Chapter Text
Edward wakes up on the fourth ring.
He sighs, fumbles around in the dark until he finds his glasses and the phone. Judging by the ringtone, the call’s from Selina’s emergency burner. He glances at the time just before he picks up— 3:47 A.M. Wonderful.
“What?” He asks, pushing his glasses on one-handed.
“Good morning,” Selina answers, “is Crane at yours yet? Harley said he said he was going to pick you up, but she’s on the phone with Waylon now.”
Edward pushes himself out of bed, puts his phone on speaker before he throws it back onto the mattress. Whatever’s going on, he may as well get dressed for it. No use getting apprehended or murdered or whatever in his pajamas. “And why is he coming over at four in the morning?”
Selina laughs. It’s the same laugh as when she gets caught with her hand in a safe. “It's a bad time to be a rogue in Gotham, Eddie. Text me when you get out of town.”
“Out of town?” He asks— says, really, given Selina’s hung up on him already. “Great,” he mutters, pulling his shirt on, “I really need a mysterious plot before the sun’s even risen.”
His shoes are barely on when he hears someone knocking on his living room window. One guess, he thinks, grabbing his cane and sneaking a look past the doorframe of his bedroom.
The shadow in the windowsill is decidedly lanky, so Edward sighs and turns on the lights. The extra light doesn’t make Crane any less ominous; he looks less like a bump in the night and more like a serial killer.
Edward unlocks the window and steps back to let Jonathan climb in. It’s raining, and Edward’s a second away from complaining about Jon tracking water in when he notices the slash across his sternum. It doesn’t look like it needs stitches, but it’s wide enough to have darkened the front half of his shirt.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, because when blood’s involved the blunt approach is usually the best.
Jonathan frowns, looks down. “It can wait,” he says, even as he moves to dig around under the couch for the first aid kit.
“Bleed out on my carpet, then.” Edward rolls his eyes, turns to go get his emergency suitcase from the hall closet. “What exactly is going on?”
“New rogue,” Jonathan says, fiddling with the rubbing alcohol from his seat on the arm of the couch. He’s getting rainwater all over the upholstery, and Edward has half a mind to walk over and finish the job right there. “He wants to make an impression, decided the best way to do it is to kill all of us.”
Well, that’s not exactly new, Edward thinks. If Selina’s worried enough to leave town, though… “Just how serious is this new friend of ours?”
“Serious enough to torch the Lounge. He put Oswald and Harvey in the ER.”
“Why has no one led with that?” Edward groans. “When?”
“Around an hour ago. The Bat has two of the Robins watching their hospital room. Everybody else is getting the hell out of dodge.” Jonathan finishes bandaging his chest and stands, wandering towards the kitchen.
Edward watches him ruin his carpet for a few seconds, then swings back into focus. He pulls a checklist out of the front panel of his suitcase, reads through it a few times. Everything accounted for, assuming Query hasn’t replaced his cash with Monopoly money again. “Do you have everything you need for this little excursion?”
“Clothes, meds, wallet.” Jonathan shrugs, grabs an apple from the bowl on the countertop. “Stuff’s in the truck.”
“Prepared as ever, I see.” Edward grabs his coat, does another count to make sure he’s not missing anything important. He relocks the window and turns the lights off, and suddenly the situation seems all the more absurd. “I’m ready when you are.”
They leave through the front door, because if Jonathan’s exposed to it often enough Edward thinks he may learn to use it. Once they’re out, Edward all but sprints into the rain, trying to make it to the truck before he’s wet enough to make the ride miserable. Jonathan follows behind, seemingly at peace with being covered in rainwater and blood for the foreseeable future.
Edward stuffs his bag into the back of the cab, which is already mostly-full with Jonathan’s duffel and around a hundred notebooks. “You could have cleaned some of this out, you know.”
“I was busy bleeding out on the way over here.”
“Oh, so first it can wait, and then when it’s convenient you’re dying.” Edward gets his things settled as best he can, then slumps back in his seat. They manage to get out of the neighborhood before he asks, “What happened to you, anyway?”
“Harleen called me to tell me about the Lounge while I was walking back to the lab. Somebody tried to mug me while I was on the phone.”
“Let me guess, they’re in the duffel?”
Jonathan snorts. “In a dumpster by the post office.”
“We should all be so lucky,” Edward says. “Was it a random encounter, or someone associated with our new friend?”
“Random, far as I could tell. He tried to run when he figured out who he’d come after.”
Edward sighs. “Welcome to Gotham, where you can have someone actively trying to kill you and still manage to get mugged by a third party.”
That almost earns him a grin, but Jonathan doesn’t reply. They’re close enough to the city limits, so Edward busies himself with texting Selina. She messages him back a few minutes later— she’s in Metropolis with Harley and Ivy, content to lounge around the city for the next few weeks.
Few weeks? He sends back, but she just answers with cryptic string of emojis. It ends with a sleeping cat face, though, so he figures he’s not getting a reply for a few hours.
Well. Edward rubs at his eyes under his glasses, watches the world go blurry for a second before it evens back out. He’s starting to get a headache, and he really doesn’t feel like trying to turn around and dig his medication out of his bag.
“How long do you think this will last?” He asks eventually, because it’s talk or the radio, and he thinks if he touches the dial it might actually turn to dust. That or Jonathan’ll throttle him for putting the Top 100 station on.
Jonathan doesn’t answer for a good minute. When he does, it’s, “Where are the girls?”
Edward snorts. Girls. Jonathan helps Query with some organic chemistry once and suddenly she and Echo are stealing bird-patterned ties for their new favorite rogue. “They’re on vacation for the next few weeks. Last I heard, they were in Paris.”
“Good,” Jonathan says. “Tell them to stay there for a while.”
That’s enough to get him concerned; him, he understands, but those two? They’re his occasional assistants, nothing that warrants getting targeted by some headhunter.
And that’s saying nothing of the sheer amount of time everyone is planning to stay out of the city. So much for any and all of his upcoming plans. “A while?”
“A few weeks, I’d guess. Maybe a month.”
“That long? Without us rogues to help or hinder?”
Jonathan tilts his head. “After we’re all gone, our new friend’s likely to start going after sidekicks. Even if he doesn’t, the thought’ll slow Batman down. Regardless,” he adds, “I’d rather stay out of it.”
Edward hums, takes his glasses off to stick them in the cupholder— well, the cupholder that isn’t holding twenty dollars’ worth of loose change. “I suppose. Still, it feels strange to actually leave.”
“I’ll drop you off here if you want to walk back,” Jonathan offers, switching lanes. Edward squints to try and catch his expression. He can’t tell, though, so he settles for waving a hand at him.
“No, thank you. I’ll take my chances with the crazed murderer I actually know. Better you slit my throat then some D-lister, anyway.”
That gets him a laugh. “How kind.”
“Charity is a virtue,” he replies. He manages a few minutes of listening to cars on the highway before questions start gnawing at his brain again. “So,” he starts, “where are we going, anyway?”
Jonathan shrugs. “I’m not sure yet.”
“What, were you going to do laps around the city limits until Batman saved the day?”
Even in the dark, Edward can feel the scowl being leveled at him. “You’re not exactly offering any suggestions.”
“That’s because I don’t have any.” His apartment in Metropolis was raided the last time he got sent to Arkham; even if he had it, he wouldn’t want to share the city with the Sirens and all the other rogues in Metropolis. (Well, he assumes there are rogues— Bizarro, or whoever.)
“I have a lab in Blüdhaven, but if we go there we may as well stay in Gotham. Least the Bat’s there.” Jonathan sighs, reaches up with the hand that’s not on the steering wheel to adjust his glasses. “I figured you were the type to own some secret penthouse in Star City.”
Edward did have a few scattered safehouses at one point, but they were a pain to manage when he was in jail, and Query and Echo couldn’t be paid enough to care about playing housekeeper. “Not at the moment,” he says, then, “what, do you not have some far-flung stronghold we can go lay low at for a while?”
Jonathan’s silent for so long that Edward had started to think he was being ignored. “One,” he says eventually, and Edward can tell he’s not happy to admit it.
He almost asks where, but the question is more entertaining as a puzzle to solve. Not Gotham, Metropolis, or Blüdhaven, obviously. Likely not any place with a sizeable rogues gallery, so not Central, Keystone, or Star…
An interstate sign flashes by. They’re not going north, and unless they’re headed to the Midwest—
“Ah,” Edward says, very carefully; he wants to survive this line of questioning with all his limbs intact. “I take it we’re southward-bound?”
Jonathan sighs again, heavy, but doesn’t reach over to claw Edward’s eyes out. “If you don’t have any other ideas,” he says, which is as close to a yes as Edward thinks he’ll get.
“Unfortunately, I don’t.” He pauses. He wants to ask, but this is thin ice, and he really doesn’t feel like getting kicked out of the cab at sixty-five miles per hour. They’re friendly enough for this, aren’t they? They’ve run heists together, successful ones, and they’ve managed to keep their cell rotation aligned for nearly a year. It’s more positive interaction than he’s managed with most of the other rogues.
Alright, he decides; if he gets murdered for prodding despite all that, it’s not on him. “Georgia,” he asks, though it doesn’t really sound like a question.
“Georgia,” Jonathan replies anyway. He doesn’t look away from the highway.
It’s quiet after that, and Edward doesn’t have the energy to try and talk his way through this minefield. His headache isn’t getting any better as it is. “Well,” he says eventually, leaning his head against the window, “I’m taking a nap. Please be kind enough not to dose me in my sleep.”
“No promises.”
Edward flips him off, which earns him a snort, and it’s the last thing he hears before the hum of the highway puts him to sleep.