Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bruce had no hesitations when he crashed the bat plane.

Its demise had made a brilliant distraction—in all the chaos, their enemy had let Flash slip from his grasp, finally unpinned, while Wonder Woman had been able to wrestle the demon to the ground. The loss of his transportation had been a small price to pay for the safety of his team.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t put out about the whole thing. Or the aide he was forced to accept if he wanted to get home in decent time.

“I promise I won’t drop you,” Superman said. His body was warm and broad; he cradled Bruce in his arms as if he weighed no more than a kitten. Landscape flew under them, miles eaten up in seconds.

“That’s not my primary concern with this arrangement,” he replied. His voice needed no modulation to convey his annoyance.

Bruce tried to keep his grip around Superman’s shoulders relaxed. He was having a difficult time of it. Tension made him stiff—he couldn’t escape the vulnerable feelings that hounded him, and that made him agitated.

A chest muffled a laugh against him. “I offered to get a Zeta Tube installed wherever you’d like in Gotham; that offer still stands.”

Bruce made a dismissive noise, rumbling between them. It would be a cold day in hell before he put a Zeta Tube in the Batcave. No matter that he had so little control over who else could access it from the other side. No matter that it was a massive security risk in one of his most secure refuges. No matter that it would tie him more permanently to this new, messy group of people who were tentatively comfortable calling themselves teammates.

No—his kids would never forgive him for letting strangers into the one place they all agreed was neutral ground. Setting aside feelings of hurt and anguish, they knew the Cave was there for all of them. Even when they didn’t want to talk to Bruce or deal with each other, they knew the equipment and medical aid and the training space was theirs.

Bruce wouldn’t rob them of that by inviting outsiders in. He shook his head, once; a reflex against his thoughts more than an addition to their conversation.

“Alright,” Superman assured into his ear, far closer than Bruce thought was warranted. He didn’t say anything about it. “Just know—you can always ask.”

“I won’t be taking you upon it.” Gotham appeared on the horizon, outlined in the setting sun. Bruce was thrilled to see his city was still standing.

“Where am I putting you?” Superman tried to sound casual—Bruce wasn’t having it. There would be no locations revealed, no other information that could be gleaned from this moment of weakness.

“First rooftop you can land on,” he instructed. He’d find his way back. The sun was close to setting—he could run through a few patrol sectors before going back to the Manor. Just in case.

Superman took his time selecting a suitable rooftop. Bruce said nothing when he daintily landed them on the pinnacle of Wayne Tower. It was the highest building in the city, in a central part of the city. Bruce could get anywhere he wanted from here.

Which Superman probably figured out. The odd bout of kindness left a lingering, cloying taste in his mouth.

He slipped out of those steady arms the moment he could, landing on his feet with a grunt.

“Glad I could give you a lift,” Superman said, his touch lingering around Bruce’s waist to stabilize him with unnecessary gentleness.

“Uh-huh,” Bruce muttered, stepping out of grabbing range.

“You could call just to chat, you know,” the man of steel said, his eyes far too bright and teasing. “I love our conversations.”

Bruce looked him dead in the eyes. “Uh-huh.”

Then, he took three steps back. The ledge’s wide lip was an old friend; there were grappling marks in the stone over a decade old. He chucked himself over the edge of his tower without further hesitation. In free fall, there were no questions.

Plunk!

Jason reached back, muscles stretched through his arm and back as he flung the flimsy nuisance of a tracker wide and sloppy. Before him, the dark waters of the Gotham harbor rolled out in a broad target. He couldn’t hear the fizzle of dying electronics when the tracker sank; the ripples it caused were quickly lost in the windy caps.

He tried skipping the next one. He managed two good jumps before the harbor swallowed it. Not his best.

At his feet was a beat-up backpack that was older than him, showing its life with patches and stains and a ripped handle held together with duct tape. Crammed in it was a six-pack of the crappy beer he liked more than he admitted, a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice, and another dozen or so trackers from the various Waynes who thought they had a claim on him.

Alfred said they planted trackers like fingerprints on him because they worried for him, in so many words. It was how they showed concern for his whereabouts, for his well-being. For his safety and security. The consistent updates were there to alleviate their distress at his distance.

Jason didn’t believe it, not really. If they were so concerned, they knew how to contact him. How to get his attention, if they really needed it. He was delineated from them, not wholly cut-off. They didn’t have to slip the buzzy little bugs into the lining of his jacket or the grips of his weapons. The soles of his shoes or behind the buckle of his belt.

To Jason, worried translated into possessiveness. Every single one of them, bird and bat, down to the last, thought loading him up with trackers and panic buttons and other signatures of their presence was a smart, well-thought-out idea. That he would simply take this invasion of his space in good humor. And they had been growing bolder.

His tolerance had snapped earlier that day when he had found one tucked into his book; a tiny little thing worked into the binding of the spine. Merrily pinging away.

Call it sacrilege, tainting one of his books in such a way. Call it desecration. Call it catching Jason on a bad day, after a gnarled run of bad days, when all he saw in these stupid little tags were blatant marks of their insecurity and distrust in him. Call it blistering outrage that they didn’t think it was safe to leave him unsupervised.

Call it an overreaction after a week-long simmering argument with Bruce that had ended up with Jason yelling himself hoarse with inarticulate fury on the rooftop of Wayne Enterprises in the dead of night. All he had gotten from Bruce was stony-shouldered silence and evident disapproval.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?!” Jason yelled, anger taking over, digging at old wounds with knives he knew would hurt.

Bruce’s jawline hadn’t so much as clenched. “If that’s what you want,” he replied in a dead even voice. No fight. No pushback.

That one had burned. It hadn’t mattered that Jason had been provoking him towards it all week. That he pushed at buttons and picked at scars in Bruce’s personality. That he had been relentless in his probing, far past common sense and courtesy. What had mattered was that Bruce broke and fell into the trap either of them wanted to set.

To be rid of the memory, Jason killed his half-filled beer and tossed another tracker out into the harbor.

That was the knot of it all. Bruce would never say what he wanted to hear. I miss you—I worry for you—let me help. Instead, it was the damn tracker nonsense; all the knowledge of their safety without any of the emotional deadlifting needed to make it palpable.

He thought it was what he needed to do to keep them safe. Because he’d failed so miserably the one time Jason had needed him to know. They’d all be paying for that fuck-up for the rest of their lives.

And it pissed him off. It wasn’t his fault he died—why was he reaping the results so often?

The next tracker went further into the harbor, parting dense and murky waters. Jason’s shoulder throbbed with effort and strain.

Stressed knees popped when he knelt and rooted through his bag. The next one to come up from his collection was slightly different in design; slimmer, more subtle. Delicate, even. He’d go so far as to call it a clever little thing; it had gone unnoticed for a good long while.

In one fierce move, he stood, lined up his arm, and threw it out into the water.

It was a good throw, he decided. To celebrate, he opened another beer. He had been on the dock for about twenty minutes; three empty cans had been tossed into a nearby trash bin.

Bruce’s obsessive behavior was bad enough. The intolerable part, to Jason, was that his terrible habits had infected the rest of the horde as well. Because he suspected with a deep conviction that the tracker in his book, that stupidly clever little thing, had been planted by Tim.

Tim coveted familial knowledge with the kind of sharp-edged focus that startled Jason sometimes. The more intimate, the better. And he exerted an overbearing control when he thought something was being hidden from him, insinuating himself into spaces previously off-limits. Replacement believed their complicated relationship, interlaced with so many injuries and traps, granted him the right to know everything about Jason because the more he learned, the stronger his hold became.

Tim got creative when he wasn’t allowed that physical space to occupy, hanging trackers and alerts dangling off Jason like little charms. Because heaven forbid there be things he didn’t know. Actions he couldn’t account for.

Bruce’s bad habits were definitely rubbing off.

Sour barley and hops sat stale on Jason’s tongue when he drained the beer down. He should slow down. He didn’t want to slow down. If he did, the tentative logic keeping his rage intact would collapse like a burning building finally pushed too far.

It wasn’t just his shoulder; his bones ached. It made him overly sensitive to things around him. When he had woken up the coffin and later in a glowing green pit, his bones had ached as his mind had unraveled. He’d mostly put his mind back together over the years, but his bones still gave him problems. Fuck.

Fifteen-year-old him would have found the trackers endearing, a sign of care welcomed. Twenty-three-year-old him worked to be rid of them, a sign of care rejected.

He didn’t want the worry of the horde. If he took it, he’d be responsible for it. Would have to acknowledge that Alfred was right, and all of this was meant to bring him closer, not constrain him. And that was too much. It was too fucking much, and he couldn’t do it.

He grabbed for the next tracker, his balance wobbling from the bend in his body. His vision smudged around the edges, blending the harbor’s weak light with shadows and fog.

From the depths of his bag came a cheerful little chime. His phone screen lit up, a bright point in the dank night. Jason didn’t answer the message—he didn’t want to talk to Dick right now.

Or, more honestly, he couldn’t talk to the man who so easily slid into the role of older brother the moment he was allowed to do so. Any opening, no matter how vague, brought his more covetous personality to the forefront. Dick’s possessiveness wasn’t like Bruce’s. It wore a cheerful face, masked over with affection and touch. Kind words and warm smiles kindled a blaze of intense emotions, branding his name on those he chose to care about.

Jason had tried cutting his name out before—Dick’s persistence had restamped it over the scar tissue. If he answered, even to simply tell the man to fuck off, it would be all the opening Dick needed. One utterance of Little Wing and Jason would be on the phone for hours, reforging another link in a connection that could be used to shackle him back into the family.

So, he left the phone unanswered. Instead, he drained the beer can, grumbling at himself and the time. Chucked out the next tracker without grace or accuracy. He was nearly through the collection he’d wrung out of his things. Which meant he’d have to figure out where to go next.

He didn’t want to go back to his apartment yet. It was a complicated, loaded space, full of both comfort and concern that he couldn’t process. Because it wasn’t just the trackers, he suspected. They were simply the easiest part of it all to spot. If he were earnest about rooting out this insistent familial oversight, he had a great deal of untangling to do.

The rest of the horde were subtler. Or at least, Duke was.

Their newest Bat smiled, shrugged, and sighed like an ordinary citizen. He had the weary sensibility of a hardened Gothamite, along with the starry idealism that made that sensibility empathetic rather than cynical.

“Don’t worry,” Duke had told him, shaking his hand in a firm grip and meeting his eye with a nervous, determined expression. “I’ll work hard to look after you all.”

Everything about the kid radiated a rational, level-head personality that wasn’t prone to overreaction or avidity. Jason labeled him a welcome low-maintenance soul to their little horde and thought nothing else of it. Maybe he’d bring a little stability to the cohort.

Then odd little things started cropping up around him. Take-out containers with Duke’s name written on the lids appeared in Jason’s fridge. Yellow stickie notes around his place reminded him to eat, sleep, and hydrate, written in a distinctive, confident hand. A to-go cup of tea from the local coffee shop sat on his counter, waiting for him after patrol; some distracted employee had scrolled a causal Duke just above the cardboard holder.

Jason did not look at the copy of Pride and Prejudice, sitting idly in his bag. Waiting for him. He hadn’t put it there. He especially didn’t look at the inside cover, where he was sure he would find a four-letter name, starting with a big, cheerful D.

Duke was just as bad as the rest of them, putting himself in Jason’s space whenever he could.

The constant occupation felt almost like assurance. And that freaked him out enough to get drunk at the Gotham harbor, destroying the most obvious evidence of it, like that would excise the uncomfortable driving into his chest. It seemed a better alternative to putting names and thoughts to nebulous feelings.

Something heavy dropped in the distance, somewhere to his left. Soft cursing and a rough scold followed. Hushed, frantic. Jason stilled, his instincts flaring. He was over-trained. He knew a suspicious bump in the night when he heard one.

He wasn’t suited-up. Hell, he wasn’t even armed, not really. It’d be nothing but trouble, he was sure.

But a little trouble sounded so much better than his apartment and all the complicated thoughts embedded in it. A good brawl and a few bloody knuckles could be just what he needed to clear his head.

He found a dock crew working fast and harried on a lower dock, just out of range of the harbor’s security cameras. Always a promising start. The shadows made for good cover as he peered over the upper ramp’s edge to watch them.

They were smugglers—he saw the signs of their trade like neon lights. The covetous way they hovered over their cargo was a big giveaway. The lack of a country flag on the ship’s hull. The four hands they had stationed to keep watch, one even monitoring the dark waters in case of surprise attack. They were fidgety, loading up their haul as quickly as they could without any undue noise.

Some sort of artifacts, Jason decided, watching the unvarnished wooden crates being loaded up. They were unlabeled—another warning sign. Hard to say for sure without a closer look. But his instincts were leaning towards artwork. The boxes were the wrong shape for gunrunners, and drug lords tended to be more creative about their covers.

With its dodgy providence and its natural scarcity, old-world art was one of the best ways to launder money. Damian, Jason knew, had a particular interest in the black market deals around the topic. He might enjoy this.

Reaching for a communicator that he had forgotten he’d drowned earlier that evening, he overbalanced, going sideways when he meant to simply shift. His body worked on instinct; he caught himself on the ramp’s edge before he could tumble off. Fuck—the noise he made doing that was worse than the fall itself. And worse, it left him with no balance and occupied hands.

A dozen pairs of eyes turned up. Locked on him. He was easy to spot, half-hanging off the ramp, out of his kit and alcohol-clumsy.

He should have just fallen into the harbor. It would have been an easier escape.

Jason dropped down, leaning into the pull of gravity on his body. It gave him enough of a swing to land on two conveniently-placed goons, like a spider upon flailing prey.

It wasn’t a good fight. Drunk, underprepared, and off-guard, Jason felt himself become sloppy and mismanaged. He was fighting without a goal or any sort of plan. Bruce would be ashamed.

He still took a visceral sort of pride in putting four of the smugglers into the dark harbor waters before they got their act together and surrounded him in tandem. After that, it really wasn’t much of a chance of winning–just of causing as much damage as he could before he was taken down. Jason’s face exploded with pain when a heavy blow struck hard across his temple, another into his ribs. His world went dark and engulfed.

Three days. He was almost sure of it.

Bruised and bloodied, stripped of his boots, his jacket, his belt, he was horribly exposed. Gagged and bound, he really wasn’t much of a threat in his current state. Dizzy, hazy—he quickly lost track of which way was up.

He couldn’t die. That conviction was surprisingly easy to find. If he did, he’d ruin Damian. And he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.

The kid was the worst of them all. Or the smartest. He saw himself as Bruce’s natural heir, which meant he also saw the care of Bruce’s family as his own. He saw them all as his responsibility and needed to make sure they were looked after. They were his and his alone to mock, annoy, frustrate, and antagonize. He didn’t share well—especially not with bad guys who caused his family pain.

And he was learning so damn fast. Jason knew—he just fucking knew—that Damian would be able to demand anything of him, and he’d do it. They both knew it. It made Damian possessive.

Jason wouldn’t feed it any more than he had to. That meant staying alive—because if that little demon brat told him to rise from the dead, he’d do it. Then none of them would ever hear the end of it.

The smugglers weren’t trying to get information out of him. They had no reason to think he knew anything worth their effort. To them, he was just some harbor rat they’d managed to cat by the tail and torment for the pleasure of it. He was merely a plaything for a group of thugs; some drunken vagabond who made for some free entertainment during a long and tedious voyage. Once they got to wherever they were going, he was useless, and therefore dead.

In the meantime, they used him for the brutal amusement of taking him apart to see how he worked.

Jason pulled himself inward, looking for an internal escape. He couldn’t peel himself out of his skin—previous trial and error had disillusioned him towards that tactic. So he braced himself as well as he could, separating each nerve and limb from its association to him. Brought up walls made of persistence and bloody wounds around him, like the intimidating alley shadows of his hometown.

The pain of his body—the beating, starving, angry claws of pain—vanished into the puddle-filled asphalt and trash-collected corners. It wasn’t Bruce’s voice that talked to him, this far down. It was Stephanie’s.

Stephanie’s possessiveness came masked with a swindler’s smile. She lived to cheat Jason out of his secrets. In her brash determination to crack into his personality and take all she could find. To distract him with laughter when he felt like screaming and to trick him into giving up all his attention to her. Not for the harm they’d cause him, but so that he could never again claim to be their only victim if he gave up on her now.

And if they couldn’t hurt her, he really had no excuse for letting them hurt him.

“What, you gonna let the goon squad break you? Come on, man! You’re the freaking Red Hood! Be a baller, my dude!”

So, he hunkered down and bore it, just as she demanded.

Brutal fingers carded through his hair in a mockery of a gentle touch. Gripped the stands tight. Pulled his face up in a harsh grasp. Jason grunted from the pain, his body reacting on instinct while his mind swam in the dank corners of Gotham. The smuggler’s leader grinned down at him, content in his violence.

“Here’s the deal, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ve got some things to do—you’re gonna keep nice and quiet, and we’ll leave you alone for a few hours. Sound good?”

Jason spat in his face. It was worth the beatdown it earned him—every bruised and bloodied gasp of it. Satisfaction was a warm fire bubbling through him and kept him going when everything else seemed impossible to endure.

But after that, finally, finally, they left him alone in the hull of the ship. With his arms chained above his head and his heels just barely touching the steel floor. But alone, nevertheless.

It took him longer than he cared to admit to resteady himself. The pain of his captor’s amusements made his thoughts sluggish and difficult to parse. The bright light through a far-off port window turned dim before he was confident in his control of his body.

Then, slowly, tensing his core muscles in a way that burned, he curled himself up.

It wasn’t often, but every once in a while, Jason regretted his bulk. Dick would be more graceful about this. Cass, more nimble. Tim, more efficient. Damian, more versatile.

But none of them would have been able to withstand the beatings. Bruce had always been clear about that aspect of training—for every advantage you honed, there was a counter tactic you were giving up. Where most of the bats and birds opted for stealth or agility, Jason had the muscle mass and endurance to take a medley of thrashings and keep going. However, for that protection, he easily outscaled any of the others in sheer size, so deadlifting and holding his own weight for longer than a few seconds would always be a difficult process.

He got his feet above his head after a few tries, panting and straining his aching abdomen. His sore shoulders couldn’t be much more help. Time to be a little more creative about this.

Using a rock-climbing technique he’d once seen Duke pull off, he got his ankle around the chain above his head. Used his calf muscles to bear his weight. With his mass resituated, he could get just a little bit of slack around his hands.

Invasion was Cassandra’s poison of choice when keeping tabs on him. Once she busted through Jason’s defenses, she felt free to make herself at home, not seeing any difference between his autonomy and hers. Most often, that meant helping herself to his supplies and gear. Her nimble fingers would be in and out of his pockets before he could stop her. His lockpick set, the smoke bombs he always kept with him, his favorite knife. Once, when he had really upset her, she’d walked away with every spare clip he carried.

It wasn’t trackers she planted in return. Tools and tricks were her calling card, the sign that she’d invaded and retreated before he’d even noticed. Or, at least, what she considered helpful tools. Spare sticks of bubblegum in aluminum wrappers. One-shot bottles of superglue. Neon-yellow glow sticks bent into bracelets. He’d come back from patrol without a single weapon, a pocket full of miscellaneous junk, and a sharp temper towards her.

He wasn’t about to tell her about this.

Days ago, she’d slipped a small needle into the lining of his jeans. Nothing fancy—just a plain sewing needle, steel-forged with a delicate eye. It would do in a pinch, and this definitely counted as a pinch.

Pain was everywhere—it would become overwhelming if he wasn’t strategic about it. Jason fell back on his training, balancing his knowledge of his body with the risks and rewards of strain, cursing Bruce every step of the way just because it made him feel better. There was a time in his life he didn’t think twice about pain.

Jason had the first tumbler of the lock caught when the cargo door opened. Cursing the poor timing, he looked over.

A tall, well-defined woman crept inside, her body low and silent. Sneaky, even. Her face was upturned, searching for threats from any direction. She wasn’t supposed to be here anymore than he was.

She had a sword in her hand and a lasso at her hip. Jason’s eyes widened. His rough state made him sluggish and slow. He hadn’t seen sunlight in a couple of days, and his eyes were sensitive to the bright silhouette she cast.

But, dazed, dehydrated, and half-starved as he was, he still recognized Wonder Woman.

Diana couldn’t go home.

This caused her great agony—she knew where her mother and sisters were. Her people were so close. A skip into the Mediterranean. A curve around Sicily. She could be there in hours. If she lingered on the thought, she could imagine the surf under her feet, the hills and mountains of her home rising in her eye line.

But her home was barred to her. Themyscira may as well be unreachable as the surface of the sun, for all she was no longer welcome. She would not change her decisions—regret was foreign to her. Mourning, though, was becoming a familiar friend.

To stay closer to her roots, Diana often kept an eye on the pieces of her culture that filtered out into the greater world. The stories warped and changed with every retelling. Sculptures and artwork stirred intense emotions within her. The ornate jewelry she remembered adorning her friends during their name days and weddings. The weapons from forges she could recall in detail.

And, as she paid closer attention to these pieces of her homeland, the more she noticed how often they ended up in unsavory hands. Apparently, these pieces of her life brought a great deal of money.

She kept her eye out on those kinds of ships when work at the League allowed her the free time. She didn’t have an easy time finding them. But then again, she supposed that was rather their point. She’d come across the Vertigo the same way she’d found any of this ring of smugglers—another boat that she had invaded and pirated gave them up.

One at a time. That’s how she’d dismantle this smuggling ring. She hadn’t found any other way that worked, really. So, she hopped from one to another, pulling it apart piece by piece.

It still took her days to find it—they must have docked for a bit, slipping under her detection. Diana came upon the Vertigo in the mask of the setting sun, letting it hide her in its glare. She touched down onto the upper-most level with light feet, making sure to keep herself unseen.

The crew seemed to be gathered in the mess. She could hear their voices echoing up through the steel corridors. It was worth a quick inspection while she had the space to herself. The better to plan her attack.

She crept into the ship’s hull and found a surprise.

A young man hung from his wrists in the center of the cleared cargo space. He had seen better days—his face was far too pale, his skin bruised and bloodied. He was curled in on himself with a leg wrapped around the thread of the chain, giving it his weight. His fingers fumbled through the lock with a small tool. His dark hair was matted with sweat and grime. Exhaustion ringed his eyes and hung off his shoulders.

He stared at her, agog. Diana stared right back. Uncertainty made her hesitant—was he a hostage? A member of the crew who was being punished?

Rowdy voices tumbled down the corridor across the hull. An internal door, opposite the external one she’d used to get in. The young man stilled, his expression turning wild. Whoever he was, he wasn’t looking for more company.

She hoped he didn’t yell out. She needed every second the silence could give her. Ambush was her greatest ally when she was outnumbered. Slowly, she raised a finger and pressed it to her lips as she moved forward.

With a flat, reevaluating look, he went back to his work on the lock. His shoulders bunched and strained as he held his weight on the chain.

“How many?” she asked as she passed by him. Her sword was ready in her hand—her heartbeat climbed up as her anticipation grew. Her blood sang for a good fight.

A beat. His eyes were blue; they were easy to track when he glanced sideways.

“Six, I think,” he replied, his voice a gravel-filled rag twisted too tightly. His fingers didn’t stop working on the lock.

She nodded, once.

Each whisper-step she took across the cargo was another chance for her enemies to reconsider their path. She could no more be derailed than a storm could be diverted from its path. But they still had an opportunity to turn away. All they needed to do was stay out of the hull. If they turned away, they could avoid her wrath.

She was no longer simply after parts of her, stolen lifetimes ago and traded for obscene amounts of money. Protective instincts made her pointed—there was now a life involved.

Her enemies didn’t take their chance to escape her. They opened the bulkhead door, laughing between them. They believed there was no cause for alarm.

Diana struck out, her limbs moving with assurity of eons of training.

She didn’t particularly like the feeling of flesh giving way to her. It wasn’t enjoyable. That didn’t mean she wasn’t good at it. The line that bore her was rich with warriors—she would not dishonor them.

Five bodies fell under her weapon.

The last one tried to run—they always tried to run. She grabbed him to pull him back and hauled him up to her eye line by the collar of his shirt. While he fumbled at her wrist, her hand grabbed the lasso at her hip. The more the smuggler struggled, the easier it was to loop the rope around him. It glowed hot under her touch as its powers were brought forth.

“Who is the man you have chained up inside?” she demanded of her prisoner. The lasso burned under her demand, pulling truth from him.

“Some harbor rat,” he stammered back, loud and loose. “He saw us loading up the cargo—we picked him up for some fun. We-we-we were gonna toss him overboard when we got to port.”

Diana smashed him against the wall and tossed his unconscious body aside with his fellows with some relief. It was good to have confirmation on the chained man’s identity—she would not like to have a traitorous smuggler or scoundrel at her back.

For his sake, she was glad she had gotten here in time. The pieces of her stored in this vessel had likely seen enough blood and death. Piracy and smuggler were never kind professions. She stripped off a jacket and a pair of boots from a smuggler she thought was roughly the young man’s size.

She stepped back into the storage hull and found the young man further along in his extraction; he had untethered himself from the taunt chain holding him up. With both feet now firmly on the floor, he worked on the manacles around his wrists. The small needle he worked with struggled to catch the heavy mechanism.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said by way of greeting. When he couldn’t get the manacle off his wrist fast enough, she simply reached out and snapped it off like a rubber band. It was worth the wide-eyed look of amazement the move earned her.

“I wasn’t planning to be,” he muttered, looking red around the edges.

“What’s your name?” she asked, holding out the pair of boots and jacket for him to don.

He took the clothes with an unreadable look. “Jason,” he replied after a long beat as he shrugged on the jacket. It tugged at his shoulders, making him wince.

“Nice to meet you, Jason. I’m Diana. Think you can walk out of here?”

“I’m damn well gonna try,” he said as he pulled on one boot, doing an awkward one-legged hop-step so that he wouldn’t have to sit down. “You here for the cargo?”

Her lips twitched, a little surprised and a little amused at his quick refocus. “Indeed. You?”

“Wrong place, wrong time. I was out alone on the Gotham docks and saw them packing up their loot. Didn’t run fast enough when they noticed me watching. They brought me along for some free entertainment.”

“You were walking alone in Gotham? At night?” Diana had been given to understand that was a stupid thing to do.

Jason rolled his eyes as he got the second boot on. “The old man’s already gonna give me shit for that,” he complained. “I don’t need it from you, too, thanks.”

He sounded so miffed at his future scolding that Diana couldn’t help but smile. Good to know his captivity hadn’t broken him.

“Do you know how many others there are?”

“My personal tormentors? I think you got ’em all, there. Thanks, for that. The whole crew? Probably about seventeen, from what I remember at the harbor and for a boat this big.”

Diana was quiet for a heartbeat, just taking him in with clearer eyes. His skills, attitude, and awareness all added up to one thing in her mind.

“I take you for a soldier,” she finally said.

“I’m trained,” Jason confirmed with confidence in his voice. There was a strong, intent look in his eye. Focused, despite his condition. He stood upright, and his hands didn’t shake.

Excellent— He’s got skin in the game, she’d once heard Flash call this kind of behavior. He had the skills and the knowledge to be helpful. She would never say no to a partner who knew what he was doing. And after Trevor, well… she’d always had an affinity for soldiers.

“The six I left in the hallway won’t be getting up any time soon. Feel like giving me a hand with the other eleven?”

Jason grinned. There was something feral in it, enhanced by the bruises on his face and the blood on his shirt. “I’d love to.”

The captain’s notebook, retrieved from his inner jacket pocket, was written in code. Diana couldn’t decipher it and so set it aside. She was more intent on getting answers out of the man himself. And more straightforward about it.

“Where’s the next boat? The one you were sailing to meet up with?” she demanded, hanging the man over the side of the ship. She shook him to make her point more emphatically. The waves swelled and swirled below. Just waiting to swallow him up.

This was how she’d gotten her information before. Ship by ship, she’d squeezed out the location of the next by intimidation and repeated questioning. Time-consuming, but she really didn’t have any other methods at her disposal.

The captain made a grab for the railing. Diana held him higher to keep it out of reach and shook him for good measure.

“The next ship,” she repeated in a thundering voice.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the captain failed back, a European accent coloring his vowels.

This was going to take a while; she just knew. Bitterly, she rose higher, considering the negotiation between time and gravity when she dropped him.

“Hey, Diana,” Jason called. She glanced back to her new friend; he looked none the worse for wear after their raid. She’d been right, pinning him a soldier—he handled weapons with confidence and knew how to clear a room of hostiles. How to watch her back and how to count enemies.

Their efficiency had been startling—they’d cleared the ship of its crew in a vivid one-two pincer movement. He had herded them together, letting her pluck them off in ones and twos at prime moments.

It had taken them all of twenty minutes, and while there were plenty of broken bones, there had been no lives lost, past the tormentors who had died in the hall.

Jason had left the captain to her, instead picking up the coded notebook. It laid open in his hands, the blood from his split knuckles staining the cover’s edge. He had a pen out, slowly moved over the page as he marked notes in green ink.

“I think I broke it,” he continued, half-amazed.

“You did?” She dropped the captain back onto the deck and came over, letting him show the first line he’d broken. On it was the Red-Headed Stepchild, a ship she’d raided a little over a week ago that had led her here.

“You picked that up fast,” she muttered, watching as he broke the next line.

His mouth twitched while he worked. “I have a brother who goes crazy for this kind of stuff. And he likes to talk—you really can’t help but pick up tricks when he starts in on it.”

A sad look passed over his face as he spoke. It vanished quickly when he looked up with a furrow in his brow. The green pen was jabbed over her shoulder. “He’s getting away.”

Diana turned. The captain was indeed crawling across the deck as fast as he could. She cursed. Snapped out. Grabbed the man’s ankle and dragged him back. A firm foot on his back kept him pinned to the deck.

“Stop that,” she told the captain before returning her attention to Jason. “Do you think you could find the next ship?” That would be faster than her method if nothing else.

“I think? Yeah, I think so. Why don’t you put him in the brig with the others and meet me on the bridge? I need a radio.”

With a better path before her, Diana didn’t hesitate to drop the captain into the brig with the rest of his crew and lock the door behind her. They had enough rations and water to make the situation bearable.

Her body hummed in happy anticipation. It was excitement that made her steps light up to the quiet bridge.

The navigational station was aglow with screens and information. Jason sat in front of the radio, working away. The notebook was now filled with scratches of bleeding green ink.

“They’re quartered in Cartagena,” he reported, his eyes gleeful with success.

That surprised her. “None of them have ever mentioned Columbia.”

“You don’t sell out your boss. Not in a smuggling ring this massive. Your boss knows where all your weak spots are, and won’t hesitate to hit them. If any of these guys have families, or nest eggs, or gambling debts, or rivals looking for a little revenge, they’ve got plenty of motivation to keep quiet. That kind of self-preservation isn’t going to get broken by you dangling them off a ship.”

The young man sounded absolutely convinced. The kind of conviction that only experience created. His smile didn’t go away, though his eyes grew older.

Diana remembered Trevor, with his charming smile and his haunted eyes, recounting the horrors he saw in the method of warfare he’d chosen. He didn’t speak with regret—he was upbeat in the face of the apocalyptic moment he occupied, but neither had he masked the damage the war had left in him.

“So,” she said as thoughts of an old war faded back into memories where they belonged. “Cartagena it is.”

Jason waited a beat longer to see if she’d push back at him. She nudged him back to the notebook, redirecting his attention.

“It’s about five more days’ travel, going as fast as we’re going,” he said. “I figure we’ll have better luck going to the center of the ring rather than peeling back a layer at a time. That’s how I’d do it, at least.”

She could just fly the distance. It would be faster if she did. She could be there by nightfall if she left now.

Jason showed her his work, a little eagerness and pride peeking out in his words. She couldn’t help being impressed with him—his skills and his tenacity. Thrown into an unprecedented situation, he hadn’t panicked or flailed. He’d buckled down, and he’d worked well with her.

It had been his abilities that had led them this far. Without him, she’d still be picking off ships one by one. There was no honor in abandoning him in her impatience. She didn’t want to insult him like that.

“Would you like to travel with me?” she said with a steady expression. “You’ve been a prisoner here a while. Surely you have people worried for your safety. If we’re only three days or so from Gotham, we could turn around instead. It’d be a shorter trip for you.”

“It’s fine,” he replied instantly.

Her expression didn’t ease. She didn’t resort to the lasso—not on an ally. But her time amongst men had given her a better ear for falsehoods.

Her scrutiny made Jason shift in his borrowed boots, suddenly ashamed.

“It’s just...the old man and I got into a fight right before I got grabbed. It was stupid. He thought I was making some—some bad decisions,” he snorted. “As if he’s got any room to talk. And I probably–probably said some things I shouldn’t’ve. I don’t….”

I don’t know how to make it right, she could hear, stitched in under his silence.

Diana set her hip against the radio console, looking just past Jason’s shoulder as she thought. The sun had well and truly risen, now. A golden sunrise gave way to a bright day.

It was easy to picture that sky from her favorite viewpoint in her mother’s palace. She missed her home; her family. They were so far from her now. She understood the price she paid, the decisions she didn’t regret.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. She had learned from that hurt. Perhaps this young one could as well.

“I can’t go home anymore,” she told him. “A terror came upon my homeland, and I broke many of my mother’s laws to fight it. I won against that evil but…but I can no longer go home.”

Jason didn’t move. His sharp gaze alone told her he was still listening.

“The first month, I was nothing but hurt. Angry. Outraged. Ashamed. I had done what I had to do and saved those I loved. I couldn’t comprehend why my mother had made such a brutal decision.”

She paused, swallowing down emotion. The memory of her mother’s agonized face still left a bitter taste in her mouth, like over-steeped tea.

“Does it,” he cut himself off.

“Does it what?” she asked, opening up her body language like she’d seen Superman do when he wanted people (mostly Batman) to talk to him.

“Does ever go away?” he asked, so quiet the motors of the ship nearly swallowed up the syllables. “The anger, I mean. It doesn’t feel like mine ever will.”

“It can be combated, just like any enemy. I still wish to speak to my mother—what child doesn’t? It upsets me that our last conversation was so bittersweet, and I hope one day I can make better memories with her.”

The green pen flicked between his fingers in quick, fidgety circles. “My family keeps trying to,” he growled out his frustration as words stumbled on his tongue. “To get in my space and remind me they’re there.”

That made sense to her. He wouldn’t be the first soldier she met who forgot what it was like, coming home. As much as she missed Themyscira, she too worried that she would not find the peace of her idyllic childhood after her time amongst men.

“My friends did that, too,” she smiled to remember them all relentlessly reaching out to her, making sure she stayed sane after her banishment. “They talked to me constantly. Invited me for food and distracted me often with their company. They reminded me they were there whenever I needed them. Some days, I hated it. Other days, I adored them for it.”

Her teammates had carried her when she couldn’t carry herself. She would never forget their compassion.

Jason chewed that over with wide eyes, his expression somewhere between stricken and elation. The pen stopped moving through his fingers. The idea seemed to stop him cold.

With an amused smile, Diana bumped her arm against his shoulder in a companionable gesture.

“Come, little one. We’ll fix these smugglers, you and I. It will give you the strength to face other things.”

That brought Jason out of his gobsmacked thoughts. His grin lit his face up. “Let’s do it.”

Bruce’s phone buzzed through the quiet of the Batcave.

He didn’t immediately look towards it, face-down and out of reach as it was. His attention was fixed on his computer screen, on which multiple location points here highlighted. Tim at the downtown Wayne Enterprises building; Damian at Gotham Academy; Cassandra wandering through a pop-up flea market on the East Side; Duke at the university library. Dick was out of range in Bludhaven—Stephanie was the same, on a day trip to Metropolis.

A point was missing—Jason was nowhere to be found. His trackers had gone dark just over three weeks ago. All of them. That itself hadn’t been overly concerning; just a sign that Jason needed some space and that everyone else needed to give it to him. Typically, Bruce would wait a few days, then test the waters between them by planting a bug or two in obvious places. If Jason deactivated it, Bruce knew to hold back for a bit longer, for fear of driving his son further away. If he didn’t, Bruce could sleep easy knowing his wayward child had an extra layer of protection.

It was the best equilibrium they’d found together, caught between Bruce’s ferocious defense of his family and Jason’s relentless embrace of independence.

This time was different; Red Hood hadn’t been sighted on patrol in over a fortnight, nor had any of his common safehouses been occupied. He hadn’t responded to messages from the rest of the children either, though Bruce thought they were on good terms. Jason had given them nothing but complete radio silence.

So he had spent his night flashing through security cameras, police reports, and social media footage, trying to understand why Jason would go to ground without a word of warning.

His phone buzzed again. Half-distracted by a grainy feed from the harbor dated almost a month ago, Bruce stretched for the device. His eyes were locked on an outline in the upper corner that could possibly be Jason throwing something. The catch of his shoulders was right, at least. And that could be his motorcycle, just around the building. The fishery across the dock may have a better view…

A quick glance at the phone stopped him cold. He had two pictures from an unknown number on a private line that only about ten people knew. Bruce opened the messages.

The first was a photograph of a receipt. He zoomed in and saw a single berth purchased on a ship named Freckled Cheeks out of Cartagena under his own name and purchased with his credit card information. The ticket had been purchased about an hour ago, and the boat was set to leave by midday. There was no explanation attached by the sender beyond the receipt.

The second photograph was a selfie—Jason holding the camera and grinning as he leaned slightly into the woman beside him…was that Wonder Woman? Bruce immediately sent the photo to the computer for better analysis.

He pulled up his Justice League files. Ran the photo through facial recognition, hoping he was wrong (and knowing he wasn’t). Groaned aloud, already thoroughly frustrated, when the computer confirmed it.

Diana Prince stood next to his son like she had no idea who he was or what wrath she tempted, being in such close proximity to one of Bruce’s own. Every parental alarm that had ever been wired into him went off at once, demanding he separate the two immediately.

He’d never make it to Columbia in time.

He studied Jason next, intent for any detail. They both wore dockworker clothes: dark sweaters, sturdy pants, worn boots, and woolen caps. Behind them stretched a scenic coastline, touched gold by a rising sun. As far as he could tell, they were both unarmed.

He looked hale, healthy, and...happy. The perpetual scowl he wore was gone, replaced by a giddiness Bruce hadn’t seen in a long time. His smile was genuine. His shoulders were relaxed. He didn’t look ready for a fight at a moment’s notice.

Bruce didn’t respond to the text messages. He did, however, piggyback into the security cameras of the Cartagena port, fresh concern making him flash through frames with sloppy haste. It was early sunup in Colombia; ten minutes worth of investigation later, he found the Freckled Cheeks.

Jason and Diana appeared in the frame twenty minutes later, chatting amicably. They moved like a pair of good acquaintances; their body language showed friendly comradery, and she clasped him on the shoulder just before he boarded. Jason’s spine was straight, his face clear and bright. She saw the boat off, then disappeared from the frame.

Bruce let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding deep in his lungs.

Jason disembarked off the Freckled Cheeks nine days later. Bruce stood on the dock in full Matches Malone attire, waiting for him. Beside him was Jason’s motorcycle, clean and primed. In his hand were a pair of brown-paper wrapped sandwiches and two coffees from the nearby stand that served it black and tar-like.

Jason wavered, caught off-guard. “What are you doing here?”

Bruce shrugged and held out a sandwich. “Why’d you send me your ticket information?” he countered.

Jason really didn’t have an answer that he wanted to say aloud. He did take the sandwich, though. Seafaring food was horrible.

They ate together on the edge of the docks, leaning against the rail as they watched the night ships come in.

“Did you find my book?” Jason asked. His copy of Pride and Prejudice with Duke’s name in it had been in the bag left behind during his impromptu adventure.

“It was gone by the time I found out what happened,” Bruce admitted.

Jason made a tisking noise in annoyance. He had only been up to Darcy’s first proposal.

“There’s a copy in the manor library if you’d like it.”

“I know.”

“And… there are other resources there for you, too. If you want them.”

Jason was slow to swallow his next bite. “I know,” he finally whispered.

A full moon rose high above the harbor, turning the dark waters silvery. A siren screamed through the streets behind them.

“Who’s out right now?” Jason asked.

“Cass and Damian on the downtown route. Tim and Stephanie in the Narrows.”

“You going out tonight?”

“No. I had other things to do.”

Something warm unfolded in Jason’s chest, fast and uncontainable. He stared at his motorcycle to distract his eyes from watering. Then, he stiffened.

A big, obnoxious, and all-too-obvious tracker had been bolted dead center of the bike, right between the handlebars. It was nearly the size of a pinhead, for fuck’s sake. How was he supposed to just ignore that?

He tried prying it off with a fingernail and found it firmly affixed.

“I’m gonna have to dismantle the whole front end to unmount that,” he complained.

Bruce hummed in agreement around a mouthful of coffee. It had been some of his better work.

Jason finished his sandwich in a few wolfish bites and downed the coffee, hot and burning and perfect. His soft “thanks” was nearly lost in the crinkling of brown paper in a nearby trash can. Bruce said nothing, just watching as Jason straddled his motorcycle, started up the engine, and slipped away into the night.

Neither of them mentioned the tracker that had found its way into the collar of Jason’s jacket.

The Tower’s mess hall was quiet—Diana ate lunch alone, watching the stars dance out the massive windows. Green Lantern, seemingly in a similar mood, sat across the way, reading while Hawkgirl worked on the electrical wiring of her mace. J’onn sat a level above them, meditating. His reflection occasionally flashed in the windows as the station orbited. They shared the space in communal, companionable silence, each occupied by their own thoughts.

A small device with a wide touch screen dropped next to her elbow. Diana looked away from the windows in surprise, hastily swallowing her bite. Batman stood beside her, tight-lipped. Annoyance and frustration bled out into the air around him.

“It’s a tracking program,” he told her without introduction. “I heard you were trying to keep an eye on art smugglers. This will help.”

She blinked. Looked down at the device. The program was just booting up–it looked simple enough. Some of the equipment Batman supplied or created could be a little complex, to put it politely. He must have slowed down long enough to make it user-friendly as well as functional.

What had she done to earn something like this, unprompted?

Before she could ask, Batman turned and left. Explanations, apparently, were not part of the gift.

She grinned, relieved, surprised, and a little mischievous as she watched him leave. “Thank you, dear one!” she called. Green Lantern’s head came up from across the mess, his expression puzzled.

Batman stilled. Under his cloak, his shoulders raised. Lowered. With a soft grunt, he continued on his way.

Chapter Text

Bruce had a message waiting for him on the frequency only the League used. Occasionally, a notification popped up to remind him about it. Dismissing it became more challenging each time. He left the message to sit for nearly twenty-four hours, unacknowledged.

It wasn’t procrastination so much as it was preservation. If he listened to it, he’d want to respond to it.

He had plenty to distract him if he let it. Stephanie out on concussion protocol, and Damian behind in his school studies. Jason had been favoring his right shoulder when he thought no one was watching. Dick had gone three rounds with Killer Croc a week ago, and the play-by-plays were giving Bruce nightmares.

Three corruption scandals. Five criminal cases of equal severity and time pressure, each losing leads with every passing hour. Two suspected prison break attempts, with signs pointing towards a third. A Wayne Enterprises board meeting at the end of the week.

There was plenty to concentrate on besides that little gray notification box.

He let himself stay in that place of comforting denial for the rest of the night. Work brought focus. Brought vigor. Brought comfort, in its own cold way. He investigated trail after trail, tagging patterns he saw and suspected leads. On a nearby screen, Cass and Duke covered the twilight shift; he kept half an eye and an open ear on their feed.

Eventually, Tim tapped Duke out. He and Cass would see Gotham through until dawn. Duke arrived back at the Cave with a nod and a yawn. Bruce urged him upstairs with a soft grunt, thoughts anywhere but on the notification.

“Night, B!” Duke called over his shoulder, taking the stairs two at a time. That boy had so much energy; it made Bruce wince just thinking about the stress he’d do to his knees. “Don’t forget to take a break.”

Duke really did have casual nurturing down to an art. Struck by the thought, Bruce decided on compliance as the better part of valor. Pushing himself to his feet, he reminded his body how to move after hours of inactivity. Stephanie and Cass had taken up a yoga regime for fun bonding in the last year, and were slowly co-opting the entire Wayne clan into their lessons.

He ran through Mountain, Tree, and High Lunge in slow progression, letting his mind settle. The little gray notification box was still there.

Calling himself eight times a coward and a fool, he reached out between transitions and opened the message. On screen, Superman’s frustratingly handsome face popped up, smiling softly. The Watchtower’s monitoring room unfolded behind him in a thousand stars and lights.

“Hey, Batman,” he said in that tone that commanded both patience and joy. “I know you said you needed a break from the League—,”

“He didn’t say he needed a break,” Wonder Woman interrupted. She pushed herself into the frame—Bruce pressed his lips together to keep back a smile. Whatever comm Superman was recording on jostled as she grabbed at it, reorienting herself in frame.

“You,” she reiterated. “Didn’t say anything. You just vanished. The Flash says you ghosted us, whatever that means.”

Bruce had seven children—he was familiar with the term. He shifted his stance into Warrior II and reminded himself to breathe.

“That’s Batman-speak for I need a break,” Superman assured her, taking the comm back. “You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

“We just wanted to make sure you’re well!” she called as Superman recentered himself.

“Take the time you need. We just wanted you to know we’re here if you need us.”

That stupidly kind look was back on his face when he spoke. Wonder Woman fluttered her fingers over his shoulder with a deep look in her eye.

Bruce let the recording run out and concentrated on a deep toe-touch bend to keep his hands away from the Reply option.

He couldn’t feel entirely upset by his sudden disappearance—after nearly a month of non-stop cases with the League, he had hit an emotional wall. The kind that made him want to retreat into the familiar beats of his city and his habits. The kind that told him he had spent too long around people who didn’t know Bruce, for better or worse. The kind that made him angry and short-tempered and bone-deep tired.

He’d left in a quiet rush without so much as a notification.

Superman, apparently, knew him well enough to understand the situation. That…Bruce didn’t quite know what to do with that.

Some distance couldn’t hurt right now. It’d give him a chance to find out why, exhausted and grumpy, and irritated as he was, he couldn’t stop smiling at their voices.

Duke ordered his coffee the same way every time. It was half habit, half homage. When he started drinking it in the final years of his adolescence, he fell back on the way he remembered his mother making it; a dash of milk to brighten the color up from pitch black and nothing else.

When he tried to add sugar, it took away the bitter, pungent taste he suspected his mother had always loved about her method. In his memories, she drank vodka martinis with onions instead of olives and dry red wine full of tannins. Bitter green tea and carbonated water that fizzed on her tongue. She loved intense drinks, and the older Duke got, the more he understood why. There was something invigorating about a drink that could knock you off your feet.

He still had a few years before he could order the martini or the wine. He would, in time; copying his mother’s drink order was a way to connect with her. The habit helped him remember her.

Standing in line at the university cafe before his first class of the day, Duke had the kind of realization that only happened under sleep deprivation after a long night, when your mind was occupied by the soreness of muscles and bones and not really concentrating on any particular problem.

He had quite a large family, now.

He tapped into the group chat, which someone had renamed the Horde a few weeks ago. No one had yet to admit it, but it had happened around Jason’s return from his mysterious boating trip.

Tilting up his phone, Duke snapped a picture of the intricate menu above the counter. Cass was at the top of his text chain; they’d spent the night sending song lyrics back and forth after finishing his patrol rotation.

what do you usually order? he texted.

The line collapsed by one person while he waited for a response. He took a step forward and idly checked his email. A few moments later, his messages buzzed.

caramel thingie tastes like chocolate. And then: stole from B once really good

He nursed a caramel mocha through class, taking small sips of the sugary drink as the instructor discussed logistics policy.

It was good, he decided. Sticky and chocolatey, he could see the appeal for Cass, whose sugar tooth could rival Dick’s. He imagined she and Bruce sharing one during long, cold patrols and smiled at the picture.

The next day, he spent an afternoon at the rock climbing gym, getting chalk under his fingernails and sweat in his eyes. He stopped by the coffee shop as a matter of habit.

what would you order? he texted Damian, along with a picture of the menu.

He got an answer two hours later, well after he’d gotten to the front of the line and ordered his usual house coffee with a dash of two-percent.

you want an iced green tea frappuccino with peppermint and chocolate chips, Damian’s message read, making no mind of the fine layer of snow on the ground that made iced drinks untenable to him. Duke clung to the remnants of his warm coffee in sympathy, soaking in the lingering heat while he braved the cold home.

do i? he texted back—he could just hear the superiority dripping through Damian’s words. The kiddo took everything so seriously.

Yes–do not argue with me, Thomas. I know best.

Duke laughed and tucked his phone away. He ordered Damian’s recommendation the next time he stopped by the coffee shop. That got him a vivid green cold drink studded with tiny flecks of chocolate chips. It tasted amazing. It also had no caffeine in it. He should have suspected.

what would you order? he texted Dick a week later.

His phone rang fifteen seconds later.

“Have you tried the lavender latte? It’s amazing,” Dick told him the moment he picked up.

“I haven’t,” he admitted, a little bowled over by the enthusiasm bleeding down the phone line.

“You should—but not the campus place. We should go to Bruno’s Cafe downtown! I haven’t been in months. They draw a bat symbol in the foam, and I love it. When are you free next?”

Duke didn’t walk away with a lavender latte that day. Instead, there was an appointment on his phone for a coffee meet-up with Dick at the weekend. He couldn’t quite understand why he smiled for the rest of the day.

A few nights later, after hours of rough weather, crappy classmates, and a handful of unkind thoughts that refused to go away, Duke pulled out his phone. He always struggled to banish these days on his own.

what would you order? he texted Jason, half-expecting the message to go ignored.

He was surprised and oddly touched, when Jason responded a few minutes later with a photograph of a half-emptied Lipton tea box, folded over and battered at the corners. Most likely pulled from the depths of his cabinet. stop being a finicky yuppie.

“Sweet tea, iced,” Duke translated to the barista. you won’t know a yuppie if they bit you.

Not his most decisive comeback, but he was having a sour day. He was allowed to be off his game.

you’re mistaking me for timbo. cardinal sin, dude.

Duke grinned as he searched out a gif of the Red Robin logo to send over. this is you, right?

He and Jason traded light-hearted barbs for the rest of the day, and Duke couldn’t remember the last time his brain had been this kind to him.

On the following day of class, he pulled his phone out.

what would you order? he asked Stephanie.

She sent him two orders in fifteen seconds: a vanilla chai latte with extra whipped cream and sprinkles or something called a Double Torture. Intimidated by the name, Duke opted for the sprinkles. He sent her a photo after.

for my sage advice, i demand you buy me one of each next time, she commanded.

Duke sent her a thumbs up emoji and munched on sprinkles. He was high off sugar and caffeine throughout class, and crashed into bed in a dehydrated, headachy mess at the end of the day.

The next time his little game he had a dilemma on his hands. He almost didn’t ask Tim—he knew Tim’s order. Everyone did.

It wasn’t until an all-dayer bled into an all-nighter that Duke decided he was very much in need of a large coffee, pitch black and industrial strength, to get through the day. He pulled out his phone and texted Tim the menu. He figured he’d get what he wanted, and either way.

Calculated? Yes, totally. Bruce would be proud.

While waiting in line, his phone buzzed, but there was no message. Instead, Tim had sent him a location pin alert for an off-campus coffee shop just down the street.

come meet me, he texted a moment later.

Duke followed the pin out of the campus coffee shop, curiosity standing in for his caffeine craving.

The pin led him just off-campus and into downtown proper. The coffee store his phone led him to stood catty-corner with the Gotham library. There was no obvious sign; Duke almost walked into a nearby laundromat and a barbershop before he found where to go.

The decor was industrial and basic. Little pops of personality snuck in through the scenery, in a small mosaic tiling of a latte, or the wrought iron furnishings holding up a set of shelves. The large, intimidating machines behind the counter spoke to the space’s real purpose.

Tim sat at one of the sparse chairs, two simple white cups, cut into modern edges and sitting on square saucers, on the table before him. He had his phone out, his face intent as he worked off the little screen. When Duke took the other chair, he pushed one of the cups his way.

“French blend with honey. You don’t seem to be a big fan of artificial sweeteners.”

Duke’s lips quirked, oddly touched. “Thanks.”

Tim hummed, finally putting his phone face-down on the table. He gave Duke a cheerful, engaging smile that, without a doubt, offered trouble. It was the same smile Tim often gave the Wayne board of directors, right before he did something they would inevitably hate and complain about.

Duke suspected he was about to have more in common with the board of directors than he ever cared to have.

“You got class tonight, right?” Tim asked.

He grunted around his cup, reluctant to actually admit anything. The coffee really was a good blend; he was touched by the thoughtful order despite himself.

“Wanna help me with something?”

Tim did this—made his questions small and easy to answer. It was a trick, Duke was learning. Like being lured into a spider’s web, each one pulled you deeper. It wasn’t until you were well and truly entwined that the consequences struck.

All the Horde did it, in one fashion or another. Dick was a master at manipulating them into groups and forcing them to interact with one another, especially if there had been a recent argument or conflict. Stephanie’s audaciousness could often pin people in an all-out confrontation, where she excelled best. Damian would often lay traps for no other reason than to succeed in tricking friend and foe alike.

Jason and Cass, at least, were blunt about it: the pair of them often opted for the I’m doing this, with or without you method that never failed to get Duke on their side instantly and without reservations.

Because he couldn’t help it. A deep desire to stand tall and be worthy of his new family made him game for anything they asked. He was reasonably confident in his skills, and he couldn’t help the excitement a difficult task offered. That eagerness likely wasn’t good for his self-preservation; it gave his confidence a boost, though.

“Of course. What are you looking at?” he said, readily agreeing to a plan without knowing what he agreed to. His want to help far outweighed his better judgment. He figured he could get away with it as long as he had the good sense to know it was a flaw.

That smile got sharper. Tim picked up his phone and unlocked it in a quick swipe. Flicking through some apps, he set it between them to show Duke a photo. An old manuscript of some kind; ancient, large, and cumbersome. He didn’t readily recognize the language across its pages.

The staging made it look like the manuscript was on display. Duke scrolled enough to see a limited tour of antique texts scheduled up and down the east coast.

“What is it?”

“It could be an oath to summon a demon from hell,” Tim tilted his hand back and forth in a so-so motion. “Or, it could be instructions on how to curse a person to endless torment and damnation for fun and thrills. Or it could just be an accounting of the local harvest that year. The sources are unclear, and no scholar seems to agree on a translation.”

If that wasn’t a big old red flag. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t think it’s anything so straight-forward, which makes it dangerous. I know it’s got some powerful groups interested in it. A new-age cult funded by old money, some CEO who’s got a reputation for black magic curses, some folks whose property records go back a lot further than I’m comfortable with. The kind of people with a lot of means, no scruples, and all the vices that cursed objects tend to amplify.”

Duke winced, looking at the manuscript again. It seemed innocuous enough, but photographs never showed him everything.

Tim tapped his fingers against the table in a quiet habit. “Did you know other major cities have contingencies for magical objects on display? With safety protocols and anti-theft procedures?” he asked.

“For real?”

“Yeah. But not Gotham. Wanna guess why?”

Because the infrastructure for something like that would be a gargantuan undertaking, requiring both steady funding and administrative efficiency, two aspects of government Gotham was not known for. Because it would require a dedicated team of experts, who couldn’t be bribed or hoodwinked. Because magical items had a nasty habit of going missing in Gotham’s underground at the first opportunity.

“People say it’s because Batman hates magic, isn’t it?” he guessed.

Tim grinned in reply. “No existing infrastructure to bypass and a protector infamous for his dislike of magic. I can’t think of a better place to try a grab for it. It’s only in town for a week. I’ve got the nightshift, but,” he made a face.

“But you need a pair of daylight eyes,” Duke finished.

“Exactly. Off the books.”

That got Duke to pause, his fingers seeping out warmth against the mug. “Why?”

In a gesture that was part subtle, part sneaky, Tim waved a hand in dismissal. “Bruce is in one of his don’t talk to me moods. I think the Justice League gig’s wearing him out. I didn’t get this from a Gotham source. I heard some things from Central City and tracked it through Metropolis. I can’t substantiate it in our own network yet. You know how he is about outside help. Why bother dragging him into this when we can solve it ourselves, especially when he’s already in a mood?”

Duke thought about pointing out the obvious: that Tim often used that rationale to do what he liked, and more often than not, he paid the consequences for it again and again.

If it was left between them, the end goal would be success at all costs because Tim didn’t think in terms of evacuations or compromise when there were missions to accomplish. A trait he shared with Damian; probably why they couldn’t get along. Neither of them considered admitting defeat or offering secession when there was something, anything, to be gained.

Duke saw it, but he didn’t say it. He was still unsure how well his advice would go over in such a personal critique.

If he were smart about this, he would step outside and call Bruce now. Explain what was going on, and craft a plan that offered better support avenues. But that meant Tim would likely never again ask him for help or trust his discretion.

And Duke very much wanted to make his new family proud. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll be your daytime spotter.”

The manuscript was clearly haunted.

Duke had determined so after observing it for a grand total of eight seconds. Now he was convinced. Light moved differently around the thing. Like the shadows were scrambling to keep up with something too quick for them.

It gave him a headache when he looked at it for too long. Or got too close to it. Like eye strain building between his temples, he felt dehydrated and achy. His nose constantly itched and his palms burned when he sat still for too long.

His powers were a nebulous thing—he could never quite find the right words to describe their ephemeral tricks. So, he didn’t know to break it to the rest of the Horde, but the damn thing was haunted.

From the mezzanine, at least, he was far enough to avoid the worst of it. To comfort his nerves, he had ordered his usual—house brew with a splash of two percent. The familiar taste settled him. Between the circles under his eyes, his backpack, and his computer, not a soul glanced his way twice.

And he had to say: he hadn’t yet seen anything to disprove his haunted theory. Meanwhile, his list of evidence was growing by the hour. In the natural ebb and flow of an exhibit, he witnessed a great many odd things.

A woman stood staring, transfixed, for nearly an hour upon one single page of the manuscript. She didn’t even notice when others openly gawked at her. Her body was rigid as stone and her eyes had gone a little wild near the end.

After that, an old man with a cane sat at a bench by the entrance for half the day, slowly working his way through a back of sunflower seeds as he watched the display. He was minutes away from asking Tim for a recent photograph of Ra’s al Ghul when he finally left.

A little girl, no older than ten, ran wild around the display as her parents chatted with a guard in an overly-friendly fashion. He kept track of her laps on a scrap of paper while watching. She made good time, and her light-up sneakers were a welcome distraction for his eyes.

Duke also decidedly ignored the two young art students who had slunk off to get hot and heavy in the corner. They had tucked themselves far into the shadows of the exhibit—had Duke been anyone but himself, he wouldn’t have noticed them. But their movements warped the atmosphere around them, making them stand out like a beacon in his eye.

These things weren’t necessarily proof of nefarious plans—it was Gotham, after all. But it definitely helped fill out his list of evidence supporting a haunting. He kept a running tally in a note on his computer, fully convinced he’d need to defend himself later.

For all of these demonstrative examples of the supernatural that only Gotham public spaces specialized in, there had been little in the way of concrete suspicion. Nothing that made him sit up and stiffen in concern. Nothing that made his instincts lock in. Just people being their insane selves.

So it surprised him to all get out when brilliant light sparked across his eyeballs in a chaotic, colorful mess.

Startled into a cold sweat, he jerked up from his computer screen, baffled as the colors grew in intensity. A headache spiked through his skull, dizzying in its power. Jerking away from his computer screen, he rubbed at his eyes as they watered uncontrollably. Overwhelmed, all he could do was freeze until the figures around him once again took on hue and definition.

As quickly as it came, the attack on his vision faded back, receding into the shadows where it belonged. He searched the room wildly to pick out something to concentrate on. Anything to understand what he was being shown. There wasn’t a guidebook for his powers—his only key was intuition. It was as frustrating as it was surprising.

Looking down onto the exhibit floor, his attention fell upon a nondescript man who hadn’t been anywhere in the room a minute ago. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance or his bearing. His clothes were middling, carefully middle-class and unimpressive. Hair neither light nor dark, a jawline that was neither too soft nor too hard. A little on the tall side, but nothing overt.

He shone like a beacon in Duke’s eyes, all in amber and platinum hues. No other soul in the room looked like him.

Unheeding the singular audience he gained, the nondescript man approached the manuscript’s display and studied it with the appreciation of an art patron. Then, he moved to the back of the room, a place masked in shadow and away from security’s attention. Without a hitch in his stride, he passed straight through the damn wall.

Duke’s mouth dropped, stunned. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

He was out of his seat and down the stairs before thinking better of it. Before he sent any messages or reports off. Before he had a plan.

He knew the damn thing was haunted.

There was nothing unusual about the wall the man had disappeared through. He ran his hand over it to make sure, trying to find a trick or a faint. He’d never hear the end of it if he reported back on ghosts in the library without evidence.

“How are you doing that?” a voice asked. Duke froze, turning. The nondescript man stood beside him, watching him with shockingly empathetic eyes. His body language was peaceful, his hand folded before him. Snails would have shown more hostility than this man.

And still he glowed in that amber and platinum light.

Duke opened his mouth. Closed it, surprise making him speechless beyond a vague uhmming noise. The man tilted his head, waiting.

Something in the air sparked; his vision was once again filled with a riot of clashing colors, making him wince and jerk back. The headache returned with a vengeance, crippling his Bat-honed instinct like an empty aluminum can. Suddenly, he didn’t feel nearly as much like a vigilante as he did a college kid in over his head.

A large hand caught his shoulder, broadcasting gentle concern and a steadying presence like a beacon projected directly into Duke’s thoughts.

“Are you alrigh–,”

The man got no further. His words lost all meaning to Duke because the pain had returned ten-fold.

It was like a spike driven through his brain. A single burst that radiated through Shapes twisted in the violent array of hues around them. Heat and light carried debris by in shattering seconds. Sirens and screams echoed; alert lights were blaring, confusing the mashing planes of existence around him.

Duke curled in on himself as a loud explosion detonated, spewing dust and heat and so much light into the exhibit.

J’onn felt a shadow stalking him through the Tower. He said nothing about her gaze through breakfast and his morning observations. He couldn’t tell exactly who it was; he was doing his best to keep his mind-reading abilities to a minimum.

He had thought he would struggle more with his self-imposed rule. When his society thrived, mental communication was simply one aspect of a varied and complex language. To his people, there was no taboo in reading another’s thoughts. The transference of ideas, emotions, and nuances had built itself up over centuries of civilization. For J’onn, it had simply been a habit he never considered.

Then had come five hundred years of silence. No thoughts but his own echoing in the cranial space were once dozens of voices occupied at once. Seclusion hadn’t been an easy lesson to learn; a misery with every passing year.

In the last year, he had come to appreciate the skill. Human minds were an entirely different beast from what he had known amongst his people. Their thoughts were frequently brutally sharp, weaponizing themselves against their progenitor at the slightest provocation. They flowed in a natural process of instinct and emotion, half-held together by logic.

Keeping up was exhausting for him and unwelcoming for them. Best for all if he let people find words in their own time.

And they had so many words. He hadn’t known a life so full of enunciated language.

Instead of listening where he was not welcome, he read in quiet moments. It was a remarkably similar experience. While sharing monitoring duties a fortnight ago, Green Lantern had given him a dog-eared copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

“To help better understand humanity,” John had explained when he gifted it. “I can’t come up with a better way to explain it.”

J’onn had taken the book with delicate consideration. When he thumbed through the pages, loneliness, empathy, heartache, and strength bled out to him. Someone—many someones—had felt a great deal reading these pages.

“Thank you,” he replied with sincerity and began reading later that day. It wasn’t an easy thing; the shifting stages of reality, and the character’s changing perceptions of it, often confused and fascinated him in equal measure.

If this was how Earthlings saw themselves, he really did have a lot to learn. Their conflicting values and priorities changed with their realities. What mattered one day was worth nothing the next. What was passed off as expected became treasured with the shift of a word. A single day could change their entire personality.

He read in the Tower’s cupola, surrounded by stars and silence. It was peaceful there, combining all the serenity he had learned in his time alone on Mars. He had just met the third generation of Buendías when his shadow solidified into form. It was entirely unsurprising when Wonder Woman finally came to his side.

“Good morning,” he greeted, marking his place with a cheery bookmark bearing the Flash’s logo. He hadn’t purchased it—the glittery piece of merchandise had appeared in his book between page turns a week ago. J’onn appreciated the sly effort of their young speedster.

“Good morning,” Diana replied with a bashful, uncertain smile. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“This is no interruption.” He had chosen to set his book aside. Had he not wanted to help her in whatever burdened her, he would have simply continued reading until she left.

In a deliberate choice, he kept his words soft and his shoulders relaxed, letting her come to her words on her own time. Observation served him better than any question he could formulate.

She blushed a little around the edges of her cheeks, her eyes diverting sideways. Telltale marks of embarrassment. She needed help but didn’t know how to ask. In times like this, he couldn’t help remembering just how young many of his teammates were, body and soul. They often acted as if he would not oblige them without first receiving a detailed list as to why.

It seemed part intimidation, part respect, part uncertainty. He hadn’t yet learned how to break that down into friendship. Perhaps John had a book that could tell him about that human tendency, specifically. He would be sure to ask later.

His teammates sometimes forgot that he had once been a soldier and a father. A husband and a rebel. He loved them for their embrace of him without barrier or condition, and that love meant he would always be a source of aid for them. They just hadn’t found the right ways to communicate that critical understanding to one another.

That kind of thing took practice, after so much silence. He waited and refrained from reading her mind. That was a way to gain information, not understanding.

“I need some help,” Diana confessed. “Well, I need a secret, more like.”

“You’ll find I’m good with secrets.”

She set down a small data tablet on her knee. J’onn recognized Batman’s touch in the device; sleek, direct, and utilitarian. Someone—he suspected the Flash—had stuck a glittering yellow sticker in the shape of the Bat symbol on the back of the little thing. The screen was alight with information, flashing on a point. She tilted the device towards him and tapped it to reveal more data, including a geographical tag.

A tag that pointed to the heart of Gotham City.

“It may require some underhanded tactics,” she admitted. “And while I would never ask you to lie, it may require some omissions.”

“That seems unlike you.”

“The world of men has taught me the need to be discerning in my morals,” she replied, looking remorseful in her loss of innocence. Perhaps her friendship with Hawkgirl exposed her to more nuanced covert work.

“Indeed. What would you have me do?”

“Sneak into Gotham under Batman’s nose.”

J’onn blinked. “You don’t ask for a small thing,” he replied, faint. His first instinct was to say her request was impossible. Their surly teammate was a fierce defender of his territory; nothing happened in his dank and dark city that he didn’t know about.

Diana brought up a file on her tablet. A manuscript of some sort sat open on a guarded pedestal.

“This is—well,” she interrupted herself with a wave of her hand. “It’s a lot of things. Most importantly, it’s old and dangerous to certain people. It’s on display in Gotham for the next week, which worries me. I can protect it anywhere but in Batman’s city. You, however, may have a chance.”

“I’m sure Batman would not complain if you explained what you needed.”

“Perhaps. Only, I can’t ask. He’s not responding to any of our messages.” Something akin to sorrow, tinged with a distinct sense of longing, colored her words. “I don’t know how to reach him otherwise, and the manuscript goes on display there tomorrow.”

J’onn looked down at the manuscript again. He was hesitant to deny his new family anything, really.

“All right,” he decided. I will watch it for you while it is in Gotham.”

Her smile made him feel just a little brighter.

Gotham was surprisingly straight-forward to infiltrate for all their concerns about Batman’s omnipresence. J’onn had simply landed in Metropolis, taken on the countenance of a passing businessman, and riden the ferry across the waters to Gotham. A hectic taxi ride had gotten him to the library and the manuscript in question. He spent the first few minutes simply admiring the atmosphere and sense of calm the place permeated.

He didn’t quite know what to do about the young man who intently studied him from the balcony.

He hadn’t noticed the inspection at first. The metaphysical pull of the manuscript was distracting to him on a wholly unpredictable level. If he got close enough and listened at the right pitch, it filled the air with voices. Malicious, pleading, clawing voices that demanded his sanity in return for their secrets. It was becoming increasingly clear why Diana had been so concerned.

He had planned to leave well enough alone. Really, he had. One Hundred Years of Solitude was a comfortable weight in his pocket; he intended to find a quiet corner, monitor the situation, and pass the time in quiet contemplation.

A sensation overtook him, something he had never felt before. The fainting of slithering, like feathers being dragged over his skin. He barely had to register its wrongness before his illusion warped. Like someone was trying to peel away the face of the unassuming businessman he wore.

J’onn didn’t think—he stepped away from whatever pressure he was under, phasing through the wall before him. It was a risk, surrounded by people as he was. Yet his instincts demanded he retreat and regroup.

No one had ever been able to break his shapeshifting abilities before.

He circled the exhibit, heading once again for the entrance. He was shocked to find the young man from the balcony now before the back wall, running his palm over it in cautious curiosity. Under his hand, the light twisted. Not a lot, just enough to change the color and definition of the wall.

J’onn was fascinated by the display. So preoccupied with thinking of his illusions as physical changes, he had never considered the effect light played into perception.

Approaching the young man, he asked: “How are you doing that?”

The young man jumped in surprise, eyes wide as he gaped at J’onn. “Uhhh,” he hummed, his voice breaking as he winced, his gaze skating to the side. There was something like pain in his face like it hurt to look directly at J’onn.

Concern bled into his curiosity. “Are you alrigh–,”

A thought pierced J’onn’s mind, so intrusive that it cleared anything else. Malicious, greedy, and gleeful, a distant woman’s voice came down to him. This will be fun.

Heat built up between his shoulder blades. Shadows became long, stretched things under blinding light. The deafening boom of air exploding climbed into his ears and took firm root.

J’onn threw himself over the young man, shielding him from the worst of the blast. For an endless moment, it raged.

And just as quickly, it faded into nothing but smoldering rubble and screaming smoke alarms. Slowly, J’onn uncurled enough to look around. When he could see through the fog, he realized the display had been smashed to bits and the manuscript was gone.

The loss of property, no matter how dangerous the item, meant little to J’onn when he had more pressing concerns. The young man hunched, shaking in J’onn’s arms, his breathing shallow and rapid. Light refracted around him like broken moments and turned it into razors.

Then, half-dazed and unthinking, the young man reached up to touch his face. The warping sensation from before had returned, as if his disguise was being flaked away.

In a moment of thoughtless instinct, J’onn phased them both through the wall. It was for the best, getting them away from the sirens and smoke of the explosion. And away from anyone who may accidentally injure themselves on the fractured light and resulting chaos.

“It’s alright,” J’onn said, offering guidance in the weeds of uncertainty. “Focus on me. Just me and nothing else. I’m J’onn. What’s your name?”

“Duke,” the young man whispered, shocked by their sudden displacement.

“Thank you, Duke. Breathe with me and follow my voice.”

J’onn might not recognize what this young man was, but the control methods were solid, broad foundations. He had spent many decades perfecting those foundations, and all his experience would not allow him to turn away from another who needed aid.

On the inhale, he worked to strengthen them. On the exhale, grounding them. Slowly, the light lost its lethal edge, becoming once again a hue and not a hammer around Duke. Every so gently, J’onn stepped back, leaving him back in control.

“Better?” he asked.

“Uhh—yeah. Who–uh, who are you?”

In response, J’onn dropped his disguise, returning to the form he felt most comfortable in amongst humans. It had the desired reaction; Duke’s eyes went wide as his mouth opened and closed in the rapid forming of new thoughts.

“Oh wow. You’re…you should be careful—metahumans and Gotham don’t mix. Something in the water, you know? Makes people crazy,” he said, looking J’onn up from toe to nose.

“Yes, I imagine magic and Gotham make for a difficult time,” J’onn replied, looking straight at the Gothamite who had just broken his shapeshifting abilities in an odd blend of light and will.

It was as if the light dimmed around him. Duke said nothing, twitching his mouth closed with an unamused expression. “Anyway,” he said, his tone becoming flat. “Thanks for the help. I’m good now, no sweat.”

He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking far more comfortable in his skin. J’onn took that for a good sign and let the conversation go.

“Very well. Get outside,” he ordered, turning him towards the glowing red exit sign. His thief had enough of a head start—

Duke reached out and turned him in the opposite direction. “She went the other way. Towards the janitor’s closet, I think.”

“How do you know?”

“I can–uh,” Duke’s face flushed red around the edges. “I can see the trail her flashlight left. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Before he could protest, the young man tugged him out into the hallway, weaving them around the rapid rush of people evacuating in the opposite direction. Bobbing and ducking, they pushed against the tide.

“Behind that wall,” Duke called over his shoulder, nodding his chin towards the closet. “She went in there.”

The closet was thankfully quieter than the lobby. Duke’s trail proved true—the floor of the room had been drilled into, creating an opening large enough for a person to slip through. Their thief’s likely exit.

J’onn touched Duke’s elbow in gratitude. “Thank you for the help, my friend,” he said in farewell, then levitated down, intent on following her into the darkness.

A scraping noise followed him. J’onn looked up to see Duke clamoring his way down into the hole. He hung by his fingertips over the edge, and grappled down the wall until his feet were safely on the stable ground of the tunnel.

The young man stretched his arm and shook out his hands. “Good to know those rock climbing classes are paying off,” he said, looking around the dank space with a grin. “Oh wow, I think these are the old catacombs.”

J’onn said nothing for a moment, consideration warring within him. It was clear to him that Duke was a truly impressive young man, made all the more astonishing for his surroundings. He couldn’t help but feel a kinship to someone who was working so hard to learn and protect, even in undesirable circumstances.

Dke wanted to learn and help, likely so he could understand what he was capable of, and how he fit into such a strange world. J’onn didn’t want to squash that budding desire. Forcing him to turn back would only embitter and infantilize him. As long as J’onn was careful, and made sure to keep an eye out for his safety, perhaps he could help the young man find that understanding.

“Is it your wish to see this through with me?” he asked, more to see how the offer would go over.

Duke blinked at him, slightly surprised to be questioned. “Well, yeah. You helped me, so it seems fair I should help you, right?”

J’onn’s lips quirked at the young man’s sincerity. “All right. Come then—she would not have gotten far.”

“Cool,” Duke said. Then, without fear nor folly, he turned left and began walking through the tunnel with some confidence.

J’onn reached out and grabbed his arm to stall him and pull him back. Were all Gothamites so dauntless? It would heartily explain Batman, if that were the case.

“If you are to come along, I ask you to stay behind me,” he decreed.

“Sure, just as soon as you tell me which direction we’re going,” was the snarky reply, softened into comradery by a friendly tone and the ghost shadow of a grin.

J’onn considered the darkness around them. Little wonder a city so haunted had catacombs. They were likely a byzantine maze, as well.

“Carefully then, if you please,” he decreed, releasing Duke’s arm.

“No problem—my sister is the best sneak I know. She’d cry if I couldn’t get one up on someone in the dark.”

Curiosity made him ask. “Does your family know what you can do?”

Duke put his hand on the tunnel wall, his concentration focused on something J’onn couldn’t follow. Distractedly, he said: “Yeah—they’re helping me figure it all out. None of them are metahumans, so we’ve all learned to roll with the punches. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all a bunch of squabbling maniacs who don’t know the first thing about privacy, but I love them anyway.”

J’onn felt a wave of relief, glad that he had that kind of familial support. He was aware of how vital that was in surviving the demands of life. Duke had managed to keep to himself in a city notorious for its hostility towards metahumans. He surely knew how to keep a secret. But there was an exquisite kind of pain in having to keep it from your loved ones—J’onn felt it every time Superman or the Flash talked about their personal lives.

He’d likely feel it from Batman as well, if the brooding man ever let his humanity show.

Around them, the darkness turned more a dark gray than pitch black. There was no clear light source—it was instead as if Duke had given every third particle a jolt to brighten it. Slowly, that gray became just clear enough to add definition to the space, giving J’onn a better idea of his surroundings.

“Well done–do you know the range of your abilities?”

Duke hummed in a mixture of shyness and pride at the praise. “I just kinda figure it out as I go. I wasn’t really given a guidebook or anything. It’s a lot of trial and error.”

“Far be it for me to stand in the way of such a complex system,” J’onn said with a faint smile. Duke snorted and wrinkled his nose at the teasing.

“Lead the way, young man,” he ushered. He wouldn’t let Duke get too far ahead of him. Just enough to build his confidence—he knew from experience that the best guides were the ones who didn’t suppress but encouraged.

Duke handled the responsibility well, taking to the task with a single-minded seriousness as his cockiness bled away. He led them through the twisting maze of cross tunnels left from old construction, natural formations, and the stony layers that any city built up over ages. Occasionally, he would stop, regain his bearings, silently taking stock of his location. A quick check to J’onn to confirm he was still nearby, and they would be off again.

Down and down into Gotham’s bones they went, until finally the sound of faint cursing came in through the darkness. J’onn tapped Duke’s shoulder and made a silent hand gesture to stop, not stopping to think that the motion might not be recognized.

Duke stopped, let J’onn pass him, and tucked in behind him.

Before them stood a woman entirely distracted by shoving the cumbersome manuscript into a backpack. She had bound the book closed with rope wrapped around it close to a dozen times, which only added to its oversized unwieldiness. She looked up, stunned to see them through the pair of high-end night-vision goggles she sported.

“What the hell?”

“Oh–hi!” Duke called, his awkwardness and cheerfulness dove-tailing into politeness.

Bringing his hands together, he clapped once with the kind of startling force of a detonation. Light emitted from between his palms in a blinding flash; all the more stunning for the silence accompanying the event. The thief screeched at the surprise attack that burned into her eyes, dropping the manuscript to reach into her bag.

Half-blinded and surprised, J’onn had enough instincts left to know that was a dangerous thing to allow. She could have all sorts of redundancies and plans in store. He threw himself forward into the light, trusting that Duke’s control and power were enough to protect him.

The thief struck out, finding J’onn’s jaw in a lucky strike that came from sheer reflex. He took the hit without defense to plant his palm on her forehead.

It was all he needed; a firm mental command put her mind to sleep before she realized she was under attack. The bright light died as if cut as she stiffened then slackened, all her awareness silenced into sleep.

Unconscious, she slumped to the ground in a clatter of equipment; Duke just managed to catch her before her head cracked against the stone ground.

“We did it!” he cheered, his face full of thrill as he untangled her from her harness.

J’onn couldn’t help smiling at the young man’s enthusiasm. “Yes, we did. Come along—let’s find an exit.”

Taking the thief into his own charge, he eased her limp body over his shoulder as Duke collected her things. It wasn’t entirely clear what she had planned; most of her equipment looked new and unused. J’onn would let Diana piece together its whole; this was technically her case, after all.

There was no point going back if they could go forward. With Duke’s sharp eyes leading the way, they found a man cover that, once cracked, led to freedom in an alley beside the library. J’onn passed over the thief to him, so he had a free hand to pop open the cast iron lid with a quick burst of strength. Fresh air rushed over him as he hauled himself up to the surface.

The exit had brought them to an alleyway; the play of emergency lights over the walls told him they were still close to the library. Twilight was upon them, stretching the shadows out into ominous figures.

And with darkness came danger.

J’onn felt a familiar presence above him. He tilted his head up, unsurprised to spot a brooding silhouette along the rooftops. The twin points of the bat cowl signaled their watcher’s identity.

He took the full weight of the unconscious thief from Duke, unburdening him of any responsibility.

“Go now,” he ordered, calm and commanding. “Go home. I will handle things from here.”

Duke paused, surprise and curiosity in his expressive eyes. J’onn smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring and ushered the young man on his way with a nudge. He didn’t want him around during the inevitable fall out from his brooding teammate, whose anger and fury at finding J’onn in his city built by the minute like a volcano just set to erupt.

After all, Batman didn’t like metahumans in his city.

The first warning was Tim’s silence. Bruce had become an expert in those silences over the years. And he had enough experience in that particular tone from his quiet child—shallow breath, complete stillness, eyes narrowing as Tim considered where he may have miscalculated.

His quiet child didn’t like to bring Bruce’s attention to these moments. It was an admission of failure Tim couldn’t stand to have acknowledged.

Honestly, Bruce didn’t see that look often nowadays. In the intervening years, Tim became comfortable relying on the rest of his siblings, and his inclination towards fierce independence had dimmed. In fact, he nearly missed it when Tim stilled across the Wayne Enterprise conference table.

He blamed his obsession with the damn messages he could never seem to clear away from his League communicator. The memory of two familiar voices, warm and sinfully comforting, had distracted him at the worst possible time. Deliberately banishing them, he set his phone aside. It made him distracted, or he would have noticed sooner.

“Tim,” he prompted, taking a moment to appreciate that at least the board members had all left.

“I think I fucked up,” he muttered, eyes searching in the distance beyond them.

Bruce didn’t have to ask further. The explosion that rattled the windows and shook the streets was enough of a tip-off. He jerked in his chair towards the noise. Through the high windows of the conference room, the rising bellow of smoke could be tracked from blocks away.

“Where?” he demanded.

“Library,” Tim replied, looking chagrined. “Duke’s there.”

Batman took to the roof; Wayne Tower made an excellent launching point. Years of muscle memory had him screaming down the rooftops without stopping for safety or caution, running for the emergency. Running towards his child.

Duke would be fine. He would be fine. He had come to Bruce knowing so much already. He had kept himself safe in Gotham for years, and he had a good head on his shoulders. It would be fine.

That logic did nothing to quell the anxiety and fear gripping his chest.

When he descended upon the library, the first priority was evacuation. The more able and aware were stumbling out the smoking doors, dragging along those who struggled in the debris. Sirens could be heard rippling off the high buildings.

Bruce set to work evacuating the building. In his early days, this kind of work had been a struggle. The characteristics he took on as the Batman to intimidate Gotham’s villains worked just as well on any unsuspected soul unprepared for him to drop down upon them.

That had slowly changed. In the long stretch of years, people started turning to him with evident relief on their faces. When they saw him cut through the smoke and chaos, they readily pointed him toward others in need and cleared his way. They took his offered hand in trust rather than desperation.

That trust was vital to him now. It helped him keep his sanity the longer he went without finding Duke amongst the crowd.

Thankfully, the explosion had been designed to harry and confuse rather than harm. Loud flashbangs and a massive outpouring of smoke, but no shrapnel or uncontrolled fire. Most folks he came across had superficial wounds; scrapes and abrasions, and twisted joints that slowed their evacuation. Surprise and shock were the most significant obstacles. Many had gone temporarily deaf from the noise or were blinded by the fumes and had trouble finding their way.

Precision and focus kept him on task—he reached for people and pulled them towards open air and safety.

And yet, for all that focus, he couldn’t find Duke. A call to Oracle told him Signal’s tracker was moving. Bruce took that as a good sign and used that to beat his fear into submission.

What he did find was an abandoned table with a familiar backpack and an open laptop. The same laptop that had been retrofitted with backdoor access to multiple major intelligence servers. Unable to resist rolling his eyes, Bruce collected his wayward child’s belongings, hoping it was a good sign that everything appeared undisturbed.

Once outside, he took on height, trying to clear his head and get an idea of what could be happening. Story after story he climbed, until he hit the familiar rooftop of City Hall.

Which meant he had a perfect view of the man cover being pushed aside, and the unmistakable figure of the Martian Manhunter appeared on the streets of Gotham.

Tense nerves flooded Bruce’s system and made his breath sharp, scandalized. It did his sensibilities no good when his teammate leaned down and offered his hand back into the sewer. He pulled a companion up—Duke’s posture was unmistakable, covered in dust and ash, and grinning with satisfaction. A slumped body slung over his shoulder added extra weight that he took care to handle.

Bruce slowly exhaled, relief running through like a flood. His boy was safe and sound.
And within arm’s reach of a man who should know not to cross into Bruce’s city. As surely as the sun rose, relief turned to indignation.

The flush of emotions was a mistake. Martian Manhunter paused in speaking with Duke. With startling abruptness, he turned and found Bruce in the shadows. He had always boasted of a particular skill in locating the members of his new team. Bruce hated it—hated how he had no defense against it.

Martian Manhunter took the limp body from Duke and made a go-along gesture. Dismissing him—good. The more distance, the better. Bruce stood tall as his teammate rose through the air up to him.

“Batman,” he greeted, his tone calm.

“What are you doing in my city?”

“It was an unfortunate necessity.”

Martian Manhunter landed on the rooftop beside him. With a small grunt, he placed his unconscious passenger down. Bruce didn’t recognize her, but long experience saw all the hallmarks of a professional thief in her clothes and gear. A voice that sounded remarkably like Selina derailed the selections as unnecessary and overly complicated.

“This place was not what I expected,” Martian Manhunt said, his tone intrigued as he looked out over the city line. Below them, emergency services worked by spotlight, clearing out glass and building debris from the front of the library. Bruce barely resisted the growl sitting in the back of his throat.

“What’s there to expect?”

“The people—or better said, the collective mentality of this place. I always thought of this place as an extension of yourself, you see. A manifestation of what you practice. By that logic, I expected to find wariness and doubt in a city filled with cynical people. But I find that’s not true. I see hope and encouragement. Your people trust you. I would go so far as to say they love you as their protector.”

Martian Manhunter suddenly turned to Bruce. There was something fierce in his expression like he strove to command his words into being by sheer force of will. “I hope you understand that—and return that trust and love, no matter your own feelings.”

That brought him up short. “Excuse me?”

“I must ask you to set aside any enmity you could ever feel for the love of one of your own.”

Bruce’s expression turned cold, a look that penetrated even the heavy blockade of the cowl. “Don’t speak to me like that when you stand here uninvited,” he snapped, defensive.

Under that outrage ran a strong undercurrent of fear, boarding on concern. He knew about Duke. Maybe not all of it; maybe he still didn’t see the relationship linking him and Bruce. But he had enough to understand that Duke was a metahuman in a city protected by a man famous for his dislike of magic.

Polite as it was, this conversation was Martian Manhunter warning Bruce to stay his hand.

His defensive mind screamed at the perceived threat. How dare he—Bruce would rather swallow glass than hurt one of his own. The idea that one of his teammates could come so close to his family left his skin crawling in uncontrollable panic. The fierce divide he enforced in his life suddenly collided, and that ensuing wreckage left him angry.

He almost struck out across that divide. There would be brutal consequences if he did–-in the blind rush of protection for his family, he doubted those consequences would matter to him. He could easily ruin his teammate, if he really had to. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it before…

Then, Bruce remembered who he was speaking with. Martian Manhunter had fought for his people for far longer than Bruce could contemplate. Five hundred years of protecting their memory, even when he had been the last one to remember it. J’onn would understand Bruce’s devotion and responsibilities to his community, come hell or high water.

Gotham was full of his presence, from the decades-old grapple marks on the skyscrapers to the yellow graffiti symbols in the alleyways. The whispers in the shadows became louder with each passing year. The legacy and joy of a mansion filled with noise and trouble and love. Bruce wouldn’t have it any other way.

He met J’onn’s gaze through the cowl.

“I watch out for all my people,” he replied, stiff and unyielding. It was the best he could offer in this baffling situation.

J’onn nodded once in respect of the difficulty. “Thank you. Now, please excuse me. I would hate to outstay my welcome.”

Bruce said nothing as his teammate gathered the unconscious thief back into his arms and all of her frankly unnecessary equipment. He had always admired Selina’s reliance on simplicity—a sharp needle and a limber physique were all she needed. It made him prone to disparaging judgment on others who couldn’t match her elegant style.

Then J’onn hesitated, his attention caught by something. Looking over himself and his passenger, a slight frown line appeared across his forehead as he failed to satisfy his concern. Turning to Bruce with a firm expression, he squared his shoulders.

“Since you are determined to accept no help from us, I must charge you with this alone; the manuscript this thief stole has gone missing. It has a powerful sway over people, and can easily hurt those who encounter it. You now must retrieve it.”

He was in the air and gone before Bruce could throw the righteous fit that sprung up in his chest at the order.

“You can come out now.”

There was a shift in pressure, like the drop of warmth just before a storm came in. The yellow-hued light of Gotham’s old public lamp poles bent into subtle arcs. In the fuzzed reality, Duke bled out of the shadows. His power sparked under his fingernails, making his heartbeat speed up and his blood hum.

And no headache. No distracting sensations. Relief at having his power back working as he expected made him giddy and grinning as he stepped onto the rooftop.

“Hey, B,” he greeted.

Bruce’s body language didn’t change from its gargoyle-like stance. His shadow hovered over the edge of the city, twisting into the imposing dark knight of Gotham.

“Are you alright?” he growled into the city lights.

He had always marveled at Bruce’s Bat voice. No one ever managed to imbue confidence, intimidation, foreboding, and reassurance quite like he could. It was a tone pitched to perfectly blend together a question and a command. It was the voice of Gotham; it had been since he was a child.

It also carried an edge of demand; they would never need to wonder where Damian got it from. For all that, he had never felt anything but comfort from that voice.

“Yeah,” Duke shrugged with a sideways look, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Honestly he was more embarrassed than anything. “Nothing but a few rattled nerves and a close call or two. The Martian Manhunter...wow. He’s good; he bailed me out down there. I can’t imagine what he’s like to work with on a team,” he said with no little awe.

Bruce’s stance didn’t change, hovering over the streets like a phantom. So Duke came forward, stepping up onto the ledge beside him. Since he wasn’t in costume, and since his powers finally felt like behaving, he delicately warped the light around him, masking all but his outline from any passing onlookers.

The remote speck of the Martian Manhunter grew dimmer against the whisp-cloud twilight as he crossed the harbor towards Metropolis.

“Call in your safety protocols. The others are worried.”

Oh, shit—Duke reached for his phone and initiated a check-in sequence. Guilt nipped at him; he had forgotten about Tim and any communication protocols in the chaos. Which was really when he was supposed to be using them. In his defense, it wasn’t like he had been unsupported.

Bruce’s reaction wasn’t entirely a surprise. Dick had explained the numerous times he had instantly hit unbearable levels of protectiveness, especially when metahumans started sniffing around them. And double especially when those metahumans were members of the Justice League. Call it a convoluted blend of instinct, self-defense, and anger.

If he caught Tim exhausted into talkativeness, he’d sum it up to a finely honed insight for trouble-making. Though he never specified who exacted what trouble. Stephanie made light of the trait more often than not, investing in any novelty shirt, mug, or magnet that proudly boasted the owner to be a Papa-Bear. She presented them to Bruce in grand flourishes, enjoying the joke every time.

Stories were one thing; reality another. Duke couldn’t decide if he was touched or annoyed to be on the receiving end of the behavior. It irritated the quickly growing part of him that desired to be competent above all else. What good was it to be half-skilled at something?

Another part of him, still young and nervous and unsure of himself, cheered at the care. That part of him was faster off the mark, and the light glow of his phone hid his soft smile. On screen, alerts poured in as his confirmation hit everyone’s feed.

yay! you’re alive!

shit was that explosion you?

thank fuck

wait, does this mean we need to reschedule our coffee date?

sorry. That last one was from Tim. Duke sent him a smiley face to show his forgiveness. He had a favor in his back pocket now–-he could afford to be magnanimous.

“Oh!” Speaking of back pockets.

He reached behind him, under his shirt. Tucked into the waistband of his pants was a large and heavy book. He had needed to stand very still to keep it in place.

“Look! I grabbed it—never leave anything behind, right? Just like you taught me,” he said, presenting the manuscript with a flourish.

Bruce made no noise; his shoulders’ brief rise and drop gave away his amusement. In reply, he hefted what was undeniably Duke’s backpack, left on the library table when he had run down J’onn. “Half-points. You missed this.”

“...Whoops. Thanks—did you grab my coffee, too?” he asked, half-hopeful.

That got him a flat, exasperated look as they swapped backpack for manuscript. Duke did a cursory rummage through his pack to see if anything had gone missing and mourned his coffee loss. It had been from the fancy industrial place Tim had shown him.

“Do you want me to bring J’onn back?” Bruce asked, quiet. One could almost call it uncertain.

Duke blinked. “Uh,” he fumbled. Instinctively, he zipped his backpack closed and tossed it on his shoulder.

Bruce’s stance dropped, finally shaking loose the tense, quietly furious body language he had been casting off since finding J’onn so close to his family and his city. His animosity dropped into something else; something more familiar and recognizable. He turned sideways, and if Duke bent the light just enough, he could make out Bruce’s face under the cowl. Irritation and fondness fought it out over his features, making his mouth stern and his eyes soft.

And also faltering. It was an incredible experience to see hesitation in the shadow of the Bat. Like he was concerned about something more profound than an unwanted guest trespassing upon his city.

Under his jacket, Duke’s spine straightened, institutionally looking for trouble. “What do you mean?”

Bruce’s voice had lost that natural authority, picking up hints of uncomfortable and anxious distress. His jaw didn’t show it; only Duke’s enhanced sight revealed his ducking, wavering eyes.

“Not a one of my children is typical. That said, I usually...I know what I need to teach each of you, in general. But you came to me knowing so much already. There are things I worry I can’t teach you well. About your powers and your control. If you worked well with J’onn—if he could teach you those things, I could...ask if he’d be willing to—to help you find your way.”

Duke blinked, stunned by the implication. “But you’re Batman,” he said, dumb-struck.

The sigh he gave out was more Bruce than Batman. “I’m also human.”

“But...” Duke paused, trying to see what was really being said. “You’re Gotham. That’s all I need.”

That got Bruce to go still. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s just,” Duke’s mouth stumbled over his words with how quickly they came. He had to stop and take a breath, remembering how to steady himself like Bruce had taught him. “I know you’ve been doing this a long time. Like, probably long enough to forget that I grew up with Batman. Everyone—all my friends and classmates and neighbors—we know Batman is gonna help us. That he’s gonna be there when we need him.”

To prove his point, he leaned sideways, over the edge of the building. Gravity tugged at him, ready to pull him down seven stories onto the concrete alley below. As quick as lightning, before he could do so much as stumble into open air, Bruce reached out and hauled him back with a strong grip and a firm look.

“Stop—you know better than that,” he scolded in the time-honored tradition of parents when faced with their children’s recklessness.

Duke grinned. “See? You’re Gotham’s defender before you’re else. I don’t want to be some global peace-keeper or intergalactic fighter. I’m a Gothamite, through and through. This city, these people, are what I want to protect, and I want them to trust Signal like they trust Batman. No one else is gonna teach me how to do that. You’re the only mentor I’ve ever needed. You know that, right?”

Silence, disbelieving and heavy, hung between them.

Then, using the exact grip that had pulled Duke from the grips of the fall, Bruce hauled him in, under the cape and into his arms. Actions were always more manageable than words for Gotham’s dark knight. His hug was slight, mindful of the suit’s many tough and rough points. Even now, he was careful not to crush or hurt.

Duke was not so restrictive—he hugged back with fierce joy, leaning into the embrace for all he was worth. Because apparently, Bruce hadn’t known.

His powers would always be a part of him, the legacy of a parent who seemed less than altruistic in his interest in his son’s life. Duke would be damned if he ever let that define him. All the skills and tricks he held close and fell back on, all the lessons that kept him alive and thriving, came from Bruce. This man was the head of his family and the best teacher he could ask for.

There was light in the corner of his eye that was not his doing—neon signs were kicking on across the city. The first signs of life; delis were regathering their energy in preparation for the evening rush.

“I’m hungry,” he decided, his words muffled in Bruce’s chest. “I want a bagel. I deserve it after the day I’ve had.”

Bruce’s shoulders rose and dropped in a silent shuffle—the only sign of his laughter. “Come on,” he replied, drawing back. “I know a good place.”

Duke rode in his shadow, highlighted by fuzzy streetlamps and all-night billboards. At a small deli, they landed at bore windows crowded with stickers and the kind of sign that hadn’t been updated in decades. Its back door was open, letting in the cool evening air that would burn away in the roasting dishes. The owl-eyed kid cleaning out the ovens blinked in the shadow of his abrupt customer.

“We’ll have a—,” Bruce paused, glancing back.

“Onion bagel and chive cream cheese,” Duke yelled from the alley, masked by the shadows. “House coffee, room for cream!”

“That, doubled,” Bruce repeated in his best Batman voice, probably making the bakery kid’s night.

Food in hand, Bruce let Duke pick the rooftop—a sweeping one with a great harbor view. They sat on the ledge, their legs kicking into the open air. While they ate, the moon rose high over Gotham.

The night had been a busy one; fallout from the explosion had given others ideas of mischief. Bruce had sent Duke homeward come the dark and had delved into the concrete comers and alleyways of Gotham. These were pathways into his heart and mind, his home. The familiarity and steadiness of the city gave him the calm he had been after for weeks.

When it came to the early hours—the lull time between late night and early morning—he felt again on solid ground. Sitting against the large Wayne Enterprises logo atop the downtown tower, he found the desire to pull inward.

Bruce contemplated his League communicator, deciding. He had disliked carrying it, to begin with. It acted as a tether to a group of people he didn’t feel comfortable with. Yet he could never bring himself to cast it aside. Like a stubborn penny, it always made its way onto his person.

Before he could think better of it, he hit the dial button. While it rang, he sat it on his knee, camera pointed upward. All the frame could capture where the tips of the Gotham city line and the clouds barely filtered by moonlight. If one had good enough eyesight, and was patient enough to look, the shadow of his resting figure could just be made out against the wall.

Wonder Woman picked up with a soft smile on her face. “There you are.”

“In all the messages you left, you could have told me there was a cursed book in my city,” he scolded, looking at the manuscript beside him, innocuous in its resting state. Duke told him its powers seemed less potent when it was closed. He didn’t feel anything from the thing himself and had to trust Duke’s assessment.

“So you did get them,” Wonder Woman replied with what she no doubt thought was a sly grin. Bruce cast his eyes upward—he wasn’t obstinate enough to deny he had been ignoring them.

He had needed breathing room. It took some time to remember what it was like to be comfortable in his skin again. He didn’t think he had accomplished that so much as he had numbed the buzzing sensation being around his teammates had caused.

“You didn’t want to risk coming to Gotham yourself to get it?” he asked instead.

“I would have, had I thought you wanted to see me.” Her voice was tinny over the speaker. He would need to fix the problem in their subsequent upgrades. The little device didn’t do her deep voice any justice.

In that desire, he realized he wanted to hear her voice in person once again. He carefully examined that impulse, then settled it away.

“I wasn’t avoiding you. Either of you.”

“Of course not. You simply didn’t wish to be found. Has that changed?”

Bruce ignored the question, searching out his city to keep himself from saying something he’d regret later. “J’onn caught your thief. He’s taking her to Metropolis.”

“And the manuscript?”

“Haven’t you heard? Gotham has a habit of swallowing these things up whole and leaving no trace. Could be decades before anyone sees it.”

Wonder Woman’s laugh rang deep and lush. “As you wish. Consider it my apology. I’ll go meet J’onn. Should I say hello to Superman for you while I’m there?”

Bruce considered the tips of his boots to keep his voice even. “Do as you like.”

“Will you let me see you?”

She really liked testing her boundaries. No wonder Jason had gotten on well with her. Bruce tilted the communicator’s screen down enough to catch the side of his cowl in the frame. It got him a grin full of relief and encouragement.

“I’ll tell him you thought of us. Thank you, dear one.”

Heart in his throat, Bruce reached out and ended the call. It was that, or consider why, exactly, Diana’s words ran like fire through him.

J’onn paused when he found Batman standing in the Tower’s cupola waiting for him. He hadn’t realized their intransigent teammate had returned.

“Can I help you with something?”

Batman threw a book at his chest. J’onn caught the weight before it could bounce off him and turned it around to inspect the cover: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Part I.

“What is this?” he asked. It wasn’t a new book—the battered corners and curled pages showed a life of being thumbed through.

“It’s about human insights and the marvels of teamwork,” Batman replied with the kind of biting, simmering frustration that seemed to be his preferred state of being. By the time J’onn looked up, he had disappeared from the tall perch, down into the Tower’s depths.

J’onn let him have the last word, and he opened the book to the first page.

Chapter Text

Desert landscapes were quickly becoming Bruce's least favorite backdrop for battle. Especially with the League. Over half of them had no experience on a team, and the vast expanse of space led them to spread themselves thin. They quickly lost sight of each other as they battled against the giant sandworms that had been menacing the land and population for weeks.

He had planted himself atop a rocky outcropping cliff of the high plateaus pushing through the barren geography, keeping the high ground against the giant, writhing worm determined to eat him. The thing was far, far, too large to be moving as fast as it did, and its appetite seemed indiscriminate, livestock, crop stock, human stock---the worm tracked it all for substance.

And now the thing had a lock on Bruce. He didn't often subscribe to Jason's abrasive way of doing things, but the emergency grenade in his utility belt was showing its appeal just now...

In the distance of the high desert, he didn't see Wonder Woman go down.

He heard her pained grunt and the impact she made with the ground as she was smacked into it. The pressure stressed her comm and filled the line with sharp feedback. Through it, Flash's panicked exclamation was nearly lost as the speedster grabbed her out of immediate harm's way.

"Hey guys, she's bleeding bad!"

Bruce tossed the grenade without a second's more thought. Once it was in the worm's gullet, he didn't stick around to see the carnage. Grappling hooks worked just as well on natural stone rock faces as on skyscrapers. He slung down the canyon to where he thought Flash had stashed them.

In Gotham, he never had to worry about getting lost. The city streets were carved into the paths of his brains, the nightmare alleys and dead-end and freeways and suburb squares. He had all the kids trained to look for street signs, then significant landmarks, using Wayne Tower as the orientation point.

In the high desert, there were only scrubs, rocks, and gritty sand.

Green Lantern crossed paths with him, leading a desert-eating worm firmly in one direction. Bruce dove in the opposite, searching out his teammates.

Wonder Woman was down, and he hadn't seen what had hit her. He just saw the blood and her wain face grimacing in unfamiliar pain. Flash knelt beside her, his hands pressed into her shoulder. His shoulders shook from nerves and worry; under his palms flowed a steady run of blood.

"What happened?" Bruce demanded, landing beside them.

"I don't know," Flash responded, his voice high and panicky. "I just got here, and she was down. I thought I'd get her away from the worm, but---,"

Flash, when he ran on adrenaline and nerves, was not the person to be handling an actively bleeding shoulder wound. Wonder Woman winced, her breathing turning labored. Bruce growled his frustration and peeled Flash's hands away from the injury. A hard shove got the speedster to his feet so Bruce could take over.

"Javelin's right side, compartment B-1. Med kit, black bag, bright yellow labels. Grab it now," he ordered as he pushed down onto her wound with more confidence. Flash went, happy to turn over guidance to his surly, competent teammate.

Despite the tense situation, Bruce felt calmer seeing her. At least she was breathing and responsive. It looked like she had managed to protect her most vital spots, deflecting the blow to her high shoulder. There was no exit wound or matching gash on her back shoulder. The laceration was deep and would put her out of commission for at least a month. Any deeper and she might have lost the arm.

"Never be this stupid again," he demanded.

Her pale face grinned up at him in a weak reflection of her usual smirk. "Sorry to worry you, dear one."

"I'm not worried; I'm angry. Stop moving."

His teammates didn't bleed. He did---all the time, in fact. His body was a collection of scars and injuries, the undeniable signs of his work and the toll it took on him. The others were indifferent to the concept. Alien, immortal, or enhanced, their physicality should hold up better against this kind of abuse.

So why was it he had Wonder Woman's blood on his hands? Her sharp shoulder, tanned from sun exposure, trembled from the pain. He kept a steady pressure on her wound and ruthlessly silenced any further thought in his mind.

"This one, right?" Flash came crashing back to them with a familiar black bag in his hands.

Bruce grabbed it, dropped it beside his knee, and popped it open one-handed.

Medical supplies were undisputedly his purview, and he was fierce about having one on ready hand at every opportunity. The black-bagged, yellow-labeled supplies were laid out in the same order his father had stored them for years. The layout never deviated from kit to kit, so he could always rely upon their contents. If he knew where everything was, he didn't have to spend valuable time scrounging.

He stripped off his uniform gloves; the brief flash of his bare hands felt scandalous. Pushing through the instinctive need to hide, he grasped the wrist of her uninjured side and determined her pulse. She let him manipulate her, breath evening out to a steady rhythm.

Bruce double-checked his count: her pulse came back high but not concerning. Satisfied, he set her wrist aside and pulled on a pair of purple nitrile medical gloves.

"Dealt with the worm," Green Lantern called, landing beside them with a graceful thump of heavy boots. "How is she?"

"She's peachy," Wonder Woman replied with a tense wince as Bruce applied disinfectant in a liberal spread.

"Yeah, Bats knows what to do..." Flash trailed off, looking down at his hands. Wonder Woman's blood was a lusher shade of red than his bright costume and stood out in stark contrast across his gloves and chest. His shock set in stark and brutal across his face. He really was so young.

Tutting, Green Lantern leaned over and plucked a disinfectant cloth from the med kit, handing it to the Flash to clean his hands. "A real firefight, wasn't it?"

"Don't do that again," Bruce snapped, glaring at his pilfering teammate. If people started pulling things out of his medical kit on a whim, he'd lose track of what supplies he had. That thought made his skin itch and his hands flex in instinctive rejection.

"You really can't bring yourself to be civil, can you?" Green Lantern replied with a dry look.

"I'll be civil when you keep your hands to yourself," Bruce spat.

That comment earned him no friends, and a stony silence fell over them all. He took the quiet gratefully, letting his hands work as his mind went carefully blank. Focus on what he could solve---that was the only way to survive desert landscapes.

When Wonder Woman's shoulder was wholly bound up tight to her chest, he stood up, helping her along. Urging her towards Green Lantern, he pointed towards the Javelin.

"Go---keep your shoulder still, sit quietly, and think about how to stop this from happening next time."

Flash ran off like Bruce's dismissal was a firing squad aimed directly at him, while Green Lantern looked decidedly unamused at the reprimand. Wonder Woman just rolled her eyes at him in something that looked far too close to affection, a little dash of color coming back to her pallor now that her pain was manageable. She reached up and touched his cheek in thanks.

Bruce kept his glare in place to diminish the effect, though he didn't move away from her. She smiled at him just as a neon green enveloping glow overtook her, and she and Green Lantern rose into the air towards the Javelin. He couldn't mind Green Lantern's blatant exclusion of him---they needed some time away from one another, their personalities far too alike to find cohesion together.

Superman passed them midair, floating down towards Bruce with a look of sincere concern. His red boots touched down with a heavy thump, sending dusty sand up, and his bulk filled the immediate space between them. Far, far too close for comfort.

"What?" Bruce snapped. That open gaze unnerved him, and that nervousness made him cross.

Undeterred, Superman reached out and put his fingertips to Bruce's wrist, just beyond the bloody medical gloves. The small gap between the nitrile edge and the cuff of his uniform where nothing but skin showed.

"Are you alright?" he asked. Curling his fingers, he worked off first one and then the other glove, carefully rolling them into themselves to keep from letting the mess spread.

Bruce let him, working only to keep himself still. "I'm fine. Wonder Woman will be in recovery for at least six weeks, though. Maybe ten."

"But she'll recover?"

Bruce nodded. "She may have broken collarbone, but her lungs sound clear, and her pulse is strong. We'll need x-rays to know more."

"Good. Come on," Superman said, stepping back. He dropped the folded-in gloves into the black medkit, picked up the whole thing, and held his free hand out to Bruce. "I'll give you a ride back."

It was this, or walk the ten miles back to the Javelin. Bruce stepped into his arm and let himself be lifted into the air, thinking about deserts and bloody gloves and not how the back of Superman's neck felt under his bare fingertips.

Tim ran for San Francisco, retreating in the face of humiliated obsession.

The thief who had snuck into Gotham galled him. He expected better of himself, especially when his failure put Duke at risk. The library made for a weak point, he knew. He'd planned for grandstanding contingencies and daring nighttime raids. For super villains and megalomaniacs and aliens. He had charts and maps and indexes.

He hadn't seen the possibility of a simple smash-and-grab in broad daylight until it had happened. Too caught up in the contingencies to visit the easier path. Stupid, shoddy, and just horribly embarrassing on all fronts.

Tim hated being embarrassed.

Duke had taken his miscalculation in good humor, but Tim couldn't entirely scrub the shame of being outplayed, however accidentally. The feeling never sat well with him. This wasn't an attractive side of his personality, he knew. But it was an efficient one.

He tracked the thief, half in atonement and half in outrage. The moment she was processed through Metropolis agencies, he had a solid paper trail to follow. Within a day, he had found her past associates, her favorite fences, and her clients, both regular and one-off. Next were her bank accounts, networks, and suppliers, which he relentlessly pinned down and dragged into the light.

Once he had started actively hunting her ex-husband through international links and massively violating multiple privacy laws, he realized he may have gone too deep. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept or his most recent meal.

Years ago, he would have kept going, feeding his obsession rather than curtailing it. There was a vicious satisfaction in a hunt well-fought. It had taken many long, firm talks with Bruce and Dick and Alfred and the rest of his family for him to come to terms with the fact that he could not, in fact, simply work himself to death to sate his curiosity. Or his need for revenge.

Rather than go to his room, lie down, and continue to obsess behind closed eyelids, he opened up the Wayne Enterprises server. The West Coast branches were coming up on their inspections---he added his name to the board meets and reserved the earliest flight out. A quick email went to his assistant and another to Bruce. Then, he grabbed a medkit from the Cave and a go-bag from his room, barely catching the lunch Alfred pushed on him on his way out the door.

I’m running away to cali he texted Steph as he went. you in?

wish i could boo she replied a moment later. already promised cass a girls weekend.

Oh well. A solo trip wouldn't kill him. It wasn't like he had a good reason for going, anyway. It was running away, pure and simple. He had no illusions about his bad behavior.

His phone ding again. And again. And again. By the time he got to the airport, Steph had flooded his phone with photos.

Sunsets.

Sleepy cats.

Rams running into punching bags.

The Teen Titan's latest publicity photos.

A particular close-up of Superboy, grinning at the screen with his arms folded, his biceps and forearms doing things for Tim's imagination...

He caught himself staring and hastily scrolled by. Drunkenly mention a crush one time!

the TT are in SanFran, rite? you should check 'em out. Steph followed up when she saw his read receipt.

fuck no was his gut-punch response.

you need friends

what are you then?

OTHER friends. The not B-affiliated friends

Tim left her on read and got on the plane rather than defend himself.

The only thing waiting for him in San Francisco was board meetings and breakout discussions. Uncomfortable shoes and mediocre coffee, all set in unfamiliar surroundings. He kept his back to any windows facing westward so as not to glimpse the rising new construction tower in the distance. His self-enforced deprivation was a suitable punishment for his obsessive need to be right.

During his morning meetings, Duke sent him a selfie from the downtown cafe across from the Gotham library, looking relaxed and appropriately caffeinated. Tim saved the photo but didn't respond.

He only relented when the financial controller quietly suggested a lunch break, her face showing exhaustion. Grabbing another cup of coffee, he stepped outside into the lawned picnic of the Wayne Enterprises property to drink in a bit of sunshine and remind himself how to be human.

Just over the horizon line of the trees surrounding the park loomed the shadow of construction---a large tower in the shape of a T. The city of San Francisco had recently approved its construction. If all went according to plan, the teen Titans would be taking up residence in their new base of operations by the end of the year. The progress was much heralded in the media, especially on the West Coast.

In an odd blend of contempt and longing that he didn't want to inspect too closely, Tim couldn't help but indulge in compulsive curiosity about a group of heroes his age. Metahumans and skilled teens not raised in the shadow of the Bat. How different would they be? How would their styles line up? Had someone considered what kind of work they would be doing?

It was really just as well that he kept a safe distance. Tim could no more keep his mind off a case than Dick could keep his nose out of someone else's business. Who knows what he'd let slip if he stepped foot in there? All the bats and birds had enough excitement, what with Bruce tangling with the League. No need to add to the pressure of their lives being found out by a group of teenagers.

Unprompted, his knees wobbled under him.

Without any input from him, Tim's center of gravity shifted sideways. Bracing himself was instinctual; the first month of his training had consisted of nothing but Bruce teaching him how to roll, shift, and rebalance so that he always knew where his body was.

It was useless to him now. Grounding techniques meant little when the ground itself rolled and trembled.

Tim's thoughts split, compartmentalizing in a time of unprepared stress. Safety first and always--he could do nothing if he hurt himself out of dumb reaction. He dropped to his hands and knees before he could fall, stabilizing himself.

No doorways; that was an urban legend. Tables were safer to hide under. His mental space unfurled with a map of Wayne Enterprises West, drawing a red line to the outdoor picnic area, careful to avoid gas and power lines.

He wasn't alone. It was the lunch hour, and more than a few employees had taken the good weather to eat outdoors. Deliberately, he redrew the path on his mental map to include reaching anyone he could. The plan that would save as many lives with as little risk as possible. That was how Bruce had taught them to think over the years. And it was the mentality that had saved Tim from his more destructive tendencies, over and over.

Dispassionate facts rolled on under all his thought, like a ticker tape set to doom-scrolling: there was no such thing as earthquake weather.

He crawled along his proposed path, stopping first to grab a shaking young intern by the elbow and haul him along. Two more from the pathway leading off campus were herded in; he waved them down and shoved all three under a nearby picnic table.

This is what being a sheepdog felt like, he thought with hysterical amusement.

An earthquake was the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault line. The release of energy when two tectonic plates pushed against each other.

Wayne Enterprises West had been engineered for safety first and foremost, and Tim had faith the building would hold. But even the strongest convictions could be shaken when you saw a sixty-story skyscraper dance like a car-lot air puppet overhead.

He couldn't do anything about the building. Nothing about the I-beams or the foundation, or the architecture. So he kept grabbing people and getting them out of the way of falling trees, glass, and bricks. When he could, he grouped folks together so they could look after one another.

Twenty seconds passed, stretching themselves out into hours.

The fastest wave, and therefore the first to arrive, was called the P wave. The P wave alternately compressed and expanded material in the same direction it is traveling.

The ground ripped and rippled under his hands and knees as if tearing apart at the seams. Tim could do no more and hunkered down under the closest picnic table, protecting his neck and head. To keep calm, he counted his breathing and forced the instinctual flood of fear at bay. Fear was nothing but an indicator of danger, he told himself repeatedly.

The earliest recorded earthquake in California was experienced in 1769 by the exploring expedition of Gaspar de Portola.

And just like that, the ground eased under his body, calmed and settled. Tim held his breath and counted to five, suspiciously convinced they weren't through the worst of it. The ground stayed still.

Slowly, he climbed to his feet.

Thirty-seven seconds, his watch told him. Too prolonged. Too intense. Had to at least have broken 7.0 on the Richter scale. Disaster-level, at least a thousand likely fatalities.

The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 resulted in the deaths of three thousand people.

"Find the safety officer and follow the evac plan," Tim told the others in the area, using his Robin voice to squash any argument and get them moving. The campus staff had to know the evac plan; quarterly drills were a requirement at all WE-operated buildings. Thomas Wayne had been fierce about it, his medical knowledge applied over a business environment, and Bruce had only doubled down on his father's priorities over the years.

The street outside the WE campus was in chaos--cracked foundations made buildings unstable, and utility lines had become compromised by the quake. A building had fallen sideways, blocking road access. There was a faint trace of leaking natural gas somewhere nearby. Glass littered about from busted-out windows, and the cracked and rippled asphalt made walking precarious. Active power lines were twisted and bared into the open, ready to become deathtraps. A busted water main spewed across the sidewalk, soaking muddy the ashy ground.

Into it all, people pooled out into the open, careful and nervous and angry and afraid. Some looked for ways out of their dicey surroundings, while others called out for their loved ones and neighbors. Pets---cats, dogs, the occasional ferret or bird or snake---lent their unique brand of chaos to the mix as their owners tried to chase them down.

Over them all, hovering like an ill-gotten phantom, was the constant threat of a second wave. Earthquakes were rarely singular events.

Tim was out of uniform and standing in broad daylight. Street-level, with no communicator. He tried his cell phone--no service. The towers were likely demolished or overloaded. He was running on two cups of coffee and no food, and about three hours of sleep he'd caught on the plane.

No time for second-guessing or obfuscation. There was work to be done, and Tim couldn't stand to ignore what he could solve.

He returned to his assigned WE car and popped the trunk with a quick jerk. It felt like a blessing to see the fully-stocked black medkit kit, complete with familiar bright yellow labels, laid out precisely the same. He didn't have to rifle through it to know what supplies he had to work with, down to the gauze pad count and the entire roll of duct tape. Thanks to Thomas Wayne's memory, there was no such thing as being over-prepared for a medical emergency in their family.

Bruce kept a whole wall of medkits stocked in the Cave. It was a habit that seemed ridiculous until the minute it was a lifesaver. Dick would grab a new one each month. Stephanie had one sitting under her apartment bed. Damian had snuck one into his locker at Gotham Academy. Hell, even Jason had a few stashed around his safehouses.

Tim cast off his suit jacket and tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Grabbing the medkit and the roadside emergency bag, he slung them over his shoulder and dug out a pair of utility gloves. The emergency radio from the kit got strapped across his chest and dialed into the emergency services channels. He scarfed down a dry energy bar, stuffed four more in his pants pocket, and packed in as many water bottles as the kit's spare room could hold.

Then, he went to work.

Destruction always had a human cost and came with very human calculations. Disaster response would be working to reinforce the structures first, to keep anything else from falling and causing more damage. Medics would be stretched few and far between, most of them concentrating on evacuation centers and checkpoints to reduce confusion.

The goal of emergency first-aid wasn't to repair a person to perfect health. It was to make the best of a bad situation; get them mobile so they could evacuate, or get them stabilized so medical services could get to them. Nothing else mattered.

His first year in the Robin suit had been a crash course in field medicine, preparing in detail for any injury he was at risk of encountering in the Gotham night. Bruce hadn't even considered letting him into a uniform until he could prove he knew what he was doing when it came to blood and pain. Tim had learned, years later, that Dick and Jason hadn't been put through nearly the same intensity on the subject, though every member of the Horde, from Tim on, had. Even Cass, who would rather just ignore an injury if she could.

But where Tim had a file of previous injuries, Dick had a volume. Jason had two. Never let it be said Bruce didn't learn from his mistakes.

"Help! Somebody help! He's under the truck!"

Tim ran towards the shouting. He wasn't the only one. By the time he arrived, a group of deli workers had shoved a jack under a truck bed that pinned a middle-aged man in a green utility suit to the road. He screamed as they pulled him free.

"Let me through," Tim ordered, using his bats and birds voice. They didn't argue, splitting away to let him pass and crouch beside the man. Tracking back the blood on the man's pants and his frantic, broken pleas, the wound quickly identified itself.

A femoral shaft break—Tim immediately recognized the massive bruises and swelling above the man's knee and the limp way he held his entire right side. While he worked, the ticker tape running through his mind changed: Femoral shaft fractures in young people are frequently due to some type of high-energy collision.

He had found Stephanie bleeding badly from a wicked bite from Killer Croc, directly on her thigh. The villain had been nowhere in sight, though the sound of brawling further down the tunnel had warned him of still lurking danger. Tim had held her hand and indulged her loud cursing as he disinfected the wound and laid in field care: brace it, prep it, make sure his work could stand transporting, get ready to move.

"That son of a bitch!" she had screamed while Tim worked, surrounded by the muck and grime of the sewer. "Where'd he go? I'm gonna knock his teeth out one by one!"

"B is chasing him down--hold still!"

Stephanie had screamed at him instead.

Tim stabilized the man's femur break and told the deli workers what he did, making them repeat back the medical jargon so they could recite it to the first responders when they arrived. By the time he finished, his sensitive ears had picked up further cries for help down the street. He grabbed his black medical back and stood up.

"Keep him still, and get the medics to come to him," he ordered, changing his gloves.

Following the cries, Tim found a pair of teenagers braced against the crumpled remains of a brick wall. One was fine, frantically fluttering around her friend and yelling for help. The other girl was slumped against the wall, curled in on herself while she cradled her head.

"What happened?" he asked as he descended.

"She hit her head when she fell!" the uninjured one replied, frantic.

The ticker tape now read out: Never return to play or vigorous activity while signs or symptoms of a concussion are present.

"Dude, I'm fine, lay off," Jason had yelled, his words slurring together as Tim had shown a flashlight into his eyes. The recently set ablaze and smoldering warehouse cast hot white-orange light over everything, making it hard to see details. Tim had to pay close attention to see the uneven dilation in Jason's pupils.

"Guh, just gimme back my helmet and let me up—hey!" Jason had screeched when Tim seamlessly picked up the Red Hood helmet, cracked over the forehead where it had stopped shrapnel from embedding itself into a stupid, unsuspecting face, and chucked it into the Gotham Harbor. It sank instantly.

"What were you saying, you jackass?" Tim had asked in a falsely pleasant voice.

He patched the bleeding head wound while he ran the injured teen through a basic TBI protocol. Determining that she was movable, he made her friend recite his diagnosis until he was sure she could say it in her sleep. Then, he had her download a radio app, using his more advanced phone as a hotspot when her service proved overloaded.

All the emergency channels broadcast medical triage centers and first-responder information, including directions to the nearest hospital.

"Go now—stay away from power lines and crumbled walls. Keep a nose out for any gas smells," he ordered. Even without his mask and uniform, his tone left no room for argument. The uninjured girl slung her friend's arm around her shoulder and headed for safety. He changed his gloves and moved on.

Further down the alleyway, he found an older man in a tattered coat with long, tangled hair curled behind a dumpster, clutching his eye.

"Hello," Tim said in Bruce's calmest voice, kneeling down to put them level. "Is it alright if I take a look?"

"I can't see," the man whimpered from behind his hands.

"I'm right in front of you. I'm reaching out," Tim replied, narrating their surroundings as he urged the man's hands away from his bleeding eye.

The ticker tape kept running: Do not attempt to treat an eye injury yourself.

Tim had caught Damian with the Cave with a half-scrambled first-aid kit and a guilty expression. The hand pressed over his eye had been slick with blood.

"Go away, Drake."

Tim had stared with sharp intent and said nothing. Then he had gone about his business, pushing down the knee-jerk guilt of being idle with the simple justification that Damian clearly didn't want help.

The logic trick hadn't worked. After about five minutes of listening to Damian struggle with the bandages and antiseptic, Tim had simply circled the Cave and returned to his side. Taking the medical gauze in hand, he told the youngest Wayne to sit down.

Damian hadn't argued with him, which itself was a massive indication of just how much pain he was in.

"What happened?" he finally asked into the stilted silence between them. It looked like an animal, in his opinion. Likely one of the many strays Damian couldn't walk away from, no matter how much they lashed out in their fear and pain.

"Training accident," was all the younger boy had said. Tim let it go in silence and set a neat line of stitches into his brow.

Tim washed the dust and debris from the man's eye and applied an antiseptic to the cuts across his forehead, brow, and nose. Then, he stayed with his patient until emergency responders arrived, listening to the man vent his fright. He took the opportunity to change his gloves. In the chaos of getting the man ready for transport, Tim slipped away and continued searching.

"Help! Over here!"

A young professional with good hair and in a smart dark suit and knee-length skirt was curled up under an awning. Her ankle was rolled from when she had fallen out of her bright yellow high-heels. Her exposed knees were bloody and grimy from the concrete. She rambled as Tim crouched down beside her.

"I–I–I thought it was just a sprain, you know? It wasn't that bad, but–but it got worse the more I tried walking, you know? And–and–and–and I can't," she hyperventilated.

"You're alright," he reassured. "Breath with me. Big breaths, breathe with me, and we'll get you sorted out, okay?"

A stressed ligament she likely tore when she put additional strain on it. A sprained ankle is one of the most frequent lower limb injuries and is very common when dancing, the ticker tape helpfully reminded him.

Cass rolled her ankle not while on patrol or training but while she was in her dance studio.

That had been a horrible time since not a single one of the Horde could take the injury seriously. Including Cass. The number of times she had fallen and reinjured herself was outrageous. What was a sprained ankle in all of the dozens of scars she carried?

So she kept dancing. Something odd overtook her face, though. Just around the edges, like the color slowly bleeding out of a cheap bolt of cloth. It took nearly two days before the realization hit Tim—he was seeing pain on her face.

He pounced on her from around a corner. He didn't surprise her, but his antics amused her enough to get his way.

"You need to stay off of it," he said, determined to wrap the ice pack around her ankle.

Cass said nothing, her expression rigid with stubbornness.

Tim sat back, his frustration making him fatigued. Why the hell was everyone in this family determined to ignore themselves?

"Have we shown you Zorro yet?" he finally asked.

She blinked. Cocked her head and shook it, causing her bangs to sweep across her face.

"Yeah, let's do that," he decided. She wouldn't move if she was enraptured, he figured.

By the time he had the businesswoman's ankle wrapped, her coworker had found them—a man in a ruined suit and ash in his short-cropped hair. Tim stepped back as they hugged each other, messy and frantic. Their emotional reunion seemed to bleed into the air, turning up the situation's fear, horror, and relief.

Tim deliberately turned that dial back down, resetting himself.

"Make sure she keeps her weight off her foot," he ordered, snapping to get the pairs' attention. The man in the ruined suit nodded with terrified determination and slung his coworker's arm over his shoulder.

Tim made them download the radio app and listed off his instructors. Then, he changed gloves and kept moving.

Not five yards away was a young jogger clutching her shoulder and sobbing quietly. The skin of her shoulder distended in a gruesome, familiar way.

Once a shoulder dislocates, the joint might be prone to repeat dislocations.

Dick's shoulder was a sensitive beast, prone to dislocation if he overextended himself the slightest amount after so many years of stress and training. That didn't mean Tim had the trick of resetting it down to an art.

Dick babbled when he was in pain; it was a trait he had never lost. While working on his shoulder, Tim had learned about his newest case, his most recent break-up, his thoughts on asparagus, what he planned on getting Bruce for his birthday, and his plans for the next week.

"You gotta hold still," he had told Dick between barely concealed panicked glances. "You may be an old hat at this, but I'm not."

"You're doing great, Timbo. Hey, how's the college hunt going?"

Tim had been sorely tempted to shove a roll of bandages in his motor mouth. His palms were clammy and achy once he reset Dick's shoulder, but the one-armed hug his older brother gave him made it worth it.

Flagging down the business pair before they had gotten far, Tim sent the jogger with them. Always in groups, if possible—they could look after each other until they were on safer ground.

Tim instinctively reached out for his next patient—and found a quiet street instead. He had worked his way into a residential neighborhood, quiet and vacant for being in the middle of the day. Works, errands, or school had drained the place of inhabitants before the earthquake. The silence was nearly chilling after so much activity.

He changed gloves and checked his radio. Emergency professionals' rapid-fire, calm and level-headed calls came through loud and clear. The assurance of action soothed the frazzled edges of his fright.

When he cut the feed, the penetrating sound of silence washed over him. Distant sirens. The rushing flow of burst water lines. The beat-beat of a helicopter on the horizon. Not unlike Gotham, really…

Then his hearing descended under the expected noise, picking up new notes. Just under the semi-collapsed building to his far left was the faint shrill of someone screaming. Tim picked up his medical bag and ran.

The building hung on by threads and hope. The entire street-facing wall had fallen in, making the remaining roof unstable and stressing the foundation enough to crack and fracture. Framing boards splintered, wrenched water and waste pipes sogged the building, and the floor groaned ominously when Tim gingerly set his weight upon it.

He held his breath and thanked Dick and Duke for every balance lesson and rock-climbing info dump ever imparted. Stepping through the twisted, broken wooden floor, he strained for his next patient.

"Hello! Where are you?" He called.

"Oh God, down here! Please, it's so dark…."

Tim stared down into the darkness of the broken floor, snapped into a splintered maw into a deep, dark basement. The ticker tape running through his mind was blank. It didn't know what advice to offer here.

Duke had come back from the library whistling to himself, the clear pitch echoing off the Batcave's high walls. His backpack was slung over his shoulder, and he cradled a half-drunk coffee in his hand. There were scorch marks on his clothes and a scabbed-over scratch on his forearm.

Tim had sat up in the wide chair of the Cave computer and watched him with wiry eyes. Guilt bit deep at him and tightened up his throat.

"You're bleeding," he finally managed.

Duke glanced at his arm with casual disregard. "Nah—it's already healing. But hey, you know where the painkillers are? I've got a raging headache thanks to that manuscript. S' creepy stuff, dude."

Tim silently retrieved a simple bottle of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet and handed it over.

"You need me to look at it, anyway?"

Duke munched down two red pills with a swill of coffee. "We're good, I promise."

And that, Tim realized, was the danger of Duke. He very well may mean it when he said things like that.

"Hold on!" Tim called, climbing down the unstable structure. Hand over foot, slowly, oh so slowly, moving in inches until the ground felt stable enough under him. Cracking on the flashlight packed in with the medical supplies, he searched the dark corners of the fallen-in basement.

"Where are you?" he called.

"Here!" came a weeping reply. He tracked it back to an elderly woman tucked into the closest wall.

She was in rough shape. The lower half of her housecoat was soaked in blood. Her arms gave out when she tried to push herself up, and she collapsed again with a cry.

"Don't move! I'll come to you," Tim ordered, doing exactly that.

Her leg had shattered, he could tell immediately. The blood was from where the bone had pierced the skin. A more significant concern still was the clear signs of a spinal injury. Numbness, slack muscles, and a lack of pain response. Not good. Getting her out of here…

He firmly set the fear aside, reaching for his radio to broadcast the address and a medical alert. Hopefully, there was an emergency crew in the area who could get them. He'd just have to stabilize her until then. He could do it—Bruce's training wouldn't allow him to admit defeat.

"I'm Tim. What's your name?" he asked, wanting to keep her coherent while he worked.

"M-Margaret."

"Hi, Margret. You're doing great—I'm gonna get you out of here, okay?"

Margaret laughed in ragged disbelief, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. "My little grandchildren lie better than you do."

The building above them cracked ominously. Tim worked as fast as he could, trying to get Margret patched enough to evacuate her. Blood ran slick over his gloves, and the narrow circle of his flashlight held his entire focus, leaving only a sliver of congeniality to keep her going with him.

Louder, refusing to be ignored, the building groaned, loud and intolerant of its crumbling situation. His patient breathed out oaths of fear and panic, trying to hold still against her fright as he worked.

"You're doing great," he told her, his mouth running on autopilot. Just a little more—if he could stop the bleeding, he could consider moving her. "Just hang on with me a little bit longer."

Crack! went the house support beams.

Shit! went Tim. Margaret screamed as the floor caved in on them.

A roar. Then, nothing.

He opened his eyes gradually. As if the slightest movement would change the situation.

He wasn't squashed. Neither of them were…nervous, he looked up.

A massive neon green glowing dome encircling him and his patient. The house debris fell around them, sliding off the dome like powder over a mountain. The heavy building material, furniture, and rubble sloped away from them, well away from harm.

Tim didn't have time to feel relief, his hands working on habit through the surprise. His gloved hands were slick with blood, and the basic pressure cuff he'd slapped on Margaret told him her heart was still pumping, regardless of her circumstances. Which meant she was still at risk of bleeding out.

A shadow hovered over him. Tim looked up just fast enough to confirm the undeniable figure of Green Lantern. That shade really was eye-searing. That spot of attention was all he could afford; when Margaret gasped in pain, he returned his gaze to her.

"I've almost got the bleeding staunched, but it's a bad break, and she's got a possible spinal injury. She needs a hospital," he called up, having no time to be surprised by the super's arrival.

A beat of silence.

"Keep her stable and don't panic," Green Lantern called down rather than argue with him.

"Stellar advice," Tim called back, bitterly sarcastic from the scare and the adrenaline. "Got anything else you wanna tell me?"

If he had a reply, it was nonverbal, and Tim didn't bother looking away from his work to see it. Instead, a neon green light began to seep up through the ground. It first cradled his patient, conforming to her to keep her in the same position she had fallen in. Then, the light extended under his knees. The rocky surface vanished, and inextricably, they floated upward. The ground felt no different under his knees, and he couldn't take his eyes off his patient's abdomen to see how high they rose.

Tim wanted to stop and look around. Find out what it was like to fly unaided by grapple or glider.

That was nothing but a fleeting want, and he had bigger concerns. He focused on his hands, the information ticking across his inner eye, and kept Margaret from bleeding out. Compartmentalized his emotions the way years of Robin had trained him to.

Probably not healthy, but highly effective.

He didn't let his head come up until he was sure Margaret was in safe hands. Watching her get wheeled into the open doors of the local ER, he stripped off his gloves and tossed them into his black medical bag. Thankfully, it had made the impromptu flight with him, close enough to his side to be encompassed by the green light.

The hospital's parking lot had become a triage center. Initially chaotic, Tim looked closer to see the method in the madness. The center had a standard operating procedure, and the staff adhered well. It was just a system that didn't allow for a lot of improved leeway.

"Hey, kid." Tim turned.

Green Lantern's vividness extended into his very aura. Even dressed in civilian clothes, doused in the red and blue flashes of a dozen emergency vehicles, his acid green stare pinned Tim in place behind an expression of bemused consideration. The man stood with confidence and assurity—honestly, he stood a lot like Bruce did when he needed to project absolute control.

Tim instinctively mirrored that posture, meeting Green Lantern's gaze head-on. The super chuffed at him.

"You keep a level head down there. Good job. You got some training?"

"I'm an Eagle Scout," Tim lied in a heartbeat.

"Is that so? I always wanted to be a scout, growing up. What's your name?"

"Jason." It wasn't even hard at this point.

"Good to know you, Jason. You know who I am?"

"I've picked up enough context clues to figure it out," he replied, glancing significantly at Green Lantern's emerald ring.

"Heh. Alright, kid. You did good—now get to higher ground. We've got it from here."

The trite and banal sentiment instantly set Tim's teeth on edge. Dismissed not because he was a civilian but because he was young.

Tim had never dealt well with being dismissed. Green Lantern started to take flight; he reached out and snagged his wrist.

"Wait!" he said before he thought better of it. "Let me come with you."

Bruce was going to kill him.

The super's feet resettled on the ground as he stared in disbelief. "You serious?"

"I can help," Tim reiterated. "Look, I'm not an EMT or anything, but I'm a decent field medic, and you said it yourself--- I'm a level head. I'm calm and available, which is more than you can say for anyone else right now. If you're going back out there, you're going to run into people who need help. Let me tag along, okay?"

Let me be helpful, he almost pleaded. Don’t just dismiss me out of hand.

Green Lantern looked him up and down. Tim tried not to feel peeled back and inspected. His dress shirt was stained with soot, ash, and blood. His suit pants were ruined, as were his shoes. He needed a shower and a nap, and a cup of coffee. He wanted to call Alfred and Dick and Bruce and…well, all of his family to tell them he was safe.

He raised his chin and waited.

"Alright," Green Lantern decided. "But let's be clear: if I tell you to do something, you do it. No questions, no backtalk. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," Tim replied. He was used to that rule; Bruce had been much the same in their first years together. Memories of Jason's tragedy made him reticent to trust Tim's instincts.

That had been a long, brutal slog, fraught with the kind of emotional tangles Tim had never been good at parsing. So he had kept his eyes forward, refused to budge, and worked. Sometime later, he had resurfaced enough to notice Bruce actually looking at him, not through him, searching for the outline of Jason or Dick.

After that, they had been alright.

This, though, was different. This was shutting off all the unimportant things like pride and shame and embarrassment. This was doing what he could, as fast and as well as he could.

This, Tim knew how to do.

But Bruce was definitely going to kill him.

That didn't stop the rush of excitement and fulfillment that shot through his veins when they helped evacuate a family trapped under a collapsed roof. Or tracked back a lost cyclist, tossed into a storm drain by the tremors. Or reunited a young boy with his frantic father.

"Come on," Green Lantern said once the grateful father finally let them go. "We need to find something to eat."

Through each rescue, the super trusted Tim to know his skill level and act accordingly. He didn't second-guess or demand an explanation. That was a heady drug for Tim, who continuously threw himself forward to prove himself to the man.

There was a trap in that ambition. It became challenging to keep himself back and not show off the extent of his abilities. How many aptitudes could he pass off before he started raising red flags in Green Lantern's mind?

It was a tantalizing game to play. So while Tim had energy bars in his medical bag, he instead followed Green Lantern down the street, following the smell of fried food.

A street vendor had set up shop on a corner intersection. His cart was still running, hooked up to a little generator. He was slinging coffee and hot dogs for free, and he was instantly Tim's favorite person.

The vendor looked somewhat awestruck by Green Lantern's patronage. The super did nothing more than nod to the man and the small crowd before asking for his own meal. Tim got two hotdogs dunked in mustard and honey, and the largest black coffee the vendor would give him.

"What's that?" he asked around a mouthful of food, pointing to the layers of duct tape wrapped around the vendor's knee.

"Ah, slammed it during the quake. Slapped some tape on it to keep it braced. I can go a little longer, yet."

Tim grabbed his medical bag, juggling it around his coffee as he scarfed down the last hot dog bite. "Sit down," he ordered, fully expecting to be obeyed. "You don't do that to your knee, man. It's only gonna get worse."

Sitting the nicest vendor in the world down on the curl, Tim popped open his black medkit. Yellow-labeled supplies flipped by as he dove straight for the splints and bandages he needed.

Busy as he was, he didn't see Green Lantern's eyes widen.

John prided himself on a level head in an emergency. He'd done it all with galactic war zones, League-level tactical missions, and emergency response with stoic will. It had earned him a steely reputation and a clear eye in catastrophe.

Now, though, his concentration was in shreds. One thought dominated his mind, banished all but his most basic instincts, and threw his body into automatic responses to cope with his startling disbelief.

Holy shit, Batman had a kid.

It was ludicrous. One day around their unbearably bad-tempered teammate was enough to paint an undeniable picture of his personal life: the Gotham Knight was single, living alone, and without connections that endangered familial or romantic concerns. Probably skulked off to some hole in the ground every dawn and ignored all his neighbors and coworkers during daylight hours. He was a loner, and loners were, by definition, never good pack mates. John was thoroughly convinced that Batman only stuck it out with the League because his controlling tendencies wouldn't allow them to run without his supervision.

Yet, taking Jason in... John's brain picked out hint after hint, contributing to a massive puzzle he couldn't help piecing together. The kid's Gothamite accent, so out of place on the West coast. It made for a familiar pairing with the steady, icy glare when he didn't get his way. The level head and skilled hands in a calamitous emergency. The method of control and assumption of responsibility the kid shouldered like it was nothing. The quiet, obsessive tracking of dangers and tasks.

The medkit bag with those obnoxious yellow labels, laid out just so.

The puzzle formed into a picture, and John stared at Batman in a young man's body. A young man who was exhausted, filthy, overworked, stressed beyond measure, and yet still determined to help.

John's first instinct was to grab the kid by the scruff like a disobedient pup, drag him to the first rescue tent he could find, and tie him to something sturdy and unmovable without remorse. He honestly wouldn't be able to justify doing anything else to Batman. Explaining to his most obstinate and paranoid teammate how he let Jason work himself into injury or mistake didn't bear thinking about, since John wouldn't survive the conversation.

Wait—take a step back. He couldn't be sure. There was no proof. It wouldn't be the first time John had taken a handful of context clues and extrapolated a false idea. Katma Tui had said it best: his best traits of observance, will, and focus turned to his worst impulses of judgment and suspicion. He jumped to conclusions, and those conclusions weren't always right.

So he watched Jason, trying to decide what to do. The kid kept glancing towards the horizon when he thought no one was watching him. John had initially thought he was simply keeping an eye out for air support, but now he realized—the half-built Teen Titans Tower. The kid kept looking towards the Tower.

Huh–really?

The Teen Titans was an uneasy experiment that John wasn't entirely on board with. Teenagers were unpredictable at the best of times. Add in superpowers, high negative-stress situations, and a lack of constant supervision; he felt they were just being set up for failure. But with Jason to balance them out…

Was this what Batman's month of radio silence had been about? There was no version of his neurotic teammate John could imagine that would have taken well to the idea of letting his kid out of his sight without some serious work. And interpersonal issues had a way of derailing even the best-bonded teams.

As it was, John had a hard time picturing that concept. Even if the kid was more congenial than his father. Did he get it from his mother? Oh God—was Batman married? Divorced? Widowed? The possibilities boggled John's mind.

Damn, but he was going to make sure Jason didn't get himself killed out here.

And then he'd gloat about it. For years. Already he could picture Batman's outraged expression at having John know something so personal about him. The thought alone made him chuckle during the dark day. The only thing funnier than an offended Dark Knight was a speechless Flash.

Once the hot dog vendor's knee was better braced and the medical bag had been closed, Jason stood up. In an absent-minded gesture, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, his thumb flicking across the screen. Then he sighed, glared at the little device, and sunk it into his medical bag.

"Cell towers still down?" John guessed.

"Yeah."

"Alright. May as well find something productive to do in the meantime. Ready to move on?"

Jason flashed him a renewed grin. "Lead the way."

When helping a group of utility workers clear the street of fallen trees tangled in live power lines, he caught Jason waving at a group of kids on the curb. They had their phones out, obviously recording. One of the group waved back before the utility lead shooed them off with a stern word.

"Really, kid?" John asked, dragging large branches off the street, using his ring to give himself a pair of workman gloves.

"They'll probably post this stuff online the minute they can," Jason explained, embarrassed but not ashamed. "I'm hoping one of these gets back to my--my family. My dad knows I'm in San Fran. I don't want him freaking out, thinking I'm dead or something."

I could just call him for you, John almost offered, thinking of his League comm in his pocket.

Instinct, and not a little self-preservation, stopped him. If he let on that he had figured out just who Jason's dad was, they'd never hear another word from Batman. The jackass had disappeared for a month and caused havoc within the Justice League in his wake. This, though, would be unforgivable. Bad enough letting on he had a kid, but to have the boy’s name and face known, even by one team member? The controlling lunatic just wouldn't accept it.

He had no wish to watch Superman and Wonder Woman set aside all competency and rationality as they slowly lost their damn minds over the stubborn bastard. Once was more than enough, thanks.

While his mind had wandered, he hadn't noticed Jason straying. Branches clear, the kid was already halfway down the street, nosing around in the debris the utility workers hadn't managed to clear yet. The power lines above him were live, and the cracked water hydrant further up the street left water pooling on the pavement.

"Yo–hey!" he flew after the kid, the ring enhancing his speed. "Didn't he teach you the buddy system? In Eagle Scouts, I mean."

"I can manage."

"It's not about managing; it's about staying with your team."

Jason blinked at him, looking dubious. "Okay, but like—you don't need to underestimate me. I'm doing pretty well, right? Don't think you have to look after me or something."

Yes, I do.

"That's not...kid," John tried again. Damnit, Batman---of course, his kid would be a clone of his worst habits. "Take it from a man who knows---doing well or no, your team's there to help you."

Jason didn't seem to have much filter from his thoughts to his mouth. Or at least not when he was exhausted. "I don't need help."

Well, that just put to pasture any hesitancy he had in his little bat-shaped theory. "Everyone needs help. Even me. I left mine in the dark once. I made a massive mistake. One I thought would ruin me."

The kid still looked jaded. The furious need to give more context was how he ended up half-lecturing, half-storytelling. While shutting the hydrant off, moving building debris, and directing civilians moving by, he told Jason about his arrest by the Manhunters for the faked genocide on Ajuris 4.

"And I just accepted it, you know—I faced it alone like I'd been taught. Didn't tell the rest of my team what was going to happen or why I had given myself up. And you know what those stubborn brats did? They came after me. They found out the truth and helped me see that going alone hurt more than it helped. You get me?"

Jason shrugged, outwardly looking nonchalant. His poker face was nearly as good as some of John's old army buddies.

Yet, he could see consideration building behind those intelligent eyes.

"Just think about it, kid. Good teammates are worth their weight in gold."

And maybe share that advice with your old man.

Jason's expression did something John couldn't quite follow, shutting down and breaking open in a rapid back and forth. Processing and trying to work his way through a thousand thoughts at once. Was this what Batman looked like under the cowl?

Then, with a sharp cut-off, Jason's eyes went considerate as he gazed out over the landscape. He wrinkled his nose and pointed eastward.

"What's that?"

Letting the distraction work, John blinked and followed the line of his finger.

"... that's a pay phone, kid," he replied, feeling older than dirt.

"Oh. Can I use it?"

"You got any change?"

Jason looked startled at the idea. John rolled his eyes and turned over his shoulder.

"Yo! Anyone got a couple of quarters?"

They got a handful of coins from the utility workers, most of them bemused to scrounge for change for the famous Green Lantern. He leaned against the payphone while Jason manipulated the number pad. His palm masked the exact number he dialed.

"Tell your dad I said hi," John couldn't help but say. Maybe a little dangerous, but he'd earned it.

Jason made a face at him, then pressed the receiver to his ear. After a moment, he shook his head and hung it up. "No luck—landlines are still down, too."

"Hmm."

John considered Jason long enough for the kid to start fidgeting under the scrutiny, feeling the edges of his stern expression soften. "Come on," he said, thumbing over his shoulder. "Let's see if we can get you a bigger platform."

Bruce scrolled through his phone again in an ineffectual distraction, borderline frantic for any information.

Tim hadn't hit his panic button or broadcast any distress, he reminded himself. Was that because he was fine? Or because he was dead?

He was fine--he was just trying to keep his head down and allocate resources for those who needed them.

He was dead--that's why he hasn't tried to get a message out. His son was dead under a collapsed building, and there was nothing Bruce could do about it.

Over and over, his brain oscillated between those points. His fingers continued to scroll, looking for any data he could incorporate.

"Sir," Alfred said, pulling his attention up. "I think you should see this."

It was a local interview, recorded at ground level. Green Lantern, his face stern and unyielding even in civilian clothes, was answering questions in a rote voice from a bedraggled reporter. Clearly, he wanted to be anywhere but in front of a microphone.

Behind him, leaning against a brick wall just at the edge of the frame, was Tim. He looked like a building had fallen on him, and his business clothes were stained with all sorts of things. But he was upright and seemed coherent enough. He was just in the back of the frame, scarfing down some wrapped sandwich. In between questions that Green Lantern stiffly fielded, he waved at the camera. He almost looked cheerful.

Bruce watched the feed for a long time. Then, he sighed.

"Where are we now?"

"Just over Arizona, sir," Alfred replied with a glance out the window. The Wayne private jet ripped across open space as fast as he could push them.

"Tell the pilot we'll detour to LA. I'm sure we shouldn't clog up San Francisco airspace any more than it already is."

Alfred generously did not point out that he had said the same thing mere hours ago when Bruce was frantic for any news out of San Francisco. He had been desperate for any confirmation of Tim's safety and completely willing to be the obnoxious billionaire over it.

Decision made, Bruce folded himself up, setting his face in his hands to hide his flooding relief. And to just hide.

"Sir, I believe you're now at a point where I can make this suggestion."

He looked up to Alfred delicately holding out his cell phone. Dick's contact was already ringing through. He wordlessly took the device and pressed it against his ear, waiting for his eldest to pick up.

"Any news?" Dick asked before anything else.

"Find the local news feed," Bruce replied. He waited as Dick did so.

"Wow—well, never let it be said he's not creative. I'm gonna record this. He knows that's Green Lantern, right?"

"I can't imagine he doesn't."

Dick hummed, the affectionate sound rattling through the tiny speaker. "How many layers of your skin have you peeled off over this?"

Bruce didn't rise to the bait on that one. "Can you let the others know?"

"Yeah. Also—hi, I love you. Take a deep breath. He's smart, and he's safe. That's not nothing."

"So I shouldn't ground him for the next five years?"

"That barely worked on me—there's no hope for the rest of 'em."

Dick, wondrous child that he was, stayed on the phone with Bruce for a full hour. By the time they disconnected, he didn't feel quite so broken open. Like he was on safer, more stable ground.

He dialed up his executive assistant on the West Coast with instructions to contact the San Francisco local with support. Now that he'd established his location, Tim would know to stick close to a communication center. Resources were what he needed, not incessant worry.

The logic calmed Bruce in the air. Leaning against a sleek rental car in the long-term parking lot of LAX, that same logic scraped at his raw nerves. He wanted his son, not rationality.

He needed a distraction. Once they had set foot on West Coast soil, he sent Alfred to rest in the air-conditioned hotel, unsure how long he would be waiting. Surrounded by nothing but vacant cars and kiosks, he was utterly alone.

Pulling out his League communicator, he set a single wireless earphone in and muted his side of the line. Then, he tapped into the Monitor Room's secure channel. The brilliant LA golden hour exploded overhead as he waited for the Watchtower to recognize him and establish a connection.

"And I don't understand the appeal of reading a work the author had no investment in," Wonder Woman said as Bruce's device tapped into her feed.

"Not all art needs to plumb the depth of the human condition," Superman argued good-naturedly. "I had a college professor argue that there's no such thing as high-brow and low-brow art. It's about the emotions you use to connect with other people."

"You attended college?" she asked, surprise coloring her voice.

"Yeah—my parents insisted. I fought them on it for a bit—thought they would need me at home, more. But the time apart did us all good."

Bruce said nothing as he eavesdropped, though he shuddered at the causal way Superman slung around personal information like it couldn't be used against him later.

With her wounded shoulder still healing, Wonder Woman had been assigned endless rotations of monitor duty. Bruce knew Superman kept up a conversation with her while he was on Earth.

Sometimes he tuned into it. Listening to them talk felt like coming up on a shoreline after days at sea.

“Do so many people find an emotional connection in The Da Vinci Code? Honestly?" Wonder Woman demanded. Bruce wanted to know who thought that had been a good recommendation.

"How did you get a copy of The Da Vinci Code?" Superman asked, agog.

"Flash loaned it to me."

Of course, Bruce thought, spiteful.

"Of course," Superman said, chagrined. "That's a bad example. I was thinking more about Conan Doyle. J'onn's been reading Sherlock Holmes—there's a complicated cause of wonderful literature from authorial disdain. Maybe ask if you can borrow his copy once he's done."

"I might. Is Conan Doyle a favorite of yours?"

"I always preferred Kurt Vonnegut. He saw something in humanity I'd like to find. I try to read Mother Night once every couple of years. It’s a satire about becoming who you pretended to be.”

That surprised Bruce. Mother Night wasn’t just a satire, it was a cautionary tale of the consequences of heroism and propaganda. The tale of a man who killed thousands because he was told it would save millions. And the tragedy of believing the results justified the means. He wondered how much Superman saw of himself in those pages.

"Is that a good one to start with?" Wonder Woman asked.

“God no—start with Breakfast of Champions. I'll lend you my copy next time I'm at the Watchtower.

A bus rolled out of the distant horizon line, huffing and puffing on old, tired wheels. Bruce watched it come, and felt like a weight dropped off his shoulders.

"You got a favorite, Batman?" Superman said.

He didn't start at the callout—he was better trained than that. He did pause, considering the device.

Across the lot, Tim disembarked from the bus, his shoulders slumped and looking thoroughly exhausted. Bruce leaned through the open car window and tapped the horn once, drawing Tim's attention. With a rare smile, he gambled over, moving like a sluggish vapor.

"Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None.," Bruce contributed, watching his son approach.

"I haven't read that one yet, either," Wonder Woman said, interested.

"Ten murders on a deserted island. The perfect puzzle box mystery. I'm not surprised. Did you guess the ending ahead of time?" Superman replied. His voice was rich with humor.

Bruce considered that tone, decided the warm excitement under his skin was from Tim's arrival, and cut the line. Tucking the communicator away, he let himself relax for the first time since news of the earthquake. His son was alive—he allowed himself to feel grateful for that.

Tim stopped his sluggish crawl by the car. "Hey, Bruce."

Bruce didn't let him get any further. Reaching out, he wrapped his arms around Tim's shoulders and dragged him in for a hug, regardless of the squawk it earned him.

He and Tim didn't hug often. Physicality simply wasn't a language either of them felt comfortable communicating in daily. Not like Dick, or Stephanie, or even Jason, who would hug, clasp hands, or simply touch at the slightest given opportunity. It wasn't a connection they craved—words and idea trading was more their stock.

But Bruce didn't have any words right now. Simply the sheer relief of holding his kid alive and in one piece.

Tim's slim body shuddered and twitched. He pressed his face into Bruce's chest, clutched at his waist, and exhaled in a long, steady gust of exhaustion. Thin shoulders slumped as his body cast off the tension and adrenaline he'd no doubt been carting around since leaving Gotham.

Together, they leaned against the car in silence for a long time. When Bruce felt like letting go, the sun had begun to set over the Pacific water.

Then, as abruptly as the hug had begun, Tim stepped back and scrubbed at his face. "I lost my sunglasses in San Francisco," he said as if the last ten minutes hadn't happened. "The glare is killing me."

"You can use mine," Bruce offered, finding steadiness in providing.

"Thanks. I want a burger."

"Alright."

"And a milkshake."

"That's doable."

"With about this much this much bourbon in it," Tim went on, holding his thumb and index finger as wide apart as they'd stretch.

"How about a single shot?" Bruce compromised.

"Fine. And I want to talk about the Teen Titans."

Bruce didn't have it in him to be surprised. Tim always knew what he wanted in the end. It really had been just a matter of time. "Alright. We can do that, too."

At least it wasn't sandworms this time.

John groaned and sat up. The cliff he had been thrown into by the giant, sentient cell phone tower crumbled around him. The hole he'd made upon impact was pretty damn impressive if he said so himself. He pushed dust and rubble off his face when a shadow fell over him.

"Don't say it," he growled as Batman's looming presence set itself on the ledge beside him, grappling hook in hand. There was a beat of silence.

Then, a black glove reached out to help him up. "You got a good shot in," Batman gruffly praised. John blinked and took the offered hand, too surprised and delighted to question it.

When John was on his feet, Batman dropped his hand and disappeared down the gorge towards the ongoing fight, with zipline buzzing. That was the most comradery they had ever expressed towards one another.

He considered asking about Jason. He had some investment in the kid, after all. Disaster zones forged steel-strong binds. But he discarded the idea the next moment.

They weren't there yet.

Despite that, John felt lighter, more at ease with the surly shadowman. He could see the man better now. All the abrasive, obsessive precautions and monitoring he did wasn't because he didn't trust them. He was used to looking after a family, not a teammate. John sometimes had the same problem regarding the younger members of the Green Lantern Corp. It was a challenge to see them as capable when he’d also witnessed how badly they misstepped in their early years.

He was markedly more tolerant of the behavior now that he understood it. Shaking out his limbs and sending rock dust everywhere, John took to the air and rejoined the fight with his teammates.

Chapter Text

Bruce was exhausted, sorely in need of a full meal, and the humid heat of the jungle had him running the risk of overheating in his armor. Which was par for the course for a Justice League mission. He should be grateful, really. In their last outing, he had finished the day actively bleeding from a leg wound that had taken him out of commission for weeks.

They hadn’t found what they had come for, but that wasn’t a surprise either. Lex Luthor knew better than to lay a single layer of deception and expect it to work. Not when Superman watched his every move.

Experience had taught Bruce that while Superman’s sense of suspicion was well-founded, it also needed guidance. Left alone, the man’s instincts would only take him so far, fumbling for his foe’s intentions in the dark. He didn’t have a cynical bone in his body and struggled to imagine what that was like.

Bruce saw well in the dark. Submerged in it, he mapped the path leading to an idea. Luthor had been dumping financial resources and land management into the rainforest surrounding them, with no clear way to recoup that cost. There had to be something here he valued more than that money, and for a man like Luthor, very little mattered more than money.

The slicked oil of a megalomaniac’s thought process coalesced into a corner of Bruce’s mind, ruminating.

They were deep enough in the jungle that the noises of civilization had faded, forgotten. Around them, the greenery grew lush and dense. In their private little clearing, a river cut gentle through a rough and rocky outcrop, falling down in convenient rivets. The woven net of isolation locked in tight, blocking out malicious pressures that would have compounded upon that small corner of Bruce’s mind occupied by Luthor’s contrivances. Without those outward and immediate pressures, his thoughts turned wayward, searching for stimulation.

In a slip of control, his eyes fell sideways towards the rocky river falls.

Under a nearby flow, Superman stood with his hands cupped, collecting water in his large palms. The mere act of water-gathering lit his expression with unfettered enjoyment, like this simple experience was the highlight of his day. When he had enough, he’d scrub hardily at his face, hands, and neck with evident relief from the humidity. The excess fell in slow droplets down to darken the collar of his uniform.

Wonder Woman had taken a more direct approach—she leaned forward, her hands braced against the wall with her head down, her hair falling forward to reveal the back of her neck. Her tiara had been ripped free of her thick mane and tangled in her fingertips, clanging against the rock. Angled just so, she let a constant slip of water run down her scalp and neck, groaning in appreciation. She seemed unselfconscious of the picture she created, bent over and emphatically vocalizing her pleasure.

Bruce returned his gaze to the forest line, refusing to consider that line of thought further.

It was just the three of them. Superman’s determination to root out Luther’s schemes had not allowed for much in the way of prep time or forewarning. He’d never let his kids get away with such shoddy planning.

But the pair of them…

Bruce had always struggled with compromise. Nearly a dozen souls in Wayne Manor could attest to that. Outside of his family, he didn’t come when called, and he didn’t rearrange his priorities for someone else’s concerns. He didn’t have peers.

Yet, here he was, in the middle of a jungle with two people who, if not his peers, were quickly becoming something more complicated.

Slipping away would mean plunging into the darkness of the dense forest, becoming vulnerable in an unknown environment. So instead, he demanded something useful of himself. He activated his comm link and tapped into the Watchtower feeds—only to immediately wince as blaring, high-tempo music filled his ear.

Muting his commlink, he pressed a finger against the base of his ear through the cowl as tinnitus bled through his skull. Under the ringing was the squeak of surprise as Flash hurriedly turned down his music. He had taken over monitoring duty from Hawkgirl at the tail end of this sudden sojourn into the rainforest, marking their progress so as not to be entirely without backup.

Biting back his sigh, Bruce unmuted his commlink.

“Sorry! Thought you were done for the night,” Flash cried, his voice clear through the comm link’s upgraded speakers.

“We need pick up at this location. Let Green Lantern know,” he said. Flash was quick enough to squeeze in a “Yougotisorryagainaboutthemusic!” before he cut the connection.

It irked him that he recognized the pop song, having heard Stephanie blare it on repeat while she and Cass sparred in the Cave last week. It had planted an earworm in Tim, who had hummed it while cleaning the dinner dishes with Damian later that night. His youngest had sung it under his breath during lulls in patrol for the last week.

In the middle of an isolated rainforest, Bruce had thought he’d escaped the catchy tune, but apparently not. It would be running on repeat through his head for the rest of the night.

“We’re out in twenty,” he called, still considering the tree line. The crunch of vegetation signaled Superman pulling back from the rocks. He set a heavy palm on Bruce’s armored shoulder as he came up beside him.

“Alright. I’ll take one more parameter sweep. Wonder Woman?”

“I’ll watch for Green Lantern,” she replied, shaking water out of her hair and replacing her tiara. With a quick nod to them both, she took to the air, disappearing through the treetops.

Superman gave him one last look, half bemused and half expectant, before heading for the tree line.

Leaving him alone in the small clearing. It took a long moment for Bruce to realize the implications. Alone, he had privacy, and a solid level of protection, with them both on scouting duty. Their way of urging him to take a moment for himself.

Behind him, the river called in a peaceful call, countering the jungle’s oppressive humidity.

The instincts that screamed at him to stand alone, to not endanger himself in this unknown and possibly hostile, couldn’t override the rooted certainty that he was safe. That this was alright, just for the brief moment they had granted him to recoup himself.

Bruce gave into impulse, ducking low and throwing back his cowl, embracing the chilled, misty allure of the rockface. In the interest of speediness, he emulated Wonder Woman and angled his head down under a strong flow. The riverfall felt like a fantastic relief, and he quickly scrubbed a handful of water through his hair in vicious satisfaction. Blissfully cool against his overheated skin, the water dripped down his nose and chin in rivets.

Superman whistled on his way back to the clearing, giving Bruce plenty of time to set himself to rights. By the time his teammate had returned, his cowl was back in place, and his demeanor reset. Wonder Woman set herself down a minute or two later, looking elegantly windswept.

“Flash thinks you’re mad at him,” Superman said, cradling his ear with a nonplus expression. “He’s,” the man’s countenance shifted as he struggled for politeness in the face of their youngest teammate’s manic energy, “concerned about it.”

Bruce had the morbid realization that this kind of anxious need for direct assurance was new to him, even with seven children gained. He had learned the hard way that all of his children craved his approval, but they equally demanded their independence and competence recognized by him. Not a single one of them wanted his praise half as much as they wanted his respect. It was their combining family trait and the one thing they could be consistently relied upon to bond over.

It left him with precious little practical knowledge for Flash’s particular brand of jovial people-pleaserness.

“I’ll deal with that later,” he decided. “Do we have an ETA on Green Lantern?”

“I have the Javelin ten minutes out,” Wonder Woman said. “Any thoughts on what to do in the meantime?”

Her look was nearly suggestive, gleeful that she caused Superman’s cheeks to go faintly pink–-her friendship with Hawkgirl was starting to show in new and exciting ways.

“Tell me more about Luther,” Bruce replied, cutting into the increasingly bold looks Superman and Wonder Woman gave each other. “Tell me why a man like this would put resources into land he can’t develop.”

Superman started to speak in a professional manner, detailing his thoughts and research on Metropolis’ resident evil genius. His words were emotional, but his tone stayed level and his thoughts direct. Hints about himself that he didn’t realize he was broadcasting.

In the general way Bruce’s thoughts worked, a part of his brain narrowed down what he knew of the super. College-educated and familiar enough with Metropolis’ municipality to confidently dissect it. Well-spoken and used to presenting an argument. Analytical in his own way, relying more on instinct than concrete logic.

Reporter or civil servant. Maybe a librarian, Bruce concluded without much conscious thought.

He wasn’t trying to discover Superman’s identity; at least not actively. Tying a civilian identity to the man put a level of responsibility into Bruce’s mind that he wasn’t prepared to acknowledge. That didn’t stop his mind from working out a good puzzle.

By the time Green Lantern appeared with the Javelin, calling them for the pick-up, Superman had enough circumstance, coincidence, and confidence to spark Bruce’s attention.

“Give me a few days,” he said as they boarded. “I’ll see what I can find.”

He expected the protestations and demurs that were part and parcel of Superman’s personality. He didn’t have the mental room to deal with them and thus planned to ignore them, but he expected their emergence, nonetheless. Patterns often held, after all.

Instead, Superman smiled at him. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”

Bruce had been wrong; the water hadn’t helped at all—he was still overly warm and flushed under the suit.

Energy buzzed under Wally’s skin.

After twelve hours in the Watchtower, he wanted nothing more than to run. To burn off the manic, near unbearable energy stored after the antsy responsibility of good teammateship. He loved his place in the League—he did—and he didn’t want them to be disappointed in him. He liked that he was dependable in their eyes, even at his flakiest.

But there were days when he needed to step back. The pressure of their expectations weighed him down, becoming lead boots and a suffocating grip. They just knew so much. Wally didn’t think he was stupid—far from it, and he had the degrees and practical applications to prove it.

Maybe it was more that his teammates made him feel young in a way he hadn’t considered before meeting them. He couldn’t even tell which of them was the closest to him in age; every single member of the Justice League felt like an old soul, worn down by trauma and weariness in a way that Flash hesitated to connect with. That nervousness made him feel extra clumsy and baby-ish under their eyes.

It was good to be home on those days. Central City was his memorized turf and his well-worn territory. He wasn’t, like, Batman levels of intense about it, and really he didn’t want to be. He welcomed any and all of his teammates, eager to show off and impress an audience. It was simply that Central City was his home. He was slowly learning more about it each day—something he hadn’t thought to do when he was younger and just starting out with this whole Flash thing.

Like the Quik-Stop gas station, which sat just outside the nebulous path that was his running route through town. Its isolated location and rundown, unmonitored nature made it an easy target for daylight robberies. Its security consisted of a single, misangled camera that captured half the cashier counter and most of the floor and a worn wooden bat behind the register.

It hadn’t occurred to him to add the place to his route until one of those robberies had turned violent—he had barely intervened in time, stumbling over himself to save the counter clerk from a bullet. He still had nightmares about misstepping, about being a second too late.

After that, Wally kept an eye on what happened in the Quik-Stop parking lot as he ran by.

This day, just past dawn, the lot had a slight sprinkling of commuters and truckers fueling up for the stretch down the highway that would funnel into Gotham, where gas prices were nearly triple. Nothing unusual there.

The motorcycle parked in front of the ethanol-free station almost made him stop if only to admire her like she deserved. The machine was a thing of beauty; a dark titanium frame that would have made for a nimble ride, a sleek V4 engine that promised power and grace, and the kind of care in her maintenance that spoke of a loving rider. Wally, who would never have a need to climb on such a bike, couldn’t stop himself from salivating in a startling burst of sweet masculinity.

The phantom reminder of Green Lantern’s unimpressed glare kept Wally’s feet moving.

On his second lap by the station, he cast an eye out for the eye-candy motorcycle again, hoping for a last glimpse of the beauty before her rider came to remount her and leave only the memory of her in Wally’s thoughts. An aspirational, entirely whimsical want that made him happy in its silliness—he had been trying to convey that idea to Hawkgirl for weeks now.

The bike no longer stood beside the pump, beautifully waiting to be ridden. Instead, it was a crumpled heap of metal under the wheels of an obviously unmarked van that had hopped the curb of the gas station. The engine ran unattended, and the doors were thrown up as if their occupants had evac’ed in a hurry.

His body shifted before his suspicions could fully form into awareness, instincts honed from a year with the Justice League pushing him onward. With a great leap, he ripped into the convenience store, bringing a gale in his wake.

With speed soaking into his limbs and alight in his senses, the moment became a tableau. His brain processed the moment in a series of concepts too fast to explain. Core certainties fell between heartbeats: three men in cheap clown masks, armed and angry as they stormed the counter. One clerk reaching for the heavy baseball bat under the desk, another diving for the cover of the back room. Five customers in total, three already rushing for the back exit and away from the threat. One crouched down low by the hot dog station. The last one was up against the counter, caught in the middle of checking out when the robbers entered.

A year ago, Wally would have showboated hard, gabbing and smack-talking his way through the fight, reveling in his power and strength against an outclassed opponent. It was an impulse he could never quite shake, a colliding mix of high confidence and low esteem broiling within him and spewing out in waves upon his enemies, great and small.

A year working with the League—specifically Green Lantern’s refusal to let any recklessness slide uncommented on—had changed Wally’s approach to such moments. This wasn’t so much a fight as it was an effort at containment. It wasn’t just an opportunity to show off. Or at least not only an opportunity to show off.

Reaching out, he snagged the first robber’s shirt, swinging the man around in a semicircle to dance by the customer at the counter. He grabbed the second one’s belt just as the masked clown turned toward him, reaching for a customer to use as a shield. Leaning just enough to catch the third one’s stomach on his shoulder, he swept through like a whirlwind, collecting debris in its wake.

“Going somewhere, fellas?” he asked cheerfully, unable to completely silence his mouth in the face of such an obvious chance. The one on his shoulder had enough time to holler something unflattering before Wally unceremoniously chunked the three of them into the walk-in refrigerator. Slapping the door closed, he bumped the fridge’s setting to a bearable temperature and engaged the lock. Nice, neat, and secure.

He liked to think his teammates would be proud of him.

“Everyone alright?” he called, stepping back into the convenience store’s front entrance. One clerk was already calling in the robbery, baseball bat gripped in her fist like a hammer as she spoke tersely with the dispatcher. The second one was busy vomiting into a trash can outside the open door.

The customers who got out early were across the street, skirting the wreckage and taking photos of everything from the flames to Wally. He grinned and flashed a peace sign at the closest one. Then he counted them, frowning slightly. Coulda sworn there were more…

From beside the hot dog stand, he heard a soothing voice command with utter assurance: “Hey, it’s gonna be okay, alright? Head between your knees now, just like that. Just breathe.”

Wally zipped over, uncovering the customer recently pinned against the counter now crouched down, rubbing soothing circles into the shoulders of a young man curled up and busy hyperventilating. The calmer one turned his face up when he heard Wally approaching, but his hands and mouth kept going, a soothing touch mixed with that confident low voice that was impossible to ignore.

He was indisputably the most gorgeous person Wally had ever met. Tall, slender, and long-limbed, he held a deep crouch without the usual signs of discomfort, hinting at a level of flexibility Wally envied and idolized. His tanned skin was set off by a robin’s egg shirt, the neck cut low enough to show off a loose charm necklace looped around his throat twice over. His dark jeans were an incredible fit, hugging his waist, thighs, and calves in a keen example of tailoring. Practical gray motorcycle boots, buckles scuffed and durable leather worn soft, protected his ankles and toes from damage.

His face was open and bright, his features nearly delicate if not for his vivid blue eyes, like the sheen shot through well-forged steel. Dark hair swept and curled around his face and shoulders in an intoxicating sweep; Wally wondered what it would feel like to run his fingers through it. That thought led to other thoughts, like half-formed images flashing over his mind’s eye in a rapid run of interest.

Wally had to look twice. Maybe three times. Definitely, he’d stop after four.

Bemused, the man quirked a smile at him. “Did you hear me?” he asked, patient.

Wally blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

Bemusement morphed into flat-out amusement. “I said: can you grab him water from the fridge behind you? I’ll pay for it before I leave.”

“Uh, yeah.” Wally reached behind him and plucked out the first bottle of water he saw, handing it over.

“Thanks,” the gorgeous man said, cracking the top and urging it into the hyperventilating young man’s hand. “That’s it, small sips. You’re having a panic attack. Take deep breaths and know I’m right here. This will pass. What’s your name?”

“M-Matt.”

“Hi Matt, I’m Dick. This is,” those vivid blue eyes tilted upward, turning sly and playful. “Well, I guess this is a superhero. Bet you never met one of those before, right?”

Was that stab in Wally’s heart wounded pride or devastating infatuation? Hard to tell…

“That’s Flash,” Matt said into his knees, his grip on the water bottle tight enough to crinkle the hard plastic. “How do you not know that?”

“Right?” Wally cried with good cheer, crouching down to their level. “I thought everyone in Central City knew their favorite super.”

Dick’s grin slipped out, and it did absolute wonders for him, in Wally’s totally biased opinion. “I’m a Gothamite,” he admitted with a ruthful look as he urged Matt to take another sip of water. “I have certain obligations when it comes to my favorite super.”

For a hot second, Wally wondered what Batman’s stance on this situation would be. After all, he’d made it clear he didn’t want his League teammates within ten miles of Gotham. Did that radius apply to individual Gothamites, as well? Or did it stop outside city limits? He couldn’t be sure when it came to the city’s dark knight, the personification of possessive devotion. If it was just the buildings and the streets, the parks and the back alleys, would Batsy care as much? It was the people he protected, though. Did they stop being Gothamites outside Gotham?

Wally had worked himself into a total philosophical conundrum of a spiraling circle. Best he stopped now before he ran that thought into dangerous places. Hitting the mental breaks, he shook that existential thought off into the ether.

Matt’s breath was slow to level out as he peeked out of the folds of his arms at Dick. “I got an uncle in Gotham.”

“Really? Do you ever get to visit?”

“No,” the kid replied with a snort of derision aimed at the ground. “No one wants to visit Gotham.”

Wally privately agreed, even as Dick laughed and encouraged Matt to take another sip of water. And then another. “Can’t fault you there, Matt. It’s a hard place to love, sometimes.”

Sirens in the distance made Wally straighten, alert.

“Hang tight,” he told the pair before running out the door for a quick round-up.

The two gas station employees had propped the back door open and were sharing a cigarette in the doorway, commiserating on their crappy luck between smoke hits. Of the three customers who had managed to escape upon Wally’s arrival, one had simply gotten into his car and left. Another had retreated to the bus station across the street, while the third sat in her car with the door open, scrolling on her phone while she waited for emergency response.

Wally’s attention soaked into helping sort out the immediate aftermath, using himself as a buffer between the suspicious-faced police officers, the recalcitrant witnesses who had no inclination to talk with them, and even the stony-faced bandits, once they were ushered out of the walk-in refrigerator. Acting as the intermediary, protector, and power check in these situations had become an important and utterly unexpected part of his position. One Wally valued the most, from all his work as Flash.

Which was to say that, once the scene had cleared and he got Matt into a medic’s care, Wally stopped, taking a moment to absorb the sweet relief of success building in him. There was nothing quite like the high of being helpful, trusted, wanted. A dangerous high if he let it get out of control. Wally knew himself well enough to understand how easily he could be led with the promise of companionship and approval.

After all, he’d gone all in on the League within a day. It had been sheer good luck that they’d turned out to be worthy of his instant loyalty; he’d made mistakes before when it had come to judgments of character.

A disappointed sigh caught in his ear like a spike. Turning in the emptying parking lot, he saw Dick crouched by the twisted frame of the sleek motorcycle that had originally cotton Wally’s attention. The unmarked van had been backed up, revealing the full extent of the damage in brutal detail. Forget rideable; with the wheels bent and the engine looking precarious, it didn’t even look salvageable.

A black visored helmet dangled from the man’s hand, idly hitting his knee as he swung it on his fingertips. Suddenly the motorcycle boots made more sense…

“Oh wow,” Wally muttered, zipping to his side. “That sucks, man. You hate to see it.”

“You’re telling me,” Dick muttered. Resigned, he pulled his phone from his back pocket and snapped pictures. “And I’d just gotten it out of storage.”

Suddenly he stopped, covered his eyes with one hand, and rubbed with a vicious kind of pressure like he was trying to push a different reality into his brain. His shoulders shuddered in warning.

“Wow, man. Come on, come sit down,” Wally urged, concerned. Dick had been the customer at the counter, he recalled. The one closest to the bandits, pressed up against the glass case directly in their line of sight on entry.

And instead of freaking out about that, he’d spend the next hour helping a stranger. Wally winced with new-found concern laced with guilt over not noticing earlier.

He took Dick’s elbow, urging him onto the curb outside the gas station door. The employees, still lingering out back smoking and talking, gave them only a cursory glance. Safely off his feet, Wally was confident enough to leave the guy alone long enough to snag another water bottle out of the fridge, some beef jerky, a family-size bag of barbeque chips, and a packet of chocolate cookies. In a last-second reminder, he also grabbed a package of tissues.

“Here,” he said, setting down his selection by the man’s hip. “Give yourself a minute, okay?”

With a soft laugh, Dick dropped his hand from his eyes and immediately went for the cookies. So Wally unself-conciously chomped into the jerky stick. The water bottle’s top cracked under a twist of pressure, and they passed it back and forth in companionable silence.

Once Dick’s eyes had lost their redness and his composure returned, he smiled at Wally. It was like the sun coming out after a month of rain and gloom. “Thanks. Didn’t realize how hard that was going to hit me.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” Wally replied, glad his mask would hide how red his face suddenly felt. He set his hands behind him on the pavement and leaned back, showing off his arms and shoulders. “I mean, it’s not every day you find yourself in such devastatingly handsome company, am I right?”

He didn’t entirely know if he was defusing Dick’s tension or just shamelessly flirting. Probably a little of both, if he was being honest with himself.

“Need to talk it out?” he prompted. “Or are you one of those strong, silent types?”

Dick burst out laughing hard enough that he had to hide his face behind his hands. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, strangled on his mirth. “I’m sorry—those are just the last two traits I could be accused of.”

Wally grinned with good humor, so it took a moment for his words to sink in.

“You think so?” he asked, more surprised than anything. In that surprise, his mouth got a little away from him. “Cause, I gotta be honest, hot stuff; you’re looking plenty strong from here.”

He slammed his teeth together the moment his mouth checked in with his brain filter. Oh, he really shouldn’t have said that. Hawkgirl was going to kill him. Green Lantern was going to kill him. Batman was going to incinerate him.

Superman was going to look at him with such disappointment it would make the other three feel like a mercy.

Dick gaped at him in astonished glee, curling a loose fist over his mouth that did nothing to hide his flattered expression. A small, damnably cute giggle slipped through his fingers; it was different from his self-deprecating laugh, which had frankly hurt to hear. This one was charmed and charming in return.

“Gotta say, you’re not too bad yourself,” he replied, the cheerful dare making his voice bright.

Wally’s body sharpened, then softened in quick succession, bringing all sorts of fun sensations to the forefront. He leaned further back, flexing his torso while he did it; those vivid steel eyes danced, overjoyed. When Dick tilted his head, openly inviting leering as he showed off the line of his throat and chest, it would have been a travesty not to take him up on it.

“Oh yeah? Thanks, man. You know, I work out when I can.”

“It shows. Gotta be ready to jump in front of the next damsel in distress.”

Wally leaned in, bumping their shoulders in gentle comradery. “Hey now-–you were amazing in there. You know that, right? Seriously, I’ve seen every reaction imaginable; do you know how many people I save try to punch me just out of reflex?”

Dick’s snort sounded more like commiseration than disbelief. Wally took that as a good sign and pushed just a bit more. “I mean it, though. You were freaking awesome back there. I’d love to hear you talk me through any of my bad days.”

In a delicate shift that Wally couldn’t quite track, Dick’s expression went from playful to curious. There was a subtle guardedness to his body language, as if sensing a probing point. Something familiar in that shift hit Wally’s instincts like a bullet, though for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why.

“You have bad days?” Dick asked with an empathetic voice and reckless eyes that made Wally want to tell him every half-formed thought that tumbled through his head.

“I do, yeah,” he admitted with a softness that surprised him. Instead of feeling ashamed by it, he felt giddy. A secret kept alive between them.

Dick’s mouth wavered. Opened and closed as he considered a tender, wordless choice. Eventually, he decided. “Me, too. What do you do about them?”

Wally shrugged. And then he smiled the only way he knew how to: open and honest. “I hear talking about them helps.”

Regrets built up on Dick’s shoulders like stones.

He regretted whatever thought process had let him reconcile working for Bludhaven’s corrupt police force, telling himself he could fix it from the inside out. That long, drawn-out mistake had left a vicious scar over his heart he hadn’t figured out how to move on from. In fact, it had festered into the kind of wound that left him lethargic. The kind that left him aimless for days. The kind that made him ignore his phone.

The kind that blended into a dangerous cocktail of shame and guilt and anxiety, perfectly concocted to convince him that ignoring his family was for the best.

He regretted the last few months that floated past after his resignation that had cut him adrift in his personal life. Missed calls and unanswered texts; from his siblings, from Alfred, from Barbara. Even from Bruce, in his rare, awkward moments of concerned connection. That remorse building in Dick did nothing to motivate him to pick up his phone after so long. The more he ruminated on the lost time, the more it grew insurmountable.

He regretted waking up feeling like he couldn’t breathe and rushing out of Bludhaven with only his wallet and half a charge on his phone battery. Claustrophobia had clawed at him, urging him to run, run, urn. He hadn’t any idea where to go—just the rush of escaping his responsibilities for a while.

He regretted not taking his electric motorcycle on the road with him. If he had, he wouldn’t have needed to stop in the damn gas station, and his poor baby wouldn’t be in pieces scattered across the concrete.

Despite all that, he couldn’t really regret flirting with Flash. The Flash. Who, frankly, looked damn good in red and gold. The speedster’s initial flirtations and the looks of honest appreciation that lingered on Dick’s body lit a fire in his chest that had been dormant for a good while. He hadn’t indulged in this kind of easy teasing in years and had forgotten the flattering confidence he got from it. That it made him feel good.

When Dick felt good, he started asking dangerous questions, because if there was one thing that ran in the family, it was self-destruction.

“Me, too. What do you do about them?” he asked.

When Flash smiled, he made it look like the easiest thing in the world to do. Dick knew, down to his bones, that wasn’t true, but that grin made him second-guess himself, just for a moment.

“I hear talking about it helps.”

The simple advice sent Dick’s into a rolling mess of emotions, spanning the spectrum from shame to joy to the simple pleasure of being seen. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d expressed that sentiment to his family—and yet had absolutely failed to follow it here. That guilt was a massive weight on him, stalling his attempt at course correction. And with every passing day, time stretched, and the weight grew. It was an impossible hole to crawl out of the longer he left it to grow.

With Flash’s offer, given without any of the messy strings that established relationships brought, Dick found words for the regrets in his head.

“I quit my job,” he admitted, his voice shakier than he wanted. “Didn’t give notice–just left. And I haven’t talked to most of my family in over a month.”

The lightning sigils on that bright red helm flickered in the sun as the super tilted his head, thoughtful. “Because you don’t want to?”

Million dollar question right there. Dick winced, confronted with the cut-and-dry of it all. “No, it’s not—I love my family. They’re everything to me. I just… can’t talk to them right now.”

“That’s gotta be rough,” Flash replied. Food demolished, he leaned back to rest on his elbow, torso tilted towards Dick. Those mile-long legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles. It was such a casual, normal recline, and so at odds with the professional persona, that any intimidation or awe that could have come from sitting beside the Flash was utterly demolished.

“I have to imagine, though,” he continued. “If they matter that much to you, you gotta matter to them in turn, right?”

Dick hummed in an attempt at nonchalance rather than admit Flash may be onto something. It earned him a friendly bump against his arm from a red-clad shoulder and a charming smile.

“Right?”

“Just because you have a point doesn’t mean I have to admit it.”

“Yeah,” his charming smile melted into an impertinent grin. “I’m right.”

That kind of cockiness shouldn’t be a turn-on. Dick bit at the tip of his finger to keep his smile, and resulting blush, in check. And maybe as a bit of a power move. The way the focus of those masked eyes honed in on his mouth, and the way that grin fell into an open-mouth gap, was good revenge.

“I know I should call them,” Dick admitted, cutting off the moment before it could be awkward. Or worse, acted upon. “But getting your head and heart on the same page isn’t easy sometimes.”

“No arguments there,” Flash replied after a beat to regain his footing in the face of Dick’s provocations. “I’ve never gotten the hang of that, either.”

Just like his posture, his jovial tone was so relatable that it caught Dick by complete surprise. The sheer scope of his situation hit him anew—sitting on the curb of an isolated gas station in broad daylight, chatting up a superhero for fun and pleasure.

This would never happen in Gotham. The improbability of it was too great on nights filled with chaos, violence, and unrelenting danger. The city was too gnarled and challenging to love like this, with daylight, gentle flirting, and reassuring conversation. It was a place to bleed for, not to take comfort in.

The jarring contrast, combined with a delayed shock response Dick was determined to ignore, and a flood of attraction towards Flash he’d much rather indulge in, had him entertaining dangerous thoughts. That couldn’t be that many consequences to making out with Flash in broad daylight, right? It wasn’t like he wasn’t already setting himself up for a lecture from Bruce for going radio silent the last few months. And frankly? He’d consider it worth it.

“So–how’s about this. I figure you’re not going anywhere with your bike like that,” Flash said, pointing to the twisted metal heap.

“I’ve got family in Gotham who can come get me,” Dick replied, playing with his phone.

“That’s like seven hours, one-way. How about this: I’ve got to finish my patrol—I can stretch it out to about ten minutes or so. While you wait, give your family a call. That gives you an out, just something to take the pressure off your shoulders. Just chat for a bit. Then I can give you a lift home.”

Dick blinked, stunned by the thoughtful gesture. It did absolutely nothing to douse the current of emotions routing him towards bad, wonderful ideas.

“You don’t have to do that,” he demurred, overcome by habit.

“I know—but I want to. What do you say?”

“Do I get a prize for being responsible?” he teased, unable to commit to a sincere answer.

Flash’s easy posture turned brazen in an instant. When he leaned in, Dick had to hold himself to decades of training and control not to pounce like he so desperately wanted to.

“I think we both should get one,” he agreed, close enough to be altogether too tempting.

Dick had never thought he could be motivated by a simple rewards system. This day continued to offer surprise after surprise…

“Better get going then,” he muttered, doing nothing to pull back and put space between them.

Flash’s expressive face conveyed a bold wink, even through the lens of his mask. “Back in a flash,” he said, leaning into the pun. In a gust of wind, he was gone, and there was silence in the parking lot.

For a long moment, Dick just sat there, absorbing. Then, he picked up his phone. He had promised, after all. His fingers hovered over the Horde group chat, hit by a ball of nerves. It felt too overwhelming to jump right into that thread after so long…

One step at a time.

The first person he reached out to was Alfred. It wasn’t even a contest. Phone calls were still a little outside his current mindset, so he opened his messages instead and found Alfred’s contact under a white-heart emoji; Dick didn’t like putting names in his phone since the photos were the vital part for him.

Alfred’s photo showed him seated at the head of the table during Thanksgiving, just as the meal had been winding down. Surrounded by the family, excellent food, and a good glass of merlot, he had bled relaxation and contentment. Just as Dick always thought of him.

Hi Alfred, he started, moving deliberately to avoid typos. Sorry I’ve been quiet recently. Up for lunch sometime soon? I’ve got a lot to talk to you about.

Wasn’t that the truth?

Speed wasn’t Alfred’s forte when it came to communication, so Dick didn’t expect an immediate response. Even just sending the message made the tight ball in his chest ease with relief.

On a roll, he hunted down the contact with a simple broken red-heart emoji.

Jason’s photo was from last Halloween–they’d convinced Damian to take the night off for trick-or-treating and had landed in a nearby BatBurger around midnight, exhausted and giddy from a night of determined candy-hunting. Jason had sat across from Dick, his jaw propped on his fist, munching idly on a fry as he watched costumed teenagers wander the sidewalk. His face was distracted, half-watching the costumed crowd for signs of danger.

Sending off some photos of the mangled bike, he followed it up with a question mark and prayer hands.

damn, dude. you fucked. Wtf happened?

bad day he shot back.

You good?

Dick sent back a thumbs-up emoji and a gif of the warthog from The Lion King reciting Hakuna Matata.

loser. call me when you put her back together. gotta make sure you don’t make it worse.

Dick snorted even as his shoulders slumped from nerves alleviated, and he scrolled further down his contact list until he came to the full red-heart emoji. Middle of the day, Tim was probably in a meeting or something similar, the little workaholic. The perfect time for an interruption.

His photo had been updated earlier this year, after an all-night romp through the Iceberg Lounge they’d called a stake-out to appease Bruce. In the picture, he was still dressed from a day at Wayne Enterprises in a rumpled white shirt with undone sleeves, black circles under his eyes, and a familiar distracted expression.

hi i love you drink water he sent out without preamble. It was a complete guess but an educated one. Tim didn’t do self-care.

Right above his contact, Stephanie was represented with the purple-heart emoji. Unlike everyone else, she had taken her photo herself—an extreme close-up of her face, taken on a downward angle while she bugged her eyes out and scrunched up her mouth into a comically lousy look. Dick adored it too much to change it.

He sent her a selfie, angling the frame to obscure the gas station and all identifying landmarks. Once satisfied with the photo, he shot it to Stephanie.

just met someone. how do i look?

use chapstick you windswept hooligan was her instantaneous response, followed by who got lucky enough to catch you?

Halfway through composing a smart-ass answer to Stephanie, his phone vibrated with an incoming call. The green-heart emoji flashed under a photo of Damian asleep in a sunbeam in the manor library, cuddling up on Titus’ side while Alfred the cat stretched out beside him.

With a spark of pure joy tinged with exasperation, Dick hit the answer button and held his phone to his ear. “Hey, kiddo,” he greeted. It wasn’t hard to lighten his voice; he was always thrilled when Damian decided to make first contact.

“Grayson! Drake said you texted him. Where have you been?”

Dick heard the underlying question there—why wasn’t I first?

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school right now?” he dodged easily. It wouldn’t do to feed the beast that was Damian’s possessiveness.

“Those fools are easy to deceive. Where have you been?”

Dick winced; their youngest bird wasn’t nearly as adept at hiding his hurt as he thought he was. “Sorry, little D. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Whatever. I expect you at dinner tonight. Goodbye, Grayson.” With that, he hung up as abruptly as he’d called. No offers, no invitations, just commands issued with the full expectation he’d be obeyed. The perfect blend of arrogance and confidence that characterized his parents funneled into him.

Dick loved him so much.

Scrolling up, he found Duke’s contact pinned by the yellow-heart emoji. His photo had come from a gym day the two of them shared, comparing the relative grip strength from gymnastics and rock climbing. While he had sat at the top of the uppermost rockwall, timing how fast it took Duke to scale it, Dick had seen an opportunity. Framing it right, he’d managed to capture the moment Duke had found the grip just beside his knee, his face flush and excited from success. It was one of Dicks’ favorite pictures of his siblings.

Tim’s response came while he was chewing on a message to Duke. He tapped over to it and saw a photo of a water bottle, half-emptied. In the foreground, a pale, slender hand covered in scars flipped Dick off. He saved the shot because it made him laugh. Then, he sent back a gif of Leonardo Decaprio clapping in congratulations.

Going back to Duke’s contact, he shot out a quick how are classes? thinking of picking up a few summer classes along with an emoji face wearing sunglasses. Going back to school wasn’t a horrible idea, after all. It wasn’t like he had a lot of job prospects at the moment.

Since it was a weekday afternoon, and since Duke took his education seriously, Dick didn’t expect to hear back from him immediately. The delay didn’t bother him as it might from Stephanie or Jason. The Horde’s casual disregard for decorum only came into play when Duke felt like it.

Searching out the black-heart emoji in his address book, he opened Cass’ contact. She didn’t do casual messaging that often, unused to putting herself into words. Of all his siblings, his text chain with her was the shortest, mainly consisting of song suggestions, intercut with the occasional reaction gif, and voice memos.

That had been a trick well-worth learning—Cass didn’t like using her own voice, but she craved the sound of others she cared about. Her phone was full of samples and clips of their voices. Opening up a voice memo, he hit the red record button.

“Hey you,” he said into the speaker. “Miss you. When are you in the studio next? I’ll come dance with you.”

Leaving it at that, he sent off the message. She would respond in her own time. Her contact photo was her sitting on Jason’s back as he lay face-down on a floor mat, after going 0-3 with her. She beamed up at the camera, sweaty bangs sticking to her face even as she refused to give Jason an inch of space to squirm out of her hold. Dick was a little embarrassed how much of his camera roll had been filled documenting their training session. Cass’ joy, and Jason’s resulting trips onto the mat, had been a joy to watch.

The familiar joy he craved around his family sat low under his heart, a sensation both familiar and wonderfully missed. He sat with it for a long minute, marinating in a boil of emotions he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed. Care, love, connection…all the things he thrived on when he let himself.

And then there was one. Dick scrolled up to the top of his contacts and found Bruce’s pink-heart-and-yellow-sparkle emoji. There was no photo connected with it.

He didn’t have any pictures of Bruce; he’d stopped trying for them years ago, a defeat he had made bitter peace with into adulthood. The Brucie Wayne persona was simply too tightly set in place, drawn up around Bruce like a cape and cowl the minute any lens fell on him. Not even candid shots could puncture it. Any photo of him taken inevitably lied about him.

Dick hated it. He wanted pictures of the man who raised him, not the playboy Gotham spoiled herself on. But that man refused to be captured for fear of being revealed.

Just because Dick understood the lack didn’t mean he was at peace with it. Bruce’s empty contact card was an old scab he picked at from time to time, reawakening the urge to have one—just one—set frame of the man as he honestly was.

The sound of heavy wind pulled his attention; across the parking lot, Flash’s signature red appeared across the gas station. Done with patrols, then. Impulsively, Dick raised his phone with the camera activated.

“Do you mind? My sister won’t believe me otherwise.”

Flash preened and was in front of him in an instant. Throwing himself onto the curb beside Dick, he leaned back on his hands and effected a jaunty expression. “How could I refuse, gorgeous?”

Warmth spread through Dick, comfortable and bubbly like a hit of pop rocks. Distracted, he flicked his phone’s camera into selfie mode. Flash’s propped-up arm brushed against his lower back as he leaned into the man’s side.

Snap.

“Wow,” Flash said, looking at the photo over Dick’s shoulder. “You’re one of those disgustingly photogenic people, aren’t you?”

“Right back at you, hot stuff,” he replied as he reopened Stephanie’s purple-heart contact. He shot off the image without preamble.

Her response was immediate: !!!!???!!!!! followed by a stream of curses and a demand for details. Dick cackled and closed his messages without remorse, content to make her wait for that. Gossip was the best sort of bribery when it came to Stephanie.

“All done?” he asked Flash as he put his phone away.

“Central City, safe and sound. How about you?”

“Fabulous,” he replied and meant it. Looking down at his phone again, an idea bubbled up in Dick’s mind. But first…well, he’d earned something nice for being a responsible adult.

“But I don’t have to be home right away,” he offered. When he leaned in, his chin tilted just enough; his invitation was clear.

Flash bit his lip. Then he leaned in and let Dick bite it instead.

On forty-eight hours without sleep and nursing a nasty, stitched-up cut across his ribs from Poison Ivy, Bruce’s patience was simmering like a vat of boiling oil. Spitting, hissing, and just waiting to splatter everywhere, injuries be damned. The energy under his skin bubbled uncomfortably, making his joints ache.

He should have taken this meeting virtually. Wayne Enterprise conference room was a gaudy monster of a jail cell on the best of days. His stubbornness had won out–-that, and the promise he’d made to Superman and Wonder Woman.

The board members had been salivating ever since he mentioned “Lex Luther” in a slightly considering, suspicious tone. Their imagination had taken over after that, driven by the blood-in-the-water instincts that had made them both effective and vile. He’d almost be impressed if he wasn’t so put off by their increasingly brutal brainstorming about how, exactly, they could force a look at Lexcorp’s accounts. After four hours, he knew enough to trust in their cutthroat instincts.

Lucius Fox agreed, taking Bruce’s waning attention as approval to wrap up. “Thank you, all. We’ll be sure to incorporate your suggestions going forward.”

Stretching, coughing, and the unmistakable gesture of subtle phone-checking covered everyone’s exit. Once the room had cleared, his director of operations regarded Bruce with deep eyes. “I trust there’s a point to this feeding frenzy you just kicked off.”

Bruce slouched and put on his most obnoxious expression. “Luthor is just so gauche,” he complained in an airy tone. “Can’t I just tweak his nose a bit? Haven’t I earned that, Lucius? Haven’t we all?”

Lucius wrinkled his nose and waved the jab away. “Alright, you made your point. Get out so I can work through all the floodgates you opened.”

Lips turned up, Bruce obediently let himself out, moving tenderly to favor his side. A side-check of his phone showed a message from Tim:

heard from Dick today?

Concern, and a nagging suspicion, twinged in his chest while he responded with a quick negative. Dick hadn’t chatted with him since Tim’s visit to San Francisco. Bruce didn’t push, since the last time he pushed Dick had taken it as a shove. Sometimes his eldest had to work out his thoughts before he began pouring them out onto others.

Stopping by his assistant’s desk, Bruce chatted with conference stragglers while sorting through unanswered messages and meeting minutes. Hopefully, he’d be able to slip away within the hour.

Unprompted and entirely unwelcome, his instincts pricked; he glanced up, a familiar shudder running down his neck.

Air rushed through the lobby, followed by a rushing, crashing, cackling sound he recognized, to his dawning horror. Papers were kicked up, office chairs scattered, and runs appeared in the carpet. Dread clawed up his throat even as outrage soaked into his bones and automatically straightened his spine. Had he not made his opinions about the League in Gotham clear enough?

A streak of bright red burst through the door, leaving crackled lightning and ozone in his wake.

Bruce blinked, and Flash stood in the lobby of their C-Suite offices shamelessly bedecked in his ostentatious uniform, looking far too pleased with himself. And he wasn’t alone. Bruce felt his jaw drop in utter shock to see Dick, looking overjoyed and mischievous, swept up in Flash’s arms like something out of a trashy romance cover.

“What,” he started, only cutting himself off when he caught how dark his tone sounded. Thankfully it was covered by the general noises of shock and surprise as his staff reacted to their abrupt guest.

Dick cawed as he looked around the room, his face bright and excited. He made no effort to stand on his own two feet.

“Wow—sorry everyone, everything’s fine!” he called at once, sounding entirely sincere for their unexpected arrival. Bruce’s staff members were already straightening, relief and annoyance warring over their faces; working in downtown Gotham made for nerves of steel. A few already had their phones out in a surreptitious fashion. Dick, by accident or design, was oblivious.

“You said that was your slow setting?” he asked, looking up at Flash with an expression Bruce knew all too well.

“Gotta take care of precious cargo, right?” Flash replied, enamored. They’d be trending on every relevant social platform by the end of the hour.

Bruce felt something in him clench in absolute horror—and indelible delight at the sheer audacity of his eldest. Dick picked up admirers like a penny picked up bad luck, and danced with them to any tune he wanted. He was miles out of Flash’s league, but when had low standards ever slowed Dick down?

“Dick,” Bruce called, drawing attention into himself to calm the anxious burst of nerves around the office. “What a sudden surprise.”

That got the couple’s attention. Flash looked unrepentantly smug—come to their next shared watch, Bruce was going to bawl him out at the first opportunity, teamwork be damned. Dick’s impishness was an undeniable part of his life, one he had long ago accepted, which softened any oncoming wrath. Roguish colleagues wouldn’t be so lucky.

“Hi, Bruce! I made a new friend,” Dick laughed in that coquettish way of his that meant he knew exactly what he was doing. He nudged his foot towards Bruce and commanded. “That way.”

“You got it.”

Another rush of air, and in between moments, they appeared directly in front of Bruce. The overactive speedster scraped back a sliver of Bruce’s regard with how gently, protectively he cradled Dick’s body, being sure to absorb the impact of their speed and avoid whiplash. He appeared charmed to obey Dick’s whims, amused rather than offended.

Dick impulsively kissed the Flash’s masked cheek and hopped to the ground. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Any time, gorgeous,” the Flash replied with relish. After a beat of silence, Bruce could pinpoint the moment the hero realized what he said, as his shoulders straightened and his pale skin went pink at the edges of his mask.

“Uh, sorry. Hi Mr. Wayne! It’s great to finally meet you. Kinda like meeting a celebrity or something.” He chuckled, self-conscious in the way he got when Hawkgirl played too rough with him. “Kinda intimidating, really.”

Weight settled on his shoulder as Dick dropped his arm across it, shamelessly balancing on himself against Bruce. “He’s a teddy bear, honestly. Harmless—right, B?”

“He’s right–I’m only dangerous on request,” Bruce replied with a bright smile, taking some sadistic glee in the cough and shuffle he caused Flash. It would be the only revenge he could extract from the situation’s absurdity.

“Uh, y-yeah. Yes, sir. I just wanted to get Dick home safe, but I’d best get out of here.”

Bruce cocked his head, eyes wide. Against him, he felt Dick nearly vibrating with excitement.

“So soon?” he asked, tilting his chin up in the posture that came second nature to this skin.

“Yeah—your guy’s not a fan of sharing.”

“Who?”

“He’s talking about Batman, B,” Dick supplied, winking at Flash like they were sharing a secret.

“Oh! Don’t let him chase you off. He’s nothing but a silly nuisance for the city,” Bruce purred, fully committed. Dick loved getting him into this kind of ridiculousness, and Bruce couldn’t help but indulge him in the shenanigans. He would give a lot to see his eldest happy.

“Ha! I’ll tell him you said that—or maybe not, now that I think about it,” Flash shook his head in very real fear. Then, the expression on the visible part of his face brightened. He turned to Dick: “Anyway—glad I got you home. Be safe, alright?”

Dick smiled, enchanted. “Thanks again. I mean it—you’re a lifesaver.”

That…softened Bruce’s sharp-edged humor into something close to appreciation. Dick’s happiness had always been the quickest way into his good graces. It was such a slim and sparse headspace that impulses were a little looser, a little more provocative. Before he over-thought the reaction, he leaned forward and sipped a kiss onto Flash’s cheek, opposite of the side Dick had chosen.

“Please let me know what I can do to return the favor,” he offered, wondering if Flash would ever take him up on it.

Flash was nearly as red as his costume when he darted out, likely mindful of outrunning the sun. For all his talk, Bruce figured he really didn’t want to be in Gotham after dark.

He didn’t quite know what to do with Flash. The young man’s age and antics had him marked firmly in the same realm Bruce put his kids. It was a type of energy he was familiar with, if only through exposure.

The definable and indelible difference was that he had complete faith in his kids’ skills and sensibilities (most of the time). For all their recklessness, his confidence in their training was always a stalwart balk against his anxiety over letting them out into the underworld.

Flash didn’t have that level of trust in Bruce’s mental calculations. Moreover, there was an independence and casual assurance in him that Bruce hadn’t come to terms with yet. Even Jason, for all his determination to avoid association, had Batman’s training outlined in him and that support structure built into him.

Flash had started entirely on his own and had adapted to that isolation. Trial and error on the highest stakes. The uncertainty in the equation made Bruce’s skin itch when it came to their youngest teammate. Like any good puzzle, it sat in the back of his thoughts and chipped down, a sliver at a time.

He nudged Dick towards his office, leaving the staff to sort themselves out after their unexpected guest. When the door shut with a soft click, Bruce exhaled with a deliberate release, shuffling off the foppish persona. It often left a heavy ache on his shoulders, like a weighted jacket pressing down on him.

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” he asked, tilting to look at his eldest through his lashes.

Dick laughed and collapsed onto his office couch in a graceful heap.

“You’re one to talk—don’t tell me you weren’t having fun,” he accused.

“Not the point.”

“I really was stranded,” he replied, genuine wide eyes and bashfulness. “Found myself caught up in a gas station robbery, and my poor bike paid the price. But I got to experience the real hero treatment—it’s something else to be on the other side of.”

“It loses its charm after the fourth or fifth kidnapping attempt.” He spoke from bitter experience.

Dick snorted as he reached sideways over the edge of the couch, grasping for the door to Bruce’s fridge. Popping out a mint and coconut kombucha, he twisted the cap off and downed a mouthful.

“You’ve got Superman himself on speed dial for the next one. Get your very own super treatment; I bet he’d appreciate a good thank-you kiss,” he said when he swallowed, eyebrows dancing up and down his forehead suggestively.

Urgh, his children. Leveling an exasperated look, he growled: “Restrain your imagination.”

“What—you don’t want to?”

Bruce didn’t take the bait into that particular conversation, instead curling up on the free end of the couch. Dick’s feet tapped against his ankle like he was nine years old again and determined to be a nuisance.

“What happened to your bike?” he prodded, smacking those dancing feet and dusty boots away from his costly suit. Dick’s face twisted up in expressive disdain.

“It’s in bits and pieces across a gas station in Ohio. I’ll drag Jason out there tomorrow and see what we can do.”

Concern made Bruce’s face go stony. Dick waved it off, his body language casual as he dismissed the implications as unimportant. Nothing about his movement or posture spoke of pain, and all the telltale signs of distress Bruce had learned to read from him over the years were absent.

“Need company?” he prompted to alleviate the pressure.

Dick shook his head. “I don’t plan on giving Jason a lot of warning, so he’ll be in a great mood for the first few hours. Figure I’ll spare you that. But I’d like to stay the night if that’s okay? I already promised Damian I’d have dinner with him.”

Bruce blinked, caught off-guard by the vulnerability leaking under that usually cheerful voice.

“Of course, you can,” he said, blunter than he meant to be. “Why would you even ask?”

Thankfully, they had decades between them spent learning to understand each other. Dick’s body relaxed under Bruce’s half-offended stare. Slowly, deliberately, he leaned forward. Once his face was pressed against Bruce’s shoulder, his lean body went limp. For a long moment, he just rested there, silent and introspective.

“Missed you,” he whispered.

Bruce pressed a dry, slightly awkward kiss into his hair. Something in him unwound in a kinked, knotted mess. “Missed you too, chum.”

“Look, not all fun things have to be good,” Wally defended in the face of Diana’s bemused expression. “I can read all the trashy stuff I want as long as I’m having fun.”

Below his elbow, his favorite music app interfaced with the control panel’s speakers, working through one of his more energetic playlists. He’d turned the volume down when Diana had come in, but not off. Fast, familiar beats pattered against his arm in a soft frenzy. His feet kept time even as he talked with her.

“Like The Da Vinci Code?” she asked, bemused.

“Like The Da Vinci Code,” he confirmed, shameless.

Diana hummed, more considerate of his words than he expected. He knew his tastes weren’t particularly high-brow, but his head felt crammed with thought at the best of times. Sometimes he just wanted something to distract himself that wouldn’t demand all his attention. Something that made him feel good.

His neighbor had some Danielle Steel novels she’d been trying to get rid of. Wally considered taking them off her hands; he hadn’t read a good romance in a while.

And boy, could he use the distraction. Three hours into the slowest Watchtower shift ever, and Diana had the glazed, distracted look that meant she was miles away. Her responses were repetitive, and her eyes occasionally wandered to a spot over Wally’s shoulder. The monitors, alarms, and gauges there were all quiet, the emergencies of the world contained for the day. So it was an internal disturbance that took over her attention.

He didn’t take offense—she’d had no problem dismissing him when she hit her limit with him. Since she wasn’t on duty, she could leave whenever she wanted. But, considering her demeanor, Wally suspected she wanted a distraction more than anything. That he could do.

So he talked, ambling through topics like a river through a forest. About books, about life, about the really hot dude he met in a gas station.

“So hot, Diana. So. Hot. I need you to understand this. Picture the most gorgeous human being you’ve ever seen, then make them hotter. That was this guy.”

Amusement danced in her eyes. “Are you going to see him again?”

That question gave him pause as he realized he didn’t know the answer. He had been too amazed to learn that Dick was the Dick Grayson, son of infamous and notoriously changeable billionaire Bruce Wayne, and had forgotten to grab so much as a goodbye kiss, let alone a phone number. His brain clashed, comparing the image to reality; the spoiled golden child splattered across tabloid covers to the easy-going and flirty Dick that sat on gas station curbs scarfing down beef jerky sticks. It seemed an impossible contradiction, Dick’s genuineness raised under Bruce Wayne’s frivolity and irresponsibility.

Yet it was strange…staring down Brucie Wayne should feel like meeting Brad Pitt’s business cousin. Instead, Wally felt like a rat dropped in a cage with a snake. An angry, half-starved snake.

Placed next to Dick so starkly, it was startling how easy it was to trace the places they aligned. The two were so clearly related it jolted Flash every time he thought about it. How they held themselves, how they looked when they listened, empathetic and shrewd and with their entire focus. They even flirted in the same manner—their tones of voice, identical smoldering looks, and even the damn head tilt that showed off an unfairly tempting jawline and neck.

On Dick, the whole bit came off as unpracticed, appealing for its authenticity. As if he had unconsciously picked it up from years of exposure and imitation. On Bruce, Flash had felt outclassed and intimidated, like he was being handed a budding star and told to tame it. Maybe it was something about Gotham that made people so dangerous to handle.

Diana straightened, her expression going from dazed to intent. “Batman,” she called, her voice warm. “Are you on duty tonight?”

The sulking shadow of their merry band of misfits bled into the Watchtower monitoring room, his distinct manner blocked up around him. In a complete disruption to his presence, he held a full cup of coffee in hand and a datapad tucked under his arm.

“No—I just needed a place to work. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he muttered, already shying away from them.

“Not at all–I was just considering a change of pace,” Diana stood up, stretching out her spine with languid grace. “Hawkgirl promised me a sparring session, and I want to take her up on it.”

Nodding to Wally, she stopped just long enough to touch Batman’s shoulder in both greeting and goodbye. “See you later.”

Hmmm—Wally squinted after her, considering. Diana didn’t really do casual touch. And the way she glanced over her shoulder as she left…

Gears turned in Wally’s head. In the meantime: “Hey, Bats. What’s happening?”

Batman grunted, taking up Diana’s vacated seat. Flash hurriedly set aside any thoughts of the Wayne family—he suspected the family wasn’t on Batsy’s list of favorite topics after how Bruce had spoken about him. Nuisance indeed.

“You can turn your music up,” said a gruff voice. Flash paused, stunned into a stilted silence.

“What now?”

“Your music,” Batman pointed to the console with a neglective gesture. “You can turn it up. If you want.”

“Uh,” slowly, unsure if he was walking blindly into a trap, Flash reached out and turned the dial up. His bright, cheerful, and thumping poppy music peeled out of the speakers in rapid time. “Thanks.”

Batman said nothing as he continued to nurse his coffee, staring down the Earth’s curve like it personally offended him. Yet, as Flash turned up the music a little bit more and a little bit more with each song, he didn’t complain. And he didn’t leave.

Flash took it as a good sign and turned his music up louder.