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Chapter Text

The Red Hood stood in the middle of Louise' storage room, looking over the stacked bags of product. The harsh lighting glared against a smooth and shiny helmet with no expression, only blank white lenses in place of eyes. 

Her workers stood around, frozen in their work, and trying not to stare. Just kids really, all teens who needed some extra cash. She paid them to move things and not ask any questions. It was funny. Louise thought of them as kids and they called her ‘boss’, but she was barely older than them. Confidence made all the difference.

“Mr the Red Hood.” She plastered on a smile. “So good to meet you. I had no idea you were getting into the garden supplies market.”

The helmet turned.

“What?”

The crunchy modulated voice was completely flat. 

The words ‘eight heads in a duffel bag’ floated in the back of her mind. Were they all neatly lined up? Or did he have to stack them? Face up, or scalp up? Surely face up to maximise the shock. That couldn’t be very stable, what if some of them rolled around in there?

“Top soil,” she said. Her smile felt a little strained. She patted a tightly packed plastic bag at the top of a crate. 

She knew how it looked. That was how she’d gotten it through the harbour without paying any fees. Every customs officer in Gotham knew drugs were Black Mask’s business and asked no further questions, charged no further fees. That was the case last week, at least. Things changed fast. 

He cocked his head. “Is that what you’ve got kids moving?” 

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. 

“Everybody out,” she called. 

The kids looked between her and Gotham’s newest crime lord. She whistled sharply and jerked her head.
They scuttled out with sudden urgency. The door banged closed noisily behind them. 

There was a silver flash of a knife. Her breath hitched. 

Dirt spilled onto the concrete floor. The split plastic slowly deflated as the stream of dark and loamy earth slowed. Red Hood stared at it. She stared at him staring at it.

He coughed a laugh, then flipped the knife around and propped his hand on his hip. 

“Why are you smuggling dirt?” 

She shrugged. “Ever tried to grow anything in Gotham’s soil? It’s heavy metals and toxins all the way down to the water table. Terrible for flowers, worse for food.” She wasn’t into gardening but a buyer was a buyer. 

“Huh. Learn something new every day. There good money in it?”

“Some money,” she hedged. “I wouldn’t call it good.”

“Uh-huh.” He strolled casually around the stacks of crates. Prowled, more like. She lost sight of him and wished she hadn’t. “And it's just dirt,” he called. 

She leaned against the nearest crate and crossed her ankles. “Just dirt.”

“You’re not about to become some kind of dirt themed villain, are you?” he asked, suddenly behind her and making her jump. How was he so quiet in heavy, combat boots? “Doctor Dirt? Dirtula?”

“The Soiler,” she replied, straight faced. “It’s like Spoiler, but, you know.” Her lip twitched at her own joke. “Soil.”

The helmet stared.

“I’m kidding!” 

“Alright, Soiler . You can smuggle your dirt through my territory, under my protection.”

“That’s very gracious of you.” She smiled winningly. “...Five percent?”

“Twenty.” 

“You’re killing me. Just how much demand do you think there is for gardening supplies in a city with no sunlight? I can do seven percent. Final offer.”

He cocked his head. She could see her own calculating expression reflected on the shiny red surface. 

“I’ll throw in a free crate of my finest potting mix. You can set up a nice bonsai garden. A cent more and I’m going out of business.”

He stepped forward. He loomed over her. He was very good at it. She was tall and lanky and couldn’t pull off a good loom to save her life. 

“Do I look like I’m in the market for a nice bonsai garden?”

“I wouldn’t dare assume,” she replied and crossed her arms. 

He stared her down. Then scoffed a laugh. “Ten percent. And I’ll be in touch.”

He disappeared into the gloom around the back. There was the sound of the back door opening and swinging shut.

“Great to meet you,” she said into the empty warehouse, with a shaky laugh. “Let’s do this again sometime.” 

The next morning, after her shift at her morning job, Louise found an unfamiliar teen standing outside her warehouse. He looked about fifteen, with greasy blond hair and a surly expression that never rose from the ground. He stood awkwardly by the wall next to the padlocked roller door. 

“Who are you?” she asked, swirling her takeaway coffee in its paper cup. She always took the plastic lid off and idly considered throwing it in his face if he tried anything. It was still hot enough to do some damage. 

“Marcus.” He shrugged. “Hood sent me.”

“...Did he just. What for?”

“Said I was s’posed to help.” He had both his hands buried in his pockets and a slouch in his soul as well as his posture. 

“Help with what?”

“Dunno. Whatever you want.”

She hummed and put her coffee down. 

She fiddled with the lock and it clicked open. In this part of Gotham a padlock was really just there to keep the amateurs away. Pros would just put an axe through the door. 

She rolled up the door and ushered the kid in. She got him moving some heavy stuff around and doing busy work while her regulars drifted in and out. He slouched about, doing nothing terribly alarming. 

She had always made a point of staying low. Keeping her head down whenever the big dogs were barking. Sure, she flirted with danger, but she wasn’t bringing it home with her. At most she let it take her out for dinner. Maybe a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night. 

Through the blinds of her office she watched Red Hood’s blatant mole sweep up around her stock. 

The same Red Hood who was openly challenging Black Mask. Hell, he was spitting in his ashy misshapen face.

She wasn’t flirting with danger, she was in bed with it.

The gang wars weren’t all that long ago, and there was no reason things couldn’t go tits up again. That mess that killed the short-lived girl robin. Red Hood had missed all of that. He had no reputation before last week. He was murderous and fearless and Black Mask wanted him dead. She didn’t know what his idea of ‘protection’ actually looked like. 

She was just some small fry smuggler. Easily forgotten. Easily stamped out when nobody was looking. 

She drummed her fingers along her crooked desk. 

The kids who worked for her were going to be painted with the same brush she was, for whatever choices she made. If things went really bad then the consequences would fall on her grandpa.  He had nobody else to look after him. 

Was Red Hood really the horse she wanted to bet on? 

Some other Gothamite might think she had no choice in the matter, but she was born in Falcone’s Gotham, grew up in Penguin’s city, then got wise under Two Face. Black Mask was the power today. Maybe Red Hood was tomorrow. The wind changed. Gotham stayed the same.

Marcus opened one of the bags of topsoil. He put something in it.

“Hey!” She yelled.

His head whipped around.

She ran into the storage space. 

“What the hell are you doing? Trying to make me a mule for Hood’s product, is that what this is?”

He held his hands up and shook his head mulishly. 

“It’s not! I’m just– it’s not. I’m not doing drugs anymore. I’m taking a sample. He said to, it’s to test it for stuff.”

“What?” Her brow furrowed. “Why would I hide drugs in a product disguised as drugs? What kind of stupid double bluff is that?”

He only shook his head again. “Um. Ammonium nitrate.”

“Why would– oh.” She pouted. “Well.” Yeah, that made some sense. Joker had that whole thing with fertiliser bombs a couple of years back. And the weapons black market paid way more than dirt, no matter how good the dirt game looked. 

“Don’t yell at me,” Marcus said, staring at the floor.

She sighed. “You can just take the bag back to Red Hood for testing.”

He shook his head. “He said just a sample.” 

There was no way this would fly anywhere else in Gotham. This kid would get eaten alive. He looked a little chewed up already. What was Hood thinking? 

“What are you doing here, Marcus?”

“Told you. Hood sent me.”

“Yeah? And where’d he find you?” 

“Cooking for some guys in the Narrows.” 

She looked to the ceiling. She didn’t think he meant as a line cook. He was so young . “Go nuts then. Get your samples. And take a break.”

“What for?”

“Lunch, genius,” she said, and stalked back into her office. 

Two weeks later she had wrapped up a major deal with a landscaping company and gotten Marcus set up washing dishes at the Indian restaurant across the road. He seemed much happier there with Mrs Chauhan badgering him to eat more. 

Red Hood hadn’t said anything. Not to her at least. The sample must have cleared any suspicions. Some of his guys showed up asking for his cut the day she wrapped up her deal. They knew exactly how much was owed too, which showed an attention to detail she didn’t like. 

Maybe it was time to get out of garden supplies. She was getting steady shifts and the cafe and the underground fighting rings always picked up this time of year. It was enough to keep the lights on. If things got really dicey she could sell her car. 

She still had the number of that guy from the window manufacturing plant though. Skylights were expensive but short-lived, or so she heard. That might be something. If she only supplied the glass and didn’t do instals then she could keep costs low and dodge complaints when vigilantes immediately smashed through them. 

Red Hood could take the remaining topsoil business and God bless him.

She was not choosing his side, she was choosing no side. 

Gotham was a mean old lady who ate any of her kids that stood still long enough to get caught. Louise wasn’t getting caught today.

She walked up the steps to her grandpa’s apartment as the afternoon turned to evening. Technically her apartment, despite his bitching about it. He was getting weaker, since a fall last year. She could pay for his nurse and medication or she could pay her own rent on top of his. Moving back in was the smart play. She repeated that to herself a few times a week. 

She opened the door to yelling. She sighed, stretched a jaunty smile across her lips and strode home. 

The nurse, Rachel, was holding her own with strained patience. Louise intercepted the yelling by being loud and annoying, and let the poor woman have a break. 

“Thanks,” Rachel mouthed at her, with a hand to her temple. 

Grandpa had never taken being powerless well. When Louise was little he used to hit her. She learned to hit back. These days he just threw bitter insults and all she could do was take them. Sometimes she missed how it used to be. It felt more honest.

That probably said something depressing about her. Who cared? Therapists were expensive. 

She was packing up the leftovers from dinner. Their kitchen window overlooked the cramped alley behind the apartment block. She had a fine view of the neighbouring buildings’ wall mounted HVAC units. And for a couple of weeks in late January they got to see the sunset sneaking down in the thin slice of horizon between two other buildings. At this time of year all the light they got came from other apartment’s windows. There was someone higher up who never took down his Christmas lights, so they got red, green, and gold flashes year round. 

The red light blinked off. The green never came. She looked up from clipping shut tupperware. 

There was a shadow over the kitchen window. 

There should not have been a shadow by the window. 

Rachel was helping Grandpa to bed. She could hear the cantankerous mutterings from the other room. Louise crossed the room backwards, always facing the window, and shut the kitchen door. The muffled voices cut off. 

The shadow by the window moved slightly.

She eyed the pantry, where they kept a shotgun. It wasn’t loaded. The ammo was in the cupboard above the fridge. Would she have time?

Her eyes darted to the steel baseball bat leaning against the wall by the window. It was very close to whoever was out there. 

She edged around the room towards the window. She wasn’t trying to be quiet, just casual. 

She caught a glare of golden Christmas lights on a shiny red surface. The helmet was facing her. 

She froze. 

He leaned against the brick wall casually, sitting on the balcony railing. 

“What are you doing here?” she whispered. 

She should have gone for the shotgun. His gun was on his right hip. Had he drawn it? She couldn’t see. Fuck. Fuck . She hadn’t broken any of his rules. Had she? She didn’t even deal in drugs. 

“I’m not here for you,” he said quietly. 

“There’s no one else here. I think you’ve got the wrong address,” her mouth said without any input from her brain. 

The helmet turned. 

“The nurse.”

“What?” 

“She’s been selling prescription painkillers. She’s not getting them from the pharmacy.” 

“What?” Her voice came out loud and flat. 

“You didn’t notice anything?”

She didn’t move for a moment. 

Her grandpa took a lot of things. Opioids among them. It was a high dosage. Upped three times. Getting him to admit he needed it had been almost as difficult as getting a doctor to prescribe it. He couldn’t just say it. He got mean when he had no power. 

Yeah. That figured.

She had the bat in her hands. 

She wrenched the kitchen door open and stormed down the corridor. 

Hands grabbed her and pulled her back. She struggled like a wild cat, fury so white hot in her veins she felt disconnected from the rest of her body. Hood pulled her into the kitchen.

“Whoa, hey, wait,” a modulated voice crackled near her ear. He closed the door with a kick.

She tried to hit him with the bat. He wrenched it from her hands and threw it away. Strong arms held her still. 

“Calm down.”

“Let go,” she hissed.

“Look–”

“He’s in pain! All this time he was in pain! And she –”

“Louise. She’s hurting others too. I get it, I do, she can go directly to hell, but if you cave her head in I can't find out who else she’s doing this to. And a few other things besides,” he added darkly. “I need to know who she’s working with.” 

She hauled in a couple of deep breaths. He didn’t move. She came back to herself. 

The flash of blind fury passed. Grim steady anger settled in its place. Her elbow ached from smashing it into unyielding helmet. 

“Fine,” she said.

“You gonna try to hit me if I let you go?”

“No.” 

He let go. She shook him off and rolled her shoulders. She eyed the bat on the floor and intentionally looked away. Focus on the present danger. The crime lord in her kitchen. Red Hood watched her patiently. She assumed. Who knew what he was thinking under that helmet. 

Just what the hell kind of kingpin was he? 

“Why are you here?” she demanded. “You’ve got guys, they couldn’t just grab her off the street?” 

“You needed to know what was happening. Talk to his doctor. If she ever actually gave him anything, he could be going through withdrawals.”

She stared at him, long and hard. 

“...But I don’t get to turn her brain into chunky passata.”

“No passata for you. But don’t worry,” he said, with a coldness that wasn’t just the modulator. “She’s not getting away with it.”

He disappeared back out the window. 

The Christmas lights winked their usual pattern. She could faintly hear mumbling from the corridor. The leftovers still needed to go in the fridge. 

There was a boot print from a crime lord on her kitchen door. 

A minute later Rachel got a phone call and hurried out of the apartment, yelling her apologies. 

Was she going to die? 

Did she have grandpa’s meds in her bag? 

Louise drifted into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. She cracked open one of the labelled bottles and looked at the little white pills of what should have been the good stuff. She turned the bottle, letting them rattle around.

She threw one in her mouth. 

It was very sweet. The realisation that this was a tremendously stupid thing to do didn’t get distant and pleasantly hazy, but instead got more pointed. 

Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Her elbow did not stop hurting.

She hoped Rachel was in pain. If Louise ever saw her again, she would be. Something told her she wouldn’t get the chance. 

She sat on the toilet lid. 

Looked like she was on team Red Hood after all. 

Chapter Text

Louise sat heavily on the step of her fire escape. It was a hot but dark night. The pitbull two apartments down slept chained up on the landing, occasionally growling in his sleep. Wind howled over the top of the alley. There were no clouds, but even the brightest satellites were just orangey smudges through the smog. 

She was thirteen and realising the world wasn’t fair. She had suspected, but she didn’t think it was this bad.

She kicked her satchel full of homework. It made a dull thud. It wasn’t very satisfying. She tried again and hurt her foot. She sighed. She grabbed a lollipop from her jacket pocket, ripped off the plastic, and shoved it in her mouth. 

She had worksheets to do for math and an essay on Romeo and Juliet. Her history homework wasn’t due until the weekend and she wasn’t making the mistake of putting in too much effort. If another teacher made comments about her not applying herself, or wonder woman help her, ‘unrealised potential’, Grandpa would start getting ideas again. 

Screw him. She’d skip the math homework. 

The fire escape shook with a creak. She grabbed for the rusted railing. The shaking stopped. The metal bars didn’t shriek and rip themselves from the bricks like she expected. She looked around, wide eyed. 

A figure in bright red, green, and yellow perched on the railing one level above her. 

Holy shit. 

“Hey!” she said. 

Robin looked down at her. 

“What?”

She had no follow up. He was a scrawny little guy, maybe even shorter than her, with curly black hair and a round face. In the dark it was hard to see much more but she got the impression of a bright grin. 

“You’re just a kid,” she blurted. She had thought for sure he was just a short adult. That was what her grandpa always said when they mentioned him on the news. ‘No way a kid could last on these streets, let alone be a competent partner in combat.’

Take that gramps, you don’t know everything. 

“So are you!” Robin said back. He swung down with a neat little flip to her level. She backed up, shoving her hands in her pockets. The yellow cape flared and flapped in the wind. He had a black domino mask with white lenses over his eyes.  

Now she was closer she could see he was actually breathing pretty hard. In the light of her apartment she saw scratches on his bare arm, but they hadn’t broken skin. He crouched down into a squat on the railing. 

“What are you doing out here?” he said. “It’s really late.”

“I live here. What are you doing?”

“Yeah? Everything alright?”

She sucked on her candy then pulled it out of her mouth and pointed it at him. “How come you’re allowed?” 

“What?”

“All this. Running around, punching people, jumping into alleys at night.”

“I’m Robin.” He shrugged with a kind of casual arrogance that made her laugh. Asshat. She bet he wasn’t even in ninth grade.

“It’s a school night,” she said. 

“Crime doesn’t wait for the weekend and neither do I.”

Oh shit, that was pretty badass.

“Lame,” she said.

He scoffed.

She threw him a lollipop. 

He caught it and stuck it in his mouth. “There goes the diet,” he said around the candy. 

She snorted. He swung out around the support pole, high above the pavement, with such ease and control it was like he simply floated around it. He settled in a new position sitting on the railing opposite her with his legs swinging casually beneath him. It was kind of insufferable. She decided she needed to annoy him. 

“Three dollars,” she said. 

“What?”

“For the candy.”

“You’re kidding!" He leapt up onto his feet. 

“Am not.” 

“Three dollars for a lollipop, that’s crazy!” he crunched through the red candy with his teeth and gestured with the soggy white stick at her. “‘S not even a good one.” 

“What’s crazy is robin cheating an honest Gotham citizen.”

He scoffed. “No such thing.”

A shadow enveloped her. She felt colder. 

Robin grinned. 

She turned and looked up, and up a little more. 

Batman stood on her fire escape. He was a looming terror in the dark, two sharp ears silhouetted against the rolling night sky and white eyes glowing from within an inky black shadow. 

“You owe me three dollars.”

The two shadows left as suddenly as they arrived, swinging away into the gloom. The two moved in perfect synchronisation up into the sky, following lines she couldn't see.

Robin’s laughter trailed behind. 

A year later Louise dragged herself into the free clinic in Park Row. 

She had busted knuckles and something felt funny in her wrist. It hurt pretty bad. Normally she’d have just wrapped it up and called it a day. It couldn’t be that bad. Only an idiot would go to the clinic late on a Friday night. 

She was feeling a bit of an idiot today. 

The school had called home about the fight. So she hadn’t gone home. The waiting room was packed with people, many bleeding or whimpering. No way they were getting to her in less than four hours.  

She filled out the form, and took a seat on a creaky plastic chair. 

An older teenage girl in a sparkly dress and a scowl sat next to her. She held a pair of strappy stilettos in one hand. She crossed her legs with a long exaggerated whine, letting a swollen ankle hang in the air.

Louise leaned over. “What are you in for?”

“Oh my gosh. This boy asked me to dance, right, and I said yes, we’re at the club, I don’t care, let’s go, but you won’t believe what he did.”

Louise checked out of her own life for the next few hours. 

The throbbing in her wrist came and went. She wasn’t thinking about it. 

The waiting rooms only got louder and more cramped. There were three different crying babies who kept setting each other off. The guy next to her on the other side was hacking up a lung, and the lady next to him had a paring knife in her forearm, bandaged into place. 

Across from them were a rowdy group of older teens in tracksuits with lots of tattoos over their hands. Nobody was making eye contact with them. The clinic helped everyone and asked no questions. 

Louise was learning all about the dangers of cheap mascara when her name got called.

Aww, butts. Reality was still there where she left it. 

Her wrist stung really bad actually. She cradled it as she followed a nurse into a different room. 

She was going to be hearing about this for months. She hadn’t even won the fight. Grandpa didn’t mind fights, he got her the lessons after all, but getting caught was unacceptable. He’d blow his top over anything that went on her record. 

He still thought she was going to get into West Point Military Academy.

She woodenly answered questions about what hurt and what didn’t. The wrist was just sprained, and her knuckles weren’t too bad either, they just looked nasty.

“Is there anything else?” the nurse asked. He had a metropolis accent and a voice that sounded like a smile, without actually smiling. That was clever, how did she learn to do that? 

“Na, I’m all good,” she said. 

She’d have to go home sooner or later.

“What about the bruise on your arm?”

She glanced at it. It was mostly faded. She shrugged. “Nothing for it now.”

“You know that’s… not okay? If someone is hurting you?” He was painfully sincere. 

She frowned. 

“Hey now. Isn’t your whole deal that you don’t ask questions?”

“Yes,” he said, slowly, drawing the vowel out, “but if you need someone to talk to, we can help. Who brought you in tonight?”

Oh no. She wasn’t one of those kids. Grandpa was just like that. She didn’t need help, this guy would just get her in trouble. 

She patted his arm consolingly. “I’m fine, pal. Thanks for asking.”

He sighed and rubbed his temples. He looked tired. He excused himself and ducked out for a moment. 

She narrowed her eyes, calculating whether or not she had to do a runner. She wasn’t in an actual office, just a curtained off corner. There was a blanket of constant but controlled activity in the area and bright white lights everywhere. It smelled sharply of artificial lemon. 

She got off her little stool and pulled back the curtain a little. She couldn’t see her nurse. 

Yelling broke through the controlled chaos of the atmosphere. Footsteps thundered over the squeaky floors and bright yellow fabric whipped past her. 

She ducked out of the way, then leaned out to see more. 

Robin was carrying a little girl. He sprinted by, overshot his target, and spun back to slam through a door. 

He looked thunderous. As he turned Louise caught sight of the wet mess the back of the girl’s head was leaving against his arm. 

Skulls weren’t supposed to be mushy like that. 

She stepped back, leaving the curtain open. The taste of the saliva in her mouth felt sickening suddenly. 

She sat heavily on the stool, looking at the door. It wasn’t far. 

A number of nurses and doctors disappeared through it.  

Then, a few minutes later, Robin staggered back out, with empty arms. His right arm was still drenched in blood. 

He stood there, unmoving. He looked different under the bright white lights. His curls were lank and greasy with sweat and dust. He looked washed out, with a splatter of drying blood turning brown on his cheek. He had shot up since she last saw him. The baby fat around his face remained. He was facing the door, tense as a finger on a gun. She didn’t think he was seeing anything.

She heard the quiet hiss of conversation further down the room. It had gone too quiet. She remembered the guys in tracksuits.

“Hey,” she said. “Robin.”

He turned. Blank white lenses faced her.

“You gotta go, man.”

He shook his head and his lips twisted into a scowl. “She needs someone. There has to be someone here.”

“The doctors will handle it. You can’t stay here.” 

“She needs someone,” he said again, quieter. His shoulders were sinking.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is her family coming?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t have one.”

She studied him. He looked like he was ready to throw himself in front of a gun for this, if that was what it took. 

Oh. So that was why he was allowed. He was just... that kind of person.

“I’ll stay,” she said suddenly. She thought it through belatedly and decided she agreed with her mouth. “I’ll make sure she’s got someone until– for the night.”

His expression sharpened, and he looked her over, his forehead scrunching up. “Do you mean it?”

“Yeah.”

“You have to promise.”

“I promise. I’ll stay. All night.”

It was like his strings were cut. He dragged a hand through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Fine,” he whispered. 

“Get outta here.”

He spun on his feet and disappeared out another door. 

When Louise’s nurse came back she made up a story about seeing a friend come through, and could she wait for her? Since she couldn’t give a name, they wouldn’t let her in any further, but she was welcome to sit in the general area. So she returned to the waiting room.

The party girl was gone. The lights were just as bright and the room just as noisy.

She took a chair in the corner. Her wrist was nicely wrapped and her knuckles no longer stinging under the disinfectant. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees and her head bowed, and waited for a little girl to die. 

She promised. 

Another year passed, and Louise was on her fire escape again. 

She leaned heavily on the railing. The wind ruffled at her hair. She had spontaneously cut it all about three months ago and now it was growing back into a horrible choppy mop. It was going to rain soon. 

She was fighting with grandpa again. It felt like she was fighting with everyone lately. 

She’d gotten herself kicked out of the good high school in the Narrows. It was embarrassing because it was only a month after she’d decided to take it seriously. But they found out about some of the things she did before reaching that decision, she dug her heels in, and it all went tits up. 

She was taller than grandpa now and starting to put some muscle on. He thought twice before taking a swing at her. But he was a wily old soldier, he knew how to hit where it hurt. 

He dropped the words military school tonight. 

She said some things she didn’t really mean in reply. 

She felt bad about it after the flash of anger had passed. Now she just felt kind of queasy. Not resigned, she wasn’t going to go quietly, but she wished she’d been smarter about it. It didn’t have to go down like this. The threats were just threats, until they weren’t. 

Grandpa’s anger wasn’t like hers. It had staying power. 

There were going to be real consequences this time. 

Funny. Every other punishment had felt like such a big deal at the time, no matter how hard she tried to pretend she didn’t care. Suddenly it was all small potatoes. 

A man ran into the alley below, skidding on the concrete.

She leaned back a little and tucked her face in. It was a dark night. It smelled like rain. She looked down through the steel grate of the landing. 

He was overweight, back to her, in a thick puffer jacket pulled loosely over something brightly coloured. There was a stripe of light across the filthy ground of the alley. It glinted over a knuckle duster. He panted heavily, and looked up and around, spinning in place. 

He was wearing a white and red clown mask. 

She didn’t move. 

He put his hands on his knees and giggled quietly to himself. 

Black wings swept silently down from above her. 

She relaxed a little. 

Batman glided in a graceful arc around and behind the clown, between him and the mouth of the alley. 

He landed heavily.

The guy rocketed up. He lunged forward with a clumsy punch. 

Batman caught his first, arm extended out.

There was a crack of shattering bone.

Louise’s eyebrows rose.

The clown laughed through his tears, spitting insults. He tried to pull his broken arm back, and got thrown to the ground for his trouble. 

She looked up to try and spot the grinning traffic light. She kind of expected to share a look with him. She couldn’t see him anywhere.

The first rain drop splattered on the railing with a sharp ‘toc’. Then another. And another.

Batman kept hitting him. The thuds of fists on flesh got harder. The sound turned wet. 

The clown stopped laughing. 

Batman didn’t say a word. 

Robin was late. 

The queasy feeling in Louise's stomach got stronger. 

The rain pelted down. It drowned out the sound of breaking bone.

Robin never arrived. 

Chapter Text

At the end of long nights of tightening his grip on Gotham’s underworld, Red Hood came home to a sparse and clean apartment. He had multiple across the city for security and redundancy’s sake: all identically equipped with no personal touches to be found anywhere. He cleaned his guns and knives, checked the systems on his helmet, updated his records, and lay down on the bed. 

The tension of the day drained out of him and he slept like the dead. In the morning he woke, still aching and tired, but he stretched, ate, and continued his work. 

There was so much to do. 

The weeks stretched out. He took more and more territory. Black Mask upped the price on his head. Batman prowled. Joker sat in his cell, oblivious. Old Mama Gotham watched her children play. 

Jason sat on a bench. He breathed in the cold morning air. Oh, he was tired. 

Alright. He could have ten minutes, then he was back at it. 

There was no time for indulging. The filth of the city made their own little plans to counter him. He undermined, side stepped, and parried with such carefully crafted fluidity it looked improvised. Only took a year of planning. It was a tightrope act that demanded both extreme flexibility and perfect control. 

Oh, he wanted Batman to figure out it was him under the helmet. But only after he had time to suspect. To stew and deny as the fear set in. Then, when there was no more denial to hide under, he wanted Bruce to look him in  the eye and face the ugly truth.

Which meant keeping everyone else balanced right on the edge, until he was ready for them to fall.

The headaches were getting pretty bad though. 

Someone laughed a dozen feet away and he twitched.

Hm. 

Maybe he needed to schedule more down time. He couldn’t be twitchy on the job.

There was an ugly little diner only a block from the safe house he used most often. He gave himself twenty minutes. 

He pushed open the door of the diner. A little bell rang. Nobody looked up. 

Vinyl floors squeaked under his boots but it smelled clean. There were only three other people here, one reading the paper, another contemplating oblivion in a stack of pancakes, and the last lying down and asleep in a booth. The low murmur of a tv above the counter played throughout. He took a seat at the far end of the counter, facing the front door and the kitchen door.

The walls were covered in Gotham Knights memorabilia. Black and white photos of players and signed shirts hung above the booths and behind the counter. His eyes trailed over the faces and names. The sepia tone gave the impression these players were the greats, even though the Knights had never had a great anything. 

It took a certain kind of bullishness to keep backing them, year in and year out. A lockjaw refusal to quit in the face of all common sense that seemed to grow in Gotham like a mould. It made him smile. 

Someone stepped through from the kitchen. He looked up from the bare bones menu. 

Well, if it wasn’t the Soiler herself. 

“Hey. What can I get you?” she asked, tying an apron over a band T shirt and ripped jeans. She looked younger in the daylight. 

“Just a coffee. Black.” 

“Sugar?” 

“Two.” 

She poured him a mug. 

“It’s free refills if you get something from the cabinet.” 

He shook his head. 

“Alright. Call out if you need anything.”

He took a long sip of coffee. It was pretty bad. She retreated to the other end of the counter where she opened a laptop. She typed and worried her lip. 

The TV ahead of him played the news. He had been disconnected from the world for a long time. He kept track of Gotham’s underworld, but nothing else reached him.

He let his mind drift, just for a moment. The waves of mundane reality swept over him.  

Someone had broken the record for world’s largest taco. The South Pacific was recovering from a typhoon. Wonder Woman spoke before the United Nations. Men in suits and campaign buttons shook hands with farmers. The city decided it couldn’t afford to expand the public transit system through the Bowery afterall. 

The Knights lost again. 

His coffee got refilled. 

He looked up at the waitress. Louise Brick. Nineteen. Local. Highschool dropout. No gang affiliations. No criminal convictions. Numerous charges. 

She narrowed her eyes. She put a cinnamon donut on a little plate in front of him. 

He raised an eyebrow. 

“Call it a freebie. You look like death warmed over,” she said, and turned away. 

He hummed and took a bite. She wasn’t wrong. She went back to her laptop. 

She had her place in his plans too. Just another dreamer trying to turn lead into gold. There were thousands of them, and the combined momentum of their greed and recklessness made up a good part of Gotham’s underworld. The useful or dangerous were folded into Red Hood’s empire. The more predatory were cut down. 

That nurses selling stolen prescription meds he uncovered from her house was the second type. He didn’t need to kill them, that was for those who wouldn’t change. Scaring them into turning themself into the cops did the trick just fine, while tying up police resources finding the rest of the network. 

Dirt smuggling was a new one. He let her negotiate the protection fees down because it was funny and not hurting anyone. She even got the kid he sent to her a real job somewhere. He had made a note of it. Might be useful later. 

That was his twenty minutes up. 

He threw back the coffee, shoved the remaining donut in his mouth, and tossed some cash on the counter. 

By the time he was out the door, he had his head back in the game.

It became a part of his routine. The diner was a quiet little slice of Gotham that could have existed at any point in time and didn’t throw the passing of years in his face. There was a nostalgia to it, and unlike just about every other nostalgic thing in the city, it didn’t make him want to throw a grenade.

There was also a fifty percent chance of getting a free donut. 

“You are a very bad business woman,” he said after it had become a pattern. 

Louise grinned. “Boss’ wife bakes them. It’s very important that they’re all gone by close of business.”

“And here I thought you cared.”

“Of course I care. Boss is happy. Customer’s happy. And I’m not eating a dozen donuts a day, so I’m happy too. It’s a win for everyone.”

He snorted and shoved a piece in his mouth. 

“There goes the diet,” he said around it. 

She looked at him for a moment. Then she shook her head and started wiping the counter. 

He went back to idly watching the TV screen. 

San Francisco had been attacked by a robot army. A reporter stood in the wreckage and spouted wild speculation.  Then the rubble started to be moved by a flying kid in a superman t-shirt. On the ground they interviewed Robin and the current Wonder Girl. 

Jason looked at his donut and felt his token interest fade. 

The kid was so damn young. He stood confidently in front of the camera, patronising the reporter. Idiot still thought this was noble. 

“He’s getting old, isn’t he?” a woman in shining road worker yellow said from further down the counter. She nodded at the tv.

Louise turned and craned her head to look up. 

“Yeah, look at that.” She went back to wiping the counter. “Must be almost time for the next model.”

“What?” the road worker said. 

“What? You think Robin’s been thirteen for twenty years? They get too old, they get replaced.”

“I mean, yeah, I know there’s been more than one,” the road worker hedged. “There was the girl one last year. But I thought Robin was, like, superhero bootcamp or something.”

“Pretty sure they just die. Lift your plate.” Louise wiped under her plate and continued her campaign across the counter. 

Jason looked sidelong at her. 

“You monster,” the road worker said lightly. 

“Come on, they don’t even wear helmets. You really think no goon with a gun, or hell, a brick, has ever gotten lucky? Probably a pit full of tiny bodies out the back of whatever lair the old Bat crawls back to.”

He grinned grimly into his coffee. The chasms in the batcave were deep enough to bury a whole army of Robins. The delirious cries of sudden resurrection probably would have scared the shit even out of Batman. Jason would have had a worse time trying to crawl out though. He rubbed the tips of his fingers.

“That’s grim,” the road worker said.

“Or maybe he shoots the bodies out of a cannon like Hunter S Thompson. Is that whimsical enough for you?” 

Jason snorted a laugh and got coffee up his nose and down his front. 

Louise raised an eyebrow at him, her lip twitching into a grin. 

“Maybe Robin’s magic,” he said with a jovial and deeply sarcastic tone, patting down the front of his hoodie with paper napkins. 

She held out a trash can for him. “Maybe the sea is made of custard.” 

“Makes you wonder what kind of city this is,” he said. “Letting kids get their heads caved in for us.”

“Letting them? What, is this an opt-in arrangement?” 

The road worker made a sour face. “What kind of man is Batman ? They’re his kids.”

“Shit. I hope they are,” Louise said, returning to her wiping. 

Jason lifted his plate and mug. 

“Makes no difference,” he said. “Gotham eats all her children. Robin’s not special.” 

He finished his break, and got back to work. 

Louise sat in the driver’s seat and pushed the wires under the steering column back into place. 

It was dark out. The road was empty. 

What dipshit street parked a sports car?

She hated that she was here, again . But life didn’t pull its punches and neither did her creditors. She wasn’t a cryer, she was a grumbler.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered. “I could be scamming tourists in the diamond district right now. I could be at the knight’s game. I could be at the club !” She didn’t really go to clubs. But the idea seemed nice. 

The passenger seat door opened and she jumped. The Red Hood got in.

She stared at him. 

He swung a heavy bag onto the back then settled into the seat next to her. A smooth and shiny red helmet swung to face her. 

“Hey,” a mechanised voice said. 

“Hey.” She looked straight ahead, squeezing the steering wheel. Hmm. She didn’t think he cared about things like car theft. She didn’t think he’d have cared about dirt either. 

Embarrassment wasn’t an emotion that came readily to Louise. She liked to think it ran off her back like the Gotham rain, leaving only a jaunty grin and a confident strut. Today it trickled in through her clothes and slid down her spine, wet and freezing. 

She cleared her throat. “Would you believe…this is my car?”

“No.”

“Shit.” 

“Mm-hm.”

He didn’t have to be so damn relaxed about it. Those blank white lenses watched her, unflinching. 

“Alright,” she said, with a smile. “What do I have to do to get through this encounter with the smallest number of broken bones or bullet holes?” 

“You can start by telling me what you’re doing.”

“Cleaning the upholstery.”

“How invested are you in keeping that number of broken bones down?”

“I’m stealing. Okay? I’m stealing the car.” She dragged a hand through her hair. Dammit. He was a scary son of a bitch and that brought out the stupidest parts of her. It was like her mouth objected to being told to close. 

“Why.”

“Plans fell apart. Bills came due. Here I am.” She gestured at their surroundings. “Stealing cars like a chump.”

“Get into gear.”

“What?”

He stared at her. 

She did as she was told. 

“Straight ahead through this intersection then take the second left.”

She waited for a green light. The engine was a quiet hum, just the ticking of the indicator filling the car. “Wait. Are you stealing the car? Am being made an accomplice to my own crime right now?”   

“Stay in the left lane.” She got the feeling he was smirking. 

She decided asking questions was probably unwise at this point. They left the quiet, wide streets between empty office towers behind for the cracked and narrow streets of the Bowery. 

He twisted around to rummage through his bag.

“How’s your high speed driving?” he asked. 

She straightened her back. “Great. Why?” 

“Perfect. Confidence is key.” He faced forward again, now with a submachine gun and magazine in hand. 

Her eyes narrowed. “What is happening?”

“What happened to dirt smuggling? You had a good thing going.” 

“That was like a month ago.”

“What were you cooking up then? The next right.”

“Reinforced skylights. I had really a good deal too, prospective buyer even paid upfront.” She peered out at the dark road where the street lights had died. There was a moment of quiet. “You would, of course, have gotten your cut.”

“What went wrong?”

She glanced at him, now loading a shotgun. Her fingers around the steering wheel turned white at the knuckles. She forced herself to ease her grip. It was too late to throw herself out of the car now, and besides, she’d already picked a side. 

“All my stock was waiting in a warehouse right next to Ace chemicals.”

He laughed. “Why would you put it there?”

“Cheapest real estate in Gotham.”

“Yeah, wonder why that is. So your product’s molten slag.”

“I already paid the supplier, and now the buyer wants his money back.”

“Should’ve charged more. Could’ve gotten a loan with the collateral.” 

“I’d have loved to.” She gave a put upon sigh. “It’s hard to be a new player in an overcrowded field. It takes something really dramatic to upset the board.”

“Uh-huh. Turn left at the end of this road.” She could hear the smirk this time. He raised the SMG. “Then you’re going to speed up. Weave around the streets, try to veer north and away from the river. Don’t get boxed in, don’t slow down. Do not stop the car under any circumstances. You got that?”

She took a bracing breath, her eyes fixed to the road. “Don’t slow down, don’t stop. Got it.”

“Try not to get shot.”

“I was already doing that,” she informed him. 

He lowered the window. She turned left. 

The part of her that got to do things like panic and ask stupid questions switched off. Her grip on the steering wheel eased into something more confident and she avoided the deep potholes that littered the streets. 

One of Black Masks businesses was coming up. She didn’t know what they did in there, only that the pizza restaurant on the first level was very obviously a money laundering joint, and the guys hanging around watching from the terrace above it were not the sort she wanted to ever share an elevator with. 

Red Hood Half climbed out the window and splattered the terrace with machine gun fire. Screams and bellowed threats followed. 

She stepped hard on the accelerator. 

Red Hood got back in and switched weapons. 

Three big black cars pulled onto the road behind her. She swallowed, took a hard right, and barrelled down a tiny alley to get onto the main road. Bullets tore up the asphalt around her. Some tore through the body of the car. She wasn’t thinking about that. Just the road, the car, and the map of the Bowery fixed in her mind. The wind screamed past the open window.

Red Hood shot out the wheels of the largest pursuer, a huge armoured car. It crashed into one of the others and flipped into a deafening crash behind her. Two fast vehicles took its place. They were catching up on a long stretch of straight road. She glanced at her side mirrors. A guy in a balaclava was pointing a rifle at her. 

She slammed on the brakes. 

Red Hood moved easily with the sudden change in momentum. He was the only one. The three cars flanking her shot past. The fourth smashed into her boot. Red Hood swung out the window and shot the driver in the head. 

She changed gear and swung around into a hard u-turn. Tires screeched, rubber burned on the road, before she shot away back the way they came. She gulped down a breath, and shook away the ringing in her head from the crash. 

“Take it easy, you’re doing great,” Red Hood said. Ammo slotted into a rifle with a ker-thunk. “Take this corner and keep going. I’ll find you after.” 

She blinked, turning behind a dilapidated apartment block. “What?” 

He slung a rocket launcher onto his shoulder, and then climbed out of the window entirely. The roof thudded under heavy boots, then he was just gone. 

The other cars appeared from behind the apartment block a second later. They were gaining on her again. 

She sucked in a breath and swung around into the winding back streets. She hoped with all her soul that they were empty tonight. 

The barks of gunfire got closer. She was breathing like a marathon runner. The smooth hum of her engine turned into a straining roar. She handbrake slid heavily into a row of concrete bollards, but shot away before an armoured car could t-bone her. It crashed into the bollards and stopped moving. All her focus was on surviving. Without someone watching her back she couldn’t risk getting out into the open. 

A deafening BOOM shook the streets. Blinding white flashed in her mirrors before red swallowed everything. She looked back. A fireball rose from somewhere several blocks over. That was the heart of Black Mask’s territory, wasn’t it?

The bark of gunfire snapped her out of it. The two remaining cars came at her faster. She picked up speed and wound through a narrow alley, clipping the edge of a dumpster, but making it through to the street beyond. 

The report of a gun fired again. One of the pursuers veered into a wall. The other slowed, then stopped altogether. She took a corner, and caught sight of the driver, slumped in his seat with his chin on his chest.

A heavy weight thumped on the roof. 

Red Hood swung smoothly back inside into the passenger seat. 

Nobody was chasing them anymore. The skies were still red, reflecting off the low clouds like a mistimed sunset. She slowed the car. The world seemed so quiet. The engine was making strange grinding noises. She felt like she was moving at a snail’s pace, but she looked down at the speedometer and saw she was still doing eighty. She slowed some more. 

“Get onto Poplar. There’s an abandoned laundromat at the other end,” he said.

“I know it.”

“Turn into the alley behind it.”

It was a dead end. 

She stopped. The car died with a cough. The alley was an empty place between boarded up buildings. 

Her heart hammered in her ribcage. She was pretty happy with how well she’d handled that. Her hands were shaking but she’d give herself a pass for it. Considering. 

“Not bad,” he said. “I’d practise that handbrake slide if I were you.” 

“How did you know I could do any of that?” she asked quietly. 

She’d had people wave guns in her face before, but never actually been fired on. She’d always assumed, with no evidence at all, she would be cool as a cucumber if the moment came. Now she was through it, she couldn’t work out why she’d taken the route she did. They could have cut her off on Bailey street, or cherry lane, if they had thought about it for half a second. Whatever she had been thinking was completely gone now. 

A shiny red helmet, only slightly soot stained, turned lazily to face her. “You got full points in a tactical driving course three years ago. How do you get kicked out of military school anyway?” 

“They really make you work for it.”

“Figures.”

“You hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t lie to me, I will call an ambulance on your ass and we both know you don’t have insurance.”

She stopped to actually think about it. Her neck hurt, probably from the strain. Otherwise she was just lightly bruised.  

“I’ll stop by the free clinic. It’s nothing serious.”

“Good.”

He opened the door. It took a spirited shove to get the warped panels to move. He got out and walked around to her side. 

She was still gripping the steering wheel. It wasn’t just her hands shaking now. 

He crouched next to her open window. The blank red helmet watched her for a moment.

She tilted her head slightly. “Need a lift?”

He snorted. 

He held out a stack of bills. 

“What’s this?” she asked, like an idiot. 

Her hands were still working, even if her mouth wasn’t, and automatically took the money. 

“For the night’s work. Plus hazard pay.”

Son of a gun. She couldn’t count it in front of him, she wasn’t a rube, but Benjamin Franklin’s gormless face looked back up at her. It was a thick stack. She might be in the clear. He stood. She couldn’t see the helmet anymore, just a handgun tucked into his belt. 

“Oh, and Soiler?”

“Please call me Louise.” 

“Don’t let me catch you stealing cars in my neighbourhood again.” 

Chapter Text

Louise hung her apron over her neck and pushed through the kitchen door into the diner. 

Her hot regular was sitting at the counter. His elbows were on the table and head hung loosely at an angle, eyes half closed with dark rings. She tied her apron strings around her waist and went straight to the coffee pot to get him his usual. 

“Morning Jason,” she sang, obnoxiously bright and cheery. 

He glared at her. A massive yawn cracked through his face. 

“Good morning yourself,” he grumbled, just as a sympathetic yawn hit her too. 

“How’s your thing coming along?” She wiggled her fingers vaguely as she asked, giving no details because she had no details. She wasn’t totally sure his name was even Jason. 

She was eighty percent sure it used to be Robin. Not dead after all. Good for him. 

“Never better,” he drawled. “On the verge of my big break.”

“Congratulations. Have a donut.” She slid him a plate. 

“What about your stuff?” he said, taking a bite and getting cinnamon sugar on his fingers. 

“Between stuff right now, but I’ve got plans. This one’s going places.” 

“ This one , huh?”

“Just you watch,” she said, opening her laptop on the counter and smiling wide. “I’m the next big thing.” 

He smirked around a mouthful of donut. “Uh-huh.” 

She worked on her own exploits for the next fifteen minutes and left him in peace. The diner was always dead in the mornings, and the owner never came round on weekdays. She rolled her neck to ease the crick in it. She’d recovered from the strain of the Red Hood’s car chase the other week, only to sleep funny last night and kick it all back up again. The money he gave her made up for it. Sweet Lord, did it make up for it. 

When Jason put his cup down with a certain finality she got up to get him a refill in a takeaway cup. 

“How’s the hunt for a nurse?” he asked quietly. “The interview go alright?”

She slowed pouring the coffee. “Yeah, actually. He starts tomorrow. Turns out we live in the same building.” His name was Sean and he seemed both professional and unflappable.

“That’s great.”

“Yeah. Well. He can only do part time.” 

“Aw. He’s just filling in until you can get someone permanent, then?”

“I don’t know.” She spooned in the sugar and stirred slowly. The fact that they didn’t really know each other made it easier for her to talk about some things. Business was verboten. Fleeting little secrets that didn’t really matter were allowed to slip through. His guess was exactly what she told her grandpa and his doctor. That this was just a stopgap. 

“I think I’m alright with just part time help,” she admitted. “I don’t know if I can ever really trust anyone with this again.”

His brow lowered. “Who’s picking up the slack? You?”

“Me.” 

He raised his eyebrows then looked away. 

She glowered, still holding his coffee. “The last nurse screwed us over. Badly. I’m not taking that risk again.”

“I saw the scandal on the news, the hospices got hit even worse. You’ve gotta know that’s not on you.”

“Of course it is. Am I running this show or not?” She passed him his drink. “I am. For the record. The buck stops with me.” 

He looked at the vinyl countertop and his expression turned cold. “What are you doing about it then?”

“Never letting it happen again, that’s for sure,” Louise tossed out, and turned away to busy herself with rearranging the mugs.  Some days she wanted to deck the Red Hood purely out of frustration over how much she owed him. “I owe that son of a bitch so much,” she muttered.

“What?” Jason said.

“Donut?” she replied.

“I had one.”

“Have another.”

“I’m already doing my part in the donut wars, go wear down someone else,” he said, and she could almost hear the eye roll in his voice. 

“Fine. Cupcake?”

“Louise.”

“Scone? Banana bread? Macaroon?”

“I’ll have the check.”

“Done. I’m so good at this waitressing stuff.” 

Gotham’s underworld simmered, and then reached a boil. Black Mask triggered the nuclear option. 

Louise didn’t mind the building tension, it being none of her business, until she got the same alert as everyone else in the city: Arkham Breakout. The Joker was on the loose. 

She looked at the alert through bleary eyes in the dark of her bedroom, then dropped the phone back on the bedside table and rolled over. 

The phone rang. She squeezed her eyes shut. Sean was supposed to be working tomorrow, but deep in her gut twisted the fear he was calling her to cancel. The phone rang on. 

She rolled back and grabbed the phone. 

It was Marcus, the kid Red Hood saddled her with back during her dirt smuggling days. She had only a moment to be relieved. 

He was stuck out by the docks with no ride home. 

Laying on her back, she dragged a hand through her hair. She wiggled her toes in the warmth of her blankets for just a second. She considered being a bad person. 

“Alright, kid. Hold tight. I’ll be there in twenty.”

She threw off her blankets, decisive, and not at all mournful. She shoved her feet into her doc martens and pulled her thick wool coat over her flannel pyjamas. 

“Keep it down!” Grandpa yelled from his room, smacking the wall.

“I’m heading out!” she called, grabbing her keys and making for the door. “Be back in an hour!”

“Then do it quietly!”

She made a point of slamming the door behind her. She jogged down to the carpark and had her beaten up old rust bucket speeding towards the docks in record time. 

The roads were very quiet. Only idiots were out tonight. And cops. Lots of those , all with flashing lights. 

There was a red glow in the direction of the river. She hoped it stayed there. Minding its own business. The glare reflected off of wet roads. 

She pulled up outside the address Marcus gave her. It wasn’t a warehouse, it was some kind of community centre. All the lights were off except one small side room on the second level. She texted him.  

Four teenage boys came out, all about fifteen or younger, carrying backpacks and looked scared out of their minds. They hurried from the door and piled into her car. A corner of a D&D dungeon master's guide was sticking out of a hole in the side of a backpack. Marcus got into the front seat. He had the decency to look embarrassed. Louise watched the procession with a growing scowl.

“Marcus.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his shoulders hunched. “This is Brian and–”

Louise held up a hand. “I truly do not care.” She heaved a sigh and mentally composed a letter of sincere apology to her bed, who would surely miss her dearly. “Okay. Who’s going where?”

He relaxed into a slump. “They all live near me.”

“You owe me a full tank of gas.”

“Sorry.” 

She pulled a u-turn and sped down the main road towards Robinson. ‘Near’ ended up being something of an exaggeration. She was happy he was spending time doing normal things so she tried not to yell at him. 

“The Bat Signal is still on,” one of the kids pointed out. 

“That means the police have information for him,” one of the others said with great confidence. “They must have caught him already.” 

Louise didn’t bother to correct him. The light was up to make scared people feel like things were being done and it was all Under Control. They put it out when the cops actually felt in control again. Neither state of affairs was very comforting to her. 

The signal was gone by the time she dropped the last kid off. The rain went from intermittent drizzle to a downpour. The window wipers swept hard across her windscreen, pushing torrents of water out of the way. 

The roads were deserted.

She turned into Crime Alley. Home wasn’t far now. She drove slowly, dodging the dark, growing puddles that disguised all the worst potholes. An entire row of street lights was out and she had nothing to go by except the reflection of her own headlights on the shimmering road ahead. 

The CRACK of an explosion split the air, overtaken by a booming rumble. Fire flashed above her, in the block ahead. She couldn’t see beyond the burning red and billowing clouds even darker than the night. The ground trembled with the force of the explosion. She hit the brakes, wheel sliding over wet asphalt. 

“What that hell,” she hissed. 

The building was an abandoned apartment tower, one of the many in this side of town. Graffiti scrawled over the grey walls between black voids that had once held windows. All she could see now was the jagged, red-lined outline of a gaping hole on maybe the fifth floor. Smoke poured out into the night, and black and sooty rain ran down the side of the building. Rubble had blown out onto the road and surrounding buildings. 

Was this some Joker plan? The smoke wasn’t purple and nobody was laughing. She couldn’t see anyone up there.

She wouldn’t, though, would she? 

There was no way home without driving past it. 

She edged forward slowly. Her finger hesitated over her hazard lights, before she thought better of it and turned all her lights off. Better not to draw attention to herself. Falling debris wasn’t going to discriminate anyway.

Red flickering light shone against the soaked streets. Her eyes adjusted slowly. 

Directly ahead of her, she spotted a long dark patch interrupting the red reflection. She squinted. It was in the shape of a human. She stopped breathing and pumped the brakes, gently this time. She came to a stop in front of the body.

She ran out into the rain. The body was face up in the gutter, one leg swaying gently with the current. There was a pile of debris up on the sidewalk it looked to have slid down from. She knelt in the puddle.

Even in the gloom she recognised his clothes. Armour, really. The Red hood was missing his helmet. 

She reached to check his pulse, and gasped. There was a long slice through the side of his neck. It was oozing into the puddle, as red as the reflected flames they were all doused with. She pulled his jacket collar up to try and put pressure on the injury, then hissed. Her hand started bleeding too, a long line of blood dribbling down the side of her index finger. A batarang fell out of the lining of his jacket. 

She froze. 

She looked up at the torn open building.

A shadow moved around inside the smoke and flames. Through the drumming of the rain she heard deranged cackling. 

Fuck. 

She hauled him up and dragged him along the gutter to the car. He was heavier than he looked but she was stronger than she looked. Her arms hooked under his armpits, while she staggered backwards. He wheezed softly. Still alive. Okay. Good. Still alive. Hopefully that wasn’t a cracked rib. 

Every second she was expected to get cold clocked by a furious Bat. Or maybe a zipline to drag her up into the sky and dangle her from a street lamp. 

Red Hood’s head started to roll forward. She caught him in time and supported his head against her bicep. Water splashed everywhere. Her hair was plastered over her forehead and her sleeves stuck and pulled against her arms. Her boots were full of water. She slipped. She got back up. 

She got him into the car and laid him down on the backseat. She pressed a forgotten hoodie to his neck, tying the arms around his torso to try and anchor it, and hoped that would do… anything. He was very pale. 

His eyes moved under his eyelids. 

Still alive. 

She got back in the driver’s seat and edged away from the explosion site. The roads suddenly seemed too busy. The police drove by, cruising with their sirens off but lights flashing. She headed straight for the free clinic. There was a door out the back that was pretty discrete. Unfortunately that meant everyone used it. 

A cluster of Black Mask’s guys were hanging around outside. A doctor was under the awning, yelling at a man with a rifle. The gunman shoved the doctor back dispassionately. 

She kept driving. Inconspicuously.

In her head she was swearing on repeat. 

She had a really good first aid kit in the back of the car. That wasn’t going to be enough. The cut on his neck was just the most obvious injury, but if he was thrown by the explosion, then there had to be more going on. Probably internal damage.

She scoured her brain for ideas. 

One presented itself. 

It was a bad idea. It might not even work. It was burning a bridge and fucking herself over to boot. 

She looked in the rear view mirror. 

Red Hood, who was so obviously Jason in the hazy streetlights, wasn’t moving. The hoodie around his neck was sodden. The broken half of a red domino over one eye looked starkly bright against his pallour. 

Without the helmet half the terror evaporated. He was just a teenager, dying in the backseat of a stranger's car. 

She had no other ideas. 

She headed towards home. It really was very lucky grandpa’s new nurse lived in the same building as her.

Chapter Text

Jason lost time. 

His body was a distant thing, cold and heavy. Like a lead weight holding him down, down, under the earth. A haze smothered his mind like a blanket of snow. Maybe this time he could rest.

Voices found him, despite the haze. Muted impositions that floated in and out of the dark. 

“...any idea what time it is?”

“...wouldn’t do this if I had any other…”

The voice grew louder, angrier. 

“...to make it my problem! This is my home, who do you think you are…”

 A blurry shape resolved into a man’s face above him. Black hair above blue eyes and a square jaw. A knot of emotion twisted in Jason’s chest, bringing him further into his body. Desperate longing and burning fury. He resented it all. Pain, which had been there all along but held at arm’s length, sank its teeth into him. 

“...should be in a hospital.” The man muttered. The voice was wrong. “I’ll do what I can, but you’re going to have to…”

“Thank you,” the other voice replied. A woman. “...pay you, of course. Double, for the inconvenience.” 

“That doesn’t fix this.” The man snapped. “Nothing’s going to fix this.”

The voices floated away. The words lingered, sinking through the mire of pain and cold. 

Nothings going to fix this. 

Time slipped past. 

The pain numbed into nothing. The cold grew and grew. He groaned and tried to shift. He was so heavy. His arm shifted and grazed something burning hot. 

“You’re okay,” the woman said softly. “It’s okay.” 

A cloth peeled off his forehead then returned, cold and wet. Everything hurt. The surface he was lying on was horrible against his skin, the cold air even worse. His skin was so clammy. The light was too bright through his eyelids. 

“You’re through the worst of it. The fever’s coming down. You’re gonna be alright.” A hand moved through his hair, pulling it back from his forehead.

“Mom?” he mumbled. His tongue felt swollen and dry.

“Sorry. Just me.”

The hand pulled away. He twisted to follow it. The effort made him sink back into the haze.

When he next rose into consciousness, he cracked his eyes open. The light was gone. 

He lay very still. He wished it was a strategic decision. He wasn’t sure he could sit up if he tried. A sweat stained sheet was tangled around his legs. He didn’t recognize the bed clothes he was in. In the gloom he made out the narrow bed he lay on, a curtained window above him, and stacked cardboard boxes at the foot of the bed. 

A thin strip of light streamed in from a cracked open doorway, and lay across the room’s other occupant. He assessed his company without turning his head or opening his eyes more than a sliver. 

A woman, sitting on a plastic chair. Her position was a strange pretzeling of limbs, sideways in the chair with a notebook pressed against the backrest that she was scribbling in with her lips pursed. Straight black hair hung loose around her shoulders. The light painted a stripe across her cheek. It took him a few seconds to recognise her. 

“ Louise ?” he rasped. Of all possible people, he would not have predicted her. 

“Hmm?” she said, only turning her head a little and still scribbling. “It’s a great vehicle for disgust, isn’t it? Louise . Really lean into the ‘eez’ and it does all the work, not like ‘Annie’ or ‘Katie’, that don’t bring anything to the table. Louise is a name meant to be hissed. Possibly even spat.”

He blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” she said, turning around with a grin. “How are you feeling?”

Numerous parts of his body were numb. He’d put money on topical anaesthetic. Nothing stronger, he still had all the aches of a really good beating. She brought him a glass of water that he didn’t bother being suspicious over. 

He was alive. There were no worse disappointments available. 

He drank his fill, then let his head fall back. 

“Do you need anything else?” she asked. 

He didn’t say anything. 

“Fair enough,” she said. 

She left, closing the door behind her. 

He stared at the ceiling. Big white tiles with a large brown water stain on the right side of the room. He lifted his hand, despite the exhaustion in his bones, to the side of his neck.

A large bandage covered the area. His fingers traced the bump of stitches under it all. He pressed until it hurt, and his vision blacked out. 

He came back to himself a second later, breathing hard. 

Somewhere below them a dog barked. It barked and barked and barked. It sounded choked, like it was leaning as hard as it could against its collar. 

Bruce made his choice. 

His fingers traced the bumps. 

He thought about ripping the bandage off. Tearing the stitches open. Bruce’s aim was very good. He must have missed the carotid artery, but only just. He really thought he could cheat and find a third way out. 

Hadn’t he been listening? Joker or Jason. Those were his options. He only got to keep one. Not choosing was still a choice. 

There was no ‘after’ to Jason’s plans. He had taken over the city to prove just how easy it was for someone prepared to commit. He had Black Mask on a leash and every criminal cartel in the city bending to his rules. Change was possible if they wanted it. Gotham’s unending appetite for its own could be redirected. 

The point was made. The plan complete.

Batman chose. 

The city would rot. Unchanging.

Jason’s hand fell to the bedsheets. 

What a joke.

He woke up again. 

Bright light streamed in through the door across the bed. An old man stood in the opening, leaning heavily on a cane. He was rail thin, with wiry white and grey hair shot through his black moustache and buzzcut. He narrowed his eyes at Jason. 

“Louise,” he barked. “Your invalid is awake.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. 

“Is he dying?” Louise called back from somewhere else in the apartment.

“How should I know?”

“...Are you dying?” 

The old man turned to glare down the corridor. “Do I sound like I’m dying?”

“Then why are we yelling?” 

“If there was some other way to get you to listen, maybe you would have amounted to something.”

“Aww, Pops, you do care,” she said, appearing in the doorway with a laundry hamper under one arm.

They had the same tall and thin build but that was where any similarity ended. She had a face made for laughing, with eyes that promised mischief. He was all foreboding brow, and looked like he hadn’t smiled since the seventies. 

He tsked. “I want him out of my apartment. And take out the trash. I can smell it from my bedroom.”

“Tell you what, I’ll get the trash today and you get the next lot, hmm?” she said. 

“Brat,” he scowled, and hobbled away. 

She rolled her eyes and strolled into the room, pushing the door shut with a socked-foot. 

“I’ve got your clothes, as clean and mended as they’re going to get.” She put the hamper down at the foot of the bed. 

He could see his jacket folded up at the top of the pile. It was marked with the tell-tale discolouration of bloodstains. No amount of cleaning would wash some things away. 

He tried to push himself up. It was a struggle. She helped him, moving the pillows. It was humiliating. Too late to be getting prissy about accepting help now. 

She sat herself down on the chair. 

“So,” she said, with no follow up, and crossed her legs. 

A weighty silence settled over them. He was unarmed. She was not, he realised. Her posture was relaxed and confident, but it always was. It was usually more convincing. He saw the rigidity to her smile. Her defenceless grandpa was in the next room. She had taken the armour off of the Red Hood and put him in cotton pyjamas. 

He’d pegged her as someone who would cover their ass first and foremost. 

“Why am I here?” he asked. 

“I found you bleeding out in a gutter.” She reached into the bedside table and pulled out a shiny black batarang. “This was stuck in your jacket.”

He took it. 

Something inside of him shut down. His face hardened. 

The silence got heavier. 

Louise reached into one of the nearby cardboard boxes and pulled out an acoustic guitar. She leaned back in her chair and plucked notes idly. Fidgets when nervous, a part of him catalogued in the back of his mind. 

“Did he see you?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” she replied, halfway through a tune he half remembered, “It was dark. Lots of smoke. I think I saw his shadow up in the wreckage on the blown up building, but honestly that could have been anyone.”

“And the clown?”

“I heard him laughing.”

He lowered his head. He had been angry for so long. Whatever it was that had burned in him felt like a hardened slab in his chest now. 

“Why?”

“Why..?”

“Why am I here ? You know who I am.”

“What else do you do when you find a guy half dead on the street?”

“Keep driving.” 

She sniffed. “That’s no way to make friends and influence people.” 

“You trying to be my friend?” he sneered. 

“Sure. We can braid each other’s hair and roller blade through the park.”

“What do you want?”

Her lips twitched in annoyance, before she looked up with a long hum. “How about a loan?”

He looked at her flatly. 

“I’m kidding, asshole. I don’t need anything from you.”

“Yeah? Back to stealing cars? Or got a sucker up for your next scam already?” 

“Yeah, I’m selling your kidneys,” she said, plucking out the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. 

He scoffed. 

She sighed, and her noodling came to an end mid scale. She looked at the shut door. “You saved my grandpa, man. It’s really not that complicated.”

He leaned back against his pillows. “You hate your grandpa.”

Her face did something sharp and involuntary. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“He hates you right back.”

“Hey, go fuck yourself.” She put the guitar down and stood. “And take your antibiotics. You’re not through the woods yet. Painkillers are in the drawer, don’t OD on my spare mattress.”

She left. He threw a blister pack of pills at the door.

His body betrayed him. 

The feverish energy he had raced on for months, years, was suddenly gone. He had smashed face first into a wall, and lay crumpled and pathetic on the ground. He hated it, with all the strength he had left. It didn’t make him any less exhausted. He slept, and slept, and slept. 

Louise was always around, and always busy. He picked up the pattern, as she alternated looking after him and looking after the old man. Food, laundry, medical care, screaming arguments he heard through the walls, business calls as she did the dishes, jokes with the delivery people who dropped off the groceries. 

Wasn’t there supposed to be a new nurse? There was no sign of one. She wasn’t going out for shifts at the diner either. How was she paying for everything?

He hated that he cared. He hated that he was just another invalid here. It took all his energy just to shower and eat. He had no plans, no purpose, he was just taking up space. He didn’t even have the strength to leave and stop being a burden. 

Louise didn’t say a word about it.

He kind of hated her for it. The shame sank through him.

The idiot was going to burn herself out and have nothing to show for it. She already had enough on her plate. 

He owed her so much. 

One morning, as a quiet filled the apartment that meant all other occupants were asleep, he put his foot down. Enough.

He hauled himself up. He had had enough lying down, rotting into the sheets. His feet hit the ground, heavy and sluggish, but he got them under him and moving. The kitchen wasn’t that far. Just twenty steps. 

Fifteen. 

Ten. 

Mission accomplished.

Activate next mission: Make a sandwich. 

He leaned heavily against the bench but he got it done. The pain from his injuries was down to manageable levels now. He hadn’t taken any of the strong painkillers but gritting his teeth through it all had added enormously to his exhaustion. 

Where was a Lazarus pit when you needed one, he thought with an internal roll of his eyes. 

Maybe he should be crawling back to Talia. Apologise for the complete waste of her time and investment. 

No. She deserved better than that from him. After all she did, he’d rather knock on the door of Wayne manor. 

Well, that was obviously a lie. He’d rather rip his own neck open and bleed out on Louise’ ugly vinyl floor than that. He could take a message, thank you very much, Bruce.

He slapped the two sides of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich together. 

There, another victory. He was on a winning streak. He ate slowly and looked out through the kitchen window at the watery early morning sunlight bathing the back alley. Gotham remained exactly where he left it. There was smoke in the distance. Yeah that was about right. 

He needed to get out of here. 

He was still so tired, damnit. 

He leaned forward, his elbows on the bench, and found himself looking through the pass-through window directly at the old man.

Huh. 

Louise’s grandpa sat in the living room, on his leather arm chair holding his cane between his legs. He was watching Jason. The busy little gears that turned perpetually behind Louise’s eyes spun slowly but surely in her grandpa’s eyes now.

Jason really was tired, if he hadn’t noticed he was being watched so intently. He braced himself for whatever abuse he was brewing up. It was probably deserved given the useless lump he was these days. 

“Where were you posted, son?” 

“What?” 

“Afghanistan? Iraq?”

Jason huffed, and hung his head. 

“Take it easy. You’ve survived the worst of it already.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Every generation thinks it’s the first to discover pain and anguish. You’re not. Plenty of others have walked this road before. Whatever you’re going through. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s help for people like you nowadays.”

“What about for your granddaughter?” Jason drawled, before he could be told to go and waste the time of the good people at the veteran’s centre. “Is there any help for her?”

The old man scoffed. “Louise helps herself just fine. She could do with a little real suffering, it might give her some perspective.” 

“You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?” 

He looked up at Jason, his lip curling. “You’re wasting your time. She’ll drop you like every other man she’s ever brought home.”

“Good talk, Gary.” Jason knocked his knuckles on the bench and hobbled back to the guest room. 

The next day, Jason woke up even earlier. He pushed himself up. He felt better. The dead weight in his limbs was fading. He did some sit ups on the floor, then stretched and meditated. 

He felt great. 

Tomorrow he was out of here. 

He made it to the kitchen without even counting steps. The house was quiet again, the whole apartment block felt hushed before the morning rush of kids going to school and the shift workers came and went. 

He checked the living room this time and noted its emptiness. He was making himself some toast when another door softly opened and closed somewhere in the apartment. 

Louise appeared a little later, yawning widely and pulling a giant knitted sweater full of holes over her head. 

She blinked at him after resurfacing and smiled. She shuffled past to the coffee machine. 

She mumbled something that was possibly ‘good morning’. 

He grunted back. “Toast?”

“Yeah. Coffee?”

He grunted in the affirmative. 

They exchanged food stuffs and stood listless eating in the narrow kitchen. Both looked out the window. The sun wasn’t above the city skyline yet, but soft light somehow made its way into the alleyway anyway. Beads of condensation ran in uneven lines down the glass. There was something pretty about it.

The light grew stronger, and fell golden and dabbled on a narrow bookshelf above the pass-through window. Cookbooks were wedged haphazardly alongside a random assortment of other books. His eyes trailed over the titles until they snagged on a beaten copy of Wuthering Heights. 

“This yours?” he asked.

“Hmm?” Louise looked up from her coffee. “Oh. I think it belongs to my old high school, technically. Never actually read it.” 

“Too good for English class?” 

She shrugged. “I wasn’t a great student.”

“You should read it. It’s good.” 

“How accurate an adaptation is the Kate Bush song?” 

“It skips a subplot or two.”

She smiled and sipped her drink. “I picked up a paranormal romance series a friend recommended a couple of years back, but it lost me after the first book.” 

“What was it called?” It had been years since he read anything just for the sake of it. He missed it. He missed the kid he had been. 

She squinted in thought. “A Dream of Swords and Flowers. It’s in one of the boxes in your room, I think.”

“Any good?”

“I liked where I thought it was going, but one of the love interests died. The cowards way out of a love triangle.”

He chuckled. “No idea what you’d think of Wuthering Heights then.”

“No spoilers.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Someone in the apartment above them flushed, and the pipes all creaked with the influx of water. The day began. He saluted with his coffee cup and made his way back to his room. 

He did some more stretches and light exercises. Then he dug up the book and read the day away.

Chapter Text

Louise came home from a supply run to an apartment with one less occupant. 

She put down her shopping bags. The quiet gave the game away. She followed her instincts to the spare room. 

The bed was neatly made and the dishes were all cleared away. The combat boots that had spent the last two weeks under the bed were gone. She stood in the doorway of a now pristine store room. The smell of blood and sickness had been gone for some time now, but she was pretty sure that was always going to haunt her when passing this threshold. 

That first night, she had been so sure Jason would die. A victim of her incompetence and bad choices, bleeding out while she did nothing but flounder. 

By the time he woke and started fuming she was so relieved she didn’t even mind that he was an ass about it or that she was bleeding money. 

Alright, she minded a little. Not paying for a nurse anymore reduced expenses, but without even her paltry hours at the diner to support them it wasn’t nearly enough. She had been burning through her savings. 

She found a buyer for the pile of slag she was left with after Ace Chemicals blew up right next to her storage shed. People would buy anything in Gotham. That injection of cash kept them going. She had plans, good ones, this next gig was going places. If she ever got it off the ground.

She sat on the bed. 

She hoped Jason was okay. Wherever he was. He seemed like a guy who could look after himself, obviously, but he also seemed like a guy who didn’t see why it was necessary.

“If I find you bleeding out in the street again, I’m gonna be so annoyed,” she muttered. 

Her phone, buried deep in a coat pocket, chimed. She was hoping for a call back from the diner, if they’d let her do the morning shifts again, but when she pulled the blocky Nokia out the black and white screen showed a message from an unfamiliar number. 

‘ Take care of yourself. Don’t let the old man win.’

She huffed. Like she needed to be told. She put the phone back in her pocket, and stood. She had a lot to do. 

Her eyes landed on a suitcase sitting on the chair. It wasn’t hers. Or Grandpas, he guarded all his things jealously. It was pretty old and beat up looking, about medium sized. 

She flicked the lid up. 

It was stuffed to bursting with cash. She slammed the lid back down again and looked around frantically.

Holy shit. 

That was a lot of dough.  

Her phone chimed again.

‘ And don’t spend it all in one place. ’

Louise’s next month was very busy. 

A third of the money went straight into rebuilding her savings. Another third went into home repairs, things she’d been putting off for a while because the prices would never come down and a leaking tap wasn’t the end of the world anyway. 

The last third went into her next venture: cloud computing. It was brand new technology, still mostly buzzwords and confusion. She had no doubt that tomorrow it would all be swallowed up by the likes of Wayne Tech or Kord Industries, or some other giant conglomerate. Today was still up for grabs. She got a really good deal on about fifty playstation consoles and had them reformatted to be basically servers. All it took then was a fast internet connection, and bam. Cloud storage, baby. Marcus’ friend Terry had half a computer science degree and was in desperate need of cash, so she paid him to set it up and keep it going. 

All she had to do was sell her services to people afraid of being left behind by the next big tech movement. The fact that nobody was totally clear on what ‘the cloud’ actually was just yet meant that it was up to Louise to decide what it was going to be for them, and at what prices. 

It sold a hundred times better than dirt. It sold so well in fact that Terry told her to slow down on finding customers, because they didn’t actually have a functioning service yet, just some very hefty deposits. She turned her efforts to finding a new nurse for grandpa. Grandpa chased off the first, but she found a second in almost no time. She wasn’t needed at home. The business only needed time. 

She found herself with nothing to do. 

It was a foreign sensation. 

So she picked up Wuthering Heights. If Jason liked it, then it probably wasn’t as bad as she had assumed at fifteen. 

Two days later, in her tiny office next to a store room packed full of whirring playstations she turned the last page. She flipped the book over and stared at the cover, then stared at the wall directly ahead of her. 

What the hell. 

She swung backwards on her chair and opened the door.

“Hey Terry!” she yelled. “Did you ever read Wuthering Heights?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a book!”

“...No?”

She scoffed and shut the door again. She landed all four legs of her chair on the ground and fished her phone out of her pocket. 

‘What the hell ,’ she typed out to Jason. 

She sent it to the number he last messaged her from, at least. She assumed it was a burner phone and long deactivated, but there was no one else to talk to about it. She didn’t even need him to see it really, so long as she got to let it out.

‘I thought wuthering heights was a love story. I thought Heathcliff was a romantic hero! That was the most confusing, claustrophobic, miserable thing I have ever heard of and I can’t get it out of my head. I’m being haunted now, and I’ve never even been to a moor. How could you do this to me.’ 

Having said her piece she flipped the phone over and crossed her arms. 

The phone chimed. She flipped it back over. 

‘Lol’ Jason wrote.

She pursed her lips to stop the smile. 

She typed, ‘‘It’s good,’ he says ‘you should read it.’ Not ‘its a dozen fucked up english people with three names between them all screwing each other over until they run out of graves to fill’.’

He didn’t reply for some time and she wondered if that was all she’d get out of him. Then the phone chimed again. 

‘Honestly I didn’t think you’d actually read it.’

‘You said it was good! ’ 

‘It made you feel something, didn’t it?’

She opened her mouth then shut it again. ‘Drinking Gotham harbour water would also make me feel something.’

‘Why’d you finish it then?’

She narrowed her eyes. She couldn’t put the book down, it was like watching a car crash: fascinating in its horrible inevitability. Even the incomprehensible old timey speak became part of it, reeling her in like a fish. She had never seen anything like it before.

‘You can’t just get off a roller coaster halfway through,’ she said. ‘It’d be disrespectful. To the park operators.’ 

‘Somehow I don’t think Emily Bronte would hold it against you.’ 

She rolled her eyes. 

It was nice to know he was still kicking. Wherever he was. There hadn’t been any chatter about him in the city. 

Her phone screen lit up again. 

‘You should read One Hundred Years of Solitude,’ he said.

‘ What’s that ?’ she asked, ‘It better not be as messed up as this one.’

‘It’s actually very normal. It’s a Colombian classic.’

‘Huh. I don’t know any Colombian books.’

She didn’t know many books from anywhere. She wasn’t much of a fiction person in general.

‘Could probably stand to broaden my horizons,’ she added. ‘No unhinged British people marrying their cousins?’

‘Not a single Brit to be found. It’s not set on a moor either.’ 

With that stirring recommendation, she decided to pick it up from the library when she had some free time again. 

The business had its soft launch to tentative success. The customers were happy and she didn’t have to return any deposits. She expanded the server farm by another rack of playstations. She didn’t want to get ahead of herself only for the bottom to fall out, but so far everything was coming up Louise. 

The lady who checked her books out at the library was a redhead in a wheelchair. She looked at the worn paperback with a pensive, slightly cold expression.

Louise kicked back in her chair in her office, and cracked the book open.

Two days later she closed the book and looked up at the ceiling. That son of a gun. She grabbed her phone.  

‘I bet you thought that was real funny, ’ she texted. ‘Totally normal. Uh-huh. Nothing odd here.’ 

‘Did you read it?’ Jason replied almost immediately. 

‘Just finished. It was so weird! Holy shit!’

‘Hahaha’

‘Don’t think I didn’t see that little dodging of the question over people marrying their cousins. You think you’re so slick, don’t you?’ 

‘To be fair,’ he replied. ‘They’re not cousins.’

‘No this is much worse,’ she said. She gave a baffled laugh and kept typing, ‘Damn, what a trip. I feel like I’ve just watched a thirteen car pile up on the highway, and now I have to go home and wash dishes and file taxes. Why is nobody talking about this? I feel like a crazy person here!’

‘It really sticks with you, right?’  

‘I didn’t know books could be like this, ’ she said, feeling a little vulnerable about it. She hadn’t stopped thinking about Wuthering Heights, and now with some distance she could admit she actually liked the confusing experience. It felt like it tore open a part of herself she didn’t know was there and threw a firecracker in. 

‘ I read it way younger than I probably should have,’ he said. 

‘How young are we talking?’

‘About twelve. I just found it in a library, it blew my mind.’

‘I bet,’ she wrote. Then her lip quirked. ‘You probably looked at donkeys a little differently afterwards.’

‘...I forgot about that.’ 

‘I can’t forget, so you don’t get to either.’ 

‘Ugh .’

She laughed. 

Late one night Louise was loading up the brand new dishwasher, the novelty of which had not worn off yet, when her phone buzzed in her back pocket. 

‘ I finished that series you recommended,’ Jason texted.  

Rumour on the street said the Red Hood had been seen again. Others said it was copycats, and he was dead. The underworld was a mess, everybody scrambling for their little piece of the pie, with the big dogs snarling at each other from across the table. Red Hood hadn’t swung in with any of his signature wild stunts. Yet? Nobody knew. 

She hadn’t heard from him in two weeks. 

‘How was it? ’ she replied. 

‘Alright. Kinda sticky.’

She snorted and scraped cold lasagna off a plate. 

‘I’m pretty sure it was my first encounter with the word ‘turgid’,’ she said. 

‘A word I have previously only heard in relation to corpses.’

‘Ha!’  

She hadn’t finished the series, but it had been insanely popular at her second high school. She learned all about it by osmosis.

‘The vampire love interest is a rat and I wish he died instead of the other one,’ Jason said after a five minute lull.  

‘Right?’ she replied immediately. ‘ Bring back the human. His scrappy unhinged ambition compels me.’ 

‘I mean the werewolf! He understood her better.’

‘Oh,’ she replied. ‘Na, he was boring.’

‘You’re insane. Why even read this fantasy stuff if you’re just here for the humans?’

‘It’s called having a refined palate.’

‘Horseshit .’

‘lol .’

They kept messaging back and forth throughout the night. His messages were intermittent, with long gaps at times, but he kept coming back. It was nice.

She finished the housework, checked her emails and found no fires in need of putting out. The nurse was helping Grandpa with his bath and they weren’t even yelling about it. She climbed out onto the fire escape for some fresh air. 

It was a cold night. The wind howled over the gap above the apartment blocks. There were no clouds, and a couple of rogue stars made it through the shield of smog. Nobody else was outside. 

For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel like she was sprinting on a speeding-up treadmill.

She breathed in the night. 

‘You should read Pride and Prejudice,’ Jason wrote. 

‘I’ve actually heard of that one!’ she replied. 

‘It’s great.’

‘Yeah?’

‘One of my favourites,’ he said a few minutes later. 

She smiled. ‘I’ll check it out.

‘Lol Collins proposed, ’ Louise texted on a Tuesday morning, over a milky coffee and a paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice. 

‘Lmao.' Jason replied. 

Word on the street said the Red Hood and Batman had brawled in the industrial sector last night. The Batmobile was heard roaring through the alley afterwards. Nobody saw what happened to the Red Hood, only that he didn’t end up in police custody. 

‘What’s with this Wickham guy though? I thought Darcy was the hunk for this one.'

‘The heart wants what it wants.’

‘Hmmm,’ she replied. Jason was not to be taken seriously, except for when he was dead serious. 

‘You’re so full of it,’ she texted later that day . ‘I knew Darcy was the only one for Lizzy! She’d be bored with any of these other losers.’

He laughed at her.

She landed another customer. The second month of regular payments all came in, and she didn’t know what to do with herself. She was used to having to scramble a little harder. Success was success though, and she wasn’t about to question it before it had the chance to all come burning down.

She treated herself to a night out. Skrunkfest was on, and while she didn’t have tickets, she did know how to climb the retaining wall down to the pebbly beach where the music festival was being held this year. Gotham’s music scene was a lively thing, with the local style affectionately compared to getting hit over the head by a car battery. Louise loved it. She drank too much, screamed along to her favourite songs, and went home with someone who was nice or possibly just hot. 

Her eyes cracked open the next day in the bed of a guy with a purple mohawk and a giant anarchy tattoo on his chest. She squinted in the gloom of a cramped bedroom with all the curtains drawn. 

She was very hungover. Her mouth felt disgusting, her feet were bruised from the moshpit, and she was starving. 

What a good night. It had been a long time. 

She crawled out of the bed and found her clothes. Her partner for the night remained sleeping with his mouth open and tiny snores coming out. 

“Goodbye Mr purple mohawk man,” she whispered, softly closing the bedroom door, and then the front door. 

The afternoon light was suitably subdued and watery for her tastes. It got dark early these days. She looked up and down the street and took a moment to wonder where her car was. Then she remembered she caught the bus to the festival. 

She caught a bus back to the bowery, did not throw up, grabbed a greasy Philly cheesesteak from the place on the corner, and started to walk home. 

The sidewalks were piled high with soggy rubbish after a week of rain, and the evening commute honked up and down the main road. It was too early for the street lights, but the clouds hung low and dark in the sky.

She wound through the alleys and side roads to cut a few minutes off her walk. It wasn’t late enough in the day to be too dangerous, she thought. 

She turned into an alley. A crowd of men with assorted blunt weapons were hanging around the back entrance of a nightclub. 

She turned back around. 

A big guy stood behind her with a considering look on his face and a baseball bat on his shoulder. 

She stopped in place. 

He looked vaguely familiar. Maybe it was just the black wool hat. They were a common choice in this neighbourhood. 

“Hey,” he said, slowly. 

She chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of sandwich while her mind sped up to terminal velocity. Fuck. Make a run for it or play nice? He wasn’t that close to her, but he was blocking the way. The bat had bent nails hammered through the end of it. 

“Hey man. Can I get past?” she asked. 

“Didn’t you sell me a car with no motor?” 

She frowned. “Doubt it. I work in a call centre.” And it was the carburetor. 

“Good for you,” he said, and slung the bat off his shoulder. 

She took a slow step back. She should have run. Maybe she could take him, if she was quick. And if he had no back up. 

Some of the guys further down the alley noticed them and the murmur of background conversation dropped. 

“See, I might know nothing ‘bout cars, but I never forget a face.”

He approached leisurely, swinging the bat by the knob. She knew exactly what he was doing, with his little intimidation routine, which didn’t make it any less intimidating. She kept backing up. Her mind raced. There was a stack of wooden crates pushed up against the nearest building, maybe she could scramble up it. Then what? These goons absolutely had guns. 

“The boss man didn’t much like me getting cheated, on his dime. No, he did not.”

He swung the bat up into a two-handed hold. She made her peace with booking it. 

“Really blew a gasket, didn’t I?” A mechanised voice said. 

Nail bat guy jumped and swore. Louise stood very very still. The voice came from behind her and slightly up a bit. On top of the crates. The crowd froze and swapped glances nervously. 

“I, uh. Hey boss,” Nail bat said. “Been a while.” He edged away from her to stand in the safety of the frozen crowd. They were swapping nervous glances and stood a little apart from him. 

She turned. 

The Red Hood landed on the street with a heavy thud. He had an automatic rifle slung across his back. 

The helmet turned to her. 

He looked bigger and bulkier in his gear. The neon glare of the nightclub’s back entrance shone over the shiny surface. It was completely unreadable. She had forgotten.

He cocked his head. 

Son of a bitch. 

He stalked forward suddenly, and she recoiled. Her back hit the crates. 

“Remember to scream,” he said very quietly. 

His fist lashed out in a vicious jab, and wood exploded with a horrible crunch. She, right next to the damage, screamed heartily. She collapsed clutching her arm at a weird angle. Her throat was sore after the music festival, so she made herself cry instead. 

“Time to shush now,” he drawled, before swinging the rifle off his back and advancing on the gang. She hiccuped and swallowed some whimpering. 

“Now,” he barked. The goons all jumped to attention. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”

He gave his orders and she pulled herself up and slunk off into the night. She sprinted as soon as she was out of sight. 

The Red Hood reclaimed his territory across the city. He was violent and ruthless, and on a rampage.

It felt like it was different now. He had still saved her from getting her head caved in. He was still the man who slept in her spare room for two weeks and did all the dishes when he left. 

He was also the most powerful crime lord in the city, who might not appreciate some random civilian knowing that about him. 

His favourite book was Pride and Prejudice. He pretended it was just ‘one of his favourites’ because he was sensitive about it. 

She gave it a week.  

‘Started reading Jane Eyre yesterday,’ she texted him. ‘ I’m noticing a lot of these famous sexy gothic heroes are actually just vicious assholes. I hope Mr Rochester falls off the roof of his own castle.’ 

She stared at her text for a bit. 

‘Manor, ’ she corrected. ‘Whatever.’

He didn’t reply.

Chapter Text

Jason stood in an airport bookshop, watching the arrivals come through.

He wore no mask and no leather jacket, only a simple puffer vest. There was a discrete knife hidden on his person. His tired eyes stung under the bright, eternal lights but he blinked through it. He checked the overhead timetables. There was still time. 

He roamed the shelves idly, looking like just another bored punter waiting to pick up grandma. There was a new John Grisham book and some celebrity autobiographies. He had completely lost track of pop culture and didn’t recognise any of them. He turned into the fantasy book aisle. 

His eyes slid over Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and then snapped back, with his brow furrowed. 

He scoffed at it. 

Louise would probably respect the hustle. Someone was getting a pay day out of a two hundred year old book someone else wrote. Good for them. 

He picked it up and read the blurb. It sounded stupid. He was a zombie, he was allowed to say that. 

Louise would have so much fun tearing it to shreds. 

His lips thinned. He put it back and walked to a different aisle. 

The Red Hood was back, which meant there was no Jason Todd anymore. At every moment he was facing off against Batman, the cops, and the criminal underworld simultaneously. He couldn’t be associating with random civilians at the same time. He wouldn’t ruin her life like that. 

He missed it, the casual back and forth. 

He missed a lot of things. 

It all melted into the churning knot of anger beating in his chest.

He checked the arrivals timetable. Still time.

None of Red Hood’s guys were working this op, he was on his own. He didn’t trust any of them. Not really.  

His territory had reached some stability all the same. His rules were established and followed with enough commitment that he wasn’t making examples of people every night. Violence related to organised crime had dropped, and now held steady.

It wasn’t enough. 

The dress ups were crawling out of their holes. The Joker was out of Arkham. His rules didn’t mean squat to them. He needed to evolve. He needed to be more. That was Bruce’s problem, a refusal to adapt. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake. 

He picked up a book at random and sat at a table by the little attached cafe. He moved aside a spread open newspaper and a dirty coffee cup and saucer. 

A smaller operation, that was his next move. Less people, less collateral. He wasn’t delusional, he knew how this worked. There would be collateral. There was always collateral. 

It wouldn’t be people with good intentions. 

He flicked through the book. Over the top of it, he saw a picture of Bruce Wayne. It was in the newspaper he shoved aside. He saw half the headline, ‘ Death of Wayn- ’

He tilted his head, and rolled the paper over to see the rest of it. 

‘Death of Waynes’ Killer’

Oh. Joe Chill was dead. 

It was just a small story on page eight. Thomas and Martha Wayne’s murderer died in hospital of leukaemia. The photo was an unrelated picture of Bruce walking out of the WE building in a suit and tie. Bruce had been there though, in the hospital. He sat with Chill at the end, and paid for the funeral and burial. He declined to give an interview, but did give a short statement. 

‘My parents strove for reconciliation and peace. In their memory, those are the principles I live by.’

A sour taste sat in Jason’s mouth. 

It sank into a lump in his throat. Then sank further into the bitter burning rage. 

He wanted to laugh. 

A lifetime of raging at the world, growling about injustice atop gargoyles in the rain, and now he preaches peace? He put weapons in children’s hands and marched them single file to their doom. And he talked about peace. 

He was so angry, he felt distant from his body. His fingers were cold in fingerless wool gloves and his temples ached, but it was all through a veil of separation. 

Would Thomas or Martha forgive Chill if they knew what his actions turned their son into? Would they want peace for the man who robbed them of everything?

The article went on to talk about how gracious Bruce was and the charitable work he had done for the very neighbourhood his parents died in. Jason delicately turned the flimsy page to keep reading. In the back of his head he pictured ripping it apart, flipping the table and screaming. He flattened the page out. 

He thought there might be an undercurrent of criticism in the writing. It was all too tidy. Demeaning the memory of the fallen, it did not say. Offering forgiveness that wasn’t his to give, it did not say. Maybe he was projecting. Maybe he was the only one who thought these things. Who else could? Thomas and Martha didn’t get magically resuscitated to give their opinions. Now Chill was too dead for it to matter.

What did forgiveness achieve in the end? Besides pretty lies to make his passing palatable. 

That was all it was when it came down to brass tacks. Bruce couldn’t accept death. 

He had that luxury. 

Jason’s target came through the arrival gate. 

He was skinny, white, and clean shaven with a friendly face. He wore a nice watch and expensive leather shoes. Human trafficking had been going well for him.

Jason followed him out.

Louise got on with her life. 

Business stabilised, and she could move out of her grandpa’s apartment again. She thought about sharing a place to save on rent, but in the end she gambled on privacy and found a studio apartment at the other end of the Bowery, in a tower some delusional property developer had once hoped would be luxury condos. The plumbing worked and she had a nice view through a big west facing window. 

She finished reading all the Brontes and looked around for something else to read. Without someone to talk it over with, half the appeal was gone. She was busy anyway, and never got around to it. She missed it. 

She ran into the guy with the purple mohawk again. They shopped at the same grocery store. He let her have the last of the beef cup noodles. She let him have her number. 

A month later, she let him call her his girlfriend.

His name was Leo, and the purple mohawk only came out on weekends. From Monday to Friday it was just a sad purple pony tail while he worked pumping gas. He had all the ambition of the average mollusc, but he was tall, hot, and not too needy. They liked the same music and he made her laugh. 

Late one Tuesday night he was sitting on her couch, watching some reality tv. It was a good couch. She’d bleached Jason’s blood out of the cover and the whole thing turned a hideous splotchy yellow. She threw an orange throw over the back and it brought the whole room together. Leo ate the last of some takeout noodles from a carton, his sock clad feet swinging over the edge. 

She sat on the bed with her legs crossed and her laptop on the blankets in front of her. Some of the servers needed replacing. There were faster models of playstations 3 coming out soon, but Terry was on her back to get some real servers. They were more expensive. It would give them technical support if something went wrong. If they paid for it, that was, support was expensive too. She was investigating her options. 

She shivered and looked up. The golden light shining through the windows had faded when she wasn’t looking. The sunbaked feeling of the afternoon was all gone. 

Leo’s backpack was closer than the wardrobe. He usually had a hoodie in there. She rolled over sideways and hefted it up by the straps. 

“Lazy,” he said from the couch, not looking away from the tv. 

“‘M cold,” she replied. 

“Cold and lazy.”

She unzipped the bag and shoved her arm inside. 

Leo stopped moving. His eyes shot over to her. 

She found something smooth and hard. Something plasticky jabbed into her wrist. She looked down and saw a clown mask. 

It was white, red, and green.

There was a gun under it. 

Leo was looking at her. 

“You’ve been getting into Insane Clown Posse without me?” her mouth said. “That’s as good as cheating I’m pretty sure.”

A startled laugh burst out of him. 

“Baby, how can you say that, I’d never!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before,” she said, shoving all his stuff back into the bag and a well of panic deep down inside her. She got up. 

She grabbed her empty takeaway container and pointed at his. He handed it over, watching her closely, and she took them to the kitchenette. She made a show of putting them in the sink and running the water. She could feel his eyes on her. She swallowed the lump in her throat. She forced her body to relax, switching wholly into emergency mode. 

She grabbed her phone from her back pocket as casual as she had ever done anything in her life, dear God, please may it look casual, and opened her messages. She scrolled through a descending list of contacts to someone who hadn’t answered her in six months. 

“Hey babe,” Leo said. “Want to go out tonight?”

“I thought you were watching your show,” she replied, sounding distracted. 

The sounds of the tv turned off. “It’s boring tonight. Let me take you out.”

‘One of Joker’s guys is in my house.’

She pressed send and rolled her head on her neck to look back at Leo. 

“You know I’ve got work.”

He got up, his feet hitting the floor with a thud. “You’re your own boss. Just take a break.”

“If I don’t do it, nobody will. The sad downside to being the boss.”

He came and put his chin on her shoulder from behind. He put his hands on her hips. He offered up some pathetic puppy dog eyes. “Please?” 

“Aww, baby.” She reached up and closed his eyes. 

He laughed, and leaned back. He did love to laugh. 

“You’re really good,” he said, smiling. 

“What?”

“If I didn’t know you, I would never guess you’re terrified right now.” 

Suddenly she hated his smile more than anything in the world. 

“What are you talking about?” she said, turning slowly to face him. She pushed his hands off her. He went without a fight. 

“You don’t have to be. Scared,” he said. “It’s not that bad. You’d be great at it, you know.”

“Are you insane?” Stupid question. 

“I’m serious! You’re quick on your feet, you can take a joke, and I know you’re not squeamish. And trust me, it pays better than anything you’ve got going on. Not that you’ll get as much as me. It takes a while to work up to that.”

She stared at him. There was a filleting knife sitting on the counter. He was closer to it than her. She didn’t think he’d seen it. 

“Come on,” he said, with a self satisfied little twist to his lips. “You had to wonder how I could afford an Audi?”

“I thought your dad paid for it.”

He scowled. “Well he didn’t.” 

“I don’t know why you’re telling me. I’m not interested, obviously. I don’t need to know.” 

“The thing is, you do know.”

She didn’t look at the knife. 

“Let’s pretend I don’t.” 

“It doesn’t really work like that.” He sighed, rolled his eyes and began to step forward. “Look. I was kind of hoping this would happen. I’m sick of pretending like it’s–”

She grabbed the knife. He grabbed her wrist. 

“What are you going to do with that?” he demanded.

She dropped the knife and punched him in the face. He staggered back, then laughed at her. 

“You know what, yeah. Let’s go. I work for the fucking Joker, you really think I’m–”

The window exploded with a gunshot. Leo collapsed with a burst of blood from his foot. The wind howled across the dark open window and the Red Hood swung in. He landed smoothly and stalked across the room. Leo swore and crawled back towards his backpack. 

Red Hood got to him first. 

Louise kept her back pressed up against the wall.

He attacked him with a brutality she had never seen before. She knew Hood was ruthless, everyone did, but she had never seen him angry. Not like this: a release valve on a pressure cooker unlocked. Leo made a horrible gurgling noise, then stopped moving.

Red Hood dropped him and stepped back. He was breathing hard. It came through the modulator as crunchy rasps. 

Louise got closer. She nudged Leo with her foot. He was slumped against the base of the couch and still breathing. One eye fluttered closed. He wouldn’t be getting back up anytime soon. 

She wasn’t sorry. 

She had met monsters before. She had a lot of sympathy for them. She thought she might be one herself most days. Leo’s jaw was clearly broken, if not dislocated. The swelling mess was horrible, same as the blood pouring from his mouth. His foot was unrecognisable.

Fuck him. 

She was a Gothamite to her bones. How dare he?

A mean little part of her thought, ‘I’m friends with the Red Hood, you worm, you can’t scare me with your spindly little clown.’ 

A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped. 

“You okay?” Jason asked. He had taken his helmet off. A red domino mask covered his eyes. 

“What happens to him now?” she said. 

He looked around. “He’s your boyfriend?”

“Was. I didn’t know.” She swallowed the humiliation of that sentence. 

He stepped away. 

“Hell. He was gone for three days during that hostage situation last month.” She should have known. She should have known. She was supposed to be smart!

“Was he?”

She turned and saw Jason rifling through the backpack. He pulled out the mask and the gun, then some kind of canister with something bright green in it. She started at it. He put it all back in the bag.

“He wanted me to join them,” she said. 

He stopped for a moment. Then continued. 

“You won’t ever see him again.” 

She felt only relief. Possibly she was a very bad girlfriend. In her defence, he sold her out first. 

Jason stood up again. 

“Are you going to be okay?” 

She nodded. “Yeah. A little hydrogen peroxide, that’ll wash right out.” He was going to force me into the Joker’s gang. She sat on the edge of the bed without deciding to. 

Jason looked at her carefully. He brushed her hair back from her eyes and tilted his head. She pushed his hand away. 

“I’m fine.”  

“Right. I’ll be back later anyway.”

He swung the backpack over one shoulder, then stooped and swung the body onto the other. 

He left the way he came. 

Louise remained sitting. She looked out through the broken window into the dark. The wind had dropped for a moment. Most of the smashed glass had fallen outside, but some was scattered across the carpet. 

She could probably get that fixed before the landlord found out. 

An hour later she had called a builder friend and wheedled him into stopping by first thing the next morning. After the call she threw up. She had a Joker goon in her house. In her bed. Fucking Leo. She wiped her mouth and started taping cardboard over the hole in the wall. A gust of wind sucked the first sheet of cardboard out of the hole and into the night. 

She was working on a kind of duct tape framework to hold the second attempt in place when someone knocked on the cardboard.

“Who’s there?” she called. 

“Vacuum salesman.” 

She pulled the cardboard away and Red Hood climbed back in. He took off the helmet again. 

He was slightly more blood splattered now. She decided not to think about that and taped the cardboard up again to stop the wind’s sharp whistle. 

“You have to move,” he said. “Don’t stay here tonight and only come back once to get your stuff. Go to a friend’s place, or back to your grandpa’s.

She sighed with her entire being.

“The body’s been dumped in an alley. It was obviously me so Joker won’t have any reason to investigate his home life. He doesn’t care about his goons, but it’s worth playing it safe.”

“So you're taking all the heat?” she said, spinning to stare at him. She wasn't thinking about bodies dumped in alleyways.

He laughed, and it was grim. “If Joker wants to come after me he’s can try.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Given the level of violence he just dished out she shouldn’t have been worried for him. He would win a fight with the Joker like he’d win a fight against a paper bag. There was no reason to be afraid for him. Her eyes narrowed further. 

He dragged a hand through greasy hair. “Still. If you see any sign of someone watching you, or following you, tell me. Immediately. I’ll be there.”

She shifted in place. “What if it’s nothing?”

“Even if it’s nothing. Besides, you’re in the Bowery, it won’t be nothing. If you need my help, you’ve got it. No questions asked.”

“Same to you,” she said, which made the weight of needing to be rescued easier to bear. She didn’t know why he would offer that. “I mean that. You ever need anything, just ask.” 

“I won’t.”

“Well, if you do.”

He turned, looking around the small studio apartment. He glanced down at the red helmet under his arm. He sighed. “Things are about to change, Louise. You might regret making that offer.”

“Try me.”

He grinned. It was a twisted, sad little thing. “You shouldn’t want anything to do with me. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I’m getting mixed messages here.” 

He huffed. “It’ll be obvious pretty soon anyway.” 

He put the helmet on his head and reached for the duct tape, opening the window again. 

“Hey,” she called.

He paused. 

“Don’t go doing anything stupid. I already saved your life once and that was mostly luck.”

“I won’t,” he said, sounding amused. The crackling voice changer made it hard to tell. 

She was not amused. 

“I have permanently blood stained my couch for you,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t make it be for nothing.” 

“It won’t be for nothing.” He looked out at a city that hated everyone. “I won’t let it be for nothing. See you round, Soiler.”

The next time she saw Red Hood was on the news. He was wearing a very tall, very silly helmet.

Chapter Text

Louise sat on a stool in front of the microwave, idly strumming her guitar. A frozen lasagne spun lazily on the glass plate. Outside the kitchen window it was darker than usual ever for the middle of the night, since the upstairs neighbour had finally taken his Christmas lights down.

Grandpa was visiting an old friend for the night and she had the apartment to herself. It was practically a bank holiday. 

She plucked some stray notes and hummed along. She wasn’t very good. There were no delusions of monetising it though, so she was allowed to be a bit shit. Nobody yelled at her to pipe down, so she didn’t feel the need to get louder and more obnoxious. She just mumbled out half remembered lyrics and watched the cheese melt.

Her phone rang on the counter. Unknown number. She grabbed it and wedged it between her ear and shoulder so she could keep strumming.

“Go for Louise,” she sang. 

“That offer of help still good?” Jason asked, strained and short of breath even through the modulator. 

She clapped a hand on the body of the guitar to stop the reverb. 

“What do you need?”

“Open the fire escape in fifteen seconds.”

She rocketed up and ran to the living room. She pushed the curtain aside and looked down at the call’s timer to count it. It seemed to take eternity. He was totally silent, she wondered if he’d muted himself somehow. 

Thirteen seconds. Fourteen seconds. Fifteen. 

She hauled the window up. 

Red Hood with a body slung over his shoulder swung in through the window at speed and landed hard on the living room floor. 

“Shut it! And the curtains,” he called, immediately rolling the body to the ground and checking it. 

She slammed the window shut and closed the curtains. She stayed at her post but turned back.

“The lights,” he said.

She flicked them off. Silence descended with the dark, only rasping breath from the body on the ground disturbing the room. Louise grabbed the steel bat and stood guard at the window. She squinted in the gloom through the thin fabric.

Outside the silhouette of two soaring figures passed overhead. The capes flared in the wind. Then they disappeared beyond the next building. 

Louise glanced over, briefly, at her guests. 

Red Hood’s getup had lost its plain practicality. He was a towering figure, even kneeling on the ground, in a white bodysuit and black cape with a high collar. A tall, shiny red helmet rose straight up from the collar with no contouring and even less features than the last helmet. Bright red guns hung in holsters on each hip. There was a skull on his chest. For a single moment it was blazingly clear that she was friends with a Gotham rogue.

What are you doing to yourself, Jason? 

He was entirely focused on his patient, with a gentleness at odds with the costume. 

She was a girl with vibrant spiky red hair. She wore a mask that looked like it had previously been someone else’s face. Louise had seen her on the news, but they always blurred her face out and said it was too disturbing for public broadcast. Even in the low light it was deeply unsettling. 

Red Hood checked her pulse. He was shaky and breathing hard, although the helmet silenced it. 

“What does she need?” Louise asked.

He let out a weary sigh and hung his head. “They only tranqued her. She’ll sleep it off.” 

“She can have the spare bed.”

He looked up. “You don’t have to do that. Your grandpa will lose his mind.”

“It’s just me until tomorrow afternoon. It looks like your tail bought the disappearing act, but if that’s who I think it is, they’ll be watching the area.”

He got up, lifting his patient in a bridal carry. “Thank you, Louise.”

She waved him off. He had bulked up and the outfit and changes to the voice changer added a grandiosity to him that she wasn’t buying for a second. This bastard wasn’t old enough to drink and she bet he only owned two shirts. 

The microwave beeped. She wandered back to the kitchen. She remembered the way he would lick cinnamon sugar off his fingers after eating a donut. The dirty, but practical way he fought. She couldn’t square it with the towering helmet and cape. 

The kitchen door opened behind her, and she twisted her torso to look. 

Jason had taken off the helmet and cape. He looked exhausted in his padded white jumpsuit. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Lasagne?”

He slumped into a seat at the tiny dining table. She joined him, bringing a two person sized block of bubbling goodness. She was too lazy to have to do any more dishes. He put the helmet on the table, his elbow on the helmet, and his forehead in his palm. 

She pushed a fork into his other hand.

The look he gave her was grateful. She stabbed herself a crunchy edge piece and leaned back in her seat. He munched slowly and mechanically. Wow, he looked terrible. She wondered if Batman looked equally like roadkill when he took off the spiky ears at the end of the day. 

Speaking of, “Is she sleeping in the mask?” she asked, nodding towards the bedrooms. “I don’t want to see anything I shouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t come off.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah. Don’t stare. Scarlet doesn’t want pity.”

“I bet.” The poor girl. Louise could admire the guts to be out there making trouble for the damn Batman with whatever that was about going on. “She’s brave.”

“As brave as they come,” he said proudly, and grimly. “She puts us all to shame.” 

He smiled sadly and took another bite. He had such a bigger, tender heart. She wondered what it was costing him to live like this. 

“How’s business going?” he asked. “Cloud services, right?”

She shook her head. “The city noticed. They didn’t approve of an unregistered business bringing in tens of thousands a month.” 

“Oh, Soiler .” He rolled his eyes but still grinned. “You get charged with fraud?”

“No, they just seized everything. I’m technically bankrupt right now.”

“You lost all the money?” he said, suddenly very serious.

She blinked with innocent confusion. “Money? No, there wasn’t any money, we were working at a loss.”

“Hmm. Let me guess, got a little something hidden away somewhere?”

“This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“But your next idea’s going to change the world.”

“Oh, of course.” 

He shook his head. “You’re such a crook.”

“You’re a crook,” she replied, taking a big bite.

He scoffed. Then laughed weakly and dragged a hand through his greasy mop. She grinned. He rolled his head and then tucked back into the food. It let her see the redness on his collar bone from where the rigid helmet rested its weight, rubbing against his skin. 

Her smile faded. 

“What are you doing, Jason? What is this?” 

His face hardened. 

“What’s best for Gotham. Whether it likes it or not.”

“That’s crazy talk. Like actual crazy, man.”

He looked up slowly. His eyes were dull and hard. “Do I scare you now, Louise?”

“No,” she replied easily, because people had been asking her that her entire life. There could only be one answer and it was fuck you.

He tossed his fork onto the table. “Let me guess. You can’t bear to see me walk this violent path?”

She looked behind herself and back to stare at him. “Remember that time you murdered my boyfriend for me? And my response was ‘hey, thanks, let me know if you ever need anything?’ Let’s not lose perspective here.”

“But now it doesn’t serve you, you draw a line?”

“Who the fucks talks like that? What are we, Hapsburgs?” She crossed her arms and leaned on them over the table. “Jason. You are always going to be the man who saved my grandpa. I am always going to be in your corner. Why do you think I’m asking?”

His brow creased. 

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“You’re not listening.” She dragged a hand down her face. This idiot. She changed her approach. “Why did you help us? Way back when. It wasn’t to help build your criminal empire.”

“It was, actually. It monopolised police resources and shot out the knees of the prescription drugs market.”

“You could easily have just taken it for yourself, like you did crack and heroin. Instead you broke into our home and made sure I knew to talk to his doctor about it.”

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, watching her sullenly.

“Would you do it now?” she asked. “If you found out about all the elder abuse today, would you still reach out and help us?”

“Stopping the status quo of this rotting city is helping people.” 

“That sounds good. Poetic. I don’t know what it means.”

“It means I’m sick of lunatics having the run of this city,” he said, leaning forward suddenly, “and I’m doing something about it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He clenched his jaw and looked away. She sliced herself another bite of lasagne and let him stew on it. 

“I’m worried about you, man. You’re not acting like yourself. Get offended if you want, you can string me up from the East Bridge, or strip me in front of a live-streamed audience.” It had been such an absurd thing to do to Batman that at the time she could only laugh. She knew nobody else took it that way. 

“You know I wouldn’t,” he snapped. 

“Yeah, I know. Does anybody else?”

“Feeling safe and being safe aren’t the same thing,” he shot back. 

“There is nobody on this side of the river who doesn’t know that,” she said, flatly. “Who is this for? Is it for you?” Her brow furrowed as she remembered a batarang and a sliced open throat. “Is it for Batman?”

He shook his head and looked aside.

“That girl back there. She had nobody in her corner.” He was quiet for a long time, before he looked back at her. “I don’t need you to get it, but that’s your answer. I found out about her, so I am helping her. I’m not leaving her alone with her demons.” 

He looked utterly earnest, and so, so tired. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay? That’s it?”

“Well yeah. Friends don’t let friends become costumed supervillains without at least checking in. You want to talk about it some more, you know where I am.”

He scoffed. Then looked at her oddly from under his brow. 

She got up. “You want to take the couch? I’m staying up.” 

Despite claims to the contrary, Jason did eventually take the couch and get some sleep. He draped his cape over himself and rolled over. 

Louise took her laptop to the kitchen and set up at the dining table. She had meant to go to sleep after eating, but with two villains(?) sleeping in the apartment it wasn’t on the table.

It was about four in the morning. The text on the webpage was starting to get blurry. She blinked hard and rubbed her eyes. She looked up. 

Scarlet was standing in the doorway, staring at her. 

“Hey,” Louise said, getting up. 

Scarlet charged at her. Louise ducked the grab, and blocked the punch, trying to tell her to calm down, only to have her hair wrenched back and a curved knife held to her throat.

“Where is Red Hood? Where is he?” the girl demanded with a rasping voice. She was strong for such a short, waifish thing. She couldn’t be older than fourteen. 

“Jason’s napping in the living room,” Louise replied calmly. “Look, behind you.”

Scarlet’s head whipped around. Through the pass-through over the counter they could both see Jason on the couch, bundled up in his cape like a tar-coated burrito. 

“Oh, wow, he really is exhausted to sleep through that,” Louise muttered. 

“Not that exhausted,” he grumbled loudly, burrowing his head deeper into the couch cushions. “Could you two kill each other quietly?”

Scarlet let go, and looked between them. Her rubbery second face made her very hard to read. 

Louise stood back up to her full height and massaged her neck. Scarlet looked up at her with narrowed eyes. The excess skin bunched around her temples. 

“Who are you?” she said. Her accent sounded eastern European. Russian maybe? Louise wasn’t great with accents.

She indicated the open window between rooms with her chin. “Wanna close that? He’ll keep grumbling otherwise.”

Scarlet pulled the wooden partition down, sparring another glance for Jason before closing it softly. Louise tried to stay in her periphery. 

“Is he okay?” Scarlet asked quietly.

“Yeah, he wasn’t hurt, just tired. I’m guessing you already know he doesn’t take breaks very often.”

“Don’t talk like you know him.”

“Alright.” 

She stared up at her. 

“Who are you?”

“I’m Louise Brick. Who are you?” 

“Scarlet.”

Louise nodded and offered a smile. Stage name. Fair enough. 

“I saw your big TV debut, Scarlet. Captivating stuff.” She kicked that mean little Robin in the head on the nine o’clock news. Another of those things Louise got a laugh out of that she probably shouldn’t have. “Anyway, I’m getting hungry. Do you want some…” She opened the pantry. She was supposed to shop today, the shelves were woefully bare. “Oatmeal?” 

She shrugged. 

Louise grabbed the box and a saucepan. 

Scarlet lingered nearby, watching her with suspicion and a slight air of threat.

Louise handed her the box after she had poured it in.

“You’re not scared of me,” Scarlet said. It wasn’t a question, but it was a little sly, and a little curious. 

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Would it help?” She sprinkled a pinch of salt in. “How do you want your oatmeal?”

“However.”

“Blueberries? Lemon curd? Macadamias? Gold leaf?”

“I don’t care.”

“Phew, because I don’t have any of that stuff.” She mixed brown sugar and some raisins in. 

Scarlet scoffed and sat up at the table. She pulled her feet up onto the edge of the seat and put an arm around her knees. “You’re an idiot.”

“Probably.” There was no audience quite so ruthless as teenagers. Louise served up two bowls, her own mostly obligatory. She was too exhausted to be hungry but the need to feed people in her house was ingrained. 

She went back to her laptop, leaving Scarlet to do whatever she wanted. 

“Why are we here?” she asked suddenly.

“You were being chased, and I’m a well placed hiding spot.” Louise didn’t look up from her screen. “Don’t tell anyone. I don’t want Batman kicking down my door.”

“Hm.”

The quiet sounds of eating filled the space for a few minutes. 

“What are you doing?”

“Looking at community colleges,” Louise replied. “The nearest one is not very inspiring, but it is free.” 

“Aren’t you too old to be starting college?” 

Louise grinned. “Says who?”

“You won’t fit in. They won’t want you there.”

She looked over the top of her laptop. 

Scarlet was morosely stirring oatmeal. Most of it was gone. 

“Why should I care? If I want a degree, I’m gonna get one.”

“Hm.” 

She didn’t know if she actually did want a degree. She wanted the certificate, but you could just buy those. Or you could just imply the existence of the certificate on your résumé and hope nobody checked. 

She got the feeling the kid sewn into the horrible skin mask probably needed to know that ‘too late’ was made up.

Scarlet went quiet. Louise left her to her musings. 

About an hour later, it was starting to get light outside. Louise was on her last legs. 

“Alright,” she said, closing her laptop. “What do you say, it’s been five hours and there’s no way the Bats are still on the prowl. Do we wake him up or let him sleep?”

Scarlet marched into the living room and gave the sleeping maniac a good hard shake. 

Louise decided she liked her.

Chapter Text

Under rolling clouds and a burning sunset, Jason lay prone on a roof. 

He had a rifle set up in front of him. He looked through the scope, adjusted the focus, and then leaned back and rolled his neck. The pill helmet wasn’t really conducive to the position but he wasn’t going to risk taking it off tonight.

Scarlet paced the narrow roof behind him. 

“You should get into position,” he said.

“Not yet.” 

He rolled his eyes. Just who was in charge of this operation? There was still time for being stubborn and nervous, so he’d allow it. Not much time though. He breathed out through his nose. 

Far below them one of Gotham’s nicer galleries was all lit up in lights and colour. The glass dome on the roof glowed like a Christmas ornament, showing off the blue and silver decorations inside. Orchestral music reached them even at this distance. A ribbon of cars flowed endlessly through the courtyard’s turning circle, pausing only to let people stream out and up the stairs. 

Penguin was already inside. It was his party. That alone said how big of a deal this shindig was, that Cobblepot felt so untouchable he left the Iceberg lounge for someone else’s venue. He was rubbing it in everyone else’s faces by making them play nice. Two Face slunk in the back a while ago. Black Mask hadn’t shown up but his guys came in force. The majority of the crowd were regular Gotham socialites, here for a good time and ignorant of the way the tide was turning.

Once upon a time Bruce would have infiltrated this kind of party as himself. Those days died with him. 

Dick Grayson didn’t risk his civilian persona like that and Jason didn’t have a civilian persona. Everybody was using proxies tonight.

A Jaguar entered the line of cars. 

Red Hood squared his shoulders and signalled Scarlet. 

She swung off the roof and disappeared. He restrained a nervous desire to adjust his gear again. He had done all the proper checks. The plan was as good as it was going to get, and there were as many safeguards in place as were possible.

He wasn’t the one taking the biggest risk. That fact alone stung like sandpaper over bare skin. Louise was a fast talker and quick on her feet. She would be fine.

He breathed out. 

He looked through the scope. 

Louise stepped out of the nicest car she had ever legally touched. 

The long pant-legs of her green silk tuxedo were loose and flowing around her ankles and towering heels. Her black hair hung in loose and glossy hollywood curls over one shoulder and a heavy fur coat rested on her shoulders. She sauntered up the wide marble stairs, a sequined clutch in hand, and an easy swing in her gait. The pristine white blouse of her shirt was tucked in and unbuttoned. 

Her chest lacked any real topography, so it all came together as more of a sophisticated look than sexy. She told herself she was cool with it. Who wanted to look sexy anyway. 

“Looking very fine tonight, Miss Allegra Dalca,” Red Hood’s voice crunched in her ear. 

“Please, it’s Allie while Daddy’s not here to tell me off for it.”

He sighed. She grinned. 

“Try not to have too much fun, will you?”

“Absolutely not.”

She breathed in and smiled at the beautiful and extremely rich looking trio of people waiting in a little cluster at the top of the stairs just by the entrance. 

She was alone. Her hair looked soft, but it was actually rock hard with hairspray to get it to stay in place. The suit was rented and the two hundred dollar bond hung over her head like an anvil. She had seen this building in tourism ads but never so much as approached the door. 

She huffed airily and strolled by the people waiting and right inside the gallery with confidence so smooth it looked seamless. 

Not only was she supposed to be there, it was the presence of everyone else that was the pleasant surprise. If she even cared enough to notice them. 

She drew her invite from her clutch and handed it to the greeter, who already looked bored under their professional smile. Rich people didn’t buy tickets, they received invitations to make donations. Two security guards in sharp uniforms stood on either side of the door’s interior. 

Louise handed over her coat a moment later. 

“Please follow me.”

He led the way down a long hall, draped with black velvet curtains that swallowed the light. He pushed open double doors, and the glory of the main gallery hall sprung to life before her, a riot of colour and sound and people. 

She stepped into the rush and was swallowed. She looked up at the soaring glass dome above them, sparkling with lights like stars in the night sky. She breathed out. She made it. 

“Are you inside?” Red Hood’s voice asked. 

She resisted the urge to reach up and touch her ear.

“Mmhm,” she replied under her breath. “How much can you see?”

“The main stage and the floorspace on the western side. Remember I can hear your conversations. If there’s something you need me to know, get someone to say it.”

She glanced up, despite not being on the western side. Beyond the glittering reflection the glass was silky black. Probably ideal location for dramatically crashing through. 

“I’m gonna go mingle, let me know if there’s anything to know.” 

“Keep a low profile. We don’t want anyone recognising you.”

She wouldn’t recognise herself right now, but this was his gig, he called the shots. She wove through the crowds towards one of the quieter bars. 

Tables and booths were set up throughout much of the room, all angled around the stage at the far end. That was where the auction would take place. Some of the more mundane auction items were on display on plinths and in glass cases around the room. 

The highest value item, the reason they were all here, was hidden away. 

She passed a group of tables where the latest head of the Falcone family and his men were congregating. Black Mask’s guys surrounded one of the bars. The Penguin was in rare form, on the floor surrounded by fabulous hanger-oners and looking delighted with himself. 

I am out of my depth, Louise thought.

Then Allie Dalca lifted her chin. She was never out of her depth, actually, because she was an amazing swimmer. 

She reached the bar and looked over the novelty cocktails they were serving. The label on one of the display bottles of Dom Perignon was starting to peel, revealing the corner of some other label beneath it. Even on his own victory tour Cobblepot was cheap. 

“I’ll have one Death aboard the Titanic,” she said, flashing a smile.

“You’re braver than me,” a man’s voice said to her right.

She turned her head enough to see past her hair and met the eyes of Dick Grayson. 

The magazines didn’t do him justice. He had a smile made for Hollywood and his hair was artfully messy. The papers hadn’t said much about him since his billionaire father’s death. His tux was not rented. 

“Careful,” Jason whispered in her ear. 

“Hm?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. Thoughts of potential opportunities and metaphorical windows that might be jimmied open ran through the back of her mind. The Waynes were much bigger fish than she normally went for. But there was a first for everything. 

He nodded at the bartender pouring her drink through a strainer.

“I’d hate to die aboard the Titanic.”

“Me too,” she said. “I can’t stand the cold. If I’m going to die on a boat it has to be in the Mediterranean.” 

Dick flashed a smile. “I’d settle for the Caribbean and some floaties.” 

“What’s yours called?”

He held up a glass of something blue with silver sparkles gathering at the bottom. “Poseidon’s treasure.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t get it.”

He blinked and looked at the drink. “Me either.” He smiled like not getting things was normal for him. She giggled in commiseration. Allie was a big giggler. They talked about nothing for a little longer, until he excused himself and drifted away. She leaned against the bar. 

“Fake as hell,” she muttered and sipped her drink. 

“What?” Jason said suddenly. 

“Don’t tell me you buy the megawatt smile. That man is a salesman down to his bones, which is weird for the mega rich, don’t you think?”

“...I guess.”

“I don’t know what he’s selling but I assume it’s something deeply unhinged. I’ll pass.”

The earpiece went quieter, like it had been muted. She blinked.

A few seconds later the sound popped back in. 

“You are the funniest person I know, Lou,” Jason said.

Weird response, she thought, before a stray little fact surfaced in the back of her mind.

Jason’s last name was Todd. Wasn’t it? She remembered it because it was the same name as that dead Wayne kid.

She closed her eyes. Ah, what a genius she was.

“That’s not your brother, is it?”

“A little slow on the uptake there,” he drawled. “But no.” His voice hardened. “He’s not.”

“...Alrighty,” she said. Not touching that then. “I’m gonna find somewhere to sit before the bidding starts.”

She took a leisurely route around the room, looking over the items and finding all the exits. There was a lot of security, but not as much as she’d expected. Hmm. The mobsters were doing their own assessments of the room. She felt eyes on her.

She stopped at a small round table on the floor where a middle aged man in a blue suit sat alone, looking into the depths of his champagne. There were two empty chairs nearby. 

“Excuse me, would you mind some company?” she asked, toning her smile down to merely cordial. 

He looked up in surprise. “Not at all. I might be a little boring, mind.”

“Oh, none of that,” she said, and sat next to him. “I’ve been dying to get off my feet and talk to someone who isn’t desperate for attention. I’m Allie.” 

“Bob Rogers,” he said and stuck out his hand for her to shake.

She recognised the name of a midsized shipping company CFO. 

She crossed her ankles beneath her and leaned forward on the table. 

“Are you networking ?” Jason asked a few minutes later. 

She smiled and asked how often they looked for new steel suppliers in Gotham. 

“Unbelievable. Try selling him the East Bridge while you’re at it.”

She ignored him. 

Soon after the band stopped playing and the lights changed. The evening’s entertainment began. The small ticket items were brought to the stage and bidding commenced. None of the main players were engaging yet. She watched them closely. There were a few people on phones in the crowd bidding for others, but nobody was getting too excited. A signed baseball got some movement. The ugliest necklace she had ever seen, studded with giant yellow diamonds, started a mild bidding war. 

She raised her hand. 

“Thirty thousand to the lady in green,” the auctioneer called, nodding at her, “Do I have thirty five thousand? Thirty five thousand?”

“You’re paying for that,” Red Hood said.

“Forty thousand here, thank you sir, forty five anyone? Forty five thousand?” 

A breathless chuckle escaped her. The adrenaline spike had hit hard, and then left her soaring as the immediate danger passed. The auctioneer looked at her for any counter bids. She sat on her hands and swallowed her grin. The necklace sold to someone else. That brought the first round of bidding to a close and the murmur of talk rose again.

Bob shrugged in consolation. 

“What can you do?” she said. 

“You win some, you lose some,” a deep voice said. “Life’s fair like that.” 

She twisted in her seat.

Two-Face stood over them. He was looking at her.

She froze. 

Bob stood up and greeted him with nervous enthusiasm. 

“Mr Dent,” she said, with a nod. 

“Disengage,” Red Hood barked. 

 Two-Face’s good eye looked hard at her. The other eye was wide open and equally focused on her. Bailing wasn’t an option. 

“Miss Dalca. I was friends with your father in law school.” He put a cigar in the corner of his mouth and lowered his brow. “You look just like him.” 

She made a snap decision. 

“I’m afraid I’m not being paid to make nice tonight,” Louise said, cold but polite. Allie fell away like a snake skin. 

“Paid by who?”

She lifted a shoulder, a restrained move. “I’m not being paid to know that either.” 

“Hmph.” He dragged another chair over and sat facing Bob, who was looking at her worriedly. “Clear off.” 

She swiftly did so, plunging back into the anonymous crowd. 

Jason breathed out deeply. He sounded pissed. She was just glad no coins were tossed. She couldn’t visibly react. She was still on stage, there could be no dropping lines. 

“Okay,” he said after a few calming breaths on his end. “Your real name is Jasmine Jones, you were contracted through the hiring agency Ringwood by a man named Fred Staples. You’re here for the auction.”

“Mm-hm.” She claimed an empty stool up the back. She resolved to be on her best behaviour from now on.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You can leave if you need to. We’ll make it work.”

She scoffed. The adrenaline was still zinging through her veins and she felt a little detached from herself, but she wasn’t quitting on him. She’d survived Two Face! What was the point of running now ? 

“I can’t go, I haven’t even tried those little caviar pancakes yet,” she said, managing to reclaim some airy nonchalance. It wasn’t quite convincing. 

“You don’t eat fish.”

“Well, maybe today’s the day.” 

The auction started up again. 

He went quiet when all the lights moved to focus on the stage. The band started playing something grand. Penguin thanked everyone for coming and wished them all luck in the bidding with a wide smile. 

The curtains pulled back to reveal a small porcelain vase, white decorated with blue. 

Louise cocked her head. It wasn’t much given the fuss. The auctioneer talked about what a magnificent historical item it was, one of very few Ming vases of this style. He was so animated, you would think he didn’t know it was a fake. 

Somewhere inside the small porcelain ornament was hidden the blueprints to the Batmobile. It was why this whole party was out in the nice part of town and open to the public. 

Red Hood didn’t seem interested in it himself. From what she gathered he wanted to know where it ended up at the end of the night. The way he talked about it, she almost wondered if it held any blueprints at all. He wasn’t telling. 

Jason was a man of plans. She was a woman of the moment. She didn’t need to know. 

The bidding started. The price rose high and fast. 

Jason asked who was most interested. She kept track of who was confirming with their people and who was keeping up effortlessly. A woman who she thought she recognised from a Lex Corporation ad was outbid by Black Mask’s representative. Two-Face made bids at random, always jumping the price by a good chunk. Most of the voters weren’t the mobsters, but people with phones at their ears. Whole armies were interested in those blueprints. The numbers thrown around were astronomical. 

“It’s not even the actual car,” she muttered. 

Black Mask was in the lead. 

The auctioneer looked at Two-Face. 

He sucked his teeth and flicked a coin. 

A gunshot rang out. The vase exploded.

The room roared to life. Guns came out everywhere, a whip cracked and one of the main lights got dislodged and swung from its frame, plunging half the room in sharp dancing shadow. 

“Was that you?” she said, ducking under her table. 

“No, get out of there,” Jason barked. Gunfire cracked over the comm. 

People screamed and pushed and shoved. Gunshots thundered. It echoed around the ancient hall. She risked a glimpse. Everyone was shooting at everyone, with some trying to duck and run, others yelled insults and accusations. The swinging half light didn’t help. She kicked off her heels. 

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a smoke grenade. She tossed it into the middle of the floor and booked it the other way. The smoke exploded out, thick and white. The shouts changed to even more confused. A few less gunshots went off. 

Someone tackled her to the ground. She kicked and elbowed them until they rolled off, groaning. She launched up and ran. 

The glass ceiling exploded. Wind churned up the smoke. 

“It’s the Bat!” someone yelled, just as she disappeared through the doors. 

She kept running. The gallery itself was huge and she hadn’t come in this way. She followed the twists and turns, and others trying to escape. She passed some confused wait staff who looked like they were going towards it all. She grabbed their shoulders and pulled them away, yelling at them to run. 

Finally she saw the glittering dark of a Gotham night. She burst out into the free air.

She breathed deep, before coughing through the smoke inhalation.

Then she ducked back in and picked up the nice bonsai tree sitting in the foyer. 

She limped down the stairs to street level. Her feet left bloody prints on the marble. The sound of a helicopter veered away then something exploded behind her. 

The comm line had gone silent. 

She tried to flag down a taxi, same as everyone else. It took a little while but eventually she was the closest to the stopped car and she climbed in first.

Her sense of time was a little out of whack. Had it been three minutes or thirty? The taxi driver was listening to very loud Indian dance music and was completely uninterested in the drama. 

Only as they pulled away did she look back and see the smoke pouring from the doors and the lights shining up through where the tinted glass ceiling used to be. Sirens blared in the distance.

The comm crackled back to life.

“Tell me you got out okay,” Jason said.

She collapsed in the back seat with a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m okay. On the way home. You two?”

“We’re fine.” 

“I saw a helicopter go down.”

“Scarlet has lost piloting privileges.”

She laughed. It felt like her strings had been cut. She looked herself over. She was one bonsai tree and two cut up feet the richer. There was blood and dirt all over the suit. She would bill him for it. She was pretty sure she could convince some punter the tree was three hundred years old.

She was feeling pretty good, all things considered. 

“Did you get… whatever you were hoping for?” she asked. 

He laughed on the other end. “Nobody else got what they wanted, so yes.”

“Excellent.”

“Get home safe, okay?”

She let her head roll back against the headrest. “You too.”

Chapter Text

Jason leaned his head back against the headrest of the driver’s seat. Scarlet slept on the backseat. She snored a low rasp from the way her mask compressed oddly under the pressure of her face against the seat cushion. 

Their last base had been compromised. He couldn’t risk settling somewhere until he knew for sure how Oracle was tracking them.

He blinked through the tired sting in his eyes. He pulled a worn jacket around himself. His knees hurt, little bolts of pain shooting through the joints. There would be no sleep for him tonight. 

The old station wagon was parked on the side of the road in a dead end backstreet. A fine mist of rain fell, so gentle it seemed almost in slow motion. There was a popped street light across the road from them, and a rat eating trash in the gutter. A forgotten sleeping bag and a shopping trolley of stuff lay under the awning of a boarded up shop, but there was no sign of whoever used to sleep there. 

It was so quiet. 

The yellow glare of the only working street lamp cut a line across his hands and the book propped on the steering wheel. His phone lit up on his lap. 

‘Frodo doesn’t appreciate Sam’s commitment to keeping everybody fed.’ Louise wrote. ‘ Typical rich hobbit behaviour.’

His lip quirked. 

He wasn’t supposed to be doing this anymore. He wasn’t supposed to be taking her on ops either. After the auction it felt silly holding out on this one point.

He hadn’t read the Lord of the Rings before. She hadn’t even seen the movies. He picked up a paperback from a secondhand bookshop. It was shifted about in the bottom of a bag of weapons and medical supplies. Louise, who was an insanely fast reader for someone with two jobs and a third in the works, was ahead of him.  He wasn’t very far yet, the hobbits were wandering through pleasant shire countryside and plotting their route via the good ale houses. He was scared for them. They were so unprepared. 

‘Frodo’s job is to carry the ring and not become evil,’ he wrote in reply. ‘He’s busy.’

‘Can he not be evil while helping with breakfast?’

He snorted quietly. 

Scarlet whined in her sleep. 

He looked back. She twitched and her fingers tightened where they gripped around the seat belt buckle. Just a nightmare. She had a lot of those.

He read a few more lines. 

Scarlet’s mask was getting looser. 

There was a decision looming in her future. Get it removed and risk whatever booby traps Pyg hid in it, and the health issues to follow. Or play it safe, get it secured properly to her face, and live like this forever. 

It haunted her. She was so young. The future was terrifying in every direction. 

He rested his forehead on the wheel. 

‘I don’t know if I’m doing this right,’ he admitted.

‘Is there a wrong way to read a book?’

‘Scarlet.’

There was a little pause. Then, ‘Yeah?’

He probably shouldn’t tell her. It wasn’t her business, it was one more secret that put her at risk.

Who the hell else was he going to tell? She was the only person he talked to. 

‘She’s going through a lot. She’s gone through so much already.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘She’s looking to me to keep it all together, on top of everything we're doing. But I can’t do anything.’

‘That’s hard.’

‘I know some things just don’t get better and sometimes there’s no winning but how do I tell a kid that? She wants to burn the world down sometimes, and I don't have anything better to offer.' he looked up at the sole remaining streetlight. His eyes stung. ‘I’m no better myself,’ he typed, then deleted. 

‘Hey, whatever else she’s going through, you’re someone she can count on,’ Louise said.

He looked out into the night. Little beads of water gathered and ran down the bonnet of the car. 

‘Am I?’

‘Yes. You are. And giving her someone to rely on while she figures herself out isn’t nothing. It’s a whole lot actually.’

The tears dripped down his cheeks. 

‘What if I’m worse than being alone?’ he wrote. His finger hovered over the send button before he committed. It wasn’t any less true if he didn’t say it. 

‘What if the world is a simulation. What if the planet gets overrun by mole people.’ 

A startled indignant noise burst out of him. ‘Hey fuck you.’ 

‘You’re doing the best you can with the options on the table. That’s all you can do. Don’t go killing yourself with what ifs, it won’t help.’

She messaged again before he could reply. 'You're not, Jay. She would be gone if you were. She's not an idiot.'

He wiped his cheek with his wrist.

'How do you know?’ he groused, only half mocking.

There was a long pause. 

‘Yesterday, when I was helping my grandpa bathe, he told me that if he could go back and cut his own dick off before having kids he would.’

He would like to hit that old man with a brick. ‘Yikes.’

'I don't think there is a right way to be a caretaker,' she said.

'Probably not.'

‘Is there something that would help her? Right now?’

He breathed out heavily.‘She’s not getting an education.’

‘Talk to her about it. There are options.’

'Yeah,' he replied. ‘I should look into correspondence schools.’ 

He shifted in his seat. He sniffed and took a steadying breath. The moment was past, he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He felt too exposed. 

‘Those hobbits, huh?’ he wrote.

‘Pippin is my favourite.

‘I like Sam.’ 

He looked back at the book. He’d lost his place. He started the page again. 

About fifteen minutes later when he had successfully gotten himself to focus on the logistics of frying mushrooms in butter while on a wilderness hike his phone lit up again. 

‘Knowing you is not worse than being alone,’ Louise said. ‘Just so you know.’

He couldn’t bring himself to answer. He tapped the screen back on to read it again as the night grew old.  

Louise cracked her knuckles. 

She rolled her neck, did a couple of squats, then smacked her fist into her palm.

“Alright,” she called and shoved her mouth guard in.

The door opened. She walked out. 

The crowd did not roar at the sight of her, it surged. She sauntered through the alley of people to the ringed off sand floor. As she swung a leg over the rope most heads were already turned the other way to see her opponent. 

Louise grinned. She didn’t take it personally. 

Gotham’s underground fighting scene was an egalitarian thing. All were welcome. There weren’t so much classes as themes . That was why it never really got shut down. Sure, it was insanely dangerous. The injuries were frequent and that wasn’t counting when the cops busted it. There was a non-zero chance of having to fight a mutant hyena or a guy with plants for hands. But that was half the appeal. The crowds loved it. 

Louise was a semi-regular and she still had all her teeth. She wasn’t the best, or flashiest, she wasn’t even a crowd favourite. But she was an old fashioned Gotham survivor, as the announcer liked calling her. She could handle a gimmick and dodged like a motherfucker. She had a deal with the guy who ran it: he got to throw the crazy-eyed first timers at her to see if they had legs, and she got paid, victory or no. Mostly she fought dipshits riding high off three months of krav maga training, with the occasional twitchy undergrads who thought they were the next Bane. She had also fought a hyena. That was Gotham for you. 

She thought of it as the safer version of the scraps she got into back in highschool. Which wasn’t true, but at least there was a medic on hand. 

She did beat the hyena. She felt bad about it. 

She bounced on her toes and paced around her side of the ring. She was barefoot in tight pants and a sports bra, with her hands wrapped up tight. The crowd cheered and whooped, and craned their necks to see what was going to come out of the other entrance. 

Pleased murmurs picked up. No horrified gasps or roars of excitement; that was promising. She couldn’t see over the heads so she didn’t bother to look up until they were hopping over the rope.  

A man covered in scars landed on the sand floor. He was tall, muscled but not huge, in tac pants and no shirt. There was a giant Y shaped scar over his chest. The harsh lights bore down black hair and a reflexive scowl. 

She grinned. 

Jason Todd, you son of a bitch. 

The corner of his lip quirked up. 

Well shit. 

The crowd assessed the newcomer. Money changed hands, some looking at her and shaking their heads, the traitors, others had pleased little grins. And they didn’t even know he was the Red Hood!

Red Hood, who was, by every relevant metric, a bat.

His hands hung relaxed at his sides. There was a lazy tilt to his head and cool green eyes watched her. 

She smiled wider. This was going to be so bad. She rolled house shoulders and bounced on her toes. 

The announcer talked them both up, hyping up the crowd further. She wasn’t listening, eyes only for her opponent. He smirked back. What the hell he was doing here she didn’t know and probably didn’t want to know.

She wasn’t going down without making him earn it, she decided. That was half her rep, she could take more of a beating than anyone expected by looking at her. Probably not a Red Hood beating, but still. 

And it was Red Hood, across the cage from her. That swagger may as well have been his work uniform.

She raised her wrapped fists in a tight guard.

The whistle blew. He circled, idly. She bounced lightly on her feet, keeping her distance. 

He cocked his head. She narrowed her eyes. He jerked his head lightly and his lip quirked. It looked like an invitation to play. 

She smiled around her mouth guard then raised a single finger. A promise: she was going to get one hit in. Minimum. 

He spread his arms wide. His smirk was insufferable. 

She closed the distance. 

The crowd roared. He blocked her jab, her kick, her elbow, then retaliated.

It was like fighting smoke. The crowd cheered, she staggered back, then surged forward. He swept her feet out, then let her have space to get back up. She knew when she was getting played with. She got her guard back up. He came at her.

She dodged and dodged and dodged. Her knee connected with his thigh. He grunted. 

He nailed her to the floor. Her arm was yanked behind her and a knee pressed into her lower back. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re ridiculous?” he called over the roar of the crowd. She could hear the grin in his voice. 

“No. You?” she replied, spitting out sand. 

The countdown started. She had no leverage at all. 

The announcer called it. 

She sagged. 

A little later, after she’d gotten her money and a gel pack for her shoulder, she lingered outside. This month the fights were held in a converted space behind the Knight’s stadium. There was a game on, and she could hear the roaring of the much bigger crowd watching Gotham’s hopes for another season circle the drain. The car park was already emptying. 

The fights were ongoing, and would be until the early morning. After the fastest defeat of her inglorious career, she wasn’t sticking around for it. 

She leaned against a wire fence. 

‘ Come on out, asshole, you owe me some churros, ’ she texted.

“No, I don’t,” Jason called from the other direction. She twisted her head to see him walking over. “Loser buys. Everyone knows that.” 

“Then ‘everyone’ needs to get their heads checked, because that’s bullshit.” 

“Uh-huh,” he said, heading for the churro stand outside the stadium. “Less whining, more buying.” 

They walked side by side through the vast carpark. It was a beautiful clear night and absolutely freezing. He was in the same tac pants and a giant blue hoodie with his hands buried in the kangaroo pocket. She was in her long wool coat and wishing her skinny jeans weren’t ripped. 

“How’s the shoulder?” he asked, looking ahead.

“It’s fine. I don’t normally fight people who know how to take down someone safely.” She shrugged one shoulder. “This is almost a treat.” 

He smiled. “Almost?”

“Yes,” she drawled. “Almost.”

He laughed.

“Are you working tonight or did you just want to see how good my high kicks are?”

He smirked and didn’t answer, which was a yes to working. He didn’t seem to be in any rush now so she assumed he was done. 

They reached the churro stand and lined up with a bunch of depressed Knight’s fans. Turn around was quick and she got them a large bag. The game was properly over now and the tide of people rose and rose, rushing out towards their cars. Jason led the way against the current through a door she had never noticed, up some stairs, and onto a landing that didn’t seem like a place you should be able to access, above the gates. There was nobody around. 

She put the sauces down on the thick concrete barriers overlooking the parking lot and growing bottleneck of cars trying to get onto the highway. 

“How’ve you been? What’s going on?” Jason asked, peeling back the lid on the sauces. 

“Same old, same old. Between nurses again. Looks like we’re doing bowel surgery next month, so that’ll be fun.”

“Back to your grandpa’s place?”

“Back to grandpa’s place,” she said with a wry smile. 

She dunked a churro in and took a bite. She made a face and stared down at the sauce container.

“Mango and lime,” Jason said, dipping one in himself.

“You’re a maniac.”

“You don’t have any taste buds.”

“That’s a crime against taste. Probably against Mexico too.” 

“Go hide in your chocolate then.”

She pulled the chocolate sauce protectively to herself. He snorted. 

The landing they stood on was uncovered. There were no clouds above and even the smog seemed to have retreated. A few stars dared show their faces. The moon hung low and huge between the city’s skyscrapers on the other side of the river. 

Someone smashed into the bumper of another car in the sea of metal below. The horns went off. 

“How’s Scarlet?” she asked. 

He smiled sadly. “She’s gone.”

“What!” 

Louise dropped her churro.

“Retired, I mean. Left the mask behind. She’s trying to build a new life now.”

“Oh my- are you kidding me? Don’t scare me like that! Damn.” She put a hand over her heart.

He shrugged. “Sorry.” 

"You think she’s gonna be okay?”

“I think so.” He leaned his elbows on the barricade. “I’m really proud of her. She decided what she wanted and she’s going to make it happen." He sighed and smiled wistfully. "It was time to move on. Maybe for both of us.”

“Well, I’m happy for her."

She licked a trail of chocolate off her thumb, then rolled her shoulder when it twinged.

He watched the movement with narrowed eyes. She clocked his observation. 

“Beating up Batman on the Wayne Tower last night wasn’t exciting enough for you, huh? Had to come ruin my day too?” 

“Well. It wasn’t the real Batman,” he said, then blinked at nothing. He looked at her quickly. 

“Are there fake Batmans running around?”

He gave her an assessing look for a second before he huffed and shook his head. 

“You know you can’t tell anyone this right?”

“Yeah I know.”

“It’s the understudy. The real deal’s dead.” He shoved a sticky churro in his mouth and chewed aggressively. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.” 

She leaned her hip against the barricade. She was pretty sure there were a lot of things he had let loose, whether out loud or just implied, that she wasn’t supposed to know. If Jason Todd was Robin, was Red Hood, then it followed that Bruce Wayne was Batman. 

“How long has he been dead?” she asked. The news had been confused and contradictory.

“Almost a year now.”

He stopped talking to her around that time. Red Hood’s crimes got more extreme. She wished she tried harder to reach out to him. 

“I’m sorry.”

His forehead scrunched up. “What for?”

“...He was family, right?” 

“No. Yes. It doesn’t matter now, he’s dead either way.” 

She shrugged. “I’m still sorry.”

“ Why ?” he demanded. “Screw him.”

“It’s not the same when they stop hitting back.” 

His expression shuttered. He let out a heavy breath and looked across the view. Most of the cars were stuck in deadlock. Red and yellow lights shone everywhere. 

“Yeah,” he said. He dragged both hands through his hair. “He was the worst. And the best, when he wanted to be. I don’t know anyone else who could just… turn it on and off like that.” 

“Churro of commiseration?”

He scoffed, and ate his churro.

“I don’t know why I’m talking about this now.”

She thought of a batarang caught in his jacket. A scar that had healed jagged and white over his throat. Almost two years ago now. 

“What were the good times like?” she asked. 

He leaned his forearms on the barricade and let his hands hang over the edge. “He took me to a game here once. It was my first time, the knights lost. We were meant to be working.” He glanced at her. “You know I was–”

“Robin. Yeah.” 

“Yeah. We weren’t in costume, pretending at being normal. It meant the world to me.” He looked down. “I didn’t know we were pretending,” he muttered. 

She didn’t think that was for her. 

She took a deep breath and looked up at the sparse stars. If Bruce Wayne was in heaven it had to be a clerical error. 

“What’s the deal with your parents?” he said, a little sullen, still staring down between his hands at the pavement. 

“You’ve met my dad,” she said lightly. “And you know almost as much about my mom as I do, which is basically nothing.” 

He turned his head to look up at her with a frown. “When did I meet your dad?”

She smiled, toothy and mean. “Not really my grandpa.”

“Huh.” He turned his head and watched the parade of cars again. “Why the lie?”

“He was embarrassed.”

“About having a kid in his fifties? It’s not that big a deal.” 

She laughed, then stopped hard. “About getting his son’s wife pregnant. My older brother’s wife, that is. He was on tour in Kuwait at the time, while the family lived on an army base. I’ve never met him. Or her.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“I don’t think any of them have spoken to each other since. Gramp– Garry and Dave used to be close, I’m pretty sure. The son he always wanted.” She turned to rest her back against the barricade with her elbows on top of it and her ankles stretched out and crossed before her. “Straight As, got into a prestigious military academy, married the perfect woman. He even got a medal of honour, which is clearly overdoing it.” Her smile was strained. She looked up again, admiring the clear night sky. “I destroyed that family.”

“No, you didn’t.” Jason said. “They did.” 

“Sure, I didn’t choose to exist.” She wasn’t feeling brave enough to look at him and see his pity. He probably thought she was some kind of victim here. “Frankly it’s their fault for not having the balls to terminate their own mistake then to turn around and bitch about it.” 

He blew out a noisy gust of air. “You are so much more than someone’s mistake.” 

“I know. I am also my own mistakes.” She grinned. She managed to get past the horrible strain this time to make it feel natural. 

He looked at her from the corner of his eye then dropped his head. “I’m Batman’s greatest failure.”

Her head snapped over to stare at him. 

“He said so in the will.”

“That’s–” She was so suddenly so incandescently angry her words stalled. “What a load of horseshit!” 

He shrugged. “He would know.”

“Then he hasn’t been paying attention. You? Are you kidding me?” She stood up straight. “Riddler starved an entire class of kids to death last year because they couldn’t solve a labyrinth in time. Poison Ivy’s out here drugging men and sending them on raping rampages across the city. Biggest failure, for fucks sake! It’s been like twenty years and Joker’s still beating his personal best body count every other month! He’s delusional!” She huffed angrily. Then she looked at him awkwardly. “Um. Not to speak ill of the dead. Sorry.”

A smile cracked through the strange look that had taken over his face. His brow softened. 

“Don’t be. He can take it.” He huffed a weak laugh and smiled at her oddly. She didn’t know how to take it. 

“Churro?” he said.

“I’d love a churro.”

She angrily shoved the last one in her mouth.

Chapter Text

Louise woke up slowly, gently, with the blankets pulled up under her chin. She was perfectly warm and cosy. 

She wiggled her toes. The springs didn’t creak. She couldn’t even feel the springs. Not her bed then. 

She cracked her eyes open and relocated herself. She was in a large and luxurious bed in the large and luxurious bedroom of a guy named Tom. Tom wasn’t her boyfriend, but he wasn’t not her boyfriend. 

Gentle snoring warbled somewhere deep in the sea of blankets off to her right. 

Disappointment settled somewhere in her stomach. She didn’t know why, waking up here followed on quite predictably from going to sleep here. 

Tom was an overly keen gym rat who was absolutely getting scammed on his diet supplements and could afford not to care. He thought she was sex given human form. She thought he was alright. She felt a little bad about that.

But his deep well of insecurities meant he liked that about her. He loved it when she pinned him to the bed and spat all his fears back at him. He didn’t ask too many questions and wasn’t curious about her legal-adjacent business model and varying liquidity levels. So long as the sex was frequent and filthy he probably never would. Not until they were in too deep, and he realised just what he was stuck with. 

The night before she called him a fraud who wasn’t fooling anyone. He told her he loved her.

She sat up. 

He kept on snoring. 

She rested her temple on her finger tips. 

It had been a good three weeks. You couldn’t say she didn’t try. 

She slipped out of the bed. 

She bounced to get her skinny jeans on, shimmied on her shirt, and then slunk out of the room. She could write a note. Stick it on the counter maybe? 

“Hiya hon,” his mom said, from where she was pouring pancake batter onto a frying pan in the kitchen. She beamed a big cheery smile. “Tom up yet?”

Louise offered an awkward smile in return. She didn’t usually do well with the moms. “Uh, not yet. I’m heading out. Work.” 

“No breakfast? The bacon will be done soon.”

“Sorry.” She pulled her coat on.

“Alright, sweetie. You have a good day now.”

“You too.”

She could just text him that it was over. It was still kinder than sticking around. 

Outside, it had just stopped raining. Raindrops sparkled on the leaves of the large oaks that flanked the street, twinkling in the freshly washed sunshine. She put her head down, shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat, and stalked over the neat lawns to her car. It didn’t want to start. The engine strained with a whirring noise. She thought about screaming. 

Then the key turned in the ignition, and the day was saved.

She crossed the bridge back onto Gotham proper and pulled over at Big Belly Burger. The drive-through had cars lined up all the way back to the road, half of which were honking at each other. She parked and went inside. 

Nobody else was having a good morning either, which mollified her slightly. She ordered a breakfast burrito next to someone screaming about an incorrect order, and sat down to enjoy her warm and greasy mistake.

There was a large TV on the wall playing music videos with the sound turned all the way down. She watched Beyonce dance to Single Ladies. She looked into the depths of her burrito. They were cheating her on cheese here, this was disgraceful. 

The music video ended and the news came up 

She froze, midway to taking a bite. 

‘RED HOOD ARRESTED’ the scrolling line of text at the bottom read. 

Images flashed beside the presenter of Jason, helmetless and all beaten up, being held by Batman in the flashing lights of some cop cars. The texts said he had no fingerprints and couldn’t be identified. He was being processed just as ‘Red Hood’. The list of charges was very long, and frankly a little funny. She didn’t know he had done half of that shit.

“Oh Jason,” she muttered, and put her chin on her fist. 

Damnit. 

The arrest had been last night, and by now the news had moved on to conjecture over what they would do with him. Kingpins had been arrested in the past, but they weren’t usually the most deadly person in their operation. The police lockup wasn’t secure enough so he had been moved directly to Blackgate. There was conjecture about Arkham Asylum. 

The idiot. The absolute buffoon.

How could he let them catch him? 

She put her burrito down and covered her mouth with her hand. 

Half of Blackgate would be out for his head. Yeah, he was dangerous, but he would be unarmed. He had made enemies with everyone. 

And Arkham? It always seemed okay to her that they sent people like Joker and Scarecrow there, they were crazy terrorists. 

It suddenly wasn’t okay. Everyone knew what Arkham did to people. Even Joker wasn’t always like that. Jason wasn’t crazy. They couldn’t do that to him. Could they? 

Fuck. Fuck . 

The trial was set for next year. Things would be slow. They usually were. The evidence was sparse and heavily tainted by vigilante interference, and as always with these cases, the state struggled to find people brave enough to actually prosecute. Unlike the other mobsters though, Red Hood wasn’t entrenched across industries. He didn’t have a dedicated legal team ready to go. 

She studied his face when his mugshot flashed on screen. He didn’t look scared. He looked bored and unimpressed. 

An old idea of hers floated back to the surface. 

Louise sat in her car at the gate house of Blackgate Supermax in a suit and tie. Her hair was in a sensible bun and her makeup was discrete. A briefcase sat on the passenger seat. 

Months had passed. The sheer time demands and logistical requirements of pulling this off were insane. Especially since she was already in the middle of another gig. She had outdone herself, in her own private opinion.

There were two security guards in the booth. One looked over her paperwork. The other was drinking coffee from a paper cup.

“Can’t believe last night’s score,” the coffee drinker said.

“I really thought this was going to be our year,” Louise replied. 

“You know the Knights,” he sighed. “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, time after time.” 

The other guard handed her forms back. The gate arm in front of her rose up. 

“That’s the Gotham way,” she said with a smile. 

He waved her through. 

She parked, and took a second to breathe. She had been inside a prison before, a couple of times actually. The charges were dropped both times. She had some idea of how this worked. It was very weird being back on purpose and under her own power. 

She grabbed her briefcase, got out of the car, and walked in with an air of confidence and a touch of boredom. 

They patted her down for any weapons while processing her paperwork. She was scheduled to come in, but it was her first time here so they needed to enter her into the system and get her ID printed. It had a picture of her face and the word LEGAL in all caps at the top. They put it on a lanyard and told her to wear it the whole time she was on prison grounds. 

She hoped they let her keep it. Just in case. 

They did let her use the coffee machine. 

Then she was led down a concrete corridor and through a steel door into a large room with one table bolted to the floor. A few plastic chairs were scattered around. 

Jason sat at the table. He wore an orange jumpsuit and chain link restraints. 

He stared at her.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, I know.” She sat opposite him and placed two paper cups on the table. She gave the guard at the door a smile. “My client is entitled to privacy with legal counsel.”

“You’ve got one hour.” 

The door shut. 

Jason was still staring at her, his brow low. 

“This was stupid.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“They’re going to look into you. I should go back.”

“Too late now. And you’re allowed to consult with multiple lawyers, it’s not the end of the world.”

“You’re not taking this seriously! You think Batman cares about what is and isn’t allowed?” He ran both hands through his hair and swore.

“Do you think this took me five minutes? Like it’s just a crazy idea I had this morning that I haven’t bothered to think through?” She pointed a finger at the door. “I have one hour. And this is probably being recorded, despite that being definitely illegal.” 

He pinched the bridge of his nose. 

She leaned back in her seat. “So how are you?”

He sagged in his seat. “Not great, Soiler. I am not great.” He leaned his elbows on the table. He shook his head at her then sighed. “But I don’t have it as bad as half of these guys. I actually did the stuff I’m in for.”

“That bad?” 

He had put on more muscle since she last saw him, but lost all fat. It was a worrying combination, leaving him kind of shrink wrapped looking. She studied the stubble and messy hair that had grown out.  

He idly scratched at the peeling vinyl surface of the table with one nail.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking, putting me in here. Like this isn’t a major distribution centre for the police’s side of the drug trade. Maybe they’re hoping for a change in management. Get numbers back up, cut the fat.” 

“I would love to not hear about it,” she said. “Client attorney privilege can be overridden.”

He cut his eyes at her.

“Since when are you a lawyer?” 

“Since I passed the bar.”

“And what about your degree?”

She picked up her coffee. “Did you know you can sit the bar in New Jersey without going to law school?”

His eyes narrowed. 

“You passed the bar.”

“What, like it’s hard?”

“Don’t you quote Legally Blonde at me. How did you do it?”

She took a sip. “I’m simply very smart.” 

He was clearly not buying it. 

“Besides,” she said, waving off the question, “they waved your visitation rights. Which isn’t legal either, but whatever. There was no other way in.”

“Why did you want to come anyway?” he asked, sounding legitimately baffled.

“You’re supposed to visit your friends in prison. Don’t make a whole thing out of it.”

He looked at her like she was the crazy one. 

She was unconcerned. Jason was always kind of a pain. It was half of why she liked him so much. 

He shook his head again and picked up the coffee she brought him. 

“Uh-huh. So besides becoming a legally accredited lawyer in six months, what have you been doing?”

“I’m importing Jamaican coffee beans.”

“Sure. Tell me about it.” 

“I had this bonsai tree. Juniper. Healthy foliage, nice tapering, artfully shaped trunk. Very pretty.”

He sank down until his upper half was resting on the table and his chin resting on his crossed forearms, watching her lazily. “Mm-hm.”

“I figured it was probably some twenty year old pet project from Garden Centre. I did some research, you know, find out how much I could charge for it, and it turned out… it was not from Garden Centre.”

“No?”

“It was the three hundred year old family heirloom stolen when the Japanese were forced into internment camps during world war two. 

He snorted. “Oh Louise.” 

She grinned. “The surviving family has since moved back to Japan, but they’re been trying to get this tree returned ever since. Its previous owners were… unreasonable about it.”

“The previous owners being the Kane Gallery of Arts who have lodged several reports with the police over their missing exhibit?”

“I don’t know about that,” she said with a sniff. “But that seems very sad, I hope they find their tree.”

He laughed. “Why am I the one in here?” 

“It’s not what you did, it’s what they can prove you did. I should know. I’m a lawyer.” 

He cut his eyes at her.

“Anyway, I got in contact with the rightful owners and gave it back.”

“For free?”

“Of course. I’m not an animal.” She swirled her coffee in its cup. “Besides, what;s a one time payment compared to the everlasting bonds of friendship?”

He rolled his eyes. 

“What does any of this have to do with Jamaican coffee?” 

“Jamaica makes good coffee. Insanely good. It’s called Blue Mountain and it has to be grown at a certain altitude so there’s limited land, and limited yield. It’s a whole thing. And ninety percent of it is sold directly to Japan.”

“Huh. Really?”

“They’ve got a special trade deal. Everywhere else in the world it is a highly prized rarity.”

“Expensive too, I bet.”

“Oh yeah. It’s actually cheaper to buy it in bulk in Japan and ship it here yourself.”

“If you have friends willing to do the buying and shipping from Japan, I take it.” 

“Precisely.” 

“How’d you get that through the port?”

“Paid them off in beans.”

He got more relaxed as they kept talking. He looked so tired but she wouldn’t call him beaten. There was a banked, calculating fire in his eyes and a coiled tension in him. He was an opportunist at heart. This was just a change in circumstance, not the end of the line. It comforted her a little to see it. 

The end of the hour drew near. The conversation dwindled, and they shared the silence for a moment. 

“Don’t do this again,” he said quietly. 

“Hood. You’re facing down multiple life sentences.”

“You’re going to get into trouble worse than you can talk your way out of.”

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms.  She hadn’t committed any of the sorts of crimes that got the Bat in a tizzy, and she wasn’t actually representing Jason in court. There was no reason for anyone else to care. 

Abandoning him here didn’t sit right with her.

He looked very sincere. 

“Louise. Please. I’ll refuse to come see you next.” 

She sighed. “Fine. Look after yourself. As much as you can.” 

“Yeah.” He looked down at the table. “It was good seeing you.”

“You too.”

He sat up. The door opened. The guard stood waiting. 

She cleared her throat very officiously and stuck out her hand. “Mr Red Hood.”

He rolled his eyes and shook her hand. “Ms Brick.” 

They escorted her back out. 

Two weeks later Red Hood was moved to Arkham Asylum after poisoning sixty of his fellow inmates.

“Jason, you idiot,” Louise muttered. 

Chapter Text

Louise stood in Marcus’ apartment with her arms crossed. He shifted from foot to foot next to her. 

In front of them both, taking up the entirety of his living room was a giant metal tank on legs with a tapered bottom and a pressure gauge on the front.

She stared at it for a moment.

“It was a good deal,” Marcus said, his shoulder hiked up around his ears. 

Her eyes rolled up. “That’s not a tone people normally use when talking about a bargain.”

He looked at her helplessly. 

“What is it? And how much did you pay for it?”

“Okay, well, the guys and I have always talked about starting a microbrewery. It’s our dream, you know? We’ve been thinking about it for ages and I started keeping an eye out for the equipment.”

She eyed the eighteen year old. He had a serious growth spurt in the two years she’d known him but she wasn’t fooled by the sudden square jaw and broad shoulders. He still stood like he was at risk of melting into the ground. 

“Do you… drink beer?” she asked.

“Not really.”

She stared at the giant tank again. 

“It was a great price,” he said. “They’re never this cheap, so I told the guys, and we all went in on it together. But… now it’s here, and…”

“And you have a piece of industrial brewing equipment in your living room.”

“Betty will kill me if it’s still here when she gets home. I don’t know what to do.” 

She walked around the tank, looking it over. She tapped it with the back of her knuckles and listened to it sing. 

“How big is it?”

“Twelve thousand litres.”

She whistled. She could probably move it for him. Industrial supplies didn’t normally go on sale so she was suspicious over why it was so cheap. But there was always someone desperate and in a rush open to making the same mistake Marcus had. 

“I don’t even know where I’m going to put the rest of it,” he said.

She stuck her head out from behind the tank.

“What ‘rest of it’?”

He shrugged. “The rest of the brewery equipment. The other tanks are getting delivered tomorrow.”

“Marcus. Marcus. How much money did you spend?” 

He fidgeted. Oh no.

“...Twenty thousand dollars.”

She filled her cheeks with air and slowly let it out. 

“Terry’s dad loaned us half.”

She had a horrible feeling that this was what dealing with her was like half a decade ago. Maybe a quarter of a decade. She completed her circuit of the tank and crossed her arms again. 

Her brain turned over the idea. 

“I need your help. I don’t know what I’m doing. I still think the microbrewery is a good idea, but we’re in over our heads. If you’ll buy in, then maybe…” he trailed off. 

“Back yourself. If I buy in…?”

“Maybe we can do it. Break into the market. We can still make our money back and maybe even come out ahead?”

She hummed. The Jamaican coffee deal was up and running. She did need a new project soon. She didn’t know anything about the beer market, or production. It would take a lot of work before even getting started. The potential payout though?

“Tell me about the project,” she said. “Sell it to me.” 

Three weeks later, on a bright and chilly October morning, Louise met Marcus and his D&D group at a warehouse on the edges of the Bowery. She pulled up the roller door to reveal a long narrow space filled with gleaming steel tanks. 

They were a nice enough group. Terry she knew from a previous job, Brian hung around Marcus all the time, and Patricia was the newest of the lot. They were all between seventeen and nineteen. Louise had bought out Terry’s Dad’s share and was covering their expenses until they had something to sell. In return she was running the show. 

A truck pulled up outside, filled with sacks upon sacks of barley and hops.

Louise marshalled her troops. There was a healthy amount of whinging, but she got them unloading the truck in a neat line before the driver could yell at them for wasting his time.

She had a sack of hops over her shoulder when she noticed a shadow stretching away on the asphalt by the corner of the warehouse. It looked like someone smoking. That was neither here nor there, but she hadn’t paid any protection money to the two bit thug who thought he was in charge this month. Nobody really cared about the Bowery enough to check. Not the current crop of crime lords anyway.

She put her sack down and wandered over. 

The figure stamped out their cigarette just as she rounded the corner. 

Jason leaned against the brick wall. She stared at him. 

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” her mouth said. 

He didn’t look like someone serving multiple lifetime sentences chained to a bed in Arkham. He did look like someone who had recently been chained to a bed in Arkham. It hadn’t even been that long. But he was too pale and his eyes were sunken. He had picked up a huge scar running from the corner of his mouth up to his hairline, over his ear. He wasn’t in a prison jumpsuit but his clothes didn’t look like they belonged to him either. 

“You look like hell.” 

His eyes dropped. “Thanks.”

“Are you… what are you doing here?”

Marcus’ voice called out from around the corner. “Where’s Louise gone? Louise? Where do we put the yeast?”

“By the bench!” she yelled back. 

Jason flinched. 

Her heart broke. 

What the hell did they do to him?

He rubbed the back of his head. “Don’t worry, I’m just passing through. I wanted to thank you. For visiting, that one time. I’ll get out of your hair now.” He pushed off from the wall. 

“Do you want a job?” she said suddenly.

“What?” 

“We’re hiring.”

His brow furrowed. “Not really my speed.”

“You don’t know what we’re doing yet,” she said and managed a teasing grin. “Do you have something better on?”

His shoulders slumped a little and he looked away. “What is it?”

“Come see.”

“You don’t have to do this. I don’t need pity.”

“Please. You think I would run an operation poorly to cater to someone’s feelings? I’m a business woman, thank you.”

“It’s okay. Really.”

“You know I tried to visit you again?” she said. 

He shook his head mutely. 

“At.. the facility they were holding you. You’re supposed to be allowed visitors. They wouldn’t let me. No matter what I did or said, and I made nice with many fucking cops, I talked to actual lawyers. They stopped taking my calls.” She swallowed through a painful lump. “I missed you, man.”

“Oh.” He looked struck. “You shouldn’t have done that. You’re only painting a target on your back.” 

She shook her head. “It’s done now. You’re welcome to stick around. We could use you.” 

“I’ll… take a look.”

They stood motionless for a moment, looking at the other.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “Really.”

She reached tentatively for him. He wrapped her in a hug. She squeezed him. He held her really tight. 

Jason let Louise lead him into her latest scheme. 

The headache that had chased him since he broke out of the asylum was still there, the same as sensitivity to light. He squinted at the row of teenagers she introduced him to. One of them looked familiar. His headache was throbbing too aggressively for him to think any further about it.

She took him inside the warehouse. It was darker and quieter there, and the headache calmed. She presented him with a machine that wasn’t working, a water stained old manual, and a box of parts. 

“Do you think you can get it working?” she asked. 

He sat at the desk and looked it over. He read through the manual. Sometimes the words swam in front of his eyes. He picked up the parts and thought about it. It was straight forward really, and he could see where it had been assembled wrong. The instructions were misprinted. He changed the pipes around. There. That should work.

“Why did you do?” Louise said, over his shoulder. 

He froze up. “What you told me to.”

“...Alright.” 

“Don’t stand behind me,” he snapped.

“Alright.” She backed away, in the corner of his vision.

He breathed deeply. His heart rate was thundering. It slowly came down. He moved onto the next part of the machine. 

He watched whenever someone walked by. They stopped walking by. He breathed deep, and focused on the work. 

The day passed. 

Someone called goodbye and he looked up to see the kids disappearing through the roller door. It was dark out, and yellow lights lit up the warehouse. Cold blustery air blew in from the river nearby. It smelled of the outside in a way he had forgotten. 

Louise climbed the metal steps up to his work bench and boxes of parts, keeping in his line of sight. 

“I think we’ll call it there for today,” she called. “How did you find it?”

“Fine.”

She moved the manual aside and sat on the corner of his desk. He allowed it. 

She handed him a wad of cash.

“What’s this?”

“Money.” She smiled. 

“You don’t… have to…”

“I don’t think you know what a job is,” she said and pressed the cash into his hand. She hopped off the desk. “Come back tomorrow if you’re up for it. It was good having you.”

He breathed out. He didn’t know how he felt. His thoughts weren’t in order lately. 

“Okay,” he said. 

He got himself home without really noticing the process, not until he was locking the door to his shoebox of an apartment behind him. 

It was bare bones, with nothing but a mattress on some pallets in one room and cupboards of emergency rations in the other, and his security measures. 

He checked it hadn’t been tampered with, that every window was still locked and electrified, and felt calmer. He felt real and present in this space.

Nobody else had been here. Neither Bruce or Dick ever found this place back when they were at war, probably because he only rarely used it then. It was cold and unwelcoming. Nobody had any reason to come here. There was nobody to tamper with his food, or force him to go to bed, or to shower. He rubbed his wrists and kicked off his shoes. Having laces again was really nice. 

He had been all but chewing on the walls the first few days after he broke out. He wasn’t totally sure how many days ago that was.  

He didn’t know what drugs they had been giving him. They were strong and at least some of them were addictive. He was pretty sure the sedatives caused audio-hallucinations, and whatever they gave him to stop the hallucinations was what caused the headaches. Going cold turkey on the whole cocktail was like running face first into a wall.

He had sweated through the worst agony of his second life on the thin mattress. He drank a lot of water, threw it all up, and hallucinated until he passed out. He was through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms now. He hoped. 

He mechanically made some oatmeal and ate it from the pan. He lay down on the bed and slept deeply. 

He woke in a sharp panic. 

He crawled under the table and hyperventilated. His skin itched and he felt watched. He stared at the dark window.

There was no laughter. He repeated it to himself. It wasn’t real. Nobody was laughing. He was alone. He gripped the handle of a knife too hard and made his hand ache.

Eventually he made it back to the bed and passed out again. 

He couldn’t bring himself to leave the apartment the next day. The day after was miserable and wet but he felt more like himself. He made it down to the brewery again.

Louise met him at the door with a box of familiar donuts. They were the only two there.

“Hi Jay. How do you feel about looking over the control unit today?”

He rolled his shoulders. “Yeah, alright.”

He set up at the workbench again, this time with a new box of parts. He looked casually at what he had already done, and realised it was all nonsense. He didn’t even remember doing most of it. He sighed deeply. He tucked away what remained of his dignity. 

“Louise,” he called.

“Yeah?” her voice echoed from somewhere else in the warehouse. 

“Control unit’s gotta wait, I’m not done with the other one.”

“Alright.” 

He sat and redid all his work from the previous day. 

The others arrived throughout the day and the warehouse grew lively. Rain fell heavy and monotonous but they left the roller door open. Someone found a radio and turned it to some Golden Oldies channel. The sloshing of the rain over Sam Cooke’s crooning echoed through the hollow space. He breathed deeply. It felt pretty good.  

Days passed. Then weeks. He settled back into his skins. He knew he weirded the others out, but they were all giving him his space without making a scene out of it. They didn’t stand behind him and nobody moved his drinks or touched his food. He was pretty sure Marcus thought he was a recovering addict. Which he was, in a way. 

He tried not to think about that. He didn’t want to throw up again. 

He was getting really sick of feeling so weak and delicate. There was nothing he could do about it. He just had to ride it out, like everything else. 

In time, even the headaches started to fade. 

Gotham was in a rare state of calm. Occasionally the news mentioned the criminal Red Hood was still at large, alongside every other current escapee from Arkham. Nightwing was sighted back in Bludhaven. Batman and Robin patrolled the streets of Gotham. Bruce Wayne was declared not dead after all. 

Jason Todd focused on the minutiae of brewing beer. 

He was the only one here who knew anything about chemistry, and he stopped them from making chemical weapons by accident.

Most nights he and Louise were the last to leave. He didn’t like leaving a job half done, and she was a workaholic with two other projects on the go. Once everyone else was gone they alternated stealing the radio from each other. 

Louise listened to the local grunge scene. He would rather drink Gotham river water. He liked east coast hip hop. She put up with it, until he looked away and suddenly someone was doing terrible things to an amp again. 

When they had enough she would herd him out, threatening to pay him for his time, and they’d do it again the next day. 

He was unwillingly added to a group chat. Some days Louise would ask for their bagel orders. He didn’t know where she was getting them from, but they were quality. 

The others stopped treating him like a lit firework, and his skin stopped crawling when someone looked at him for too long. 

Louise annoyed him, so he ate her custard filled donut. 

She ate his lox bagel. 

“You don’t even like seafood!” he yelled across the warehouse.

“Tell me about it,” she replied, crunching up the wrapper. “I didn’t enjoy that at all.”

“I’m gonna key your car.”

“Draw something pretty,” she said and blew him a kiss.

He hid the radio in the rafters that night when it was just the two of them and played the Phantom of the Opera on full volume. She had earmuffs on before Angel of Music was finished. 

The next morning they started again fresh like nothing had happened. 

He was doing a stock take when Louise sat next to him. She tapped her feet, then started carefully unfolding and separating the sheets of a napkin. She draped one over his arm.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking between his notes and the translucent paper. 

“I don’t know if we should use the fancy hops or not,” she replied.

“You already bought them. What does this have to do with putting stuff on me?”

“I’m trying to decide. Without it, we have a bog-standard lager on our hands. With it, plus the proper yeast, we'll have something like an IPA.” She draped another sheet over his bicep. 

He picked up the water spray bottle kept for the pot plants and gave her a spritz in the face. She squinted through it. 

“What are you going to do with it otherwise?” 

“Sell it.” She wiped her face. “I grabbed it because it was discounted with everything else we got, but someone more specialised could pay good money for it. And if the latest batch doesn’t work then we’re just pissing it away.” 

Another napkin graced him, this time on his shoulder. He spritzed her again. 

“Wait until the test batches are done and see what product you like better.” 

She hummed. 

“Does it go off?” he asked. 

“No.”

“Then you can always sell it later.”

She hummed, and wandered off again. 

“You have a paper napkin on your shoulder,” Marcus said about fifteen minutes later. 

Jason gave him a spritz. 

“Alright team,” Louise called at five o clock on a Tuesday. “Everybody pack it up, it is time for some market research.”

Jason looked up from the bottling equipment.

The heads of assorted teens popped up around him, with varying levels of excitement. 

There had been a hubbub kicked up throughout the week as Louise got proper fake IDs for all of them. She was registered as the company owner so they were allowed to sell alcohol. That didn’t cover buying it. She was taking the group out to actually try the product they were making, because none of them went to bars or had any idea about their target demographic. 

Jason wiped his hands on a rag and strolled over to the entrance. It was a beautiful night, cold enough for a coat, but with no clouds or wind. Since escaping Arkham he hadn’t done anything except survive. He worked, he slept, he ate. This felt like some kind of test. Louise had asked him to be a sober driver with her and make sure they didn’t lose anyone along the way. It was very low stakes compared to most of his life.

It still felt like a big step. 

At the carpark, Louise and Marcus were arguing over potential product names. She hustled him and Patricia into her car, while Jason jerked his head at Terry and Brian and got them into the back of Terry’s car. Jason took the driver’s seat. He took a deep breath. Today was not the day he started backing down from challenges. 

“Alright,” he said, as they buckled in. “This is a dangerous mission, watch out for your partner, keep your ears open, your eyes peeled, and we’ll get through this in one piece.”

“Bring it on,” Terry said.

Brian started playing Born to be Wild through his phone. 

Five minutes and half a dozen song changes later they pulled up at a bar wedged between a laundromat and a combination shoe repair and locksmith. The guys turned very serious. Jason smirked. He knew this place, it had been here forever. There were slot machines out the back, if you knew who to ask, and little baggies of various powders occasionally left in the bathrooms. The neon sign out the front had so many dead letters it was hard to see what it was meant to say.

Louise was already leading her troupe in. They followed her into a greasy and noisy dive bar. It smelled like old frying oil, the floor was sticky, and generic eighties rock blasted through the speakers. Clusters of people hung around the booths, bar, and pool table, each with their own cluster of glass mugs of hazy gold liquid. It was a quiet night, by this place’s standards. 

The bartender was a woman in her thirties busy pouring mugs without stopping to look. Louise swung herself onto a stool and ordered four of the house beer. Four glasses slid their way immediately. There wasn’t so much as a suggestion of looking at IDs. Not a whiff of a thought of IDs. 

Marcus and company all sat on the stools like a little row of ducklings and assessed whatever it was they served here. The tap said Coors, but that didn’t mean anything. 

Jason leaned against the bar at the other end, making sure they didn’t lose any stragglers. He made eye contact with Louise. She grinned back. The bartender interrupted herself to look at their weird little group like she was expecting a punchline, then shook her head and went back to her work. 

Marcus made a face after his first sip, which was pretty funny for a guy Jason once fished out of a meth lab. Terry was putting on a show of trying to appreciate it, Brian drank his too fast then had to stop, and Patricia was staring into her glass like it was a conundrum to be solved. They were all so young. Fresh faced babies. 

Brian reached for a bowl of bar nuts. Jason caught his hand. 

After Louise was confident they had suffered enough, she called it and they trundled back out to the cars. Louise paid. 

The mood in the cars was grim. 

“Don’t wimp out now. This is only stop one, fellas,” Jason said cheerily. 

It did not improve the mood.

He followed Louise out of the Bowery, to a more fashionable area. The streets turned wide and leafy. They stopped outside a large beer garden. It looked pretty empty. 

“There is no way they’re letting us in,” Jason muttered to Louise as they headed for the entrance. 

She smiled. “We’ll see.”

“IDs please,” the maitre’d said. She offered a pleasant and bland smile that said ‘you will not get past me.’

Jason gave Louise a look. 

The teenagers rifled around in their pockets for their new documents. These were assessed with discontent. Jason had seen them, and yeah they were convincing, they were also all clearly part of a set made yesterday. 

“Hugo!” Louise called, waving at the bar.

A red-headed man looked over, then brightened at the sight of her. He hurried over and gave her a hug. 

“Louise! It is very good to see you again,” Hugo, apparently the bar manager, said in a German accent. “What is the problem? What is happening here?” 

The maitre’d made an annoyed sound and gestured between the acne-ridden crowd and the row of IDs. 

Hugo made a conflicted noise and looked at Louise. 

She smiled like she was letting him in on a secret. “My friends here have only ever tried Coors. I’m trying to get them a real education. Can you help us?”

He clucked in the back of his throat. “Say no more.” He swept out into the empty courtyard. “This way, my friends! I will show you the world.”

Louise sent Jason an annoying smile. 

Hugo took charge. They were seated at a large table with wide benches and an umbrella. Jason excused himself from the beer history lesson and sat with Louise at the other end of the table. 

Carafes were brought out, flights of beer were poured, and the kids slowly started to ask questions and get into it. They were the only ones here and the bar staff had nothing else to do. 

Jason and Louise ordered food for the table and just hung out. 

Patricia successfully identified a wheat beer and looked very proud of herself. Marcus found one he liked and looked just as proud. 

Louise sighed. “They grow up so fast.”

“It seems like only yesterday they were asking why they couldn’t add lemonade to the mix.” 

“I wonder if we’re insufferable.”

“Probably,” he said. “What will you do if it’s all too much for them?” 

“Hugo’s just keen, they’ll survive.”

“I mean the brewery. Not everyone has your chutzpah, you know, and you’re a long way from turning a profit.”

She shrugged. “If it all goes tits up, we can sell the business and recoup some losses. You know me, I’m always ready to cut and run.” 

“That can’t be true. You keep me around,” he drawled.

“You improve the scenery.”

He cut her a look. She smiled. 

“What do you have to be so smiley about, huh? You are burning money.”

She shrugged. “That’s just what it takes. They’re not all winners, but I’m prepared to crash and burn from time to time. Builds character.”

He scoffed. “Does not.” 

“Keeps me humble then.”

“That’s not true either,” he said and took the last onion ring.

She laughed. The evening was stretching on and the table getting comfortably tipsy. Louise thanked Hugo and tipped generously. He kissed her on the cheek and wrote his number on the receipt. 

Jason watched the way she clocked it and tucked the receipt in her back pocket. 

He herded his boys back into the car. Brian and Terry were leaning against each other in the back seats.

They left the affluent streets behind as he drove towards their last stop of the night. The roads got narrow and the buildings an expensive mix of run down and heritage. They were around the back of the Gotham U campus. 

The bar was in a converted garage. The sign was spray painted on the walls, but it was on such a busy background of older tags that Jason had no idea what it was supposed to say. Nu jazz music wafted through thin and high windows, accompanied by the faint smell of weed. 

“Alright,” Louise called while they were all on the sidewalk. The group gathered loosely around her. “There’s something we have to talk about before we go into this one. This is important, pay attention.”

Jason crossed his arms. They all focused on her.

“Yesterday, one of you took my peach cobbler from the fridge. You are going to tell me who.”

The silence got tense. 

Jason threw his head back and laughed. 

“Maybe he did it,” Brian said, shuffling on his feet.

“Please,” Louise replied with scorn, “Jason would rub it in my face.”

“Damn straight.” 

The group swapped some looks, but nobody said anything. 

Louise didn’t flinch. 

“It was Marcus!” Patricia said.

Marcus looked at her in betrayal. “I didn’t know it was yours!” 

Louise tutted and shook her head.

“Marcus, Marcus, Marcus.” She put an arm around his shoulders and steered him into the bar. “My own business partner. I’m hurt.”

The others followed them with a kind of horrified curiosity. Jason, for one, was heartily enjoying Louise’ mob boss impression. 

Inside the bar didn’t look much like one. There were couches everywhere and giant knitted cushions on the floor. Murals covered the walls and bizarre artwork hung from the rafters. People lay around and chatted. Bottles filled a tall fridge, and there was no actual ‘bar’.

A tall lanky man with a top knot and a scraggly beard came over to greet them. 

“Hi guys, welcome. I’m Julian. Have you been to The Shed before?”

“I have,” Louise said, “My friend here is starting his own microbrewery.”

Marcus turned pink. Louise pushed him forward. 

“Oh that’s incredible, little man! I’ve actually been running a nanobrewery myself for three years now. It’s so freeing. I’m an IPA man myself, but I’m moving into Pacific amber ales lately, it’s just a less commercialised field, you know? There’s more room to express yourself. We’ve got a hoppy guava fruit ale that’s–” 

Julian led Marcus away. 

“Cruel and unusual punishments are illegal, you know,” Jason said. 

“Remind me to go rescue him in an hour.”

“Do we… help ourselves?” Patricia asked, looking around in confusion. 

“I have no idea,” Louise said, and opened a fridge. She nodded at Jason. “Last stop of the night, do you want to split a bottle?” 

“Yeah, alright.” 

The kids broke off and settled down on whatever furniture looked most comfortable. Louise brought some bottles around to each of them, apparently picking flavours at random. 

Jason collapsed onto a couch near the kids. They were really only about two years younger than him, and just as out of their depths. Louise ran rings around them, and she did it so well you couldn’t tell she was also completely out of her depth. 

She joined him on the couch, with a bottle and a glass. The couch was too low and too wide, with not enough padding. She wiggled to get comfortable then cracked the bottle open. He held the glass steady and she poured half out for him.

“Cheers,” she said, and they tapped bottle to glass with a little ‘tink’. They drank. 

It tasted odd. 

He wasn’t really a beer guy. 

Louise hummed. “That’s disgusting.”

He sniggered. “It is. Our shit has got to be better than this.” 

She laughed and leaned into him a little. He relaxed despite himself. This was not his kind of place. In fact, he hated it a little. He stretched out. 

He didn’t know what he was afraid of happening tonight. 

Brian and Terry were getting lost in each other’s eyes on a beanbag. Patricia had developed some strong opinions about craft beer and was loudly decrying pilsners to some captivated college students. Marcus had had enough of being Julian’s captive audience and was valiantly fighting back. 

“I think they’ll be alright,” Jason said. 

“I’ll drink to that,” Louise said, and raised her bottle. “But not literally.”

Chapter Text

Jason blew out a thin stream of smoke into the night. His eyes reflexively scanned the rooftops. Old habit.

Behind him Louise was locking up the brewery. He didn’t let her stay late on her own, even though she would and had many times before at previous jobs. She was a very clever idiot like that. He was her ride home tonight.

He took a drag of his cigarette. 

Heavy black clouds hung over the city. It had threatened to rain all day but refused to deliver. The air was charged and too warm for this late in the fall. 

Gunshots popped in the distance. 

A gang war was raging a couple of blocks over. A stray bullet had taken out a leg of their bottling machine earlier in the week. It was propped up on cinder blocks now. 

He let out another stream of smoke. 

Joker was out of Arkham again. The police advised everyone to stay away from Amusement Mile, like that would make the difference. People went about their normal lives anyway, because what else could they do? Gotham was Gotham. Either you got got, or you didn’t. 

He rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, took a final drag, then stomped it out on the ground. He could hear Louise’s footsteps approaching. They were moving too quickly for someone who sprained their ankle in an underground boxing match last night. 

He turned his head. 

Louise hurried from the warehouse in her coat and fingerless gloves, looking back furtively.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Just as I was shutting the door behind me, I saw a shadow drop from the rafters.” 

He sucked in a breath and let it out long and slow. “Let’s get out of here.” 

She threw him her keys and got into the passenger seat. He drove them away without looking back. 

“What’s going on, Jay? Do you need to run? I’ll cover for you.” 

He shook his head. “He’s known where I am for a while.” 

Louise narrowed her eyes. “...I’m not hearing any police sirens.” 

He sighed. Who knew what Bruce thought of him these days. He was watching Jason’s apartment. The clues were there. He hadn’t broken in, but surveillance on the entrances was 24/7. The route of his morning runs had acquired cameras. That loss of privacy made his skin crawl, but it was normal for Batman. Jason was… dealing with it. This was normal. 

He would bet good money this wasn’t even the first visit paid to the brewery. 

“What’s he doing in my warehouse?” Louise asked when he didn’t say anything. 

“Probably checking I’m not making nitroglycerin in the tanks or anything.”

“That’s stupid.” 

“I could be,” he said, turning onto the main road.

“But you wouldn’t.”

“How do you know?

“Because I didn’t meet you yesterday.” 

He harrumphed. “See, that’s why you’re not Bat material.”

“Heartbreaking.”

He looked at her. She was staring at him intently. 

“Are you safe?” 

“It’s fine,” he said. 

“Jason.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

She huffed, but let it drop. She put her feet up on the dash, her right leg with its swollen lump of bandages stretched out. 

The streets were quiet tonight thanks to an abundance of road works. They slowed to a crawl, as workers in high vis waved them around closed lanes, then told them to wait again. Louise was still watching him, but trying to be subtle about it. From his periphery he saw a smile quirk at her lips. 

“So…Thanksgiving, huh?”

He groaned. “I think I’d rather talk about Batman.”

“I’m happy for Terry and Brian and the healing power of love or whatever, but can they shut up about it?”

“That pity invite.” He rubbed a hand down his face. The road worker waved him on.

“He means well,” Louise groused.

“No he doesn’t. He feels bad for us sad sacks and was relieved we both said no.”

“It’s not even sad. A lot of people don’t have families to go home to. It’s very normal actually.”

“Right?” He had never had anything that looked like the holiday in the movies. But Mom made the effort, while she could. Willis had been home a few times and they tried. Alfred had tried. It had been good enough for him.

A road worker flipped their sign to ‘stop’. They waited again. Yellow and white lights zipped over the windscreen from the cars in the opposite lane. 

“What do you and your old man do?” Jason asked. 

“I drop him off at a friend’s house. He’s godparent to one of their kids.”

“You don’t go?”

“And play happy families for a live studio audience? No thank you. I’ll take the day off instead.”

“And do what?”

She shrugged. “Might get some takeout. Pirate a movie.”

“Take out,” he repeated. That was what he did last time he wasn’t in prison, actually. But that was different. He was a vigilante, he signed up for that sort of thing. 

“The Chinese place around the corner is usually open,” she said. “They do good dumplings.”

“...Okay, that is sad.” 

“Fuck off,” she laughed. 

“Come hang out with me,” he said, with sudden inspiration.

She raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

“Cooking for you, apparently.”

He could pull it off. There was no way he could cook a whole turkey in his toaster oven, but he could come up with something . He would need to get a couch and move his weights to the bedroom. Maybe get a TV? 

Yeah. He could do it. 

“You can cook?”

“I do alright.” 

“This better not be another pity invite,” she said softly. Then she cleared her throat and had her signature grin back in place. “I can pity myself just fine.”

He crooked an eyebrow at her. 

She looked away. 

“So Thursday?” he asked. 

“Yeah alright.”

The sign flipped to ‘Go.’ 

Jason looked over his apartment critically. It was still a miserable little shoe box. But it was his. He had made it comfortable over the last few months. 

Now he was letting someone else inside it. 

He had been twitchy about that when he got home. He double checked all his security, and remembered a bat invading the brewery. A doctor looking into his cell. 

Then, while making himself a cup of tea, he pictured Louise sitting on the kitchen table, chatting about the newest barley suppliers, casually peeling a potato. Or maybe playing a guitar badly. It made him smile. 

Louise was allowed in, he decided. She didn’t count.

So he had gone hunting for furniture. He only had a day, but tracked down a second hand couch, a TV, and got a dining chair thrown in for free. The living room looked more like someone lived there once he had it all set up. He nodded to himself then set off again for groceries. 

The shops were busy and woefully stocked. He got enough to make do, switching out recipes on the fly to work with what was available. He wasn’t going the whole nine yards, it was just the two of them after all, but he had standards. They were going to be well fed and have a great time, damnit. He picked up a casserole dish and a second saucepan.

The next day he rolled out of bed with a mission. There were turkey legs to brine, and vegetables to prepare and roast off. 

Soon the whole apartment smelled like potential. The range hood didn’t work so he cracked open a window. The wind was fresh and bracing. 

He realised, halfway through preparing the potatoes, that he was recreating a dinner he helped Alfred with once. A version of it, at least, Alfred overcompensated with American holidays, even though Bruce had called away by an emergency every year Jason was there. 

He remembered the crispy skin of the turkey, the richness of the gravy, and the beautiful flavours of the stuffing. The days and days of leftovers. 

He slowed his peeling. He was pretty sure Alfred would be proud of his efforts. Given the conditions he was working under, and not given their current relationship.

That wasn’t something he cared about anymore, of course. 

He did kind of want his stuffing recipe though. He had bought what the online recipe said, but Alfred’s didn’t taste like anyone else’s. 

If he had planned ahead he could have broken into the manor in the early morning after patrol ended and before Alfred got up and photographed the recipe card. Too late now. 

He could call. 

That thought circled his brain, interrupting any other.

The day was about family, right? 

They hadn’t been family for a long time. 

But they had been. Once. They said you didn’t get to choose your family, right? 

The last time he spoke to Alfred he was in tenth grade. 

He put the peeler down. Alfred would be cooking too, he was probably run off his feet right now.  The phone was in the kitchen, there was no risk of getting anyone else today. A call might slip in under the radar.

He took a breath then got his phone out, before he could talk himself back out of it. 

He dialled, and committed to his course.

It rang. 

It kept ringing. He looked up. Alfred was probably was too busy. He probably didn’t even hear it ring. 

The phone clicked. 

“Yes?” Alfred said.

“Hey Alfie.”

A hitch of breath. “...Jason?”

Not ‘master’ Jason anymore then. He swallowed.  

“Yeah. I, uh. Any chance I could get your recipe for turkey stuffing?”

“My boy,” he said, quietly. “I… I’m not sure this is appropriate.”

“...Yeah. S’pose not.”

“Why don’t you t–”

Jason hung up.

He shouldn’t have called. Idiot. 

He fumbled for his peeler and knocked a potato off the chopping board. 

He sniffed hard. Fuck. He put his hands flat on the board. 

It was just stuffing. Anyone could make stuffing. 

Louise arrived early in the afternoon. Jason had gotten himself back under control and focused on cooking by then. 

She breezed in, wrapped up in a scarf and wool hat, with heavy laden plastic bags dangling from her arms. 

“Wow, it smells amazing in here,” she said, emerging from under her layers with a smile and rosy cheeks. 

“Thanks,” he said, closing and locking the door. Was that weird? He unlocked it. No, that was worse, he locked it again. 

“You said dessert, but this was all they had left in the freezer section.”

“What is it?”

She stepped back, revealing a box that he would expect to contain frozen pie, but the cardboard had been damaged and all that was legible was the word ‘Deluxe’ and the bottom half of a photo of a plate. He didn’t even recognise the brand.

“A mystery we can solve together,” she said. “Plus ice cream, in case the mystery is gross.”

He gave it a suspicious look before throwing it in the freezer. 

Next she pulled out a couple of bottles of their own beer, which hadn’t gone to market yet but would soon, and a bottle of red wine. He made off with the wine for deglazing. She cracked open the drinks and got comfortable. 

“Can I help?” she asked. 

“No.”

“Not even a little? Come on, you did all the real work, let me help out.”

He focused as he poured the deglazed frond and juices from the roast into a pot, careful to avoid splashing the hot oil. He poured in a cornflour slurry, gave it a mix, and handed her the spoon.

“Here, you watch the gravy.”

He added green beans to sauteed mushrooms, then threw in a little more butter. He glanced back at Louise. 

She was mixing her little pot like it might explode if she lost focus for even a second. 

He threw his tea towel over his shoulder, put his hands on his hips, and watched her. She didn’t even notice. The gravy was simmering very very gently. She stirred, intently. Affection for the goofball swelled in him. 

“Alright,” he said, turning off the gas. “Are you ready for your next mission? This one is more dangerous, with higher stakes and more complicated manoeuvres.” 

She straightened up. “I’m ready.”

“Mash the potatoes.”

“I am not ready.”

He handed her a fork. “Learn on the job.” 

“Oh, okay.” 

There were no catastrophes in the potato mashing department. A little later everything was done. Louise was blown away that he had made it all from scratch. 

“Except the cranberry sauce,” he said.

“Are you kidding me? This turkey is life changing,” she said, throwing her head back. “Didn’t make the cranberry sauce, pshaw.” 

They ate until they couldn’t anymore, which definitely made him feel good about himself. They gossiped about their coworkers and the city in general. It was hard to be that miserable around Louise when she had set out to enjoy herself. 

The stuffing was just okay. 

They moved to the couch and put the game on. Neither was really watching it, it was just on in the background while they lounged about. 

They cracked open the mystery dessert and discovered what was probably a sticky date pudding. They found they could eat a little more after all. 

Louise sat slumped down with one leg thrown over an arm rest, sifting through her melting ice cream for pudding. Jason put his bowl on the ground and let his head roll back. The couch was surprisingly comfortable. On the tv someone scored a touchdown. It must have been the visiting team, the crowd was disgruntled. He folded his arms behind his head. 

“Maybe it’s fudge cake,” Louise said. 

“I’m telling you it’s sticky date.”

“Then why isn’t it sticky?”

“Because it’s been in a freezer for five years.”

“Hmm.”

A few minutes later she muttered, “It’s definitely some kind of sponge.”  

He shook his head. She put her bowl down and picked up her wine glass. 

“I’m thankful I’m not in Arkham,” he said quietly, watching the tv.

She hummed. “I’m thankful I’m not at home.” 

Silence settled in after their declarations. The TV was turned down low. He thought about stuffing that was just okay. 

“Do you suppose they’re missing us?” he asked. He meant to sound sarcastic and bitter. It didn’t really come out that way. 

“No,” Louise said. “I don’t.” 

He looked down at her. “How do you know?”

She shrugged. “Love is a doing word.”

He let his head roll back again. “Yeah.”

The visiting team scored another six points. The commentators were distraught.

“They threw me in Arkham,” he said. 

“The fuckers.” 

He laughed, and there was the bitterness he was so good at. “My own family. Who does that?”

He covered his face with both hands. The old anger flared in his chest, hot and ugly. He was so tired of being angry. He was so good at it. 

He wanted to be something else. He wanted to stop living for these people, instead of hurting himself to prove a point, over and over. It was never going to achieve anything. 

He leaned his weight sideways against her. She rested her head against his arm. 

“I need to get out of here,” he said, as the realisation sank into him.

“Alright,” Louise said. She took one last gulp of wine, then pulled herself up. She headed for the coats thrown over the back of a chair. “Where are we going?” 

Fuck, he was going to miss her. 

He looked up at her as she put her arms through their sleeves.

She looked back down at him, and put her hands on her hips. 

“Ever been to the top of the East Bridge?” he asked. 

“First time for everything, right?”

He rolled to his feet. He took her down to the garage where he locked up his bike. It was a cheap old clunker. It had done its best. 

He rode through the streets, Louise holding on behind him. It was still only early evening. The city was quiet under shreds of cloud, rippled in the wind. A touch of peach lined the blue and white. 

He drove down to the pebbled beach at the water’s edge, just for the extra work out. If he was going to do it, may as well do it properly. 

Louise hopped off the bike. He pulled out his grapple gun. It was one of very few things kept in the safe house from before. He felt her watching him change the settings. 

“You’re not afraid of heights are you?”

She grinned. “Let’s find out.” 

“Come ‘ere.”

She stepped up to him and he put an arm around her waist, pulling her a little closer.

“Hold on.”

“Mm-hm.”

He shot the grapple gun, and launched them up. 

Louise wrapped herself around him with a gasp, then cackled wildly. He smiled and swung up again and again, gaining height and passing the support cables. They passed the road level and soared up with building momentum. The wind was strong and he hadn’t done this in ages, but it came as easy as breathing. He had missed the ache in his arms. He wasn’t Dick Grayson, maybe he wasn’t born to fly, but some part of him still loved it. 

A passing car below honked. 

Then they were up, hidden away from the roads on top of the bridge’s first pylon. There was a wide flat platform around them of brown brick. The edges were elaborately tapered before the sheer drop. 

Jason let go of Louise gently. She released her death grip on him with a shaky laugh. She kept a hand hovering up like she might grab for him if anything unexpected happened. He put an arm around her shoulders. 

She looked around, wide eyed. 

The blue of the sky was getting deeper by the second. The thin lace of clouds were dyed peach and orange, and reflected in the water. The first of the city’s lights were turning on and smudged over the rippling water. 

He breathed in deeply.

Gotham was beautiful, from the right angle. 

A gust of wind blew. Louise latched onto him.

“I’m gonna sit down,” she said. 

He sat with her. She crossed her legs and looked out, her head tipped up.

The air was clearer here, cold and fresh in the way it only ever was above the skyline. 

The burning orb of the sun dipped out of the clouds just above the horizon. The city shone. The clouds burned, red and gold glorious and bright.

“Do you remember that night on your fire escape?” he asked. 

“With the nurse?” she replied, not looking. 

“With the candy.”

She laughed, loud and free. “I was so hoping you’d forgotten about that.”

“Nope. I got chewed out for accepting candy from strangers.”

“Serves you right.” She glanced at him. “I thought you were the coolest thing in the world.”

“I thought you were pretty.”

“Well, I am.”

“Never change, Lou.”

The sun touched the horizon. The city burned. Every glass skyscraper reflecting the fire around and every black gothic monument soaked it up like ancient coals. It was heart breakingly beautiful. 

She leaned into him. 

“When are you leaving?”

The sun sank. The light softened.  

“Soon,” he whispered. The wind snatched it away. It didn’t really matter, it was out anyway. He’d said it. 

“Back to the old bone?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m leaving town. I can’t… this city…”

“Yeah.”

“I still want to save it.”

“It’s killing you.”

“Yeah.” He brought her in against him, his arm around her shoulders. “Thanks for everything.”

“Just… don’t die, alright? Or get thrown back in prison.”

“No promises.”

She sighed.

They watched the night reclaim its city. 

Chapter Text

Jason leaned his hip against the wall of the jail cell with his arms crossed. This was embarrassing. 

Roy sat slumped on the bench, his head tipped back against the wall, and his fake beard starting to peel. Jason resisted the urge to smooth down his own fake moustache. He wished he was in his armour. 

Kory strolled a loop around the other cell, the burning ends of her hair swaying with the movement. The cop who arrested them had wisely not tried to put handcuffs on her. She was going along with this because Jason and Roy were. 

The Outlaws were the only ones in this tiny precinct’s lock up, despite it being nearly four in the morning. It was as far away from Gotham as you could get while still technically being in the municipality. He got the feeling this suburb didn’t get a whole lot of the dress ups. They didn’t have any power suppression cells that were standard on the island police stations. He could walk out of here with his eyes shut. 

The problem was that it was Gotham, and nobody’s eyes were shut. They couldn’t afford a paper trail. 

“I still say we should have called Dick,” Roy said. 

“Over my empty grave.”

“I’m pretty sure Bludhaven is in the other direction actually.” 

“Was he not once a member of law enforcement?” Kory asked. She kept looking at the door the guard had disappeared through. 

“That just makes it worse.”

The drone of yelling started up through the wall. 

“There’s always plan B,” Roy said lightly, stretching his arms up and folding them behind him.  

Jason rolled his eyes. Like that wasn’t the most direct way to get Bat attention. 

This was not how he announced he was back in Gotham. He wasn’t back in Gotham and there was going to be no announcement. 

The yelling got closer. He grinned. 

“I told you. My friend ‘is a lawyer’.”

“I don’t like that I can hear the quotation marks around that.” 

The door burst open and Louise strode in. She was wearing a grey suit and reading glasses. Two short and rotund cops followed close on her heels, all talking over each other. 

“–Because of her skin colour?” Louise demanded.  

“She’s bright orange! And her hair’s on fire!” the guard said, gesturing wildly at Kory. Kory blinked back at him. 

“–One of those science nutcases Batman’s always fighting,” the duty sergeant was saying.

Louise held a hand up. “I don’t care if she’s purple with green polka dots. My client has the same rights as anyone else.”

“I don’t want her going around frightening people in my–”

“Alright,” Louise said, “you book her for having criminal features, and we’ll make it the DCR’s problem. How much does the captain like paperwork?”

The arguing stopped. The guard huffed a breath. The sergeant pursed his lips. 

“Alternatively, everyone promises to be on their best behaviour all the way to the county border, and you don’t have to deal with this anymore.”

The sergeant looked at Jason. 

Jason smiled back. 

Ten minutes later they strolled out of the tiny police station. 

Louise brought up the rear, looking very proud of herself. They stopped on the pavement.

She grinned at him. “Hey.” 

“Hey.” 

Wow, she was a sight for sore eyes. 

It had been almost a year. A lot had happened, he felt different on a level he couldn’t even explain to himself, but Louise was always Louise. She had cut her hair and her makeup was different but there was the same spark of trouble in her eyes and quirk to her lips. 

“Could have sworn I said something about not getting yourself thrown in prison,” she said, opening her arms. 

He wrapped her up in a hug. She even smelled the same. 

“Dumbass,” she muttered into his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah.”

He felt Roy and Kory staring and he didn’t even care. Much. He kind of didn’t want them looking at her, which was stupid. 

“Aww. You really do have other friends!” Roy said. “I figured you owed her money.”

Louise pulled back. “Well, you do now. My hourly rates are extravagant.”

“Make the invoice out to ‘Roy Harper’.” 

Roy swept in and put his arm around Jason’s shoulder.

“Isn’t he funny? Hey, what was your name again?”

“We should get out of here, they’re starting to look like they regret letting us go.” Jason started walking around to where the cops had impounded their car. “

“I’m Louise,” she said from behind him. 

“Roy, and this is Kory.”

“Thank you for speaking in our defence,” Kory said.

“Any time. Wow, you are beautiful.”

Jason snorted. 

“Thank you,” Kory replied, all ethereal grace.  

“Alright, enough of that,” Roy said. 

They got their car back. Roy sat in the driver’s seat with the window down. Kory floated over to the passenger seat. 

Jason and Louise lingered outside the car. There were floodlights on the carpark and a security guard sitting in a booth, not paying much attention. 

“How’s the brewery going?” he asked. 

“I’m out. The launch went so well, Marcus bought my share. He’s asked me to look over a lucrative partnership deal some restaurant chain offered them.”

“Wow. So people actually like it?”

“People like it!” she said, throwing her hands up, looking equally surprised. 

He laughed. “No accounting for taste. So what are you doing now?”

“I’m a rally driver. Well. Co-driver.”

“No way!” Roy called through the window. “What are you driving?”

“Production Subaru.”

Huh. Jason narrowed his eyes.

“Aww, no custom super cars?” Roy said. 

“How’d you get into it?” Jason asked.

She shrugged with a little grin. “I had to get out of food production, and I thought I’d try a normal job.”

Well that made sense. Louise wouldn’t know normal if she scammed it for every cent in its pockets. 

“You’re an okay driver. Is it going alright?”

“And can you get us tickets?” Roy chimed in.

“Yes, and yes,” she said, “because I’m an excellent driver, and it’s free for spectators.”

The security guard leaned out of his booth. “Get a move on.”

“Next race is on the third if you’re interested,” she said, backing away. “Good luck with whatever the hell it is you’re doing!”

“You too,” Jason opened the car door and hopped in. Wait, why was he in the backseat? He usually drove. 

They headed away from the city. The job they had initially come here for was beyond salvage at this point. 

“So… she’s cute,” Roy commented. 

Honestly. They made him feel like a kid in a booster seat sometimes. 

“Go get lost in Kory’s eyes.”

“We’re free on the third, right?”

“No.” 

“You came!” Louise called.

She honestly hadn’t expected him to. Now she had to win something.

Jason and Roy waved from the entrance. There was no sign of Kory today. The two were wrapped up in scarves and jackets, Jason wore a wool hat with a bobble on top and Roy a trucker cap. A fine mist of snow was falling from low white clouds. 

The race track was fairly humble. There were no grandstands for the crowd, no sealed circuit.  There were some tents, the admin building behind them, and a row of gazebos with fairly normal looking cars under them at the centre of it all. Each car was splattered in logos. Their crews hung around, some in matching logo-d jumpsuits, some dressed in their own clothes. People roamed and chatted with excitement. One of the other drivers was hoping to break some record today, and the anticipation was shared between groups. It was a friendly community. 

Beyond the crowds and the gravel of the starting zone, the track disappeared into a treeline of towering pines and silent, skeletal maples, their long grasping branches reached into the grey sky like desperate supplicants. The air was quiet and crisp, despite the camera crews and sound guys setting up nearby. 

Louise threw a coat over her padded race suit and went out to meet them. 

Jason greeted her with a hug. She didn’t know when that became normal but she was on board with it. Roy looked pretty rotten and was lining up for the coffee truck. He waved them off. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Jason asked, pointing out one car in particular. 

“The car you sent me?” she drawled, quirking an eyebrow. “With nothing but ‘happy birthday, change the plates’ on the card? Yes, yes it is. So really, this is all your fault.”

He beamed. “Hoped you’d get some use out of it.”

It had shown up in her parking spot three days after her old rust bucket finally died. She didn’t want to ask if he knew that or not, it would take away from the mystery. It was the only time she heard from him in the last year. 

She had done a lot more than change out the licence plates, of course. She added a roll cage and found a driver who had recently totaled his vehicle and made him an offer. It was street legal, which was a requirement for this type of racing, so she still used it as her day to day car. 

“Thank you,” she said. “Really. I still can’t believe you got me a new car.” She had had a lot of cars. None of them had been new . 

He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets awkwardly. “Well. I needed to not have it anymore.” 

“I figured.”

“I thought you’d sell it, to be honest.”

“No need, it’s a great car,” she said, leading him back towards it. “Handles like a dream on difficult terrain.”

“The suspension isn’t anything to write home about.”

“We ripped it all out and replaced it.”

He perked up. “Can I see?” 

“Sure. I’ll introduce you to the crew.” 

It was an area she fell down in. She could make it sing, but she needed someone else to tune it. Jason talked easily with the guys she worked with. Most of them were middle aged dads who were in it for the love of the sport, and were always eager to talk about their work with someone new. Jason was a motorhead through and through. 

She let them lead the conversation. She surreptitiously watched Jason. 

He looked good. Better than she had ever seen him, probably. The benefits of feeling safe and not being crushingly depressed. He had lost the last of his baby fat, and gained a healthy weight. There was colour in his cheeks and his habitual scowl didn’t look so heavy. He had always been tall and looming, but he had filled out to match his frame. He was emphatically not a kid forced to act the man anymore. He was a man, living his own life.

Leaving had been good for him.

She circled that thought for a bit. He probably shouldn’t come back. For his own sake. 

She was a bad friend.

Roy caught her eye, hanging around the edge of the gazebo. She wandered over to him, and he handed her a coffee. He looked a little more awake now. 

“So I know you said Rally, but I totally heard NASCAR,” he said. 

She laughed. 

“This is cool though. Very outdoor music festival.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” 

“Not at all.” 

She snorted. “The races are all time trials. We drive one at a time on four different courses, all hidden in there somewhere.” She gestured at the wall of towering trees.

“Oh.” He looked less interested. She got the feeling Jason respected his opinion so she pushed on. “Most of the spectators aren’t here, they’re out on the course. You guys should find a spot on the second stage, it gets all the best air time and wipe out corners.”

“Wait. Air time?”

She grinned. “Oh yeah.”

“Alright, I’m back on board.”

“It’s a pretty fast track normally, but with this snow… it’ll be a muddy mess. Choose your spot wisely.”

“We’re here for the full experience.”

“If you’re that jazzed about getting a mouthful of wet gravel, you’re going to have a wonderful time.” 

Music started to play through the sound system. An announcer spoke over it, hyping the crowds and telling the crews to get ready.

She said her goodbyes, shooed Jason out of her engine, and touched base with her driver, Cedric. Her role was a support one. As co-driver she gave meticulous instructions based on pre-prepared knowledge of the track. Really good rally drivers, common wisdom said, drove to their ears not their eyes. They weren’t there yet, but they were getting close. 

Jason and Roy disappeared to go find a spot to watch. 

The race was starting soon. 

Jason stood on a rocky embankment over the track with his hands on his hips.

“This is it,” he said. 

Roy sat down next to him, swinging his legs over the side. Most of the snow caught on the gnarled old hemlock pine above them, and only drifted down in little spiralling streams of powder here and there. 

Their little spot was deep in the forest, inside a sharp corner of the track with a long view in both directions. He looked both ways, assessing the swells in the road, the shifting of the turn. They would be coming in fast, given the previous straight, he had picked this corner for what had to be high speed manoeuvring with a good chance to lose control in the snow.  

Sure, it was no Batmobile smashing through the walls of a warehouse. There were no lives at stake and nobody was getting arrested at the end. He could appreciate that. 

 He breathed in deep. The air smelled so fresh and alive.

He had overheard someone say this was an old growth forest. The track was made from old dirt roads that cut around the ancient roots and waterways. This was the first time it had been raced on by professionals.  

They didn’t have to share their spot because it was hard to get to if you weren’t confident climbing tall trees, and the sharpness of the corner meant nobody was standing opposite them either. 

The air was very quiet.

Then the roar of engines echoed in the distance.

Birds scattered. He grinned. 

Louise was good. Even though she technically wasn’t driving today, he was confident she had this. She knew how to find good people to work with, and was thorough in her own ridiculous way. It was more immediately dangerous than her normal work. But there were medics on hand, and the operation looked well planned. 

The roar got closer, and then it was impossible to tell how far the car was, with the trees and little gullies echoing and redirecting the sound. 

Then a car burst out of the woods, skidded sideways around the corner, throwing up a huge cloud of snow and gravel, and rocketed down the track. 

The two of them whooped and cheered as the car disappeared. 

“See? I was right, this is relaxing,” Roy said.

“Don’t jinx it.”

Another car came screeching down the track a little later, then another, and another. They were all about five minutes apart. The day got warmer and the snow melted into sludge. The corner got harder to manage and they watched some cars fishtail and almost wipe out. 

Jason joined Roy sitting on the edge. 

“It smells funny,” he said. 

“That’s called nature,” Roy replied. “It’s this thing we have outside of Gotham.”

Jason looked down the track. 

“Where’s the next car? It’s been a while.”

“They’ve gotta be close, I can hear the roar.”

He chewed his lip. He could still hear the roaring. It bounced around the tree tops. 

It sounded close though. He tilted his head. Louise still hadn’t come through. 

Maybe she washed out earlier? 

He pulled his phone out and looked at the website for today’s races. Louise’s team had just logged their time on the first stage and should be starting the second stage.

“Look at that tree,” Roy said.

Jason looked up. A towering pine in the distance was swaying. 

“It’s moving against the wind.”

Jason narrowed his eyes and looked down at the race times, counting cars. Not enough had passed them. Not nearly enough. 

“Could be someone climbing it,” Roy muttered. “Or a car crashed into its base.” 

Jason took a deep breath through his nose. He knew that smell. His heart rate picked up. 

“Or it’s Poison Ivy.” 

Louise split her focus between the road and her track notes, keeping up a constant stream of directions for everything just beyond the immediately visible. Angle upcoming turns, rises and falls, danger zones, level of grip on the road. The previous drivers had ploughed thick furrows through the snow that were filling with melted sludge. She adjusted her instructions on the fly, trying to match the conditions. 

Cedric was on a roll. They might even win a stage. 

There was no time to think about it, not at these speeds. Her mind ran on high gear, quiet and smooth. There was no race, no other cars. No slightly-too tight helmet. No buzz of the radio in her ears. There was only the road ahead. 

A branch smashed through the windscreen and smashed into Cedric’s head. 

She grabbed the wheel. 

The car accelerated. 

Through the spiderweb of smashed glass she saw a tree in the middle of the road. 

She swung the wheel hard. The car spun and slid backwards, tires skidding on snow. The engine roared but over it she heard a deafening cracking sound, like falling lumber. The back of the car slammed into the tree. Something came down hard on the back of the car. The tires screeched, spinning and smoking against gravel. 

She looked back. 

A giant gnarled branch had impaled the back of the car. The bark twisted with a groan, like tendons in an arm bunching, and then the car lifted from the ground, trunk first.

Cedric slumped forward, unconscious. The branch hadn’t gone through his head, it had slid off the side of his helmet and impaled the headrest behind him. Louise didn’t have enough presence of mind for relief. She grabbed him and hauled him into her seat, and wiggled her way into the driver’s seat. She yanked the branch out and threw it through the smashed glass of the windscreen.

A timer until the next car came roaring around that corner ticked down in the back of her head. 

There was a ‘thunk’. 

The branch snapped. The car hit the ground. She shot away. 

The car fish tailed before she swerved off the road, through a gap in the stationary trees. The ground fell away almost immediately into a swampy area. 

The back end of another car stuck straight up from the water, encircled in vines, dragging it down. Two or three others were visible further in. 

Behind her, the tree from the road took a thunderous step after her. 

She spun the wheel, running along the edge of the green water. Half her tires spun, shooting up water everywhere. She shifted down a gear and found some traction. She inched along, being slowly chased by a tree. It was gaining ground.

So long as it was chasing her, it wasn’t blocking the road. She could hear roaring echoing through the forest, on top of her own car’s groaning engine. 

There were three more ‘thunks’. 

In her rear view mirror she saw a row of glowing red arrows land in the bark. It recoiled and twisted under them. Branches flailed out at speed, trying to swat at someone backflipping through the canopy. 

What she could see was the second walking tree ahead of her. A steep rocky face blocked off the way back to the road, and the swamp lapped at its trunk on the other side.

The roaring of an engine got louder.

A motorbike launched off the rock face, straight into the tree. Red Hood bowled it over, and drove along its trunk as it toppled backwards with a splash. A part of her breathed out in relief. The tree struggled in the water, torn roots wiggling in the air. 

“Keep going, get back on the road!” he bellowed back at her. 

“There’s another car coming!” she yelled. 

“Is your radio down?”

Oh shit, her radio. She turned the dial to contact the organisers and called in the crash. Behind her the tree was still coming for her, she kept moving while trying to find words. The organisers were confused but they got that something was very wrong. 

Red Hood pulled the front wheel of his bike up and spun around to race back the way he came. 

A stray branch from the struggling tree rockerted towards her. She ducked. It smashed into her helmet. 

The next few minutes slipped away from her, in darkness and muffled noise. 

She came back to herself to the flash of red and blue lights. She was being carried. It felt like Jason. 

She sagged in his arms, the adrenaline crash really setting in. He had this. She could tap out. Wait. No, not yet.

Her eyes cracked open. A red helmet looked down at her. 

She yelped and jerked away. 

“It’s okay, it’s just me.”  

“Why does your helmet have a face?” 

“Really? That’s what you’re upset about here?”

“The mouth moves? How deep into your mouth does that go?”

He sighed. “At least you’re aware of your surroundings. How do you feel?”

“Like a secondhand pinata.”

“Heh.”

No. She had a job.

“...Is my driver okay?”

“The paramedics have him. He was breathing when I handed him over.”

Okay. That’d do. 

And she promptly passed out.

A week later, Louise sat in a booth at the back of an O’Shaughnessy’s on the edge of Gotham. Her arm was in a cast and sling, and her entire torso and half her body had bloomed with magnificent purple and green bruises. She trailed a finger through the condensation forming on the side of her milkshake.

Jason slid into the seat opposite her.

He was in a hoodie and cargo pants, with a jacket pulled over the hoodie. He had a tray with a burger and a Pepsi on it. 

She ripped the end of the paper casing off her straw and blew through it, sending the paper across the table to wack his chest. 

“You’re late.”

He retaliated, his wrapper going ‘thock’ against her cast.

“Got held up.”

She stabbed her straw into her cup and got down to business. He unwrapped his burger and took a giant bite. She relaxed into her seat. These guys did a killer salted caramel milkshake. She was peripherally aware of being studied. 

“How’s recovery going?” he asked. 

“Looking up. The first few days I was so badly bruised I couldn’t get into anything except my flannel pjs. Now look at me. Jeans and everything.”

“You’re unstoppable.” 

“Did you figure out what happened?”

He tilted his head sideways, in a distinctly unpromising manner. 

“Ivy says it wasn’t her.”

“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?”

“Not really. She’s an activist first, she loves telling on herself,” he said, chewing. “She said it was just The Green reacting to outside forces.”

Louise took a long sip of her milkshake. “I don’t love that.”

“Don’t let that stop you. Nature itself is only trying to kill you some of the time.” 

“I’m getting out of the racing scene anyway.” And not just because she totaled the car and watched a bunch of her coworkers get eaten by a forest. The racing organisation had made her get the car insured, and she was too busy to get bogged down by the horrors. Costs rose to match profits. Grandpa needed another surgery. Weep afterwards. 

“Yeah?” 

“You know me, I don’t like to overstay my welcome. The earth itself is telling me to get the hell out. But my next gig will blow your socks clean off.”

“Of course.”

“Enough about me. What have you been up to? Where’d you go? It was like you dropped off the face of the planet.”

She had wanted to ask before, but she didn’t know his friends. She wasn’t having any real conversation in front of them. 

He told her a little about them, and the sort of things they did. He actually had dropped off the planet at one point. It all sounded insane and convoluted and very Jason. 

She leaned against the vinyl table, her elbow on the table and her chin on her palm. Her milkshake slowly warmed. 

“They seem cool,” she said. 

“They’re the worst,” he said, with a smile. 

“You three are sweet.”

“I don’t know how much longer it will last, but I’m going to ride it out. We’re doing good. Actual good.”

He looked down thoughtfully. She smiled, wistfully. “I’m happy for you, man. I don’t know many people who can say that.” 

Good for Roy and Kory. She wished them many a happy adventure. And not a single embarrassing death for either of them. 

He looked happy. 

That mattered more than her having outlasted her use.

“I… I met someone,” he said. 

Her eyebrows rose and her smile turned more genuine. “Congratulations.” Not ace then. Maybe just more sensible than her. 

His lip quirked in a kind of miserable smile that he probably thought looked sardonic. 

“Oh no,” she said.

“She asked me to leave it all behind. Live a normal life.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “I did try. I really did.”

“What happened?” 

“There were some kidnappings. It was a whole ordeal in the end. And I couldn’t walk away. I didn’t want to.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” she said seriously. “But I am sorry.” 

“She deserved to be someone’s whole world. I couldn’t do that for her.”

There was nothing she could really say to that. She had never met a man who thought he owed her that, but she’d fled everyone who came even close to it. 

He sighed and screwed up the used wrappers of his food. “I don’t know how you walk off so many break ups.”

“That’ll be the commitment issues.”

“You’re plenty committed when you want to be,” he commented.

She sucked on her straw, noisily slurping around the remains of her drink. “Maybe I’m just a piece of shit then.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” he said, and there was the asshole she remembered. He still looked pretty miserable. 

“Did I ever tell you about the guy I speed-ran a relationship with in a single mosh pit?” she said, with a leading smile. 

He shook his head, leaning back in his seat. 

“Picture Skrunkfest, main stage, the year it was in the dry docks. There’s this huge guy behind me; he leans down and asks if I wanted to be his girl. I said, ‘yeah, why not,’ and he lifted me up onto his shoulders so I could see the stage better.”

“Hn.” 

“From that angle, I could also see the top of his shiny bald head, and the giant swastika tattoo covering it.”

His eyes widened, then he put his face in his hand. “Louise, no.” 

“Oh yeah. I happened to have a bottle in my hand, and without really thinking about it, I brought it down on his skull.”

Jason laughed. A point to Louise. 

“He went down like a ton of bricks. The punks and rockers around me were furious, until I pointed at the tat, and said he tripped. Then he tripped like twenty more times. His friends didn’t much like that.”

“This was seven years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Something like that. Why?”

“Because I was there too, breaking up a riot.” 

She flashed a smile. “Didn’t catch the instigator though, did ya?”

He snorted. “You idiot.” But he did smile. 

Chapter Text

Louise was having a wonderful day. The most wonderful. 

She lay on her back in soft, green grass. Pink and yellow flowers bobbed around her, occasionally bending down to graze her nose like little kisses. Warm golden sunlight drifted through the leaves of the old oak. 

She sat up and stretched her arms over her head. 

She didn’t smile. There was no need. Everything was perfect.

The smell of something delicious was wafting from her childhood home behind her: a neat two story house with white siding.  

She blinked slowly, lazily. 

The wooden swing dangling from a branch of the oak tree creaked in the gentle wind. 

Maybe she should lay back and have a nap. 

She stretched her legs out in front of her and reached down to touch her bare toes. Her dress came to about her knees. The periwinkle blue cotton spread out on the grass around her. 

She looked at it, her brow crinkling. 

Where did she get it from again? 

She had always had it. Of course. It was her favourite. 

The thoughts slipped away. 

She stood with a little hop and followed her nose around the side of the house. The smell was warm and rich and buttery. Pie perhaps? She dared to hope. 

She rounded the corner of the house to the backyard, beneath the old oak. 

Her mom and dad called to her from the picnic table. 

She called back. 

Mom was setting down one of her classic apple pies, and dad manned the grill. Louise sat on the wooden swing. She held onto the worn old rope, grey with age, and swung gently, her feet never leaving the ground. She watched the production around the table, under the dabbled midday light and perfect warm breeze and happy familial chatter. 

“Hey mom,” she said. 

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Shouldn’t I be working?” 

“On a weekend?” Mom said.

“Even the dream job doesn’t pay that well,” Dad chimed in with a laugh. 

Yeah. Of course. 

She didn’t work weekends. At her… job. Where she did… work. 

She tilted her head. She looked at her parents. She looked at the house. She looked down at her dress. 

“Now, are you going to come help me or not, missy?”

“No, I don’t think I will.” She smiled. “‘Mom’.”

“What’s gotten into you?” Dad said. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Never better.” 

“Come ‘ere, kiddo.”

She got up and went over to him. 

He put a strong arm around her shoulders and brought her into a side hug. She looked at his plaid shirt. He put a hand on her forehead. Then he leaned down and gave her forehead a kiss, holding the back of her head.

That was nice. It always made her feel better when he hugged her and called her kiddo. 

“What’s going on, hm?” he asked, with a warm, concerned smile. 

She felt like crying. She felt like punching him in the teeth. She didn’t know why. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Hmm. We need to get some food in you.”

“Coming right up.” Mom said, and steered her towards the table. “You sit down in the shade here and have some lemonade. It’s probably too much sun.”

“I’m okay.” She offered up a smile. “Or I will be, once I’ve had some pie.”

Mom smiled back, scrunching her nose. “Nice try.”

“You’re okay, sweetheart,” Dad said, walking past and patting her shoulder.

She relaxed. Yeah. Everything was okay. 

Wonderful, really. 

Jason got out of a taxi at Rome’s airport and marched straight to check in. He had no luggage, checked or otherwise. His flight was very soon, he barely had time to get through customs. 

Something was wrong with Louise. 

Roy and Kory could finish the job with him. They would have to. 

He got through customs, then priority boarding got called up, and he was first in line. It made no difference, it was still a ten hour flight. He scowled.

Louise had stopped replying mid conversation that morning. 

She never did that. She might look chaotic, but it was organised chaos. She was extremely thorough and methodical because, in her words, the only way to get anything done was to have your ducks in a row. 

After an hour of no contact, he called and it went straight to voicemail. So he had hacked into her laptop just to check. She had stopped using it before she stopped texting and it hadn’t been touched since. It was late evening in Gotham on a night with no fights and she had emails from suppliers and clients pouring in. All unread.

That elevated the situation from uncharacteristic to unheard of. 

He called her grandpa’s apartment, currently her apartment. It rang out.

He hacked into their nearest hospital and checked admissions. The old man wasn’t in, having an emergency. 

As he waited for the plane to board, he checked another hospital in the area. Then he called the house again. 

Still nothing. 

A voice in the back of his head wondered if... she’d just had enough of him. He was overreacting and invading her privacy when she was trying to put distance between them.

The larger part of him said something was if he didn’t check, nobody would. If it was all a misunderstanding, he would apologise, but he wasn’t risking it. His gut said there was a timer ticking down somewhere. 

He tossed his phone in his hands. 

He had been speaking to Dick again lately. Maybe-? He cut that thought off. 

He buried it in his pocket. 

All evidence would be cold by the time Jason got there. Dick was closer. He was the only one he was on speaking terms with. Babs interfered with his tech from time to time, sometimes adding what she likely thought was helpful information, something just sniffing around. He always booted her out. They didn’t talk. Maybe it was playful. Maybe it wasn’t. 

Dick said he could come to him if he needed anything. Maybe he even meant it. But he would rat him out to Bruce first, who would suspect Jason was up to something, and put more effort into undermining him than finding her.

Jason wasn’t putting Louise’ fate in his family’s hands. She deserved better than that. 

It would be a long flight. 

Louise was always slightly to the left of playing it straight. He had looked over her latest scheme, it wasn’t anything dangerous, but she had a lot of plates in the air and he could easily have missed something. She flirted with danger but didn’t like to embrace it. 

Except for when he threw her into the deep end. 

She had been getting more comfortable with risks lately. In the moment it all seemed very Louise of her, but with some distance, it unsettled him. Had he worn away her sense of self preservation? 

Had the bill finally come due? 

He was ten hours away. 

He swore and fished his phone back out of his pocket. He dialled. 

It rang then went to Dick's voicemail. 

“Hey. It’s me. I–” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “My friend just dropped off the map. Her name’s Louise Brick, she's in Gotham. I think she’s in trouble, but I'm half a day out of the city. ...Anything you can do... I’ll owe you one.” 

He hung up. He rubbed his forehead. 

Maybe he was overreacting. But this was Gotham they were talking about. 

They finally took off. He cycled through plans and possibilities, until he fell asleep. 

By the time they came in to land, he was awake and ready to go. Dick hadn’t gotten back to him. Louise hadn’t called, laughing at him for getting his panties in a twist over some mundane nonsense she had gotten tied up in. It was down to him then.

He picked up his gear and set off for her apartment. He swung down onto her fire escape. 

It was quiet for so early in the night. The lights were on in the kitchen. The microwave door hung open. 

He unhooked the window and let himself in silently. The smashed remains of a mug lay on the vinyl floor, in a pool of cold tea. There was no noise anywhere in the apartment. He checked the front door. Locked from the inside. 

He ducked his head to look through the pass-through window to the living room. 

Louise’s grandpa lay at the foot of his armchair, his eyes closed. 

Jason hurried over to him. The old man’s walker was knocked over nearby. He lay curled up, his head propped awkwardly against the base of the armchair. He was still breathing. 

Jason let out a pent up breath and knelt down next to him. One trouser leg was wet, and the position looked uncomfortable. He was wearing his house slippers. Jason pulled off his helmet and sent an automated request for an ambulance to his location. He zipped up his jacket, covering the red bat symbol, then gently rolled the old man over. 

He awoke with a start and a groan. 

“Garry?”

His eyes looked around unfocused, before he blinked hard and focused on Jason. 

“You? What are you doing here? Where’s that stupid girl?” 

“What happened?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

Jason helped him sit up. “Were you attacked?”

“What? No, get off me.” 

Jason pursed his lips. 

“Garry. Why are you on the floor?”

Through Garry’s angry lashing out, he pieced together what happened. Louise had left the night before to get dinner. She didn’t come home. At about midnight Garry tried to make some food for himself and had a fall. He crawled to the living room but couldn’t make it onto the armchair. He had been on the cold floor all night and all day. 

He had a medical alert bracelet, but he kept it in his room so it wouldn’t get damaged. 

“What do you mean you don’t know where she is?” he demanded when Jason tried to get more information about Louise. He clutched Jason’s jacket with frail spotted hands. “What fucking use are you?” 

“I’m going to find her.”

Garry swore at him some more. Jason lifted him up onto the armchair. There was genuine fear under the bluster. Jason didn’t have any more time to console or humour him. The ambulance was on its way. 

He grabbed Louise’s laptop, left open on her bed, and left the way he came. He swung across four blocks to his old safehouse. 

It was the first time the Red Hood had been seen in Gotham in years.

He hooked Louise’s laptop up to his computer and looked through what she had been up to. The last keystrokes were placing an order for two Thai curries for pickup. The restaurant was a fifteen minute drive away. 

He hacked into the cameras on the streets around it. 

There, Louise’ car. 

It was parked on a dark side road, probably to take advantage of a free parking spot. The camera was at a bad angle, she had parked almost directly under it. He could only see about half the driver’s door.

He looked back to footage from the night before. He clicked forward and back, until he found the moment the car arrived. The driver’s door opened. Louise got out, though he could only kind of see her, he recognised the coat and gait. She disappeared off screen, beneath the camera. 

Two figures followed her. 

He searched the surrounding cameras. None of them, not Louise or the two men resurfaced.

They had emerged from the shadows of the dark road, and moved quickly, if woodenly. They weren’t dressed like mobsters or gang members, they weren’t even matching. One was in a suit and tie, the other in coveralls. They wore orange hard hats though. 

He froze the video on them. Jason looked closer. 

Both of them were completely expressionless. Not focused, or bored. Just empty. He memorised their faces. 

“Jason.”

He had a gun pointed at the man behind him before he could blink.

Batman didn’t move. He loomed dark and larger than life in Jason’s humble apartment, black cape draped across peeling flooring and a second hand couch. 

Jason’s mouth dried. He was, technically, meant to be in Arkham.

“The hell are you doing here?” he growled, standing up. Not now. He wasn’t doing this now.  

Bruce looked different. There were crags in his face even the cowl couldn’t hide. The suit had changed but he wore it that same, like a burden and a second skin at the same time. White out lenses hid his eyes. Jason looked reflexively at a face he could once read through any amount of armour, and didn’t see a thing. 

Anger roiled in his gut. 

“Your missing friend. What have you found?” 

The anger turned cold. “I don’t recall telling you about any friend.”

“Nightwing called me.”

Jason’s lip curled into a sneer. The betrayal burned. He lowered his gun and turned his back. 

“Get out. I don’t have time for this.” 

“Neither do I,” Batman growled.

The floors creaked under a step.

Jason clicked the safety off his gun. 

Batman stopped. 

“Robin has been missing for eighteen hours.”

Jason looked back at him.

And there was the old man he knew, beneath the cowl and unmoving face. Just a tired man trying to overcome his own powerlessness with fury alone. Still furious. Still failing. 

He was going to get the latest fool to wear the scaly panties killed. If he hadn’t already.

Nightwing called them brothers. They weren’t. But they all shared something: Bruce’s attention the moment it no longer mattered. 

He looked away from him and rewound the footage. Batman approached on quiet feet, looking at the monitors. 

“It’s Mad Hatter,” Jason said.

Something smacked Louise in the head. A sparking sound crackled in her ears, through her skull, down her spine and zinging out her nerve endings. The whole world fell out of focus.

She opened her eyes in the dark. 

She took a breath to call for Mom and Dad before her brain caught up with her. 

“What the fuck,” she mouthed. She wanted to throw up. Fear crawled up her throat. Rage swallowed it whole.

Something was shuffling around in the dark. Multiple somethings. She blinked hard, peering out.

Her eyes adjusted slowly. The somethings became murky silhouettes moving on a slender platform against a sloping wall. She was moving too, and hadn’t even realised. She looked down at her hands. 

She was carrying a tank shell. 

Oh boy. 

There wasn’t time to be afraid, only time to be clever. 

She didn’t react, stuffing all emotions deep down inside her. She kept walking with the row of people all carrying the same ammo. They all wore identical hard hats, including her. It didn’t sit quite right on her head, she could feel it tilting slightly towards the right. A strange pressure lingered at her temple. 

They all shuffled along in silence, not a stray murmur over a stubbed toe or a grunt of the physical strain. Even the echoes of their footsteps sounded muted in the dark. 

They turned a corner, following the sloping brick wall into a large chamber. There was a little more light here. 

It looked to her eyes like a disused sewer, but it didn’t smell like one. Maybe flood tunnels? The walls were rounded and met at the top with no real roof. There were more people here, shuffling around with the same deadened obligation, and the same hardhats.

They were preparing for a child’s idea of battle. Halberds, morning stars, and shields that all looked like they were lifted from a reenactors garage were being brought in. They were stacked alongside ancient looking rifles and giant novelty playing cards.

A stack of crates made up a platform at the side of the chamber. Atop it sat a round-faced man in a big blue coat and tall top hat at a table, where he watched the proceedings over the rim of a teacup. He muttered to himself. It echoed incomprehensibly around the room. 

Her line of people rounded the platform and came upon a tank. Someone was painting it to look like a pink flamingo. 

Gotham, man. 

Arm the tank.

The pressure increased against her temple. Her limbs moved instinctively to follow the order. What the fuck. The obstinate heart of her was offended at the very idea of it and she stopped out of spite. The danger of that hit her a second later and she snapped back into action.

She could disobey though. 

She glanced around her fellow hat wearers. Everybody else was dead eyed. They hadn’t noticed her hesitance. Could they notice? There were about fifty people here altogether, if they turned violent… she couldn’t give the game away. 

She glanced at Mr Top Hat. She didn’t know who this nutcase was and she didn’t care. He didn’t seem to have noticed her. She was too far away from the guns to try taking a shot at him.  

They shuffled around the tank, collapsing from a neat line into a messy huddle. It was immediately obvious that despite the orders, the lot of them knew diddly squat about tanks.

Louise moved herself to the front. She knew a little something. The high school she got sent to after one too many expulsions had an alarming number of army careers days. The recruiters would bring all their fancy toys and do everything they could to try and sell it to the kids. It was a great way to get out of class. Louise had talked a bored sergeant into letting her drive a tank around the carpark, with supervision.

That was eight years ago. 

With great confidence, she cracked the lid open and climbed inside. There was a man in a hardhat in the cabin, sitting still in the driver’s seat. The engine was on, she could feel a tremble under her feet. 

He didn’t react as she put her shell down and started fussing with the main gun. 

The sergeant had not explained this part, so she winged it. She did know which way the shell was supposed to go. Pointy end out. She put it in the other way.

Nobody screamed ‘seize her!’ Nobody turned to look. Nothing happened. Perfect. 

She turned back around. The tank was still open but nobody could see inside. She approached the driver, and nudged him. He moved easily with the motion. She got him up and out of the seat. He stood awkwardly nearby, not watching, not doing anything.

She took his seat. 

By the wall, opposite the entrance.

Well then. 

There were three clutch pedals on this model. Stalling was not hard. 

The gearbox started to grind and the whole thing jolted like a startled rabbit. She kept at it like she’d never even heard of a manual. The engine whined. There were a bunch of controls in front of her. She flipped switches at random. Some lights flashed. Others turned off. The gearbox continued to grind. The tank did not move. 

Get into gear.

Eighth gear would do.  

Lower gear. 

Seventh. 

It was starting to smell like burning rubber. Someone else climbed into the tank, and stood awkwardly at the side, achieving nothing. 

Change driver. Rejoin your group.

She let the next guy take her place. He didn’t know how to fix what she’d done. She left him to it, staring blankly at a bunch of flashing alerts. 

She clambered out.

Mr Top Hat was looking now. 

She schooled her expression into nothing. She walked mechanically towards a group she hoped was hers.

They were heading back out into the tunnels, presumably to get more supplies. She was a good thirty yards behind them, and made no effort to rush. The last of them disappeared around the corner, revealing a kid standing just inside the entrance. 

She recognised the uniform on sight. 

The mean little Robin looked silly in a hardhat. He didn’t have his sword on him. 

He stood motionless, staring out into the gloom. On guard? 

She would have to knock his hat off. 

She had meant to just slip away as soon as she was out of sight, but she wasn’t leaving a kid here. It wouldn’t be subtle. He was in full view of the whole room. 

Something told her Top Hat McGee was still watching her.

Hopefully Robin would come back to himself quickly. Or at least non-violently.

He was ten steps away. 

If he freaked out, she’d just grab him and run. She could handle one confused fifteen year old, surely. 

Five steps. 

He was close to the entrance. If they were quick–

She reached for his hat. 

A hand wrapped around her wrist. 

She looked down into a blank face behind a domino mask.

Then she was smashed face first against the wall, all her breath punched out of her. Her arm twisted painfully behind her. 

Bring her to me. Someone needs a new hat. 

Robin hauled her back from the wall, and she went limp. He tried to catch her but she was too heavy and slipped down against him. Her elbow snapped out. 

His hat went sailing.

He sucked a breath in and looked around. For a split second, he looked devastated. 

“No!” Top Hat screeched. “Get them! Stop them! Everyone– I want– Robin does not leave!”

Someone with a halberd and charged them. 

Louise threw herself in front of Robin. And was promptly hauled aside. 

“Move, imbecile,” Robin snapped as he deftly took the halberd out of the hands of their attacker. He swept the next off their feet and flipped back to knock out the first before he could strike. 

Louise sprinted at a man picking up one of the guns. He saw her coming, and sprayed bullets wildly. Louise grabbed the rifle from him and smacked it into his nose. He fell back with a cry. Hats were falling off around them, and confused people sat blinking on the ground. 

Footsteps thundered against the stone and the group that had left returned, empty eyed. They converged on Robin. 

Louise fired at Top Hat. He stumbled back with a burst of blood, clutching his arm. He hid behind the crate he used as a table. The gun jammed. Louise swore. 

The barrel of the tank turned towards her. She ran for cover.

The tank exploded. 

The force of it knocked her off her feet. Shredded metal and pulverised brick rained around her. 

She snorted a laugh through the smoke in the air. She tried to get back up. Her leg collapsed out from under her. 

Oh, shit, that was a lot of blood. 

She looked up, along the barrel of a gun. A man in a hardhat pointed a rifle at her. It jammed.

He raised it over his head. 

Red Hood hauled him back by the neck, throwing him onto the ground.

Louise sagged. He scooped her up. 

“Can you go five minutes without getting into trouble?” he demanded, dodging a punch. He retaliated with a kick that knocked the guy over. 

“Okay, but I blew up a tank.”

“Hell yeah, you did.” 

Around them, Batman swung down onto the platform. Top Hat backed up and hit the wall. Everyone in a hardhat stopped moving, a second before Top Hat became Hatless.  The chaos ended, suddenly. 

Robin delivered one more kick.

Batman looked at the two of them. Well, just Red Hood really.

Jason stared him down. He was so tense.

An insane part of her wanted to call Batman a little bitch and make a run for it, so Jason could escape the other way while he was distracted. That was probably the blood loss talking. A thick red rivulet ran down her leg. It dripped onto the stone floor. 

Jason held her closer and stalked out through the hole in the wall that used to be a tank.

Batman let them go.

Chapter Text

Louise’s phone rang loudly, vibrating in her back pocket. 

She sat up.

Nathan, who was sort-of her boyfriend, and who seconds before had been blissed out and relaxed with his hand in her hair, suddenly returned to earth. 

“Wait,” he mumbled. “You’re not getting that. Are you?”

She pulled her phone out. ‘J’ was calling. 

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said with a wink, and accepted the call. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, I’m trying to win a bet,” Jason said. There were voices murmuring in the background. 

She scooted back off the bed and walked to her door. “What do you need?”

“Are you kidding me?” Nathan cried. 

“A buyer for six hundred piglets in a warehouse west of Bludhaven at the best price you can get.”

She paused, a hand on the doorknob. She pursed her lips and thought for a second. 

“What type of pig?” 

“Saddleback cross. No idea what it’s crossed with. They’re two weeks old.”

She nodded sharply. “I’ll call you back in ten.” 

She let herself out of the room and searched through her contacts, and called someone else. While it rang she sat at the kitchen table, opened her laptop and got to work. The call connected

“Jasmine! How’s the farm? It’s been so long. No, I don’t need more barley, I’m calling because I have something you need. I owe you one, so this offer is just between you and me, alright?”

True to her word, she called Jason back in ten minutes. The phone was sitting on the table with the volume up. He picked up immediately.

“Jay, I’ve got an offer.”

“Putting you on loudspeaker. What have you got for us?”

She cleared her throat and sat up straight. She had haggled hard. So help her, they were winning this thing.

“I have an offer for one hundred and thirty per pig, for pick up at five tomorrow morning, no questions asked.”

“Damn,” some stranger muttered in the background.

“Ha!” Jason crowed, “Suck it, Red.”

She grinned like a shark.

“What’s your next best offer?”

“Ninety,” the other voice sulked. 

“Weak,” she said.

Jason laughed. 

The chattering in the background quietened and she thought she was off loudspeaker.

“What’s it like being the best, Lou?” 

She stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles, and folded her hands behind her head. “You learn to live with it.”

“Uh-huh.” She could hear the grin in his voice. 

“I’ve got to get back to our buyer. Who are we making the cheque out to?”

“To yourself.” 

She jolted and stared down at the phone.

“I’m going to need you to repeat that.”

“You heard me the first time. Money’s all yours.”

He hung up. 

“Holy shit.”

Her bedroom door opened. Nathan, wearing his pants again, walked out. He looked down at her from across the kitchen. 

“Are you done?” he said.

She slipped her phone into her pocket and closed the webpages on swine speculation and piglet breeding. “Yeah. All done.”

“Good.” 

“Sorry about that.”

“Are you?” His eyebrow spiked. “You don’t look it.”

“What’s a hundred and thirty multiplied by six hundred?” 

“I don’t know. Like sixty five thousand and something? What’s up with you?”

Her head cocked. “Seventy eight thousand, actually.” She grinned. She opened a new tab in her browser. There was an idea she had been sitting on for a while now… “I’ve got work. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No. I’m gonna go anyway.” 

“Alright. Bye.” 

Louise got to work. 

Jason finished up the case feeling pretty good about himself. Unexpectedly, given it put him into contact with Tim Drake of all people. 

Lives had been at stake and there was nobody else on hand. Neither one of them was thrilled about it. They got the job done, nobody died, and Jason won a bet.   

It was closer to dawn than midnight when they finished. The sky was still dark and the city glowing with lights. Jason looked across the jagged skyline and got his grapnel out. 

“Hey,” Red Robin called behind him.

He ignored him.

“You should come back to the cave.”

Jason looked back at him. Surely his incredulity was visible through the helmet. 

“I’m serious. B wanted to talk to you after the Mad Hatter incident.”

“Then he can call me.” He felt safe saying it knowing Bruce never would.

The look Tim gave him through his cowl said he knew it. Jason didn’t give a shit. 

“You’ve got a standing invite.” 

He looked out across the city again. 

“ Why ?”

“I don’t know, and honestly I don’t care. He wants to see you. Do whatever you want with that.”

He rested his hands on his hips. 

Behind him Red Robin swung away into the night. 

Alright. If Bruce wanted to talk. They would talk.

He swung above the streets to his bike. 

He hadn’t spoken to Dick since he ratted him out to Bruce. But they had worked together, silently, from across a battlefield. It was something. 

He didn’t know what yet.

A part of him turned towards the simple promise of something. Better than nothing. Right?

The larger part of him knew better. 

There was no way anything but a fight was waiting for him in that cave. 

Yet, when he got on his bike, he drove towards Bristol. He disappeared into the dark of a private road underground. 

Several hours later he crawled in through Louise’s window. 

He should add some more security to that. He didn’t like that anyone could just climb in.

He rolled onto the couch. His cheek was swelling into a black eye and the graze on his knuckles stung. His eyes traced the familiar water-stained ceiling tiles in the gloom. 

Actually, fuck Bruce and his cheerleaders. He was six feet and one crowbar past needing them. 

There was a creak from down the hall. 

Louise’s head stuck out of the open door, alongside the muzzle of a shotgun. He didn’t know how she expected to shoot anything from that angle. She looked around before spotting him. 

He raised a hand. 

She grunted and returned the way she came. 

His hand fell back, and he dozed off. 

Some time later he got up and started nosing around the fridge. There was a nutrition plan for Gary stuck to the fridge with magnets, with lots of things crossed off and additions added and dated. The old man was on a liquid diet after a surgery. 

Jason started getting things out. 

Louise reappeared, groggy and shuffling, just as he turned the blender on. She watched with a kind of blandly confused expression, until he put an oat and fruit smoothie on the bench in front of her. A tired smile crossed her face and her shoulders slumped. 

“You’re the best, Jay,” she said. She took it plus a glass of water back down the hallway. 

He fetched a frying pan. 

Louise reappeared a little later.

“What can I do?”

“You can sit your ass down and wait. I’ve tried your cooking.”

“Extremely rude,” she said and slumped into a seat at the kitchen table. She put her chin on the table, her arms splayed out around her. Her laptop booted up. She tapped at it, with no real enthusiasm.

He brought her a coffee, just as milky and lukewarm as she liked it. 

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

“Mm-hm.” 

He went back to frying eggs and bacon. The tortillas in the pantry looked fresh-ish, they would have to do. He chopped up some avocado and tomato and rolled it all into two breakfast burritos. 

Louise waited happily like this was all normal. He sat down opposite her, bringing the food. They got stuck into it without any fuss. It felt normal. He relaxed a little. 

They were arguing over hot sauce when someone knocked on the front door. 

Louise got up, still holding her burrito, and swung the door open. 

Her latest boyfriend stood in the hallway, hands in his pockets. “Hi. Sorry, I know it’s early.” 

“Hey, Nathan, what’s up?”

“I think I left my jacket here last night.”

“Sure. Go ahead,” Louise said, stepping aside. 

Jason took a large bite and chewed thoughtfully. Nathan didn’t look much like his driver’s licence photo. The passport was better, and the security footage completed the picture. The background checks had come back clean, so Jason didn’t care. 

Nathan spotted him and paused. He looked over the cosy little breakfast set up and something bitter passed over his face. He looked at Louise.

“Oh, Nathan, this is an old friend of mine. This is Nathan.” 

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Louise sat down again, apparently unconcerned.

Nathan made indignant eye contact with Jason. Jason continued to eat his burrito. He was here first. 

He felt a little sorry for the men she brought home sometimes. But not that much. They generally had delusions of tying her down, like a cheap helium balloon they bought at party city, and not the unrepentant bluejay with places to be that she actually was. 

Nathan disappeared into her room and came back with a jacket. He left without any fanfare. Another disappointed man left with some broken string. 

Louise cleared her emails.

“What’d you do to your face?” she asked, without looking up from her screen.

Jason blinked, and was reminded of the tender bruise around his eye. 

“This is actually an improvement,” he said. 

Her lip quirked as she glanced up at him. “You’re not that ugly.” 

“Yeah, laugh it up. I’m filling your burrito with hot sauce next time.”

“How’s a black eye an improvement?”

“I’m not under arrest.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Congratulations.”

He shrugged and examined the bottle of Tabasco on the table. “I’m allowed to work in Gotham now.”

Louise’s face went on an interesting journey, through suspicion and indignation before landing on grudging acceptance. 

“Oh yeah? Aren’t they generous.” 

“We cut a deal. It’s complicated.” 

“Hmph.” 

He shook it off. He didn’t want to talk about that now.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. Stuff. Things.” She tapped some keys. “The pigs got picked up and the money came through, by the way.” 

“Of course they did. Are these time sensitive stuff and things?”

“Not really. I’m sending out feelers on a new idea.”

“Take the day off then. I’ve got an idea.”

Her eyes snapped up to him.

“What sort of idea?” 

Louise and Jason strolled down a sidewalk beneath churning, overcast skies. Next to them ran a tall and thick brick wall. 

They were on the mainland, outside of Gotham proper, in a neighbourhood with plots of land so enormous it was like they were pretending to be rural. It wasn’t a famously wealthy establishment like Bristol, Louise hadn’t heard of it at all. 

The brick wall came to a sudden pause around a tall wrought iron gate. Jason stopped her in place.

Through the gate, she could see a race track. She hadn’t ever heard of a track here either. When Jason had proposed practising her high speed driving, she pictured something more like that time he had her desperately fleeing Black Mask’s armoured cars around Gotham back streets under a constant hail of bullets.

Tentative excitement started to build.

Jason tapped something on his phone, and the camera above them beeped. Then he jerked his head towards the track. 

“After you.”

“The gate’s still shut.”

“Like I said, after you.”

They scrambled over the gate. Well. She scrambled. He flipped himself up and over with gravity-defying ease for such a big guy. Then he watched her attempt the same with his arms crossed and an annoying running commentary.

She landed and felt it all through her legs. 

He grinned. “That was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She stood up straight and brushed her hair back. “Just wait until you see me try to get back out.”

“You always manage to outdo yourself.” 

They walked around the track’s outer edge. It was a sealed road with corners that banked on the outside, and strips of black and white on the inside of the corners. Walls of stacked tires lined the arena. The track wasn’t huge, but there was enough room to pick up some serious speed. In a fast enough car, that was.

Jason led her towards some flat and modern looking buildings off to the side. A small viewing lounge overlooked the track, while the bulk of the building was garage space, given the roller doors. All the lights were off and the windows dark. The wind whistling over the flat buildings was the only noise. 

Jason fiddled with the lock on a side door. 

Louise bounced on her toes and tried to keep her excitement in check.

He opened the door and ushered her inside. 

A row of luxury cars spread out before her, gleaming in the low light. She cackled with delight. Jason pulled up a key fob. Somewhere further in, a car beeped. She walked down the row, admiring them. 

“Whose cars are these?” she called.

“The private equity manager who drove the hospital in the Narrows into liquidation,” he replied, casually leaning against a Bentley. “It’s his race track too.”

“Hmm.” Maybe he’d let her make off with one of them. She tried not to steal cars, but in this case it was practically a public good. 

An orange car caught her eye. She ran her hand over the body, just above the silky paint job. She was about to make contact when Jason cleared his throat.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She blinked up at him. “To the McLaren Senna?” 

When he didn’t reply, and she was faced with the possibility he was being an asshole for fun again, she straightened her back. “I successfully climbed the fence, I’ve earned it.”

He smiled, wide and insufferable. “You’ve earned the sensible Volvo.” He tapped the fob again. The last car in the row beeped. 

“Nooooo,” She groaned, raising her hands to her head.

“Uh-huh.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that tank you somehow blew up. You don’t even get to look at the McLaren.” 

She paused for a split second, then threw herself into bitching about it with gusto. He threw her the keys, and a pair of latex gloves. She pulled them on then slid into the driver’s seat. Jason got into the passenger seat, holding a tall stack of cones in his hands. 

The garage door opened and she got out onto the track. It was an annoyingly smooth and responsive ride. 

Jason had her drive the track normally first, getting a feel for the road. Then he had her stop and start so he could get out and put down cones. 

She drove around and around the track, serpentining through the cones, knocking them over when she missed, pulling sharp hairpin turns that made rubber tires burn against the track, and hand brake sliding into hard stops. 

Jason was a surprisingly patient and succinct teacher. He gave instructions without insult while she tried again and again to perfect the manoeuvres she struggled with. She asked him to show her how to pull off a drift over the grass that she kept spinning out on, and they got out to swap seats. 

Damn, he was good.

Which she knew, of course. She wouldn’t be taking his advice if she didn’t.

But damn. 

The competence was hot as hell. 

She pulled off the manoeuvre perfectly when they swapped back.

“Alright, car swap,” he decreed, directing them back to the garage.

She perked up.

He pulled out the keys for the landscaping maintenance van.

“It’s actually really important to get a feel for different vehicles,” he said, with the smarmiest grin she had ever seen. 

She snatched the keys from him.

Jason’s amusement lasted for most of the circuit, trundling along in the van. She had to be more careful with her speed on the corners or risk rolling the vehicle, which presented an interesting challenge that she would never admit to. 

She turned onto the home straight. The sun was breaking through some of the clouds, painting splotches of gold on the grass. The light kept getting swallowed again. The van was quiet, with only the rumble of the motor. 

“There were two people in that tank,” she said suddenly. 

She hadn’t decided if she was going to or not, until her mouth got sick of the taste of the words, festering on her tongue. 

“I forgot. At the time. They were under the same mind control as me.”

Jason didn’t say anything for a moment, watching her quietly. 

“You did the best you could with what you had, alone and outnumbered. I’m sorry you were in that position.”

“Yeah,” she sighed.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

He watched the road.

“I’ve never killed anyone before,” she said a moment later. “Well, I have, but never directly. This one was all me.” 

She sensed more than saw the raised eyebrow. She pulled back into the garage. 

“Who have you killed?” he asked, somewhere between incredulous and concerned.

She gave him a flat look. “I ratted out my joker-goon of a boyfriend to the Red Hood.”

“I killed that man.”

She killed the engine. “And how surprised did I look about that? I knew how that was going to end.” 

His face closed off a little. She hated it when he did that. Today she thought she deserved it. 

“Do you wish I hadn’t?”

“No.”

“Do you resent me for being a killer?” he asked, his voice quiet. 

Her brow lowered. “You saved my life. I would never have known peace again if he was still alive.” She shook her head. “It’s just different seeing the blood on my hands. Feels like…”

“You’ve crossed a line?”

She looked down at the steering wheel. 

“No. I don’t feel different at all.”

It was the first time she had admitted it. It scared her. 

“I’m not like you, Jay. I’m not a good person.”

His eyebrows both shot up.

“...Setting that insane assumption aside,” he muttered, before facing her fully. “If you don’t like who you are, change.”

“It’s that easy, huh?” 

“You built a successful beer company in six months because you decided to.”

“I had help.”

“You made yourself a lawyer the year before. You are whatever you want to be.”

She blew out a gust of air. “Yeah. That is the fear.”

She got out of the van before she could say anything else so revealing. 

Jason climbed out as well, and they stood side by side at the open garage door, looking over the cars. She wondered if she had ruined it. 

“Hey!” A sharp voice called out.

Her head turned. A plump man in a suit was hurrying towards them from the carpark. He wouldn’t be able to see the garage was open from his position. 

“Who said you could use this race course?” he called, still some distance away. “This is private property!” 

Louise assessed the car he had come in, and the quality of his suit, the way he carried himself. Staff, probably. Important staff. 

“What’s the owner’s name?” she asked quietly. 

“Bryant Davids, his friends call him Bry,” Jason muttered. “Play it cool.”

Louise smiled broadly at the swiftly approaching interloper, and easing her posture into something so relaxed it was downright languid.

“Hi!” she called, too loud, “We’re only in town for the day and Bry insisted .”

That brought him up short. He looked suspiciously at the two of them and the open garage. “I’m glad we could accommodate you with such perfect timing, Miss?”

“Ms Dalca.”

“The security team, aha, are a little upset, I’m afraid. They weren’t notified.”

“Thank you for sorting it out, darling.”

Jason stepped forward, slinging his arm low around her hips with a sort of entitled confidence that read very different from his normal self-assurance. 

“You can tell security we’ll be gone by four, we have a flight,” he said. “And you can tell Bry I’ll call him tomorrow. I’ll have an answer for him then.”

She leaned into him easily, playing the carefree trophy wife to the spoiled billionaire. 

“Ah,” the man said, nodding respectfully. “Of course. Your name, sir?”

He gave a name, and she truly couldn’t gauge if it was a real person, an established cover, or something he made up on the spot. 

He steered her towards the cars. “Come on, baby, you wanted to see me drive the McLaren, didn’t you?”

The staff member retreated after Jason lifted a set of keys from his pocket, and the wing doors rose. 

Louise stayed glued to his side the whole walk to the driver’s seat, losing the act. She glared at him when he looked like he was going to get in.

“If I don’t get to drive this car I’m marching back out there and ratting us both out.”

He laughed, low and annoying. “So pushy.” He circled around to the other side.

She got into the nicest car she could imagine. 

“Oh,” she said, sinking into the seat. It wasn’t leather or the pinnacle of comfort because it was made to be light and aerodynamic. “This is good.”

“Since when do you go crazy for luxury?” Jason said, sitting next to her. 

“I don’t, I just respect good engineering.”

“Uh-huh.”

She grinned and pressed the ignition button. The engine purred. “Art is for everyone.”

He rolled his eyes, and she gleefully got back out onto the track. The worker had disappeared, car and all. She assumed there were going to be consequences, their lies wouldn’t hold water, but this was Jason’s op, she it in his hands. 

“Why now?” she asked, as she smoothly took a corner at irresponsible speeds. The downforce pinning the car to the road was incredible. “We’ve been friends for years, suddenly I need to be a better driver?”

“Got a lecture on endangering civilians,” Jason said. He wasn’t especially awed by the speed, but she ignored that. His standards were unfair.

“Who’ve you been endangering?”

“You, idiot.”

“When?” she asked, baffled. 

“Hatter. That mess at the race.”

“What? You didn’t have anything to do with either of those. I can endanger myself just fine, thanks.” She wove around corners and cones, slowly picking up more speed.

“Thank you! If anything I should be thanked for bailing you out.”

“Wait. Hang on.”

She took a hard corner around a cone a little quick and then put the handbrake on. They slid to a hard stop. 

Jason looked down out his window at the next cone.  

“You’re a half inch over. If that was a wall you would have lost the side mirror.” 

“Are we here to placate Batman?”

He scoffed. 

“Better not be.”

“Please. Batman would only be satisfied if I cut off contact with you entirely.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

“He thinks you’re a bad influence.”

“Oh.”

“Right?”

She smothered a grin. “I think I should be flattered by that.”

He laughed.

She shot off again, picking up speed. 

“No,” he continued, “We’re here because I don’t want you dying when I’m not looking. Or when someone who wants me dead decides you’re an easier target.”

“Much chance of that happening?”

“You want to find out?”

“No, thank you.”

He shrugged. “You live in Gotham. It’s only reasonable.”

She nodded. 

“Are you leaving town then?”

“I haven’t decided.” He went quiet for a moment. She was moving too quickly to risk looking. 

“If I stay I’m not allowed to kill anyone,” he said. 

“Were you… allowed before?”

He huffed something almost a laugh. “Sure, but only because they couldn’t stop me.”

Right up until they did, she thought. 

“Hang on,” she said. “You can’t kill anyone ? What about self defence?”

“No.”

“What if, I don’t know, some maniac is holding a kid hostage and you have a clear shot? What do they want you to do?”

He barked a hard laugh. “That is such a good question.” He shook his head. “I work better without Batman and his vigilante daycare on my back. But Gotham is my city too. It’s more my city than any of theirs.”

She slowed her pace, taking the wide corners with lots of allowance. She risked a glance at him. 

He was looking out the window, hit by a sudden burst of golden light, with an expression that was both thoughtful and dangerous. 

“The deal only lasts as long as we uphold it,” he muttered. “I don’t know how far I’m willing to go yet.”

“How much further are they going to ask for?”

“Another good question,” he said, with a bitter twist of his lips. “Say I did it. I stopped taking the lethal route, maybe I even put up my guns and became worse at my job on every level. Would you still think I was a good person then?”

“Depends. Would you let someone die to make your dad happy?”

The silence was loud and uncomfortable. 

“Maybe I would. I’ve killed for less.” 

She nodded. “I wouldn’t blame you.” 

That was family for you. Love was a box you squeezed yourself into. Cut off any excess until you could fit, or give it up as a lost cause. She was better at cutting and running than him. 

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said. 

She followed a corner around a rise in the earth and caught sight of a security team pouring out of a truck at the car park, accompanied by the disgruntled staff member. He looked at them with self-righteous anger.

“Ready for the field test?” Jason drawled. 

She flexed her fingers on the wheel. “Bring it on. You’re navigating.”

“Hit the gate as fast as you can.” 

She stepped on the pedal. 

Chapter Text

On an unassuming Tuesday morning, Louise helped her Grandpa out of bed. 

It had rained all night, and was down to just a thin drizzle. Hazy columns of cold white light broke between the apartment blocks from time to time. 

She yawned and trudged down to the kitchen to get started on breakfast. She turned the tv on for some ambient noise. 

The Red Hood had been seen in Gotham again, according to some morning news show. The convicted crime lord on the loose was rumoured to have been spotted with a red bat on his chest last night. 

Louise poured some cream of wheat into a little pot. 

Last night huh? 

Two nights ago he sent her a selfie of him and Roy in front of Uluru, the giant red rock in the middle of Australia. She replied with a photo of a pigeon sitting in a sunbeam on the railing of her fire escape. He saved her photo. She laughed at his sunburn. 

They tried not to talk about work, his or hers. The official reason was security, but really they just got enough work chat from everyone else. 

The talking heads speculated wildly on the bat symbolism. Sure, Red Hood had been operating in an heroic-ish capacity across the globe for years now, but if it wasn’t in Gotham, it didn’t count. She couldn’t see the screen but she’d bet good money they were showing the footage of the row of human traffickers he hung from the bridge that one time. 

If the bat on his chest was indorsement, then this all reflected very badly on the city’s resident hero. Not that they supported vigilantism, but Batman was an institution, and they all knew what to expect from him. Nobody knew what to expect from Red Hood.

Louise had heard the chatter on the streets for months now. The underworld was on edge. Certain operations quietly withdrew from the city. Others reassessed how they did business. It felt like they were all holding their breath, waiting to see just how he would announce his triumphant, terrible return. 

The hallway creaked beneath a slow moving walker. She glanced sidelong to keep an eye on proceedings, but Grandpa made it to the kitchen unassisted. He sat at the table with a sigh. He resented the days he couldn’t leave his bed, common though they were becoming. She tried to let him do things by himself where possible. 

She finished cooking his breakfast and served it to him in a bowl. 

She inspected the pantry. The grocery run she had put off all week could be put off no longer. 

Grandpa scoffed at something on the tv. “What will they think of next?”

Louise stuck her head around the pantry door to look. They had moved on to discuss some other scandal. This one was a woman wearing some kind of toga with loose curly black hair and no shoes. The photo showed her walking through the Robinson Mall flanked by half a dozen pigs. 

Louise shook her head and went back to her stock take. Gotham didn’t reward the curious.

There was a splash and a gasp behind her. 

She spun. Grandpa had knocked his bowl and spilled the hot cereal onto his lap. She grabbed a towel. He gripped his metal spoon with knobbled knuckles turning white. He looked away while she crouched to wipe the mess off his trousers and the table. 

She thought about making a comment about her cooking not being that bad. She bit her tongue.

He didn’t swear at her. He didn’t make eye contact. His jaw ticked. 

She got the feeling he was biting his tongue too.

She wondered if he would be kinder if he didn’t need her. 

Things hadn’t always been so bad. He used to ruffle her hair and call her his little trooper. When she was small he took her on camping trips to a lake. He taught her how to drive in a truck loaded down with tents and fishing rods. So long as she didn’t cry or make a fuss, they were good times. 

She wondered if she would become as much of a monster as him when she was helpless. 

“Do you want to change pants?” she asked, having wiped the worst of it off. Fortunately the food had been cooling and gluggy by the time it spilled. 

“No fucking point. I’m not going anywhere,” he bit out. 

She nodded and got up. 

“I’ll get you another bowl.”

“Get yourself a bowl. You’re so skinny it's disgusting.”

She decided to take it as concern for her health. 

Later in the morning she headed out for groceries. The rain had stopped and the supermarket was only a block away, so she decided to walk. 

It felt good to stretch her legs. The air was as clean as it got, with just a hint of old piss. Despite the bright sun, dark clouds churned directly above the city, giving the light an eerie quality. Maybe there was a storm coming. 

Not long after, she browsed the freezer section of the supermarket, inspecting boxed pizzas. Someone behind her made an inarticulate noise of surprise. 

“Louise? Is that you?”

She didn’t recognise the voice. 

“Who wants to know?” she said, turning and plastering on a smile.

Dick Grayson stood behind her, also smiling. He was in a bulky rain jacket patterned like the floor of a bowling alley. 

“It is you, right?” he asked. 

“Have we met?”

His smile turned conspiratorial. “I think you were calling yourself Allegra at the time.”

She nodded, annoyed. “Oh, that’s right. And you were calling yourself B–”

“I wouldn’t,” he said, suddenly a different person. 

She just felt smugly good about breaking the veneer, before the consequences could arrive. Understudy Batman looked like he was perfectly ready to prove his credentials. Probably not worth annoying him. 

Why was he talking to her? 

Why was he even here? Nobody who lived in a Bristol manor had any business being in her neighbourhood. 

The aisle was awkwardly silent for a moment of everything except the humming freezers. 

“You here for a classic Bowery frozen pizza?” she asked when it got unbearable. 

“It’s an impressive range of options,” he said, putting his hands in his pocket. 

“Crazy right?”

“Look at them all.”

“Pepperoni? Hawaiian? Cheese ?” She shook her head. “No wonder you came all this way.”

“Don’t lay it on too thick,” he said. 

Okay, now she was done fucking with him. 

“What do you want?”

“Have you seen Jason lately?”

“No.”

He gave her a considering look. It was less openly combative than Jason’s, but no less perceptive. She opened the freezer doors, grabbed a stack of pepperonis and threw them in her trolley. 

“I heard he might be in town. I was hoping to catch up with him.” 

“Good luck with that.” She started walking down the aisle.  

“Do you know how to get in contact with him?” he asked, walking alongside her.

“No.”

“I’m worried about him.”

“Then I hope you find him. Goodbye.”

She escaped the supermarket without him. 

She was suspicious though. Jason went dark all the time, that was normal. She genuinely didn’t know where he was right now. She didn’t know what his relationship with his family was right now either, it tended to change moment to moment. But even when he was wistfully optimistic about them, she was not. Dick Grayson threw Jason in Arkham. She hoped his life was short and his death embarrassing. 

She was halfway home when she caught sight of something purple moving quickly along the rooftops.

Huh, Spoiler was back in town. She swung into an alley in the direction of the river and disappeared from view. 

Weirdly high number of vigilantes around the neighbourhood today. Out in the daylight too, making fools of themselves where everyone could see.

Hmm. 

The dark clouds had gotten darker. There was a strange wailing noise in the distance she couldn’t identify. It was similar to the siren of an ambulance, but with too many notes. She couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Maybe there was a party boat in the river. At ten in the morning. 

A couple of people looked around for the source of the sound but otherwise nobody paid it any mind. 

She waited until she was inside her building and climbing the stairs before she pulled out her phone. She paused on one of the landings, just outside of the view of the camera, and texted Jason. 

‘Dick’s looking for you, and I think the rest of the circus might be too.’

There was no response by the time she got to her level. That was normal. She unlocked the apartment and swung the grocery bags in through the door and put them down around the entrance.

A cat sat on the kitchen table. 

She blinked at it. 

“Meow,” it meowed. 

It was an enormous grey and brown tabby, with a scar under its eye that ran through the fur under its ear. It sat with perfect cat dignity on the table’s edge, staring at her.

She swung one of the bags up onto the table. The cat moved back a little to make space but otherwise it just watched her. It cocked its head. She studied it. 

“I don’t have a cat,” she informed it. 

“There you are!” Grandpa yelled from the living room. “You live in my apartment without paying rent and you bring wild animals into–” 

Her head shot up.

“I pay rent.”

“When? Where? I’ve never seen a dime of it!”

“Well you see it’s a very special type of rent called ‘your mortgage’ and I pay it directly to the bank, on your behalf, you’re welcome.” She flashed her middle finger through the passthrough.

“Finally paying me back for those schools I slaved to get you in, just so you could get expelled?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she said, lighthearted, because she knew it pissed him off, “They expell you just the same from the local schools.”

“I didn’t ask you to pay my mortgage.”

“Sure, let's all get evicted together.” 

“Maybe then you would finally take life seriously.”

She ducked down to stick her head through the passthrough window. “Don’t worry, they’re gonna take the apartment to pay off your medical debts the second you die anyway. We’re just counting down the timer here.”

He threw his mug at her. It didn’t make it, clattering against the coffee table and rolling on the carpet. It was a little sad. 

“Sorry,” she said. “Too real?”

“Get out.”

She stood up straight again. 

The cat had leapt off the table and walked around her feet, looking up at her. 

She ducked her head down again.  

“I do feel bad about that one.”

“Out!” 

She huffed and slammed the wooden shutter down. 

She ran a hand through her hair, then turned back to the groceries. She put everything away and tidied the space up until the scream in her throat had sunk back down. 

The cat trotted back up to the table, and sat there watching with a sort of expectant silence, until she was done. Then it let out a long and demanding meow. 

“How did you get inside?” she muttered. The window was shut. 

“Meow.”

It was wearing a collar, a light brown one that looked like it was fraying. She stepped closer to see if there was a phone number on it. The cat watched her hand suspiciously. She gave it a pat on top of its head. It hissed. She kept patting it. It hissed a little less. She ran her hand down its head and over its back. It hissed very quietly.

“Hissy baby, it’s okay,” she muttered. Like a kitten getting its first hug, which was funny for a cat that looked like it played a mobster in Fieval’s American Tail.

Its fur was thick and smooth. It looked down, not making eye contact. She wondered if it would let her pick it up. 

Moving very slowly, she brought her arms around it, but it jumped out with a disgruntled little chirp. 

“Funny little guy, aren’t you?” She raised her hand again. “Someone must own you, let me check your collar.” 

It screeched and leapt from the table to the bench. She tried to calm it down and approach slowly, with her hands out. It hissed and sprang away. She chased it around the kitchen, getting bitten and screeched at. 

It leapt off the table and bounded down the hallway towards the bedrooms. She huffed and stalked after it. 

It had disappeared into the spare room, with its made up bed and cardboard boxes of things she never bothered to unpack everytime she got booted back to this apartment. 

She pushed the door open further. 

The cat was walking circles on the bed, looking confused.

“Meow?”

“Yeah, there’s no food in here.”

“Meow,” it called, looking up at her. 

“I don’t know what you want from me, pal. I don’t know if you know what you want.”

It’s tail flicked back and forth. 

She shrugged, opened the window in case it wanted to bail, and left. She went to her own room. She kicked her boots off, scrubbed a hand down her face, and collapsed onto her bed. There was work she needed to get done today. There were quotes to haggle down, debtors to convince to wait just a little longer, and potential customers to schmooze. She wasn’t in a schmoozing mood.

The cat entered on quiet feet, soft little pat-pat-pats over the carpet. It paced the length of the room, head down and tail up. 

It made little chattering noises occasionally. It had a deep voice, which suited its ridiculous size. It was like a short haired maine coon cat. 

She watched, unmoving. After a time, it jumped up onto her stomach.

She grunted, bowing under the pressure. It meowed, loud and annoying, right in her face. 

“Are you some kind of hellcat sent to torment me?” she demanded, laying back down. 

It meowed again, sitting on her stomach and staring down at her.

“Yes, hello.”

It sighed. 

“Don’t give me that. And don’t get comfortable, I’m not adopting a cat.”

She pulled out her phone to see if Jason had replied. Above the phone, mossy green eyes looked down at her. 

Jason had not replied. 

She idly ran a hand down the cat’s head.

It wasn’t unusual that he hadn’t said anything. She refused to panic without verified bad news when it came to Jason, because the only alternative was to panic all the time. He would probably be fine, he usually was. 

The cat leaned into her hand. She scritched the back of its head, behind the ears. It started to purr. 

She smiled.

It stopped purring. 

She ran a finger over the collar. 

It hissed and moved its neck away. 

It wasn’t a collar at all. It was braided flax, fresh, green and fibrous. It felt weird, and too tight for the neck it was around. She examined her hand. Her finger was kinda tingly. 

She narrowed her eyes. Maybe she could cut the braid off when it wasn’t looking.

The cat watched her. It had a very sharp gaze, cold and considering, in a way that made her feel like her bullshit was being examined and found wanting. 

A ridiculous idea struck her. 

The hazy light coming through her window faded, quite suddenly. 

The cat jumped off her and prowled over to the windowsill. She sat up to look. 

The window showed a narrow view of the street below, and the closed shop fronts of the opposite building. 

The clouds looked… wrong. Too dark, with shapes convulsing in them, like eels writhing in a pond. The air itself looked hazy, like a black mist descending over the city. 

On the street below a woman in a tuxedo leotard and fishnets stalked by. 

Wait, Louise knew her. She had seen posters for her magic show plastered on bus stops. Zatanna waved a hand and the darkness soaking into the air retreated with a crack . 

Hmm. 

If that was stage magic than that woman was too good for Gotham, she should be performing in Vegas. 

Louise unhooked the window, and her ears immediately rang. 

Someone, somewhere, was chanting.

The cat yowled. She caught it just as it tried to jump out, and closed the window. The large cat scrambled in her arms and fell to the floor and booked it out of the room. 

She followed it down the corridor.

“Grandpa, stay away from the windows. Something’s going on,” she yelled. After a moment’s deliberation she grabbed a gas mask from the hooks behind the door and threw it to him in the living room.

“That scarecrow clown again?”

“The scarecrow and the clown are two different people.”

“I don’t care.”

The doorbell rang. 

She paused. Everything was very quiet. The chanting was only the faintest murmur beyond the walls. She didn’t know where the cat had gone. Even Grandpa looked unnerved. 

Her ears hadn’t fully stopped ringing. 

She went to the door. She turned the knob.

Batman stood in the hallways. He took up most of the doorway, inky black cape falling from broad shoulders all the way to the ground. 

“Oh. Hi Batman.”

“Where is Red Hood?”

She leaned against the door jam. “Lost him again, huh?”

He glowered. It was one hell of a glower. Her survival instinct told her to shut up. 

“Did you check between the couch cushions?” her mouth said. “What about under the mats in your car? Hey– you can’t come in–”

He pushed past her. 

She made to follow, incensed at him barging in, this was her grandpa’s apartment, the son of a bitch. 

A deafening boom thundered outside. 

They both stopped. She spotted the cat hiding under the table. Batman whirled in place. 

“I think you’ve got bigger priorities right now,” she said, and found herself talking to a disappearing flicker of cape, and then an empty window. The chanting echoed through the apartment. The air tasted sour.

The cat sidled out from under the table, watching the empty window. It was a step in front of her. 

Louise picked up a paring knife. She leaned down in one smooth motion, and cut the collar off. It collapsed into smoke and ash. 

Then there was no cat.

There was Jason, sitting on her kitchen floor, blinking hard in the low light.

“Oh shit,” she muttered. 

Sure, she suspected . She didn’t really believe it though. It was ridiculous!

“Never doing that again,” he said, squeezed his eyes shut and curling over. 

She crouched by him. He was in his Red Hood suit and jacket, with a domino mask. He looked like he had already been through a fight, before whatever bullshit magic this was. 

“Are you… okay?”

He grunted. 

She put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned into it. Kind of like–

Her lips quirked. His eyes cracked open and he looked at her suspiciously. She cleared her throat and pulled her hand back. 

“What happened?” he asked.

“You don’t remember?”

“Kind of. I don’t think I was fully me . Or if I was… cat me had a lot less brain cells to work with.” 

She snorted a laugh.

“Have you got the usual number back? Because I don’t mean to rush you, but the city does seem like it's being attacked by demons or something. And your family are all desperately looking for you.”

He grunted and pulled himself to his feet. He put a hand on her shoulder to stabilise himself for a second, then he shook his head and stood tall on his own. 

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Why? What’d you do?”

He laughed grimly. “Nothing. Yet.”  

He pulled two flaming copper swords seemingly out of his own arms.  

Louise staggered back, her eyes not understanding what the hell she was looking at. 

“Stay inside, keep the windows shut.” 

Glowing tattoos shone through his clothes and the air seemed to hum, making her clothes vibrate very lightly against her skin. He seemed to burn through reality itself. He looked like some kind of terrible avenging angel, and it was hot as hell. 

He jumped out the window. 

Chapter Text

Jason flopped down on a plastic chair with a sigh. He rubbed his shoulder and squeezed his eyes shut against the glare of the afternoon sun on water. Everything hurt but it was the satisfying ache of hard work, not injury. 

Next to him Bizarro lay on the ground, admiring the pretty pink clouds and wheeling birds, occasionally tracing their passage through the sky with his finger. 

Artemis was spearfishing in the shallows. The long red mass of her ponytail kept throwing water up in dramatic arcs as she leapt about. It was all very picturesque. 

Jason took a photo on his phone and sent it to Louise. 

She reacted with a heart. He should take her somewhere like this sometime. Not necessarily the Philippines, but somewhere beautiful and warm outside of Gotham. The tranquillity always put him a little on edge and he wanted to subject her to it too. She’d probably be scamming other tourists within a week. 

‘I hate to ask,’ she replied a few minutes later, ‘But I think my boyfriend might have been murdered by Cobblepot. The cops are refusing to look.’

He hummed and flipped through to one of his surveillance programs. He messaged back a few minutes later, sending her a photo of a dark haired man with sleeve tattoos and an arm draped around the waist of a beautiful blonde woman in the French Riviera. 

‘This him?’ 

‘Motherfucker.’

‘You can do better.’

‘Well yeah, but he let me worry about him!’

Immediately after she messaged again. 

‘And why is everyone at the beach but me? This is such bullshit.’

He stretched out on his chair, crossing his ankles in front of him. If she was immediately back to griping then she was more frustrated at being played than heartbroken, but he took offence on her behalf. The Outlaws were in and out of Europe lately. It would be a minor detour. 

‘Maybe his car will spontaneously explode,’ he said. 

‘Don’t you hate it when that happens?’ she replied.

‘Common manufacturing error. Being vulnerable to rocket launchers.’

‘Lol.’

‘What’s Penguin got on him?’

‘Nothing, he’s trying to intimidate me.’

He sat up straight. 

‘...why?’

The ‘typing’ symbol flashed for a while, then disappeared. 

‘What did you do?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing!’ 

‘Then why is Cobblebot after you!’

‘It’s all above board! I even have permits this time.’

‘Goddamnit Soiler.’

He got up and strode back up the slope towards the house. 

Biz and Artemis could hold down the fort, they were still looking for their next lead anyway. Forget blowing up cars, he was going to stop Louise from getting herself blown up. 

About twenty four hours later he was flying into Gotham. The plane circled the city a few times, waiting for a runway. He blinked back to wakefulness and looked out his window. 

The skyline had changed. 

On the four hour stopover in Tokyo he had done his research on what Louise had been up to. He had known what to expect. Seeing it was different. 

There were giant zeppelins everywhere. They glided gracefully above the city but below the planes. Mooring lines rose from the towers, anchored to skeletal platforms perched on the side of the buildings. They suited the mix of gothic and art nouveau that up Gotham’s skyline. They didn’t look like an awkward new addition, they looked like they had always been there. 

He watched the silent dance with his chin in his palm until they landed. He grinned. It had to be playing hell with Batman’s reliable sightlines and perches. Or established criminal territories. No wonder people were threatening her. 

Next to the luggage carousel were two giant posters on opposite walls for Black Dog Airships, with bold white text over dramatic shots of blimps between office towers. 

The first said:

RISE ABOVE THE GRIDLOCK
FOR A QUIETER
SAFER COMMUTE 

And the second: 

LEAVE YOUR COMPETITORS IN THE DUST
TAKE TO THE SKIES 

At the bottom of the signs pointing towards possible exits and connecting transit options, were timetables on when Black Dog Airships were leaving and to which districts. There was a decent crowd moving in that direction. 

He joined the flow of people, texting Louise as he went, then leaving the crowd when he got to the turnstiles.

Louise waited for him, leaning against the ticketing booth and looking at her phone, in combat boots and skinny jeans and a badly printed band t-shirt, like she was just another traveller, and not Gotham’s darling new rising star. 

She beamed at the sight of him. He wrapped her in a tight hug.

“You overachieving dumbass,” he said into her hair. 

She laughed. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me that before.”

“A dumbass?”

“An overachiever. I’m going to take it as a compliment.” 

“Of course you would. Come on, show me these blimps, then you’re shouting lunch. I’m starving.”

She led him through the staff area to cut the line and the turnstiles, and then up a gangplank into a cabin hanging beneath a giant bullet shaped balloon. 

They were sitting in the regular passenger compartment. There was no fancy first class area, but it was clean and spacious, and much nicer than the economy class flight he had just gotten off of. 

“How did you pull this off?” he asked, taking a seat opposite her at a little table. They were the first onboard. People filtered in around them, until it was three quarters full. Maximum capacity looked like about two hundred. 

Louise launched into a convoluted and ridiculous story involving trading her coffee import business, which had ballooned when he wasn’t looking, for some very expensive koi, which she traded in turn for a fleet of blimps. The rest she paid for with the proceeds from those pigs he asked her to sell the year before. She had been arranging the pieces for this for a long time. 

The blimp took off. The movement was gentle but at a steeper incline than he expected. It was strangely quiet. It wasn’t fast, but while cars on the freeway sped past them, they soared by gridlocked roads and closed intersections. For the second time that day he looked out across Gotham from above. From this vantage his city looked just like he remembered. 

He smiled. Then he stopped smiling, as he realised they were heading to the Bowery. He got up and looked out the window. There was a new platform on the roof of the tallest building in the district. 

He looked back at Louise. She looked extremely pleased with herself. 

They landed in the heart of a neighbourhood that had been promised a metro line since the fifties and never gotten one. The two of them disembarked with the rest of the crowd, most of them locals taking a more comfortable ride home than the three bus connections it normally took to get to the airport. 

Louise led him to a little Italian restaurant nearby that had more people in it at eleven in the morning than he had ever seen inside it before. The whole street looked more alive than he remembered. 

The owner came out and gave her a hug and insisted everything for her was free. A table was produced and they sat across from each other to dig into some really good pasta. 

“Are you making any money off this?” Jason asked. 

“From the freight side, sure,” she said, twirling spaghetti from a bowl of cacio e pepe on her fork. “And the advertising. Hand over fist.”

“And the public transit?”

“Bleeding money. But that’s how I got the permits for everything. It’s a ‘public good’ according to city officials.”

“It is.”

“I figured… why shouldn’t I build something that’s actually worthwhile, for once? We’ve been waiting forever for the city to do it, but they’re never going to. I may as well give it a crack.”

“I’m really proud of you, Lou.”

She ducked her head. “Yeah well. It’s bought me access to some very wealthy idiots looking for a bright young entrepreneur to invest in, who I fully intend to take for a ride.”

He rolled his eyes and took a big bite of puttanesca. “Must be a lot of smuggling going on.”

“That,” she said, returning to her shameless self, and gesturing with a fork, “Is not my problem.”

“Uh-huh. How about Cobblepot losing profits because he no longer controls traffic through his territory? Is that your problem?”

“He is trying to make it my problem,” she groused. “I’ve got a lot of public support so far.”

“That’s never saved anyone before.”

She tilted her head in a concession. “I guess we’ll see then.”

That night, Red Hood swung above Gotham’s streets. 

He maintained a permanent presence in the city these days, even when he was working with the Outlaws for months at a time. He had his own guys and operations. Nobody knew for sure if he was in town or not, and there was a corner of the criminal world he could always slot back into without any fanfare. 

Louise underestimated the damage she had done. 

Sure, some of the criminal factions were benefiting, most smuggling was easier, both because the new routes opened up and the reduced pressure on the old ones. Airship freight was secure and discreet. 

That left Penguin, who had been the top dog for a while now, with growing competition and a shaky grip of his protection rackets. 

Red Hood climbed onto a rooftop and looked down into the loading area behind one of Penguin’s warehouses. He made himself comfortable for a good, long stakeout. 

The shadow he was sitting in moved away. He looked up.

An airship passed by overhead. 

He sighed. You know what they say, nobody ever looks up. He watched it go, heading towards the docks. Its cabin was a different size and shape from the one he took during the day. Only the freight airships operated through the night.

A bang cracked through the air. 

He rocketed to his feet. Was the blimp being shot at? No, the noise had come from inside the cabin. Flickering red shone out through the windows on the port side.

He shot his grapple at a nearby rooftop and swung himself up, gaining height and momentum from the surrounding buildings, until he could shoot for the blimp. It was at the furthest extreme of his grapple’s range, which reeled him in swiftly. 

The balloons used inert gases. There wasn’t going to be a repeat of the Hindenburg tonight. But that still left a very heavy rigid airship, directly above warehouses and silos that could contain stored explosives, but definitely contained night shift workers. 

He sprung up and landed on the ledge of a smashed out window. 

Smoke obscured the cabin, lined with a weak red glow. Stacks of crates, all held down with rope, dominated most of the space. It looked like one of them had exploded. Shattered planks of wood were lodged into the roof and the floor. Further in, people were coughing and calling to each other in confusion. 

A body lay face down next to a crate. 

Jason stalked towards it, and leaned down to check their pulse. It was a man, late fifties, in armoured security gear and carrying a handgun in his holster. 

“Get off, get off,” he coughed out, flailing an arm to get some space. “I’m breathing.”

He had a familiar London accent. 

“Shifty?” Jason asked. He was a regular in the Gotham goon scene. He’d worked for just about everyone at some point or other, and had a good nose for  trouble and how to avoid it.  

“Hey boss.” He rolled until he was sitting up. Jason hooked his hands under his armpits and hauled him towards the windows, where the air was clearer. His helmet gave him better visibility and he looked around as he went. 

“You work for Black Dog now?” 

“Good health benefits.”

“Yeah? What do I have to offer to lure you back?”

“Sorry, no can do. I promised the missus. I’m respectable now.” 

“Well, la di dah, look at you.”

“I know, I know.”

“What are we looking at?”

“One of the boxes blew. I told the boys it was off.”

“How many others are on board?”

“Three. Two of my boys plus the pilot. I reckon–”

Machine gun fire rattled through the cabin.

Jason dove behind a crate, hauling Shifty with him. The report echoed around the metal cabin, making it impossible to hear where it was coming from. Jason drew his guns and chanced a look. No sight of who was firing, or at who. 

The rat-tat-tat of automatic gun fire kept going. 

“Stay here,” he said, and headed off through the maze of crates. 

He wove around two corners, and found a wall plastered in bullet holes. Someone was yelling. 

The gunfire stopped. 

He rounded a corner. 

Two wind up Penguins sat on the floor. 

One was on its side. The both had submachine guns taped to their sides and looked like they had been firing wildly at whatever they were facing. The gun on the penguin still standing clicked sadly. The burning embers of an exploded crate glowed on the floor around them. 

“Shifty, that you? Did – did you get it?” Someone called from around another crate. 

“Stay where you are until I say. It’s not safe,” Jason replied. He assessed the penguins at a distance.

“Holy shit, is that Hood?” they muttered. “Thank fuck.” 

The penguins were about two foot tall each, with round bodies and cartoonish features. They had beady little green eyes. He stepped closer carefully. He’d seen too many of these things in his career. It was always a roll of the dice if they were booby trapped or not. He sucked his teeth for a moment. 

“Are you hurt?” he called. 

“Yeah, my arm got got in the explosion. I can’t move it.”

“How long until we land?”

“Should be any second now.”

He could just let the cops handle the penguins then. They weren’t doing anything right now, so he didn’t want to risk moving them and setting them off. 

The airship began to tilt nose down.

The penguin on its side rolled. It beeped, and the eyes turned red. 

He dashed forward. He swept them both up and dashed to the window. The beeping sped up. The second penguin’s eyes turned red in his arms. He threw them out into the night. 

They fell in silence, spinning in the cold evening wind. 

Two explosions detonated below them. Red and white flashed for a moment, followed by a shockwave. It hit the water below them in rings. 

He let out a pent up breath. 

Well now. It looked to him like Penguin was trying to drive an honest business owner out of town. That was work for Bats. 

Louise met her airship at the station by the docks. The pilot had called it in the second something went wrong. 

Before the airship landed, she thought she caught sight of a shadow with just a hint of red swinging out through the windows and into the night.

That was probably why there still was an airship to land at all.

An ambulance arrived, then the fire department, then the police. She checked on her guys as they were wheeled out, no casualties, thank goodness. Once the fire department declared it safe she went aboard to assess the mess. 

The crew who were meant to be unloading it and reloading were all on standby. She was going to have to pull a passenger blimp to fill in while they got this fixed and declared safe to fly again. It would cost a lot to slow down and reassess safety. It was going to cost her a lot anyway, just on tonight's business, let alone the shaking of client confidence. 

The police declared it an accident and left. They didn’t even blink at the fake penguin fur inside and around the exploded box, let alone photograph it and open a case. 

She ground her teeth. 

She wasn’t going to stand for this. Penguin wasn’t going to make her cower. Not today. 

She went directly to her offices, despite it being the middle of the night, and got to work. 

In the morning she took a radio interview with Vicki Vale and announced the opening of a second station in the Bowery and the purchasing of new airships to meet growing freight demand. 

It drowned out any talk of explosions. 

“Besides,” she said, with a smile in her voice, “the police don’t think there’s anything to be worried about.”

She amped up security. The presence of security personnel on the passenger airships helped. Passenger numbers were high, and freight profits bounced back. 

Red Hood stopped a scheme to hijack an airship. He couldn’t prove it was Cobblepot, not in any way commissioner Gordon would act on. She asked him to keep the news of the attempted attack to himself. 

Word got out anyway, among a certain crowd. Penguin was targeting her. That made her too hot for a number of small timers. And the big timers… They were too hot for her. 

She turned down an offer from Two Face to buy a blimp from her and operate it through her stations, with his own security. 

“I suggest you reconsider,” he drawled, looking at the cigar in his hand. 

She took a shaky breath. 

“No.”

One of the twelve gunmen he had brought him shifted a little. 

“Hn.” Two Face reached into his jacket and pulled out a coin. 

He flipped it and looked at the results. He looked at her. 

“Next time then, Miss Brick.”

He left. She steeled herself, and went back to ordering weaponry of her own. If only Cobblepot could be so reasonable. 

Red Hood’s guys started defending the station. People said she was paying him protection money. 

Batman solved the seven day murders. That was unrelated. 

Then, by chance, Louise’s security team found a crate of wind up penguins hidden among the cargo to be loaded that night. 

Terry, who was doing her IT again, disabled the remote detonators. He left the GPS active. She had them all loaded into her smallest blimp, usually reserved for advertising. Even a small blimp was still a giant heavy object floating hundreds of feet in the sky. 

She moored it directly above the Iceberg lounge. 

Things went quiet for a few days. 

Red Hood didn’t like the blimp being there. She was unmoved. 

Then the next afternoon, it wasn’t there. 

Louise got a call while she was in her offices, attached to their main hangars by the docks. She ran outside onto the wide balcony. 

The blimp careened towards the new Bowery Station, still under construction. It was mid afternoon, and the full crew of construction workers were on shift. 

Cut mooring lines dragged behind the blimp. She tried to work out how much explosive power those Penguins contained. The size and weight of the balloon. 

Around her office workers and mechanics gasped and gawked uselessly. 

She called Shifty, who was on site today. 

“Shoot it down,” she said.  

“The balloon won’t go down that easy, Boss.” 

“Not the balloon, the cabin. Heaviest calibre you’ve got.”

“Got it.” The line went dead. 

She watched the balloon drift closer and closer. It’s nose was pointing down, and it started to drift side on. Nobody was piloting it. 

They were too far to hear the report of the rifle. They only saw the flash of the explosion. The BANG reached them a second later.

The balloon lifted higher suddenly, without the weight beneath it, it jerked upwards. Loose balloon fabric flapped and flailed as it rose up and over the half built station and the river beyond. 

The helium escaped through the torn and burning balloon, and the whole thing lost its height again. It crashed into the river.

The people around her cheered and cried and asked each other what happened. She gripped the railing until her knuckles turned white and her hands stopped shaking. 

She couldn’t help thinking that if the wind had been stronger, it could have landed on Penguin’s riverside warehouse. 

Jason marched into Louise’ office building.

Of the few still working this late, some stood up and stared. Others put their heads down and pretended they didn’t notice the crime lord stomping into their work space. 

He threw open her door and slammed it behind him. 

She looked up from where she was sitting on her desk, eating peanuts from a tiny packet. 

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded.

She crunched angrily on her peanuts. “Nobody died and I’m footing the bill. What are you pissed off about?”

“Nobody would have been in danger of dying if you hadn’t hung a live bomb over Cobblepot’s head!”

“It’s the same thing he’s doing to me!” she yelled, getting off the table. 

“Because he’s a lunatic!” 

“So what, should I just let him intimidate me? Why don’t I turn everything over to him? Why fucking bother at all?” 

She pushed past him and stormed out. 

He followed. 

She stalked into another open plan office, this one with two other workers. They looked nervously at him. He jerked his head at the door and they both scampered. The door swung to a shut behind them. 

“Louise.”

Louise wasn’t looking at him, she was bending over the back of a chair to look at a monitor and clicking on a mouse. 

He crossed his arms. 

He didn’t like this. Any of this. 

“Louise.”

She kept ignoring him. Fine. He had time. 

“Soiler. Doctor Blimp. Deadly Dirigible.”

“My dirigibles aren’t deadly,” she said, still not looking up. “Some of them are armoured. That’s the opposite of deadly.” 

“Ten minutes ago you placed an order for a mini gun.”

She finally looked up at him.

“That’s not for commercial use.”

He gave her a flat look. 

She sniffed and looked back at the computer.

“Louise. You’re my friend, and I love you. You’ve lost your mind.”

She stared at him. “...Have not.” 

Shifty opened the door and stuck his head inside. “Where do you want the grenades, Boss?”

Louise slumped. Jason looked at Shifty. He removed himself from the scene. Jason locked the door. 

“It’s Penguin’s fault,” she muttered. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to run a business!”

Jason pulled out a chair and sat. He took his helmet off and looked up at her. 

“What’s going on with you? Since when do you dig your heels in when it’s time to walk away? You always know when to cut your losses.” 

“Maybe I’m sick of always cutting and running,” she said, cold. “Maybe I want to win for fucking once. Why is that crazy?”

“You’re fighting wind up penguins in the sky.”

“So throw me in Arkham,” she bit. 

He scowled. 

She blinked and seemed to shrink. She looked away. “I didn’t mean that.”

He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. 

“What’s happened? What is this?”

“Nothing’s happened. I’m just… trying.”

“It’s gotten away from you, Lou. There’s nowhere else to go from here. It’s time to walk.”

She looked down at him bleakly. 

He took her hand, where it hung limp at her side. 

“Friends don’t let friends become blimp-themed supervillains,” he said. 

She held onto his hand. 

“Some supervillain.” She scoffed weakly. “I’d be a D lister at best.”

He rubbed the back of her knuckles. You had Penguin scared, he did not say. Batman’s file on you is vast and full of hyperlinks. 

I am afraid for you. 

“Are you going to do it?” he asked. 

She sighed. “Kord Industries made me an offer before we really took off. I’ll see if they’re still interested.”

“Ted’s good guy. He’ll figure it out without blowing anything up.”

She didn’t look very comforted. 

“And you’ll get a fortune for it.”

“We’re in a lot of debt. So long as it's enough to pay for itself.”

“You’ve got another idea in the pipes, don’t you? I know that’ll be a game changer.” 

She smiled. It lacked its usual brilliance. “Yeah. The next one.”

He got up and put an arm around head and pulled her in for a hug. She sagged in his arms. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

“I just… I wanted to win. You know?”

“I know.” 

Chapter Text

Louise’ Grandpa died.

It wasn’t a surprise. It was obvious. It was inevitable. 

It hit her like a brick wall on a highway. 

She sat at her kitchen table. There was nobody else in the apartment. And there never would be again. 

Her eyes trailed, dull and unfocused, over the peeling vinyl laminate. The left corner was the worst, a constellation of cracks around a central wound. She had rammed the back end of a hammer through it when she was eleven. She slapped herself in the head trying to rip it back out when Grandpa came thundering around the corner, and knocked herself on her ass.

It startled a laugh out of him. That made her laugh too. And they sat there, on the floor of the kitchen, chuckling, with a hammer lodged at a jaunty angle in the surface of the table. She rubbed her stinging forehead. He pulled her hand away and gave the spot a kiss and called her his little genius. It probably only took seconds. But it felt like the whole world could squeeze inside that moment. 

The window in the living room opened with a soft creak. She blinked. It was dark. Huh. It had been afternoon when she left the hospital. She didn’t remember driving home. Presumably she did. Unless she took the bus for some reason. That would be an annoying parking ticket.

Jason pulled her into a gentle hug against his chest. She leaned into him. 

Her eyes were dry. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered in the gloom.

She didn’t have any words. 

Jason got Louise to eat something, and then gently ushered her off to bed. She went without resistance. 

He didn’t think she even noticed he was in his work clothes. He had come as soon as he heard. He showered and lay down in the spare room for the night. He didn’t get any sleep. He doubted she did either.  The apartment was no quieter than normal, but there was a difference. 

He didn’t remember the day his mom died. 

He recalled all the facts, like he had read them in a case file. He found her after school. She was lying on his bed. The vomit had soaked into the mattress. She was wearing her blue robe and some socks. 

He had called the ambulance. She had overdosed before and pulled through. Maybe… maybe. He had known it was too late, but he tried anyway. 

He couldn’t see it anymore. He rarely tried. He could smell it though. 

He sighed. 

It took years before he could smell a dead body and not instantly be ten and alone again.

In the morning Louise shuffled out of her room. She looked tired, but dry cheeked and clear eyed. Breakfast was quiet, and awkwardly normal, as everything always was after a death. 

“What do you need to sort out?” he asked. “What can I help with?”

She shrugged. “Not much. I planned and paid for everything in advance. The funeral’s going to be this Saturday.”

“That was smart.”

“I kind of wish I hadn’t. I wouldn’t mind some admin to distract myself with. Maybe I’ll call some vendors. Double check.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t move.

“You don’t have to…" she started. “I’m okay. You’ve probably got important stuff on. I’ll be okay.”

“Do you want some space?” he asked. 

“I don’t know.” 

“I’ll hang around then. Feel free to kick me out if you need.”

“Alright.”

He hung around when he could for the week. He continued researching his cases, working on a laptop in the kitchen. Louise floated around, making calls to notify people, then arguing with the funeral home who wanted more money after all. She unleashed a quiet and ruthless version of her normal saleswoman persona on them, and walked away with extra services thrown in for free and an apology for the mix up. He made sure she kept eating and at least tried to sleep.

He got back from patrol in the early morning and found her passed out with a three quarter’s empty bottle of tequila. He poured it out and replaced it with milk. 

She made such a face when she woke up and took a gulp without looking. He burst out laughing, and she collapsed into coughing, spluttering giggles.

“You asshole,” she said, covering her face with one hand and trying not to smile. “Do you have any idea how disgusting that is? Come here, you taste the curdled tequila milk.” 

“Yeah, I’m good.”

It was as good a start to the day of the funeral as they were going to get.

They drove there together. Jason wore a suit he usually wore while undercover. Louise had unearthed a pleated black dress from somewhere in her wardrobe. She stuck with her usual doc martens. 

He sat next to her in the car. She looked like she was thinking about driving into the sea.

“You know, we don’t actually have to go,” he said. 

“Don’t tempt me,” she replied. The smile was unconvincing, but he appreciated that she tried. “Thank you… for, staying. This week. For coming to this.”

“Of course.”

She didn’t look at him. 

“It means a lot.” 

He didn’t say anything. As though he would be anywhere else. 

They pulled up outside the funeral home. It was a neat little brick building, with an inoffensive white sign out the front. The number of cars arriving surprised him. 

Louise gripped the steering wheel. She took a deep breath, then turned to him.

“Don’t let me get up and talk.”

“...You’re allowed to. Today is for you.”

She shook her head. “All this, the fuss, the flowers, the memorial, it’s for his friends. He had people who cared about him. I want them to… to enjoy the good memories. Like a nice little bow at the end. There’s nothing I’m going to say that will make anyone happy today.”

He made a face. He didn’t see why their happiness was worth her silencing herself. But it wasn’t his family.

“If that’s what you want,” he said. 

She sucked in another deep breath. She put her game face on. 

“Alright. Let’s do this.” 

They got out and went in. 

Louise shook hands with people, the perfect mix of sombre and sweet. Mostly she just nodded and accepted whatever they wanted to say to her. He didn’t know how she could stomach it. He wasn’t sure if he admired or detested the insistence on still playing the old man’s games. At this point it was probably unfair to ask her to break character. She had come this far. 

Jason floated. He spoke to some people, haunted Louise and watched. It was mostly elderly in attendance, some in military dress uniform, but there were others too. More than a couple hung back in awkward reluctance, not making eye contact and pretending like they were part of the decor. But generally the atmosphere was light hearted, with cheery flower arrangements on the tables and Bob Dylan’s creaky voice and harmonica in the background. 

It wasn’t technically a funeral since there was no body. The cremation had taken place the day before. A silver urn was on display between some flowers and a portrait of the man when he was young, bright and optimistic in his military best. He looked a lot like Louise. 

Jason studied the display. 

Did Willis get a funeral? 

Probably not. Prison wouldn’t bother, and he didn’t know if anyone else had cared enough about him. He had learned just how much time and money they took this week. And even if someone did, who would attend? 

Jason probably would have, back then. Willis had tried. Jason appreciated it more in retrospect. It wasn’t enough, and they all knew it. But he wasn’t violent or cruel to them. He wanted to be good enough. He loved them, Jason and Catherine both. Maybe that was worth something.

He hadn’t attended Bruce’s funeral, that year he was gone. Jason could admit he wasn’t at his most stable then. He wouldn’t have attended even if Alfred had hand delivered an invitation alongside a president’s pardon for all his crimes. 

If it had been for real, if Bruce had never come back… he would have wished he had gone. Even if it meant listening to hours and hours of speeches from people who never really knew him.

He shook the thoughts away and went to rejoin Louise. 

They sat down a little later for the service. A number of people spoke. A lot of it was rambly, but sincere. Everyone agreed Garry was a character. Louise sat straight backed through it all. 

A man in his forties got up. He looked a lot like Louise. Heavier tan and a little stockier. 

He looked deeply affected by all the stories. He struggled to speak for a moment.

“Take your time, Dave, you’ve got this,” someone in the audience called. 

Dave gave a watery smile. 

“I… I miss my dad,” he said. “I wish I had told him. I missed him.” 

He hung his head, then sat back down. There was a moment of respectful silence.

Louise started to move.

Jason gently took her hand, holding her in place. She stopped. She tugged her hand. 

“Are you sure?” he asked under his breath. 

Her face said she was very sure. It was grim, and desolate.

“Why shouldn’t today be for me?” she whispered back. 

He let her go. 

She stood and walked to the front of the room, with its microphone stand and little table. She looked up and across the room, meeting eyes with her audience. Everyone watched in quiet anticipation. A calm had come over her that tied a knot in the pit of his stomach. 

“Garry’s last words were ‘I’m glad they’re taking the apartment, I hope you starve in the streets.’”

Awkward shock took the room. 

Then Louise smiled, a little tilt of the lips. “A character right to the end, huh?”  

Some of the crowd relaxed, shaking their heads ruefully. 

“Thank you all for coming. My name’s Louise. Those of you I’ve met will know me as Garry’s granddaughter. I’m not though. I’m his daughter.”

The shock was a ripple this time. Some people looked between her and an embarrassed Dave. 

“I’m not kidding. Daphne’s my mom. Hi Daph, lovely to meet you, glad you could make it,” she said, eyeballing a woman standing right at the back. 

Daphne blanched.

“When I was seven,” she barrelled on, with an easy grin, “Garry broke my nose for the first time. Temper like a hurricane, and a mean right hook, he had. You learned to duck quick, growing up around him. If you get got,” she clucked her tongue, “Should’ve been quicker.”

It had the rhythm of a joke while not being one at all. There were scattered, uncomfortable chuckles. Some people swapped looks, as if asking who was going to stop her. 

Louise took the microphone from the stand. 

Oh, she was going to be mad at him afterwards for not stopping her. He didn’t want to stop her. She was glorious, rage as sharp as a snapped pool cue. She had put up with enough. They could all suffer the discomfort of listening.

“He told me if he caught me whimpering about it, he would give me something real to cry about. And I haven’t cried since,” she said, cool and calm and dry eyed. “He coached me through what to tell the schools about the injuries. He’s where I get my effortless, charming demeanour,” she drawled.

“That was Garry. Charming, when he wanted to be. Persuasive. He knew exactly what to say to make people believe. Or, when that failed, make them want to believe.”

She looked at the portrait, then back across the room again. Jason felt bolted to his seat. 

“I don’t want to believe anymore. He can take my share of his lies with him. Garry loved his children when they made him look good. And he betrayed them both. He loved his friends when they propped up his lies. He liked feeling more powerful than others, and if you wouldn’t let him, he’d find a way to hurt you. Nothing was ever his fault, except for when he wanted you to know it was.

“He looked his best friends in the eye and promised he never hit that kid covered in bruises. And they weren’t prepared to deal with the Garryness of it all, because he was such a fucking character.”

Her smile dropped. 

“Garry Brick’s last words were ‘I’m glad they’re taking the apartment. I hope you starve in the streets.’”

She put the microphone on the table and walked out, between the rows of seats. It was dead silent. 

Jason grabbed her coat and followed.

She had pushed the doors open when someone else took the stage. 

“We all know he had his flaws,” they started, “But, today, let’s try to remember–”

The doors swung shut behind them.

Weak drizzle fell from ragged clouds, intercut with shreds of brilliant blue. Patches of sunlight littered the ground. Gotham smelled wet but clean. 

Louise tipped her head back. She breathed in deep. Jason threw her coat over his shoulder and waited. 

“I want a burger,” she decreed. 

“Let’s go.” 

She sat herself in the passenger’s seat. 

The drive through at Big Belly Burger drive through was quick and quiet, then Jason drove them down to the rivermouth. There was a lonely bench, overlooking the pebbly banks. The tide was out and the river low, leaving damp rocks slick and shiny in the noon sun for a hundred yards before them. 

They sat on the wooden bench, ignored the slight dampness to their backsides, and chomped down on their hot and greasy burgers.

The clouds shredded under high winds, rippling like sands in the shallows. Intermittent sun sparkled over the water.

Louise licked mayonnaise off her thumb. She sat with her legs spread and her elbows on her knees, dripping burger juices on the ground in front of her. Jason leaned back, one arm on the bench behind her and the other strategically positioning his burger for minimum mess. Eating take out on the go was an art form for vigilantes. 

“What part of ‘don’t let me go on a spite-fuelled rant to a bunch of mourning octogenarians’ did you not understand?” Louise said around a mouthful of spicy chicken burger. 

“Everything you said was true.”

They watched the distant cargo ships in the harbour. 

“Still a bit shit,” she muttered. “Making everything about me. Making a whole fuss for nothing.”

“Do you regret it?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve got the rest of my life to decide.” 

“I liked it.”

She smiled and tilted her head to look at him through one eye. “You think more people should be out here ruining funerals?” 

“He’ll never know. And you only took a few minutes, they can rewrite him into a good guy again over the tea and sandwiches at the end.”

“True.” 

“Did it feel good?”

She looked forward again. He thought she looked achingly beautiful in the sporadic bursts of sunlight that draped over her, here, and gone. 

“Little bit,” she admitted. 

She screwed up her burger wrapper. He held out the paper bag and she tossed it in. 

They sat in silence for a moment.  

“Four people came to my funeral,” he said. “And they did nothing but tell lies.” 

Her brow scrunched up. “Just the family?”

He shook his head. “Bruce, Alfred, Jim Gordon, and his daughter. And the priest, I guess. Bruce didn’t tell anyone else. He just… stopped talking about me.”

Her frown sharpened. “I don’t know what its like, losing a kid. But you deserved better.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“I probably shouldn’t have called out Daphne in front of everyone. She’s probably a normal, not evil person. But I saw her at the back of the room, and thought… ‘This is what you show up for? Now? For him ?’”

“You deserved better too.”

She put a hand over her face. 

He put a hand on her back. 

They watched the sun gleam across the waves. 

Louise went home. 

Life kept going, in spite of how rude that seemed. After six years of being a primary caretaker and breadwinner, suddenly nobody needed her. She felt like calling Doctor Henry just to see how he was doing. She gave away Garry’s things and aired out his room. 

Something had happened since the funeral. 

She stopped calling him her grandpa. Even in the privacy of her own mind, it felt ridiculous. The truth was out, everybody knew, who was she pretending for? She wasn’t calling a man ‘dad’ who never admitted she was his daughter, so he was just Garry. 

It felt very final. And that felt ridiculous. The man was dead. It was already final. 

Some part of her was braced for blowback from her speech at the funeral. Maybe for one of his old friends to call her, drunk and furious, about besmirching their good friend’s name. Maybe even for Dave to write her some wounded letter about what she didn’t understand about him and her and this whole fucked up situation.

She should have known better, really. Nobody called. Any connection between her and her family was finally dissolved. 

The bank took the apartment and sold it to pay off Garry’s debts. She moved out of her childhood home for the final time. 

She sat on a couch in a bland white apartment, surrounded by boxes. She should probably unpack. She laid down. She didn’t unpack. 

Jason kept showing up. He rolled in through her window every couple of nights. He claimed the second bedroom for his gear. 

She hadn’t expected him to keep it up. It had been weeks now, way longer than it normally took for him to catch the scent of some human rights violation and disappear off the face of the earth. She wondered how long it’d be until he’d had enough. 

She opened her laptop on the floor of a living room full of boxes, leaning against the base of the couch. The number of emails in her inbox kept rising. She closed the laptop. 

There was probably something she needed to do. She just… didn’t care. 

She felt like that should have scared her, but she couldn’t muster the energy to care about that either. She slept late most days. The chinese restaurant downstairs did okay wonton soup, and they would drop it off at her door for free if she paid cash. It became her go to. 

“What are you working on?” Jason asked. He was leaning against the wall behind the couch, at the mouth of the hallway to the bedrooms. 

“Hm?” 

“What’s the next big idea?” 

“...I’ll think of something.”

He cocked his head. “Nothing in the tank?”

She shrugged. She had ideas written somewhere. None felt like anything right now. 

“How are you paying rent?”

She shrugged again. A cold touch of shame curled in the pit of her stomach. “I’ve got some money left over from the blimps.”

“How long will that last?”

She looked away. “That call centre next to the mall is hiring.” 

“A call centre? You’ll be miserable.”

“I’ll be paid,” she snapped. “Get off my back.” She didn’t want to work at a call centre. She didn’t want to wake up tomorrow.

That was… an exaggeration. Tomorrow would probably be okay. She might feel like getting up then.

“Uh-huh,” he said, unimpressed and disappeared back into the spare room. 

He came out in his uniform a little later, and ducked out the window, like normal. She watched the red of his helmet disappear in the gloom. The apartment was very quiet. She had no neighbours. 

Her heart screwed itself up like a piece of paper about to get tossed in the trash.

She woke up the next afternoon to Jason nudging her with his knee. 

“Hnng. What?”

He jostled her arm again. “You’re on my couch.”

She cracked her eyes open. She was on the couch. She had gotten into her pyjamas the night before, decided the vacuuming was overdue, realised the bag was already full, and gave up on everything. 

Jason wore his regular clothes and looked down at her with his arms crossed. 

“So sit on the floor,” she croaked. “It’s about as comfortable.”

“Get up. Get changed. I’ve got tickets to that awful music festival of yours, and I want to get there by four.”

She didn’t move. Was that on already? She hadn’t made it the last couple of years. She was too busy.

He squatted down so he was about head height with her. “Come on. You love Skrunkfest.”

“I do love Skrunkfest,” she said quietly. 

“River Muck are headlining this year.”

“They haven’t been the same since their lead singer got eaten by Killer Croc.”

“Louise. Go put pants on, or you will be going in your yellow flannel pjs.”

She gave him a flat look. 

A picture of her in her pyjamas on his shoulders in the mosh pit ended up on that week’s cover of the Gotham Herald. 

It was fun. 

It was a lot safer than it used to be. They had gotten corporate sponsors, and started to worry about things like insurance and lawsuits. That took away some of the raw edge she used to like so much. But she wasn’t seventeen anymore. She was twenty five, she had run a public service, and when she looked at it now she saw mismanagement instead of rebellion. The increased number of porta-potties was a good move. 

She knew Jason hated it, but that added an additional dimension to the fun. He wore earplugs the whole time, alongside a scowl that fit right in with the more punk side of the festival, and had to be negotiated into enjoying himself. There was some local grunge band that he actually liked playing on one of the side stages. River Muck were on top of their game, and Jason grudgingly got into it. 

She could see he was trying so hard for her. She put in the effort to try to make the most of it. Her energy dipped long before she thought it should. They headed for the gates before ten. She was so tired. 

Shame kept its cold little fingers on her spine.

She knew she was being a pathetic worm of a person. And not just because she was in her pyjamas in public. She couldn’t put up a good front, and her skin crawled at how exposed it left her. If he would just leave, then he wouldn’t have to see it. He was going to see, because he always saw through her. Didn’t he already? 

They got back to her place, and he swung out the window into the night again. He came back two nights later. And again on the weekend. 

Fear that this time he would draw the line and save himself the effort gripped her again and again, and it made her angry. She wasn’t a fearful person, she didn’t know what else to do with it. She tried to keep the anger bottled up, it wasn’t going to help anything. 

But every time he came back, and the moment he gave up on her was delayed a little longer, her restraint stretched thinner. 

Out of the blue, it snapped. 

“Why are you still here?” she demanded, after he did her dishes then opened the fridge and asked if she needed groceries. “Why do you care ?”

He stared at her. Her chest seized up. He looked so hurt. How was he still blindsided?

“Because I’m your friend. Idiot.”

“I’m not going to change. This is it,” she said, spreading her arms and hating herself. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut and accept a good thing? 

His brow furrowed. He looked at her like he didn’t recognise her. 

“What do you think this is?” he demanded. “What do you think I am?”

“Someone who isn’t blind! You have to see that I’m… I can’t…” She shook her head. “It’s all a lie.”

He jabbed a finger at her. “Don’t go putting whatever bullshit you spew about yourself in my mouth. I’m not some idiot you’ve scammed.”

She looked back at him, eyes wide.

‘ Then why are you here ?’ went unsaid. 

He turned away, muttering angrily. Then he whirled back. 

“You know what, it’s because I’m not blind,” he said. “I see the way you treat yourself, the way you carve yourself open so nobody can beat you to it. The way you hide, and lie, the way you throw yourself at any man who asks, then despise them for wanting you. I know who you are, under the act, the frantic busyness. I know you.” He leaned down in her face. “And I’m still here.”

Her throat felt like it was going to close. 

“Why?” she gasped. 

“Is it so hard to believe I care about you?”

“I’ll disappoint you.” 

“I’ll disappoint you right back. And we’ll keep on going. Like always.” 

He tsked and stepped back. 

Her eyes were so wet she couldn’t really see him. 

“You’re not going to scare me off,” he said. “Stop trying.”

A sob broke out of her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. He wrapped his arms around her. She didn’t deserve him. She couldn’t believe he even existed. 

“I’m sorry,” she managed. The tears poured down her cheeks, hot and messy. She grasped his jacket. She felt so pathetic but she couldn’t stop it. Her chest had cracked open and she didn’t know what to do with the pieces. “Please don’t leave me.” 

He cradled the back of her head. “What did I just say? Huh?” 

She sobbed. It was ugly and completely outside of her control. 

“You’re going to have to believe me, sooner or later. I’m more stubborn than you.”

She held onto him while everything she knew about herself fell out from under her feet. 

He held her up.

Chapter Text

Louise sat up from the couch, annoyed. 

The walls of her apartment were white, the ceiling was white, the carpet was grey, and so was the couch. The boxes she hadn’t unpacked yet that loomed around the lounge as monuments to her inertia were all a kind of bluey-beige. One had a brown mystery stain on the side, and it was the most colourful thing in the room. 

She had read about a kind of torture that looked like this once. 

She got up, lips pursed, and hands on her hips. There was a big white wall directly in front of the couch. Her small tv sat on two cinder blocks beneath it, and the wall to the side held a wide window, facing the blank grey backside of some corporate building, but it was at least something . 

She narrowed her eyes at the white wall. It was mocking her. 

She grabbed her coat from where it sat on top of her suitcase in her bedroom, shoved her feet into whatever shoes were closest, and marched out the door. 

She got into her car and drove. 

It was late afternoon. Watery sunlight reflected off the dark blue paint of her car’s hood. Black airships glided silently in the sky above. The light had turned to dull grey by the time she crossed the bridge, the river a brown slab far below. 

The city disappeared behind her. Empty fields and sparse trees passed her by. The sun sank below the horizon and night swallowed her up. There were no stars. The silver grey road stretched away before her. 

She pulled over to consult the map on her phone, then took the next turn off. 

She had passed through here years ago, she couldn’t remember what for. Probably returning to the city after some job or other fell through. All roads lead back to Gotham. 

On the edge of a small township, she pulled up at a cute little countryside hotel. The attached restaurant and bar looked like they saw more business than the accommodation side of things. 

Louise sat in her car for a moment. A part of her said to just turn around and drive back home. Or just keep driving, into the wide blue yonder. The road trip was meditative and quiet. Nobody could demand anything of her, there was no standard to fail. Getting out now felt like stepping off a pier. 

She took a deep breath, then got out and walked into the hotel foyer. 

A riot of orange and red and purple met her, like an air horn for the eyes. It was a giant oil painting, set in an ostentatious gold frame that still wasn’t as loud as the painting itself. The purple smeared like it might depict movement, and there was a peach blob on the foreground that had an air of a person about it. The red was rich and garish, too bright for blood, too blobby for fire. Maybe it was a hill full of blooming poppies, bobbing in the wind. Maybe it was a flock of cardinals all taking flight. Maybe it was a thousand discarded red pleather jackets rotting in a landfill. Maybe it was just a lot of paint. 

It was just as magnificent and obnoxious as she remembered. A celebration of an amateur’s wild confidence. 

It made her smile. 

There was a small square title card with a price displayed underneath it. She didn’t read the title. Her smile turned into a wide grin at the price. It wasn’t just ambitious, it was delusional. And some part of her had been afraid someone would have bought it.

“Be there in just a mo!” someone called, before a middle aged woman appeared from behind a curtained off area. She was in an apron and drying her hands on a tea towel. 

She gave Louise a rosy cheeked smile. 

“Hi there! Welcome to our little corner of paradise, are you looking for a room for the night?”

“Is this your hotel?”

“It surely is,” she said, with a little grin that contained depths of exhaustion Louise could not fathom. “My pride and joy for twenty three years running.” 

“It’s lovely.” Louise pointed at the painting. “Did you paint that?”

The lady huffed, mild exasperation hidden in the dimple in her cheek. “My husband. It’s meant to be–”

“Don’t tell me,” Louise said, holding up her hands. “I’ll give you three hundred dollars for it.”

The lady hesitated. She glanced at the painting, a calculating glint in her eyes, and then sent a softer look towards the rooms. 

“Four hundred and I’ll take it right now,” Louise offered.

The lady chewed her lip. “It has to be first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Done. And I suppose I am looking for a room for the night.” 

She got booked in, then went and sat in her room. It was a neat, if dated little spot, and more spacious than it would have been in Gotham for this price. Her phone lit up, and she replied to Jason.

‘I haven’t been kidnapped, I’m just out of town for the night.’

‘Fleeing the state, huh?’

‘They’ll never catch me.’

‘Pick me up some kitschy small town memorabilia.’

She rolled her eyes. He was extremely nosy, in a hands off kind of way. She rolled to her feet and wandered down to the restaurant. It was about half full, with soft rock playing on the speakers and a small cluster of people hanging out around two pool tables. 

She sat up at the empty bar. The menu held normal pub food, and she ordered a plate of brown, drowned in gravy. They had cans of Marcus’ beer in the fridge. She got one. It tasted like the good old times, whenever they might have been.

She quietly enjoyed her night. 

She was looking at the decorative teaspoons on the back wall and wondering if it was kitschy enough to get a laugh out of Jason, when someone approached her. 

“Hi, uh, mind if I join you?”

She had clocked him when she first came in: another single diner, eating a hoagie at one of the tables. He was a large, stocky man. Probably about her age, maybe a little younger, with a freshly scrubbed look to him. He offered up a sheepish grin. 

She inclined her head at the chair. 

She considered the possible ways her evening might play out.  

He was a bricklayer from Bludhaven, it turned out, doing a job in the area for the week. They chatted about the tiny town. It was a nice place, and they agreed it was good to get out of the city from time to time. She resisted the urge to be an annoying Gothamite about it.

He had a warm, bashful smile, and a timidity at odds with his size. Calloused, strong looking hands fiddled with the handle of his beer glass.

She didn’t really have a type, but she did enjoy the gentle giant sort. She played well to an appreciative audience. He seemed the kind of man to be awed by the sight of her naked. 

He took a gulp of his beer then cleared his throat.

“Would you maybe like to come back to my room?”

She looked at her own drink. Then she shook her head.

“I’m not looking for company tonight.”

He ducked his head. “Okay. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Have a nice night.”

“You too.”

She finished her drink, and wondered at herself. It had been a while since she followed a stranger back to their place. The impulse felt muted. 

She went back to her own room, alone. She was alright with it. 

In the morning the hotel owner helped her fit a giant painting into the back of her car. She drove back to the city under a stunning peach and pink sunrise. 

The apartment felt less cold. She stared at her giant ridiculous burst of life, dominating the entire room, and couldn’t help a grin. 

Three days later she unpacked her punching bag. She hung it up in the corner of her living room. It had been a while since she bothered. 

She worked up a sweat embarrassingly fast. 

“Widen your stance,” Jason said from the couch.

“Learn to parry,” she replied.

“I am parrying,” he muttered. An xbox had appeared under her tv when she wasn’t looking. She had downloaded Dark Souls 2 on Patricia’s recommendation and they were using the power of teamwork to get their asses handed to them. 

He was stewing over something. There was a certain focus to him that only made an appearance when he was mid plan.

She held the punching bag still. Jason almost killed a boss, and then got flattened at the last minute. He swore. She laughed and went back to practising her jabs. She did widen her stance. 

The rhythm of the exercise was relaxing. Her brain ticked over ideas while her body worked. 

A rogue little scheme scratched at the inside of her brain. Then another. 

She wasn’t ready. 

They simmered away in the background. 

Marcus reached out to her. They were expanding the brewery, and he wanted her to oversee opening the second site. She took him up on it, a little nervous. It had been a while. 

Then she got stuck into it. 

It was easy. Not just easy, it was boring. She’d done beer already. The team was new, they had expanded, but the newbies had a strange reverence for her. She was a founder. They said it like she’d been descended from on high to tell them where to store the sacks of hops. She whipped them up into professionals and expanded production by three hundred percent. It was a nice pay cheque and it filled time.  

She was walking to her car at the end of a day when Jason texted her. 

‘Ever run a nightclub?’ 

She leaned an arm against the roof of her car. ‘Not yet.’

‘Great, you’re hired. 10am at the Iceberg Lounge tomorrow, wear a suit.’

She stood up straight, dropping her things everywhere.

‘Jason’

‘JASON’

‘Say psych right now.’

‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘And that’s Boss to you.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘You don’t mind snatching Penguin’s business out from under him, do you?’

She smiled with all her teeth. 

‘See you at 10 Boss 🫡 ’

Jason met Louise in the carpark. 

The Iceberg Lounge was a towering edifice of lights and glass and steel, at night it sparkled like a diamond. Under glaring daylight he thought it looked sad, with stains bleeding from the steel over the glass, and ageing lights with obvious wiring dangling from them, all drowning in a sea of concrete. It’s sixties style looked old and tired. There was usually vomit on the pavement outside, alongside more unpleasant things, getting hosed away by bored cleaners. 

Not today though. The Lounge hadn’t opened last night, or the night before. 

Louise looked sharp and professional, in a neat black pants suit with slingback heels that went ‘tac tac tac’ against the sidewalk. 

She assessed the club and then levelled an amused look at him.

He leaned against a fake column next to the door, in blue jeans and a beige sports jacket. A cold wind ruffled his hair, and he took a final drag of a cigarette. 

Jason Todd, long lost son of Bruce Wayne, was the new proprietor. 

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what’s going on?” Louise said, a grin pulling at the corner of her mouth. She hesitated where they’d normally share a hug. They were in public.

He opened his arms wide and wrapped her up. 

“Of course I am. It’s your club now, if you don’t know what’s going on, nobody does.”

“Well in that case,” she said as she pulled back, “What the hell is going on?”

He nodded towards the entrance. “Come see.”

The black glass doors parted and they walked in together. A vast and brightly lit foyer met them, with mirrored walls, a lofty ceiling, two curved staircases and a giant crystal chandelier looming over the room. Jason remembered sending it smashing to the floor as Robin, and he knew for a fact Dick did it twice. Cobblepot always hung the ridiculous thing back up in defiance. 

The place was empty of all but a member of security lingering awkwardly at the side of the room. Nobody was entirely sure what was going on, even though word had spread about new management. They didn’t know what that meant yet. 

They walked down the centre of the room, between the staircases towards the main bar.

“Ever been here before?” he asked. 

“Once, when I was seventeen. Some friends and I wanted to see if we could sneak into the casino without getting caught.”

“Did you?” He held the door open for her. “Get caught?”

“Immediately. The bouncer clocked us and signalled someone inside to escort us straight out through some side door, he just wanted people seeing pretty young ladies going inside.”

He shook his head. They entered a huge room with too many tables, and a large stage. It was all done up in shades of blue and silver. There were a few anxious staff floating around, not doing much.

“Where is the Penguin?” Louise asked in a low voice. 

“Away.”

“Hm.”

“Ready to get to work?” he asked. 

She set her shoulders. She was already wearing her game face. “Tell me what you want, I’ll make it happen.”

“I want you to turn this place around. It’s old, it's tired, it’s mismanaged. I want it to be unrecognisable when we reopen.” 

The little gears that he hadn’t seen turning in her eyes since Garry died began to slowly spin. She looked around the room. 

“When is Reopening?”

“Saturday.”

She grinned. “Then let’s fucking go.” 

He loved working with Louise. 

He took her around the entire building, introducing her to the remaining important people from every major arm of the business. Penguin’s operations were split into two parts, the Lounge, and then the illegal things it covered for. Louise was only in charge of the first half. 

The other half was being run by the Red Hood. It was the subtext that let Jason Todd, some dead kid nobody had heard of in almost a decade, suddenly take control of the most public criminal enterprise in the city.

There were going to be staffing and supply line issues on both sides. Cobblepot's sudden disappearance meant a lot of his contracts were null, creditors and debtors both were making trouble, and Jason made trouble for some who didn’t. He’d gotten rid of a lot of people already. Some were offered second chances. Most weren’t. Louise would be righting a ship with  a bunch of holes knocked into its hulls and a skeleton crew. 

He introduced her to the head of the casino floor staff. She shook his hand and asked how things were being run currently, and received a torrent of complaints. 

Jason hung back and let her feel out the situation. 

He had been working on this coup since the Blimp fiasco. He wanted to pull it off sooner, but it took so much work, and so much waiting around, to arrange everything just so. Bruce liked to call killing people the lazy way out. But while they ran around doing everything except killing the unrepentant monsters, worse things were lost than time. 

Louise’ arships still sailed overhead, now rebranded. A basic ticket went up from four dollars, the same as a train ride, to ten, and now twenty. It was a luxury mode of transport now, and a tourist attraction. Come ride Gotham’s zeppelins, soar above the filth of the city where you can’t smell it. The Bowery station was still open, but it didn’t see much traffic. The newest station, the one she built close to the Iceberg Lounge in an open challenge to Penguin, now served the Lounge almost exclusively. 

If he’d just put a bullet in Penguin’s head it would never have come to this. He’d made his choices. All he could do now was try to make it right.

Louise finished her talk with the casino staff and they headed on. In the deserted kitchens, they found the head chef muttering angrily at the state of a walk-in fridge. 

“Paulo,” Jason called. “Meet Louise, our new manager.”

Paulo looked her up and down and sighed heavily. “Well, you can’t be worse than Frank. Please don’t be worse than Frank.”

Frank was currently in police custody facing charges of trafficking almost everything it was possible to traffic.

“I don’t intend to be,” Louise said plainly. “Tell me about your restaurants.”

There were three of them all together, one high end barbecue place that managed all the smoking and dry aged meat production, a buffet place near the slot machines, and a fine dining restaurant.

“Pff, ‘fine dining’,” Paulo said at Louise’ prompting. “It’s haute cuisine from thirty years ago. Silver service, undressed greens, pasta salads, lobster bisque. It’s embarrassing.”

Louise nodded. “Alright. I want to hear your plans to fix it.”

“... My plans?” He lit up.

“Yes, chef,” she drawled. “I’ll come find you later today.”

Next came the head of the bars. He was a young man, very recently a bartender in training, and now in charge by default. They found him looking over the drinks cage where all the liquor was locked up, with a sort of existential dread. 

Jason made introductions. The kid didn’t know the answers to Louise’ questions. 

“Alright,” Lousie said, “I am going to meet you back here at three, you and I are going to go over everything together and make a plan. I want a stocktake ready, as up to date as possible.”

“I… don’t have one of those.”

“Then make one,” she said calmly.

“Okay. Yes, ma’am.”

She clapped him on the shoulder and they moved on. 

There were dancers, sound techs, lighting techs, cleaners, runners, security, and that wasn’t even counting the admin staff. They walked the full length of the gambling parlours, the VIP lounge, the private VIP lounge, the champagne rooms, and then the offices. Louise spoke to everyone, memorising every name. 

Jason spoke to Suzie Su while Louise grilled the accountants. 

Then there was only Penguin’s office left. Jason’s office now. It was a large, comfortable series of rooms with low couches and private bar, and an ostentatious desk in the innermost room. A giant fish tank backlit the area. 

Louise looked out the windows, overlooking the VIP lounge. She had her arms crossed and her lips pursed. Usually she stewed over her schemes for months, even years, before she brought them into the world. 

He sat up on the backrest of a couch. “What do you think?” 

“It’s a catastrophe. What idiot makes a loss on a casino ?” 

“He was making up for it elsewhere.”

“So? Even those money laundering pizza joints in Little Italy sell good pizza; let’s have some self respect here. I could run this place better with one hand tied behind my back.”

He grinned. 

“Saturday,” she muttered. She tapped her fingers idly against the glass.

“Four days, for the grand re-opening of the now legitimate Iceberg Lounge,” he said.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Okay, see, there’s legit legit, and there’s opening in four days legit. Which do you want?”

“Let’s say four days and call it a work in progress.”

“That I can do.”

He hopped off the couch and joined her at the window. The panicky young bartender was looking happier now with instructions to follow. 

“You want a complete reworking?” she asked.

“Tear it all down, and build back something better. Fire whoever you want, hire who you want. Hell, go ahead and knock out walls. You have complete control here.”

“What’s my budget?”

He told her. 

She stared at him. 

“For… for the year?” she asked, hoarse. 

“For the month,” he said. He smiled. “Will it be enough, do you think?”

The little gears turning in her eyes went from careful calculations to whirring. She narrowed her eyes. 

“What about next month?”

“Someone else’s problem. You have to spend it all.”

She nodded sharply. “Alright. Was there anything else? I’ve got so much shit to do.”

“Go.”

She stalked away, pulling out her phone and putting it to her ear. 

The door closed behind her, and Jason leaned against the window, looking down. There wasn’t much activity to be seen yet, but there would be. Louise could spend money even better than she could conjure it, and she wasn’t going to rest until she had burned through Penguin’s entire war chest. 

Red Hood would do the same with all of Penguin’s other assets. 

Burning an empire to the ground sounded good, but fire only got so far. You had to tear up the foundation. Like a weed, so long as the tap root stayed in the ground it would grow back.

It was still organised crime, of course, but shackled and decoupled from the legitimate business. 

Batman was very unhappy with him for pulling this again.

There was always going to be organised crime. Bruce could bitch as much as he wanted, Jason would rather be the one doing the organising. It reduced the number of surprises. And since he was using his real name, Bruce couldn’t just arrest him and drop him off at Blackgate. He had a clear run to do what he liked.

He looked over his shoulder at the fish tank. 

Cobblepot couldn’t see out of his safe room. A shame really. Jason would have liked him to watch. 

The Penguin’s food and supplies would last exactly one month. 

The Iceberg Lounge opened like paradise swinging wide its gates. 

Jason had been fielding calls from news outlets all week. The revelation of his survival had turned from unbelievable into that funny thing that happened last weekend. 

He arrived in a limousine and a three piece suit and smiled for the camera. Music spilled out onto the streets, and excited people lined up behind velvet ropes. 

“Mr Todd! Not dead afterall?” a reporter asked him. 

“Tell me about it,” he said, and strolled inside.

Louise had kicked him out of the venue two days ago, back when it was a deafening cacophony of saws and hammers and contractors yelling to be heard over the din. He had caught sight of the chandelier being carted away before she told him to stop peeking. 

He stepped into a place he didn’t recognise. 

Two giant sculptures of bird of paradise flowers rose from the centre of the floor, artfully posed at contrasting angles from each other. The crystalline orange and purple petals glowed in vibrant bursts of colour, bold and bright against the black floor and walls. Aerial dancers hung from the ceiling on vibrant red silks, sending the long streamers fluttering through the air above the crowd. They looked like birds, playing in a canopy.

He narrowed his eyes at the display. There was a lot of red and bird-adjacent theming. His lip quirked. He bet she thought that was funny. 

An electric string quartet played, and just for tonight, they were handing out food for free. It was a party after all. 

A waiter offered him a glass of champagne. He put it to his lips and it looked like he drank it. Lots of people wanted to talk to him, and he played the role of Bruce Wayne’s slightly stupid if world-weary son. He didn’t pretend at Dick’s charm, but he didn’t need to. A lot of people who didn’t like Cobblepot for their own reasons were in attendance, and they were highly motivated to get him to like them. He let himself be swept along by the currents.

They moved from the grand foyer into the main bar, which had transformed just as dramatically, and then into the gambling parlours then the VIP area. It all looked sleek and modern, and gratuitously expensive. 

He caught sight of Louise. She whispered something in a black jack dealer’s ear, then continued a circuit around the tables. She met his eye for a second from across the busy room. He raised a glass. Her eyes sparkled.

Then a member of security got her attention and she turned back to work. He didn’t think she had slept more than ten hours all week. She had thrown herself into it with a drive and ruthless efficiency the damn Batman would respect. She wasn’t wilting in the slightest. 

Tonight she was in a sharp but understated suit, a sleek tower of black silk, watching over her domain with cunning eyes and a deft hand. She was on top of her game, and he loved to see it. 

After the last year, it made something inside him feel warm. 

He grabbed a passing canape and wandered into a different room. This one had dancers on the tables and an upbeat DJ. 

He wove through crowds that didn’t care who he was, enjoying the moment of anonymity, and headed towards the bar. The bartender recognised him and gave him a lowball glass of apple juice on the rocks. 

“Hi Jay,” a familiar voice called.

He looked sideways. 

Isabel leaned against the bar, in a blue and white mini dress. She had cut her hair into a flicky blonde bob. 

He hadn’t seen her in three years. Not since she kissed him and walked away. 

She took a sip through the straw of her cocktail and smiled up at him. 

“I hear you’ve gone straight.” 

Chapter Text

Louise walked through the Iceberg Lounge at eleven in the morning, chomping on a sandwich and assessing the damage.

It was the Monday after opening weekend. She felt like she’d just weathered a siege. 

The building was blessedly low on guests right now, with only the casino and buffet restaurant still open. The rest had closed at three in the morning and would open again at five tonight. Her eyes stung and her feet ached. She rolled her shoulders. Bring it on.