

  “Hnnn.”

  “No, that was a full, accurate, and complete translation of what you said, B, don’t even try to pretend otherwise.”

  “That was only once! Tt was Riddler, and he was doing his ‘Gotham, Behold!’ speech in front of a giant Scrabble board filled with death-traps! There was no way all those multisybilic words he was using weren’t going to be a part of some sort of ‘only the unused squares are safe to use, Boy Blunder!’ scheme.”

  “Not even remotely my point.”

  The only reason Batman didn’t massage his forehead was because he was a professional, but Tim could tell it was a near thing. Still, more than a little of Bruce came through in his voice as he looked up and met his eyes. “Tim. We are going through this whole exercise because you glossed over details the first time that have since turned out to be of critical importance. All of it.” and after a fraction of a second, just long enough for Tim to think it wasn’t coming, “Please.”

  Tim sighed heavily and bit back a groan. “Okay, fine. Fine. Just. None of this leaves the Cave or reaches the ears of anyone else. Ever. You got it?” He was looking straight at Steph who nodded solemnly and held up two fingers in the scout salute.

  He didn’t believe it for a second, but it wasn’t like he had any choice.

  “Right. Okay. So the full thing…”

 There was a dawning look of realization in Mykola’s eyes and a nasty horrible grin that slowly spread across his face until he broke out in a laugh halfway triumphant and halfway disbelieving. “I can’t fucking believe it! You’re r҉a҉d҉i҉o҉s҉t҉a҉t҉i҉c҉! You’re r҉a҉d҉i҉o҉s҉t҉a҉t҉i҉c҉ fucking r҉a҉d҉i҉o҉s҉t҉a҉t҉i҉c҉!”

“Wait, sorry, what was that last part?”

Conrad downed a gulp of his beer instead of answering right away. The waitress had dropped off a giant tray of wings just a minute earlier, which had only confirmed his suspicions that his gut was too roiled to manage food while it tried to process the last hour. And the last 40 hours while it was at it. And the last month. It’d been a fuck of a month.

“Soon as I realized what was happening, I’d activated the fucking core-dump and just-” Conrad mimed an explosion against the side of his head while taking another drink.

Roy continued to squint at him with dubious confusion before turning to the Bos Jason. (Jesus fuck, he’s gonna have to lock himself in a bathroom stall before they leave and scream into his hoodie for a few minutes because the Boss is JASON WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK TODD) “There’s context here I’m missing, right? It’s not just me?” He looked over at the rest of the table, “Please tell me it’s not just me.”

Con really didn’t want to go through this again. Not so soon. He was honestly kinda fucking sick of the weird pity-horror look people got whenever he tried to explain his childhood.

“Radd’s parents did this whole thing with him where he can just sort of turn off his brain’s ability to process and recognize faces and language.” Oh fuck him. Has he ever mentioned how much he loves his Boss? Because holy shit, he loves his Boss. Robin. Jason. Jason. “Part of their whole Henching Family shtick. Supposedly to make it so they can’t spill the beans on shit their employers get up to because they just flat-out don’t remember it.”

Con scrubbed at his face, shoving the urge to correct and explain and excuse as far down and deep as he could. He was starting to suspect those might not be the best urges for him to be indulging. Jason nudged him in the side, and Conrad looked up from where he’d been leaning at a slight angle against his boyfriss. “Though… Given that you’ve been ushered into the Secret Mysteries, and I keep telling you to keep that brain of yours churning…”

Conrad winced and gave an awkward shrug that made the hoodie he was wearing pull uncomfortably across the shoulders. “Yeah, but this isn’t about me not processing the knowledge. It all got nuked before it could move from hippocampus short-term storage to cortex long-term storage. There’s nothing there to pull out.”

“J-Man. What the fuck?” Con glanced over to where -

Adopted ward of Oliver Queen, street kid turned heir to a billionaire, proof that Jason Todd isn’t a one-off fluke, so if you ever find yourself in the presence of Lex Luthor or one of the Kanes, here’s what you do to ensure they’re signing the adoption papers before the day’s out

-Roy was looking at him with bewildered horror. Artemis with a calculating reconsideration, Biz with a curious tilt to his head, and Starfire with concern and no small amount of sorrow.

He wanted nothing more than to pull the hoddie’s hood tight and sink through the bench into whatever basement this place had. Were his parents terrible, straight-up evil people? Yes. Were most of the skills he was taught as a kid morally dubious at best? Also yes. Were their training methods indistinguishable from child abuse if you didn’t know the context? … we’ll tackle that later… But shit like this was just something he could do. They were skills, not deformities.

Jason flung an arm over Conrad’s shoulder and squeezed his bicep just enough to reground him. “So, tio, I get that you scrambled out the faces and names and all, but you didn’t ditch everything going on then, right?”

Conrad grimaced and shook his head. “Don’t think I could just core dump everything. Faces and names are one thing, but all of it?” A few traces of childhood memory whisped past. “I mean.. I think it might be possible, but I kinda bailed before a lot of the advanced lessons, you know?” He grimaced again, “Still wouldn’t. That’d just be… Fuck. Unsettling.”

“Point is, babe. You got the master key to everyone’s identities, and still remember just about everything else that happened, and I still want to show you off some more, so… Reconstruct it all? From what you know?”

Conrad frowned up at him - at Jason – and gave his best dubious look. The Boss gave him the briefest flash of a Robin Grin in response, “And maybe I’m curious about just what the hell Three-Point-Oh has been going to all these lengths to keep under wraps all these years.”

Conrad slung an arm over his eyes and focused on the blackness behind them. “You’re lucky you’re hot, Boss.”

There were muffled snirks from around the table as Jason’s chest rumbled next to him. “Damn right, I am.”

 “I can’t believe it. You’re Tim Drake! You’re Tim fucking Drake!” Mykola laughed a second time, turning to slam a fist against the rickety folding table, nearly sending the coffee maker clattering to the floor before he turned back just as quickly. Tim shrank from the look in the man’s eyes, as manic as any Rogue’s.

 “I can’t believe how perfectly that fits. Everything-” He gave another sharp laugh, slapping his hands together. “Everything makes sense, now. All of it. I never could figure out the Boss’ deal with the Bat. It’s always been weirdly intense. Fucking personal, that shit. But now!”

 Tim shrank back into the chair, trying to breath around the ice in his chest and the way frozen shards stabbed into his lungs. It was going to all come apart and it was going to be his fault. Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Oracle, everyone. Everything. The Justice League was going to take damage from the fallout beyond just Batman getting arrested. Or murdered by his many many enemies. Or on the run. Oh god, his parents were going to find out. About everything . They were going to be so pissed. There’d be no way he’d be able to talk his way out of getting sent back to boarding school after this. Say goodbye to the credit card, that’s for damn sure. Say goodbye to freedom. Maybe he could run away to San Francisco and live out of Titan’s Tower. Or go live with Kon in Hawaii. He’d need a new identity. With papers. He needed to warn Bruce and Dick and Barbra. And Steph. Shit, at the very least he needed to tell her he was Robin. You know, before she found out from the news. He also needed to-

 “I can’t believe this entire time Batman’s been Jack Drake !”