Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In Jason’s defence, he never intended to join the Gotham Bats Crime Syndicate. He just got caught steeling the tires off the wrong car, that was all.

If he had been thinking clearly that day, he would have taken one look at that black sports car sitting pretty in Crime Alley and run a mile. He would have twigged that no one rich enough to own a car like that would park it on one of the worst streets in Gotham like they owned it unless they actually owned it. But Jason was cold, starving, and hours away from being evicted from the nest where he squatted. All he could think about was how many meals those tires would buy him on the auto-parts black market. 

A hand closed around his arm as he was tugging the second tire off and surprise made him yelp.

“Do you make a habit of this?” 

Jason whirled and swung the tire iron reflexively. A huge hand came out to catch it before it could connect. Jason’s heart stuttered as he stared up a tall, broad man wearing a black suit. His clothes were so fastidiously pressed, the creases on the trouser legs were actually poking into Jason’s shin. 

“Fuck off!” Jason snarled. 

To his utter disbelief, the man wrenched the tire iron effortlessly out of his grip, spun him around, and pinned him against the side of the car. Jason spluttered a string of profanities, but no matter how hard he thrashed, he could not budge the man’s hand.

The window of the driver’s seat rolled down and a man with salt-and-pepper hair stuck his head out.

“Are you quite finished, Master Bruce?”

The suited man sighed. “Should I be concerned, Alfie? This kid has been trying to steal my tires for the past ten minutes. Did you not notice?”

“I was streaming the latest instalment of Winchester Heights, sir. You had been gone for so long, I had quite given up hope that I would be back in time to catch my favourite programme.” He got out of the car, then, and Jason saw that he was a slim, elderly gentleman in a brown plaid suit. “Besides, I was reasonably certain that you would return before he finished the job.”

Jason couldn’t help it: he panicked. Already weak and light-headed from weeks of living off garbage scraps, he knew he was in no condition to fight off two grown men. And damn it, he must really be off his game, because he hadn’t even noticed that the car was occupied. Stupid tinted black windows. 

“Let me go, dude, I didn’t do nothin!”

“Do you know who I am?” Bruce asked. 

“No offense, but I was going for your tires, not you, old man,” Jason spat. “I don’t give a shit who you are.”

This made Bruce flip him around so he could look him in the eye, and Jason was instantly sorry he mouthed off. He’d been around hulking gangster types all his life, so he had a pretty good gauge for how bad a punch was going hurt based on the person’s height and weight. Bruce was even bigger than Two-Face and could probably break him in half just by twitching a bicep. Jason needed a new tactic. 

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to, honest!” Jason went limp against the car and sniffed dramatically. In another moment, he was going to turn on the waterworks. Tears often did the trick. “I'm just a kid, okay? I won’t do it again!”

“How old are you?” Bruce asked. 

“Thirteen,” Jason lied, knowing that he could pass with his small stature. He was actually fifteen, but he’d learned that adults were usually nicer when they mistook him for someone younger. 

"Shouldn’t you be at school then?”

“…Can’t go to school if I got no money or food.” Jason sniffed again and let a few hot, fat tears drip down his face. “I’ll scrape and bow and grovel if you want, just let me go.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Scrape, bow, and grovel? That’s quite the complete trio, there.” 

He sounded coolly amused. Jason was okay with that. Amused was miles better than angry. Amused meant he still had a chance of twisting himself out of this bind. He took a shuddering breath and blinked wide, watery eyes up at Bruce. 

 “Let me put your tires back on, yeah? I’m really, really sorry, mister.”

The grip on him went slack, and Bruce took a measured step back. Jason swiped at his eyes with a sleeve and got down to business screwing all the tires back on. He could still feel the guy’s gaze on him, which made the back of his neck prickle unpleasantly. 

“Not bad,” Bruce said once he was done. “You have a nice touch with cars. My personal mechanic couldn’t have done better.”

Jason wiped sweaty hands on his jeans as he attempted to edge around him, ready to take off for safer streets. He still had the strength left to run. If Bruce would just turn his attention elsewhere for two seconds, Jason would be able to get clear across the alley. 

But then two dark shadows appeared at the entrance of the alley, and Jason’s hopes plummeted. They were even larger and bulkier than Bruce, and Jason could tell they were packing ammo. 

“All clear, boss,” one of them called. 

Bruce raised a hand in acknowledgement without taking his eyes off Jason. “You do this often?”

“Do…what?”

“Steal things.” 

Bruce was appraising him steadily, and there was something so frankly curious in his tone, so absent of the usual anger and disapproval, that Jason actually blurted the truth before he could think better of it. 

“You think I have a choice? Not a lot of ways for a kid to make a fast buck, you know?”

Bruce gave him a crooked smile and put his hands into his pockets. “You know, I’m looking for a pair of nimble hands and quick fingers to help me out...”

“Huh?”

“And I’m willing to pay.”

Jason instantly knew what Bruce was getting at, and nope — he was desperate, but he wasn’t quite that desperate. Not yet. He edged away a little further. 

“Sorry, big guy. I don’t fuck people for money. But if you want a professional, I can point you in the right direction.” He waved a hand up and down his own torso. “You want my size, this look, yeah?”

“You misunderstand,” Bruce said, frowning. “I'm looking for a pickpocket. Someone smart and gutsy. I’m stealing something big — bigger than a few tires.” 

“Are you…offering me a job?”

This threw him more than anything else the man had said so far. Jason was fifteen. Nobody offered him jobs.

“Yes I am.” And then Bruce named a four-digit figure that made Jason’s eyes pop out of its sockets. “That’ll be your cut if we succeed. Prep work might take a month, give or take. You want in?”

It was more money than Jason had ever seen in his life. Enough to pay months of rent on an actual room in an actual apartment, rather than a rat-infested squat exposed to the elements. It would buy enough food to last him just as long. But Jason hadn’t survived this long on the streets without an overabundance of caution, and everything about this deal screamed too good to be true. 

“Uh. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t steal big-ticket items, you know? Too much hassle. If you need a pro, I’m not your guy.” He took another cautious step backwards and was relieved when Bruce didn’t move to stop him. “Maybe some other time?”

Bruce inclined his head. “I know you don't believe me, but this isn’t a trick. Here. A gesture of good faith.” And then he took off his watch and tossed it to Jason.

Jason stared down at what was unmistakably a Rolex. He’d seen one before in a high-end secondhand shop, and even the knockoffs cost more than his rent for the whole year. He flipped it over and squinted at the name engraved on the back. 

Bruce Wayne.

“Wait. Bruce Wayne?” His brain was finally catching up, like a cog spinning into motion after being stuck in molasses for too long. “The Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises?”

“So you do know who I am.” A faint smile creased his face. 

Jason just stared at him. “But. You’re like. Rich. Why would you need a kid to do a job? Don’t you have grownups working for you?”

Bruce leaned back against the hood of his car. “None who can pass for a junior high student, at this moment. What’s your name?”

Jason looked at the Rolex in his hand and decided a name wasn’t the worst thing he could give away in exchange. “Jason.”

“Okay, Jason. Listen. I need a school-aged kid to do a job for me. It’ll require some crawling through vents, some mechanical expertise, and some computer hacking — I’ll give you the training you need. You’ll get your cut, and if you don’t, you can keep my watch. Once you’re done, you’re free to walk away, no strings attached. Sound good to you?”

“What exactly do you need me to steal?”

“Something only you can access. I wouldn’t be asking otherwise.”

“But you’re a billionaire.” Jason’s brain was still stuck on this part. 

Bruce just chuckled. “How do you think I became a billionaire, Jason?” He spread his hands in way which encompassed not only his car, but the entirety of Crime Alley. “I have a very diverse portfolio, and I invest in a lot of different things.” He took a card out of his pocket and handed it to Jason. “Think about it. Call me if you want to talk.” 

Then Bruce slid back into the car and Jason watched it glide silently away.

Jason folded the card up into quarters and stuffed it into the lining of his jeans. Then he went to do some research. Ten minutes on the public library computer confirmed that the guy he’d met in the alley was exactly who he said he was, which only made the whole situation more surreal. 

If Bruce had been some shady businessman, or even some rando off the street, Jason would have said good riddance and pawned off the Rolex first chance he got. But curiosity got the better of him, and he found himself keeping the watch secreted away inside the lining of his jacket, like a lucky charm. 

Meeting the Bruce Wayne was proof that even a street kid’s luck could turn around, wasn’t it? 

One week later, a gang of older teenagers stomped into his squat and kicked him out on his ass. They also found his stash of cash, which he’d been carefully saving up for a rainy day. It took him three hours to recover the feeling in his fingers after they’d finished with him and left him shivering next to the dumpster. Miraculously, they missed the Rolex. He could still feel it in the lining of his jacket like a heavy paperweight, warm from his body heat. 

This wasn’t the most desperate situation he’d ever been in — not even close. But if he didn’t find a warm place to sleep soon, it was going to be a top contender. Jason scrounged around in his pockets until he found Bruce’s folded-up business card. Then he scavenged a few dropped quarters from the sidewalk outside of Wayne Tower and found a pay phone. It wasn’t like he had anything left to lose at this point. 

~~

Bruce was as good as his word about the job. Jason had imagined it to be some high-stakes heist at first, with a massive diamond locked away somewhere as the prize, but the reality turned out to be much simpler. 

He didn’t even need a disguise. All he had to do was pose as a student attending the New Jersey Middle School Science Fair Competition, which was being held at Lexcorp’s newest laboratory in Metropolis. The job was a straight info grab. Using what Bruce taught him, he slipped behind some high-security doors, copied some top secret files onto a thumb drive, erased his tracks, and then made his escape among the crowd of kids leaving the building.

It was the easiest two grand Jason had ever made. 

The minute he had the cash in his hand, he left the manor and slipped back into the city, just to test whether Bruce’s “no strings” promise would hold true. 

For the next few weeks, he waited for the other shoe to drop. Jason wasn’t a complete idiot; he knew there had to be some hidden agenda here. Billionaires didn’t just pop out of nowhere to offer a fifteen-year-old kid a dubious job with no consequences.

The Rolex, he kept in a notch in the crumbling wall, behind his cupboard. Bruce seemed to have forgotten about it completely since he never asked for it back, but the longer it sat in his flat, the more it weighed on his conscience. He was already expecting the police to bust down his door for the Lexcorp robbery. He didn’t also need ‘watch theft’ on his list of crimes.

Finally, he screwed up his nerve one evening and went back to Wayne Manor. The front door opened for him before he could even press the doorbell. Two hulking men in black suits peered skeptically down at him from the vestibule. Alfred looked nonplussed. 

“Good evening, young sir. And what brings you back to Wayne Manor?” he asked. 

Jason had a healthy respect for Alfred, the same way he respected the business end of a rifle. “Got something to return to Bruce. Can I come in?”

Bruce was in the dining room tucking into a massive hank of roast beef when Jason walked in. The edges of the enormous room were wreathed in shadows, but Jason could see more hulking shapes lurking there, just out of sight.

Jason held out the Rolex . “This is yours.”

Bruce crooked two fingers at him. “Care to join me? Food before business, and all that.”

He acted like filthy street orphans walked into his house every day to have dinner with him. Jason was tempted to throw the watch down and walk away, but the smell of roast beef was overpowering his better instincts. If he didn’t leave within the next five seconds, he was going to lose this battle. Damned stomach. Swallowing hard, Jason put the watch down on the table and pushed it across the polished mahogany surface. 

“You gave me my cut like you said, fair and square. So here’s your watch back. That was our deal.”

“Keep it,” said Bruce without even looking up from his wine.

Jason made a wheezing sound. “What? Why?! Is this a bribe? Are you bribing me?” He hated when Bruce threw him for a loop like this. “What do you want?”

“Call it a ‘happy to do business with you’ present.”

Jason gaped. Sometimes, talking to Bruce was like interacting with someone high on drugs; Bruce clearly operated on a logic that was entirely his own. Even after a month of knowing him, Jason couldn’t get a handle on the guy. 

“You already paid me. Plus, a kid like me don’t need a watch this flashy. Attracts the wrong kind of attention.” 

“Would you like to continue this over an actual plate of food?” Bruce asked.

Alfred was already setting out a platter piled high with mashed potatoes, gravy, and a slab of roast beef so thick it could give Jason’s battered copy of Sense and Sensibility a run for its money. 

Jason’s window for escape was closing rapidly.

“Sit,” Bruce repeated with a smile.

Internally, Jason groaned. Externally, he was already edging towards the plate of food like a paperclip to a magnet. Before he could stop himself, he found himself digging into the most glorious steak he’d ever tasted. 

If Jason had learned anything, it was that nothing in life came free. A dinner like this was going to cost him. But the steak was so good, and the smile on Bruce’s face so entirely genuine, that Jason found that his capability for resisting was fast receding into the distance. Whatever the price was, he’d pay it. 

“You, uh, got any other jobs you might need a kid for?” Jason asked around a mouthful of roast. 

Bruce swirled the wine in his glass. “Oh, I'm sure we could find something for you to do.”

~~

Over the next couple of months, Jason did a variety of jobs for Bruce. Once, he snuck a suitcase full of cash into an abandoned metro station twenty stories underground. Another time, he pretended to have a seizure in the middle of an upscale hotel lobby so that Bruce could be extracted from a meeting. Then there was the time he picked the locks to some politician’s penthouse so that he could plant hidden cameras and recording equipment. 

Every job required its own skill set, so four days a week, he commuted from Crime Alley to Wayne Manor for lessons. Jason learned how to throw a punch and take a hit, how to hack a database, how to put an explosive together, how to drive a car. One memorable week, Bruce gave him forty-eight hours of target practice with six different guns inside his private shooting range. It was probably the most fun Jason had ever had. It wasn’t until afterwards that it occurred to him to wonder: if this was for a job, who exactly did Bruce expect him to shoot? 

The weeks flew by, and more and more questions piled up in his head. Something was deeply weird about Wayne Manor, but Jason didn't want to think too hard about it.

For one thing, there was the constant stream of visitors. They arrived in sleek black cars with tinted windows and they seemed to lurk in the manor’s grand foyer at all hours of the night. Every single one of them came dressed in stiff black suits, like undertakers. Jason could never figure out why they were there, but the serving staff tiptoed around them, so Jason steered clear of them too. 

Another thing was the Manor itself. Once, Jason came back at five in the morning after a late-night job, too exhausted to even go through the motions of a debrief.

“Take a guest room this time,” Bruce said when he saw Jason wavering on his feet.

“Uh… which one?”

“Alfred will give you the passcode.”

As a guest, Jason had never seen the private side of the Manor before. Logically, he knew Bruce and Alfred had to sleep somewhere, but he’d never wondered where that might be until Alfred’s passcode opened up a six-inch thick steel door built into the mahogany wall. Beyond it was a long, winding staircase leading up to a second floor, where more steel shutters stood between the landing and the hall.

Every room upstairs was secured with some sort of biometric lock. One entire hallway was lined with screens showing surveillance footage from around the manor. If Jason hadn’t just spent thirty hours straight on one of Bruce’s jobs, he might have been alarmed. He might even have wondered why Wayne Manor had more fortifications than a medieval castle. But that night he was too exhausted to care.

Anyway, this was literally not his problem. Bruce was rich and famous, and what did Jason know about that? Maybe all billionaires lived like this.

He had a good thing going here, and he wasn’t going to risk it by questioning his baffling turn of good fortune. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t just making real money — he was learning things, and he hadn’t realized how much he craved that like breathing until Bruce came along. Bruce was the only person who’d ever bothered to teach him anything useful, and Jason ate it up like a starving man at a feast. 

It wasn’t all job-related stuff either. Bruce showed him which banks would give him the best interest rates; taught him the difference between Bordeaux and Cabernet Sauvignon; demonstrated how to put a piece of furniture together with a screwdriver, and handed him the keys to the manor library so he could read anything he liked. Once, he even brought Jason to the country club to learn how to ride a freaking horse. Some days, Jason still looked up and wondered if this was all just an incredibly vivid dream.

~~

A few weeks later, Jason was awakened from his sleep by voices from the conservatory. He’d fallen asleep in the library again, reading War and Peace. The clock said it was three in the morning. He should probably go back to his guest room before anyone came in and found him here. Jason rolled off the leather chesterfield and was about to creep past the conservatory doors when a particular name made him freeze.

“Shit, Robin, shit. He’s gonna bleed out.”

“I’m f-f-fine. Stop talking and stitch me up before I bleed all over the boss’s carpet.”

“Me? Do it yourself, man! My hands are shakin’ so much I’ll probably poke your fucking eye out.”

“Hold my whiskey. I’ll do it.”

Jason edged closer to the crack in the door, from which a thin sliver of light was leaking out. Inside the conservatory, two men were bending over a third. One of them was holding a flashlight with a shaky hand to provide extra lighting. The other was wielding a pair of thin silver tweezers in his blood-smeared gloves. He was noticeably younger than the other two, but it was his outfit that caught Jason's attention. He was wearing a hideous Gotham University sweater over a pair of neon green joggers. 

“Is this sterile?”

“As sterile as you are, Butch.”

A grunt. Then a muffled cry.

“Got it.” The college kid dropped something onto a tray with a clink of metal against metal. “Just gonna sew you up nice and pretty now. Don’t move.”

A hissed breath. “I owe you one, Robin. Name it — anything you want.”

“Hey. I’m not using that name anymore, remember? I’ve grown out of it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s hard to get out of the habit, you know?”

Jason beat a hasty retreat before they noticed him. If they wanted to play some crazy game of Operation in there, that was their business. Besides, the mention of Robin had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

As far as he knew, there was only one person besides Bruce and Alfred who had full access to the private side of the manor, and that was someone referred to only as ‘Robin.’ No last name, no rank, no job title, nothing. And Robin had an odd reputation.

If someone fucked up and was afraid of Bruce’s wrath, Robin was the one they went begging to for forgiveness. If someone wanted a favour from Bruce, Robin was the one they buttered up first with gifts and flattery. And woe betide anyone who got on Robin’s wrong side. The last person who’d made that mistake was, as far as Jason could work out, never seen again. 

Occasionally, after dusk fell, he would hear the silvery cadence of Robin's laughter echoing off the walls, which was Jason’s cue to make himself scarce. Robin reminded Jason too much of the teenage gangs on the streets — the eighteen and nineteen-year-olds with quick tempers and even quicker fists. Bruce might be intimidating in a stolid, no-bullshit kind of way, but it was Robin who made Jason nervous. Robin was all mercurial irreverence, laughter and menace, utterly unpredictable. And in Jason’s experience, it was always the unpredictable ones who were the most dangerous.

~~

Three months after he started working for Bruce, Jason pulled off another nighttime job that necessitated him crashing in one of the manor’s guest rooms. That night, he awoke to muffled shouts coming through the floor. Jason padded sleepily out into the hall and checked the security feeds. 

On one of the tiny, grainy screens, he could see Bruce pacing slowly around a man tied to a chair. All of a sudden, the prisoner threw himself forward — chair and all — to grovel at Bruce’s feet. Jason, wide-eyed and growing less sleepy by the second, flicked the unmute button. What the fuck was going on?

“— was me, all right? I was the leak.” The man was making some kind of sound — some unholy mixture of sobs and keening that made Jason’s stomach twist into knots. 

“That’s disappointing to hear, Ves,” Bruce growled, his register so low and so jarring that Jason startled. “The Black Mask must be paying you generously.” 

“Please don’t hurt my little girl,” the man babbled, his cheek smushed against the floor at an odd angle. “She’s only eight.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about her.” Bruce picked up a long, serrated knife that caught the light. It kind of looked like what Alfred had used to carve the roast turkey last week. “Worry about yourself, Ves. Since you’ve been taking money from someone else, I don’t think you should be wearing my symbol anymore.” 

He tilted his head at the enforcers flanking the chair. “Strip him.”

The suited behemoths righted the chair and proceeded to yank the man’s shirt off. Splashed across the man’s bare chest was as stylized black bat that Jason could recognize even on a tiny, grainy, 6-inch black-and-white screen. 

When the screaming started, Jason cut the audio feed with a shaking hand before his gorge could rise. Within a matter of minutes, the tattoo didn’t look like a bat anymore — Bruce had scored a series of Z’s through it until Ves's chest looked like nothing more than pulped meat. Even after it healed, it never look like a bat again. Bruce stepped back and handed the bloody knife to someone off screen. There was no expression on his face at all. Even with the sound off, it was terrifying to see.

Jason stumbled back into his room and locked himself inside his closet. For a long time, he simply sat with his head in his hands.

The black bat tattoo was the symbol of the Gotham Bats — one of the most notorious crime syndicates in Gotham. Word on the street was that they paid better and offered more perks and protection than the competition, but it was notoriously difficult to join up. They didn’t go around recruiting street kids and two-bit thugs the way other gangs did, and the few men and women who worked for the Bats never flashed their tattoos in public unless they were using it as a threat. 

Some of the street kids considered the Gotham Bats an aspirational career path — the best job they could hope for — but Jason had never been one of them. So his current predicament was pure irony. You didn’t want to ask questions, remember? his brain helpfully reminded him. But the clues had been there all along. Jason pushed a shaky hand through his hair as all the puzzle pieces came together at once.

The black-suited underbosses who showed up like clockwork. The fancy cars, the omnipresent bodyguards. The manor built like a fortress. The clandestine surgeries in the conservatory. The guns and knives squirrelled away in every room. The shooting range in the basement. 

Bruce wasn’t just a wealthy scion and society fixture, he was also a fucking mob boss.

~~

One Sunday morning, over pancakes and maple syrup, Jason finally decided, to hell with it. 

“You're the boss of the Gotham Bats,” he said, staring at Bruce over his cup of orange juice and daring him to deny it. 

Bruce sipped his coffee placidly. “I was wondering when you’d figure it out.”

“I’m not an idiot. I can put two and two together.” 

He would have to be blind not to notice the crate of ammo that just showed up in the kitchen larder one day, right next to the onions and canned tomatoes. Or the tricked-out bits of tech scattered around Bruce’s private study. Or the rooms in the manor full of bottles, each filled to the brim with pills, strange powders, and oddly-colored liquids. At least twice, Jason had gone exploring and opened what should have been a closet, only to find a massive safe instead. 

Bruce was perfectly composed as he topped off his pancakes with whipped cream. “You don’t seem shaken, though. I’m impressed.”

“I grew up on the streets. I’ve seen everything.” 

For a second there was a furrow in Bruce’s brow, but it disappeared too quickly for Jason to read anything into it. Jason chewed his next bite slowly and shrugged. “So. What’s the job this time?”

“No job today, Jay-lad. I just wanted you to try Alfred’s pancakes. They’re famous.”

“Bullshit.” Jason caught Alfred’s inquiring eye and immediately backtracked. “I didn’t mean the pancakes - they're delicious. But I don’t think that’s why you asked me here.”

“Jason. It’s Sunday. It’s pancakes day. Just enjoy yourself for once and stop looking at me like I’m about to shoot someone in the kneecaps.” 

“You expect me to believe that you asked me here to be your, what — breakfast buddy?”

“Something wrong with that?”

“Look. Just be straight with me. This is fucking weird. If it’s not work, what do you need me here for? Am I, like, your penance, or something? Got too much blood on your conscience, so you gotta make up for it by being nice to street kids?”

For a moment, Bruce looked honestly surprised. Jason knew a little bit about penance — one of his favourite former foster homes had been a parish home, run by nuns. And right now, he couldn’t think of a single reason Bruce would want him around other than to assuage his own conscience. 

“I don’t operate under a cloud of guilt, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Bruce, still looking baffled. “I run the Gotham Bats to make sure this city isn’t controlled by the insane, the power-hungry, or the greedy.” 

“So then why — why me? Why am I here? I mean, you treat me like…” Jason faltered. Nobody had ever treated him like this before. He wasn’t even sure what word he was looking for. 

“Like a son?” Bruce prompted. 

Jason resisted the urge to cross himself. He would never, in a million years, have dared to say the ‘s’ word aloud. But Bruce didn’t look like he was joking.

“I took you in because you’re a smart kid and you could go far in his world if you just had the right advantages. I wanted to give you that chance.”

Jason’s brain was still tripping over the word ‘son’ like a broken record. “Wait. Are you serious? You really think of me as your — as a son?”

“You don’t have anyone else waiting for you at home, do you?” Bruce asked. Alfred picked this moment to come back in with a second helping of pastries, and he levelled a similarly penetrating gaze at Jason, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

“Yeah, I’m an orphan. So? Have been for a couple years.” He did a one-shouldered shrug. 

“Where have you been living all this time?”

Sullenly, Jason chased dribbles of maple syrup around his plate with a fork. “I got money now, so I found a room. In a proper tenement house, okay? But you let me sleep here so often I hardly go back anymore.”

He could feel Bruce and Alfred exchanging a look over his head. 

“Would you like to come live here with me? Permanently?”

Jason’s gut tightened suddenly, like a lead weight had dropped into it. “Is this because I figured out your secret? Am I a security risk now? If you’re going to kill me, can you give me a heads up first?”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Jason. I’m not going to kill you. Or hurt you. Or hold you hostage. Or turn you in to the police, or any number of things I’m sure you still suspect I might do. At this point, I don’t know what else I can do to convince you. ”

“You? Turn me in to the police?” Jason scoffed. “Aren’t you worried that I’ll turn you in?”

Bruce chuckled — actually chuckled — as if the idea was cute. “Commission Gordon has suspected for years, but he’s never tried to build a serious case against me. Especially not when my businesses hold up half the city.”

“Wait. The police know?!” Jason actually stood up, scraping his chair backwards. 

“Of course they know." Bruce sounded amused by his outsized reaction. “But that is beside the point, since they can’t prove anything. For one, I’ve got the better lawyers.”

Jason sat back down with a thump. “Geez, Bruce, you’ve got balls. I’ve seen you invite Commissioner Gordon over for afternoon tea!”

“A standing arrangement we both benefit from.”

“Is he like…your bitch? Do you bribe the fucking Police Commissioner? Is he in your pocket?”

Bruce looked pained. He actually closed his eyes briefly and touched a hand to his forehead like he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “I don’t have a ‘bitch’, Jason, don’t be crass. Commissioner Gordon and I respect each other. We simply… renegotiate our differences as necessary.”

“Over tea.” Jason was incredulous. 

“Yes. As gentlemen do.” Bruce steepled his fingers. “Now stop avoiding my questions.”

Jason squirmed. When he looked back up, Bruce was peering contemplatively into the dregs of his coffee cup, as if surprised that he’d finished his second refill so quickly. When he next spoke, it was in in short, halting phrases, like he was being very careful with his words. 

“We know you’ve been in and out of the system for awhile now. Nothing has stuck. It’s probably your own choice to be out on your own, and you’ve done well for yourself. I don’t doubt your ability or your talent. All I ask is for you to consider my offer.” He paused and idly upended the saltshaker, seemed to realize what he’d done, hastily flipped it back around. Salt crystals scattered, invisible, over the white tablecloth. “I want to give you a better place to stay.”

“For how long?” 

“As long as you want.”

It didn’t compute, not immediately. Jason felt nothing one moment, and the next moment it was like the breath had been knocked out of him. Like some sublime fruit had been dangled in front of his eyes, within easy reach. 

“Bullshit," he repeated, but it sounded weaker this time. Like he was trying to convince himself.

Bruce might be a mob boss, but this life was everything he’d ever wanted and more. Against all reason and logic, Jason felt safer in Wayne Manor than anywhere else he’d ever lived in. 

~~

Of course, Jason should have said no. He could think of a hundred reasons off the top of his head. His shithead father had been a criminal. His mother had wanted better for him. She’d hoped that Jason would go back to school and make something out of his life. Jason had once dreamed of becoming a teacher someday, if he was lucky enough to graduate, or maybe even a school counsellor — something that could contribute back to the community. 

Plus, career criminals didn’t usually make it very far in the world. Jason’s father had worked for Two-Face, and Jason had seen him and his buddies get knocked around and sent out on bad jobs and end up coked out of their minds. Jason knew what happened to crims when they inevitably screwed up on the job. He’d seen what happened when bosses hung their lackeys out to dry. In Gotham, small-time crooks died every day on the street. And the ones who didn’t die ended up in Blackgate or Arkham, next to cannibals and psychopaths and pedos and every sick thing Gotham could spit up. 

At the end of the day, it came down to this: Jason just didn’t quite trust in good things. Orphaned street rats didn’t meet billionaires except in movies. Getting this lucky all at once put him off-balance, like a lopsided ledger. He had never done anything to deserve this cosmic stroke of good fortune, so he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that someday, somehow, he was going to have to pay for all this in blood. He was the Hansel and Gretel in this story, seduced by a candy house and a kind-faced witch, and someday the witch would devour him whole. 

But even when he had a hundred reasons to say no, none of them could trump his reason to say yes. 

Son. Bruce had called him son. 

Chapter Text

Within two days, there was a room at Wayne Manor waiting for him. There was just one catch. 

Jason narrowed his eyes as Bruce passed him a folder containing a scholarship certificate, a laminated pamphlet, an ID card with an address printed on it, and a bright red key fob. The address was one he’d never seen before, located in the butt-middle of nowhere. The pamphlet had meal plans and class schedules inside. The ID pronounced that he was now a ward of the Gotham Home for Gifted Children. 

“I thought I was gonna live here,” Jason said, ready to throw the keys back in his face. 

Bruce just waved his hand dismissively. “Relax, Jay-lad. All you need to do is go a few times a week so you can be seen on the premises. You don’t even have to sleep there. You just need the other children to think you do.”

There was no explanation for why Jason needed to live in two places at once. But if Alfred was backing Bruce up on this one, there had to be a good reason. So he went. 

Gotham Home was not at all what he expected. Unlike the drafty, crumbling orphanages Jason had lived in before, this place looked like some space-age boarding school right out of a novel — the kind that rich parents sent their kids to when they didn’t want to deal with them anymore. 

It only took him one trip to move all his worldly possessions into his room — the framed picture of his mother, the baseball cards that his next-door neighbour had given him, the box made of popsicle sticks that was his third-grade school project, the fifth-grade essay where he’d earned his first A+. 

Then he did as Bruce suggested and left bits of his DNA all over the room. Hair, skin, nails. Fingerprints on every surface. Saliva on the toothbrush. Urine in the toilet. If anyone ever decided to look into the fate of Jason Todd, there would be an abundance of evidence that he lived here; that he was really the bright, promising student who had won the coveted Springboard Scholarship. 

Jason wasn’t too worried about it; he already blended right in. Gotham Home was overrun with kids who all seemed to have the same suspicious, wary look in their eyes that Jason recognized from his time on the street. Nobody asked him too many questions or thought it odd that he never stayed on campus longer than twenty-four hours at a time. None of the adults seemed to notice Jason at all. 

On his third visit, he noticed that there was another door in the same wing as his, almost hidden behind an enormous potted plant. The tarnished name plate said ‘Richard Grayson’ and the dust on the doorknob was an inch thick.

He never saw anyone go in or out. 

~~

Jason didn’t move any of his old life into Wayne Manor. He didn’t want any overlap between the two. Street Rat Jason had too many old hurts carved into his skin. It was easier for him make a clean break if he drew a clean line of demarcation between the two. 

Besides, he liked the heady sense of freedom he got in starting over from zero. Now he could remake himself into whatever Bruce wanted him to be. 

The problem was that Bruce wanted him to replace Robin. 

~~

All of Jason’s problems began and ended with Robin. 

The first time Bruce took him out, it was to a meeting with Robert Falcone. There was some deal going down — some negotiation that required the big bosses to hash it out in neutral territory. Bruce dragged out his custom stretch limo for the occasion — a long, sleek leviathan of a machine that made Jason want to stroke its hubcaps like a cat.

“You need me to case his place while you’re making nice?” Jason asked Bruce as they rolled downtown. 

He tossed a paper airplane just for the thrill of watching it soar across the eight feet interior and smirked when it hit a meaty bodyguard on the nose. Bruce was bringing about a thousand pounds of muscle along with him, for appearance’s sake. The bodyguard snagged the plane out of the air and crushed it silently in his fist. Jason gave him a shit-eating grin.

“No. I need you to make nice too,” said Bruce. 

“Who am I making nice with?”

“With whom,” Bruce corrected.

“With whom am I making nice then, huh?”

Bruce was too caught up in his reading to answer. Soon they arrived at a nondescript office and Falcone was introducing them to a sandy-haired boy about twelve or thirteen years old. 

“My youngest, Francis.” Falcone put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. The kid’s face was creased into a ferocious scowl. 

“Say hello,” Bruce prompted. 

Jason stuck his hand out, but the boy didn’t take it. So Jason pivoted and offered the hand to Falcone Senior instead. 

“Must be ‘take your kid to work day’, huh?” he chirped. The old man snorted, but condescended to shake his hand. Jason darted a look at Bruce and saw a small smile there. Doing okay so far, then.

“New kid?” Falcone asked Bruce, one eyebrow raised. “I thought you didn’t recruit minors. Breaking your own self-imposed rules now, eh?”

“Your rules say we each bring a kid, Falcone. And Robin is no longer a kid." 

Falcone laughed snidely. “Guess the rumours are true, then. You really getting a replacement Robin.”

Something cold twisted in Jason’s gut, but the adults were already moving to the conference table on one side of the room while Francis dragged Jason to the TV on the other side. The screen showed some colorful game, paused midplay. But even with noise-muffling headphones on and the slot machine-like sounds of MarioKart hammering at his ears, Jason felt strangely uneasy.

It took ten minutes for him to notice that two of the bodyguards had detached themselves from the proceedings at the table and were instead standing at attention next to their sofa. Except the odd thing was that Falcone’s guy had his eye on Jason, while a corresponding guy on Bruce’s payroll was watching Francis. Both of their guns were locked and loaded and both had their fingers on the triggers. Which is when it dawned on him. Oh. Shit.

Jason shoved himself lower in his seat and turned to Francis. 

“Dude, what the fuck,” he hissed under his breath.

“What?”

“This sucks!”

“The game?”

Jason jerked his chin at the guns that were all but pointed to their heads.

Francis did a one-shouldered shrug. “Standard procedure, man. I mean, why else do you think we’re here?”

Jason had no answer for that. Francis sounded so matter-of-fact about it, Jason wondered if he was the weird one for freaking out. “So what, we’re just…insurance? For their good behaviour?”

“Well, no one’s gonna lose their tempers and start shooting if we’re in the room, right?”

What. The fuck. Jason darted a glance at Bruce, who was currently slamming a hand down on the table and shouting something at Falcone. But Francis had a point: none of the bodyguards over there reached for their guns, not even when Falcone got all up in Bruce’s face and Bruce surged to his feet to loom over him. The only guns with the safety off in the room were the guns pointed at them. 

Jason could feel the crosshairs like a living weight on his back, and it made him want to vibrate out of his seat. If this was Robin’s job back in the day, then it sucked balls. He hurled the controller onto the floor.

“Screw this, I need a smoke.”

Francis perked right up. “Got an extra one for me, Robin?”

“You’re twelve.” Jason glanced between him and the three-hundred-pound bodyguard who’d crushed his paper plane in the car earlier. The man cocked his Sig Sauer with no change in expression. “No yeah, all right. Fine. C’mere and I’ll show you how to roll a joint. And my name’s not Robin, you got that?”

~~

Later, when they were back in the car, Bruce gave Jason a disapproving look. “You smoke?”

“I live a very stressful life, okay?” Jason clutched his packet of tobacco protectively to his chest. 

“You’re fifteen.”

“You gonna stop me?”

Bruce’s lips thinned. “You can have one vice. One. If you’re going to smoke, I don’t want to see you going near drugs or prostitutes.”

Jason very carefully didn’t think about the way his mother had died. Or those three terrible months he spent freezing on a street corner, selling himself to anyone who’d give him a warm place to sleep for the night. 

He ducked his head and avoided Bruce’s eyes. “Yeah, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

~~

Here was the thing: Falcone wasn’t the only one under the assumption that Jason had come to replace Robin. 

The first time he met Selina Kyle, the woman palmed a pair of ruby earrings out of Bruce’s pocket and turned to study Jason with frank curiosity.

“So is it true that Robin is out of the game? No one’s seen him around for ages. You need this new birdie to grow some wings?”

“He’s got a lot of talent,” said Bruce, as she pulled off her goggles and cat-eared cowl so she could slip on the earrings. “If you’re willing to teach him a few tricks of the trade, I might be persuaded to give you a few more pieces out of the family’s jewellery vault.”

“You know, Bruce, I wasn’t expecting a diamond necklace or anything, but babysitting a kid is a bit much.”

Jason tipped his chin up defiantly. “Bruce says you’re the best in the business. Is it true?”

“What do you think, kiddo?”

“I’m just wondering why you still work alone if you’re so good.”

At this, she smirked and tapped a claw-tipped finger against her chin. “God, you sound just like Bruce. He’s been trying to get me to join his Bat Cabal for years.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“Because I find it fun to tell Bruce ‘no’. He doesn’t have nearly enough people telling him that to his face.”

She might have a point there. Except for Alfred and Robin, Jason couldn’t think of anyone else who had the guts to say ‘no’ to Bruce on a regular basis. 

“Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not replacing Robin,” Jason said to her as soon as they were alone and she was showing him how to use a grapple gun. 

Selina just tipped her head back and laughed. “You keep telling yourself that, birdie.”

“Have you met Robin? I’m nothing like him! Why do people keep comparing us?”

“Sweetie, Robin’s not even his real name. You know that, right?”

Jason’t hadn’t known that. “Then why…?”

“Because Bruce doesn’t recruit minors. So he gave Robin a pseudonym while he was underage. Even I don’t know his real name.” She shrugged. 

“Isn’t he in college now, though? Why would he still need a fake name?”

“You’re right. He doesn’t.” She gave him a toothy Cheshire cat grin. “That’s why you’re probably going to inherit it.”

~~

Jason did not want the name like some stupid hand-me-down. He didn’t want anything belonging to Robin. Mostly this was because he did not want to piss Robin off in any way, shape, or form. 

But over the next few weeks, he heard enough scattershot talk to know that the rumour had made its way through the whole organization, which made him feel weirdly violated and also pretty stressed out because none of it was fucking true. Jason couldn’t even figure out what Robin’s job was. What on earth was he meant to replace? 

All he knew was that Robin didn’t fit into any of the predefined roles within the Bat hierarchy, and that he was allowed to get away with shit that nobody else could. It was enough to make him wonder. Was he Bruce’s much younger brother? His illegitimate child? His prize boy toy? Who else would have so much freedom under the Wayne roof? 

One night, Jason went downstairs to grab a midnight snack and almost walked right into a bloodbath. Someone had evidently fucked up somehow, because there were three men kneeling on the floor right there in manor hall, looking battered and bruised up and very, very sorry for themselves. Robin was standing over them with arms crossed.

“Did I or did I not specifically say that Gordon’s family is off limits, huh?” Robin snarled.

The men sniffed and shuffled their knees and dripped snot and blood over the granite floors while Jason attempted to creep past behind them without drawing anyone’s attention. 

“So talk. Which of you morons took a potshot at the Commissioner’s daughter?”

When he got no answer, Robin backhanded one across the face so hard he went sprawling across the narrow hall. In fact, he almost collided with Jason, who jerked back just in time. 

“Hey kid,” said Robin without looking away from the other two fuckups on his shit list.

Jason glanced down and saw a smear of blood on his white pajama top from where the man’s cheek had scraped him on the way down. “Aw man, I just got this cleaned.”

The other two men half-swivelled to look at him with identical looks of horror on their faces.

“The bleach is in the laundry room, I can get you some when I’m done.” Robin grabbed his subordinates by the hair and jerked them both around to face him. “Eyes on me, boys. We’re not done.”

Jason prodded the prone man at his feet with one toe, checking for signs of life. “Um. You still breathing?”

The man coughed and rolled onto his back. His face was a livid mess of blue and purple. “C’mon kid, help a brother out,” he wheezed. 

“Shut your trap, Trevor,” Robin ordered. “I’m still your boss, not him. The kid hasn’t replaced me just yet.”

Jason swallowed thickly. There was no way Robin could have missed the rumours circling the Gotham Bats, but hearing him acknowledge it himself was a different matter altogether. 

“Kid, you gotta get him off my back,” Trevor begged, grabbing the hem of Jason’s shorts. 

Jason winced. “Look, pal. He’s Robin. Nobody in this world can help you.”

“Thought you were Robin now,” he slurred, cementing the fact that he definitely had a death wish.

“Yeah no,” said Jason, looking straight at Robin as he shook his leg free. “Not for all the money in the world.”

Robin smiled back. It was the supremely confident smile of someone who could snuff Jason like a candle any time he felt like it. Jason suppressed a shudder and said a quick, internal prayer for Trevor as he stepped over him. He didn’t think the idiot was likely to see the light of day. Then he quickly added a prayer for himself as well. 

If he didn’t play his cards right, he might end up on Robin’s shit list next. 

~~

The next day, while digging through the Manor’s digital archives, Jason unearthed Bruce’s crazy-detailed org chart from the depths of his private drive. It had the names of everyone arranged by pecking order, each crew neatly labelled. Jason’s name wasn’t on it (of course) but Robin’s was everywhere. 

Somehow, he was simultaneously the head of Internal Affairs and Special Operations, a director of Cartel Relations, a consultant of Shipment Security, and a manager of Compliance. Jason was frankly incredulous. How was he was doing five jobs at once? Did he have some meta ability to split himself into five bodies?

Jason printed the chart off and took it back to his room to memorize. But the file must have been cursed, because when he came back to it a week later on a whim, he discovered that Robin’s name had disappeared. It was as if someone had systematically wiped his name off the system. It had even been redacted out of old reports. Even on Bruce’s own encrypted, internal servers, Robin had ceased to exist. 

Jason had never logged off a computer so fast. There were only two possible explanations for this. Either Robin had quit, or he’d been fired.

Either way, Jason was fucked. 

~~

By the end of his sixth month at the Manor, Jason had graduated to all-purpose errand boy. He still wasn’t a proper Bat, not yet, but at least he was being useful. Tonight, he was running an errand for a minor drug lord.

The docks were quiet, and Jason was loitering atop a shipping container at 2am, waiting to drop off a backpack full of cash to Captain Vann Rosh for a job well done. Rosh was a small-time smuggler who had worked for them for three years now, and his shipments usually caused them no trouble.

The job did not even require Jason to come into physical contact with him. All he had to do was watch from a safe distance, make sure the goods were delivered to the correct warehouse, then leave the cash inside a rubbish bin by the north end of the quay.

Simple. Straightforward. A kid could do it, which was why Jason had been sent there alone.

The Bats were on a crusade to control every last criminal enterprise in Gotham, but the drug trade was one of their biggest headaches. On the one hand, they had a vast hold on the existing distribution chain in Gotham. On the other hand, their competitors were like cockroaches — it was impossible to stamp them all out.

So Jason wasn’t entirely surprised when it all started to go wrong. There were too many shadows moving inside the designated delivery point, and his gut feeling for ‘shit’s about to go down’ was usually very reliable. Jason scaled the side of the warehouse using the new tools Selina had loaned him and peered through the grimy glass vents on the roof. The building they’d picked was normally empty, but tonight, there were already three men inside waiting for Rosh.

A quick look through his binoculars confirmed his suspicions. He flipped his comm link open.

“Hey, uh, boss? I’ve got Antonio Maroni and two lackeys inside Warehouse No.35. Did you know about this?”

There was no reply. Odd. Jason hunkered down and tried to get a better look. He couldn’t hear what they were saying from this distance, but Maroni had his own briefcase full of cash with him, which usually meant only one thing. Rosh was about to sell them out.

“Boss? Uh, Arrowglass?” He tapped it a few more times. “Hello? Anyone there?”

This comm link thing was totally useless. Jason pulled it out of his ear in disgust and tossed it. Arrowglass, the drug boss in charge of this particular shipment, usually had several of his newbies manning the comms, but today it seemed like they were all slacking off.

That was fine. Jason wasn’t planning on stepping in. He wasn’t meant do anything except watch — Bruce had made that very clear. If Rosh was selling his services to a rival group, though, Jason sure as hell wasn’t going to be giving him his payday.

At that moment, he heard the roar of motorcycle engines. Coming towards them down the docks was a small contingent of riders, followed by a truck. What they intended to do soon became clear as half a dozen men jumped down and began dragging crates across the warehouse towards the truck.

Maroni was going to steal three hundred kilos of cocaine, and he was going to do it right under the Bat’s noses.

Well, shit.

Jason pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

Halfway through that, something dropped out of the sky and crashed through the glass skylight of the warehouse. Several somethings, in fact.

Jason, with his feet firmly on the concrete portion of the roof, nearly lost his balance. It took him a moment to figure out what was going on, and by then, gunshots were going off inside the warehouse. Someone had brought a submachine gun. The motorcyclists outside the warehouse leaped off their vehicles and rushed inside to join the fray. 

Jason swore under his breath and scuttled over to peer through the broken glass. In the brief instant when five black shapes had swooped down past him, he’d caught a glint of something metallic and feathery. To the best of his knowledge, there was only one person who dressed for a 2am shootout by the docks like it was the Mardi fucking Gras.

Inside the warehouse, a bunch of dark-clothed shapes were tussling. From this height, every combatant looked the same except for Robin, who was flying around in a dazzling gold-and-blue outfit like a Vegas showgirl. This only made it incredibly obvious how skilled he was. He flipped and spun like he had springboards built into his limbs. Nobody could get a good shot at him while he was ricocheting off the walls like a frisbee. 

Jason used to think Robin had gotten his clout from having some special relationship with Bruce, but it turned out he was actually a murder ninja who could probably kill a man with his pinky finger. No wonder the suits were terrified of him.

Down below, Robin executed an impossible rotation in midair, flicking off long, pointed knives that felled men like bowling pins. Jason knew when his home team had it in the bag. It was time to scram.

He was just about to turn away when a bullet pierced the window at his feet, sending a shower of glass at his head. Jason’s hands came up automatically with a cry. The next thing he knew, his feet were plunging through empty air and gravity was rushing up to grab him.

Somehow, he twisted enough to see a railing. His hand shot out, missed the railing, but caught the bottom ledge of the catwalk. Months of physical conditioning with Bruce on the exercise ropes had finally kicked in and paid off.

"Holy shit,” someone yelled. 

“Grab him before he falls!”

More gunshots.

Jason squeezed his eyes shut and prayed they weren’t aiming for his moronic ass. He should have hauled ass the moment they opened fire. Instead, he’d gotten sidetracked staring at Robin, of all people.

Jason chanced a look down and saw several black-suited operatives look up at him through blank black masks. His vision swam and his heart lurched. 

“Hey. Kid. Eyes on me.”

Jason jerked around as strong fingers closed around his wrist and hauled him up and over the railing. And then he was sprawled on the metal grille floor of the catwalk next to Robin, gasping for breath.

Robin flipped his eye lenses up and dragged down his mask. There was nothing but cold fury on his face. Jason didn’t need to see his expression to know he’d royally fucked up. Bruce was going to kill him if Robin didn’t kill him first.

“What the hell are you doing here? Have you lost your mind?” Robin was practically spitting the words. “Did you come here to spectate? Without protective gear? Are you a moron?!”

Jason was still dazed and half in shock, which was the only reason he started running his mouth. “Says the man who’s got sequins sewn into his sparkly catsuit,” he panted. 

Robin made a ‘tch’ sound and pressed his entire palm over Jason’s forehead, fingers spread like he was trying to cup his entire frontal lobe in one hand. 

“You cut your head open too, genius. Were you trying to die?”

Now that Robin was applying pressure to the wound, the pain came rushing back. Jason could suddenly feel wetness sliding down his cheeks. He raised his head with an effort and saw that the front of his white hoodie was liberally splattered with blood. Distantly, he realized that Robin was yelling to his cohorts.

“Anyone got bandages? Superglue?”

A few moments later, one of them climbed up onto the catwalk. Jason saw that it was a woman only when she came to loom directly over him.

“Don’t have bandages on me today, Nightingale. Wasn’t expecting to do emergency first-aid in the field.” Her tone was drier than the Sahara dessert. “What I do have is a spare pad.”

“Hand it over, it’ll do in a pinch.”

Nightingale?

Robin’s frown turned into a smirk as he unwrapped the sanitary napkin from its square packaging and pressed the cottony side to Jason’s forehead. “Hold that until the bleeding slows, then we’ll glue you back together.”

“The fuck? Ew!” Jason said, but one sharp look from Robin made him do as he was told. The woman gave him a withering look.

“Relax, moron. It’s clean and sterile and designed to soak up blood. Be glad we had one on hand.” She rolled her eyes.“Ungrateful bird,” she muttered as she left the same way she’d come.

Jason winced. “This is payback, isn’t it? For messing up your operation.”

“No. This is payback,” said Robin, taking his phone out of his utility belt and snapping a few choice pictures of Jason glowering up at him with a pad on his face. “And for your information, my sparkly catsuit is made of Kevlar. You, on the other hand, wore a hoodie into a gunfight like you think you’re bulletproof. Want to tell me what that’s about?”

Jason scowled and looked away. This was mortifying on every single level. “Arrowglass told me to be here at 2:00am with the money, so I came like he said, okay? He didn’t tell me to bring anything else.”

“Money?” He seemed to notice the backpack for the first time. Jason tried to blink the spots out of his vision as Robin unzipped it and peered dubiously inside. 

He’d seen what Robin was like with subordinates who screwed up, so he was braced for more yelling, maybe some judicious threats, maybe a bit of tenderizing with a fist. He felt like he’d been bracing for this ever since he first came to live at the manor. Instead, Robin stood up and stalked away. All his cold fury seemed to retract in on itself, vacuumed up like it was never there. Jason levered himself upright with a grunt as Robin pulled out his phone.

“Arrowglass? Nightingale here.”

“Hey, Boss Bird.” The other man’s tinny voice was just loud enough for Jason to catch.

“You knew our sting operation for catching Maroni was going down tonight, right?”

“Sure thing. How did it go?”

“If you knew that, then why did you send the kid down here?”

There was long pause.

“Wait, he’s there?!”

Robin — no, Nightingale — cocked one hip and his head tilted to one side. His voice was pleasant, almost a drawl. “Yeah. In fact, he dropped himself right in the middle of my sting. I’ve got him here beside me now. He told me he was running a job for you.”

“Aw, shit man. He ain’t supposed to be there!”

“So why does he have…” Nightingale flicked his long fingers through the wads of cash in the backpack at speed, estimating the amount with a practiced eye, “a hundred grand in unmarked bills on him, hm?”

More silence on the other end. Nightingale twirled a knife idly in his free hand and waited. Jason could almost hear the other man sweating. “He didn’t conjure this money out of thin air, Glass. Kid doesn’t have access to that much cash yet. Someone had to have given it to him.”

“It—it was an honest mistake, okay? I swear!”

“Go on, I’m listening.”

“…I-I did put him on the job, but that was like, weeks ago! That was before you got the new intel on Rosh. I just…I guess I forgot to take him off the job after you confirmed the sting.”

Nightingale dropped the backpack and began cleaning his knife absently. “What is he, chopped liver? You remember to say ‘hold the pickles’ on a burger but you forget to take a kid off an op?”

“It just slipped my mind. I-I got a million things on my plate, you know? Like tonight I was busy with the drop at the Diamond District, and that one’s worth a good twenty mil to the Boss Bat. So I forgot to tell him he didn’t have to go to the docks.” He was babbling now, trying to get all his excuses in a row. “If the kid had lost the money, I would have compensated the boss with my own funds, you know that—”

“It’s not about the money, you blundering fool.” All of a sudden, Nightingale was snarling. Jason flinched, and the savagery wasn’t even directed at him. “You almost got him killed! You know how close he came to becoming a smear on the ground?”

Arrowglass’s voice turned high-pitched and frantic, like the squeal of a boiling kettle. “I didn’t mean to, you gotta believe me! I thought the kid would have scrammed before any action went down!”

And yeah, Jason knew it was his own fault for not clearing out right at the get go. But damned if it didn’t feel good to hear Arrowglass gibbering in terror.

“What do you want me to say to the Boss Bat when he asks about the kid’s face, huh? You want me to tell him what you told me?” Nightingale was prowling the length of the catwalk now, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders and stretching his neck from side to side. 

Arrowglass was stammering so hard Jason could barely make out what he was saying. “C-come on, buddy. Don’t make me tell ‘im. If he finds out I almost got his kid killed, he’d have my head!”

“You already fucked up twice last year, Glass. Fuck up again and I’ll be paying you and your missus a visit after hours for a nice. Long. Chat.”

He cut the call with a stab of his finger. Jason shivered uncontrollably from head to toe. The rush of adrenaline was gone, leaving nothing but stiff coldness and excruciating pain in its wake. Nightingale hissed a long, low sigh.

Jason decided the only way he was going to get out of this with his dignity intact was to beat him to the punch. “I know, I know. I messed up. You don’t gotta tell me twice. I’m sorry, okay?” 

This was not how he’d imagined he might someday win the older boy’s respect. He’d wanted to prove himself — not end up dangling helplessly off a ledge like some fucking damsel in distress. Nightingale crouched down to check the makeshift bandage. 

“Relax. This one’s not on you. Not every Bat is as good at their job as they should be. But you learn to roll with it, kid.”

 “Not a kid,” he mumbled.

Nightingale rolled his eyes. “You still haven’t picked out a field name yet, so until you do, you’re a kid to me.” He dragged his gloves off with his teeth and took out a bottle of disinfectant. “Looks like the bleeding’s stopped, at least. Hold still, okay?”

Jason gritted his teeth and tried to stop shaking like an addict in withdrawal. He was only partially successful. Nightingale leaned in and began fiddling with his forehead. He was, Jason thought irritably, one of those people who looked even more annoyingly perfect up close than he did from far away. 

“What am I supposed to tell Bruce?” Jason asked eventually. He had never gotten hurt this badly on a job before. Bruce was going to be so mad. What if he had to pay out of pocket for Jason to go to a hospital or something?

Nightingale’s hands were deft and sure. “Leave Bruce to me.”

“You don’t have to —”

“This was my op. Anything that happens here is my responsibility. And I’m going to make sure Arrowglass loses a finger for this.”

“Uh. What?”

“If Bruce figures out what happened, he’ll make Arrowglass cut off a finger in compensation anyway.” Nightingale sounded nonchalant.

“That’s, um—” Jason swallowed. Was almost getting him killed a maiming offence? “What if I don’t want that?”

“Don’t stress about it. He’s already lost two. One more’s no biggie.”

Jason gave a strangled laugh, then realized he probably wasn’t joking. Arrowglass did wear gloves all the time, but he’d thought it was because the Bats all wore gloves — it was practically part of the uniform. No fingerprints that way, and one less way to incriminate them. He hadn’t thought the gloves were there to hide missing digits.

"Although.” Nightingale tilted his head. “If you’d prefer to hold this over his head as leverage, I can keep it quiet for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“This organization runs on favours, so I’d advise you collect as many as you can. They can be more valuable than currency.”

“Is that why everyone does what you say?” The question popped out of Jason’s mouth before he could stop himself. “Because they all owe you favours?”

Nightingale capped the bottle of glue and sat back on his heels with a smile of satisfaction. “You owe me too now, kid. So you’d better do as I say.”

Something cold went through Jason as that sunk it. He was right. Jason had only spoken to him for fifteen minutes and he already owed him like, two favours. Fuck. Might as well get this over with.

“What’s it gonna cost me?”

The older boy gave him a long, searching look as he pulled Jason to his feet. “Dick,” he said finally. “It’s going to cost you the effort of calling me Dick.”

At Jason’s confused look, he explained. “It’s my real name. Richard Grayson. But I prefer Dick.”

“Who actually calls you that?” Jason could not fathom who’d have the balls to address him as ‘Dick’ to his face. 

“Nobody apart from Bruce. And Alfred.”

Something twigged his memory. “Grayson. I’ve seen that name before. You’re my neighbour! Your room at Gotham Home is next to mine.”

“My room at Wayne Manor is next to yours too.” His lip quirked. “I used to live in the same two houses as you, you know?”

Jason hadn’t known. He had never dared to snoop through Wayne Manor because he didn’t want to give them any reason to send him away. Even after all these months, he still felt like a guest trespassing on their hospitality. “I guess that makes us…ex-neighbours twice over?”

“It makes us something,” Dick agreed. He gave Jason an appraising look, a slight furrow between his brow, as if he was trying to figure out what that was. 

~~

Afterwards, Dick shoved Jason into the passenger seat of the truck and took the wheel himself.

“You don’t have to ditch your op just for me. I can get home by myself.” Jason tipped his head against the window, feeling wrung out. Dick had left his team behind to mop up, and they seemed to be an efficient lot. 

“You’re not in any condition to drive a go-cart, let alone a truck. Plus, you’re fifteen. You don’t have a license.”

And you just killed twenty-five people and kidnapped a mafia don’s nephew, but who’s counting? “I don’t want to owe you any more favours,” Jason mumbled. 

He caught Dick’s reflection giving him an amused look. “Call this one a freebie. You’re Bruce’s kid. You’re entitled to a few.”

The way he said it made it clear that he did not include himself in that category. As they rolled down the empty streets, Jason turned his head slightly, catching Dick’s profile in the corner of his eye. 

“Aren’t you his kid too? At first I thought you had to be Bruce’s brother or boyfriend or something. But then Selina told me he picked you up right off the streets.” Just like me.

Dick barked a laugh at ‘boyfriend’, then snorted in derision. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t call myself his kid. More like his pet project. You, though…” he trailed off with a frown. “He’s different about you.”

The heat of the car was making Jason too woozy to pick up on whether Dick was angry, jealous, or disgusted. It had to be one of those three, right?

“I told him I didn’t wanna be Robin.” The heaviness of sleep was pulling him under like the tide. Against his better instincts, he was starting to nod off. “Didn’t want you hunting me down. Or killing me in my…sleep…”

Distantly, he heard a silvery laugh. “Pick a different name, then.”

Jason yawned. “…Couldn’t think of one.”

The silence afterwards went on so long that Jason wasn’t sure if he’d said it out loud or not. He must have passed out though because when the world refocused, they were pulling into the driveway of Wayne Manor. 

“Wake up, Cardinal. We’re here.”

Who’s Cardinal? Jason wondered blearily until a warm hand landed on his shoulder.

“It’s you,” said Dick. “I picked it, it’s yours. Now let’s go so Alfred can eviscerate me for my shoddy glue work.”

“…Why Cardinal?”

“Because you should start wearing red instead of white.” Dick nodded at his thoroughly ruined hoodie and winked. “Hides the bloodstains better.”

Jason breathed in. Breathed out. Something warm was unfolding in his chest. Cardinal. He could make that work. 

Chapter Text

Being Cardinal was, for the most part, a swell gig. Three nights a week he’d run the rooftops with Selina, learning wire work and window cutters and how to crack a safe. Two nights a week he’d run errands for the Bats. The rest of the time he would bike over to Gotham Home and take classes whenever he felt like it.

For his sixteenth birthday, Bruce dropped a pair of motorcycle keys in his hands and told him he could have the criminally under-used Aprilia Tuono sitting in the carpark. Jason felt like he’d died and gone to heaven. Most boys dreamed about girls; he’d dreamed about nothing but that motorcycle. All those gorgeous curves. 

Bruce even took him to a fancy French restaurant that night, though Jason was sure it was mostly an excuse to con Selina into having dinner with him. Jason didn’t mind, though. Watching them flirt over drinks and dessert, stealing sips from their wineglasses when they weren’t looking, seeing the pampered rich kid two tables over roll his eyes in solidarity — it was almost like having a mom and dad again. 

Dick dropped off his present the next day: a red hoodie with a crest-headed bird motif splashed across the back, wings stretching from shoulder to shoulder. Jason loved it as immediately and fiercely as he loved the motorcycle keys sitting snugly in his pocket. In fact, he wore it around so frequently afterwards that the Bats who visited the manor regularly started calling him ‘Red Hoodie’ to tease him. 

Bruce kept nineteen underbosses around to control his city, and collectively, the group was referred to as the “Extended Family,” though Aunt Kate was the only blood relation. Between them, they ran everything from arms deals to the flesh trade. Whenever they saw Jason, they’d drop heavy-handed suggestions on what he should do after he turned eighteen. All doors were open to him once he was legal — that was Bruce’s rule — so everyone was curious about what path Jason would choose.

It was Selina who gave him the most unbiased advice. 

“Stick with what you’re good at, birdie,” she told him one night, when Jason was ticking off all the Uncles and Aunts in the Extended Family on his fingers. “You’ll go farthest that way.”

Jason had to admit that he wasn’t keen on doing wetwork like Uncle Morgan, or extortion like Aunt Helena. There was an ‘ick’ factor there he wasn’t sure he could stomach. But Aunt Kate ran Acquisitions, which was a team that specialized in nicking expensive things from hard-to-reach places, and Jason wanted in on that.

After all, Bruce didn’t need another hitman — he already had Dick. Jason wasn’t going to be able to do half the things Dick could do, even if he trained the rest of his life. So he wasn’t going to try.

He’d carve out his own niche, and he was going to become the best damn thief in Gotham.

~~

Despite the fact that Jason was slowly taking on more work, he didn’t actually see Dick all that much. It turned out that Dick no longer lived at Wayne Manor because he owned a penthouse suite in the Diamond District. 

“But sources tell me he hasn’t been spending much time there recently either,” Bruce said to Alfred over breakfast one morning.

“I believe he’s been using his brownstone in the Bowery of late.” Alfred replied. “Though sometimes he does call from his apartment across from Robinson Park.”

Every time someone reminded him that Dick was rich as fuck, Jason felt a stab of envy. Of course Dick was rolling in money. Assassins of his calibre probably got paid in solid gold bars or some shit like that.

“He ought to just pick a place and stick with it,” Bruce muttered. “I still don’t know why he needs five different residences in the same city. Nine times out of ten when I visit, he’s not even home.”

“That does sound exasperating, Master Bruce. It’s almost as though he’s gotten tired of you breaking into his living room at odd hours like an amateur burglar.” Alfred lifted an eyebrow. 

“I do not break into his houses, Alf. I co-own the apartment block and I gifted him the penthouse, dammit. At most, I drop in unannounced —”

Jason carefully didn’t look up from the book he was reading when he interrupted. “How come you don’t call him beforehand? Make sure he’s there first?”

There was a tight sigh. “If I called first, he would be absent ten out of ten times.”

“Oh.” Jason snuck a peek at him over the spine of his book. So they were fighting again. What else was new? 

Bruce was sawing through his breakfast pastry like it had personally offended him. Lately, he’d had the same expression on his face every time Dick came up in conversation. 

“Shame,” said Alfred, holding up a paper box with a ribbon around it. “Whatever will I do with these fresh-baked goods that I wanted to give Master Dick this weekend? I was so hoping you’d be up to the task of delivering these for me, Master Bruce.”

Bruce gave Alfred an aggrieved look and thinned his mouth, but said nothing. Jason put down his book. 

“I can do it.”

They turned to look at him. 

Jason shrugged. “Well, he’s not avoiding me.”

~~

On his walk through the Bowery, Jason spotted half a dozen homeless people he knew by name, four addicts shooting up in broad daylight, three men lying in puddles of their own piss and vomit, and a shop whose broken window suggested it had been burglarized just last night. Even the bright noonday sun wasn’t enough to scrape the rough edges off this godforsaken neighbourhood. 

Dick’s brownstone was an old, crumbling thing that had steel bars installed over the windows. When Jason rapped on the knocker, he heard a thump upstairs, followed by Dick himself opening the door in an oversized sweater, sleep-rumpled and yawning. He looked like a frat boy who’d just woken up with a hangover. 

“This better not be another work emergency.”

Jason held up the cookie box. “I thought your bodyguard would answer the door.” 

Every Bat above a certain paygrade kept bodyguards in bulk like they’d gotten them at a two-for-one sale. The only difference was in how many they employed. Bruce kept somewhere between twelve and twenty-four — Jason could never get an accurate headcount. He’d gotten so used to them that he no longer even registered their presence. 

Dick let his front door swing wide open, just to show how utterly alone he was. “I don’t have bodyguards.”

Well, that made sense. He could see how Dick wouldn’t need bodyguards. Dick was usually the reason why other people needed bodyguards. 

“Next time I’ll just climb through your window, then,” Jason muttered.

Inside the kitchen, Dick spent about ten minutes rooting through the cupboards for an extra cup so he could pour Jason some juice.

“Alfred doesn’t usually bake on weekends. What’s the occasion?” 

“Actually, Alfred wanted Bruce to deliver these, but Bruce wasn’t sure you’d be home if it was him.” 

Dick’s mouth did a funny thing where it twisted one way, and then another. “Alfred, bless his British heart, will try anything, no matter how underhanded, to get me and Bruce to talk things out. But this cookie tactic is a new one.” 

He sounded deeply unimpressed.

“What’s going on between you two anyway?” asked Jason. 

He could never quite get the hang of what they were fighting about. Every argument seemed to start in media res, with zero context. Jason, like a fisherman sighting a storm cloud on the horizon, usually moved out of the danger zone before the yelling started in earnest. 

“Haven’t you figured it out yet? Bruce said you were supposed to be smart.”

Dick slunk around the kitchen, expertly sidestepping the piles of clothes he’d left lying on the floor. Though it was almost noon, his movements were still slow and lethargic. Like all proper Bats, he was mostly nocturnal. 

Jason made an exploratory circuit of the kitchen and almost tripped over a double-headed axe that was just lying on the floor. If Dick were anyone else, Jason would make some snide remark about World of Warcraft cosplays or Renaissance Faires. Since this was Dick, Jason eyed it askance for bloodstains instead. 

“You’re holding it wrong,” Dick said absently as he poured three different kinds of cereal into one bowl. 

“Where did you learn to use all this stuff?” 

Jason opened the pantry door and instead of canned goods, found a mini armoury inside. Knives of every shape, size, and length sparkled at him. Jason slotted the axe back into the empty space at the back. 

“It’s not a process you want to replicate, trust me.” 

“I thought you were supposed to be some kind of trapeze artist.”

Dick put down his bowl with a thump and Jason’s mouth clicked shut. “What is this, twenty questions? You want to go down the same path I did?”

“What? No!” Jason rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m just…trying to earn my keep. Making sure Bruce won’t kick me out. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Cardinal, I am literally the only one who understands.” Dick spoke around a mouthful of cereal. “You think I didn’t spend years wondering if Bruce would wake up one day and realize that taking me in was just a big mistake?”

Jason crossed his arms and leaned back against the fridge, unconvinced. “Sure, like Bruce would ever kick you out. You’re his Right Hand man — you contribute like, 15% of his billion-dollar bottom line.”

“I didn’t start out that way, Jay.” 

“And it’s not just the money. He cares about you. You haven’t seen how happy he is when you bother to come back on weekends.”

“Okay. You’re definitely in ‘none of your business’ territory now, and I’ll thank you to stay out of it. I know you’re just trying to help, but I’m warning you. Do not get between me and Bruce.”

For a moment, there was a flicker of real annoyance there — a frisson of anger so sharp that Jason couldn’t help flinching. It was hard to unlearn a lifetime of fight-or-flight habits, even if Dick had never struck him before in a fit of temper. 

Dick noticed and grimaced. “Just. Don’t bring me Alfred’s gifts when Bruce is too chicken to come himself.”

“I didn’t — he wasn’t — I volunteered!”

“I know, I know, you loyal little minion. But I’m serious, Jay. Don’t.” He reached over and pressed the flat of his hand down on Jason’s head. It made something warm expand in his chest like a hot air balloon. “Anyway, shouldn’t you be in school?”

Jason tried to remember what day of the week it was. Thursday. Right. “I’m supposed to be meeting Aunt Kate later for some light recon work.”

“A little young for that, aren’t you?”

Dick began picking through the puddles of clothing around the kitchen in a desultory fashion, looking for something to wear. 

“You were doing the same or worse when you were my age,” Jason pointed out mutinously.

“There’s a reason we don’t recruit minors, Jay.” He pulled out a shirt and began to change. 

“Then why did Bruce pick me?”

“Bruce was trying to give a street kid money in a way that wouldn’t seem skeevy or suspicious. It doesn’t mean you need to go full-on Bat for him, okay?”

“Then how come Robin existed, huh?” Jason demanded. The implication that he was only here as a charity case rankled. “I know you’re legal now and everything, but Alfred told me you were orphaned at ten. Bruce got you even younger than me.”

“And look how I turned out.” There was a strange, lilting cadence to his words that made Jason’s skin prickle. “Do you honestly aspire to be this?” He waved a hand at himself incredulously. 

Since he’d just slipped into a chartreuse jacket that made Jason’s eyes water, Jason could honestly shake his head and say, “Fuck no.”

Dick smoothed the wrinkles out of his fashion crime of a suit. “So go back to school. Hang out with kids your own age. Get a degree. And stay away from Bruce.”

“You want me gone that badly, huh?” That stung, just a little. Jason wondered if Dick was really so threatened by him that he needed him out of Bruce’s radius completely. What could he possibly do to Dick?

Dick carried his plates and bowls to the sink and braced his arms against the counter. There was a pile of dirty dishes there stacked almost higher than the fancy chrome faucet. 

“Jay. I know it's weird for me to say this, so I’ll only say it once. This life isn’t all fun and games. It can and will get you killed.”

"Hasn’t killed you yet,” Jason pointed out.

“Do you know why Bruce let me out on my own before eighteen?” Dick asked.

"Cause of your acrobatics and circus tricks?” 

Instead of replying, Dick turned and picked up a knife. Without any warning or provocation, he twirled it once and stabbed it into his own palm. Jason reared back in shock.

“Holy shit!”

But when Dick pulled the knife out, there was no blood. Instead, something black and tarry bubbled up from the gash. Seconds later, the flesh sealed itself over as if the wound had never existed. Jason was tempted to grab a knife and stab him again, just to be sure he'd really seen what he just saw. This was impossible.

Dick looked amused at the horror on his face, like he’d pulled off a practical joke instead of stabbing himself in the hand. “This is why.”

Jason knew, of course, about people like Poison Ivy and Deathstroke and Flash, but he’d never actually seen a meta up close before. Not like this, anyway. Dick treated it like a magic trick, but the grim look on his face told Jason there was more to the story than that.

“What the hell are you?”

Dick just shook his head. "You should rethink this whole Bat career now, before it’s too late.”

~~

The thing was, Dick wasn’t entirely wrong. Jason knew about the danger and the risks. But those weren’t the aspects of his new life that made him uncomfortable.

Bruce might not need penance to make himself feel better, but Jason was beginning to suspect that he did.

“We don’t deal to kids, do we?” he demanded of Bruce one night. Bruce was suiting up to attend some event downtown — a society function — and was using the dress code as an excuse to show Jason six different ways to tie a bowtie. 

“You don’t deal anything at all,” Bruce corrected him. “And neither do I, technically. I control import quality and export quantity. The actual street dealers don’t work for me.”

“Semantics,” said Jason, redoing Bruce’s bowtie for the twelfth time. 

“There was a drug, eight years ago, called Toss. Black Mask sold it mixed in with E, meth, and cocaine, and it was killing six hundred people a day along the East coast. I found the manufacturers and forced them to stop cutting it into other products. By itself, Toss works more like a synthetic opioid — less likely to kill instantly. Overdoses have been going down ever since.”

“But you bring it into the city.”

“I import the pure version of it, and then I dilute it. If I didn’t, Black Mask would be selling the compound with Toss added to everything under the sun.”

Jason stepped back and let Bruce examine the bowtie. “There are kids in Crime Alley — kids younger than me — hooked on meth and smack because they’re too young to know it can kill them. I want to help them.”

Bruce gave himself a once-over in the mirror and nodded his approval. “And what do you want to do about it?”

There were a lot of possible answers. Jason wanted to warn the dealers out of Crime Alley, period. He wanted at least one safe space for the street kids there. But at the moment, he didn’t have the clout or power to keep the worst dealers out of his ‘hood — he didn’t have the reputation that Nightingale did. And he wasn’t a big player in Gotham — not yet, anyway. He couldn’t do this using intimidation and fear. 

“There’s a program. Outreach and education. Rehabilitation.” 

He didn’t tell Bruce it was a program offered by the local chapel there. It was a small little Catholic outpost that catered to the desperate, and if Bruce started looking into it, he would know that Jason used to frequent it whenever he couldn’t bear the gnawing ache in his belly one second longer. They offered hot meals three times a week to whoever showed up, and sometimes even gave out bandages and shoes and blankets for free.

Bruce just nodded. “If you want something done, the best way is always to do it yourself.”

“You’d be okay with me helping them out?”

“Your time and money are yours, Jay-lad. You can do with you like with both.” Bruce patted his shoulder.

Jason felt the tension in his belly unwind. In Bruce’s parlance, that was practically a neon-stamped seal of approval. He did have his own money now, partly from the allowance Bruce deposited into his account every week, and party from his odd jobs. If Bruce was giving him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted… then Jason could do a lot of good.

Maybe even enough to offset all the wrong he was doing.

~~

Things came to a head between Bruce and Dick towards the tail end of summer. Jason was almost glad when the blowup finally happened. He was sick to death of watching them snipe at each other every single visit, because that meant Jason would have to give them both a wide berth afterwards for days, and Jason hated to see them moping like angsty teenagers. He was the only emo teenager in this house, dammit. 

He found them arguing over afternoon tea in the conservatory. Through a crack in the mahogany doors, he saw Dick pacing restlessly back and forth like a caged tiger.

“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” Dick said.

“Dick, we’ve been over this,” said Bruce. He was somewhere out of Jason’s line of sight, but Jason could feel his presence all the same, weighing down all the air in the room. “The Police Academy is somewhere you’ll excel. It will be useful.”

“Useful for you, you mean. I get it, all right? You want an inside man. Who doesn’t? But it’s going to be, what, two? Three years of my life? That’s time I’m not getting back.”

“I’m only suggesting this because it could be to your advantage —”

“Suggest! Hah. You’ve never suggested a thing in your life, Bruce. All you give are orders.”

“As if you’ve actually done anything I ordered these past few years.” Bruce’s tone was weary. He always sounded tired when he spoke to Dick.

Dick made a short, impatient sound. “You’ve always said I was free to leave the life whenever I wanted.”

“Yes, but I wanted you to leave with a plan. All you’ve got right now is some half-baked scheme to travel the world.”

Inside the room, Dick stopped pacing. Jason leaned closer to the door — had he misheard? For all that the Gotham Bats operated like any other for-profit business, there was also a big part of it that operated like a cult. Once you were in, there was no easy way out. That was how the mob worked. Even Jason knew that. And for someone with Dick’s level of insight and control over the whole operation, that should have gone triple. 

“So what, you want me to submit a five-year proposal? Make a spreadsheet? A powerpoint presentation?” 

“I need to know you’re not dropping all your responsibilities here just so you can go wait tables in Greece. Or tend bar.” Bruce’s voice dripped with contempt, like tending bar was so far beneath him that it ought to be relegated to a different plane of existence. Jason felt obliquely offended on behalf of bartenders everywhere. 

Dick made a frustrated sound. “I just wanted a break from all of this, okay? A break from you. Maybe have a gap year. See what else is out there. Live a different life.”

“I don’t think you’ve thought this through.” Bruce’s voice was still calm, but there was a tightness there now. “We both know you’re not the academic type. You almost flunked out of high school, and you definitely flunked out of college. Don’t look at me like that, I’m just stating facts. As it is, you don’t have a lot of career choices open to you. If you want to go straight, you’re going to need something solid to fall back on.”

“I do not need your advice on how to go straight, Bruce,” Dick hissed.

“Have you paused to consider that I’d have to cut ties with you?”

There was a more protracted silence this time. Bruce broke it first. 

“If you’re serious about leaving the life, you can’t afford to be associated with me. You can’t have questionable money in your bank account, you don’t need my enemies painting a target on your back, and you sure as hell don’t want my name interfering with your clean record. So tell me. Is this what you really want, Dick?”

Inside the conservatory, both of them had gone still. Dick was facing away from the door, so Jason could see the small knife that Dick was playing with behind his back, tossing and catching it over and over the way a smaller child might play with a fidget spinner.

“Are you threatening to never to speak with me again?” asked Dick softly.

“That’s not what I meant —”

“So instead of letting me ‘waste’ my time abroad where I might actually get a real life, you want me to join the Police Academy and be your mole.”

“I’m not asking you to give me intel.”

“So, what — you’d be okay with me working against you instead?! What the hell, Bruce?!”

“It’s good for you as a fallback plan. Your skills are a good fit with the Police Academy, and whatever you eventually decide, you’d be set. I would support you either way.”

“A good fit,” Dick echoed. He twisted his wrist and lightly caught the tip of the knife blade between two fingers. “You mean my skills for making people dead, or do you mean those other skills, of which I have so many?”

“You’re more than what the Owls made you, Dick.” It sounded like an old refrain, but Bruce’s voice was surprisingly gentle. 

“No. I’m what you made me.” Dick laughed mirthlessly. “And I’m tired — real tired — of you always making my fucking decisions for me.”

He viciously kicked over a side table and plates shattered across the tiled floor. Then the conservatory door slammed open and Jason had to jump back as Dick stormed out. Through the open door, Jason glimpsed Bruce sitting back down heavily. 

“What am I going to do with him, Alfred?”

Alfred emerged from the shadows to stand by his side. “You spent ten years scrubbing the Talon conditioning out of his system, Master Bruce. Time was, he couldn’t have talked back to you at all.” Alfred’s eyes flicked over the smashed china. “I can’t say I prefer the old version of him, even now.”

“No,” Bruce agreed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Neither can I.”

~~

Jason found Dick in his room packing his things. Their rooms were next to each other, so Jason wasn’t following him or anything, just heading back to his own room. But he’d never seen the inside of Dick’s room until now, so he poked his head in curiously. It was clearly a room that had once belonged to a small child. Jason could see old toys poking out from under the bed and a whole slew of photographs and souvenirs hanging from the walls. 

But everything that could belong to an adult had clearly been moved out ages ago. 

Dick was in the process of stuffing some dusty stuffed animals into a duffle bag. One of them was an elephant whose trunk was hanging by a thread.

"So. You really gonna leave the Bats?” Jason leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. 

Dick didn’t reply right away. When he finally turned around, Jason was startled to see that there was a ring of yellow around his pupils. He hadn’t turned on the lights in his room, and in the shaded gloom his eyes glowed like a cat’s. 

“You should be thrilled.” Dick forced a laugh, but it landed wrong. “With me out of the way, the way is free and clear for you to do whatever you want.”

Jason magnanimously avoided that entire topic with a roll of his eyes. “I’ve said it before multiple times, but I don’t want your job, Dick. There are already like five guys gunning for Right Hand of the Bat, and I’m not going to get between them and the title.”

“Yeah, maybe stay out of their way if you don’t want a knife in your back.” Dick zipped the duffle up with one final, vicious tug, and stood up.

Jason had bulked up ever since he started getting three square meals a day, but Dick still had forty pounds of muscle and about three inches on him. Today he was wearing a white tank top, and what Jason could see of his arms and chest were bare and unmarked. For reasons Jason still didn’t understand, neither of them had ever been allowed to get the bat tattoo on their chests. In fact, Bruce had put a blanket ban on all tattoos for both of them, period. 

Dick, in rebellion, wore increasingly excessive earrings, just to see if it could make Bruce burst a blood vessel. Hoops, pendants, chandelier-style constructions, plastic daisies, dick-shaped chicken nuggets, Jason’s seen them all. Jason’s rebellion consisted of dying his hair a different lurid shade every quarter. This month he was a redhead, for a value of redhead that meant his head looked like it had been eaten by Elmo. It made Bruce’s eyebrow twitch gratifyingly every time he looked at him. 

“It’s not going to be the same without you,” Jason said casually, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You’re like, the one who holds all of this together.”

“Aw, Jay. Is this how you tell me you’ll miss me?” Dick chuckled and ruffled Jason’s hair. And then he shifted his posture and repositioned his arm, and Jason realized that sometime in the past several months Dick must have trained this into him like a Pavlovian response, because this meant Dick was going for a hug, which meant that Jason was supposed to open his arms and hug back. 

They hugged. Jason counted off four seconds before letting go. He hadn’t learned this manoeuvre until he was fifteen, but this shit was just as dependable as tobacco for an instant hit. It made him all buoyant and squishy inside. 

“Look, Jay. How old are you again? Fifteen?”

“Sixteen. I’m not a kid anymore.”

Dick nodded, unfazed. “No, you’re not. You might be a minor in the eyes of the law, but we both know sixteen is old enough. Someday, you’re going to have to decide if you want to stay in this life or not, and now is not too early to start thinking about it.”

Jason’s brow furrowed incredulously. “Are you trying to turn me against Bruce? Me?”

Dick shook his head. “It’s not Bruce I can’t stand, Jason. It’s how he uses me.”

He ran one last eye over his room, his expression almost wistful. It was sometimes hard for Jason to remember that Dick had lived here a lot longer than he had. Ten years. Holy crap. 

“Then don’t join the Police Academy. Simple.” Jason wasn’t even sure what the conflict was. “If Bruce wants a source on the inside, he’s got plenty of bent cops to choose from. All he’d have to do is grease some palms. It doesn’t have to be you.”

Dick shrugged. “Bruce is a control freak, in case you haven’t noticed. If I don’t join the Academy, he’ll have a dozen more ‘suggestions’ for what I should do. And all of them will be to his own benefit.”

“Yeah? So?” Jason raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t seeing the problem here.

“So I don’t know how to tell you this, but you and me? We’re just chess pieces to him. Nobody will ever know what game he’s playing, because he never lets anyone close. We’re as close as it gets, and I still have no idea what his agenda is half the time. We aren’t people to him, Jay. We’re just tools.”

Jason just snorted. “Like I said: so? I was starving on the streets when Bruce found me. I’d be dead ten times over without him. He’s damn well earned the right to use me any way he wants to.”

Dick gave him a slightly pitying look. “Wow. Still in the hero worship stage, huh? It’s been what — a year?”

Jason’s lip curled in contempt. “Seems like you’re the one who’s forgotten to be grateful, circus boy. Where would you be if Bruce hadn’t taken you in?”

“Oh, I owe him big time all right.” Dick made a strange face. “I know just how you feel, Jay. Cause I used to think exactly like you.”

“He raised you. From when you were ten. Don’t tell me he’s not a father to you, too.”

“Father, huh? Did he adopt us while we weren’t looking?” Dick sounded amused, while Jason shifted uncomfortably. “Is there a piece of paper that says Jason Wayne on it somewhere? No, I didn’t think so.”

“He’s already adopted both of us into the Gotham Bats, and that’s more than I could have expected anyway —”

“But he’s never going to give us his name, Jay. You know why? We’re too useful to him as total nobodies. He needs street rats and circus brats to do his dirty work for him, not a Wayne scion.”

Jason glared at the floor, too nettled to admit that this bothered him, too. Being adopted was still his secret dream, even after all these years. But he’d already won the lottery once with Bruce finding him; he shouldn’t expect more than that. 

“So that’s it? You’re going to leave because you can’t be a Wayne?”

“I’m sick of being his good little lackey. In fact, here’s some advice from one lackey to another: quit while you still like him.”

Dick slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and gave Jason a tight-lipped smile as he swept past him and crossed the landing.

“I like being useful to Bruce,” Jason called after him. “So what if I’m his lackey for the rest of my life?”

“Tell me that again when you’re my age, Jay,” Dick called back.

Jason watched Dick’s progress through the manor on the CCTV feed. Dick trotted down the stairs, bypassed the biometric security on the doors between the private and public wings of the manor, and cut straight into the atrium area where the guest entrance was. Three mid-level deputies and two senior lieutenants jumped aside to let him pass.

When he got to the console table next to the door, he unholstered two guns and dropped them with a heavy thunk. He hadn’t bothered to remove them for tea high. At Wayne Manor, there were only three people allowed into Bruce’s presence while still fully armed, and Dick was one of them.

“Keep your shit, Bruce! I won’t be needing them,” he yelled over his shoulder as he slammed out the door.

Dick would not visit the manor again for another two years. By then, Jason would be dead in a ditch in Ethiopia.

Chapter Text

Dick left, and the orderly existence of the Bats slid instantly into chaos. 

Even Jason was shocked at how quickly things went to shit. Within a week, every idiot with half a brain was trying to fill the power vacuum Nightingale left behind. It was like watching rats swarm a kitchen in a feeding frenzy once the cat was gone. 

Within a month, the Bat hierarchy was a complete mess. Factions disintegrated. Turf wars were fought. Mobsters challenged each other for their spot in the pecking order. Jason got used to waking up and learning that so-and-so had been shanked in the night. 

Bruce curbed what he could, but he was too busy redistributing Dick’s responsibilities to deal with their petty squabbling. Even with nineteen underbosses pitching in, there were too many loose ends to tie up. The sheer scale of Nightingale’s responsibilities meant that everyone had their hands full cleaning up the tiny empire he’d left behind. 

It was the first time Jason had really appreciated how much of a linchpin Nightingale had been. Without him, things were cracking apart at the seams. Jason just hoped the Gotham Bats didn’t crack right in half along with it. 

By the third month, Bruce had developed deep furrows around his eyes and mouth from all the extra frowning he was doing. By the fourth month, his mealtime conversations had devolved into distracted monosyllables. By the fifth month, his temper had turned hair-trigger volatile — any tiny mistake could set him off.

This one bothered Jason the most. He wasn’t worried for himself, per se, but it was hard not to wince when Bruce turned his rage on his underlings for the slightest of slip ups. It made him uneasy in way that felt disturbingly familiar — this was just like his dad all over again. Willis Todd had been a ticking time bomb too, and Jason hadn’t signed up to do this shit twice. Bruce was supposed to be better than this. 

By month six, Jason had had enough. Bruce never actually came out and asked, but Jason was neither blind nor stupid. Even he, with only his surface-level grasp of mob politics, could see that Bruce was going to need all the help he could get. So Jason stepped up to the plate. 

~~

Where the Bat went, Cardinal went also — a constant, crimson shadow at his back. Clandestine late-night summits, predawn visits to derelict factories and abandoned properties, midnight assignations with the local enforces, Jason went to them all.

He had to abandon his original plan of joining Aunt Kate’s Acquisitions team when he started working directly under Bruce, but that was fine — really. This was just a temporary gig anyway. He only had to do this until Bruce got everything back under control and things calmed down. Then he could go back to being a thief. 

Bruce’s deputies realized pretty quickly that having him around was a good thing. Cardinal’s presence had a mitigating effect on Bruce’s temper, like a circuit breaker on a wire. At meetings, they started keeping Cardinal positioned between themselves and the boss whenever they had to deliver bad news. Statistically speaking, Bruce was less likely to strangle someone with his bare hands if he had to reach around Cardinal to do it.

Jason learned to keep one eye on Bruce’s temper at all times, but it was like watching milk on a stove — impossible to pinpoint which moment it would boil over. One particular meeting started as a tongue-lashing but quickly devolved into a frothing outpouring of rage at the forty-minute mark. Cardinal stepped in when it looked like Bruce was going to go from breaking bones to breaking necks. 

“Don’t give yourself an aneurysm, B,” he said, cutting into the tirade before Bruce could make heads roll. 

The five deputies on the chopping block turned to stare at him with barely-disguised hope, as if he’d given them a stay of execution. Jason herded them outside onto the balcony, where they stood white-faced and shivering in the frigid January air. Then he shut the doors in their faces and whirled on Bruce. 

“Let’s all just take a time-out to chill,” said Jason. “Literally, in their case.” 

Bruce was angry enough that the veins in his neck were standing out. “Trying to save them from my wrath?” he growled. 

“I don’t give a flying fuck about them,” Jason hissed back. “I just don’t want you bursting a blood vessel over this. You’re losing your shit, B. They’re not worth it.”

“You will not obstruct my justice.”

“Obstruct? I’m letting them feel the icy consequences right now.” 

They turned to stare through the glass balcony doors. Outside, the five men and women stood stiffly at attention, their lips slowly turning blue, blood congealing into jelly on their faces. Some combination of pride, fear, and self-preservation kept them from moving a muscle. 

Bruce made a low rumbling sound and tossed the fireplace poker down with a clang. “Fine. Let them freeze.” 

The look on his face was thunderous. But he took a hot drink when Jason poured him one and he sat down by the fireplace when Jason flopped down across from him and pulled out a deck of cards. By the time Jason let them back inside an hour later, Bruce was in a more amenable frame of mind. 

Only two of the deputies got hypothermia. Jason called that a win. 

~~

Bruce’s enemies realized even quicker that Cardinal’s loyalty couldn’t be bought with money or favours. 

The first time a man tried to offer him a discreet string of Indian garnets in exchange for a detailed itinerary of Bruce’s moments for the next two weeks, Bruce was busy in the next room, on the phone. When he returned twenty minutes later, Jason didn’t even attempt to hide the garnets he was examining with a critical eye. 

“What do you think, B? Are these worth two weeks of your calendar? Did I get a good deal out of it?” Jason asked him cheekily.

The man across from them spluttered a string of denials and jumped to his feet. It wasn’t going to save his skin. 

Bruce looked amused — and unperturbed — that Jason had apparently agreed to the man’s bargain. “I’d say those are worth maybe two days of my calendar, but not an hour more.”

Jason shook a finger at the man and tutted. “Bribing me with fake gems? It’s a good thing I never trained under a master jewel thief or took a course in gemology — except wait, yes I did.” He gasped in mock surprise. 

“You —” the man’s face was apoplectic. “Lying bastard.”

“Guilty,” said Jason, hand to his heart.

“We had a deal!”

“Did we?”

After that, they stopped trying to tempt him with gifts. 

It wasn’t as if Jason was hurting for money. By now he had thirteen separate bank accounts under four pseudonyms, each with a seven-figure balance. Most of them were shell accounts for Bruce to move money through so that investigators couldn’t dig too deeply into his financials, but the fact remained that the accounts were all in Jason’s names, and Jason had the passwords to each and every one. 

Bruce never told him not to touch the money, but he didn’t have to. Jason was so careful with money in general that it never even occurred to him to spend a penny of it. He didn’t realize how much money was in there until he woke up one day and realized he had seventeen million dollars at his fingertips. 

“I don’t know how I feel about this, B. That’s three zeroes too many for my comfort level,” he grumbled, staring at all the digits on the sheaf of bank statements. 

“I trust you,” said Bruce.

“I could empty these accounts tomorrow and buy myself a — a plane. Or a castle. Or a private island.”

“A small one, yes. You probably could.”

“I’ve always wanted an island.” Jason tipped his chin up, testing him. “You think I wouldn’t steal from you?” His reputation as a capable thief had been on the rise before he decided to put that career on the back burner. He was made to steal. Didn’t Bruce realize that?

Bruce exchanged a look with Alfred. 

“This is going to blow up in your face one day, just you wait,” said Jason, in prophetic tones. 

“You know,” said Bruce, “I once gave a boy a Rolex. He could have sold it. Or traded it. Or used it as leverage since it had my name on it. Instead, he returned it without my mentioning it once.”

For some reason, Jason felt his cheeks heating. Why the fuck was he embarrassed over a stupid watch? He felt, obscurely, like he’d been caught red-handed doing something bad. Except in this case, it was something good. He hadn’t expected Bruce to remember. 

Alfred patted his shoulder. “Law of the universe, my boy. You were faithful over a little; he will set you over much.”

~~

Another day, another warehouse.

Except this one was filled with people. Young women, mostly, though they had the jaded, world-weary expressions of people much older. Jason felt an uneasy twist in his gut when he saw their gaunt, suspicious faces. 

A few murmured in confusion when men came to take their passports away, speaking a language Jason had never heard before, but he didn’t need to know what they were saying to guess where they’d come from. Either they were from some war-torn country so dangerous that selling themselves into slavery overseas was still better than facing certain death at home, or they were destitute and desperate enough to take any chance that came their way. 

Jason knew what that sort of desperation tasted like, and he was predisposed to loathe anyone taking advantage of that. But Bruce had sent him here today to pick up his cut of the profits — no criminal outfit was stupid enough to do business in Gotham without paying taxes to the Bat — so Jason had come without complaint. While he waited for them to finish counting up the money, he skulked around their warehouse and pretended to inspect their merchandise. 

“You don’t want to count the bills yourself?” Brent ‘Bullock’ Crale asked him, sneering. He was the boss of this operation, a hulking bruiser of a man who had livid red tattoos decorating his bald head. 

“Why bother?” Jason asked. No one was dumb enough to stiff Bruce either, though right now Jason almost wished they would try. Operations that tried to cheat the Bat got shut down, and Jason wouldn’t mind that at all. 

Maybe one of those idiots would slip a few counterfeit bills into the pile, just to see if Bruce would catch it. One could hope. 

Crale eyed Jason askance, his arms crossed. By now most of the big players in Gotham knew Cardinal by reputation, if not by sight. His red hoodie was distinctive enough to be his calling card. Crale looked distinctly unimpressed at meeting him for the first time.

The antipathy, Jason wanted to reassure him, was entirely mutual. 

He stopped when his gaze caught on a girl no older than ten or eleven, her dark hair still neatly braided against her head. A taller but similar-looking girl — her older sister? — glared as one of the handlers held out his hand for her passport. She shook her head and gesticulated and snapped a refusal. The handler didn’t hesitate. With a growl, he struck her to the ground. 

The younger girl quickly crouched down to help her up, but the handler pushed her roughly aside and began rifling through the older one’s clothing. The older girl panicked and struggled as hands pawed roughly under her shirt. The younger one started shrieking in distress. 

Jason was almost shaking from the effort of keeping still. He’d promised Bruce he wouldn’t interfere in any of the businesses he got sent out to collect from, and so far he’d done as he was told — even if some of them turned his stomach. This, though — this was testing his self-control.

“Why are you taking their passports?” Jason asked through gritted teeth. 

Crale snorted. “Those passports aren’t even theirs. You think they have the money for this shit? We make fake ones for them when they’re crossing.”

“If they’re fake anyway, why take them?”

“Because it’s our property.” Crale looked bored. “And so are they.”

Two more of his men had lumbered over at the sound of the commotion. The other girls in the warehouse quickly cleared a space for them, eager not to get involved. The little girl was still screaming.

“Shut her up,” Crale snapped, and one of his man dragged her off to a corner where a woman in a dirty apron stuck something into her arm. She went limp and quiet with the abruptness of someone throwing a switch.

“What’s that — what did you just give her?” Jason demanded.

He already suspected a powerful sedative, or perhaps some new variant of the latest opioid on the streets. Now that he was looking for it, he could see that at least a third of the girls here had a glazed, off-kilter look to them, like they were too drugged out of their minds to know where they were or what was happening to them. 

“We give ‘em whatever keeps ‘em quiet.” Crale shrugged. “Some of them ask for it. They like being blissed out before going on market.”

Two of the enforcers were speaking in low voices to the older girl, probably pouring threats down her ears. The man with a hand wiggling down her blouse finally made a triumphant sound and held up the passport she’d tried to keep hidden. His colleagues snickered. The girl was crying silently, tears trickling down her face. 

“What do we do with this one, boss?” asked the man dragging the younger girl upright. She was almost completely dead weight. Her limbs looked rubbery. Jason felt a spike of alarm when he saw her head loll. They gave her too much. 

“Put her in the cage.”

The girl suddenly vomited onto the floor, but her handler barely seemed to notice. Instead, he dragged her through her own vomit and disappeared into the back of one of the transport trucks idling around. There was the sound of something snapping together, the slam and rattle of metal against metal, and holy shit were they actually locking up a kid who was drugged to the gills and might OD at any minute?

Her older sister seemed to realize the danger before Jason did. She was already bucking and clawing at the men holding her back, blistering the air with the only English she knew, which was 100% comprised of swear words. Jason respected that. 

“Hey, hey!” Crale was yelling too now. “Put a fucking lid on her, boys. What am I paying you for?”

“Crale, enough —” Jason said, but he was cut off by the sudden wet smack of the girl’s head against the unfinished cement floor. The sound was curiously muffled inside the warehouse, but Jason went stock still nonetheless. He could see her lying on the ground, but from where he was standing it was impossible to tell whether she was dead or not. 

“You telling me how to run my business, boy?” Crale rounded on him and Jason rapidly sized him up. The itch to hit something had blossomed into an overpowering urge. Only his promise to Bruce held him back. 

“Listen here, shithead,” said Jason, almost breathless with the effort of keeping himself in check. This was the part he was usually good at — spinning things so that it sounded palatable to gangsters — but today, it made him feel complicit and dirty. “Stop fucking up your own merchandise. People don’t want to buy damaged goods. It’s not good for business.”

“You’re mouthy for a bird,” said Crale, his eyes going cold. 

The cluster of men trying to wake the girl were now murmuring amongst themselves. They laughed the high, nervous laughter of people who knew they’d royally screwed up. 

“Dude, she’s completely out. Do you think—?”

“Fuck, I’m not writing off this inventory as a loss.”

“She could still be good for something.”

“Hey, hey, know what might — y’know — really wake her up?”

One of them crouched down and reached between her legs with a leering grin. Jason’s outrage kicked straight into overdrive. 

“Make them stop,” he growled. 

Crale grabbed his arm before he could take another step. “You might be the Bat’s messenger bird, Cardinal, but you don’t get off telling me what to do.”

And finally — finally! — Jason had the excuse he was looking for to twist out of his grip and sock Crale in the face. Crale stumbled back, but recovered quick enough to pick Jason up by the scruff and throw him against a support beam. Spots flashed in his vision, which reminded him that this was by far the least of his worries. Bruce was going to be pissed when he found out.

Fuck it. Rage made his blood fizz against his fingertips. Bruce was never going to find out. 

Crale loomed over him. “Take the money and run on home, kid. You can tell the Bat I fulfilled my part of the bargain while you’re sucking him off.”

Jason was already mad enough that the ugly insinuation made zero difference to him. “You’re dead, Crale.”

As Crale mopped at the blood from his split lip, Jason gathered his rage around him like a suit of armour. In for a penny, in for a pound. If he was going to piss Bruce off, he might as well piss him off to the max. Then he flew into action. 

He kneed Crale in the gut and watched him choke, his face going purple. Then he flipped over Crale’s head and kicked his legs out from under him. With a snarl, Crale lashed out with one meaty arm. Jason saw it coming from a mile away. He could have ducked with room to spare. But in that split second before impact, something occurred to him.

He thought of Bruce’s temper.

Maybe there was a second option. 

Jason stood still and let the blow knock him flat on his ass. Crale’s heavy metal rings gouged open his cheek and knocked a tooth loose, but when Jason rolled onto his back, all he did was laugh through bloody lips. He’d been taking hits since he was old enough to walk, and he’d had worse. Hell, Nightingale had hit him harder than this before when they were just on the mats, practicing. 

“What’s so funny, kid?” Crale was breathing like a winded rhinoceros. “You got something to say to me?”

Jason spat in his face. “Two words, actually. Fuck. You.”

The next couple of hours weren’t going to be pretty, but he knew what his endgame was now. 

~~

Bruce put down the binder in his hand with a heavy thump when Jason staggered dramatically into his study and slammed the door shut behind him. 

“What the hell happened to you?”

Even through his blackened, swollen eye, Jason could see Bruce’s hawk-like gaze tracking over him like a scanner, tabulating each and every injury with increasing displeasure. 

“Oh, nothing. Just ran into a guy’s fist, like, repeatedly.”

“Whose?”

Jason flicked a smear of blood away from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Brent Crale’s.”

Bruce steepled his fingers and waited. The shadows around him seemed to flicker and darken. Or maybe that was just Jason’s brain fighting to stay conscious. 

Jason would shrug if the movement didn’t send fire searing down his back. “I pointed out a flaw in his business model. He took issue with my impeccable logic.”

A beat of silence as Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “And for that, he broke your arm?”

“Looks that way,” said Jason, easing himself gingerly into the armchair opposite Bruce with a hiss of pain. He hadn’t actually checked, but he’d definitely heard the snap of bone when Crale had tossed him against the wall. 

It was possible that he was playing this up a little bit more than he usually would, but fuck it, Crale hit like a tank and Jason had just spent an hour making sure every blow landed for maximum impact. He needed to look as bad as he felt. 

Which reminded him. Jason worked his loose tooth free with with his tongue and spat it into his hand. “Shit. You think the tooth fairy still visits teenagers, or do I have to summon her with an incantation. She owes me like fifty bucks.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “And did nothing I teach you come in handy?”

Jason dropped his eyes. Shifted. Grimaced. “He had eight goons with him. I did my best.” 

Not a lie, though none of the eight goons had actually gotten involved in his beating. Towards the end, one had even tried to stop Crale from going too far. But Jason saw no reason not to let Bruce think the worst.

And there it was — the slant of Bruce’s mouth that promised terrible things for anyone who dared to cross him. “He knows you work for me, doesn’t he?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” 

“Then he knows I won’t let this stand.” 

Bruce was already rising to his feet, his face dark, his hand reaching for his phone. 

Jason hid a smirk behind a fit of wretched, wretched coughing that was absolutely not faked. He was counting on it. 

~~

Two days later Crale landed in the hospital with a punctured lung, eight broken ribs, strangulation marks around his neck, and holes through his feet that looked like they had been made with a power drill. Last Jason checked, he was still in a coma.

Bruce had sent his message loud and clear. Mess with Cardinal, and the Bat will mess with you. Crale’s men scattered in the ensuing confusion, and the Bats swooped in to pick up the reins of his enterprise. 

Jason heard about all this from his bed, where he was confined while he recuperated, and the vindictive thrill of satisfaction that coursed through him was like nothing he’d ever felt before. This, he thought, must be what taking drugs felt like. This was why that shit was addictive. In mob parlance, he had just removed Crale from the playing board. It was like lighting through through his veins; like fireworks in his heart. Suddenly his injuries seemed like a small price to pay. 

Crale was never going to do business in Gotham again, if he woke up at all. Better still, Jason had managed to pull the entire trafficking operation out of his grubby little hands so that those girls could have a chance with someone with a better head for business. 

At least Aunt Helena wasn’t going to dope them up on experimental drugs or beat them senseless. She might put them to work on Sleet Street, but she’d entice them with money instead, keep them hooked on a steady paycheck and a warm place to sleep. 

The one dark spot in all this was that he couldn’t stop thinking about the two sisters, especially the little girl. Did she make it? Over and over, he remembered how he’d watched her get dragged away while he’d done nothing. He should have acted sooner. Said something earlier. He’d sacrificed their immediate safety in a bid to take Crale down, and while he had succeeded, they’d paid the price for it. 

He didn’t quite have the guts to ask Aunt Helena what happened to them in the end. 

~~

Amidst the chaos of that year, Jason’s seventeenth birthday came and went without any fanfare. Jason barely noticed, if he was honest. 

Bruce didn’t notice, either, but that was because he was too busy dodging an assassination attempt that week to do anything else. Jason didn’t find out about it until afterwards, and by the time Alfred reminded him he’d turned seventeen three days ago, he didn’t care anymore. He was just pissed that Bruce had almost died and nobody had told him. 

“I walked into his room to find him conked out and hooked up to four machines. Four!” he told Selina that night as they sat on the gargoyle-studded stone ledge of the old Union Bank, swinging their legs over the Gotham skyline. 

“It’s Bruce. He’ll say it’s a flesh wound,” she replied. 

Jason had met up with her for a rooftop drink for old time’s sake, but the topic of conversation was quickly souring his mood.

“Some bitch got close enough to nick his artery this time,” Jason said, before biting his lip and looking away. It was all very hush-hush, of course. Bruce couldn’t have anyone finding out how close they’d gotten to killing him. But Selina was due to have breakfast with Bruce next week — she would’ve found out anyway. 

“Who?” she asked quietly. 

“A woman from the Clown Cabal — one of Joker’s flunkies.” Jason’s hand shook as he downed the rest of his champagne in one gulp. “I swear to God I’m going to hunt them all down one day and kill every last one of them.”

According to Alfred, the assassination had involved a team of ghoulish, clown-faced assassins wearing party hats and toting poisoned machetes. Alfred had been forced to call in a very discreet surgeon afterwards. Bruce had gotten six stitches in his neck. The captured clown had cracked under torture at the twenty-second hour.

“She told us they were hired by the Maronis.” Jason slammed the bottle back down on top of the head of a gargoyle. 

Selina hummed, but looked unsurprised. “The big Families have been waiting for an opportunity like this for a very long time. If I were his enemy, I’d take my shot now too.”

“So what — Nightingale leaves and suddenly it’s open season on the Bat?”

There had been, Jason only recently found out, no less than eleven attempts on Bruce’s life since Dick left. Bruce had kept most of them under wraps, but even he couldn’t hide six stitches in his neck — not from Jason, anyway. 

“Well. Nightingale was his Strong Right Hand.” 

Jason shook his head. Nightingale was pretty lethal, but he wasn’t invincible. So why were the Maronis and Falcones and Costellos acting like the sun was setting on Bruce’s empire? 

“Nightingale wasn’t even his bodyguard. What difference does it make if he’s here or not?”

“You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective,” said Selina. “Nightingale was a question mark — that’s where he drew his power from. Even when he went by ‘Robin’, he never came out during the day. Nobody’s ever seen him in public with Bruce. Where did he come from? Who taught him the art of murder? Nobody knows. It’s part of his mythos. It’s what made him feared.” 

“Yeah, I know he’s a scary motherfucker. Everybody knows.”

“But he wasn’t just a proficient killer, he was also loyal to one. Assassins above a certain calibre usually cost a pretty dime, but they can be bought. Nightingale was on par with the best, but he obeyed only the Bat. Nothing could buy him. The other Families couldn’t figure out how Bruce was controlling him. Terrifying, no?”

Jason frowned. Was that what they thought of Dick? That he was nothing but a monster that Bruce kept on a leash? No wonder he’d left.

Selina finished her champagne and made a sound of satisfaction as she folded the little paper cup into a neat square. “While Nightingale was around, Bruce’s enemies were more cautious. Nobody was quite sure what his trump card was capable of. But now that he’s gone…”

“You’re saying they’re not going to fucking stop,” said Jason.

Bruce’s enemies would keep coming. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it because at the end of the day, he wasn’t Dick. He wasn’t sufficiently scary to keep assassins at bay. Jason suddenly wanted to throw something heavy off this ledge and watch it smash a hole through the pavement forty stories below. 

“They think that losing Nightingale means Bruce has lost his edge,” Selina gave him a crooked half-smile. “And they think that without him, Bruce is weak.”

“They don’t know him very well, do they?”

She laughed out loud. “They don’t know him at all.” Her words turned sober after that. “The sharks are circling now, Cardinal. They smell blood in the water. You’d best be careful yourself, too.”

Jason lifted a single eyebrow. He could see how someone might take advantage of Nightingale’s absence to kill Bruce, but he didn’t see how he’d make an attractive target. He didn’t run a team, or manage operations, or own desirable territory. He didn’t even have an official job title.

 “Me?” he said. “I’m the smallest of small fries. Who’d want to kill me?”

~~

The hitman came for him while he was riding home on his motorcycle one night. The first shot snapped the bike’s side mirror right off and the second shot punched through one of the tires. Jason rolled off the vehicle before it could skid and ducked for cover while trying to track the shots. 

It was late enough in the night that the roads were deserted, which meant his assailant was on a roof. For most people that would be a deterrent, but Jason happened to be pretty familiar with the rooftops of Gotham. 

The only problem was that Jason didn’t have a gun. Bruce didn’t let him so much as touch one outside of the manor and Jason had complained endlessly about it before, but it had never seemed more relevant than this moment right now. All he had on his person were some lock-picking tools, a bolt-cutter, a window wrench, and some grappling lines. 

Thank God for Selina and her gifts. 

Jason reeled himself up onto the tallest roof in the vicinity to get a better sightline. Three buildings over, a shadow moved and flickered. Jason pulled down the binocular lenses built into his motorcycle helmet and spotted the flash of steel in the figure’s hand. 

Bingo. 

Most of the Bats had never seen Jason working with Selina, so not many of them knew that Jason could move around rooftops even faster than he could on the streets. Here, he was in his element. With his heart pounding beneath his ribs, Jason swiftly gave chase. 

Along the way, he dodged four more bullets and ducked a few sloppily-thrown knives. Eventually, he managed to force the shooter off a three-story roof and make him crash awkwardly into the dumpster below. Jason followed after him, landing lightly on his feet. 

He’d chased him to the edge of the Garment District, but the alley they were in was quiet, with almost no streetlights. The only light came from the reflected glow off the main street that the alley led out onto. Somewhere in the distance was the rumble of a passing car. 

The assailant got to his feet and discarded the gun — he was out of ammo. Jason pulled out the bolt cutters and held it awkwardly. Bruce, Selina, and Dick had all spent varying amounts of time drilling him on hand-to-hand combat, but Jason had never tested his skills in a life-or-death situation before. Sure, he could scrap with the best of them, but nobody had ever gone for his throat — metaphorically speaking.

It took a moment for him to identify the beat of his heart as excitement before the assailant pulled a knife and struck. 

The man was competent, even if the knife was nothing fancy. As they each attempted to herd each the other against the jagged brick walls of the alley, Jason catalogued his strengths and weakness. This man wasn’t nearly as strong as Bruce, or as surgically precise as Selina, or as fast and agile as Dick. He wasn’t even especially imaginative. 

Once or twice he struck at Jason’s head, but the knife just glanced off his helmet, so he started aiming for the torso instead. The conditions weren’t ideal for Jason. His field of vision (and, if he was honest, his range of movement) was somewhat limited by his headgear, and the bolt cutters were weird to hold. While he was good at improvising on the fly, he would have given a good chunk of money for one of Nightingale’s custom weapons right now.

At one point, the hitman’s knife got tangled in his hood, and Jason felt rather than heard him yank down, ripping through the back of his top in the process. Jason choked as the material pulled taut against his jugular, but he ran up the wall of the alley and flipped over the man to compensate. 

By the time he was upright again, there was a slash down his back. It was going to hurt in a minute, just as soon as his heart stopped pounding. 

“Fuck you, this was my favourite hoodie.” Jason could feel the night breeze against his shoulder blades now, which bespoke a pretty big hole. “You’re gonna pay for that.”

“You won’t live long enough to make me,” said the hitman.

Ten minutes later, Jason had three more shallow knife wounds and what felt like a sprained knee, but his opponent was flat on the ground with three cracked ribs, a snapped leg, and probably a concussion. There was also a bolt cutter-shaped dent on the side of his head that was going to look ugly in the morning.

Jason leaned down and ripped the man’s ski mask right off, feeling almost giddy. He was used to fighting outclassed. He’d never won once against Bruce, to say nothing of Dick. Winning felt like a rare thrill — one he could get used to. 

To his disappointment, the hitman wasn’t anyone recognizable. This guy wasn’t on Bruce’s list, or Interpol’s most wanted, or GCPD’s database, which meant he wasn’t Dangerous with a capital D. This was just some bottom-shelf, discount-store assassin that anyone could have hired.

Jason stared at him for two whole minutes, debating whether he ought to drag him back for questioning. Was he worth the effort? The guy was too heavy for him to lift, and too bulky to load onto a bike. If Dick were here he’d call him for help, but Dick was in the wind and he hadn’t even left Jason a contact number. 

Fuck. 

There wasn’t anyone else he could go to with a problem like this. Technically, Uncle Morgan was the go-to guy for this sort of thing — he was supposed to have a way with hot irons and thumbscrews. Very old school. 

Except.

An insidious seed of doubt wormed its way up his back. Except what if Uncle Morgan was somehow in on this too? There was always the possibility that this was an inside job, and Jason didn’t want to take any chances. Nothing in particular had tipped him off — he could point to no singular clue that had turned his thoughts in this direction. But paranoia was something he’d learned long before he met Bruce. Paranoia had kept him alive on the streets, and Jason had learned to trust it. 

He could, of course, have called Bruce for help. But Bruce had enough on his plate without something as trivial as this clogging up his schedule. Which meant Jason would to have to take care of this himself. 

Quickly, before he could lose his nerve, Jason flipped the man’s body around and twisted his arm behind his back so he could bring the full weight of his knee on the man’s folded fingers. 

“Wake up, bastard. Who sent you?”

The man wheezed and struggled until Jason hit him with the bolt-cutters again. There were now two sluggish trickles of blood dribbling down the man’s face. 

“You’re gonna need to do better than that, kid,” the hitman slurred.

“I think you’ll find I do just fine,” Jason said, grinding his knee down as hard as he could. He was rewarded with a muffled whine.

“Need to work on your technique,” he spat.

“You’ll wish I would put you out of your misery soon enough,” Jason hissed. “Who do you work for? Talk!”

No, too desperate. He needed to channel more of Bruce’s unshakeable gravitas. Or Nightingale’s smiling menace. But Jason had no patience for either — he had nothing right now except his own particular brand of pissed off. 

Maddeningly, the man chuckled. Between wet gasps, he said, “You think I’m scared of you? You won’t kill me, kid. You don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Says who?” Jason tightened his grip. He could not believe the nerve of this guy, acting like the devil couldn’t touch him when he was literally at Jason’s mercy. 

“Says everyone who knows Cardinal, kid. Bats talk.”

Alarm bells went off in Jason’s head. This was looking more and more like a Bat had put the hit out on him. 

“Guess I’ll just have to snip your fingers off one by one until you tell me what I want to know,” he snarled. He snapped the shears of his bolt cutter a few times to make his point and then maneuvered the blades around one of the man’s fat digits. “How many can you stand to lose, huh?”

If rumours were saying that Cardinal was too soft, too squeamish, then Jason was fucked. Nobody lasted in this line of work unless they were willing to do some damage.

So when the man remained stubbornly silent, Jason bore down hard enough to cut. 

The man howled. The bolt cutter was designed to go through steel padlocks, so it severed flesh and bone like it was butter. 

“Well. There goes your trigger finger,” said Jason, marvelling at how calm his voice sounded. It was like he did this stuff every day. “You’d better start talking before I get to ten.”

“Go to hell,” the man spat.

Jason moved the bolt cutter to a second finger. “I just need a name, okay? This shouldn’t be hard.”

“You’ll never get the position, you filthy brat. You think you can replace Nightingale? No matter how much you warm his bed or suck his dick, it’ll never be you—”

Jason cut off another finger just to shut him up. This time, he made a strangled, incoherent sound and twitched violently under his knee. 

At that moment, a group of teenagers clattered noisily into the ally, their entrance heralded by boisterous chatter. Jason felt a spike of irritation at being interrupted. Even in the dim lighting, he could pick out the details on their school uniforms — some fancy private academy. 

Quickly, he used the bolt cutters to club the man into stunned submission. With his free hand, Jason reached over, picked up the man’s fallen gun, and levelled it at the nearest teen. There was no ammo in it, but they didn’t know that. He just hoped to God the alley was too dark for them to see the fresh blood on his gloves. 

“Get out,” he ordered.

The smartest ones backed off immediately. The slower ones panicked, freezing up like frightened rabbits. The truly stupid ones squared off like they were looking for a fight. One kid started dialling the police with trembling fingers. 

Jason cursed fluently as he considered his options. 

Given more time and some judicious application of the bolt-cutters, he might have actually succeeded in getting a name out of this bastard. But he couldn’t exactly maim — let alone kill — someone with this many witnesses. And he couldn’t move the man without help. 

So Jason snapped a picture of the man’s bloodied face, picked up a severed finger for DNA analysis, and grappled back up to the roof. 

~~

He eventually traced the hits back to Dugall and Kazinsky — two midlevel thugs who worked in the the weapons distribution arm of the Gotham Bats.

“I know it was them, I just don’t have proof,” Jason told Bruce in a fit of frustration after an entire night spent hacking their online accounts. 

“We’re not cops, Jason. We don’t need proof to act,” Bruce reminded him. The quality of his voice was different after his surgery — rougher, bristlier. 

“So am I just supposed to shoot them the next time I see them?” Jason gesticulated with his knife. “May I take this moment to remind you that you still won’t let me have a gun?”

Bruce put down his fork. There were deep shadows under his eyes, and his face was gaunt in the way of hospital patients who’d lived off saline drip for a week. His turtleneck sweater hid the bandage around his throat, but Jason still knew exactly where those six stitches were. “Do you want to handle this yourself, or do you want me to step in?”

There was no change in Bruce’s expression, but the question felt like a test. 

Jason curled his hands around the cutlery until it was digging into his palms. He couldn’t keep asking Bruce to step in for him every time he ran into a snag — he needed to prove he could do this by himself. “No. I’ll handle it.” 

Bruce nodded and went back to his lunch of oatmeal and poached egg gratin. “But you need to get a bodyguard.”

Jason immediately sat up straighter. “I don’t want one.” He’d been stubbornly clinging to this for months. 

Nightingale’s conspicuous lack of bodyguards had set him apart from the crowd. It had been one of his hallmarks. For some reason, this made Jason determined not to use one either. It wasn’t that he was deluded enough to think himself as good as Dick; he just wanted to command the same level of respect.

“I have one ready who comes highly recommended.”

Jason scowled and leaned back in his seat. “I can protect myself just fine. You’re the one who made me train for months and months. What the hell was all that work for, if I don’t get to use it?!”

“You combat skills should be your last line of defence, not your go-to solution.”

“C’mon, B. I beat that assassin, didn’t I?”

“An assassin who by your own admission was an incompetent, third-string thug.”

“Yeah, because I’m not you! Nobody’s going to pay an arm and a leg for — for Lady Shiva to off me. I don’t rate that level of hitman, okay? They’ll pay Kenny the Thug from down the street to do it, if I’m lucky.” 

“It won’t be so easy next time. Not when they know what you can do now.”

There were other reasons why Jason didn’t want a bodyguard, but they were more difficult to articulate. A bodyguard would make all this feel so much more permanent. Thieves didn’t need bodyguards, but if he started walking around with one, he’d become ‘Cardinal: the Bat’s Messenger Bird’ in more than just name. It would get him noticed. It would make his name spread even further. It would be hard to go back to stealing after that. 

“Bruce, I can do this. I can handle it.”

“No, I’ve indulged your obstinance on this matter long enough.” Bruce’s voice turned hard. “You will engage one by the end of this week, that is an order.”

It was the voice he used on unruly underlings. The voice he used when he’d reached the end of his patience. A voice that brooked no argument. And it had the same effect on Jason as it did on everyone else. It made him feel about six years old. 

Jason made an aggravated noise, shoved back from the table, and exited the room. He could get away with saying ‘no’ to Bruce in a handful of things, but this didn’t seem like one of them anymore. As he was stalking down the hall, a light hand landed on his arm.

“Take his advice, Master Jason,” said Alfred. “It would take a load off his mind. And mine, as well.”

His face was tired too, probably from all the worrying, but Alfred carried his weariness with more grace. Jason thought about the scars on Bruce’s throat, the scars on his own back. 

Fine, he thought. Fine. 

Maybe a life of burglary wasn’t in his cards after all. Maybe the Gotham Bats needed Cardinal to be something more. He may as well hire that damn bodyguard. 

Chapter Text

There was a cave underneath Wayne Manor that Jason never went into if he could help it, but he was there now. 

Dugall and Kazinsky were currently tied up to two steel chairs bolted to the uneven stone floor, already shaking in anticipation of what was to come. Facing them was a twenty-foot wall of wicked-looking devices, almost all of them some instrument of torture. 

Jason guessed that they were mostly there for atmospheric effect. None of the devices bore any signs of recent use. Those unfortunate enough to find themselves in this cave probably were too frightened to resist interrogation by this point. 

The first time Jason had come down here, he’d inadvertently stumbled upon a back wall lined with grisly trophies, which he immediately tried to forget he’d ever seen. Since then, he’d only been down twice. 

The cave was hidden from prying eyes, unknown to city officials, and the perfect place to stash everything from dead bodies to weapons to illicit cargo to inconvenient evidence. It was also the perfect place to get answers out of uncooperative people. 

“I’ve got this place booked until 4:00pm, and then we have to turn it over to Uncle Morgan, so we’ve got an hour,” said Jason, inspecting one of the long, jagged knives hanging on the wall. 

Behind him, a young woman with chin-length silver hair and an eye patch walked into the light of the single flickering yellow bulb. Her expression, which she’d come pre-programmed with like some grumpy robot, was one of exquisite disinterest.

There was a long silence while Jason waited. Finally —

“Oh. Were you talking to me?” she asked, sounding surprised. 

“Yes. I am always talking to you and you are never answering me. Can you at least nod so I don’t think you’ve been suddenly struck deaf?”

“I’m your bodyguard, not your conversation partner.”

“I’m not expecting a bosom buddy,” said Jason. “But I also don’t intend to treat you like an invisible automaton who just happens to follow me wherever I go.”

She gave him a cool look. “But that’s what you hired me for.”

It was like pulling teeth, trying to get this woman to express a single personal opinion. Jason resisted the urge to sigh. The only thing that made this whole thing palatable was that her rates weren’t very steep. Deathstroke had wanted his little girl to kick off her career with some solid starting clients, so he’d offered them Ravager at a discount. Bruce had initially recommended Deathstroke himself, but Jason had taken one look at his astronomical rates and refused point-blank on principle. Also, he did not fancy having a former tutor of Nightingale’s following him around. 

Ravager had arrived at Wayne Manor looking like a carbon copy of her father, right down to the orange-and-black outfit. Jason now suspected it was a clever marketing ploy. If nothing else, she was very on brand. People looked at her and saw Deathstroke instantly. 

So here they were; a first-time employer and a first-time employee. Jason didn’t think it would be this hard, managing someone. Bruce made it look easy. 

“Listen. I need these two chucklefucks to give up the name of whoever they’re working for. How’s your interrogation technique?”

Another icy look. “I’m your bodyguard, not your torturer.”

“I thought you’re supposed to be a mercenary.” Jason made a show of checking the PDF he’d saved to his phone. “Says here on your resume that you are experienced in information extraction.”

She flipped her hair. “That will cost extra. $400 an hour.”

“Highway robbery. What do you say to $200?”

“$300 and it’s a deal.”

Jason gestured. “Go for it.”

Ravager unsheathed one of her swords and stalked towards Dugall. Without a word of warning, she stabbed the business end of it into the inner edge of his thigh, one inch away from his balls and half an inch away from his femoral artery. Dugall shrieked like a banshee, sending the bats in the ceiling of the cave flapping.

“Who asked you to put a hit on Cardinal?” she asked. 

When the man didn’t answer, she twisted the sword slowly and listened to the pitch of his scream go up and down like she was tuning a radio. Jason crossed his arms and stood well out of the splash zone. The great thing about having a mercenary as a bodyguard, he decided, was that he no longer had to do this shit himself. 

There had been two more assassination attempts on him since the first one — and though Ravager had foiled both, Jason was still driven to distraction over the fact that somewhere out there, someone wanted him dead enough to try three times. 

Ravager was nothing if not efficient. Ten minutes later, Dugall and Kazinsky were confessing that their boss, Walt Dekkar, had decided that the fastest way to becoming Bruce’s new Right-Hand Man was to remove Cardinal from the equation. 

“Dekkar, huh?” Jason took his wallet out and passed her $50, which Ravager took with an expression of imperious incredulity.

“You agreed to $300.”

“$300 is for the full hour,” said Jason. “$50 is the pro-rated amount for ten minutes.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Nice work, by the way.”

She narrowed her one eye at him, and the expression on her face would have eviscerated a lesser mortal. “Cheapskate. Next time, I’m charging you by the minute.”

Jason smirked at her as he went over to the bank of computers in the corner to start digging into Dekkar. “Think you can clean up some of that mess while you’re over there?”

“I am your bodyguard, not your personal maid,” she reminded him for the third, though not the last, time. 

At that moment, clanging footsteps on the metal grille stairs told them they had company. Jason looked up to see Bruce descending into the cave, flanked by his own phalanx of bodyguards. 

“Something’s come up. Cardinal, I have a job for you.”

Jason swivelled in the computer chair and frowned. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, B.”

“I can see that.” Bruce flicked an eye over the two groaning, bleeding men sitting in the cave. “Wrap this up first then.”

Jason blinked. “…Now?”

“Haven’t you already gotten what you needed out of them?” 

He had a point. 

Bruce made an impatient gesture. “We don’t have all day. Tie up this loose end.”

Jason dragged his gaze back to his two captives. There was really only one meaning to Bruce’s words. With Bruce’s eyes boring holes into his back, he went over to the wall next to his two prisoners and plucked a handgun off the rack. His hands moved automatically, sliding it open and close, snapping a cartridge of ammo into place, taking the safety off, bracing the weapon with both hands. He’d done it a hundred times before. For longer than necessary, he sighted down the barrel.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” said Ravager. She was suddenly standing right next to him, her voice low enough that Jason knew the words were only meant for him. “If you don’t want to dirty your rich boy hands, I’ll do it. Give me the gun.”

Jason bristled. Rich boy? It was a combination of that and his audience that steadied him. Bruce was watching. 

Calmly, he shot both men in the head. The moment they slumped over, Jason looked away. His hands did not shake. He put the gun down on the bench and reached over to pick up the jacket he’d taken off earlier when it looked like things were going to get messy. 

To replace his hoodie, he’d had the jacket made to his specifications last month — black leather over kevlar with his signature crimson bird splashed across the back, wingtips stretching from shoulder to shoulder. He’d kept the design of the bird the same. It reminded him that this little piece of Nightingale was still his, that Dick had thought him worthy of a name and symbol of his own. 

Bruce’s expression was mild when Jason caught up to him on the staircase, but Jason felt like he’d passed some sort of test all the same. 

“Where to, boss?” he asked. Behind them, Ravager slid smoothly between the ranks of Bruce’s be-suited bodyguards, a speckled koi fish amongst a school of black cod.

“Downtown. I’m meeting with a potential business partner from Bogatago. I need you to entertain his son. His name is Felipe Garzonas.”

~~

Felipe Garzonas rubbed Jason the wrong way from the moment he met him. Which was five seconds after getting off the elevator at the Waldorf Astoria downtown. 

“Cardinal, right?” He smiled one of those slick politician smiles. “Been hearing a lot about you.”

“All bad things, I hope,” said Jason.

Behind Felipe loomed his bodyguard, who instantly sized up both Jason and Ravager as if he expected them to be trouble.

“Shit, you even brought your main squeeze?” Felipe said, reeling back in surprise. “I’d heard you were some kind of monk.”

Jason resisted the impulse to flip him off. “She’s my bodyguard, not my girlfriend.”

God, now he sounded like Ravager. 

This job was not dangerous in any way, shape, or form, but Jason had brought her along anyway because he was bowing to social convention — a person of his standing would be expected to have at least one bodyguard. In any case, he’d already paid her for the whole month — she’d be on the clock whether she came or not. 

“Didn’t know they made ‘em hot enough to bang,” Felipe said, leering. “I should get me one of those. Bet she’s good for a midday fuck, even with just one eye, eh?”

Ravager, a consummate professional, gave no sign that she’d heard him. 

If Bruce wasn’t still in talks with Felipe’s father, Jason would have decked him across the face. Garzonas Senior was a diplomat from Bogotago with a sideline in the cocaine business who needed a discreet distributor in the States. Bruce had been intrigued enough by his pitch to grant him an interview. 

Felipe led them into the hotel’s Presidential Suite. The massive sitting room beyond the door had an actual grand piano tucked away in one corner and a full-sized bar along one wall. A crystal chandelier hung from the twenty-foot-tall ceiling. Jason couldn’t even see the bedrooms from where he stood.

“Hey, have some of this. I brought the good stuff from Bogotago,” Felipe said, swiping a tumbler of obnoxiously blue liquid from the bar and shoving it into Jason’s hand. “Careful, though. It’s stronger than that piss you Americans call liquor.”

“I’m not a liquor person,” Jason lied as he set the tumbler aside. He wasn’t drinking a single thing this man gave him, not even if it was water. 

“Not man enough for the hard stuff?” Felipe gave him a shark’s grin before knocking back his own drink. “Even monks drink, okay? Fucking let loose a little, will you? You’re supposed to making things fun for me.”

Jason wasn’t sure how he would get through this meeting without throwing Felipe out a goddamn window. 

“Let’s see the samples,” he said instead, because that was what he was really here for. Cocaine was easy to fuck up, so the Gotham Bats always did their own quality control first.

“Oh yeah, wanna do a few lines?” Felipe pulled a bag of powder carelessly out of his pocket and was halfway to setting it up on the bar table before Jason could blink.

“I’m checking it, not snorting it,” said Jason, snatching the bag out of his hand. 

At that moment, he heard a shrill scream from deeper in the suite. 

Felipe’s face changed. “God dammit.”

“What the hell was that?” Jason asked, already moving towards the sound.

He shoved open the door to the master bedroom and stopped dead. 

Sitting up in the bed was a dishevelled blonde, totally naked. Her wrists were tied to the headboard. Her skin was marked up with bruises. Specks of blood decorated the bedspread. When she saw Jason, she whimpered and tried to hide herself under the sheets.

Jason blinked. “What the fuck?” 

 Felipe leaned against the doorframe, disgustingly insouciant. “Oh, this was just playtime.” He shrugged. “I was enjoying my afternoon delight before you arrived, you know?” 

Jason kept his eyes on the woman. “Are you one of ours?” 

The Gotham Bats kept a whole stable of blue chip escorts on retainer, and most of them were willing to cater to just about any kink. When out-of-town guests flew in to meet with him, Bruce always sent a bevy of escorts ahead as part of the welcoming committee. But this woman didn’t look like a professional putting up with some bruising and blood play. She just looked terrified. 

But before she could answer, Felipe cut in. “Oh, I sent your girls back,” he said. “They weren’t to my taste.”

“So who the hell is this?” 

“She’s a real wet dishrag, I can tell you that,” Felipe said, but Jason had moved right past him. 

“You look familiar,” he said to her. 

Apropos nothing, Ravager spoke up. “Gloria Stanson. Fashion model. I recognize her from the cover of last month’s Runway.”

Gloria cowered. “L-Let me go,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’m not supposed to be here!”

Jason took a deep, controlled breath so that he wouldn’t pick up the decorative paperweight off the night stand and throw it at someone. “It’s okay. I’m not with this man,” he clarified while pointing at Felipe. “What do you remember? What did he do?”

Again, Felipe answered for her before she could open her mouth. “Oh you wanna know? We had dinner together just last night, didn’t we, dove?” There was venom in his voice.“Little bitch wouldn’t come back with me, so I had to convince her. No biggie.”

Jason turned to face him. “You’ve only been in Gotham for two days and you’ve already kidnapped a woman?”

“Hey! She was the one who asked me out, okay? And I generously treated her to a night out. You don’t string a man along and not put out at the end of it.”

Jason was moving before he’d thought through the implications. He grabbed Felipe’s tie and dragged him forward. Ravager quickly blocked Felipe’s bodyguard from getting involved. 

“I thought you had a cover to protect. Your father is a diplomat. You’re supposed to act like one,” Jason hissed. 

Felipe laughed right in his face. “Listen, the best thing about diplomatic immunity? Is that they can never charge me with anything.” He spread his arms wide. “I can do whatever the fuck I want. Why wouldn’t I milk that?” He widened his eyes in open challenge. “What are you gonna do, call the cops?” 

Jason matched him grin for grin. “Cops?” he drawled. For someone who dabbled in smuggling, drugs, and kidnapping, Felipe was astonishingly naive. “You’re standing in my territory, Garzonas. You think I need the cops to take care someone like you?” 

If Jason decided to kill him right where he stood, no cop in the world would ever find his body. One phone call, and he could have a cleanup crew here in fifteen minutes to torch the evidence. But Felipe was blind to the danger he was in. 

“Why do you even care who I fuck while I’m here?” he demanded.

“Newsflash, this ain’t your city. Crime doesn’t happen here without the Bat’s say-so. And Bruce sure as hell didn’t sign off on that.” Jason pointed at Gloria.

On one level, he knew that if Gloria tried to press charges, she’d focus police attention on Garzonas’s more questionable activities, which might in turn shine a spotlight on the Bats. But on another level, Jason was furious for a simpler reason. He remembered what it was like to be in Gloria’s exact position — the terror, the rage, the humiliation of it. 

He stalked over and used a knife to slash Gloria’s restraints. “We’re leaving.”

Felipe balked. “Wha — hey! Fuck off, Cardinal. I saw her first.”

“Shut up before I rip your tongue out.” 

Felipe’s bodyguard moved to intercept, but Ravager was on him in an instant, garrote wire winding around his throat. Which left Jason free to punch Felipe in the face. 

Felipe was many things, but a scrapper wasn’t one of them. He went down like a bowling pin. Jason delivered a few vicious kicks for good measure and got a satisfying wail of agony. Behind him, he heard the thump of a large body hitting the ground. Ravager flipped back onto her feet triumphantly and swiped her hair back into place, not even out of breath. 

“Come on,” said Jason to Gloria. “We’ll escort you home.”

“My father’s going to hear about this,” Felipe snarled from the ground, his nose bleeding sluggishly. 

Jason was already striding out the door, his blood still boiling in his veins. 

~~

“You didn’t have to crack his ribs,” said Bruce later that evening, his brow furrowed with disapproval.

“He pissed me off,” said Jason, unrepentant.

“His father is furious and demanding reparations.”

“What, like we owe them anything?” Jason glowered at nothing as they debriefed in Bruce’s office. “He waltzed into Gotham like he fucking owns the city, Bruce. Thinks he’s untouchable because of his diplomatic immunity. The entitlement slathered across his face is thick enough to cut with a knife.” 

“We have another followup meeting in five days. Can you behave, or do I need to bench you?”

“Sure. I’ll be a goddamn saint,” said Jason. 

~~

Four days after Jason brought her home, Gloria Stanson hung herself from a doorway in her own house. The news was all over it within hours. The next morning, reels of footage from her modelling shoots looped on TV. The pundits discussed it ad nauseum.

The note she left behind ignited the sympathy of a hundred celebrities, detailing the times she’d been sexually assaulted during her time in the entertainment industry. Felipe Garzonas was responsible for at least two of those times.

Jason had to shut the TV off when he had a flashback to someone pushing him down in a back alley, trying to make him unzip his fly with his teeth like he’d done the first time, despite Jason’s protestations. He’d only been a streetwalker for ninety miserable days, but old clients continued to dog him for months after he quit, demanding one-offs and favours and “just a quickie” for old time’s sake. 

The memory made him dry-heave in his ensuite bathroom for twenty minutes. When he finally emerged from his bedroom, Ravager stood up smoothly from where she’d been sitting outside his door and fell into step behind him. 

“Where are we going?” she asked, because this was an unscheduled outing.

“To make him pay,” said Jason. 

~~

The Presidential Suite at the Waldorf Astoria had access to a private rooftop patio, which pleased Jason because this suited his plans perfectly. 

Felipe’s bodyguard was still in the hospital, courtesy Ravager. So there was no one to stop the two of them from hauling Felipe up like a sack of potatoes and dragging him to the roof. Felipe was so high that he was like a live wire, bug-eyed and frenetic. His limbs were jerky and uncoordinated and he was talking a mile a minute, but it was only when Jason tipped him off the side of the building that the idiot seemed to realize what was happening to him. 

“Holy shit man, shit, don’t do this!” he babbled as he clutched the railing from the outside. 

“Is that what Gloria said to you too?” Jason demanded. 

At that moment, his phone rang. Jason let it go to voicemail, but texts began coming in simultaneously. It was Bruce. 

>>Cardinal, where are you?

>>Answer your phone.

>>Report back now.

In lieu of typing a reply, Jason flipped his camera around and snapped a few choice pictures to send to Bruce. He wasn’t planning to hide this. His phone buzzed immediately.

>>I am not authorizing this, Cardinal. Stand down.

Jason slipped the phone into his pocket. 

“Dude, c’mon, Cardinal! Stop this — how long you gonna keep playing, huh?” Felipe’s face was turning a curious grey-green shade. His fingers were twitching uncontrollably on the railing.

Leaning right into Felipe’s limited space, Jason watched the man try to jerk backwards, only to realize there was nowhere to go. “Take a good look at where you are, Garzonas. You’re the reason Gloria killed herself — do you even remember her? The woman you raped twice?”

“You’re just mad I picked her instead of one of your girls, aren’t you?” He gave a high, breathless giggle. “Hey, I don’t need whores from you or your dad. I can pick them up myself.”

Jason knew. Men like this never did it just once. They went through women like a wrecking ball, mowing down everyone in his path. He thought suddenly of those women in the warehouse, the ones he hadn’t helped. Something twisted inside him, transmuted into white hot fury. Men like this couldn’t be rehabilitated. They could only be stopped.

“He’s calling me, now,” said Ravager behind him. “Should I pick up?”

“No,” said Jason, and she put the phone away without a word. 

“You’ll never get away with this, jackass!” Felipe hands clutched the railing harder as wind whipped his hair into a tangle. “You think you can just — just — my father knows every dirty politician in your fucking country! He knows everyone, man. He’ll rip you to pieces and then he’ll do the same to your father.”

“Oh, smart. Threatening my father too now, eh?” 

Jason watched him spin out every strategy. Threats, pleading, insults, blackmail, lies, bribes, the lot. At no point did it ever occur to him to apologize for what he’d done. 

There wasn’t a shred of remorse in his eyes. “You’re going to risk all that, for some slut I fucked twice? You gonna kill me for that, huh?” 

Jason shrugged. “I’ve killed people for less.”

And then he pushed him off the ledge. 

~~

Sun motes danced across the empty sanctuary. If Jason tipped his forehead against the back of the pew in front of him at just the right angle, he could be mistaken for a praying supplicant instead of someone trying to catch forty winks.

It was a weekday, so there was a tranquil hush in the air. At the front of the sanctuary behind the altar, there was a large wooden cross affixed to the wall. It looked like it had been slapped together out of discarded table legs. St. Teresa’s was located only three blocks away from Crime Alley, so they weren’t exactly swimming in funds.

Jason felt the muscles in his shoulders loosening as he soaked in the sumptuous silence. There was no one here to see him let down his guard — that was partly why he still came. He’d done this back in his tire thief days, too. Some days that part of his past felt as far away as Neptune, but on days like this, he felt as if he could slip right back into that identity like a second skin.

For once, Ravager was taking a day off. Jason wasn’t supposed to leave the house without her, but he couldn’t stand the oppressive atmosphere at Wayne Manor. 

Bruce had been so angry about the Garzonas thing that Jason had wondered if he’d lose part of his pinkie for it. That was what usually happened when newer, greener Bats fucked up the first time. But in the end, Bruce reined himself in and broke his finger instead. A symbolic punishment.

If Jason was honest, the look of fury on Bruce’s face had rattled him more than the snap of his middle finger. Now he stared at the splint on his hand and wondered how long Bruce was going to give him the silent treatment.

The past half year had drained him dry. Even after getting rid of Dugall and Kazinsky, Jason couldn’t turn off the part of his brain that was on high alert. It was exhausting, being constantly on the lookout for betrayal. The only time he napped undisturbed these days was in church. 

Jasno let himself have thirty glorious minutes of peace before forcing himself to his feet. Later today he was supposed to meet with some local business owners who were looking to borrow money. Small amounts, mostly. Twenty grand here, fifty grand there. When people came begging to Bruce for anything less than half a mil these days, he’d wave them off with, “Ask Cardinal.”

Before leaving, Jason filled a dozen offering envelopes with cash and went looking for Reverend Avery. The deacon was tacking up some new fliers to the bulletin board by the back door when Jason found him. 

“Oh, hi Jason. We don’t usually see you around this time of week.” 

Jason handed the envelopes to him. “Had some things on my mind.”

Avery blinked at him. If it weren’t for his clerical robes, he could have been mistaken for a kombucha-swilling, weed-smoking hipster. But he had been working at this church since Jason’s tire-stealing days and he’d had actually recognised Jason when he reappeared again after a six-month absence sporting clean clothes, a fresh haircut, and brand new sneakers. 

Jason wasn’t sure what Avery made of him coming around to help hand out free meals these days, but he’d gotten the impression that the deacon was happy for him — glad that he had, against all odds, managed to claw his way out of Crime Alley into a better life. He wondered what the older man would think if he knew the truth. 

“You look tired. School getting you down?” Avery asked. 

It was sometimes hard for Jason to remember that he was still at an age when people expected him to go to school. 

“Something like that.” Jason glanced at the fliers in the man’s hand. “You need any help?”

Avery shook his head slowly, contemplatively. “Though I got something to ask.”

“Yeah? What do you need?” It was a reflexive question. Everybody needed something from him these days. 

Avery jerked his head in the direction of the small parking lot behind the chapel. “Some of the kids who come, they bike here and park them outside. But lately bikes have been getting nicked, so they’ve stopped coming.” 

As Jason examined the scruffy, overgrown parking lot, he wondered whether Avery suspected the truth. Jason had no obvious tells — no odd tattoos or missing fingers or visible weapons or unsightly scars. Nothing about him said ‘mob’. He didn’t even wear his leather jacket to church.

“When was this?” he asked.

“It started a few weeks ago. Happens on and off. Five bikes have been stolen so far.” He shrugged a bit helplessly. “If this keeps happening, people won’t want to come, and I wanted this church to be a safe place. We’ve tried locks, chains, just about everything, but nothing has worked. I don't know if we can afford to install a real bike rack. You got any ideas?” 

“Yeah.” Jason was already brushing past him and out the door, hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Yeah, I got a few ideas.”

~~

Five hours after Reverend Avery came to him, Jason delivered five bikes back to the church in more-or-less pristine condition. One still had the original owner’s bright pink helmet hanging from the handlebars.

Avery just stared at him in total bafflement. “Are those the same — wait. You found them? That’s — Jason, I once dropped a cell phone two streets over and it was snatched up and halfway to Bermuda by the time I turned around to pick it up. I thought these bikes would be long gone.”

Jason shrugged. Avery wasn’t wrong, but Jason had a lot of resources now. “I know a guy who knows a guy.”

What he’d done was call up a couple of local enforcers, ask a few questions, and then follow the money trail as the bikes passed from hand to hand. Most of them knew him by reputation. All of them were happy to do Cardinal a favour. It hadn’t been especially difficult. 

Avery was still inspecting the bikes with an air of bewilderment, like he wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating or not. “Well, whaddaya know. You’re a regular miracle-worker, Jason. The kids will be delighted to see these again, I can tell you that.”

Jason pulled out a second box with a huff. “You need better locks, Reverend. And you’ve come to the right person, because I just had these sitting round at home.”

Actually, he’d gone to a locksmith and spent a pretty penny on the latest, most innovative locks available. But he didn’t mind. How often did he get to do some good around Crime Alley? 

~~

Jason’s eighteenth birthday fell, rather auspiciously, on the same day as Bruce’s monthly meeting with his nineteen top lieutenants. This meant that every single one of them felt obligated to bring Jason a present. 

By the time dinner rolled around, Jason was the proud new owner of a pair of designer sneakers, a set of professional golf clubs, a titanium racing bike, six new electronic devices, a jacket made of stingray leather, and a real live red-frilled iguana that he suspected had been illegally imported from Ecuador. 

Jason’s second-favourite gift was the first-edition copy of Crime and Punishment from Alfred. (He just wasn’t sure if Alfred was sending an ironic message, or if it was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek joke. It was hard to tell sometimes.) His favourite gift was the couriered box from Selina that contained a safe-breaking power drill kit. That one was going to go in his regular utility belt.

The only person who hadn’t given him anything so far was Bruce, but Jason wasn’t holding his breath. It was possible that Bruce was still mad at him. There had been an entire month when Bruce had, for lack of a better word, held him at arms length. It was the small things that got under Jason’s skin — the way Bruce sometimes looked at him like he was an unreliable compound, ready to implode and mess up his fine plans; the way he repeated his instructions two or three times more than necessary; the way they sometimes had entire conversations where Bruce clearly wasn’t listening to a word he said. 

So Jason wasn’t expecting a Penthouse Suite (which was what Nightingale had gotten for his eighteenth birthday), or even a Porsche Panamera (which was what Nightingale had gotten for his seventeenth). He wasn’t expecting anything at all until Alfred delivered a large white box to him after dinner while everyone was still seated around the banquet table.

“What — for me?” Jason was truly baffled.

“Open it,” said Bruce. 

He popped the lid off and beheld a .45 handgun with a custom red finish. A thrill went through him. 

“It’s something of a tradition for Waynes,” Bruce said as Jason took it out to admire it. “My father received one for his eighteenth birthday, as did my grandfather before him. Alfred gave me one to uphold the tradition. And now I’m continuing it with you.”

Jason’s initial delight deepened into a whole new level of appreciation when he grasped the implications. His face broke into a grin. A traditional Wayne gift. Hell, he’d gotten something that even Dick hadn’t gotten. That had to mean something, right? 

Fucking finally.

“It’s a prototype from my new factory in Shenzhen. You’re getting the first working model,” said Bruce. 

Jason looked up, and this time he saw not just Bruce but the rest of his underbosses around the table. Something in their eyes — the way they were looking at him — had changed. With one gesture, Bruce had set Jason apart and made him his. Whatever these men and women had thought of Jason before (Bruce’s foundling? pet? apprentice?) — the gift of a gun had just catapulted him to a new status. Even if Jason never got the Wayne name, everyone in this room knew that Bruce had as good as declared him his son.

“It’s. It’s beautiful. Thank you,” said Jason, overwhelmed suddenly by the feelings that clogged his throat. He cleared his throat and was saved from making an embarrassment of himself when the wait staff materialized to serve dessert. 

Chatter resumed at the table as brandy and cigars were handed around. 

Uncle Toby raised his glass to Jason in a toast. “Kid, you’re gonna go places.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen Cardinal on the job. Got a good head on his shoulders,” Uncle Ambrose said. “I wouldn’t mind having him along on my next shipment run.”

Bruce just gave them that enigmatic smile he sometimes used when he didn’t want to be too extravagant with his own feelings.

“Does that make him your new Right Hand then, huh?” said a new voice.

Jason turned and spotted Uncle Dekkar five seats down, watching him with eyes like a ferret’s. Barely-leashed malevolence. 

Bruce paused, his glass of brandy halfway to his lips. Several heads swivelled in his direction, surprised by the question but also curious about the answer. The Bat’s Right Hand had been Dick’s title — one that no one else had gotten even after he left. 

“You know who my Right Hand is, Dekkar,” said Bruce.

Dekkar’s eyes shifted over the room lazily. “Tell us, then. Where is Nightingale, hm? Nobody’s seen or heard from him in eighteenth months. What really happened to him, Bruce?”

There was a shift in the mood of the room. Nightingale was a taboo subject, as far as Bruce was concerned. His eyes narrowed.

“Here’s what we all want to know,” Dekkar continued, his voice carrying across the banquet table. “Did he stab you in the back and run off to hide in Europe? Was he embezzling from you? Fucking your mistress? Working with the Black Mask? What was so bad that he had to disappear, but not bad enough that you won’t hunt him down and skin him for it, eh?”

Jason glanced rapidly between Bruce and Dekkar, wondering how this was going to play out. The thing was, Dekkar wasn’t the only one who believed this tripe. Even now, nobody really knew what had happened the day Nightingale vanished. 

The most popular theory was that there had been some kind of schism between the Bat and his Bird — that Nightingale had betrayed the man who trusted him the most and then fled his control. Others were convinced that Nightingale had been caught doing something he shouldn’t and had gotten banished for it.

“Are you presuming to question me on my family matters?” Bruce asked, his voice dangerously soft. 

“I know how much you dislike loose ends,” said Dekkar. “So maybe you’ve already silenced him, permanently? Dumped his body where it would never be found? If you trust us, just tell us.”

Jason looked down. He couldn’t blame people for wondering if Nightingale was actually dead. In their line of work, people who ‘disappeared’ were usually found dead. And Bruce had never offered up any explanation one way or another. 

Only Jason and Alfred knew the truth of why Dick had left, but outside of them, nobody else did. For once, Jason completely agreed with Bruce’s decision to keep this a secret. If anyone ever found out that Nightingale had left to go straight, it would be seen as the ultimate betrayal. Bruce had stayed silent to protect him. 

“What’s gotten you into a twist, Dekkar?” Aunt Kate spoke up suddenly. She sounded bored. “It’s been eighteen months. You’ve held your peace for this long. Why bring it up now?”

Dekkar pointed a finger at Jason. “Because he’s promoting some witless kid to the position Nightingale left empty, and that don’t sit right with me.” He swept out one arm around the table. “We’ve all been good deputies, licking Nightingale’s shoes whenever he showed his face, but we thought that was because he was here to stay.” 

He whirled back on Bruce. “You know how much shit we had to deal with when he disappeared and hung his men out to dry? He oversaw half the stuff we do, and suddenly it’s radio silence like he’s jumped on a plane to witness protection like a fucking civ. And you give us not one word of explanation. Not one! Now we’re supposed to watch you do it again?”

His words worked a strange alchemy on the men around him. Or maybe they’d always had these misgivings anyway, and Dekkar’s words were just unleashing eighteenth months worth of pent up feelings. But Jason could see that none of the lieutenants at this table exactly disagreed with him.

Aunt Kate’s lips were pressed into a thin line, but even she didn’t speak up to repudiate a single word.

“You need someone reliable, Bruce,” said Dekkar. “Someone who can be your Right Hand for the rest of his life. Not some kid who might betray you tomorrow, like Nightingale did.”

Jason’s gut twisted further. He was no longer sure if Bruce even saw him as reliable. Surely Dekkar was overreacting. This had to be wild speculation on his part. Bruce would never trust him like he trusted Nightingale. 

Bruce took a slow sip of brandy. “Whatever else he was, Nightingale was like a son to me. I would be very careful how I speak about him, if I were you.”

“I’ve been loyal to you for fifteen years,” said Dekkar. “Longer than most, by far. I deserve the position, Bruce.”

“And I have promoted you, again and again.” Bruce held his gaze levelly. “Is it your business if I decide to promote Cardinal as well?”

Something fizzed in Jason’s brain. A promotion? He had not been told about this. What even was going on? What new game was this?

Uncle Dekkar had tried to have him killed. Multiple times. But Bruce had stopped him from pulling the plug on Dekkar the same way he’d pulled the plug on Dugall and Kazinsky. Jason had used up his quota for disobedience when he killed Garzonas. He had no choice but to leave Dekkar alive.

“You’d choose him over me? Him?” Dekkar sneered. 

“I’m not promoting him to Nightingale’s position,” said Bruce mildly.

“The position has stood open for eighteen months, Bruce — why the hell would you keep it that way? It’s a weakness that other Families can and will continue to exploit!”

And Jason, despite his loathing for the man, couldn’t even disagree. Losing his Right Hand man had thrown the Gotham Bats into chaos, but not promoting someone new into the position had drawn out the drama for longer than necessary. At this point Jason wished he’d shove Aunt Kate into the position, just so someone could occupy it.

“Cardinal,” said Bruce, “will be my Left Hand.”

For a moment there was silence in the room. 

“You’re a fool to trust these children with your life,” said Dekkar. “Who are they to you anyway?”

Before Bruce could reply, Jason shoved himself back from the table and stood up. The safety on his new gun came off with a click as he raised it. Chairs scraped against the parquet floors in a symphony as everyone tried to back up at once.

Jason fired. 

A splotch of crimson bloomed on Dekkar’s shoulder. Jason had hit him precisely where his left arm’s joints and ligaments connected with the rest of his body, mere inches away from his heart. 

“That,” said Jason, “was for the three assassins you sent after me. Which I’m still kind of pissed about, by the way.” He saw surprise — and fear — cross Dekkar’s face. He hadn’t known that Jason knew. “For your information, I’m here to stay. For good. I’m not leaving, I’m not playing around, and I sure as hell am not going to betray Bruce. So the next person who tries to off me will get a bullet in the head.” 

Jason cast a long, patient look around the table. “Does anyone else have a problem with me? Because we can sort that out right now.”

The room had gone unnaturally still except for the ragged, choked breathing from Dekkar, who was desperately trying to staunch the bleeding with one of Alfred’s good napkins. Nobody moved to help him. Nobody dared to speak, either. Their guns had been confiscated at the door as per standard protocol. Every eye was trained on Jason, who held the only weapon in the room. 

Jason registered the begrudging respect on their faces, but at the end of the day he only gave a damn about the opinion of one person. Lowering the gun slowly, he looked to his right. 

Bruce’s eyes were averted, but he was smiling into his brandy like there was a joke at the bottom of the glass. It looked like a smile of forgiveness. 

Jason threw back his head and laughed. 

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t find out the other reason why Dick left Gotham until much, much later. It was only after he heard several frustrated, murmured conversations between Bruce and Alfred that he finally put the pieces together. 

The real source of Dick’s angst wasn’t just his hazy plans for his future, or his disagreement with Bruce. It was a redhead named Barbara Gordon. 

“So. You and Barbara had some Romeo and Juliet shit going on, didn’t you?” Jason said when the door to Dick’s Bludhaven flat swung open. 

One of Dick’s knives embedded itself in the wall next to Jason’s head before he had even finished speaking. Jason, who had been expecting it, dodged it just in the nick of time. Quickly he raised both hands. “Whoa. Easy. It’s just me.”

He was sitting in Dick’s tiny living room, having picked the lock on the window and disarmed the security on the tiny balcony before crawling in and making himself at home. 

Dick might be trying to make his own way in the world outside of the Gotham Bat’s influence, but Jason knew there was no way Bruce wasn’t keeping some kind of eye on his eldest. So Jason had spent half a lazy Saturday trawling through Bruce's computer until he found a list of Dick’s addresses. The Bludhaven one was his latest acquisition and it was only two hours away, so Jason had picked a nice quiet weekday to break in. 

Dick prowled into the room with the grace that always put him in mind of a panther, but when he spotted Jason the wariness dropped from his posture instantly.

“Shit, Jason. You could have called.”

“With what number, Dick? You didn’t leave me a fucking contact!”

“If you could find this place, you could have found a number.”

“You change burner phones every week!”

“My point still stands.” Dick was unmoved by his whining. “I could have taken your head off.”

He tossed his other knife onto the kitchen counter with a clatter and stalked into the kitchen. His apartment was small enough that it was only five steps from the door to the fridge. As he dumped his groceries into the vegetable crisper, Jason tried to see how much Dick had changed. Twelve months of absence stretched between them like a chasm. Jason peered dubiously into this chasm and wondered how he was supposed to jump across. 

“Nice mullet,” Jason finally said, his arms draped over the back of the sofa. “I didn’t realize your ambition in life was to look like a dishevelled hobo.”

Even Dick could not make that awkward hank of hair look good.

“It’s part of my disguise. Good, eh?” said Dick as he pulled out a juice box and squinted at the expiry date. “Helps me fly under the radar.”

“Why are you even here? I thought you went to Europe.”

“I did. Five months in Europe, four months in Asia. Then I started missing the gas-guzzling, cement-choked, slime-slicked streets of the American big city again.”

He came to the sofa, parked his ass on the armrest, and began guzzling his juice. Jason wiggled the knife out of the wall and flipped it in his hand. 

“If you missed America so much, why didn’t you come back to Gotham?” he asked, all casual.

A long silence ensued. Jason began to squirm, though he did not regret the question. This was what he’d come here to find out. If he could pinpoint the exact reason, maybe there was a way to convince Dick to come back. 

Dick took his time finishing his drink before he replied. “I already broke all my ties there, Jay. I don’t belong there anymore.” 

“And you belong here?” Jason swung an incredulous gaze around the room — a gesture that not only encompassed the bland ceilings and the undecorated walls and the minimalist furniture, but also all of Bludhaven.

To his surprise, Dick’s mouth crooked into a slow smile. “This is a surprisingly charming city, Jay. You don’t believe me? C’mon, I’ll show you.”

~~

Together they wound their way through the streets, Jason in a straight line, Dick in looping, gambolling gait that took him lazy circles around Jason. Together they entered a dingy bar and grill set on top of a hill and found patio seats next to an outdoor brazier. 

“Dick Grayson!” the owner exclaimed as soon as he spotted them. “Nice to see you back, man. How you doing?” 

Jason was too busy being shocked that the owner knew Dick’s name to hear his reply. In Gotham, they never used their real names in public. They also never used the front door. Bruce lived mostly in smoky VIP rooms accessed through hidden back entrances and freight elevators. When he went out, he either rented out the whole place or reserved a private room for himself. 

Jason was so unused to sitting down inside an ordinary restaurant in broad daylight that he didn’t realize he had been handed a menu until Dick flicked the back of the laminated sheet and pointed out over the railing. 

“Behold. The best view in Bludhaven.” 

The hill overlooked a large section of the city. Below them lay the glittering downtown. Drifts of industrial smoke obscured the orange and purple sky.

“I’ve seen better,” said Jason.

A waiter arrived with a tray. “Orange juice on the house.”

“Thanks, Arnold,” said Dick. “Can I get a Long Island Iced Tea? My brother will have the same.”

“Can I see some ID?”

Jason shot the waiter a look so menacing that the man actually took a step back. “For what? You need my name for a drink?”

Dick coughed. “Nevermind. Make his a regular iced tea.”

The waiter beat a hasty retreat. 

“Sorry, forgot to warn you that they card people here.”

Oh. The waiter had wanted his age. Jason knew that carding was a thing, intellectually, but he’d never experienced it first-hand. In Gotham, he only drank with mobsters and the children of mobsters, at bars and clubs owned by mobsters. At no point had anyone ever cared about his age.

“The last time I had regular iced tea was when I was ten,” said Jason nastily, reaching for his pack of smokes. 

Dick’s whole face wrinkled when Jason lit up. “Jay. I’m trying to live a lawful life here. Can you not?”

“First I can’t have a drink, and now I can’t have a smoke? I’m loving your new lifestyle, bro.”

“Those are really bad for you.”

“I’m allowed one vice. This is my vice.” He blew a stream of smoke into Dick’s face. 

Dick frowned. Faster than Jason could react, Dick reached across the table and plucked the cigarette right out of his mouth. In response, Jason stole Dick’s orange juice and dumped it into the potted plant sitting behind him. Dick escalated by stubbing the cigarette out on the napkin that Jason was reaching for. Jason kicked at him under the table, and Dick dodged with a knowing smile on his face. Too slow, his smile said.

Despite himself, Jason found himself smirking back. 

Suddenly it was like the last twelve months had never happened — like Dick had never fucked off and fed him to the wolves. Jason had come prepared for things to be stiff and awkward between them, but Dick’s easy manners closed the distance so effortlessly that it was more like stepping over a crack in the sidewalk than leaping a chasm. Something inside him uncoiled in relief.

A platter of nachos and a basket of fries appeared on their table. Jason felt his appetite return when Dick shoved the food at him, letting him have first pick. 

“So. This is the life you’re trying to tell me is so great?” said Jason, leaning back in his wicker seat as he crunched a greasy fry. “You used to dine on caviar and sea urchin. Your Australian steaks used to come topped with wasabi-infused foam.”

“I don’t miss it,” said Dick.

Honestly, Jason didn’t either. But he was here to convince Dick to come back to Gotham, and he’d just hit a dead end. What else would tempt him back?

“What do you miss?”

“Mostly the people. Alfred. You. I even miss Ace.” 

Jason took a chance. “Bruce misses you too.” 

“And yet, he hasn’t come looking for me once.” Dick popped a handful of fries into his mouth. His tone was matter-of-fact, carefully pruned of disappointment or resignation.

“Do you miss her?” Jason asked softly.

Dick looked out over the city and didn’t reply. 

~~

Later, when they’d returned to Dick’s tiny one-bedroom flat, Dick poured them each a glass of whisky to make up for Jason’s lack of a drink earlier. 

Jason sprawled out in the armchair and returned to the earlier topic. “What I don’t get is this. You could have had any woman in Gotham,” — no exaggeration, Jason had seen how women reacted to Dick Grayson — “so why did you have to fall for Barbara fucking Gordon?”

Dick’s eyes narrowed in a way that eerily reminiscent of Bruce at his scariest. “Careful there, Jay. That’s my ex you’re talking about.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I respect the hell out of Gordon. But what’s she got that no other woman in Gotham’s got?”

“If you have to ask me that, you’ve clearly never fallen in love before.”

“All I’m saying is. You, a mob prince, falling for the Police Commissioner’s daughter? It doesn't get any more Romeo and Juliet than that.”

Dick shrugged. “And that’s the whole reason I left. Didn’t want us to end up dying tragically, like them. Cheers.” 

He finished arranging a squiggly slice of orange peel on the rim of his glass and raised it. They clinked glasses. 

“But you guys had already broken up. Why did you have to leave the city?”

This was the part Jason didn’t get. To be fair, he’d missed this entire angle precisely because he’d never bothered to keep track of Dick’s revolving door of a love life. Every leggy redhead looked exactly the same as the last. 

It wasn’t until the spring of last year when he’d heard Bruce mutter to Alfred — “Dick thinks he’s being so clever, keeping this one under the radar. Does he think I wouldn’t notice?” and Alfred murmuring back, “Leave him with some illusion of privacy, Master Bruce. I hear it does wonders for the developing young adult brain.” — that Jason finally clued into the fact that Dick was seeing someone even more questionable than usual. 

Barbara Gordon, according to his research, lived a life that was as straight and narrow as they came. Valedictorian in high school, double degrees in Library Studies and Computer Science, a job at a top-notch research firm, plus she tutored underprivileged kids twice a week. All that would have been fine except for the fact that her father was the Chief of Police, and Commissioner Gordon’s relationship with Bruce Wayne was a complicated game of cat-and-mouse that had been going on for well over a decade. 

“Did she know about you? Is that why?” Jason asked. 

Dick just gave him a crooked smile and spread his arms wide like he was saying, Does it even matter anymore? “It was never going to work out between us anyway. What was the point of staying?” 

Jason sipped his drink and studied him. Dick’s air of bland resignation rang false, somehow. He couldn’t quite remember Dick ever being this dispassionate about anything before. 

“Somehow, I don’t think you came all this way just to interrogate me about my disaster of a love life, Jay.” Dick gathered up a handful of throwing knives from under the coffee table and began flicking them at the dartboard on the other side of the room. “Why are you really here?”

Jason took a swig of scotch for courage and sunk lower in his seat. He found he couldn’t meet Dick’s eye. “Things are shit without you. I’m serious, Dick. Can. Can you just come home?”

Dick gave him a long, appraising look. “That bad, huh?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard all the gory details already.”

“Yeah, Alfred keeps me appraised. Three attempts on your life, eleven attempts on his? You’ve certainly been keeping busy.” 

“The Gotham Bats need you, Dick.”

The corner of Dick’s mouth twitched, and Jason felt his frustration mounting. It just didn’t make sense to him why Dick would let some girl get between him and his ridiculously good life. He’d had everything going for him in Gotham: fast cars, beautiful girls, a legion of loyal minions, and more money than he could spend in a lifetime. But none of that seemed to matter to Dick anymore. 

“I’m not coming back, Jay.” Dick dragged a hand through his hair. “I can’t go back to living in shadows, hiding under fake names, pretending to be something I’m not. I can’t live in that city, knowing she’s there but completely out of my reach.”

“So she knows.”

“And she hated it — hated the secrecy, hated the lies, hated me for being the source of both.” Dick’s lip twisted into a self-deprecating smile. “By the time I begged her not to tell her father, she already had enough on me to sink me. The summer before we broke up, she almost —” He broke off and swore softly under his breath.

Jason knew, sort of, what had happened. He’d heard the story — obliquely— from Alfred, and he’d pieced the rest together himself. “That was the summer the cops busted one of your cartel operations. You almost got arrested.”

It was also the summer Dick had flunked out of university. The summer he’d had his blow-out fight with Bruce. It all made sense now when he put those disparate facts together. 

“I got out by the skin of my teeth.” Dick stared up at the ceiling, his expression caught somewhere between bitterness and despair. “I found out afterwards that she’d been putting trackers on me. My vehicles. My clothes. My men. For months. That’s how she was getting eyes on all my operations. She’d amassed over a hundred hours of video footage evidence against me. You don’t want to know the hoops I had to jump through to wipe the records and dump her data.”

Which explained why Alfred had described their final fight as “Rather more complicated than your standard lover’s tiff.” 

Jason sat up straight, aghast. “She called the cops on you, and you still — you still love her?”

Dick slumped down in his seat until his chin was tucked against his chest. He dragged a hand over his face. “Fuck me, I still love her.” 

~~

Jason ended up spending the rest of the week there, sleeping on Dick’s couch with a cushion for a pillow. 

Dick, much to his surprise, had an actual day job. At a strip club. As a dancer. Which was a pretty big downgrade, given that Dick used to run half the Gotham Red Light District. 

“It’s actually kind of fun,” Dick insisted when Jason asked him about it.

“Sure. If you say so.” Jason could think of very few things he would be less comfortable doing. The grabby hands, the catcalling, the sleezy patrons, it would get under his skin within a day. 

Dick grinned. “What can I say? I was born to be a performer. It’s in my blood.”

“And people don’t recognize you?”

“They’re not there to look at my face, Jay. Besides, nobody expects Nightingale to be doing this.”

He had a point there. Bludhaven gangsters would no more expect to find Nightingale working a stripper pole than they would expect Paris Hilton to be pulling a bellboy’s trolley. It was too far beneath him.

“You’re a sorry excuse for a mob prince.” They were cutting through a leafy park on their way back to Dick’s apartment, so Jason kept his voice low. 

“I’m not one anymore. You’re the only one still mobbed up around here.”

“Why not wait tables? Or tend bar?”

“And play out the exact scenario Bruce predicted?” Dick rolled his eyes. “Like I’d prove him right. Besides—” he stretched his arms above his head and did a sinuous little sideways shimmy “— I’m good at dancing.”

A pair of pedestrians passing in the opposite direction actually swivelled to ogle him as he undulated. Jason flipped them off. The suburban moms here were fucking thirsty. 

Jason had not visited Dick’s strip club, but he did not doubt his words. Dick had a face made for Hollywood and a body made for swimwear modelling. He probably made bank in tips. Still, it was a far cry from the income he used to collect, which ran to millions-per-month. Jason had seen his financials. 

“You don’t miss it? The mansions, the Michelin-star meals, the hired help, the fast cars…?”

Dick reached down to pet the head of a fluffy, overexcited corgi that had almost ploughed into him. “Not really. The simple life is nice. I like it.” 

Their shortcut took them through through a grove of trees and past a playground. Jason sidestepped a trio of kids playing tag. He cast about for something else that might tempt Dick back to Gotham. 

“What about your weapons?” He knew Dick still had a few hidden around the apartment, though nowhere near the number he’d once owned. 

“I don’t even carry anymore.”

“You don’t miss your armoury back home?” 

Dick just laughed. “A couple of knives are all I need, you know?” He twisted his wrist and a stiletto appeared between his fingers, winking in the late-afternoon sunlight. “They made sure it was all I’d ever need.”

Dick rarely ever brought up his time with the Court of Owls. However brief that nightmarish window of his life had been, Dick had come out of it so traumatized he didn’t speak for a year — at least, that’s what Alfred had told him. It made Jason wonder what else the Owls might have done to his head, what they might have inadvertently trained into him without intending to. 

Because Jason had never met anyone less interested in money than Dick. Most people went into crime because it paid, but Dick had gone from having everything to nothing and he didn’t even care. It was like the Owls had sucked out more than just his blood and marrow — they’d also completely emptied him of human greed.

“You’re not trying all that hard to go civilian all the way, though,” Jason said as they rounded the corner and entered Dick’s dilapidated building. 

Just getting through the door of Dick’s apartment required the disarming of multiple tripwires, heat-seeking cameras, and motion-detectors. There were locks and biometric scanners to bypass. It was the sort of security that Jason would expect from Dick’s penthouse in Gotham, not in this tiny one-bedroom dump. 

Dick shrugged as he let them inside. “Force of habit. The Gotham Bats were ten years of my life. I can’t just —” he performed an exaggerated, wiggly shrug, “—molt that like a discarded skin.”

“That’s why I’m telling you, just come back. You’re the best of the Bats, Dick. You were the only one Bruce ever trusted completely, no questions asked. Anytime you want back in, all you gotta do is make one phone call. This isn’t even Bruce asking, Dickiebird. This is me, okay?”

“I know, Jay. I know, but…”

The long pause afterwards told Jason everything he needed to know. “Oh. Oh. But you’re still hoping for a second chance with Gordon. Oh my God. That’s why you wanted to go straight.” 

Dick pointed at him accusingly. “Okay, when did you get a counselling degree and who gave you permission to psychoanalyze me?”

“No one spends their entire life in Bruce’s orbit and then suddenly decides to go straight out of the blue, okay?” Jason rolled his eyes. 

He’d read enough novels to know what True Love did to a man’s head, and Dick had been hit by Cupid’s arrow a little harder than most. Jason kicked off his shoes and fired up the kettle to make tea while Dick slid a pack of frozen waffles into the toaster oven. 

“It wasn’t just because of Babs,” Dick said, a touch defensively. “I was getting tired of the Life anyway. What’s there for me in Gotham? I can’t even go out with Bruce in daylight. I can’t be seen with him in public, I can’t sit with him where reporters might see, and I sure as hell can’t use my own name. I never had a real life there, Jay.”

Jason knew this. Cardinal and Nightingale were both creatures of the shadows, and Bruce was careful to keep it that way. Nobody could know the extent of what they did or who they were to Bruce — certainly not his upright society friends or his legitimate business associates at WE. 

“But you never had a problem living like that until you met her,” Jason pointed out.

Dick shook his head. “What she said was true, though. No one should have to grow up like me. Like us.” 

The toaster dinged and he slathered peanut butter and jelly onto each crisp waffle square before sliding a plate to Jason. 

“Besides,” he continued absently, “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being a hitman.”

"But you’re good at it.”

Dick tilted his head at the compliment. “When I was a Talon, murder was my only purpose. Then Bruce got me out and I didn’t know how to repay him. I couldn’t even speak, but I could gut a man in a hundred and seventy-two ways. It was the only thing I was good at, so I just…kept doing it.”

“Well, yeah. You were fucking unstoppable.” Jason raised his mug of tea in a toast, and Dick knocked his beer against it automatically, though his face twisted in an odd grimace. 

“It’s not the only thing I want to do with my life, though.” In a quieter voice, he added, “I’m not even sure what I want to do.”

For a long moment, they both sat eating their waffles. Dick was sawing through his with a knife and fork in the same way Bruce did with his burgers. 

“I bet Gordon gave you some ideas,” said Jason. 

Dick tilted his head and started playing with the knife in his hand. “I mean, she always thought I could be more than just…” he spun the blade over the knuckle of his thumb like it was a pencil, “…a weapon for Bruce to use. She made me want to be something more.”

Jason shook his head. “Dude. You’re gone for her.” 

Dick laughed — a strangely melancholic sound. “Outside of family, she’s the only person I ever told about the Talon…stuff. I thought she’d freak out, maybe look at me differently, but you know how she reacted? She got furious. For me. For what they did to me.”

“You are in so deep, my man,” Jason declared. “I don’t think anyone can dig you out of this.”

Dick just stared down at the knife in his hand as if he could will it into being something else if he just wanted it enough. 

~~

On his last day at Dick’s place, Jason toured Bludhaven by himself. 

Bludhaven was meaner and grittier than Gotham, but where Gotham used her prettier exterior to hide her rotten innards, Bludhaven made no pretense of the fact that she was corrupted to the core. Jason rather liked her honesty. He could see why Dick would appreciate it, too. 

Bludhaven’s criminal networks were not completely intertwined with Gotham’s, but there was enough overlap that people still knew and reacted to the name ‘Cardinal’. So Jason called up his local liaison, hit up a few well-known haunts, introduced himself to the local enforcers, and then attended a private poker game where he generously lost a couple grand and gained a few new friends.

Not bad for a day’s work. Bruce would be proud. 

He arrived back at Dick’s place in good spirits, bringing with him a bag of groceries as a farewell gift. He was just filling the fridge with fresh fruits and vegetables when the bathroom door opened and a stranger in a bathrobe stepped out. She was drying her hair with a towel. Jason shut the fridge door with one hand and reached automatically for the knife in his thigh holster with the other. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t see you there,” she said, shaking wet, coppery-red hair out of her eyes. Then she bent over and picked up the bra that had been lying on the floor. 

Jason’s brain stuttered and froze. His gaze slid over the apartment again. This time he noticed the articles of feminine clothing lying haphazardly in odd places, the pieces of furniture that had been moved just a few inches off from where they usually sat. The two cups on the kitchen counter, next to two plates and two forks. The faint, flowery perfume that lingered in the air. 

Dick had company over.

Jason was just wondering if he ought to make a stealthy exit when Dick appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, yawning and wearing only boxer shorts. It was five in the afternoon, which was when he usually woke up so he could start his dance shift at seven. 

“Hey. I didn’t realize you’d be back so soon.” 

"Yeah, I wanted to drop off some food. To replace all the shit I ate.” Jason held up the grocery bag in his hand as evidence. “I was just leaving, though. Thanks for letting me stay.”

“I should be on my way as well,” the redhead said, making a circuit around the room to pick up her things. “Unless you want to go another round before I head off?” She tossed Dick a saucy smile and tilted her hips in an openly suggestive way.

“Nope, I’m good. But thanks.” Dick gave her temple a kiss as she brushed past him into the bedroom and shut the door behind her to change. 

Jason waited approximately two seconds before the words burst out of him in a flood. “Who — what the fuck, Dick? You have a girlfriend? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Not a girlfriend,” said Dick calmly as he went to make coffee. 

“Whatever. Side piece? Summer fling? One night stand? Come on, Dick. Spill.” 

“Jay.” Dick was rubbing at his eyes. “It’s too early for this.”

“You really had me going for awhile there. You had me convinced you were depressed!” 

“Just for that, I’m not making you any coffee.”

Jason rolled his eyes and got a beer out of the fridge instead. Dick’s day was just getting started, but dammit, it was happy hour for him. “God, I feel stupid. Here I was, worried you’d spend the rest of your life moping over Gordon, when you’d already moved on.”

At that moment, the redhead reemerged in a lacy summer dress and a cloud of fresh perfume. She sounded cheerful as she faced Jason. 

“Actually, you’re not wrong. He’s totally still moping over Gordon. It’s why he only fucks redheads. And why he makes me wear these big round librarian glasses and likes to be called ‘Boy Wonder’ when I’m getting him off with my t—”

Jason almost snorted beer out his nose. He had to put his drink down as he choked and wheezed for breath. His lungs felt like they were on fire.

“Raya!” Dick sounded utterly betrayed. “We’ve talked about this! My bedroom preferences stay in the bedroom.”

Raya wrinkled her nose at him. “Sorry, but you’re not my boss anymore. You don’t get those privacy privileges.” She tipped her cheek lazily against one hand. “Do I get a tip today?”

“I wasn’t your boss,” Dick grumbled under his breath as he took out his wallet and dropped a twenty into her outstretched hand. “I was more like your boss’s boss’s boss.”

“Yeah, and if you actually tipped like one, I might be more inclined to keep my big mouth shut.” Raya raised her eyebrows expectantly. Dick huffed but dropped a second twenty into her hands. She flashed him a smile, all sweetness and sunlight again. “You do know how to spoil a girl.” 

“Is this how you treat all your ex-bosses? By divulging all their deepest darkest secrets?”

“Well, Cardinal asked. And by the way,” she turned to give Jason a warm smile, “you get a freebie anytime you want to hit me up.”

Jason was still coughing and spluttering for breath. “I — sorry — who are you again?”

“I’m one of Mother Gothel’s girls, from the Booby Trap? On Sleet Street? You must know it.”

“Oh.” Comprehension dawned. “You’re a pro.”

She threw him a wink over her shoulder as she sashayed to the door. “Word on the street is that you’re our up-and-coming boss. So remember my name if you’re looking for a good time. See you soon, kay?”

And then she was gone. 

~~

A short silence followed as Jason contemplated the door. “Is she okay getting back home by herself? This is a pretty rough neighbourhood.”

“Uh, I wouldn’t worry about it. She lives in this building. Three floors down.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Technically, she’s my tenant.”

“You own her apartment?”

“I own the building. Well, ‘Ric’ owns the building. But I don’t use that alias anymore, so I guess it was me in different life.”

Jason’s face twisted in distaste. “Wow. Way to be the cliche landlord, Dickhead. Was she behind on her rent?” 

Dick raised a single eyebrow at him, like he wasn’t sure if he was offended or not. “Okay. First, I always pay the going rate. Second, just because I’m not a Bat anymore doesn’t mean I can’t be a client. Why are you looking at me like that? It’s not like I coerced a drunk schoolgirl into my bed — Raya does this for a living.”

“Yeah, I know what it’s like to do this for a living,” Jason reminded him. Dick fell silent.

Jason wasn’t weird about sex, per se. At least, he tried not to be. In this line of work, he couldn’t afford to be. And it wasn’t like he expected Dick to abstain. Nightingale used to control huge swathes of Sleet Street, where sex was just another commodity that anyone could buy or sell. It would have been weirder if Dick didn’t sample his own merchandise, so to speak. So Jason couldn’t even pinpoint the source of his own annoyance at first. 

What made his distaste even more illogical was that Dick was, by every measure that mattered, the dream client. He was overflowing with money, manners, good looks, and powerful connections. The madams of Sleet Street had cooed over him, offering up their best blue chip escorts as bribes. The prettiest girls on his payroll had gone out and dyed their hair red every month in hopes of catching his eye, because getting Dick as a regular was basically the Holy Grail. Heck, if Dick had rocked up to Jason’s street corner back in the day and asked to buy his time, Jason would not have found it a hardship to say yes. 

But that, there, was the difference between them. Dick had managed this business from on high, at a distance; Jason, by contrast, knew what it was actually like to hustle for customers, learning to overcome his gag reflex for every nasty thing he’d had to do. He knew there were ugly, humiliating aspects of the job Dick would never understand. He’d just never appreciated how wide the gap between them was until now.

“Is that disapproval I see on your face?” Dick gave him a wry, curious look, like he holding back laughter. “Are you judging me?”

Jason felt his face work through a series of permutations. He was feeling five or six things at once. “I thought you wanted to go legit. So why are you paying for it instead of hitting the clubs and getting it for free?”

Dick shrugged. “Didn’t want to give a girl any hopes or expectations, not even for one night. If I pay for it, everyone gets exactly what they want.”

“So this is a regular thing? This is what you do when you want a good time?” Jason’s voice rose. 

“Hey. I’m allowed to have one vice too.”

“And you picked hookers!?” Jason wasn’t aware he’d yelled until he clocked his own volume. 

Dick went from mystified to annoyed in a heartbeat. “You’re sitting on an awfully high horse there, Jay…”

“And you’re a fucking hypocrite. I can’t have a smoke, but you’re hitting up call girls left and right? Who’s on the wrong side of the law now, huh?”

“Smoking is bad for you.”

“And you think that’s not bad for you?” Jason jerked a thumb at the door that Raya had vacated moments earlier. “No, shut up. Listen to me. You’re not doing this to get your rocks off, Dick. Stop lying to yourself. You’re filling your calendar with redheads in hopes of replacing Gordon. That’s the definition of bad for you!”

Dick’s expression shuttered. He was perilously close to true anger now. Jason barrelled onwards before he lost his nerve. “Why are you settling for this — this watered-down imitation of the real thing? If you still want Gordon back, go get her back.”

And come back to Gotham to do it, dammit. That would be the best of all worlds. 

There was a flinty silence after that. Dick’s patience with Jason was fraying at the edges. He looked as if he were controlling himself only with a force of will. 

In the silky snarl that Jason had only ever heard him use on his underlings, he said, “I don’t think you’ve ever even had a relationship before, Jay. So don’t come here acting like you know anything, telling me how to manage mine.”

And he was right in a way. Jason didn’t look at people and want the same things that everyone else seemed to want. He’d maxed out his lifetime quota for sex when he was fourteen. It made him faintly nauseous now to think about doing those things with anyone. But that didn’t mean he was ignorant about how relationships worked for everyone else. 

“Don’t be a fucking idiot, Dick. There’s no Raya in this world who can make you forget Barbara Gordon.”

Dick hurled his emptied coffee cup into the sink with a clang and glared at him. 

“Who died and made you my therapist?” 

“Dick—”

“I thought you said you were leaving?” 

He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder and began steering him towards the door. Jason could feel in the force of the fingers pressing into his collar bone that he really meant it this time. There was no give in that arm. No chance for him to squirm away.

“Drop it, okay? I don’t want to talk about Babs anymore. It’s not like she’ll take me back no matter what I do.”

For a moment, Dick’s voice was so bleak that Jason didn’t have to look at his face to feel all the dashed hopes and bitter self-recriminations there. He sounded far too hollowed-out for a twenty-three-year old. 

“Well not with that attitude she won’t,” said Jason. 

“Go home, Jay,” said Dick right before shutting the door in his face.

Fuck. 

Jason rested his forehead against the wall with a bitten-off groan. He’d known he had his work cut out for him, but he didn’t think the hurdle would be this high. 

Operation: Bring Nightingale Back was a complete and total wash. 

Fine. He wasn’t going to stick around and beg Dick for what he wouldn’t give.

If Dick wasn’t coming back, he’d just have to keep the Bats in line himself. 

Chapter Text

“You’re late. Explain yourself.” 

The speaker inside the nondescript Bentley was hidden behind tinted glass, but Jason would recognize Bruce’s voice even if he were concussed. The backseat window was cracked open an inch. It was five in the morning and the car was parked in the shadows of one of Gotham’s narrower alleys, compressed between two slabs of impenetrable brick wall. 

Jason leaned his kevlar-clad thigh against one immaculate fender and crossed his arms. “What, not even a ‘good job, Cardinal’?” 

“You told me it would take one hour. You dithered there for five.”

Jason took a long drag of his cigarette. “His kids were there.” He tipped his chin back and blew a stream of smoke into the steel-coloured sky. “Two of them.”

“Was that a problem?”

“Yeah, it was a fucking problem, B. I wasn’t going to lean on his kids to make him talk, no matter how much of a scumbag he is.”

“Did you at least kill him once you were done?” 

“What — in front of his kids? They were seven and four years old!” 

“I ordered you —” 

“—to find the source of Floss and stamp it out, I know.” Jason took another drag on his cigarette and then let it burn to a stub. He liked the heat of it scorching his fingertips black. “But it turns out Lonny B isn’t our guy. He’s just the distributor. The shithead swears up and down he doesn’t make the stuff himself, and I believe him. He’s too dumb to play chemical engineer, and he doesn’t have enough space in his house to hide that much Floss. We tossed his place twice.”

One of the foot soldier on his team cleared his throat and held out the small bottle of effervescent green liquid they’d found under Lonny B’s floorboards. Jason took it and dangled it next to the window. 

“Spoils from the raid. You want to see what this can do?” 

There was a near-inaudible whirr of expensive machinery as the window rolled down a couple inches further. After checking that the alley was still empty, Jason slipped the bottle through the window.

“As far as I can figure, that’s Floss in its original, concentrated form. In the meantime, I did manage to squeeze a name out of Lonny.” 

“I should hope so. I didn’t think even you would dare come back empty-handed.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Give me a fucking break, B—”

“Mind yourself, Cardinal.”

“—Boss,” Jason corrected himself, tightly. 

When Bruce used that tone of voice, it was always in the role of ‘Boss’ and not ‘father.’ Jason could differentiate between the two just fine, but he had been seeing far too much of his Boss lately and not nearly enough of his father. 

Jason flicked a glance to his right, where his three foot soldiers were standing at attention. All three were older than him by a couple of years, but Jason was unquestionably their senior in both experience and status. Foot soldiers were the freshest, greenest recruits to the organization and, like office interns, there was always a pool of them ready for communal use. High-ranking Bats usually called on them for scut work and extra muscle. 

At the moment, two were on lookout duty and one was patrolling the perimeter of the alley, but Jason knew they were keeping one ear on the conversation. This meant that Jason should be setting a good example for them. He was the favoured one, after all. He was supposed to be a model of obedience. 

With an effort, he forced himself into a more polite register. “I’ll happily give you the name, but in exchange I want the pleasure of taking him out myself.”

“This is not a negotiation. Talk.”

Jason gnawed his lip but could see no way around it. “Two-Face,” he spat.

Bruce was silent for so long that Jason bent down awkwardly to peer into the car. He couldn’t see much of the interior except a dim slice of Bruce’s face.

“Boss?”

“Do you believe Lonny?”

“Well, it took us five hours to pry the info out of him. Do you think the bastard’s lying?”

Bruce made a soft sound of displeasure. “You really should have killed him.”

“I can go back right now to finish the job if it matters that much to you,” said Jason, “but Two-Face might beat me to it. And I get the feeling he doesn’t like squealers.” 

“No, he doesn’t.” 

Jason leaned forward. “Will you let me have Two-Face? I want to see him go down permanently, and I am itching to put a bullet between his eyes —” 

Bruce raised a hand, palm vertical, and Jason felt his throat close up automatically like the reaction had been wired into his brain.

“Two-Face is mine. I’ll take care of him myself.”

Jason thumped his hands against the roof of the car with a curse. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted this until the opportunity presented itself. 

“You put me on this job, Boss. You asked me to get Floss off your streets, so I spent three weeks busting my ass, greasing palms, hunting down the supplier. You can’t make me do all this work and then yank my prize away the second it’s in sight. I deserve this.”

Bruce gave him an unreadable look. “Make you? I don’t make you do anything, Cardinal.” 

“You — I — that’s not what I me—”

“And another thing,” Bruce continued as if Jason had not spoken. “I’m beginning to have serious reservations about your judgement. You’ve been erratic of late. I think it was a mistake setting you over the new recruits.”

“You think I can’t keep my people in line?” Jason snarled, before remembering that the new recruits were standing right there. He heard rather than saw them flinch — a sharp indrawn breath. This was humiliating on every level. 

“You’re setting a terrible example, for starters,” said Bruce.

“What?!”

“You took your comm out and cut me off in the middle of the job,” Bruce snapped. “And that’s the least of your sins. I should string you up for insubordination.”

Jason could have argued the point — technically he’d still been listening — but the soldiers were starting to look spooked. And because they were watching, Jason didn’t do any of the things he’d normally do. He didn’t poke fun at Bruce or snap something sarcastic or say, “Oh come on, B. Untwist yourself for two seconds, would you?” 

He couldn’t do any of that because Bruce was his Boss and they were in public and if he lost his temper now, he’d prove him right. 

Jason gritted his teeth. Turning eighteen was supposed to have cemented his status in the family — and to a certain extent, it had. He no longer worried about being kicked out of the manor, or having to live up to Nightingale’s impossible legacy. He had earned his own place in the pecking order, and that assurance had settled his stomach like ballast in a storm. 

But turning eighteen had also added him to Bruce’s payroll. He had an actual, regular salary now. Paid vacation. Health and dental. He was an employee. Which meant he was held to a different standard in public. 

Jason took a steadying breath. “I got you the results you wanted. If you’d wanted it done in a different way, you should have specified.” 

“And would you have listened if I had?”

“You give me carte blanche to handle jobs how I want —”

“Within reasonable limits. But if you want to be a full-fledged member of the Bats, you will follow my rules.”

With every word they exchanged, the three soldiers edged farther and farther away from them. None of them wanted to be in the blast radius of one of them lost it. Jason kept waiting for Bruce to dismiss them. And then it hit him why Bruce hadn’t said a word. The soldiers were his. He’d handpicked them from the pool. Only he could dismiss them. 

Feeling like an idiot, Jason turned and barked, “Leave. I’ll debrief you tomorrow.”

They vanished with alacrity. Jason shut his eyes and slowly clenched and unclenched one fist. It was irrational to be angry with Bruce for this, but right now, all his anger was tangled up together in one snarled skein. 

In a low voice, he muttered, “I should have done that before I started yelling at you.”

Bruce managed to convey an eye-roll with just the flicker of an eyelid. “Yes, you should have.”

“Fuck.”

“I’m taking you off all jobs for the next two weeks.”

Jason’s head jerked up. “Are you suspending me?”

“Think of it as enforced vacation time.”

“What if I—”

“No.” The refusal was sharp, solid, as immoveable as a brick wall. “Cardinal, you kill the men I don’t want killed, and you refuse to kill the ones I order you to. Do I need to tell you why that is a problem? If you want to remain a Bat—”

“Remain a Bat?” said Jason. “You won’t even let me get my marks. Am I even a Bat right now?”

The question had been plaguing him ever since the banquet. It still brought a sour taste to his mouth when he thought back to that night. 

The distinctive bat tattoo that was given to every member of the Gotham Bats was always done in-house, at their annual banquet. But when the night had finally rolled around two months ago, Jason had not been invited to partake. Instead, he’d been forced to watch as a line of young soldiers swore their oaths, knocked back identical vials of black liquor, and got inked. Jason had thrown down his napkin and left halfway through the main course. 

“With the way you’ve been behaving?” said Bruce. He rolled down his window a further five inches so that Jason could feel the full force of his displeasure. “I hold you accountable for your actions, Cardinal, but you don’t act like the words obedience and loyalty mean anything to you. You want me to treat you like an adult? Start acting like one.”

Jason’s blood spiked so hot that he could hear a faint ringing in his ears. “B—”

“Keep your hands off Two-Face. I’ll handle the rest.”

Before he could reply, the Bentley sealed itself back up and glided away.

~~

The thing that both infuriated and baffled Jason was that every argument he had with Bruce essentially boiled down to the same thing. Bruce thought he was terrible at his job; Jason was determined to prove that he wasn’t. 

In fact, for 95% of the jobs he carried out, he toed the fucking line like a champ. Which he thought entitled him to the occasional creative interpretation of an order. 

“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” said Ravager. 

“Just get that case up the stairs, okay?”

“I am your bodyguard, not your pack horse.” But she heaved the five foot-long rectangular case over her shoulder, carried it across the roof, and set it down by the ledge where Jason was waiting with a pair of binoculars. 

“Thanks.”

“Remind me. Are you trying to impress him or piss him off today?”

“To Bruce, those two are very often the same thing.”

Jason unsnapped the black case and freed the sniper rifle parts from their foamy confines. It had taken him two weeks to successfully requisition it without anyone finding out. Ever since Bruce froze him out of his accounts and revoked his access to the armoury, he’d had to get pretty creative. 

“I’m pretty sure he’d prefer you to be at home, studying for your exams,” she said.

Jason assembled the weapon with quick, professional efficiency, screwing the parts together with steady hands. “Sure, but how else am I supposed to impress him if I don’t up my game every now and then?”

He propped the rifle up on its bipod legs and settled onto his stomach to fiddle with the scope. 

“Dads like that are never impressed. Take it from someone who ripped out her own eye to impress her dad.”

That got Jason to look up. Ravage blew the bangs off her eye patch and gave him a ghoulish smile. 

“You did that to yourself?” He was aghast. 

“I wasn’t in a good place at the time.” She made a face. “More importantly, it didn’t even work.”

“Jesus Christ.” Jason had only met Deathstroke a couple of times, but he’d always been under the impression that Slade was the encouraging sort of teacher — more generous with his praise than Bruce ever was. Dick had preened under his attention like a peacock, had all but offered up his head for pats and his tummy for rubs and — actually, Jason didn’t want to know what else he had offered up while under Slade’s tutelage. “Your dad seemed plenty impressed with Nightingale.”

Ravager made a sound like a cat retching. “Sadly, Nightingale was the only one who ever managed to impress him. Sadly for me, I mean.”

“Well. Shit.” Jason was used to being effortlessly outclassed by Dick, but it had to be even more annoying for Ravager. “Fuck Nightingale.”

She kicked a pebble off the roof. “Fuck Nightingale,” she agreed with a rare show of vehemence. “And fuck dads in general. They don’t deserve half the things we do for them. Stop trying so hard.”

“Oh this one’s not for Bruce,” Jason reassured her. “It’s mostly for me.”

She looked unconvinced, but he wasn’t about to explain his personal grudge to her. They subsided into a watchful silence and settled in for the wait. Two hours later, Two-Face appeared between his crosshairs in the office of a building six hundred yards away, and Jason jerked into alertness. 

 Ravager swept her binoculars around in a circle. “You’re clear.”

“All right, fuckface. Let’s play,” said Jason as he took aim. 

Killing him from a distance wasn’t going to be quite as satisfying as doing it up close, but for efficiency’s sake, Jason was willing to put aside his selfish insistence on the latter. One by one, he picked off Two-Face’s minions. Within seconds, there were half a dozen men dead in the room, and the walls were painted red. Jason saved Two-Face for last. He wanted to savour the terror on the man’s face for as long as possible.

At that moment, the door of the office burst opened and a fresh parade of suits filed in. It took Jason a couple of seconds to realize he recognized these guys. After three years of seeing them day in and day out, he knew exactly whose bodyguards they were. And this was borne out when the last man through the door was Bruce.

Jason began cursing quietly and fluently. 

Ravager summed up the situation with her usual aplomb. “Huh. That’s unexpected.”

Bruce and Two-Face eyed each other across the room, then immediately launched into what looked like a shouting match. Two-Face pointed and gesticulated. Bruce held up both hands in a mollifying gesture. His bodyguards fanned out in a protective perimeter around the room, taking care to step over the broken glass. 

Jason waited for Bruce to pull a gun, a knife — something. He waited for one of the bodyguards to give Two-Face a double-tap to the chest. But nothing happened. All they did was continue to to yell at each other. Abruptly, Two-Face stomped across the room and jabbed an accusing finger in Bruce’s face. 

At that point, Jason adjusted his aim and flicked on the laser on his scope. I’m still here, fuckface. Two-Face spluttered and turned puce when the telltale red dot appeared on his tie. Bruce put a hand on his chest to keep him at arm’s length and shot an irritated look at the smashed windows. Without a speck of concern on his face, he intercepted the red laser dot with his other hand. Like he was swatting a fly. 

Jason removed his eye from the scope and blinked rapidly to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. What the hell? When he returned his gaze to the office, Two-Face was shaking Bruce by the lapels, and Bruce was just…letting him. 

“Fucking kill him already,” Jason snarled under his breath, hoping at least one of the bodyguards present would get the message. “What are you doing, B?” 

With Two-Face standing so close to Bruce, Jason didn’t dare risk a shot. What made things worse was that Bruce was pivoting slowly to put himself between the window and Two-Face. He must have assumed that the sniper wouldn’t shoot him. But how could he know that unless he knew whose finger was on the trigger? 

Jason jerked away from the rifle rig with a bolt of alarm. “Shit shit shit.”

He knew. There was no way Bruce could see him, not from six hundred yards away, but somehow, he’d figured it out. 

“God, he’s going to fucking kill me.”

~~

By the time Bruce returned to Wayne Manor five hours later and summoned Cardinal to the drawing room, Jason was more than ready to face the music and get it over with. 

The drawing room was usually reserved for guests. Jason tried not to read too much into that. In a manor where most rooms were austerely furnished, the drawing room had the distinction of being the most ostentatious and over-decorated room in the house. It had Turkish carpets and hand-carved teak wainscoting. The walls were lined with portraits of past Waynes, immortalized in oil on canvas. Every flat surface was so crowded with crystal heirlooms and gilt-edged antiques that Jason always felt like he was one sneeze away from breaking something priceless.

Bruce was already waiting for him when he came through the double doors, seated on a leather chesterfield like it was a throne. 

“Where were you earlier today?” he asked without looking up from his tablet.

There was no point beating around the bush. They each knew that the other person knew they knew. Jason had played this game before.

“Why didn’t you kill Two-Face when you had the chance?” Jason shot back. 

“You cannot keep doing this, Jason. You’ve left a trail of dead bodies, all connected to Floss. The underworld is starting to throw around words like ‘vigilante’. Is that what you want to be known as?” 

“A what?”

“Eight dead dealers, three floss dens burned down, and a hit on Two-Face. Are you telling me it wasn’t you?”

Jason stretched himself out in the sofa opposite Bruce, crossed his arms, and put his feet up on the coffee table. “No, it was totally me.”

The first lesson Nightingale had taught him was to own up to his actions immediately. And Jason had taken that to heart. The only way to make sure that he got credit for his successes was to take responsibility for his failures as well. 

“I told you to stamp it out quietly.”

“What, is my volume too loud for you?” Jason raised his eyebrows innocently. 

“I know your priorities are different from mine, Jason, but the way to clean up this city isn’t to go around assassinating people at random.”

“Two-Face isn’t some rando off the street, B. He’s a bonafide nutcase.”

“And his men?”

Jason shrugged. “They’re gangsters.” 

“So are you.”

“I don’t use children to deal drugs for me.”

In the course of his hunt, Jason had run into more than a few preteens hawking Floss at high schools like the stuff was nothing more dangerous than a vape pen. It had made his blood boil. 

“Don’t you?” Bruce was looking at him with an expression that was uncomfortably close to pity. “What exactly is it you think you do for me when you go out wearing those colors? How clean do you think your hands are?”

“Don’t lump me in with them.”

“You think you have the moral high ground?” Bruce raised an eyebrow. 

“Over Two-Face? I should hope so. And since when were you two best buddies? You were looking awfully chummy with him back there.”

He’d meant it as sideways dig, to get Bruce off the topic of his morality, but when Bruce didn’t immediately reply, Jason leaned forward. “Wait just a fucking second — don’t tell me you’re friends with that psycho.” 

Bruce tossed down his tablet with a clatter. “I told you to stay away from him. What part of that didn’t you understand?”

Jason just stared at him, his mouth hanging half-open in disbelief. In the Gotham Underworld, ‘friends’ did not exist. What Bruce had was a shifting system of alliances and rivalries, which he manipulated to his advantage. At most, Jason had assumed that Bruce had some sort of ongoing deal with Two-Face. But it was looking like it was more complicated than that. 

“What’s he got on you?” said Jason. “Why are you letting him kill off your customer base with his stupid experimental drugs?”

As far as he could tell, Floss was a drug that did two things: it caused extreme paranoia and it sharpened memory retention to near-savant-like levels. This made it extremely popular with students. Kids who were desperate to pass their exams were more than willing to go into shakes and sweats and convulsive cramps if it meant they could also memorize a textbook in a single night. The problem was that some of them also died afterwards, and nobody seemed to know what the lethal amount was. The drug was too new. 

So far, a dozen teenagers had been reported dead from Floss and Jason was sure it was just the tip of the iceberg. 

“Look, B. I know you’re only concerned about Floss because it’s messing with your profit margins or whatever, but kids are dying from this stuff!” Jason leaned forward imploringly. 

Bruce tilted his head. “And you think you’re helping them, by killing off everyone on the supply chain? Floss has been circulating on the streets of Gotham for almost eight weeks now. As long as there’s demand, someone will provide the supply. Anyone you kill can and will be replaced by someone else within the week. Crime is born from the greed and selfishness of the human heart, Jason, and nobody is curing that anytime soon.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t try,” Jason mumbled.

Bruce poured himself a drink from the tray on the coffee table and studied Jason coolly like he was a cypher, or a chess puzzle. “Something about Harvey Dent has set you off. I haven’t seen you this laser-focused on a single man since the Garzonas incident.”

Jason carefully did not blink. Did not flinch. “If you tell me what your deal is with Two-Face, I’ll tell you mine.”

Bruce swirled the ice in his tumbler with a clink. “You weren’t like this even with Sionis or Cobblepot. It must be personal.”

He was right, but Jason had no wish to go into the details of why. No doubt Bruce would say he was being childish, or silly, or worse, emotional. 

“The stakes are too high, B. We don’t have time for this. Do you want to hear the coroner’s reports I read? I saw one kid OD — it was fucking gruesome. You care about kids, I know you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made all those stupid rules about what I can or cannot do before eighteen. So let me do something about it.”

Bruce’s expression flickered. His tone went a shade gentler. “Jason, I understand where the impulse comes from, but you are just one person. You cannot save every kid you see —”

“You saved me,” Jason interrupted. Suddenly he was urgent with the need to make Bruce see, to make him understand. “And there are hundreds of kids out there right now, kids just like me, and if I could just pay that forward—”

“I saved you,” Bruce agreed, cutting him off, “so do me a ‘solid’, as they say, and listen to me for once.” 

Jason put his face in one hand and cringed bodily. Bruce gestured at one of his bodyguards, and the man wordlessly put a can of ginger ale in front of Jason.

“Gotham is a corrupt city, but it’s not the type of corruption you can fix with amputation,” said Bruce. “My father was a doctor. He told me once that crime is more like blood cancer than gangrene. You can’t just cut off the diseased bits if the sickness runs through the veins and marrow of the whole city. That’s why killing off what you call the ‘problem people’ won’t change anything. Don’t you think I would have done that already, if I thought it would work?”

Jason scowled into his can of soda. “I just want to be able to do something good thing for once.”

“You may be in the wrong business, then, Jay-lad.”

Jason looked past Bruce and caught the eye of the woman in the oil painting hanging behind him. She smiled benevolently down at them. “I thought your parents were gunned down by a mugger. You have even less reason to be in this business than me.”

It was something Bruce never talked about, even though the aftershocks of it permeated the house. Their deaths had been front-page news when it happened — a simple internet search had turned up pages of material. A rich couple. A fatal shooting. Everyone knew all the details because that’s what happened when rich people died. People cared. 

“If I control all the crime in the city,” said Bruce, “what happened to my parents becomes something within my control. The next time it happens — and there will always be a next time, because crime never stops — the mugger will belong to me. The gun he bought will have come from me. The one who writes his checks will be me. All the variables will be mine. And so the one who decides if he pulls that trigger or not will be me.”

Jason chewed over that. There was a strange, twisted logic to Bruce’s argument, but Jason couldn’t argue with his results. Thanks to his meticulous, analytically-minded handling, the Gotham Bats put the ‘organized’ in ‘organized crime’. There were fewer gang wars now that the Gotham Bats had swallowed up so many of the smaller outfits and united them under one banner. If nothing else, Bruce’s decade-long campaign to enforce his iron will over city had driven the violent crime rate down. The statistics bore him out.

Two-Face was one of the remaining holdouts, which was why Jason had assumed that Bruce would jump at the chance of sinking him for good. It was why his reluctance to do so was so puzzling.

“Just tell me, B. Why do you want that bastard alive? Two-Face is a blight on Gotham.”

“I do not need to tell you my reasons for everything I do.”

“No, you just keep me in the dark and let me swim around like an asshole, trying to stay afloat, and I’m fucking sick of it,” said Jason. “ When are you going to trust me?”

“My trust is not the issue.”

“Dick was right,” Jason continued. “You play all these grand games over everyone else’s head, moving us around like chess pieces. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I can help? That if you’d just let me in on your strategy, I can make your life easier?”

Bruce massaged his temples with one hand and closed his eyes. “Easier?” He sounded politely incredulous. “You’re making my life difficult right now with all this backtalk.”

“Tough.”

“If you trusted me, Jason, you wouldn’t be questioning my orders like this.”

Jason leaned back, stung. 

“I am,” Bruce continued, eyes still closed, “this close to firing you.”

Everything inside him went cold. Was that a joke? Was Bruce speaking as his dad, or his boss? his fingers slid along the worn leather seat until it got to his thigh holster, and his thumb traced the comforting grip of his gun. The gun that Bruce had given him, that Bruce allowed in his presence. Like Dick, Jason never got his weapons confiscated before a meeting with Bruce. It meant something to him, having this privilege. Bruce had to be bluffing. 

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, B.” Jason forced a laugh. “I’m not Dick, okay? I’m not going to throw up my hands and quit just because you want me to be something I’m not. I told your men I’m here to stay, and I keep my word. So you’re 100% stuck with me till one of us kicks the bucket.”

Bruce gave him a complicated look, like there was something else he wanted to say, but thought better of it at the last minute. “And what is it you want to be?”

I want to be your son, Jason wanted to say. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. But that wasn’t the question Bruce was asking. 

“I guess I can be the black sheep of the family.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

“More like the thorn in my side.” The corner of Bruce’s mouth twitched ruefully. “But I suppose I have only myself to blame.”

That sounded more like a joke — a real one this time. Jason’s heart beat a little slower. It was okay. He hadn’t screwed this up completely. 

“But I think you’re better than this, Jason. I picked you for a reason. I don’t like to be wrong. So don’t prove me wrong.” Bruce got up and came around the coffee table to peer down at him. “You knew the rules. You’ll have to eat the consequences.”

Jason dipped his head in acquiescence and didn’t look up, not even when a heavy hand descended on his neck and pulled him up by the collar. If he were being honest, it was a relief to finally get this out of the way. 

~~

“Shift your arse.” Jason poked his head out of his room to find Ravager leaning against the wall, tapping away at her phone. “And change into something presentable. You can’t wear that to the exam hall, they’ll think you’re a creepy cosplayer.”

“Where are we going again?” 

“I’m taking my SATs. Let’s go.”

She looked up. Jason gestured at himself just in case she needed a point of reference. He was currently wearing a gray polo, black sweatpants, white sneakers, and a messenger bag over one shoulder. 

She frowned. “You might want to do something about —” she gestured at his face. 

Jason cursed and ducked back into his bathroom to tap some full-coverage concealer over the bruises on his face. By the time he reemerged, she’d changed into ripped jeans, combat boots, and an oversized sweater. A pair of jewel-rimmed sunglasses hid her missing eye. She’d even swapped out her usual gloves for a pair of fingerless biker gloves. It was the first time Jason had seen her in anything other than kevlar, leather, and steel mesh. 

“Do I need to get between you and Bruce next time?” she said as she fell into step behind him. 

Jason laughed. She didn’t. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.

“I’m serious,” she said. 

Her eye dropped pointedly to his side, where his shirt was currently hiding a splattering of bruises that bloomed like night flowers over the left side of his torso. Unlike the ones on his face, those still smarted when he moved. He had no idea how she even knew they were there. Not for the first time, he wondered if she’d purposely neglected to put a few of her enhanced abilities on her CV. 

Jason looked away. “That was my own fault.”

“Do you hear what you’re saying?”

She trailed him through the house into the kitchen, where Alfred had left him a paper bag full of fresh-baked cookies and a bento box full of lunch. 

“Your dad should not be doing this to you,” she said. 

“He’s also my boss, and employees get told off all the time.” Jason rifled through his messenger bag to make sure that he had his examination paperwork and his real ID card on him this time. 

“I don’t actually care whose fault it was. My job is to keep you from getting hurt. That includes Bruce.”

She stomped after him to the adjoining parkade, where Jason absently disabled the alarm and tapped the console to bring out the Aston Martin. Ravager was in one of her moods today.

“It’s fine. I screwed up publicly. The rules are the rules, and I broke them.” Jason checked his watch. “Ergo, I did this to myself.”

“This is the third time this month, Cardinal.”

She wasn’t wrong, per se. Jason shrugged. “I had a dad who used to actually hit me. This is different.”

She made a ‘pfftt’ sound. “What is the difference? Bruce hits harder?”

Jason gave her shoulder a warning shove. 

Bruce couldn’t let him off scot free — not after Jason had so flagrantly flouted his orders. The other Bats already saw the preferential treatment he got and despised him for it. Cardinal would never win their respect if he didn’t have to face the consequences of own his mistakes. Most of them got off far worse, for smaller infractions. So Jason had submitted to his punishment without a word of protest. 

Besides, Bruce was nothing like Willis. Willis had only hit him when he was drunk and out of control. There had been no rhyme or reason to it. But Bruce was the most consistently sober adult he’d ever encountered — that was one of the reasons why he’d originally agreed to move into Wayne Manor in the first place. Jason had never even seen him drunk or high before, except when he was faking it for a society party. He could count on Bruce to hit him only when he deserved it.

The Aston Martin emerged from the ceiling on a slowly-rotating platform and the parkade doors opened on the front drive of the Manor. Jason gunned the engine as soon as Ravager shut the door and hurled them down the driveway at the very edges of the speed limit, hoping it would shut her up. He should have known she wouldn’t be that easily put off. 

“My dad threw me off a cliff once,” she said as they roared down the highway that would take them into the city. “Shattered seventeen bones.” 

He darted a sideways look at her, but she was staring straight ahead, tapping her fingers absently against the ripped seam at her knee. Her tone was determinedly casual. She could have been talking about the weather. 

“Ouch?” Jason wasn’t sure what else he could say. 

“Yeah. So I know all about intense dads, okay? Mine’s never going to win any ‘Dad of the Year’ awards either, but he only pulls that kind of shit when we’re training. I know when it starts and when it stops. Do you?”

Jason scoffed. “I’m not afraid of Bruce.”

At least, he wasn’t afraid of Bruce’s fists. He was more afraid of what would happen when Bruce stopped wanting him around. When he decided to cut him out of his life.

~~

Jason gave things a couple of weeks to settle back down into equilibrium. He trotted out all the token bits of good behaviour. Since he was still suspended, he made sure Bruce saw him visiting the library, hanging out in cafes, going to church — doing all the things a regular teenager was supposed to do. 

In the meantime, he haunted the hallowed halls of Gotham University like he was auditioning to be its next resident ghost. That wasn’t too suspicious — Jason had plenty of reason to be checking out his first-pick university, and he was expecting to get his acceptance letter any day now. If he was also checking out the campus dealers, scoping out the drug scene, and following up on leads on when the next shipment of Floss was coming in, well — Bruce never had to know. 

Unfortunately, trouble found him before he could find it. 

“You the one picking off my dealers, punk?” 

Jason raised both hands and backed up against the wall as several goons closed in on him. “Whoa, hey. I’m just here to buy, man. Heard you were selling the good stuff.”

Next to him, Ravager reached behind her back for the dagger she kept hidden under her sweater, but Jason put a hand on her arm. Right now they were both disguised as regular college students, with nothing to tie them back to the Gotham Bats. It was the best chance they were going to get. 

“It’s not exam week, kid. We don’t sell before the start of term.” The dealer he’d approached was one of Two-Face’s lieutenants — Jason had spent days tracking him down. 

“Thought I’d stock up first, you know? They said Alphonse was the guy to see. You Alphonse?” 

One of the goons grabbed Jason by the front of his shirt, and he made a show of cowering. 

“Who gave you my name, huh? Talk, kid.”

“C’mon man, you don’t need to get rough, okay?” 

The lieutenant jerked his chin at one of his men. “Search them.”

“Shit, the bitch’s got a fucking knife on her!”

Ravager bared her teeth in a snarl. “And I know how to use it, too.”

Three more men emerged from the shadows and Jason hid a grin. Anyone with this many reinforcements had to be high up on the chain of command. They’d hit the jackpot. 

“Grab ‘em and tag ‘em,” said the lieutenant. “I think the boss will want to see this himself.”

Someone kicked his knees out from behind him, forcing him to kneel. Someone else bound his wrists with — he almost laughed — a zip-tie. But then he felt a prick on his neck, and knew he’d miscalculated. He turned his head just in time to see a green syringe depress into his neck. And then darkness closed over him. 

When he came to sometime later, Jason was unsurprised to discover that he’d been divested of most of his clothes and all of his weapons. He and Ravager were tied back-to-back in two chairs, inside an oblong room that smelled of salt and cedar and wet leather. An engine thrummed through the wooden floorboards under their feet. The sound of churning water filled his ears. Though it was dark outside, he could make out a familiar cluster of lights through the panoramic windows. The distant blast of an air horn confirmed it. 

Gotham Bay Marina. 

To his left was a marble countertop crowded with metal cannisters. A thin trail of green liquid dripped from the bottom rim of one, forming a fluorescent puddle on the ground. Two men stood guard over them, their faces impassive. 

Jason felt like someone had put his head in a vice. His body ached in a strange, lethargic way. The ground swayed crazily under him, and he wasn’t entirely sure it was just due to the water. How much Floss had they pumped into him?

The door opened and he looked up. A cold sweat broke out over him when Two-Face strolled in, his two-toned suit perfectly matching his two-toned skin. Up close, his ruined face was even more grotesque than it was in Jason’s nightmares. Three men with semi-automatic guns slung over their shoulders followed him inside. 

“Can’t a man do business anymore without some pissant twink and his sidekick mucking up the works?” Two-Face snarled around the cigar in his mouth. His voice was a low rasp, like nails on chalkboard. “You fuckers cost me two mil.”

A cascade of memories tumbled through Jason’s brain, a hundred competing threads demanding his attention. He shoved them aside for the moment. “So this is how you’re bringing Floss into the city. Smuggled in on private pleasure boats.” His voice came out slurred. “No wonder the police haven’t been able to find any. They’ve been searching Tricorner Yard Docks this whole time.”

Two-Face’s lip curled. “Funny, but you’re not with the police. So tell me, who do you really work for?”

Jason laughed. “How did you do it? Blackmail some dirty politician into taking some extra cargo for you? Pay off some celebrity so you could use their superyacht?”

He swept a gaze around the room. It was too nicely-furnished to be anything but a million-dollar vessel. He’d been on enough pleasure boats to know what they looked like. This was familiar territory to him.

Two-Face opened a drawer and took out a gun. Jason twitched when he realized it was his gun. The red chrome finish gave it away. Seeing it in Two-Face’s hands made his skin crawl unpleasantly. 

“See, I don’t know any factory making toys as fancy as this,” said Two-Face as he emptied the cartridge and spun the weapon around one finger. “So who hooked you up, huh? The Falcones? The Maronis?” He leaned in, his face inches from Jason’s. “Did your boss order you to take me down?”

“I don’t need orders for that,” said Jason, his tongue thick in his mouth. “I’d do that just for fun. Just like what you did to Willis Todd.”

That threw Two-Face for a loop. He rocked back on his heels and stared at Jason for a full five seconds. 

“I bet you don’t even remember him,” said Jason. After all, Willis Todd had just been one of many flunkies.

Jason, on the other hand, would never forget the night his mother got the news. The night she drank all the liquor in the house, bottle after bottle. The night Jason flushed her sleeping pills down the toilet in a panic and hid her anxiety meds out on the rusty fire escape just so she wouldn’t start downing those, too. 

“Todd,” said Two-Face, and to Jason’s shock, he frowned and tilted his head in something like recognition. “Yeah, you do got a bit of his face about you. I have a good memory. Two heads are better than one, you know.” He pointed to his right and left lobes. “You must be Todd and Haywood’s brat.”

Haywood? “My mother's name was Catherine.” 

Two-Face laughed. “Shame that Haywood ran off and stuck Todd with you. He had to turn around and marry some dumb broad quick-sharp when he realized the missus wasn’t coming back. Guess he managed to con poor Catherine into the job.”

Jason blinked slowly at him, uncomprehending. 

“Sheila Haywood was smarter than he ever gave her credit for.” Half his face was a scowl, the other half a leer. “Until she took up with the Joker, of course. Go figure.” 

Jason flexed his hand reflexively and felt the zip ties give with a snap. Since the men had helpfully tied them together back-to-back, Ravager was perfectly positioned to work them both free. In fact, she’d been diligently picking at his restraints for the last ten minutes in total silence. 

Behind him, there were yelps of alarm as Ravager surged to her feet, picked up the chair she’d been sitting on, and swung it in a wide arc. Wood splintered against flesh with a crash. The rest of the chair went flying through the window, shattering it. 

Jason lunged for his gun. Two-Face punched him in the face, but Jason used the momentum to wrench his weapon out of his hand. 

“Shoot them,” Two-Face growled, and his men opened fire in earnest. 

Jason rolled to his feet and grabbed his chair as a shield. With the chamber empty, his own gun was barely more useful than a paperweight, but he’d sooner take a bullet than let Two-Face get his paws on it again. 

“Cardinal!” Ravager shouted. Jason hurled the chair at his attackers and dived out the broken window after her.

He landed on a smooth wooden deck. She hauled him upright and covered his back just as more bullets whizzed through the air. The yacht was about a hundred feet long, which was long for a boat, but not nearly long enough for them to find a place to hide. Fifteen seconds of running brought them to pointed prow. Frothing black water stretched around them in every direction. The lights of Gotham Marina was fading rapidly into the distance as the yacht left a trail of white water in its wake.

“I need a weapon —” Ravager broke off with a grunt. Jason spun around to find her clutching her arm. Blood leaked through her fingers. A stray bullet must have hit her while they were running. 

“Going to swim for it?” Two-Face asked as he came towards them at a more sedate pace. His mangled lip twisted up in glee.  “Maybe that’s exactly what I should make them do. Wouldn’t you like that, eh?” He chuckled, then his face spasmed, and his voice abruptly changed to something softer, more nasal. “No, she called him Cardinal, remember? Think about it. Where have you heard that one before, eh?”

While Two-Face conducted a schizophrenic conversation with himself, Ravager shoved Jason behind her and turned to face their enemies head-on. They had stripped her of her boots and most of her clothes too, leaving her in what looked like a black leotard. But unlike Jason, she didn’t seem affected by their drugs. 

“I blame you for this,” she hissed out of the side of her mouth as she reached up and pulled three long needles out of the bun in her hair. 

Jason clutched the rail for balance as he peered over the side of the prow, wondering what their chances would be if they jumped. By now they were now almost a mile off the coast, which was going to be tough to swim, especially if Ravager caught any more bullet holes.

“I’ll distract them. You find a raft,” she said. 

Lifeboats. Right. A ship this size would have at least one. Jason swept his eyes over the hull. Then his eye caught on the name painted onto the side of the yacht and all the breath left his body. They were standing on the Lady Martha Wayne. This was Bruce’s fucking boat. 

The territory wasn’t familiar because he’d been on boats like this one. It was familiar because he’d been on this exact boat before. 

Jason’s eye jerked back up in time to see Two-Face leaning against the railing as he made a satellite phone call. 

“Brucie-my-man? I thought we had a deal. Is this a double-cross? Why send your pet birdie to mess with me then, hm? Was the money not good enough?”

As he spoke, he motioned his sentries forward. Jason couldn’t think, couldn’t react. He felt the ground shifting under his feet, both figuratively and literally.

“Go!” Ravager snarled, giving him a shove between the shoulder blades.

“Too late,” Jason muttered. A second group of armed men had come up along the other side of the prow, cutting them off. 

Ordinarily, if he were armoured up and fully armed, he would have charged forward without a second thought. But right now, without even a few throwing needles he could magic out of his hair for self-defense, any fight he could put up was going to be tragically short-lived. 

He’d miscalculated. It was that simple. 

The men in the lead raised their guns, and Ravager hurled her needles right through their eyes. They went down screaming. Their comrades returned fire and Jason had a moment to appreciate how strong Ravager really was when she shoved him back against the railing and trapped him there, her body a shield in front of him.

“What are you—”

“I can take a bullet better than you can, smartass,” she panted. 

Fuck that, he thought. He knew she was enhanced enough to rip out of her own eye without bleeding to death. Enhanced enough to break seventeen bones and walk again without any lasting signs of damage. But even she couldn’t take a hail of bullets to the heart.

“Two-Face!” Jason shouted over the roar of the water.

The man looked up from his phone call, his face a picture of garish amusement.

A spray of seawater caught Jason in the face, and he let the sting of it clear his mind. His fault. This was his fault, and he had to make this right. 

“I promise you, Bruce will give you whatever you want if you deliver me back to him alive,” said Jason. “Hold your fire and cut a deal. Do it.”

Even as he said it, he realized he had no idea whether he was bluffing or not. He just had to hope and pray it was actually true. Because he was beginning to realize he didn’t know what game Bruce was playing. At all. 

Chapter Text

The next time he saw Two-Face, the man was holding a phone and wearing an expression that was half amused and half furious.

“Proof of life?” said Bruce’s voice. 

The phone was put to Jason’s ear.

“Cardinal? Are you hurt?”

“Oh, just call him by his real name, he’s already told me everything,” said Two-Face in a bored voice.

Blearily, Jason looked down at himself. Wiggled his fingers and toes. Counted the teeth in his mouth. Tensed and flexed his muscles against the ropes around him. Was he hurt? 

“Nothing permanent,” he rasped. 

He was actually more concerned about Ravager. Her face was a shade of white he’d only seen once before, on a corpse. The pool of blood around her had spread to the size of a bath mat and was still growing fast. If not for her stupid dedication to the job, she would have escaped on her own by now. 

“Address of the house I bought you?” said Bruce, pulling Jason out of his reverie. 

“You... didn't get me a house?”

“The last thing I said to you?” 

This was standard procedure, Jason knew. With an effort, he dredged his memory for clues. The last time he saw Bruce was a Tuesday, which felt like a million miles away. One thing did stand out though.

“You, um… told me to sign up for Econ 101 instead of Eng Lit 200. Said it would be more useful.”

It had been such a mundane conversation. But Bruce’s offhand remark had stuck in Jason’s head precisely because it had sounded exactly like something a fussy, meddling dad might say. A tiny slice of normality in his otherwise outsized life. Jason had treasured it up in his heart. 

“Yet your class schedule here says you have Eng Lit on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said Bruce. “And I don’t see Econ anywhere.”

“… I didn’t take your advice.”

Two-Face took the phone away and Jason heard Bruce say, “Okay, I believe you.”

~~

When he next awoke, Ravager was gone. Jason was so foggy with drugs that he hadn’t even noticed when they took her away. Twice, he managed to slip his ropes and run, but he was recaptured both times because he wasted too many minutes combing the boat for his bodyguard. He never found any sign of her. 

Forty-eight miserable hours crawled by, broken up only when he succumbed to wretched, fitful sleep. 

On the third day, they dragged him into the basement of the Iceberg Lounge, where Cobblepot kept his labyrinth of secret VIP rooms. Jason recognized it almost instantly because it was that kind of memorable. Even his hallucinating brain couldn’t come up with anything this ugly. 

In true Penguin fashion, the place looked like some 60’s Hollywood set dressing gone wrong. Everything was done up in black and white, including the marble-tiled floor, which looked like a giant chessboard. Plastic flamingo heads lined one wall. A clawed-foot bathtub squatted improbably in the middle of the room, next to a water fountain shaped like a vomiting alligator, except it was spitting up champagne. The whole thing was kitschy-crass, Alice-in-Wonderland luxury.

Despair itched through him, slow and inexorable. Where was Ravager? Was Bruce just going to leave him here to die? 

In rare moments of lucidity, he could hear the negotiations taking place. 

“This new birdie of yours seems a lot more fragile than your old one,” Two-Face said once, his voice low and scratchy. “Where did you get him, the discount rack?”

“What have you done to him now?” Bruce’s voice sounded different over speakerphone — harder, brittler. 

Two-Face took a long drag on his cigar. “Oh, don’t fret. He just sustained some bumps and bruises in the course of Shipping & Handling, that’s all. The damage is mostly cosmetic.” 

Jason scowled at this bald-faced lie. Cosmetic damage, my ass. He was pretty sure that Two-Face had broken his leg after the second escape attempt.

The goons had stuffed him into a giant birdcage of steel, reinforced with chains bolted to the floor, so Jason had to sit with his feet sticking through the bars. There wasn’t enough room to stand. Every time Two-face came around to check on him, Jason imagined wrapping one of Ravager’s garrote wires around his throat and just pulling until his eyes bugged out and his lips turned blue. 

“If you touch him, I’ll make you regret it,” said Bruce.

“Relax. We’re all professionals here. I won’t let my other half get too carried away.”

Two-Face reached through the bars and carded a hand through his hair. Jason shuddered as rough nails caught on his scalp. If his mouth wasn’t stopped up with duct tape, he would have screamed. 

“Come now, Harv. Be reasonable,” said Bruce. “I’ve already taken responsibility for his mistakes. I have reimbursed you. I have apologized. What more do you want?”

“And you think we’ll give him back, just because you asked?”

“Haven’t you made your point? What else are you going to do with him?”

“I dunno, Brucie. What do you do with him when the lights are off and no one’s looking?” Two-Face finally moved away and spread himself out on a zebra-skinned sofa. He flipped an oversized coin up and caught it between two fingers without even looking. 

“I’m not fucking him. For God’s sake. You of all people should know I’m not that kind of monste —”

“Then what good is he to you? You’re all about utility, but this one’s not as pretty as the last one, or half as deadly. Seems a bit of a downgrade, to be honest.” His lip curled. “He’s got the sass, but no pizazz.” 

There was a bitten-off growl. “What are you fishing for, Harv?”

“I’m just trying to gauge your interest level here. How badly do you want Todd Jr. back? Shall we, say, put a dollar amount on it?”

He could have lifted the question straight out of Jason’s head. This had been dogging his darkest thoughts for days. Was he useful enough to Bruce to be worth whatever Two-Face was going to demand? 

“If it’s money you want,” said Bruce, “you could have just asked. You didn’t have to get my attention like this. Why piss me off on purpose?”

“Really? That’s your question?”

“You go down this path, and I won’t be inclined to be merciful.”

“You keep talking like that, and I’ll be inclined to decide the kid’s fate with a coin toss instead of letting you pay your dues,” Two-Face snarled, his attitude flipping 180-degrees. 

There was a pause, and then Bruce changed tact. “It doesn’t have to go this way. Let’s talk first, for old time’s sake. I’ll even bring the shitty whisky you like.”

Two-face laughed, and it was horrible, the way his ruined face contorted to produce that sound. His voice was husky with amusement. “See, I know you pretty well, Brucie. Everyone assumed you’d snuffed your own pet assassin when he slipped the leash.” He resumed his coin flipping, letting it spin higher and higher with each flick of his thumb. “But no, you were always soft for kids, weren’t you? You bleeding heart. I bet you released Nightingale back into the wild yourself.” 

Bruce hummed non-committally. “What was the old saying? If you love something, let it go?” 

“You’re not sentimental enough for that bullshit. Don’t make me laugh.” 

“I let you go.”

“Ancient history, tsk-tsk. If you want to argue the point, your kid will be here till Christmas. Now. Let’s talk money.”

The longer they spoke, the more Jason’s focus slipped. Being kidnapped and held for ransom, he decided, was the shittiest possible way of finding out what you were worth. The cold-blooded process of drilling down to a number swept all his illusions away. 

To speed things up, Two-Face had to threaten him with severed ears and fingers. To buy time, Bruce had to downplay Jason’s importance, deny all emotional attachment, and insist he did not have that much liquid cash on hand. 

Jason knew this dance. He’d memorized the kidnapping playbook, too. This was how the game was played. But listening to it made him sick to the depths of his soul. He felt like a piece of meat, being haggled over in the marketplace. 

Fuck this, he thought. None of it was true.

~~

On the fourth day, they stopped drugging him, and the inevitable post-Floss crash hit him like a tent peg to the temple.

Jason got every symptom in the book — fever, shakes, spine-crushing fatigue, unbearable nausea, the works. His vision had the annoying tendency to smear together. Nothing felt real anymore. 

So when the doors burst open and a Bruce-shaped figure strode in, Jason was pretty sure this had to be just another hallucination. It was amazing, the tricks your mind could play on you when you were delirious. 

Bruce was alone, which made it that much more dream-like. There was no one with him — no backup, no bodyguards, not even a lieutenant. In real life, Bruce never went anywhere alone.

Not real, Jason told himself. 

Except — every goon in the room unholstered their weapon at the same instant. The air bristled with promise of violence. Casually, Bruce tossed a large duffle bag on the floor in front of Two-Face. It was stuffed to bursting with neat stacks of bills. 

Two-Face looked taken aback. “Who the fuck let you in?”

“You said come alone, unarmed.” Bruce opened his hands in a stage magician’s ‘nothing up my sleeves’ flourish. “So here I am.”

“I didn’t say today. I never even told you where I was. How did you f—” 

“That bodyguard of his? The one you left for dead? She wasn’t dead.”

Jason sat up slowly and gripped the bars to stop his hands from shaking. Ravager was alive? For the first time since his capture, the perennial knot in his stomach untwisted itself. Maybe this was real, after all. It sure sounded like Bruce. And if this was a hallucination, then it was a collective one. Everyone was reacting as if someone had really broken in. 

While the goons circled warily, Two-Face and Bruce faced each other on adjacent floor tiles like two kings in check and began to talk. Over time their voices got louder and angrier. Jason couldn’t quite track what happened next. 

It was like someone had kicked a conversational tripwire and set something off. Suddenly, people were shouting. Guns were going off. The champagne fountain tipped over with a crash. Blood splashed across the black-and-white floor. Things were moving too fast for Jason’s eyes to follow.

By the time he got a grip and his vision stopped doubling, there were five bodies strewn around the room. The bathtub was riddled with bullet holes. Three goons were picking themselves up slowly, battered but not yet beaten. At the center of the room, Bruce wrestled a gun away from Two-Face and pistol-whipped him across the face.

The remaining goons whipped out a couple of submachine guns and opened fire. 

A spike of alarm brought Jason’s vision briefly into focus. He knelt up and lurched forward — which was when his eyes snagged on a discarded handgun, lying just two feet away.

Nobody noticed him noticing it. Nobody was even looking in his direction. Jason reached between the bars of his cage and hooked a finger around the grip. 

When he looked up, the goons had completely lost all sense of sense of proportion. In a blind panic, they were spraying bullets in all directions like it was confetti at Christmas. At one point, Bruce pushed Two-Face out of the way of a bullet, and caught a slug in his shoulder. It was pandemonium. 

Two-Face was screaming obscenities at his own henchmen as he swung around to aim a second gun at Bruce. Bruce picked up a metal end table to block, then threw the whole thing at Two-Face while he picked off the goons one by one.

Three shots later, the last henchmen slumped over. His brains painted the wall behind him a muddy pinkish-red. Bruce turned his attention to the cage in the corner, only to be stopped by a gun to the head. Two-Face smirked, right up until Bruce prodded him in the sternum with his own gun. 

Deadlock. Impasse.

“You may as well put yours down first," said Two-Face, rolling his eyes. "You’re not going to shoot me."

"And you can’t win. You know that." Bruce's navy shirt hid bloodstains well, but it was also thin enough to show that his body-armour underneath hadn’t held out completely. “For once in your life, just pick the easy way out, Harv.”

“There’s no easy way or hard way, Brucie-boy. There’s only chance. You want to walk out of here with the kid?” He took out his coin with his free hand. “Heads he’s yours. Tails he’s mine.” And then he tossed it into the air. 

Jason saw his opening and took it. His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely aim. Pointing his gun (vaguely) at the pinstriped smear that he knew was Two-Face, he squeezed off three shots. It was like playing Battle Ship with live rounds. He couldn’t even tell which was a hit and which was a miss. 

Before he could fire a fourth time, the gun was ripped from his fingers. 

Jason dropped forward onto his off hand, gasping. Looking down, he registered that his trigger finger was broken, bent at a truly wrong angle. 

When he looked up, he saw that Two-Face had crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. In fact, he’d keeled over right on top of Bruce. Bruce dropped his gun with a clatter and folded down onto his knees. 

Through the ringing in his ears, Jason heard him saying, “…Harv? Harv!”

A wave of nausea rolled over him. Closing his eyes, Jason bowed his head and finally gave in to the urge to vomit. 

~~

He came to in an unfamiliar room. There was an incredibly plush blanket wrapped around him. Several machines beeped softly in the gloom. The air smelled dry, antiseptic. 

Bruce was sitting on the chair next to his bed, his hands folded in his lap, the line of his shoulders rigid. His eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. Jason followed his gaze and saw a TV.

Breaking news. Flashing sirens. Paramedics. Police officers in uniform. A shivering reporter spoke gravely into the camera. The sound was on mute, but the feed was playing on continuous loop, so by the fourth time around Jason was lucid enough to read the ticker tape running along the bottom of the screen.

Former District Attorney Harvey “Two-Face” Dent found dead at the scene. At least eight more bodies still being identified. Evidence points to a drug deal gone wrong. Authorities suspect mafia involvement. 

Jason shifted under the blanket. “B?” he rasped.

Bruce pushed a sippy cup towards him without looking away from the TV. “Drink. Slowly.”

Jason drank. He was so exhausted he could easily sleep another sixteen hours, but aside from that, he actually felt better than he had in days. Everything was loose and lethargic, like he was floating in a warm bath. Painkillers were the best things ever invented by mankind.

“Where…?”

“Gotham Memorial Hospital.” 

Jason blinked, his reactions delayed. “What?”

Bats didn’t go to the hospital. Too much red tape. Too many questions. And nowhere to run if the police busted them. 

“You had internal bleeding. Three broken bones. Minor concussion. Severe dehydration. A fever brought on by infection. Plus a serious case of Floss withdrawal.”

“How long…?”

“Three days.”

Jason looked around, feeling baffled. This place looked more like a suite at the Ritz than a hospital room. There was a leather armchair in the corner, next to an upholstered couch. Gold-accented table lamps. Not to the mention the ridiculous size of the flatscreen TV. 

Bruce got up to draw the curtains. “It’s a private room in the Martha Wayne wing. I’ve checked you in as Selina Kyle’s nephew.”

In the weak light of the grey, overcast sky, Bruce looked pretty ghastly himself. The color was washed from his face. The hollowness in his eyes was matched only by the hollows in his cheeks. There was a raw, ripped-open quality to his expression that Jason had never seen before. He looked like someone had carved a hole in his chest and he was holding the wound close by the fingertips. 

Jason used the panel of buttons by the side of the bed to lever the mattress upright like a reclining armchair. Then he pushed away the blanket to take stock. To his relief, things were not as horrifying as he’d imagined. There was a cast on his left leg below the knee. Dark bruises ran like tire tracks up and down his arms where the ropes had scraped him raw. But it was the splint around his right hand that caught his attention.

“Shit.” The memory rushed back in snapshots. “You shot me.” No, that wasn’t right. He replayed those last few seconds in his mind. “You shot the gun out of my hand?” He let that slide for now as a more pressing question immediately bubbled up. “Did I kill him? Is he really dead?”

A long silence followed. Finally Bruce said, “Isn’t that why you aimed for his head?”

“My hand-eye coordination was fucked, B. I wasn’t aiming at anything. I could barely see.”

“Then why did you open fire?” 

“Because he was going to kill you!”

Bruce exhaled. There was a slight rearrangement of his shoulders. "I had the situation under the control.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “Sure you did. You trusted him enough to invite him onto your own fucking boat. What was that all about?!”

“It was a goodwill gesture. He asked me for a favour. I lent him the yacht.” 

Jason stared. He willed Bruce to look in his direction, but Bruce was now contemplating the ugly painting hanging next to the window with a level of fascination that seemed unwarranted. 

“He needed help,” Bruce continued. 

“Help? He's been trying to screw you over for years, B.”

“Yes, I’m aware. There is more than one kind of help.”

Jason paused his rant to blink. “Wait. Are we talking about like, psychiatric help? Cause he could’ve definitely used some of that like five years ago —”

“Yes. And now he’s beyond any kind of help.” 

His voice never once changed in tone or volume. Jason felt a strange chill at the remoteness of it. He couldn’t get a single read on Bruce’s mental state right now. Was he pissed off? Concerned? Fed up? Disappointed? What the hell was going on?

“He was going to kill you," Jason repeated slowly. “It’s usually too late to help someone at that stage.”

Bruce pressed his fingers to his forehead. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

Jason, who had been about to launch into a detailed account of his nightmarish week, paused. Everyone got debriefed after a kidnapping, that was the protocol. This wasn’t like Bruce at all. Something else going on here — something he could only just see the faintest edges of. 

With a feeling like he was swallowing broken glass, he asked, “Are you mad that I killed him? Because I’m not apologizing for putting your life above his.”

Bruce turned, but his eyes seemed to hover over the bed without actually making contact. The squirmy-wrong feeling in Jason’s gut intensified. Since he woke up in this room, Bruce had not once looked directly at him. 

“There’s going to be an inquiry. Police and media are frothing at the mouth. The public wants answers.” The abrupt change in topic threw Jason for only a second. Bruce transferred his gaze to one of the beeping machines and continued, “I have erased your presence from the crime scene. None of the prints or DNA, or any of the camera footage, will ever be traced back to you. As far as the police are concerned, you were never there.” 

“That’s. Uh. Good?”

“But I can’t have you working for me anymore.”

Jason blinked slowly. His thoughts felt tacky, sticky with lethargy. “What?”

“I’ve tried everything else. Nothing has gotten through to you.” 

“Holy shit. You are pissed at me.”

“This isn’t working out, Jason.”

Jason opened his mouth to issue a devastating screed in his own defense. Two-Face had drugged him, beaten him, starved him, and locked him up for days. He’d damn well earned the right to blow his brains out. What came out of his mouth instead was, “Two-Face killed my dad, did he tell you?” 

God. Suddenly there was a hot, throbbing pressure in his forehead, right between his eyes. Jason gritted his teeth and decided this wasn’t happening, he wasn’t crying — he hadn’t even cried when Two-Face had broken his leg, there was no way this wetness on his face was tears. This whole conversation had to be a stupid fever dream.

He took a deep breath, and got the rest out in one breath. “Willis Todd was just some lackey, nobody important. Not an enforcer, not a lieutenant. He must have royally fucked up though, because Two-Face snuffed him and sent his widow $400. That was what his life was worth to Harvey fucking Dent.”

Jason had never figured out what Willis had done to piss Two-Face off — whether he’d made a fatal blunder or simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time — but one day he simply hadn’t come home. Two weeks later, an envelope had arrived in the mail with a dollar-store sympathy card and a soggy bit of cash inside. As a token gesture, it hadn’t even been enough to cover their bills for the month. His mother had taken the death so hard that she’d spiralled into drugs not long after. 

Jason turned his face and scrubbed his damp cheek against the pillowcase. “I didn’t give a shit about Willis, okay? But Two-Face already killed my dad once. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him do it again.”

Bruce leaned back against the wall, crossed his arms, and directed his gaze at the carpet. He appeared to consider and discard several possible replies. Finally he said, “I’m sorry about your father, Jason. But I have already made my decision.”

Bruce came towards him and put something onto the table next to the bed. It looked like a chunky set of keys. “I did get you a house, as a matter of fact. It was meant to be a gift, for college.”

“You're giving me a house?"

“Yes and I’ve already had your belongings moved there. You won’t need to come back to the manor.”

“Wait. You’re kicking me out?” Jason made an abortive attempt to get out of bed, but was stopped by the heavy cast around his leg. 

“I’ve had Carol remit the rest of your salary. As of today, you are no longer one of the Gotham Bats.”

Jason was stunned. He felt like he’d been sucker-punched. Every step in this conversation had been a left turn. And why were they talking about his pay like this was some trivial work issue, when this was his life — his entire fucking life — that Bruce was casually dismantling before his eyes?

He'd thought Bruce was angry, but this was something else. It was like he'd moved beyond anger into some nebulous realm of 'didn't give a fuck anymore.'

“B, what are you — why are you doing this?”

That succeeded in finally getting Bruce to look at him, instead of through him. “I’m retiring Cardinal for good. Do you understand?” 

“Are you firing me? While I’m crippled in a hospital bed? You asshole. Couldn’t wait till I was better first?”

Jason felt like he was drowning, like no matter what he did, he couldn't get enough air in his lungs. His grasp of how families worked had always been shaky at best, but he’d always thought that being a son was more-or-less permanent. It wasn’t something you could dissolve with divorce, like marriage. You couldn’t fire your son. A father was supposed to be forever. 

At least, that was the assumption he’d been working off of. That knowledge had been a bulwark against every terrible thing ever said about him, a shelter from every storm, a firm foundation to hold him steady. It meant that someone had looked at him and thought he was worth something. Now he felt like the precarious toehold he’d carved out had disintegrated under his feet overnight. 

He swallowed. “I thought I was your son, B.”

At that moment, Bruce's phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and his lips thinned. “Dammit, Jim.” 

Jason thrashed in his bed for a few moments before he realized that there was no escaping this room, this conversation. His leg was badly broken — even if he got out of bed, he’d have to crawl to the door. Instead, he groped blindly down the line tethered to his arm. If he couldn't leave the room physically, then he was going to knock himself out. 

“Put me to sleep, goddammit,” he muttered as he stabbed the morphine button five or six times.

A hand stopped his. Gently. “That’s quite enough for today, I think.” 

Jason looked up to see that Alfred had somehow materialized next to him without making a sound. But Alfred wasn’t talking to him; he was glaring at Bruce. 

Bruce scooped up his jacket and strode towards the door. “See to his lunch, Alfie. I need to get my story straight with Gordon.”

And then he was gone.

~~

Once Jason could choke down solid food again and not throw it back up, Alfred brought him a stack of textbooks that had been delivered by the university campus bookstore. 

Jason stared at them like they had arrived from another planet. College was suddenly an absurd prospect — as pointless as buying kibble when you didn’t own a dog. He was so far from being the same person who had gamely ticked boxes and registered for classes that he couldn’t even remember why he’d done it in the first place. What kind of self-important asshole had signed him up for this? How had some past version of him ever thought that college could matter?

“I don’t need these, Alfred.” 

“Master Jason, I don’t think you should be quite so rash—”

“Where’s Bruce?” 

Bruce visited only sporadically, never stayed for long, and rarely said anything other than perfunctory questions and paper-thin pleasantries. Jason could squeeze more meaningful conversations out of the attending nurses. 

It was like a wall of ice had sprung up between them overnight. Jason had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. He wasn’t even sure what had brought this on, and it was freaking him out more than he liked to admit.

Alfred poured a bowl of soup from a thermos. “You’ll have to be patient with him, Master Jason. Unfortunately, his head is in a bit of a muddle right now.”

As usual, this was a classic Alfred understatement of epic proportions. 

“He’s still pissed, isn’t he." Even Alfred’s homemade chicken soup tasted like gruel right now. "Don’t sugarcoat it. Just give it to me straight.”

“None of this is your fault, Master Jason.”

Jason shoved his meal tray away with a clatter. “If he’s punishing me for Two-Face, I deserve to know why. But he won’t talk about it no matter how many times I ask.”

Alfred’s eyes were sad. He folded his hands and began quietly, “To give you some context, there was a time in his life when Master Bruce thought the world of his roommate — a brilliant law student named Harvey Dent.”

“You’re shitting me. They were roommates?”

“Yes, during college. In fact, they were rather….close, during those four years.”

Jason stared at him and tried to make sense of that. But even after he’d turned it over and over in his head, he never got beyond a resounding ‘what the fuck?’ Translated from Alfred-speak, ‘close’ implied something a great deal more serious than its American usage would suggest — something beyond mere friendship. 

“Are you telling me,” said Jason slowly, “he had a thing for psychotic freaks?” 

“Believe it not, Dent used to be quite the charming young man. Before he lost half his face and most of his mind, he was the most promising attorney of his generation.”

Jason tried to wrap his head around that and found he could not. It wasn’t the fact that he never knew Bruce’s tastes extended to men. He actually had no trouble believing that Bruce could fall for anyone with a a sufficiently good-looking face and a sufficiently devious mind. But something in his brain revolted at the idea of it being Two-Face. The man was a fucking unhinged psychopath, for God’s sake.

In fairness, he conceded, it wasn’t like Bruce was a saint. Bruce could be a monster too, when he wanted to be. Maybe they deserved each other in some twisted way — two monsters tied together in a gordian knot, even if only one looked the part.

“Christ,” he said. “Don’t tell me they’re still — I mean. Were they—?”

Alfred shook his head. “Whatever they had, it ended after college. I suspect their careers took them in opposite directions. They became adversaries in court, but even after Dent’s unfortunate ‘incident’ many years later, Master Bruce never stopped caring about him, in his own way. He always believed that the old Harvey Dent was still somewhere in there.”

A lot of things suddenly made sense — a slow and terrible clicking of puzzle pieces together. The easy familiarity between them on the phone. The past events they alluded to. Why Bruce had avoided killing Two-Face each and every time, to his own detriment. No wonder he’d shot the gun out of Jason’s hand when he’d started firing. The look on his face when Jason had first woken up had been grief. 

The whole tangled mess of what had gone down at the Iceberg Lounge finally hit him. Shit fuck and damn. Bruce was never going to forgive him. 

Jason put his face in his hands and made an incoherent noise. His limbs felt heavy, weighted down with everything he’d just lost. In its place, thwarted goodwill and bitter resentment boiled up. Of course Bruce would care more about his old college flame than the faux, make-believe son he’d plucked off the streets. He was a normal person; this was what normal people prioritized. 

“You know, I don’t get why people keep assuming I’m Bruce’s kept boy.” Jason laughed and let the vitriol spill. “The way he treats me, there’s just no way he was fucking me. I mean, come on. His psycho ex matters more to him than I ever will.”

Alfred gave him a severe look. “Don’t be vulgar. Master Bruce’s choice in companions may leave something to be desired, but I have never found fault with his choice in sons. If you think you don’t matter to him, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“You still believe that? He can’t even look at me, Alfred.” 

He wasn't even sure if Bruce still considered him his son. Jason had probably killed his last chance at redemption when he killed Two-Face. You didn’t come back from something like that. 

~~

The day he was discharged from the hospital, Jason hobbled outside on his crutches and took a taxi to the address Bruce had left him. His original plan was to trash the place, but once he arrived, he realized he didn’t have the energy to do even that. 

The keys unlocked a sprawling industrial loft with high ceilings, massive windows, unfinished cement floors, and red brick walls. All his belongings at the manor had already been moved inside. Someone — probably Alfred — had even stocked the pantry shelves with dried goods and snacks.

Sunlight filled the apartment. Everything from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves to the spare, clean white furniture were things he would have picked out himself. It was exactly the sort of place he might dreamed of owning, once. 

Jason stared at it all and felt absolutely nothing. Not so much as a flicker of interest.

The fall semester at Gotham University started but he couldn’t bring himself to attend a single class. It all seemed so pointless. He’d been cut loose and set adrift in a world that didn’t want him. Some days, he couldn’t even see the point of getting out of bed. 

Two weeks after he moved in, there was a commotion outside his place when some drunks mistakenly tried to let themselves into his apartment. 

He got to the door in time to see Ravager dragging them unceremoniously down the hall and stuffing them into the elevator. Looking to his left, he saw that the door at the very end of the corridor was open, pale light spilling out. Bruce must have installed her in the same building without telling him.

They stared at each other in silence for a full five seconds. Then Jason shut the door in her face.

~~

A week after that, an email landed in his inbox. The subject line was: HA! HA! HA!

Jason’s whole world narrowed in on the first line. 

>>Are you looking for your mother?

~~

Jason did not trust the Joker — not even a little bit. If there was one thing his childhood had taught him to fear, it was unstable men with unstable minds. And the Joker was the most unstable one of them all. 

So he knew, even as he replied the email, that nothing good could come of this. If Two-Face was three crayons short of a full box, then the Joker was a box filled with nothing but mould and woodlice and rat poison. 

Still, he couldn’t dislodge the idea that Two-Face had planted in his mind. His birth mother might still be out there, and she might be in a madman’s grip. So while he waited for a reply, he looked into Sheila Haywood. One by one, he hacked the city’s marriage registry, birth registry, and home owner’s records. He even dipped his toe into the crazy world of the IRS and their mountains of tax records. 

Eventually, with a bit of judicious digging, he managed to unearth his own birth certificate — the original this time. And there he found it: the names Sheila Haywood and Willis Todd, printed in tandem.

Two-Face had told the truth. 

A second email arrived.

>>Pack your suitcase, lamb chop. She’s doing a job for me in Ethiopia.

Accompanying it was a photo of a blond woman sitting in an open-top jeep, looking off-camera. Jason stared at it for a long minute. For the first time, he considered the pros and cons of leaving the city. What did he have left in Gotham anyway? 

He wasn’t welcome at Wayne Manor anymore. He was cut off from the Gotham Bats — none of them were picking up his calls. Even Dick had suddenly become unreachable; he felt as far away as the moon. Everything Jason had worked for and built up over the last three years might as well have gone down the drain. 

Some days, he missed his old life so much it hurt to breathe. The ache of it kept him up at night, a visceral pain that compressed his chest like a vice. Some days, he woke up in his too-cold, too-quiet loft and wondered if this was the rest of his life. Given the choice, he would’ve gladly chosen a beating over banishment, but Bruce hadn’t given him a choice. And the worst part was how permanent it felt. Life in exile was a slog through a barren wasteland. There was just no end in sight.

But now he had a shot at finding his birth mother. No matter how slim the chance, he had to take it.

In an instant, his decision was made. 

~~

When Jason finally mustered up the courage to visit Wayne Manor for the last time, he was greeted at the door by Bruce, who looked at him with the polite disinterest he might have given a door-to-door salesman.

“Can I help you?” he said.

Jason’s hackles went up. Well, fuck you too. Bruce could have punched him in the face and it would hurt less than this 'what do you want, stranger?' routine he was doing now. The only indication that Bruce hadn’t actually hit his head and gotten amnesia was that he’d come to the door himself. In a house this big, with this many staff, there was no reason for the master of the house to answer the door unless he wanted to. 

“I want my gun back,” said Jason. 

“I’m sorry, but that won't be possible,” said Bruce, blandly polite. Like he was turning down a proposal at a WE board meeting.

Jason curled his hands into a fists. He resisted the urge to grab Bruce by the lapels and shake him. “That gun was a gift. You can’t just—” take that away from me too. He took a breath. Swallowed twice to make sure his voice didn’t crack. “What about my bike?”

Bruce considered that and tilted his head. “Help yourself. You still have the codes.”

So Jason stomped around the side of the manor like he was the hired help, bypassing the guesthouses and the pool house until he came to the three-story garage. He pretended not to hear the footsteps following him until he was tapping the codes into the keypad for his motorcycle. 

Ravager appeared in the corner of his vision as a head of silvery hair, but Jason resolutely refused to look at her. They hadn’t spoken in eleven weeks. These days she mostly followed him at a distance unless she thought he was in danger. It was extremely annoying. 

He heard the gears turning inside the parkade, metal levers and platforms shifting as the three-dimensional rubix cube of a space turned itself over and upside-down to bring out the correct vehicle. 

Faster. Faster.

“Cardinal?” she said.

Jason didn’t answer her. 

“Can you talk to me for five minutes? Come on. You owe me that.”

His bike finally descended from the ceiling. Jason checked the saddlebags and found his personal effects still inside. The space behind the seat still had a cache of knives, wrapped inside a canvas bag, secured with ratcheting tie-down straps. 

Ravager planted herself in front of him as he swung onto the seat. “Cardinal—”

“Stop calling me that.” A wave of fury swelled up inside him. It took up all the available space in his torso, which meant there was no room left for sorrow. “I’m not Cardinal anymore.”

“Fine. Jason.”

His lip twitched at one corner. “Rose.”

“I know you’re planning a long trip. I’ve seen you buy suitcases and plane tickets. But you can’t run off alone. Nightingale might be fast enough to evade anyone who went after him, but we both know you’re no Nightingale.” 

“Gee, thanks for the reminder. It’s not like anyone’s ever let me forget that for five fucking minutes.” 

“Take me with you.”

"No. Get out of my way.”

She closed her eyes briefly, like he was a kid throwing a completely unjustified tantrum. “You’ve already paid me till the end of this month. Last I checked, that’s still thirteen days away.”

“Take an early vacation. Go to Bora Bora. Sip a Mai Tai or something.”

He kicked the stand up and started the engine, but she actually took a step forward until she was nearly straddling the front wheel. Jason gunned the throttle in warning, but she didn’t even flinch. She just stared him down like a matador facing a charging bull. 

“I was fired, okay?” he bit out. “I don’t need a bodyguard if I’m no longer a Bat.” What part of that didn’t she understand?

“You still have enemies, Jason. People who want you dead.”

“Christ. I’m letting you out of your contract two weeks early and you’re complaining!?” 

She let out an explosive breath. “Oh, you want to make this about my contract? Listen, dipshit. I’ll torpedo my career if my client kicks it while I’m still on the clock. You realize that, right?”

“You need me to sign a release form? Write you a bonus cheque? Clear it with your dad?” Jason was already taking his phone out and pulling up Slade Wilson’s number. On his current burner, the man was saved as ‘Dead Of Stroke, Terminally’, right above ‘Dick Wing Dyke III.’

“Dammit, Jason.” Her fingers closed around his wrist and he looked up to see her normally expressionless face twisted into something complicated. “You are going to get yourself killed.”

“That’s not your problem anymore. Let me go.”

“At least tell me where you’re going.”

“I thought you were my bodyguard, not my friend,” said Jason, throwing her favourite phrase in her face. 

She opened her mouth and he wondered if she was going to yell at him. She was allowed to do it now; she wasn’t his employee anymore. And if he had his way, she was never going to be his employee again. 

No one had told him that once you started caring about your bodyguard, it would become impossible to let them take a bullet for you, even if that was their literal job. He didn’t think he could live with himself if he got her killed. It was better for both of them if she stayed far, far away from him.

After a moment, she released him. 

The hollow, sucking feeling in his chest expanded, but Jason pulled his helmet on before any of it could show on his face. Then he peeled down the tree-lined driveway and through the gates of the manor. He didn’t look back.

~~

Two weeks later, he arrived alone at a massive refugee camp in Ethiopia, armed with a name and a photograph. There were only three blond women at this camp, so it didn’t take long for him to track down the one he was looking for. 

He found Dr. Sheila Haywood in one of the spare medical tents, taking a break between surgeries. She was stripping out of her PPE when he ducked through the flaps and let it fall shut behind him. 

Her face showed no recognition when she turned. “Hello. And you are?”

“Dr. Haywood?” He could already see something of his eyes and his nose in her face, and it hit him anew, the truth of who she was. 

His birth mother. 

“Yes, that’s me.” 

She removed her goggles, dumped her gloves in the sink, and faced him. She was handsome in the way of Hollywood grand dames from a bygone era, faded and careworn but still graceful in her movements, her spine straight and hair perfectly coiffed. 

Jason cleared his throat. He’d practiced this. And yet, his voice came out hoarse. “I’m Jason. Jason Peter Todd. Do you remember me, mother?”

~~

In the end, the trip turned out to be an elaborate trap. Jason had expected that. The Joker had enticed him there, dangling his birth mother in front of him like the world’s most obvious lure. Of course there were steel maws underneath to snap him in half. 

What he hadn’t expected was that his birth mother would be the one to sell him out. For her assistance, the Joker had snapped her neck. And then for one last twist of the knife, he’d left her broken body lying next to Jason’s bleeding one.

Jason just wished he knew why she’d done it.

Now he stared into her sightless eyes and said quietly, “You could have come back to America with me."

Sheila Haywood had been a successful doctor in America once, before she was arrested and sentenced to prison for malpractice. The Joker had offered her the perfect escape plan — a fresh start abroad. She’d jumped at the chance to go, and she’d been jumping at the Joker’s beck and call ever since.

By the time Jason found her, she was in too deep. The Joker’s hold over her was too strong. Interpol was hunting her down. She had too much on her conscience. It was too late for her. She had given him a hundred and one excuses, and Jason didn’t have the heart or the mental fortitude to pick them apart. 

“Why didn’t you trust me?” he asked through bloody lips. 

He had come prepared to offer her every resource in his reach. Free passage to Gotham. Fake passports. A new name, if she wanted one. Money, if she needed it.

She’d smiled sadly and turned down every offer. “I left you, Jason. Abandoned you with that asshole, Willis. And you still want to save me?” 

But Jason hadn’t cared about her past failings or what she may or may not have done. Everyone deserved a second chance. All he knew was that trusting the Joker was like tying yourself to the train tracks and hoping it wouldn’t run you over. It was a death sentence. All he'd wanted was to keep her safe.

It helped, of course, that her regret had seemed so genuine. She spoke like she meant every word. She looked at him and cried. She was just convincing enough that he let himself be fooled. God, how he’d wanted to believe she’d still cared. 

He’d come to Ethiopia expecting nothing, ready to forgive her anything. 

Now it was too late for her.

Jason wasn’t long for this world either, if the ticking of the bomb next to him was any indication. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore, and he was pretty sure every single one of his ribs were cracked. If it didn’t hurt so much, he might have started laughing. There was something funny about this whole situation, even with death staring in him the face. 

The Joker had been hoping to lure Bruce out of Gotham by using Jason as bait, but the joke was on him because Jason hadn’t even told Bruce he was leaving, much less where he was going. Once he got it through the Joker’s head that Bruce had fired him — that he wasn’t coming — the Clown had lost all interest in him. With a laugh and a wave, he’d pirouetted out the warehouse door, leaving Jason locked inside with a quarter-tonne of explosives and his mother's still-warm body.

Two minutes left. 

Jason reached across the blood-sticky floor of the warehouse and gently closed Sheila’s eyes. Even if every bone in his hand was broken because of her, she deserved that much. 

With the last, fleeting bit of his consciousness, his thoughts turned to the people he was leaving behind. 

He really should have told Ravager where he was going — that seemed silly now. 

He was sorry he’d made Alfred throw his textbooks away.

He was sorry he wouldn’t get to see Dick again.

He was sorry he’d never told Bruce ‘thank you’, for coming to save him.

Briefly, his thoughts drifted to what hell (or heaven) might be like, since the question was very soon going to be pertinent to him. 

He probably should have gone to Confession more, but he’d always hated those claustrophobic little booths. 

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned…” he murmured to the concrete, and then breathed a soundless laugh. 

Too little, too late.

One minute.

He hoped Bruce would eventually find out what had happened to him. If he was lucky, maybe the Joker would brag about it the next time they crossed paths. It was better to know than to spend your life wondering. 

Would Bruce miss him? 

The timer hit zero.

Jason’s world ended. (For the first time.)

Chapter Text

Jason couldn’t say he was surprised when he died. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always known that someone or something would have killed him eventually — that’s just what happened when you worked for the mob. It was the price of entry. He’d seen enough colleagues die on the job (and killed enough rival henchmen) to know that he wasn’t going to be the exception to the rule. A mafia soldier was always only one stray bullet, one wrong word, one bad decision away from death. One way or another, this whole enterprise would have gone up in smoke one day.

Even the Joker’s part in it felt mostly incidental. After all, Jason had walked into his trap on his own two feet, with both eyes wide open. He’d stepped into Sheila’s cold embrace knowing she had to be faking. He’d chosen not to tell anyone where he was going. 

And the most damning part was that he’d been warned. Ravager had warned him. Dick, before he’d left, had warned him twice. This will get you killed, they said, and they were right. 

In his heart of hearts, Jason couldn’t even say his death was unfair. His conscience wasn’t clean by any stretch of the imagination. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of — things he’ll always regret. Plenty of people had died by his hand, both directly and indirectly. So why shouldn’t it be his turn?

Anyway, he’d had a good run. Three glorious years as the quasi-son of a billionaire who’d looked at him and saw something beyond a mere street rat? The universe didn’t hand that shit out for free. And now karma was finally calling in his debt. 

So no, Jason wasn’t all that surprised when he died. 

What surprised him was that he came back.

~~

He vaguely recalled digging through six feet of dirt, fuelled by hunger and desperation. He remembered a long streak of panic that lasted — days? Weeks? Months? Then there was a puzzling blank in his memory, until all of a sudden his world was filled with green and he was reborn from the depths of the Lazarus Pit.

What they didn’t tell him about the Pit was that it hurt. 

The green water knitted his shattered bones together with needles of fire and acid, sewed his torn organs together one excruciating molecule at a time, and forced his wandering mind back into its fleshy sleeve like it was feeding a lump of dough through a pasta maker. It turned a cohesive whole into a hundred long, tangled fragments.

No wonder Ra’s al Ghul always come out of the Pit white-face and trembling. The Pit exacted a terrible price, and that price was pain. And madness too, if you called having your mind shredded into wood chips ‘madness.’ 

“You can put the shattered pieces of yourself back together,” said Talia dismissively. “It may take a few months, but I’m confident you will succeed. After all, my father has done it for centuries, now.”

“Your father is also a fucking lunatic,” Jason spat back. 

It was almost funny, how quickly he recognized that fact. He couldn’t remember his own name, or who he’d been, or how old he was — at least, not until Talia filled in the details for him. In fact, he could barely recall anything from his past life. The gaps in his memory were big enough for elephants to dance through. 

But one look at Ra’s al Ghul, and he just knew. 

I don’t want to become anything like that. 

~~

The League of Assassins did not do anything so mundane as physical therapy. They did ninja boot camp instead. The gruelling regimen started at dawn and ended at dusk. Every morning, a new opponent would appear in the practice ring to beat him senseless into the dust.

The first time Jason discovered that violence could trigger his memories, he was in the ring with a scimitar-wielding assassin who moved like an eel, undulating from side to side. While narrowly avoiding being gutted, Jason twisted and landed awkwardly on his back. The impact knocked something loose in him — a single bright snapshot. 

With sudden, scintillating clarity, he recalled learning how to parry a knife. His body, freshly awoken from the Pit, had come with plenty of defensive manoeuvres already pre-programmed in, but now he remembered a gloved hand on his wrist, gently guiding his hand. He remembered the first time he held a blade, fumbling to keep it angled correctly, nearly cutting himself a dozen times when his opponent wrenched it flying out of his hand. 

He remembered a target on the wall.

Jason flipped the knife over in his hand, caught the point between two fingers, and hurled it. It hit the assassin in the heart and buried itself to the hilt. 

This surprised Jason even more than his opponent. His mouth certainly gaped wider as the assassin flailed backwards awkwardly, hit the wall of the ring, and slumped over, instantly dead. 

Talia pulled him out of the ring before the onlookers could set up a clamour. 

“We have a lot of work to do,” she said, looking at him like he was the ruins of a house she intended to remodel into a castle. 

“Tell me,” he said as medics crowded around the body in the ring. “Was I already a killer before you found me?”

“What do you remember?” she asked. 

And as his memories returned drip by drip, he would tell her. 

He remembered the dull impact of his back against the grimy brick wall of a back alley. A sniper rifle in the dark, the cold press of the trigger against his index finger. A splash of red as he drew his blade across someone’s carotid artery. A burst of pain as someone snapped his finger. Someone wearing black and blue. A crooked smile that made his heart hammer in his ears. 

And running through it all, like a thread connecting beads on a necklace, was the face of a man he had been desperate to please. Jason couldn’t recall now all the things he had done to try and earn that man’s approval, but he was pretty sure he would have done absolutely anything. 

“I was the Left Hand of the Bat,” he said when he remembered his place of honour next to the man who loomed the largest in his memory. 

“I was the Young Master Jason,” he said when that face blurred and aged and become a dignified, white-haired gentleman who was stern and kind by turns.

“I was Cardinal,” he said when he remembered his beloved jacket, crimson stripes spreading open across the back like wings. People cringed away from that uniform, but Jason knew it was only because they were afraid of the blue-and-black shadow he was always standing in — the shadow he had never been able to escape. 

But some days, all he could remember was sitting on a grubby stoop, hugging himself for warmth, trying to outrun the gnawing ache in his belly. Occasionally, the face of a woman would swim into view, her face rosy and smiling one moment, distorted and gaunt the next. There would be a puddle of vomit on the floor. A scattered bottle of pills. Small pouches of white powder everywhere.

On days like that, he simply shuttered his face and answered, “I was nobody. Nobody at all.”

~~

The problem with Talia was that she was an enigma within a labyrinth, and talking with her was like begging answers from the Sphinx. No matter how many questions he asked, he never got any satisfactory answer.

Jason took to exploring instead. As far as he could tell, the League stronghold of Nanda Parbat was a citadel built into the side of a mountain somewhere in the forgotten steppes of Central Asia. There were no other towns within a thirty-mile radius. The place was a universe unto itself. 

Five thousand assassins lived here, but most of them saw Jason as curiosity — a strange interloper. Only Talia’s interest in him seemed personal. 

When it came to his training, she was a vicious and exacting tutor. Every bout was a test, every loss a chance to go over his mistakes in excruciating detail. The only way Jason knew he was improving at all was that her scathing critiques went from being thirty minutes long to a mere fifteen. 

When he wasn’t in the ring, she spent hours upon hours taking him apart like a mechanic stripping a car down to its base components so she could upgrade it piece by piece. She corrected his every move, from the way he ate (“sloppy; we aren’t starving you, you don’t have to cram it down your throat”), to the way he dressed (“red should always be paired with white or black, never brown”), to the way he wrote (“your handwriting must be legible, Jason, write it again”). It got the to point where he was pretty sure if she’d followed him into the men’s room, she’d say he was somehow pissing wrong, too. 

Jason did his best to resist her efforts, but Talia had only one mode: steamroller. What she couldn’t cajole, manipulate, or bully him into doing, she did by force. Sometimes he capitulated out of sheer exhaustion. Jason was still too new, too raw, too incomplete a person, to have any internal resources for pushing back. 

There were vast vistas in his mind that were the equivalent of an unmarked whiteboard — free of any influence at all. And into the blank spaces of his personality, Talia came down with a permanent marker and rewrote him as she saw fit. 

~~

It didn’t occur to Jason to wonder until much later why Talia had dunked him in the Pit to begin with. Three months in, he got his first clue when he stepped into her personal quarters for the first time.

Inside her spacious sitting room was a black, bat-shaped ornament hanging on a white stretch of wall. She’d even put a thick gold frame around it, like it was a museum showpiece. 

Jason had never taken Talia for an art collector, much less a collector of weird Halloween knick-knacks like this. He almost snorted until he was hit with a memory. Suddenly, he recognized it. 

“Don’t worry. I haven’t told him,” said Talia when she found him staring at it.

Jason swung around, ready for a fight. He was always ready for a fight these days. “Told who what?”

She made a patient noise. “I haven’t told Bruce that you’re alive. I thought I’d leave that choice up to you.”

The way she said Bruce struck something inside of him, like a tuning fork that had finally found the correct pitch. It reverberated through him — one long shiver that started from his toes up all the way up to his forehead. Memories came flooding back — a cascade of them. 

“You know Bruce?” said Jason.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Talia.

It was a stupid question — of course she knew Bruce. That was probably why she’d done all of this in the first place. This had to be some kind of power play — the Al Ghuls putting the Gotham Bats into their debt. Or perhaps they were returning a favour.

Jason didn’t know what kind of relationship existed between these two entities — he hadn’t been a negotiator or mediator or an official liaison. That had been partly Dick’s job, because his pretty face and easy manners could get him into more places than Jason’s could. But some sort of deal must have existed between them, because why else would Talia hang and frame one of Bruce’s toys on her wall? 

“So is this why you dragged me back onto this mortal coil? So you could — what — hold this over his head? Is that why you’re keeping me prisoner?” 

Jason reached up and ripped the ornament off its wall-mounted hook. The bat was made entirely out of matte black metal, and its streamlined body fit neatly into the palm of his hand. 

This pinged another memory — he was in a drafty cavern looking at a wall with row after row of metal bats pinned to it, all different shapes and sizes. Some had serrated wings like steak knives, some had pointier ears, and some had long, tapered tails like daggers. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at an armoury.

“Keeping you prisoner?” Talia laughed so hard it echoed off the walls. “Your definition of prison must be very different from mine.”

She had a point, sort of. Being a prisoner implied that there was somewhere else he wanted to be, but at the moment Jason was drawing a blank. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go. Someone would probably stop him if he tried to leave, but so far he had never bothered to try. He wasn’t on a timeline. He’d died. Nobody was expecting him back. And the thought of returning to Gotham made him want to crawl out of his skin. 

“Then what did you bring me here for?” Jason asked as he turned the bat over in his hands and ran a finger along one razor-sharp wing.

“I’ll tell you,” she promised, “when you’ve finished your training.”

Jason felt a flash of irritation. His fingers, without any conscious instruction from him, found a tiny seam in the black-brushed metal, just big enough for a fingernail. He flipped a tiny lever up and rotated it ninety degrees to the left until it clicked, while his thumb applied pressure to a spot near the right wing and his pinky found an invisible latch just under the bat’s tail. 

It was pure muscle memory. Jason wasn’t even sure what he’d done until the bat’s eyes lit up red and a high whining suddenly filled the air.

Oh. Shit.

“Give it here!” 

Talia snatched it out of his hand. In one smooth motion she crossed the room, threw open the steel shutters, and hurled the bat out the window. It went spinning across the sky, back-lit by snowcapped mountains. Then it exploded into a crimson fireball.

“What the fuck!” Jason yelped. 

Talia rounded on him, her eyes blazing. “That,” she snarled, “was a gift. Which you’ve just destroyed. You owe me a replacement now.”

Jason squeezed his hands into fists, hoping that would hide the tremors. The explosion had triggered a memory, and now he was desperately fighting off the cascade of images and sensations. Searing heat, the smell of charred flesh, the indescribable pain — suddenly, he was remembering how he’d died. 

“Bruce gave you a bomb? And you just hung it on the wall?!”

She perched one hand on her hip. “It was a gag gift. He was so certain I would never figure out the trigger mechanism on my own. Of course, I wasn’t trying very hard to. It seemed a waste to blow up a perfectly nice gift.” 

Jason just stared at her. 

She waved one hand like she was shooing a dog. “Now get out. Before you destroy anything else.”

Jason did not tell her it was an accident — that he himself hadn’t known himself what was going to happen until he felt the mechanism click. But that would reveal too much. He just stared down at own hands and wondered what else they knew that he didn’t.

~~

It took almost four months for him to feel comfortable in his body again. The Pit had stretched him in all directions like silly putty, adding an extra growth spurt just for funsies. This, together with all the new muscle he was rapidly gaining, made his new body feel strange and unwieldy and cumbersome. He felt like he was wearing someone else’s shoes. Nothing fit quite right. 

He had to relearn even the most basic things. How to walk around without bumping his head into low-hanging lights, how to swing a fist without overshooting the mark, how to aim when he pissed. 

There were benefits to his new bulk, but there were drawbacks, too. The teachers of the League thought him too slow, too stiff, too unbending. Before he died, he was competent with half a dozen weapons. Now he had to be proficient in all of them.

At Nanda Parbat, everything was a test; every injury a mark of failure; every slip a sign of weakness. That was okay with Jason. He’d spent three years living on the edge in the streets, knowing any misstep could be his last. He’d spent another three years as Bruce’s foot soldier, proving himself over and over and over again because he had to make himself indispensable. The League was just more of the same. 

They just made their standards crystal clear: Perform, or die. Win, or be made obsolete. It was bloody courteous of them to spell it out.

It was also tedious and gruelling and it was a toss up on any given day whether it would end in blood or in tears. The upside was that when he was fighting, his mind was blessedly, miraculously clear. Some days, when his thoughts were splintering apart and he could not remember any faces from his life-before, fighting was the only thing he could do. 

“If you’d brought me back just to kill me again, I will haunt you for the rest of my undead days,” Jason growled through his teeth as Talia put pressure on the gushing wounds on his arm. His latest opponent’s sabre had bitten right through the bone and sliced through his muscles like it was tofu, leaving his arm dangling by a sinew. 

“Careless,” Talia replied, shoving him healing pod that made a hissing sound as it closed around him. Jason slapped ineffectually at reinforced glass dome, his strength so depleted that he couldn’t even groan as bubbly liquid filled up the tiny, cramped space. 

When he awoke later, it was to the sight of Ra’s Al Ghul’s eerie amber eyes staring at him through the glass. 

“…the meaning of…keeping him here…a stray pet?” He was saying, though Jason could only catch one word out of every two. 

Talia was next to him, and her words were even more difficult to catch than her father’s. They seemed to be having an argument, though the liquid muffled most of it.

Jason closed his eyes and let himself drift back to sleep. He knew that Ra’s and his daughter weren’t always on the best of terms, but being dunked in the Pit had given him a measure of immunity: there was very little they could do to make him worse off than dead. If they’d brought him here for a reason, he was safe until he fulfilled his purpose. 

Either way, he had nothing to fear from either of them. For now. 

~~

One day, as he was climbing out of the ring, a scantily-clad assassin approached him and touched his arm. Jason had seen her watching him before, but had never bothered to learn her name.

The first thing she did was compliment his technique and ask if he’d agree to a “private” sparring session, just the two of them. Then she trailed her fingers up the side of his tunic and gave him a hopeful smile. It had been so long since Jason had felt anything (other than seething fury and total disorientation) that he didn’t realize what she wanted until she slithered out of her chain-mail armour and dropped it at his feet.

Oh.

Well. 

The lady seemed cute enough. Jason wasn’t sure if he was interested, per se, but some twisted, self-destructive part of him was curious enough to let her follow him back to his room anyway. 

She was flatteringly eager, all tongue and lips and clever fingers and warm skin. They got as far as stripping all their clothes off, though Jason felt like he was watching it happen through a long-lens sniper scope from somewhere far, far away. 

Had he done this before? He couldn’t remember. Everything felt oddly disjointed in his head. 

Then her hand slid over his ass and he was violently taken back to a dingy, rainy night in a back alley when someone with rough hands had crammed a roll of bills into his pocket and then shoved him facedown over some crates and —

He didn’t even realize what had happened until he came back to himself and found the woman crumpled in a heap on his bed while he was standing all the way at the other end of the room. His back was pressed against the unforgiving granite wall as if it could confer more comfort than soft sheets and pillows. Every part of him was shaking. 

Even from ten feet away, it was obvious the woman was dead. Her neck was bent at a strange angle; her naked limbs were splayed in unnatural stillness. 

Jason’s heart pounded and his breaths came in pants as he waited for the swell of rage in his chest to subside. He could not remember moving, or putting his fingers around her throat, or even getting out of bed afterwards. Most disturbing of all, he could not remember her face at all. His mind had blanked it out of his memory as utterly and completely as a film strip that had been cut. 

If he reached back to that rainy night in the back alley, he would not be able to recall the man’s face, either. Or the faces of the hundred others who’d come before him. And if he thought about that too long, his gorge would rise and the room would tilt back into a hundred sickening shades of green. 

Jason shuddered, turned, and retched into the washing basin. The nausea from the memory overlapped with the nausea from what he’d just done, multiplying into a long, wretched spell of dry-heaving. He felt like he’d fallen into the grip of something beyond his comprehension. 

Something moved on the other side of the room, and it took him five frozen, horrified seconds to realize it was his own reflection, moving in the gilt-framed mirror hung on the far wall. Even now, months after his resurrection, there were still times when he couldn’t recognize himself. 

This wasn’t him. He wasn’t the kind of man who murdered women, he was sure of this. Not now, not before, not ever. God.

For the rest of the day, he sat shivering against the wall and tried to make the memories stop coming. The bile in his throat was bitter. 

Eventually, word got around about what he’d done. No one, man or woman, approached him again after that. The only thing Jason felt was relief. 

~~

“This is unacceptable,” said Talia.

“If you weren’t all assassins, I’d believe you,” said Jason tonelessly. “You can’t convince me you care if I kill someone.”

“Yes, we’re assassins. When we want to kill someone, we do it on purpose. We do not kill someone by accident.” Talia’s voice was frostier than the snow on his balcony. “These freak dissociative episodes must stop. It is a liability in the field.”

“You think I want them to happen? Fuck, Talia, I’d do anything to not remember this shit!”

“If you cannot contain your killing impulses, I’ll sign you up for the next Red Tournament,” said Talia, referring to the Intra-League Tournament where every round was fought to the death. 

“No.”

“I’ll lay even odds you can win the Under 20’s Division. We have a dearth of entrants this year — our most outstanding contenders are all away on missions. You should survive.”

“I’ve already killed two people by accident, I—” Jason swore and stabbed the business end of his scythe into the practice dummy in front of him. With his left hand, he executed a scissoring manoeuvre that took the dummy’s straw head clean off. Talia caught the head with an unimpressed look. “I’m trying to stop, okay?” 

“The Pit magnifies your deepest, truest feelings, Jason. In your case, rage. I can see it. You must redirect it into a healthier channel.”

“And a League-sanctioned death match is a healthier channel?!” 

His voice came out incredulous. Was Talia right? Who was he to say? There was no one here to tell him otherwise. He had no basis for comparison. All he had right now were his own instincts and a gut-level intuition that he would not be able to stomach it. 

“It’s just a simple tournament, Jason. We hold them twice a year. ”

“Not happening.”

Her lip curled into a sneer. “Fine. Swallow that rage until your heart goes black with it, then. Let it consume you. But you kill anyone else by accident, and I’ll put you down myself.”

Jason watched her go. Then he closed his palm around one of his knife blades until it broke the skin.

Never again, he promised himself.

~~

Six months after his return to the land of the living, Jason was jerked awake by phantom laughter. The HA-HA-HA-HA’s filled up his head until he wanted to peel back his skull with his fingers and incise the sound from of his brain with a scalpel. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a ghoulish white face and a pair of red lips pulled back into a rictus grin. 

Speak up, lambchop. I can’t hear you! Forehand, or backhand? 

The wave of terror that followed left him paralyzed in bed. It pulled him taut till he was sure it would snap him in half; made his heart scrabble so fast and so hard he was sure it would seize up and stop.

After trashing three training rooms and losing a solid week of sleep, he dragged himself out of room one morning to find Talia waiting for him. Jason expected a reprimand for all the late-night screaming he’d been doing, but instead she passed him a thick file folder. 

“For your peace of mind,” she said.

Jason retreated to the quietest, sunniest corner of the compound before going through it. What he found inside wiped the grogginess from his system faster than the strongest cup of coffee. 

The first document was a copy of the Gotham Daily, dated ten months ago. The front page headline screamed, ‘GRISLY MASSACRE SHOCKS PUBLIC.’ 

Jason read it with a mounting sense of disbelief. 

A new serial killer, dubbed the ‘Clown Butcher’ by the media, had appeared on the scene. Inside a dockside warehouse, the GCPD had found a stack of corpses piled ten feet high. The bodies appeared to belong to thirty-three alleged members of the Joker’s Clown Cabal, many of whom had gone missing over the last few weeks. Nobody knew how they had all ended up in the warehouse, much less who was responsible for their caved-in faces and crushed limbs. But evidently, someone had beaten every single one of them to death with a blunt weapon.

All Jason could think was, tire iron. Slowly, sluggishly, the gears in his head whirred back to life. He forced his fingers not to grip the pages too tightly.

The next document was a 278-page police report, subtitled: ‘The Clown Murders’.

It was more up-to-date than the news clipping; this was dated just four weeks ago. Jason had thought the Gotham Daily article a bit sensationalist — its details too lurid to be realistic— but it turned out the opposite was true. The unvarnished police report was twice as horrifying to read, since it didn’t have to tone down the nastiness for public consumption. There were even crime scene photographs reprinted inside. 

Jason made his eyes skim the details. Apparently, the bodies in the warehouse had been there so long that they had congealed together into one indistinguishable, rotting mass. This made identification and DNA collection a bitch to carry out. Nobody was sure if all the victims were Clown Cabal members, but the faces they could see were all painted white, with clown makeup smeared on top. 

CSI were still trying to figure out how to dismantle the display when the whole warehouse went up in flames. Somehow, the perpetrators had managed to leave a bomb at the scene, which wiped out all the remaining evidence. The cops didn’t even have enough time to tag all the individual bodies before the place blew sky high, though preliminary investigation suggested that the Joker had not been among the corpses. 

Everything about this screamed ‘mob hit’ to Jason, but the poor sap in charge of the case seemed to have no idea what they were dealing with. This didn’t surprise him — GCPD’s Organized Crime unit came in only two flavours — corrupt to the core, or painfully out of their depth — and this idiot seemed to be the latter. 

The officer who’d been saddled with this clusterfuck of a case spent the next two hundred pages outlining all the avenues they had pursued, as if afraid that the higher ups would accuse them of negligence if they didn’t chase down every single lead. Jason couldn’t exactly blame them — this was pretty high-profile, as far as serial murders go. 

They’d canvassed a dozen neighbourhoods, scrounged up eye witnesses, collected statements, and made half a dozen arrests, but nothing had stuck. Eventually, unable to procrastinate on the inevitable any longer, they’d dragged in multiple lieutenants from both the Gotham Bats and the Black Mask Crew for questioning, but all of them had shrugged and pointed their fingers at the other gang. The evidence never mounted up either way. And thanks to the explosion, most of the other leads had dried up. 

After nine months, the case had gone cold.  

Even from just a cursory read, Jason could feel the officer’s dejected frustration leaking through the text. He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

To him, the trail was pretty obvious. Someone had gone to the trouble of killing thirty-three clowns in the exact same way Jason had been murdered. Clearly, they’d taken his death personally. This was an act of vengeance, which meant the Gotham Bats had to be involved. 

But the whole thing was too over-the-top for Bruce, who wasn’t a fan of drawing media attention. He would never condone a bloody spectacle like this. If Jason had to guess, he’d say this was Dick’s handiwork. This horror show had Nightingale’s flashy fingerprints all over it. Jason couldn’t think of anyone else with the lethal skill, the steel-cable nerve, and the motivation to pull this off. 

But Nightingale was long gone, and he wouldn’t have dragged his ass back to Gotham for a stunt like this. Would he? 

Jason finished reading and flipped to the very last page.

“Holy shit.”

Right there, under two other signatures, was the name of the person in charge of the case write-up: Richard Grayson, Junior Officer 

Jason stared. His fingers were suddenly numb. A bubble of hilarity threatened to short-circuit his brain, like a seizure. He suppressed the hysterical urge to laugh, because once he got started he wouldn’t be able to stop. What actually came out of his throat was a strangled gurgle. 

Dick Grayson was not only back in Gotham, but he’d gone ahead and done as Bruce wanted and become a Goddamn cop too. What’s more, he’d just spent nine months blithely investigating the gruesome string of murders that he had, in all likelihood, orchestrated himself. 

Talk about steel-cable nerve. The fucking balls on him. 

Jason was awestruck. The audacity of it left him breathless. 

“Holy shit,” he repeated. 

~~

The truth was, Jason had no idea how he felt about all this. On the one hand, he couldn’t deny the vicious, whip-quick stab of satisfaction he felt at knowing that someone had taken swift steps to avenge him. On the other hand, thirty-three dead clowns was literally overkill. 

Jason had only wanted the Joker dead.

Part of why Gotham both beckoned to him and repelled him was exactly this. While there were people he missed, the spectre of his past life still hung over him like a shroud. Jason had zero desire to go back to being the person he used to be, but there was no denying he’d meant something to Dick. The fact that Nightingale had come out of self-imposed exile to launch a murderous crusade on his behalf was proof enough. 

Even the fact that the Joker hadn’t been among the bodies didn’t mean much. It could mean Dick had dismembered him into a hundred pieces, or it could mean Bruce was currently pickling him inside a concrete cask of his own piss somewhere down in his Cave of Horrors. Neither would surprise Jason. 

By now, he could remember almost everything he’d done during his time with the Gotham Bats, and most of it involved violence, death, extortion, threats, and torture. It made him faintly sick, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Was it because he knew how painful it was to die now? In his memories, his crimes hadn’t bothered past-him that much. But his new, reborn self seemed to be made of flimsier stuff — it turned his stomach even to think about it. 

A huge part of him never wanted to revisit the city that had seen him at his worst again. Bruce had cut him off before he died, and Jason was happy to keep it that way. If he never saw Bruce again, he couldn’t be reminded of the person he used to be. More importantly, there would be no chance that he’d ever get sucked back into the Life again. 

There were days when he remembered how desperate he’d been to impress his dad, how he would have done anything — anything — to earn a single pat on the head, or an affectionate smile. And he knew that if he went back to Gotham, the Life might eventually drag him back under and swallow him whole, like the undertow dragging a swimmer out of sea. All Bruce would have to do was ask. 

Then there were days when he missed the warmth of his old connections like a phantom limb. Those days were the worst.

The wanting and not-wanting kept him stuck at Nanda Parbat in a constant state of internal turmoil. Sometimes, it got so bad he felt like his head was splitting in half.

“Did the decor offend you?” Talia asked him one morning. She craned her neck to peer into his room, which looked like a hurricane had rolled through it.

Usually, Jason kept it army-regulation neat. Today, his weapons were embedded in every flat surface. His furnishings were destroyed, his pillows gutted, his drapes shredded, his tables overturned.

“I can’t fucking get him out of my head,” said Jason.

“You mean the Joker? Or Bruce.”

“What do you think?”

Talia tutted. “Come play chess with me, then. That’ll give you something else to think about.”

Jason made a noise of disgust and hurled the machete in his hand so that it stuck in the wall. He was already fighting five or six opponents a day — and every match here was about winning at all costs. Chess was just another thing he would be expected to win at. He was sick of these zero sum games. 

“I don’t fucking need another thing to compete at, Talia. I need something calm.”

Talia arched an eyebrow. “As a recall, the last time I sent you to Master Hashimoto, you damn near gutted him open.”

The League had a rotating roster of sinister-looking gurus and sages who came in to give lectures like they were visiting faculty from some deranged university. Jason hated each and every one of them. Master Hashimoto had the gall to tell him his pain could be compartmentalized and Jason just about killed him on the spot — let’s see him compartmentalize that. Another offered to show him how to lower his heartbeat to a frightening fifteen beats a minute, but Jason wasn’t interested in convincing his body to play dead. Not when he’d already been actually dead. 

“I was thinking of something more like a college course.” He paused and clarified, “Online.”

Talia looked at him like he’d suggested taking up needlepoint embroidery. Or alpaca husbandry. Jason could not believe that they had reached a point where he could read entire paragraphs from the merest flicker of her eyebrow. 

“College,” she repeated. 

“I’ve got a fucking madhouse in my head, okay? And I never got to attend university anyway. Feels like I should make up for lost time.”

He needed something that would make his mind stretch out as much as his body had. Something different from anything he’d done before. Something expansive.

Talia gave him a long, considering look. 

Three days later, the tech whizzes at Nanda Parbat got him enrolled in Cambridge. 

~~

Jason spent a day staring at the list of available courses, undecided on which to pick. Feeling out of his depth, he went to the library for inspiration.

Nanda Parbat possessed a massive, sun-drenched library that stretched over five stories tall. The only reason Jason did not spend entire afternoons here in his spare time was because every single book was written in either Arabic, Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek or Chinese — only some of which he could read.

After a two-hour search, he managed to unearth what appeared to be the only English-language book in the entire library: a Bible.

The tome was so ancient and ornate that Jason would have no trouble believing it to be a first edition King James translation, produced during the actual King James era. Possibly autographed by King James himself. Fucking Ra’s Al Ghul and his fucking immortality. 

Jason opened it at random and landed on:

When ye pray, say,

Our Father which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name ¹

Only the book’s delicate constitution prevented him from slamming it shut immediately. 

He’d had enough of fathers in this lifetime. He’d gone through two already, and neither had wanted him. A couple of mothers had left him, too — he was still stinging from the last betrayal. At this point, he was pretty sure the problem lay with him. He’d never been good enough to keep a single parent. What was the point of praying to another one? 

In his memories, the Lord’s Prayer existed only as snatches of half-forgotten verses, but although the phrasing here was archaic and alien, one word had stayed the same: Father. 

Did he even want a father again?

Bruce had had his shitty moments, but despite all his faults, he’d also given Jason some of the happiest memories of his life. For a brief, shining window, he had belonged to someone. He’d had a purpose bigger than himself. Was it possible to have that again? Could he give so much of himself to another person? 

Frowning to himself, Jason paged back and forth through the New Testament, letting his eyes adjust to the script and the rhythms of the text. He’d never read the bible for pleasure before (it wasn’t exactly light material), but the difference between reading a mass-produced bible from a church pew and reading this behemoth was the difference between buying a vase from a museum gift shop and excavating a prehistoric vase from an archaeological site. Somehow, this volume with its vellum pages and musty leather cover felt less artificial. Less like it was aimed at all and sundry, and more like it had been deliberately left here for him to find.

For the first time, he was aware that the text wasn’t just speaking to a faceless mass audience, it was speaking directly to him. 

A little further on, another line caught his eye. 

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. ²

Unconsciously, his fingers tightened around the heavy, ribbed spine. His first life had ended badly. All he had now were the shattered fragments. But his second life stretched before him, a blank canvas upon which he could paint anything he wanted. 

A new creature. A new life.

Whoever he had been before, he could choose differently this time. He could live a better life — a worthier life.

For the length of time he sat reading, a strange tranquility stole over him. The unhinged laughter in his ears faded; the howl in his head went quiet. When the sun finally dipped between the mountains in the distance, Jason snuck the book out of the library and signed himself up for a degree in Theology, Religion, and Philosophy of Religion. 

He took no small satisfaction in the fact that this was going to piss off just about everyone at Nanda Parbat. 

If God was offering to be his father, Jason would take him up on it. This was one last spin of the wheel, one final throw of the dice. Frankly, his bar for ‘parent’ was pretty low at this point. If this didn’t work out, he could at least tell himself he’d tried all avenues before giving up. 

It wasn’t that much of a stretch for him, to believe in an invisible Father. He’d already spent three years with a secret father that nobody else knew about. Bruce had kept their relationship so well-hidden from the public, half the time Jason hadn’t been sure if the whole thing only existed in his own mind. There had been no promises, no adoption paperwork, nothing written down in black and white. Looking back, he wasn’t even sure where his certainty had come from, except that he’d taken Bruce at his word, on faith.

His entire life at Wayne Manor had been built on faith. 

God wasn’t asking anything of him that Bruce hadn’t asked already. And all it had taken for Jason to believe Bruce was one word.

Son.

Jason looked to the heavens and prayed. 

My Father who art in heaven, he began, You’d better not be shit like the rest of them. 

~~

I will receive you. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. ³

Chapter Text

Time was inconsequential when you lived in the home of an immortal warlord. Nanda Parbat was a world without clocks or calendars. Ra’s al Ghul was too long-lived to care about the passage of individual years, so none of his followers kept track either. 

Jason wasn’t really aware of the months or the seasons, because neither meant much in the grand scheme of things. There was only the next fight, and the next, and the next. 

Except while he climbed the assassin’s ranks, his little pile of academic credits kept on growing and growing. Slowly but surely, his transcript was filling up with grades. 

One day, he looked up and realized with a start that he was six credits away from graduation. The school even emailed to ask if he would like to pre-register for the cap and gown ceremony taking place in six months’ time — and if he wasn’t picking up his certificate in person, would he like to have it mailed?

Jason turned and looked out the window. Was Totally Isolated Mountain Citadel a mailable address?

Somehow, three years had passed.  

~~

With graduation in his sights, Jason had options now. The idea was dizzying. For a first time in a long, long time, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The last three years of his life had been about getting through the next week, and then the next. There was never any guarantee he would survive the League training Talia was putting him through, so Jason hadn’t allowed himself to think further than that. 

Now all of a sudden, he could glimpse a future beyond Nanda Parbat. The prospect made him light-headed. Having a college degree meant a chance at a real job, a career — a way of reintegrating with the world in a way that wouldn’t involve crime or blood. It meant a fresh start. A new life. 

All he had to do was leave.

Of course, this was easier said than done. Assassins didn’t just leave whenever they wanted. Those who defected from the League were hunted down with extreme prejudice. Their heads were brought back as trophies, to be displayed on the ramparts of the outer walls. In fact, there was a class of ninja specifically trained to chase down failed recruits who tried to escape. Ra’s made his rules clear from the get-go, for all those eager acolytes who came to Nanda Parbat wanting to join his death cult. Loyalty was the first and only imperative. Leaving meant death. 

It wasn’t all that different from the mob, honestly. 

Jason knew his combat skills had vastly improved over the last three years. His ranking on the Trainee Leaderboard now swung between #8 on a good week and #27 when he wasn’t feeling it. He could fight off most of his competition in the ring without difficulty. But what he couldn’t do was spend the rest of his life running from Ra’s’s hunter dogs. 

He didn’t want to imagine what that might be like, always having to look over his shoulder, wondering when Ra’s would catch up with him. He wanted to do something useful with his degree, not cower in fear of the League. But all his studying and reading and dreaming would come to nothing if he couldn’t get out of this place, free and clear. 

Maybe it was time he finally demanded to know why Talia had brought him here —why she’d poured so much time and energy into him. 

And then maybe he’d finally find a way to extricate himself from the League. 

~~

Jason barged into Talia’s suite of apartments in the North-East Solarium one afternoon and found her sitting at her vanity, in the middle of making a rare phone call. She flicked him an inquiring look just as someone on the other end picked up. 

“I wasn’t aware you had this number, Talia.”

It was a man’s voice. A very familiar man’s voice. 

Jason froze in the doorway of her bedroom. That voice stopped everything in him — stopped his breath, his heart, his tongue. Jason had to grab the doorframe for balance. 

“I keep myself appraised of all your numbers, Beloved,” said Talia as she leaned back in her chair.

“Beloved? Is that what you’re still calling me?” said Bruce. 

“Time has not diminished my love for you.”

A soft sigh. “It’s been thirteen years.”

“Then allow me to prove the depths of my devotion to you.” She motioned Jason closer, but his feet were frozen to the floor. 

Bruce’s voice went a shade colder. “Talia, what game are you playing now?”

“No game. I have merely been keeping safe something that belongs to you.”

“And that would be?”

“I have your son.”

Jason’s skin prickled. He was not ready for Bruce to know he was alive.

A beat. 

Then — “You what?” said Bruce. 

Jason wanted to leap at Talia and knock the phone out of her hand. But he also wanted to keep his fingers attached to his hand, so he reined in the impulse. All he could do was make grim faces at her while sawing his fingers back and forth across his throat in the universal gesture for ‘cut this shit out right the fuck now.’

Talia threw him an irritated glance. Then she muted the speakerphone and turned her cool gaze upon him. “Calm yourself, Jason. I wasn’t referring to you.”

He blinked. “Then who the hell were you referring t—” 

That was as far as he got before Bruce cut in with a growl. 

“Talia, what have you done with Tim?” 

Jason broke off with a stutter. Talia opened her mouth and paused. For the first time, she looked utterly mystified. Her face went through about four different permutations of bewilderment before she hit the unmute button. 

“Who are you talking about?” she demanded. 

“Who are you talking about?” Bruce shot back. 

Dead silence. Each waited for the other to make the first move. Talia’s eyes darted back and forth like she just realized that she’d miscalculated. In the midst of her rapid mental reassessment, she shot Jason a furious look. 

Jason wanted to throw something. It was clear by now that no one was talking about him. Low-grade humiliation made his neck burn. Of course ‘son’ would never refer to him. Why had he, for even one second, thought it might? He’d told himself this a hundred times, had repeated it like a mantra, had forced his stubborn brain to accept it as fact. So why on God’s green earth was he still making the same stupid assumption, over and over?

Before he could say a word, Talia crossed the room in three swift strides and shoved him hard in the solar plexus. Jason staggered backwards through the arched doorway and looked up in time for her to slam the door in his face. 

With a snarl, he slammed a fist against it. Two servants gave him dark looks as they scurried past. Jason banged on the door twice more before he gave up. Everything here was solid and soundproof; Talia might as well have retreated to another universe for all he could make out. 

His mind churned as he tried to untangle the threads of the conversation earlier. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like an impossible algebra problem. Solve for X and Y. The whole thing boiled down to the kind of mindfuckery brainteaser he hated with every fibre of his reanimated soul.

Because if Talia wasn’t talking about him, and Bruce wasn’t talking about Dick, then who the hell was the ‘son’ in that conversation?

~~

One week later, a copy of the International Business Review landed on his nightstand, delivered by another tight-lipped servant. Jason almost cut himself on the knife he was cleaning when he saw the headline.

ADOPTION OF THE CENTURY: WAYNE GETS HIS HEIR

A teenage boy in a navy pinstriped suit was featured on the cover. He’s leaning against the giant W on the roof of the WE building, looking windswept but exhilarated. Behind him is a stunning backdrop of Gotham city at twilight.

Steeling himself, Jason flipped the glossy magazine open with the tip of his knife. 

Splashed across the center fold was a picture of Bruce Wayne descending the steps of the courthouse. His right hand is resting on the shoulder of the boy from the front cover, whose face is turned up towards him like a flower towards the sun. The boy’s built like a whippet, all sleek lines and gangly limbs. The cut of his suit matches Bruce’s almost exactly, like they had coordinated it beforehand. 

Jason turned the page and physically recoiled. The boy’s headshot beamed up at him. Up close, there was no mistaking it. Black hair. Blue eyes. A confident tilt to his jaw. An insouciant smile. Jason wanted to throw up. 

Just like all those obsessive pet owners who owned sixteen dogs of the exact same breed, Bruce Wayne clearly had a ‘type.’ Twice was coincidence, but three times was a pattern. This new kid could pass for Jason’s brother — his younger, more polished, more aristocratic brother — except Version 3.0 was obviously the red carpet-ready model, safe for public consumption. In all his years as a eligible bachelor, Bruce Wayne had never adopted anyone before. While Dick and Jason had been found wanting, Bruce had struck gold on the third try.

Jason wanted to rip the picture into a hundred pieces. He settled for stabbing his knife through the kid’s perfect forehead.

‘Timothy Wayne-Drake: Prince of Gotham’ was the title of the boy’s profile piece.

Bile rose up thick and hot in the back of Jason’s throat. What sewer had this kid oozed out of and what was so special about him anyway?

A furious skim of the article soon enlightened him. Not only was Timothy Drake the sole heir to the multimillion-dollar Drake Industries fortune, he was also a genius wunderkind with an IQ of 140. In high school, he was captain of the interstate debate team. Outside of school, he liked to participate in robotics programming competitions. Now, he was double-majoring in finance and accounting at Gotham University’s prestigious Thomas Wayne School of Business. His hobbies were skateboarding and photography. Industry veterans predicted he would be CEO of Wayne Enterprises by the time he was thirty. 

It was like Bruce had special-ordered him from a catalogue. This kid was just too fucking perfect. Each new accomplishment made the shrill, tea-kettle scream at the back of Jason’s head kick up a notch. Three years should’ve put enough distance between him and Bruce for him to be zen about this. But zen was the furthest thing from his mind right now.

No wonder he’d never been good enough, smart enough, or obedient enough to be worthy of the Wayne name. Bruce had wanted a purebred show dog, not some flea-bitten mutt from the gutter. And now, he finally had the son he’d wanted all along. 

Jason saw green. In every sense of the word. 

~~

Later that day, after he’d eviscerated half a dozen practice dummies, he stormed into Talia’s parlor. Two steps inside and he almost collided with Ra’s al Ghul, who looked at him like he was a cockroach that had crawled out from under the sofa. 

“I thought you kept your pet on a leash, daughter,” he hissed. 

“Jason can mind his manners, can’t he?” Talia shot him a venomous look that promised a swift and bloody death if he didn’t.

She and her father appeared to be having afternoon tea. Jason tossed the Business Review down between them so hard, it almost knocked a basket of pastries askew. “Did you kidnap this Drake kid?” He directed this at Talia. 

“Much to my disappointment, no,” said Ra’s al Ghul, with a meaningful look at his daughter. 

“Jason, behave,” said Talia as she buttered a pastry. “You may sit at my feet, or you may stand with the servants, or I can throw you out on your ear. It’s your choice.”

This was neither an invitation nor an outright dismissal, so Jason stalked over to the far side of the room where Talia’s bodyguards were and positioned himself between them, leaning lazily against the wall. Talia and Ra’s immediately resumed their conversation as if Jason had never interrupted them. 

“This Timothy Drake,” Ra’s murmured as he sipped his wine, “is turning into quite the thorn in my side.” 

“And you thought him a harmless fly in your ointment,” said Talia. “But now he’s managed to get himself adopted. Legally. In court.” 

“He must have something on Wayne. Blackmail, perhaps. Somehow, he’s managed to hoodwink the Bat.”

Talia snorted and stabbed a meatball so hard, her fork almost went through the plate. “Whatever he’s got, it was enough to secure him a billion-dollar inheritance and the most coveted name in the city.” 

Something bitter twisted at the insides of Jason’s stomach, but it wasn’t the billion-dollar part that made him burn with envy. No, it was the Wayne-Drake part. In one fell swoop, some entitled little shit had scooped up the name that neither he nor Dickiebird had ever managed to get their grubby hands on. 

Ra’s steepled his fingers together. “From what I’ve gathered, Drake emancipated himself six months ago while his biological father lay comatose in the hospital after a ‘tragic accident.’ My informants are convinced that he arranged the accident himself.”

“Bold of him to do such a thing to his own father.”

“He has initiative, I’ll give him that.” Ra’s calmly took a sip of coffee. “He next sold his majority stake in Drake Industries to Wayne Enterprises, much to his shareholders’ horror. And then, in a move nobody could have anticipated, he turned around and so insinuated himself into Bruce Wayne’s good graces that he got himself adopted.”

“You think him a criminal mastermind, capable of taking down entire dynasties?”

“It couldn’t have been Wayne’s own decision to adopt him,” said Ra’s. “He must have been coerced.”

Despite himself, Jason scoffed out loud. “If you think Bruce can be coerced into anything, you don’t know him at all.”

Ra’s didn’t look in his direction or acknowledge his presence. He seemed to act as if Jason’s voice was coming from the ether. “So am I to believe instead that Wayne would put an untested teenager at the helm of his company, of his own free will?”

Talia sipped at her drink. “Drake’s first act as Wayne Enterprises COO was to fire the entire Board of Directors at Drake Industries. So far, he hasn’t made a single change to WE holdings. The sequence of events is too neat, don’t you think?”

She drew a finger over the tablecloth as she traced out the timeline. “Lexcorp threatens to buy out Drake Industries. Drake legally emancipates himself six months before he turns eighteen, takes over his father’s company, and sells the majority stake of DI to WE. On paper, it’s a peaceful, profitable business merger. But then Wayne waits six months to adopt him — why?” She answered her own rhetorical question with a flick of the wrist. “Because they needed to wait until he was of legal age. Once that happened, Drake’s shareholders could not accuse Wayne of manipulating a minor.”

Ra’s nodded. “He planned this.”

“They planned it together.” Talia’s eyes narrowed. “For whatever reason, he trusts Drake enough to give him the keys to his kingdom.”

Jason felt cold, inside and out. Only eighteen years old, and Drake had already overthrown one corporate dynasty and pole-vaulted his way to the top of another. 

“I can’t allow him to live,” said Talia.

Dessert arrived on a silver trolley. Ra’s helped himself to a custard. 

“Fret not, daughter mine. We will simply assassinate him before he can do any more damage.” He said this in the same tone of voice one might say, we’ll neuter the dog before it can whelp.

“You think I haven’t tried? Drake’s bodyguards are a fearsome contingent; they have disposed of every agent I sent. He has his very own, two-headed angel of death accompanying him everywhere. And since Bruce executed all three of the moles I had in the Gotham Bats, I am rather low on intel right now.” She shrugged one slim shoulder, as if to say, What can you do?

“Oh, daughter. You won’t be able to get near him with just any myrmidon in your army.” Ra’s chuckled indulgently. “To bring down a Prince of Gotham, you must send a Prince of Gotham.”

Two pairs of calculating eyes slid sideways and landed on Jason at the same time.

~~

Ra’s cornered him the next day in the library. 

Jason was in the middle of doing research for his dissertation (tentatively titled ‘Miracles in Ministry: Comparing the Gospels’) when Ra’s swept in like an ominous wind. The candles actually flickered at his approach. Quietly, Jason closed the book on his lap and put aside his papers. In all his years of living here, Ra’s had never once taken a personal interest in him.  

“You seem displeased by the news of Drake’s adoption,” said Ra’s. “Does it bother you to see someone else achieve everything you’ve wanted?” 

His voice was like an oily residue on Jason’s skin. It made his flesh crawl.

Jason watched warily as Ra’s seated himself in the armchair across from him. The mess of Jason’s college papers and study materials formed a pitiful physical barrier between them. Jason was suddenly hyperaware of his own heartbeat, which sounded overloud in his ears.

“I heard he’s even taken your name,” Ra’s continued. “He goes by ‘Cardinal’ in the Gotham underworld now. Replaced you in the pecking order.”

This made Jason snort. “He didn’t replace me. I was just an employee — a nobody. Drake’s the son and heir apparent. Get your facts straight.”

If anything, Jason had been the placeholder, only there as a stopgap until a better model came along. And Timothy was unquestionably the better model — richer, better educated, more sophisticated, more devious. How was a street rat supposed to compete with a milk-fed millionaire?

“But Wayne must have cared for you. Why else would he have gone on a clown-killing rampage when you died?”

When Jason looked up, the glitter of green in Ra’s eyes matched the green fog clouding his own vision. Why was the man toying with him like this? Jason dug his fingers into the leather armrests of his chair and forced himself to even out his breathing. He couldn’t afford to lose his cool with Ra’s. Couldn’t give in to the green haze of the Pit right now.

“Make your point, Ra’s.”

“I would like you to dispose of Drake for me. Permanently. You are, after all, the best-placed person to do it, wouldn’t you agree?” 

“And in return?” 

“Does it sound like I am giving you a choice? This is not a negotiation. Any reward I give you will be done at my pleasure alone. I own you, little dog.”

“I might be a dog to you, but I still bite,” said Jason, resisting the urge to growl. “So I ask again. What would you give me if I do this for you?”

This time, Ra’s looked openly amused. “Is there something you want?”

I want out of here and away from you. 

Ra’s leaned forward. “Isn’t the satisfaction of killing him — your detested rival — enough for you?”

It would be a lie to say he wasn’t tempted. The fantasy of dangling Drake off a ledge had played out twice in his dreams last night. The idea of smashing the kid’s kneecaps to cripple him had a certain appeal, too. But what would that solve? Sure, the instant hit of satisfaction might stay with him for a few weeks, but hurting Drake wouldn’t get him the one thing he’d always wanted — a place at Bruce’s side. Even after three years of tireless service, Jason hadn’t managed to earn that. So what was the point of destroying someone who had?

And then Jason twigged how weird this whole situation was. Something didn’t add up. 

“Why,” he asked slowly, “do you care whether Drake lives or dies? We both know why I’m pissed, but why the hell are you so invested?”

Did Ra’s have some stake in the Gotham Bats that he wasn’t aware of? A grudge against Bruce? There was something he was missing — some bigger picture he wasn’t seeing.

Ra’s steepled his knobby fingers together. “I have my own reasons for wanting Drake gone. You need only carry out my orders.”

"You can fuck right off.”

“You’d pass up this golden opportunity? Make no mistake, I’ve already marked Drake for death. The only question is who will have the honour of executing him for me.” 

While Jason could absolutely imagine taking a baseball bat to Drake’s perfect teeth, he was already sure he could never strike the killing blow. Moreover, he certainly wasn’t going to do it at Ra’s behest, like some kind of trained attack dog. He would sooner die a second time than let Ra’s puppet him around like a marionette.

“Yeah, no. Hard pass.”

Ra’s face clouded over and in one smooth motion he stood up. Somehow, he was suddenly twice as tall as before. 

“You forget yourself, boy. I have clothed you, fed you, trained you, housed you. You owe me your unquestioning obedience.”

“I didn’t even obey Bruce back in the day,” said Jason. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“I brought you back from the dead. You belong to the League, boy — body and soul.” 

“You think you brought me back?” Jason barked a laugh. “I crawled out of my own grave, Ra’s. I was alive before you ever found me.”

Ra’s tilted his head slowly. His eyes narrowed like he was trying to make sense of a lunatic’s ravings. “Ah. I see now. Is that what this…religious mania of yours is all about?” He swept a disdainful eye over Jason’s books and papers. “You think you were brought back by divine intervention?”

Jason stood up too, but slowly, so that it wouldn’t seem like he was making any sudden moves. “You got a better explanation? Because someone brought me back, and it wasn’t you or Talia.”

“It would seem that your books have thoroughly addled your mind.”

“You think I’ve got it bad?” Jason snorted. “You’re the dude who named the Lazarus Pits after the Lazarus miracle. Which is from the Gospel of John, by the way. But you must have known that, otherwise how would you have gotten the name?” He gave Ra’s a mocking smirk as he reached behind his back to get a grip on his knife. “It’s a bit of a misnomer, though. I mean, your glowing green pits of crazy don’t even do true resurrection.” 

Ra’s lip curled. “You are risking a great deal on a mere assumption. You would brave death, just to see if some divine power cares enough to resurrect you again?”

“I think I’m alive for a reason. And I think that reason trumps your reasons for wanting me dead.”

“Would you care to test that theory?”

“Kill me again, and let’s find out.”

A curved dagger materialized in Ra’s’s hand. Jason immediately shifted in readiness, every muscle tensed to spring. He had no illusions about his own abilities. If Ra’s attacked him now, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t live to tell anyone about it. His bullshit bravado could only get him so far. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give as good as he got. 

He dug his feet into the carpet and unsheathed the blade he kept strapped to his back. If he got lucky, he might get in a couple of good hits. 

For a long time, they simply stared at each other in the slowly-shifting light. The dagger in Ra’s hand gleamed hypnotically as he considered Jason with a critical eye. 

“This is a curious development. You are turning into quite the zealot, Todd. I must confess, I did not expect this from you.”

Jason laughed to hide his nerves. “You seem displeased by my religious choices,” he said, echoing Ra’s words from earlier. “Does it bother you that I fear God more than I fear you?”

Only the tiniest crease in Ra’s forehead told Jason his taunt had hit home. 

~~

For his insolence, Ra’s hung him from a meat hook in his torture chamber for two days and two nights. 

It wasn’t the worst thing Jason had ever lived through — not by a long shot — though it was starting to edge up into his Top 5 by the time Talia came to cut him down. 

He was delirious for three days afterwards, and then he was abruptly fine, with zero long-term effects from the dehydration and sleep debt and massive blood loss. If he had suspected before that the Lazarus Pit had done something permanent to him, this removed all doubt. A normal person probably couldn’t have survived that ordeal. It certainly didn’t seem normal, the way the gaping hole under his collarbone closed up smoothly without leaving much more than a raised pink patch of skin. 

“I thought you were smarter than this, Jason. Why did you refuse him?” Talia said afterwards, sounding exasperated. 

“I am a martyr for my faith,” said Jason from his sickbed. He draped an arm dramatically over his face. “Ra’s is persecuting me for refusing to kill Drake.”

Talia gave him a tolerant look. “My dear boy, you’re putting on a very convincing act for my father, but you don’t fool me. You’re not actually religious.” 

“Pfft. What makes you say that?” said Jason.

~~ 

The truth was, he wasn’t that religious, not really. 

But at Nanda Parbat, murder was a high art and death was the KPI and Ra’s word was law. Everyone and everything around him conspired to convince him this was true. After awhile, it was easy to start believing that he was the insane one. Insane for refusing to spill blood. Insane for showing mercy to his most hated rivals. Insane for daring to disobey the Demon’s Head. 

Some days, he caught himself wondering if they were right — if he really was the close-minded, inflexible, hopelessly naive person they insisted he was. 

Jason’s only defense against this was a book on his nightstand and an unshakable conviction that he did not belong here. The book told him he was sane. But there were still days when it felt like he was holding onto reason by his fingertips. 

The one unexpected upside to all of this was that using his faith as an excuse to flout League conventions seemed to get under Ra’s skin in a way nothing else did. Because in order to justify his refusal to kill Drake, the first thing Jason did was announce that his religious fervour now included a no-killing vow. 

“Are you certain that’s an actual tenet of an actual religion?” Talia asked him doubtfully when she heard about it. “It sounds to me like you’re just making it up.”

“Can you prove I’m making it up?” Jason countered in mock-offended tones. 

He had already stopped killing anyone for the past few years, but now he had a holy reason to back him up. This didn’t stop the other trainees from trying to kill him, of course, but Jason was scrupulously careful not to return the favour. 

When it came time for the Blood Season — an entire month set aside in which each League trainee was given the name of a cohort to hunt down and execute — Jason simply ignored his assignment. Up until now, most of the tasks he’d completed had involved taking a personal token from his target, to prove he’d gotten close enough to slit their throat. Jason had successfully faked his way through it, mostly because his pick-pocketing skills were still decent and nobody here was on guard against the kind of elaborate heists he used to plan.

But the Blood Season was different — death was demanded. This was how the League prepared its assassins for the real world: by pitting them against each other. Half the cohort would not be expected to live out the month. The ones who did would be promoted from League trainees to League assassins. 

Jason spent that month writing his graduation dissertation instead. While his classmates sharpened their swords, Jason sharpened his pencils. And he did it while evading every assassination attempt from his assigned killer — a damp wad of a kid who only ranked #82 on the Leaderboard. (Poor Kolya never even got close.) 

As punishment for his refusal to participate, Jason got to spend some more time in the underground dungeons where the bone saws and iron maidens lived. But that was okay, because he wasn’t afraid of Ra’s anymore. Jason might be at the man’s mercy and his whims, just like everyone else, but he also had an inner wellspring of spite the size of Texas, and he knew he could outlast Ra’s displeasure. He could outlast anything. 

It became a twisted sort of game. Ra’s would flay him open; Jason would start wearing a cross made of razor blades around his neck, just to mock him. Ra’s would stick his hand into boiling oil; Jason would fashion himself a rosary out of garrotte wire. 

(He wasn’t actually sure what he was supposed to do with a rosary, since he’d never bothered learning to pray one. But he liked the rattling clickety-clack sound it made. And he delighted in the look of fury on Ra’s face every time he saw it looped around Jason’s hand.)

It was actually kind of fun after awhile, watching Ra’s lose his composure over something so innocuous. Jason was starting to suspect the man had been the unchallenged king of his own castle for too many centuries. Ra’s al Ghul was a self-made god of his own domain, and he’d grown arrogant in his immortality. Of course he could not stand to see his followers worship a god other than him. 

While nobody else seemed to take Jason very seriously (Talia, in particular, was so indifferent she didn’t even bother learning what faith he was), Ra’s seemed to find it a personal affront. It was like Jason’s behavior represented something more insidious to him — something that had to be ripped up by the roots. 

So Jason leaned into it even harder. 

He was aware that he was performing his religion in a way that was somewhat fake. All his actions were intended for maximum obnoxiousness rather than born from real conviction. But somewhere along the way, the high-stakes game of chicken he was playing with Ra’s became something else. 

Somehow, the ruse became real. 

~~

Talia waited until he was climbing out of the training ring to get his attention.

“Jason, a word.”

Sticky with sweat and blood and dirt, Jason tramped after her into her office, which overlooked the practice arena.

There she sat him down and said, “Your training is complete. If you were one of us, this would be your promotion ceremony.” 

“Hang on. I thought I failed the League exam.” He’d tried his very best to wash out. 

“Which means,” Talia continued, ignoring him, “you’re ready to take on solo missions outside of Nanda Parbat.”

Jason could already see where this was going. “I absolutely cannot be an assassin, Talia. I didn’t even kill my designated target for Blood Season.”

“That was class. This is real life. You may perhaps be persuaded to make an exception for certain targets. I wouldn’t hand you just any contract.”

“If you’re just trying to convince me to kill Drake —”

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.” Talia leaned forward, her eyes alight with promise. “How would you like to be inducted as a full-fledged member of the League?” 

“I — huh?” Jason blinked. “Don’t you have to be born into it?” 

He’d been here long enough to know that half of the League was basically comprised of five sprawling, interconnected families, with branches upon branches of cadet families. Everyone was related to everyone else. Newcomers and pilgrims seeking to join from the outside made up the rest, but they were considered League-adjacent, rather than League-born. Bloodline purity was a real thing here. Ra’s was fanatic about stuff like that. 

“I could make you an Al Ghul — my son in all but blood. That would cement your status.” 

Jason jerked back, almost too stunned to react. “What?”

“You have potential, Jason. Your abilities hold promise. I would adopt you on those grounds alone.”

“You want to adopt me?”

“Al Ghul is an ancient and powerful name. It would suit you better than Todd.”

For a moment, Jason felt his world rock out of focus as he actually considered it. It was true that he didn’t like his last name. He had no warm feelings for the man he got it from. If he said yes, this could be his home. 

For a second, he allowed himself to imagine it. To have place at Talia’s table, rather than by the wall. To be looked at with respect rather than derision. To have his first choice of everything — from rooms to weapons to partners in the field. To have someone to call ‘mother’. To never have to question his place in the world again. It would be the thing he’s always wanted. 

But then his mind snapped back and he felt the world right itself. 

He was done selling his soul for a name. The price for belonging should not be so high. That was how he’d lost himself the first time. That was the reason why he’d died. When he thought back on all the things he’d done while chasing a family name, he felt almost sick with guilt. At least when he’d sold his body on street corners, he’d only been hurting himself. But the things he’d done for Bruce — the things he’d done to make himself worthy of the Wayne name? That was on him. Because he’d abandoned his moral compass for the chance at having a real family. 

If Talia adopted him, his life would be no different from how it was before. Possibly, it would be worse. The League of Assassins did not fuck around. They didn’t even operate under a veneer of respectability. And he’d always have Ra’s looking over his shoulder, waiting for him to make a mistake.

This, too, was vanity. A chasing after the wind.

“Thanks for the offer. But I already have a father,” said Jason quietly. 

“I thought Bruce cut you off before you died.”

“I wasn’t talking about him.”

Talia was quiet for a moment, then she threw up her hands in a kind of gestural shrug. “Very well, have it your way. I’ve said my piece. The decision is yours.”

Jason rose from his chair. “Is that all?”

“You may go. And don’t worry about the Drake job anymore. Since you don’t care for it, I suppose I’ll just have Damian do it.” 

Jason already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer, but he asked anyway. “Who’s Damian?”

~~

He was in the library brushing up on his ancient Hebrew when he heard it: the quiet click of a latch. It was night, and most of the shelves were wreathed in shadow. The door at the other end of the library opened and a young boy manifested from the gloom like a wraith. 

The light of Jason’s single lamp threw harsh shadows over his round cheeks. As he came closer, Jason noticed that he was kitted out in the Al Ghul colours: an emerald-green kaftan trimmed with rich gold embroidery. Jason put his book down.

“Damian, I presume.” 

It was a shock to see him. Because in all his years here, there had not been one word, one whisper, one hint that this kid existed. Now that he was here in the flesh, Jason could see the resemblance. Damian might have Talia’s colouring and build, but the contours of his face were all Bruce. 

“Hello, Todd. I’ve heard a great deal about you,” said Damian. 

“That’s funny. Because I’ve heard next to nothing about you.”

Damian’s gait changed between one step and the next. And then his katana was out and swinging towards him. Jason launched himself out of his armchair and met him mid-strike, two daggers materializing in his hands without conscious thought.

Attacking to kill was the official, League-sanctioned way of saying ‘Greetings, stranger. I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting you.’ It was how they said hello. Jason was so used to it by now that he expected every new acquaintance to go straight for his throat.

They exchanged a flurry of blows — the rapid-fire opening of a blitz chess match — each attempting to gain an early advantage. Jason was taller and broader, but Damian was more agile and flexible. Their respective advantages in physical size, however, were cancelled out by their weapons. Jason’s daggers were faster and more manoeuvrable than Damian’s long sword, which was heavier and could deal more damage. On paper, this should have put them on pretty even ground.

Thirty seconds later, they pulled apart in unison to assess and catch their breath. Out of respect to the books, they had both avoided the shelves by unspoken agreement.

“Tt. Pathetic. If that’s your skill level, I can see why you lost your life to a miserable clown.”

“Wow, you really go straight for the jugular. Guess your mom already told you my life story, Demon Brat.” Jason was already calculating how much damage he could do to the kid before it pissed Talia off. 

“What did you just call me?!”

Jason grinned. “God, you’re like the spitting, hissing, enraged porcupine version of Bruce I never knew existed. This is hilarious.”

The boy sneered. “I was told that you were once a great favourite of my father’s, though I cannot fathom why. I’m not surprised he lost interest in you after you proved to be worthless.”

“He liked me enough to keep me around for three years. But have you even met Bruce? Does he know you exist?”

A low blow, but Jason wasn’t above low blows. 

Damian leaped at him with a roar, and all Jason could think was, thank God that was the trash talk out of the way. Because the thing was, Damian might look like a kid, but he didn’t fight like a kid. He was vicious, bordering on sadistic. 

Jason almost got stabbed in the groin twice, and that got annoying fast. On the one hand, a groin strike was a legitimate way to kill someone: cut the femoral artery, and a man could bleed out within minutes. On the other hand, yikes.

“You gonna keep trying to stick me in the balls?” Jason snarled.

“It’s your least protected asset,” said Damian. “I would be a fool not to try.”

Their blades locked together and Damian instinctively tried to disengage — he knew that in a test of raw strength, he would lose. But Jason had two blades to Damian’s one, and he’d caught the katana between them in such a way that he could now yank Damian closer, crowd his bigger bulk up against him.

This close, it was suddenly apparent how much bigger Jason was, in terms of sheer size. Damian might as well be the chihuahua to his Great Dane. But the brat didn’t look like the word ‘intimidated’ had ever entered his vocabulary. Jason could see the wheels spinning behind his bright green eyes and was viscerally reminded that the boy had probably inherited both Talia’s ruthless initiative and Bruce’s labyrinthine mind. Only the twitch at the corner of his mouth belied the effort it was costing him every time he unsuccessfully tried to jerk his sword away.

“Is this some Freudian complex leaking through?” said Jason. “Because I’m sensing repressed paternal hatred here.”

“Are you lecturing me on paternal hatred?” Damian sneered back. “You, of all people?”

“I could give you my armchair diagnosis right now, you little psychopath.”

Damian kicked up at him, trying to use his feet to lever himself free, but Jason decided at that moment to let him go. Damian took the opening and retreated gracefully to regroup. He was panting, and there was a sheen of sweat across his forehead. By contrast, Jason wasn’t even winded. 

Damian could probably guess that Jason was holding back, but that didn’t dampen his spirits any as he lifted his chin and intoned, “Yield, and I will graciously refrain from cutting your eyes out.”

The kid was pretty lethal, Jason would give him that. He fought like he’d been doing it since he could walk. But Jason was a hundred pounds heavier, twelve inches taller, and he’d just entered his prime years as a fighter. He was ranked #8 in a cohort of 300. His endurance was legendary. And right now, he could feel the snap of impatience in him, the urge to unleash himself and mess the kid up. 

Green nibbled at the corners of his vision. It took effort to shake it away.

Jason took a quick, sharp breath, and deliberately sheathed his daggers. 

“Ashveer’an inshepfa,” he said before he could second-guess himself. This was League shorthand for, ‘Now, I know you’ — usually spoken after an introductory fight to signal that the match had served its purpose.

Damian scowled harder. “We’re not done, Todd.”

“You looking for a cup of hot chocolate? A good-night hug? Because I’m beat and I’m heading to bed.”

Damian didn’t take the hint. “The Drake job is mine,” he snarled, hefting his sword for round two. “And I’ll prove my superiority to you, no matter what it takes.”

“You’re sounding real desperate there, brat.”

“Grandfather says it will be poetic justice, for the true son to cut down the false one. Once I succeed, he will name me Heir to the League.”

“I thought Talia was his heir.”

“She is a woman. Grandfather does not consider women suitable.”

Jason blinked. Typical. “Okay. Well, answer me this: Are you prepared to face your father’s wrath if you succeed in killing Drake?”

Damian looked honestly confused, like this was a trick question. “Why would he be angry? Killing Drake would be physical proof of my superiority. My father would be impressed that I had disposed of a weakling for him.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but the world outside of Nanda Parbat doesn’t work like that.”

In fact, Damian was so far off the mark that Jason could already see, in graphic detail, all the ways this mission was going to crash and burn if Damian went it alone. Killing Drake was only going to destroy Damian’s chances at being accepted by Bruce. That’s what happened when you murdered someone’s son. 

“No matter,” said Damian stiffly. “The only one I need to impress right now is grandfather. My father does not know of my existence, and even if he did, he does not trust my mother enough to look favourably upon me. I do not expect him to care about who I am or what I can do.”

There was just enough bitterness there under all the superciliousness to make Jason reassess him. Damian shuffled his feet and tilted his chin up. His League tutors might have taught him to hide his tells in combat, but they hadn’t taught him how to hold a poker face. His expressions were an open book. Despite himself, Jason felt sorry for him. That hopeless yearning for a father’s approval was something he recognized in himself. 

“A word of advice, brat? Drake isn’t a sitting duck. The Gotham Bats are not like the League, but they protect their own. And Drake’s bodyguards have already cut down all of your mother’s other agents. You don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.”

 Damian made a sound of contempt. “Ah, I see now. Is that why you refused the job? Because you think it beyond your abilities? My mother told me you were a coward, and I see now she was correct. Ashveer’an inshepfa, Todd.”

And he swept out of the room as suddenly as he had arrived. 

~~

For the next few days, the quandary hung before Jason like a noose. 

If he didn’t accept the task and kill Drake, he would have to watch them send a thirteen-year-old to do it. Jason couldn’t stomach killing anymore, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stand back and let a child do it, either. He didn’t care if Damian had been trained for this — nobody that age should be committing cold-blooded murder.

And that was in the unlikely event that Damian succeeded at all. By Jason’s estimate, the most likely scenario was that Drake’s bodyguards would eat him for breakfast and spit his bones back up before lunchtime. Damian would be dead before Bruce ever knew he had a biological son. The poor kid was going to sink without ever getting a chance to swim. 

For all his arrogance and ferocity, Damian was really just a kid — a stupid, desperate kid who was hopelessly out of his depth. He’d never set foot in America before, never lived a life outside of the League, never taken a mission alone. He didn’t have the first clue what he was dealing with, and his simple, childlike determination was going to get him killed. 

Night after sleepless night, Jason closed his eyes and grappled with the impossible choice before him.

God, he thought. What the fuck am I supposed to do? 

The Millenium Zombie and his daughter had him stuck between a rock and a hard place. But he already had more blood on his hands than any twenty-two-year-old should, and he don’t want to add another body to his list. 

There had to be a way out. A way that didn’t involve anyone dying. But no matter how deep within himself he searched, he couldn’t find an acceptable answer. 

In the darkness and privacy of his own room, his thoughts reached upwards. 

You dragged me out of the grave to give me a second chance. So let me do one good thing with my second life. Tell me how to save that stupid demon brat.

~~

“I’ll go with him,” Jason said. 

His audience of Al Ghuls barely looked up at this pronouncement. All three of them were in the Feldspar Pavilion that day, immersed in some weird-looking board game.

“Go with whom to where?” said Ra’s after an interminable silence. 

Talia and Damian were playing something complicated that looked like a cross between Chinese chess and high-stakes Risk. Every three turns they would tally up their points and the loser would take a sip of poisoned wine from a golden chalice. 

“I’ll accompany Damian to Gotham,” said Jason.

Damian’s head snapped up. He was currently losing to his mother, which accounted for why he was pale and vibrating slightly in his seat. There was a green tinge to his face. 

“So you’ve change your mind?” said Ra’s.

Damian rose from his cross-legged sitting position like he’d been pulled up by strings. The effect was unsettling. “The job is mine, Todd, I thought I made that clear.”

Jason directed his next words to Ra’s, whose opinion was the one that mattered. “We both know Damian can’t pull this off alone.” He forestalled the brat’s squawks of protests with a raised hand. “There is no one else in Nanda Parbat who knows Gotham like I do. There is no one else who can slip under Drake’s guard like I can. I am Damian’s best chance at success, and you know it.”

“And what brought about this abrupt reversal?” Ra’s sounded bored. 

“I am willing to ensure Damian’s success, in return for my freedom.”

“I do not need a glorified tour guide for a mission as simple as this,” Damian muttered. 

“I’ll only be there as your consultant, don’t worry your tiny little head,” said Jason. 

Ra’s crooked an eyebrow. “Are you putting your religious vows aside at last?” 

“Actually,” said Jason with a grin, “I’m joining the priesthood.”

There was a moment of perplexed silence. Then all three Al Ghuls exchanged looks. 

“Which priesthood do you speak of? Is it the Church of Blood?” asked Talia. There was a wrinkle between her brows that said ‘I ought to know the answer to this question, but I’m drawing a complete blank. Which means it can’t be that important.’ 

Ra’s made a small tutting sound. “I certainly hope not. Brother Blood is becoming insufferable, alas. Bathing in the blood of virgins is terribly passé. There are better ways to achieve immortality these days.” 

“I’m sure Todd meant the Order of St. Dumas,” said Damian, with an imperious sniff. “Brother Rollo is always looking for new acolytes. And they're very up to date with their tech in Santa Prisca.”

“Or perhaps you meant The God Garden?” said Talia. “They are making great strides with their resurrection technologies. Almost on par with our Lazarus Pits.”

“I am talking,” said Jason, “about the Catholic Priesthood.”

Talia squinted at him. “You’re Catholic?” 

Jason raised his eyes heavenward. This was probably the eighth time she’d asked. “I’m sorry, what didn’t give me away?”

“I have not heard of these ‘Catholics’ before,” said Damian skeptically. “Are you certain they’re not a cult? I strongly advise you to check the stipulations of their priesthood before you sign in blood. They may hold you to unreasonable demands.”

Jason stared at him. Valiantly suppressed a laugh. “There is a vow of chastity,” he said after a moment. 

“Monstrous,” said Damian with feeling. 

Jason soldiered on. “In any case, I’ve received an offer of internship from St. Theresa’s in Gotham, which will lead to a four-year seminary. After which I’ll be eligible to get ordained.” He took a breath. This was the tricky bit. “I get four years to do this. That’s my price. Do we have a deal?”

He didn’t quite have the guts to ask for his freedom all in one go. Four years already seemed like a stretch, given Ra’s maniacal tendencies. 

But the internship was real enough. When the offer arrived in his inbox this morning, it had felt like a lifesaver — a sign — a message straight from God. All of Jason’s hazy plans had solidified in a single crystalline moment. His feelings about Gotham aside, this might be his one chance to leave Nanda Parbat free and clear. Damian taking this Drake job just sped up his timeline. All things considered, it was easier to accompany the kid to Gotham first, then make his eventual escape from there. 

If Jason could keep Damian from getting himself killed while he was there (and from killing anyone else), even better. Three birds, one stone. 

Ra’s eyes glittered. “Very well. Give me Drake’s head on a stick, and four years of freedom are yours.”