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Chapter Text

The first issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws did not impress me in the slightest when I first read it. One of the cornucopia of new titles put out by DC Comics following their New 52 initiative in 2011, the lackluster content of that comic book, along with the similar mediocrity of its fellows, turned me off to superhero comics for a long time. I had only begun to get into DC Comics, and comic books period, three years before the reboot. Sixteen-year-old me felt cheated out of a long continuation of the adventures of Robin, Batgirl, and Green Lantern. This was long before online archives like DC Universe Infinite and Marvel Unlimited came into being, and I was equally flummoxed about where to start when going through the huge backlog before that. That particular first-world problem, combined with my dissatisfaction with the New 52 line-up, drove me to steer clear from most new comics. I did follow Scott Snyder’s run on Batman, at least for a while, but for the most part confined myself to reading through pre-Flashpoint back-issues.

Fast-forward to today, and I am still largely disinterested in current Big Two comics. However, I am also a budding comics writer and self-published novelist myself, and have learned to accept that the brand management decisions of the likes of DC and Marvel are beyond my control. I can choose to be satisfied with the comic books out there which I do enjoy, and there are indeed plenty of those. Plus, thanks to the magic of the internet, I now have access to all of the comics, old and new, which I could possibly want. Thanks to the juggernaut of the modern tech industry, hardcore fanboys like me (and fangirls too!) have inherited the earth.

And now… fanfiction. I decided to take up this hobby again, after having quit the practice the better part of a decade ago. It was partially out of boredom and partially out of nostalgia. I’ve never even written Batman fanfiction before, with most of the fanfic corpus produced in my younger days being devoted to Bionicle. But I have returned to the fanfic scene out of a desire to indulge in some innocent fun, and my chosen path within it lies in the shadow of the Bat. I hope to clarify here not only my motivations for writing fic again, but also the basic worldbuilding choices and assumptions which will drive the internal events of the story.

My new fic, They That Mourn, is meant to follow the events of Batman Inc. and disregards Flashpoint, taking place within the post-Crisis era and ignoring the New 52 and DC Rebirth. They That Mourn is a continuation of the larger sweep of DC Universe continuity following Batman Inc. and preceding Flashpoint. In a nutshell, it takes place in the world of the DC Universe which might have developed had the post-Crisis continuity remained unstopped. My fic sticks to post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint continuity for reasons which I imagine are clear by this point. I simply do not care for most of what came after Flashpoint.

Regarding the New 52 and DC Rebirth, I’m thankful to the first for nothing and I am thankful to the second for reviving Jean-Paul Valley… and that’s it. My affinity for Jean-Paul Valley’s Azrael does not pertain to this fic, but it symbolizes the problems I have with the New 52 and DC Rebirth. Or at least, the problems I had. Once again, I accept that these companies’ brand management decisions are not something I can change, and therefore there is little point in complaining about them. I can, however, actively contribute to the Batman fanfic space.

I’ve read some of the aca-fan writings related to fanfiction in general, and I’ve come around to the idea that fanfiction in and of itself is (or at least can be) a perfectly legitimate form of literature. I sincerely believe that this (very big) writing niche can be used as a garden-bed for genuinely compelling works of art which match and exceed anything produced within the mainstream. That said, I believe I am too recently returned to this space to comment much on the subject beyond that. I can only say that, after having worked quite a bit on They That Mourn, I am ready to have some fun.

And it will be a lot more fun than reading Red Hood and the Outlaws #1.

- WilliamCohen

Chapter Text

Silence. Total silence, with the only sound being from the wheels of the bumpy land rover thudding along the dirt road through the scorching sunlight of a sub-Saharan Africa springtime. The two occupants of the land rover had not spoken to each other for the entire hour they’d been traveling together, and the driver, one Kyle Abbot, couldn’t blame his passenger for not wanting to talk.

An hour before, Abbot had arrived at Mundagaz Female Open Prison, the only women’s prison in Zambesi, and had paid a very small fortune in bribes to the prison’s staff to release one prisoner to him. The prison was out in the boondocks, there being much in the way of boondocks in that country, and he had at least some hope that the drive back to the capitol, Mzila, would be spiced up by the person whom he had rescued from the women’s prison.

Abbot’s passenger was Whisper A’Daire, and Whisper had not so much as cracked a smile since they’d met.

Abbot reflected on what he had been told by his new old boss, Ra’s al Ghul. Ra’s had been politely informing Abbot about some very specific matters while Abbot had been chained to a wooden chair. Abbot, Ra’s, and several of Ra’s’ assassins had been in a barn in western Massachusetts during this midnight interview, and Ra’s had carefully made clear to Abbot one particular thing.

“I normally have no patience with traitors,” Ra’s had said as a black-clothed League of Assassin’s member pressed a smoldering laundry iron against Abbot’s bare chest. Abbot wasn’t too macho to let out a scream.

Ra’s motioned for the assassin to step away, and removed a dagger from his belt. “However,” Ra’s had said, “irony of ironies, I have been having difficulty finding a large number of people within my organization whom I can trust. My own daughter, gods damn her soul, turned against me after all these years, confined me to a gilded cage, and proceeded to run the League into the ground.” Ra’s shook his head. “That business with ‘Leviathan’ was easily the most idiotic disaster which the League of Assassins has suffered since the Soviet-Afghan War.”

Ra’s casually slit a flesh-wound into Abbot’s forehead with the dagger, causing Abbot to yelp loudly. Abbot normally would have tried to break free of his bonds by morphing into his wolf form. But he’d been too drunk at the roadside dive bar where Ra’s’ assassins had found him to resist being injected with a serum which temporarily negated that faculty. During this torture session, he barely had enough wits left in him to be thankful that whatever he’d been injected with didn’t cause instant death due to it mixing badly with the three pints of Jack Daniels he’d just downed.

At this point in the torture session, Ra’s apparently had had enough. He clapped his hands, and the attending assassins took away the torture instruments, unbound Abbot, and dragged him over to a cot. A soft-spoken young Asian gentleman in a suit then came forward and began tending his wounds.

“Abbot,” said Ra’s, “I am doing this so I can make it clear to you that if you, under any circumstances, stab me in the back again, I will stab you in the back… of the head.” Ra’s turned to leave, two of the eight assassins in the room following him out. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” he said. “Have a good night’s sleep.”

The next day, Abbot was given new clothes, a hot shower in the nearby farmhouse, fourteen hours of sleep in a real bed, and a large bag of McDonald’s food. After he was done enjoying all of these creature comforts, he was shepherded by the attending assassins, most of whom were now in plainclothes, to a waiting, black SUV, which was part of a small convoy of such cars. He climbed into the back of the SUV, hoping against hope that he wasn’t about to be shot. Instead, he found himself sitting next to Ra’s, dressed in a subdued suit-and-tie, and holding a metal cane.

“How would you like to have your old job back, Abbot?” said Ra’s. “Adventuring around the world, for excellent pay and benefits, frequent opportunities to experience the thrill of battle, all in the service of the most glorious cause of all? My cause?”

Abbot swallowed hard. Even someone as hardnosed as him couldn’t help but be afraid of the Demon’s Head. “Doesn’t sound so bad,” he said. “I… I’ve honestly hit rock bottom. I wouldn’t mind a second chance.”

“That’s what I’m here to give you,” said Ra’s. “Now, your first task will probably surprise you, but I am almost certain you’ll find it both relatively easy and possibly quite enjoyable.”

“What would you like me to do… master?” said Abbot. His use of the word “master” in conversations with Ra’s had become second nature during his eight years in the service of the League of Assassins. He now thought that starting to use it again when addressing Ra’s might be a good idea.

Ra’s cracked an approving smile. “I would like you to go to Zambesi, in Africa,” he said, “and secure the release of Whisper A’Daire, who is currently imprisoned there.”

Abbot’s mouth dropped open, and he had difficulty shaking off his surprise. “…Whisper?” he said. “She’s still alive?”

“What made you think she was dead?”

“I… I don’t know. A lot was going on during the Crisis, and with Intergaang… when we were part of Intergaang, I mean…” Abbot shook his head, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Oh… oh my God,” he said. “I just… I haven’t kept my ear to the ground. I’ve been too busy staring into a bottle. I’ve been out of the game for a while.”

“I’ll enlighten you,” said Ra’s. “Whisper was jailed in that country after a run-in with Vixen and the Justice League. I believe she was working with Intergaang at the time, but our intelligence on the matter is incomplete. I conjecture that her new allies did not sufficiently value her as an organizational asset to extract her from custody.”

Here, Ra’s let out the closest thing to a snicker which Abbot had ever heard from him. “And Abbot, about your drinking problem,” Ra’s said. “We have medical professionals who can help you with any problems with substance abuse you might have.”

“Not an alcoholic… master,” said Abbot. “I’m sober most of the time, actually. I just… really like to get drunk every once-in-a-while.”

“This is serious, Abbot,” said Ra’s, a bit sterner now. “If you even so much as sniff a minibar while you’re out in the field, I will know, and I will give you that stab wound in the back of the head which I promised you last night.”

Abbot gulped, and nodded quickly. “Yes, master,” said Abbot. “I understand.”

And so, Abbot now found himself in Zambesi, after a long plane ride from New York and a connecting flight from Paris, topped off by a three-hour drive via a rented land rover with a broken air conditioning unit. When he’d arrived at the prison complex, he’d been greeted at the new iron gate by a corrections officer in a worn-out uniform, toting an AK-47. The corrections officer, speaking in stilted English, said to him, “What do you want? Are you American?”

“Yes, my friend, I’m an American,” said Abbot, in an affected southern accent. The disguise was completed by a fake mustache, sunglasses, blue jeans and a plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat. Abbot had been born and raised in South Boston.

“Okay. What do you want?” said the officer.

Abbot said, “My friend, I’m here to visit a… friend. I’m here to pay her fine, as a matter of fact. I’d like to take her home if you don’t mind.”

Abbot’s mention of “paying a fine” was the main passphrase he’d been instructed to use. The guard, unsmiling, nodded brusquely. “You got enough money to pay the fine, American?”

“Yes, my friend.”

“Okay, good. This way.”

A suitcase of U.S. dollars was delivered to the small prison’s top officials and their cronies. Abbot had actually been given two suitcases of cash by his contact at the capitol, but he reasoned that one suitcase full of cash would be enough for this bribe. He could spend the contents of the other suitcase on something much nicer. Ra’s probably wouldn’t mind. The job had gotten done, after all. Surely he wouldn’t mind.

After the money had been counted and the handshake part of the handshake deal had been concluded, Abbot was led to a cell, which was then unlocked, to reveal a sight which just crushed his heart.

Whisper was emaciated and frail, and she stank of sweat and urine. Her normally bright, healthy skin was pockmarked and pale. There was a massive scar totally disfiguring half of her face which she hadn’t had when they’d last been together.

It was all he could do to not scoop her up in his arms when she was led out to him.

But she didn’t say a word, only giving him a muted scowl. He was certain she recognized him underneath his disguise, but she didn’t indicate if she did one way or the other. As they climbed into the land rover and they drove out on the dirt road which he had taken to get out to the prison, Abbot vainly tried to make conversation.

“Ra’s wants you back,” he said.

Silence.

“He says he has a job for us,” said Abbot.

Silence.

“We’ll be going back to Gotham together.”

Silence.

“I still have some money left over from the bribe. …I could buy us a… farm, or… or something.”

Silence.

Abbot shook his head. “Whisper,” he said, “I… I love you. You know that, right?”

Whisper responded by slowly turning her head toward him, not changing her scowling expression. She then gave Abbot the finger.

Abbot sighed, and returned his focus to the road ahead. This is going to be a long drive, he thought.

But it was about to get even longer. Just as they were pulling up to the last one-horse bush village they’d be passing before they got onto the paved highway, Abbot, to his great alarm, saw something which he had been assured would not be there: a convoy of armed men in the uniforms of the Zambesi National Police.

“Dammit,” muttered Abbot, “not what I’m looking for.”

Then, Whisper spoke. “Don’t you have backup?” she said.

Abbot didn’t take the time to be surprised at Whisper’s sudden capacity to speak. He had a handgun under his seat, but the twenty-or-so cops occupying the road ahead of him were armed too, with bigger guns. He wagered that the prison officials had pocketed the money he’d given them and then called their buddies to tip them off about the American briber.

“I was supposed to,” said Abbot, talking quietly to Whisper as several of the armed policemen approached the land rover. “But we’re supposed to meet them at a safehouse in Mzila, and then catch a plane to Yemen. This wasn’t part of the plan!”

“Kyle,” said Whisper, “you’re a professional. Nothing ever goes according to plan. You know that.”

Abbot settled back into his seat as the African policemen finally arrived at the driver’s side window of his land rover. At least he and Whisper were still on a first name basis.

“Howdy, pardner,” said Abbot kindly to the officer who came up to him. “What can I do for you, sonny?”

“Get out of the car,” said the policeman, in slightly better English than the corrections officer from Mundagaz Female Open Prison. “You match the description for a wanted criminal. We will now search your vehicle.”

Abbot cursed under his breath. Great. Now what?

But then, Abbot had an idea. He still had that suitcase full of money he’d planned to embezzle stuffed in the back seat.

Abbot raised his hands, and slowly got out of the car. “I have something in the car, actually,” he said, still putting on his southern accent, “which I think you might find very interesting, my friend.” Abbot smiled brightly. “I think I might have to pay a very large unlicensed vehicle ticket, you see.”

The policeman who had addressed Abbot frowned, but then nodded. “Right,” he said. “Let me see it.”

Abbot nodded, and, being held at gunpoint by the policeman the whole time, reached back into the land rover, and pulled out the extra suitcase. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to the cop. “Will this be enough to make this all go away… my friend?”

The cop opened the suitcase, inspected the contents, and closed it, before nodding to his subordinates behind him. “Get out of here,” he said to Abbot.

Abbot nodded, and climbed back into the car, before driving past the group of policemen who had assembled to stop him.

“That’s it?” said Whisper after they had gotten on to the main highway. “That’s how the great Kyle Abbot solves his problems now? He bribes his way to safety?”

“What would you have done?” said Abbot, feeling weary. He needed a drink.

Then, Whisper said something which actually sounded happy. “The exact same thing,” she said. “The Kyle I know would have gotten out of that car, wolfed up, and then tore into those twenty guys like they were nothing, AK-47s or not. But… you decided to do the sane thing instead. You’ve changed.”

“It’s because of Ra’s,” said Abbot. “Ever since Leviathan went belly-up, the international law enforcement community has been pressing down on the League harder than it ever has in the history of either. Hell, there’s rumors floating around that heavies like Superman and Martian Manhunter are beginning to take an interest in us. Our new policy is to try and be as subtle as we can. No more public bloodbaths and mass urban destruction which winds up on national television.”

Here, Abbot let out a smile. “All the same…” he said. “When it comes to the two of us, I’ve always thought that I was the sane one.”

Whisper let out a laugh, and socked Abbot in the arm. “Jerk,” she said.

“Whore.”

Whisper laughed even more. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said.

“If you don’t like my flattery,” said Abbot, “then wait ‘til you hear my insults.”

“You want to hear insults? You look ridiculous in that cowboy get-up.”

“The handlers over in New York came up with it. They said that it would throw off people who are looking for a big, hairy, tough guy with a faint East Coast accent. My passport says that I’m from Colorado.”

Whisper settled back into her seat, wiping sweat off of her brow. “So,” she said, “we’re going to Yemen next? And then back to Gotham?”

Abbot nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re going to get debriefed in Yemen before going back to good ol’ Got-Ham.” Abbot reached over and put a hand on Whisper’s. She didn’t shake it off.

“Uh, yeah, yeah,” said Abbot. “Ra’s is going to give us some new marching orders when we get there. Something about one of the Bat-kids. Uh… yeah, yeah. He wants us to find Tim Drake.”

Chapter Text

For Sebastian Ives, it had all started on the evening of his high school graduation. His parents had taken him out to his favorite pizza restaurant, and just as Ives was about to sink his teeth into a nice fat hunk of melted cheese and anchovies, his mother had asked the question.

“So, what do you want to do now that you’ve graduated, Sebastian?”

Ives chewed on the bite of pizza, swallowed the bite, and put the slice down. “I… I don’t really know, you see,” he said. “Zoanne, uh, Wilkins, she’s going to Rutgers to study pre-med, and in my career class, they said I would be a solid mechanical engineer. But… I’m not sure that’s what I want to do.”

Jeff and Colleen Ives sat across from Ives at the table of the crowded restaurant. Jeff was scrolling down on his phone.

“You would be a great engineer,” said Ives’s mom. “You’re a top student in science and math, besides being genuinely sharp at everything else. Your father and I are so proud of you, and we sincerely believe that you’re one of those people who could succeed at anything he tried, even if he didn’t go to college.”

“No worries, no worries,” said Ives. “I’m totally going to college. And… and yeah, I think I’d be pretty great doing something like engineering. I’ve got the math and science scores, I’d be genuinely good at it, but… but I’m just not sure.”

“Well, what’s stopping you?” said Colleen.

“I just… I want to make an impact in the world, you know?” said Ives. “There’s… there’s so much wrong with the world, and I… I just thought that I’d want to be part of the solution. I mean, like, being a teacher or something. Or joining the military or police. Maybe becoming a doctor. I… there’s just so many things I could do to help… do some good in the world. And… and I just don’t see how engineering can be part of that.”

Colleen nodded gently. “Sebastian,” she said, “you know that a lot of those careers are off-the-table. You’re… you’re a cancer survivor. The military, the police… that’s a huge closed door. I don’t know about being a doctor, but even as a teacher, the pay would be lousy, even if you were a science teacher, or… or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Ives. “But… what’s an engineer going to do to stop the next Blackest Night, or whatever they were calling it in the papers and on GCN two years ago? I mean, I’m not saying I want to be a superhero or something crazy like that. I’m just… this world’s got a lot of crazy in it, and I want to help make that crazy go away. I just… I just don’t know how, or even if going to college will be the best way to figure out that how.”

Then, Jeff Ives entered the conversation. “Sebastian,” he said, “someone in your position is exactly the sort of person who should go to college.”

Ives took another bite of pizza, and said, “How do you mean?”

“College, at its best,” said Jeff, “is where people go to figure out what they want to do in life. Ideally, people going there would already have some idea about that, but going there might help you find just what you’re looking for. Even if you want to take a gap year, that’s fine, but if you are still trying to puzzle out what you want to do, then go to college! We’ll be able to pay for it, and it’s like your mom keeps saying. You’re smart. You’ll find what you’re looking for.”

Ives flashed a grin. “So you were paying attention to the conversation,” he said.

“Always,” said Jeff. He began eating his own pizza, swallowing a big bite, before saying, “What do you think of going to Burnside?”

And so Ives now sat in Math 302, contentedly scrawling down notes. He sat in the front row, as usual. But his mind wandered. He’d been tuning into Jack Ryder’s podcast too much, and he knew it. But Ryder had plenty of good points. Gotham City wasn’t the only place where there was trouble. There was trouble all over the world. Ives imagined that such had been the case forever, but all the same… wasn’t there something that could be done? Something that could be done even by a bookish suburban prince with a serious medical condition, cancer free or not?

“Ives? Are you with us?”

Ives was jolted back to the present by Dr. Brunson’s question. “Yes, sir,” he said. “The next part of the equation requires sine.”

“Correct. Very good, Ives.”

As Ives left the class, he picked up his cellphone, and inserted his earphones. He planned on listening to Jack Ryder’s podcast as soon as he could, but he had homework to do. Lots of homework. He was enjoying his studies, he really was, but… but what would it amount to? Building a better computer? Designing a slightly more cost-effective airplane component? Honestly, who cared? The world was on fire! Gotham had been on fire since he was in junior high. Literally!

Ives shook his head, and slumped off towards his next class. I wish Tim were here, he said. He’d know what to do.

Tim. Tim Drake. His best friend since junior high. He hadn’t heard from him in over a year, but… what was he doing? Was he okay? Was he still living with Bruce Wayne, wherever that guy was? Ryder had talked incessantly about Wayne during the Batman Incorporated thing which was in the news a lot a few years ago, but now Ryder just talked about cops and local politics. The Batman was an occasional topic of conversation, but Ryder seemed to have moved on. Maybe Tim moved on too, thought Ives. But… but I haven’t.

Ives had never acted in a school play, or been to too many theater performances. But when aimlessly trying to pick out an arts elective, Drama 101 had caught his eye. The idea of learning about what went into acting and putting on stage-plays made him curious.

And so it was that Ives found himself sitting in the front row of a brightly lit classroom, not a lecture hall, where a middle-aged woman with long gray hair and a floral blouse introduced herself as the instructor. He sat in the front row as a matter of course. He wanted to hear everything the teacher said as much as possible. He’d made it his goal to do so ever since sophomore year of high school.

“Okay, you guys,” she said warmly, “Welcome to Drama 101. I’m so glad to see you all here. We’ll first start off by playing a name game. I’ll say my name, and then say something I like which begins with the same letter as my name. For instance, I would say, ‘My name is Patty, and I like pies.’ Then, the next person would say their name, and then repeat my name. They would say, ‘My name is Bob, and I like bubbles, and her name is Patty, and she likes pies.’ And then the third person would say both of those names, and then her name. Then we would go through the whole class until everyone had said everyone’s names. Finally, I’ll say it all over again, and then we’ll begin orientation. Everybody got that? Okay. My name is Patty, and I like pies.”

And so the name game progressed, with Ives saying, “My name is Ives, and I like ideas” when it was his turn. Ives then repeated all the names he’d heard before, perfectly reciting them. The game continued on into the rows of chairs behind Ives, and Ives intently listened. But then, he was surprised to hear a distinctly recognizable voice say something which made immediate sense to him.

“My name is Ariana,” said the voice of a girl, “and I like Armani.”

I know that voice, thought Ives. Ariana? Ari? Dzerchenko? Tim’s old girlfriend from junior high? That Ari?

Ives craned his neck to look over his shoulder, and he thanked his lucky stars that he was in a sufficiently good position to look in the direction the voice had come from. Yes, there she was. Ariana Dzerchenko, a head taller than she had been when Ives had last seen her when she and Tim broke up during NML, and looking very, very, beau—

“Okay, class,” said Patty, the instructor, “let’s begin orientation. Now, I just want to say, this class is perfect for everyone. If you attend this class, you will get an A. I promise you. You will get an A. Just remember to leave me a good rating on RateMyProfessor.com, and we’ll all have a ton, a really, really big ton, of fun together. It’s an acting class, a class about acting in plays, and we’ll be having fun. That’s what plays are about. Playing. And playing is fun. Right?”

But Ives, who had jerked his head around to look at Instructor Patty, still had swimming thoughts from his recent discovery. Should he talk to Ari? Would she remember him? She and Tim had been close, and she, he, Tim, Callie, and Hudson had all hung out in the same friend group not-so-long ago, but now…

Immediately after class was dismissed, Ives left his table, waded past his fellow students, and approached Ari, who was still getting up from her desk. “Ari?” he said. “Ariana Dzerchenko?”

Ari looked up, almost as surprised as Ives was, and Ives got further confirmation that it was Ari. Long dark hair, fair skin, and pretty… everything. She was so out of his league.

“Yes?” said Ari.

“It’s me, Ives, Sebastian Ives,” said Ives, a little too excitedly. “From Gotham Heights High? I used to hang out with you, Tim, Callie, and Hudson? Do you remember?”

Ari seemed confused at first, but then the dawn of comprehension crossed her face. “Ives!” she said excitedly, the slight lilt of her Ukrainian accent still peaking when she was excited. She got up hastily and grabbed Ives in a hug. “Oh my gosh!” she said, and Ives found himself too shocked to hug back. “This is great!” she said. “It’s so great to see you!”

Ives finally hugged back, but began to realize that some of the students who were streaming out of the room had stopped to stare. He and Ari managed to come apart, and Ives said, “Talk to you on the way out? After we pack up our textbooks and stuff?”

“Oh! Sure!” said Ari, smiling nervously. Ives had forgotten that Ari often had the appearance of a shrinking violet, but that Tim had told him plenty of times about how fiery she could get in a crisis.

But Ari was quite obviously incredibly nice now. She always had been.

And so the two talked as they walked out of the Burnside College humanities building, walking across the quad towards the student union.

“Yeah, cancer,” said Ives, Ari wincing a bit as he told her about that episode. “I had to get chemo and everything. Went around bald for a while. Tim called me ‘Lex’ once. All in good fun.”

Ari groaned, and shook her head. “That sounds like something Tim would say,” she said. But then, she said, “Wait, you and Tim graduated from high school together?”

“No, no,” said Ives, shaking his head. “We just happened to be going to this other school together when Tim was in high school. Tim went to Gotham Heights for a while, then his parents sent him to Brentwood Academy up in Bristol, and then he and I were at this inner city high school after NML, when we were both living in the city, and then his parents were murdered, and then Bruce Wayne adopted him, and then I lost track at him, and then my parents found out that he was doing high school again at Gotham High, not Gotham Heights High, and then we were classmates there, and then he dropped out again—”

“Wait, wait, slow down,” said Ari, holding up a hand. “What… what has been happening with you? I… I honestly don’t want to hear about Tim.”

Ives’s face turned bright red. Sore subject? “Sorry,” he said. “I… I guess I overexplained. Bottom line, I got cancer in tenth grade, and then I went back to public school, then I graduated from high school, my cancer has been in remission since then, and now my parents are paying for my college here at Burnside.”

Ari nodded. “Okay,” she said, “that makes much, much more sense.”

Ives and Ari continued walking, and arrived at the student union. “Do you have a class to go to, after this?” said Ives. “I’m free for the rest of the afternoon, in case you want to… hang out, or something.”

Ari laughed, a sound pleasing to Ives’ nineteen-year-old ears. “I’d love that!” she said. “It’s so great to talk to old friends!”

Ives felt his cheeks burn. Friends. He and Ari were friends. Friends before, and friends now. He was okay with that.

“So, have you declared a major yet?” said Ives.

“Yeah,” said Ari as the two walked up the front steps of the student union. “I’m majoring in drama.”

Ives nodded, saying, “That’s cool. I… I haven’t declared a major yet.”

Ari said, “Really? I thought you’d be a doctor or something, Ives. You were literally the smartest kid in school, smarter than Tim probably! You’ve got to have some idea of what you want to do in life!”

“I know, I know,” said Ives, “but… I just… I want to do something that will help people. Something important. I don’t want to be somebody. I want to do something.”

Ari nodded. “Like what?”

“Like… well, that’s why I’m at college. To figure that out. My mom thinks I should become an engineer.”

“Hm,” said Ari. “I think you’d be great at that. You’re really into STEM, right?”

“Totally, yeah.”

“Yeah. And for the record, it’s good to have your parents in your corner. My aunt and uncle are in mine.”

“Oh. They’ve got your back with the drama major?”

“Yeah. My aunt and uncle are being supportive of me studying drama. They say that they know that a drama degree may not be a sure path to career success, but they also said that they want me to follow my dreams and be happy.”

“That’s… that’s fantastic,” said Ives. “Are… are they paying for your college?”

“I’m working my way through school,” said Ari. “I saved up a ton of money, starting in junior high, working part-time jobs, both at my Uncle Vari’s deli and at other places. I eventually saved up enough money to pay for college if I work a part-time job at the same time during school.”

Ives was deeply impressed, to say the least. “That’s amazing,” he said. “I… I didn’t know that you were that driven, Ari.”

“I wised up,” said Ari. “Life isn’t all boys and parties, you know? You’ve got to get serious at some point.”

“…And you got serious by studying drama?” said Ives.

“Fair point,” said Ari with a laugh, and Ives was beginning to really like that laugh. By this time, they had gotten into the noisy, crowded student union building, and he had made up his mind to offer to buy her lunch. But as they were walking down a hallway towards the main cafeteria, Ives noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, look at that,” said Ives, drawing Ari’s attention to a large booth which had been set up on one end of the room. It was a vending booth, advertising the Neon Knights, a Wayne Foundation-sponsored youth organization.

Ari looked in the same direction as Ives, at the large poster mounted onto the folding table where the booth was stationed, and where a pair of student volunteers in uniform t-shirts sat distributing brochures. The poster bore a picture of the front-man for the Neon Knights, a representative from the Wayne family who was publicly spearheading the initiative.

“Tim?” said Ari, looking at the poster.

Sure enough, the poster was decorated with a picture of a benignly resolute Tim Drake, or rather, Tim Wayne, dressed in a nice suit, with some kind of slogan emblazoned on the poster. Be Like Tim, or something like that.

Ives looked at the poster, as one of the youthful volunteers at the table struck up a conversation with them, asking if they’d like to know more about the Neon Knights’ work to reach and mentor at-risk, inner-city kids.

Ari bowed her head, and sighed. “Tim,” she said, and Ives could detect something in her voice. He detected… regret?

Ari turned to leave, and Ives ran to catch up with her. “Ari!” he said, hustling up to her side. “Are you okay? Are you—”

“I’m fine, Ives!” said Ari harshly. “I’ll see you later. I have to go study!”

And then Ari walked away as fast as she could, leaving Ives standing in the hallway, with only his backpack full of textbooks and folders to keep him company.

Chapter Text

Ives didn’t see Ari for the whole next week, not until they were in Drama 101 together again on the Thursday after they’d first met. He’d half-forgotten about the incident in the cafeteria the week before, his schedule having been consumed with going back up to his parents’ house for the weekend, studying, or at least trying to study, and trying to beat that one really difficult level of Halo Infinite.

But when he saw her again in Drama class, he remembered everything. He sat in the back of the class this time, so he could get a good look at everyone else as they sat down. Ari and he had seen each other when they entered the class. He knew she’d seen him because she weakly waved at him and said a quiet “Hey.” That was a good sign.

Drama class went on, and Instructor Patty talked about how to read a play script. Ives still made it his job to study, but during the entire class, he couldn’t think of anything but his old friend who now sat two rows ahead of him. Ari, she… she’s hurting, thought Ives. I want to help her. But… but how?

Once class was dismissed, Ives cautiously set his pencils and books aside and walked over to Ari, who was also getting up. “Ari?” he said. “Hi. How are you today?”

Ari nodded in his direction, and smiled. “Hi, Ives,” she said. “I’m doing good. You?”

“Never better,” lied Ives, who had struggled to even stay awake during that morning’s English lecture. Up too late shooting digital aliens with digital bullets.

 Ives decided, using the best judgement he could muster, to take a calculated risk. “Ari,” he said, “would you like to get lunch at the student union? I’ll buy. Does Mexican food sound good?”

 Ari snickered. “It’s never sounded better,” she said. She loaded her textbooks and pencil bag into her pink backpack, and said to Ives, “Sure. I’d love to get lunch.”

A five-minute walk later, the two had arrived at the student union building. They parked their backpacks at an empty table, stood in line, ordered their food, with Ives following up on his promise to pay, after which they returned to their booth.

But here, something new happened. Ari said, “Ives? Do you mind if I pray over the meal?”

Ives replied, “Sure, Ari. That would be great.”

Ari nodded, and bowed her head and closed her eyes, with Ives clumsily copying the gesture. “Dear Jesus,” said Ari, “thank you for this food, bless the hands that prepared it, and thank you for my friend Ives. I pray for a good afternoon. Bless this time together. Amen.”

Having concluded the prayer, Ari picked up her plastic fork and began digging into the beef enchilada she’d ordered. Ives nodded, smiled, and began munching on his chicken torta.

“I didn’t know you were religious,” Ives said, swallowing a bite of food.

“I’m new to being a Christian,” said Ari. “I used to go with my parents when I was a kid, but they didn’t make me go anymore when I got into my teens. But at the beginning of freshman year, my roommate at my dorm invited me to a Bible Study, and I went, and… and that was that. I went to church with the nice people at the study, and made a decision for Christ. My parents are so happy, and I’m scheduled to get baptized during a young adult church retreat this summer. They have this lake here that they baptize people in, and…”

Ari suddenly stopped talking, and said, “Ives, you’ve been staring at me with your mouth open this whole time. Is something wrong?”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Ari,” said Ives, “but… this is great! My family… we’re sort-of-religious too, and we go to church on Easter and Christmas and everything, and I’ve read the Bible, but… I’m sort of in the same boat you are. Went to church as a kid, stopped going as a teen because my parents didn’t make me, haven’t thought much about religion or church since then, and… and I like this. You seem so happy!”

Ari burst out laughing. Oh, that beautiful, beautiful laugh! “Ives,” she said, “you’re so funny, especially when you’re not trying to make any jokes.” Ari shoveled down some more of her enchilada, and said, “Gosh, this is great food. Your idea to get Mexican was a great plan.”

Ives smiled back, feeling more and more self-conscious. Ari had always been his friend just as much as Callie or Hudson were, and even though she was Tim’s girlfriend, Tim never got jealous if she struck up a conversation with other boys.

Tim…

Ives remembered the episode from last week. Moment of truth, he thought. “Ari,” he said, “I know that this is a really, really, really hard thing to talk about, and… and I understand if you don’t want to open up about it, but… what exactly happened between you and Tim?”

Ari glanced up from her food, in the middle of munching on a bite of Spanish rice. She swallowed, and said, “…Is there a reason that you want to know, Ives?”

Ives bowed his head, and said, “It’s just that, Tim was my best friend back then. And I still consider him my best friend even though I haven’t seen him in a long time. I still think about him, and I hope he’s doing okay. I just… if there’s something about Tim, something he did to you that I know nothing about… and I never had an opportunity to get much of an explanation from him about all that crazy stuff that happened when we were all in junior high… I just… I’d like to know if Tim did something horrible, just so I’ll know if my good feelings about him are still justified.”

Ives looked up, and met Ari’s gaze. “So, please,” he said. “Please help me to know if Tim deserves to be my best friend. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but… I just had to ask.”

Ari bit her lip, and shifted herself in her seat. “It’s… very simple and very complicated at the same time,” she said, slowly. “I… I propositioned Tim. Tim rejected me. …Well, more like he politely declined, but… oh it doesn’t matter… Anyway, my Uncle Vari found out about it and told Tim’s dad, and Tim wound up running away. I think his dad got the idea somehow that Tim was the one who did the propositioning. But…”

Here, Ari’s lip started to tremble, and Ives began to get nervous. Ari? Propositioning Tim? That blew his mind.

Ari continued. “Tim… Tim obviously didn’t have any real interest in me,” said Ari. “Falling asleep on dates, glancing at other girls while… while I was in the same room! Lying about what he’d been doing when I wasn’t around, totally checking… checking out mentally… on… on dates! Oh!” Ari burst into tears, leaning on the table with her head in both hands, sobbing over her half-eaten beef enchilada.

“So… so I broke up with him,” she said, still crying. “We finally got into a time in our lives where we could interact, and all the drama was over… and I decided I didn’t want any more possibility of any drama anymore. At all. I dumped him.”

Ives let all of that sink into his mind. He’d known about Tim and Ari’s breakup, Tim having told him all about it. But Ari… Ari blamed the situation with Tim on herself. She thought she wasn’t good enough for Tim. She thought that her relationship with Tim had collapsed in on itself because she’d shot herself in the foot. She… she felt guilty.

All of those things were lies, and Ives knew it.

As he watched Ari’s light crying continue, he gently put his hands on her own folded hands, and she didn’t push them away. “Hey, Ari,” he said, “I’ve… I… I hear you.” Ives had just enough sense to know that it wouldn’t be much good to do anything other than shut up and be there.

Finally, Ari regained her composure, and was able to speak again. “I haven’t had a boyfriend or anything since then,” she said. “Nothing serious. I’ve never… never gone all the way. I’m better now.”

Ives chose his words carefully. “Ari…” said Ives, firmly, yet kindly, “I promise you, from the bottom of my heart, you… you did not do anything wrong. Whatever happened, it wasn’t anything you did. You did nothing wrong. Nothing!”

Ari sniffed loudly, and put one of her hands on Ives’s. Ives suddenly realized that they were both holding hands across the narrow table.

“Did… did Tim tell you about what happened, when I dumped him?” said Ari.

“…Yes,” said Ives. “He… he told me. He called me on the phone and talked to me about it on the day it happened. He sounded really miserable, and I offered a friendly ear, but… he didn’t tell me about any of this stuff.”

Ari nodded, and sniffed again. She took her hands away, and Ives pulled some napkins out of the napkin container that was on the table, and gave them to Ari, who wiped her face and blew her nose.

Eventually, Ari was better again. She didn’t continue eating, but she was better again. They talked about more neutral things for the next few minutes, like the details of their homework, which classes they liked best, and what they were each going to do for summer vacation.

But then Ari popped the question.

“Do you want to go with me to youth group tonight?” she said. “It’s for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. They have a weekly Bible study. We’ve been spending the last quarter going through John.”

“John? You mean the Gospel According to John?”

“…Yes.” Ari began gathering up the remains of her food, preparing to go throw them away. “Do you want to go?” she said to Ives. “It would be great if you could come.”

“Ari,” said Ives, feeling a thrill of excitement at this idea, “that would be super.”

***

Bible study was super, or at least Ives thought so. Games were played, snacks were served, a youthful pastor led the study, and Ives got a chill up his spine when Ari reached over to hold his hand while they were praying.

Ives thought that the content of the Bible study was interesting, though not necessarily a thrill-a-minute affair. It was ponderous and required the students in the study to do a lot of sharing and talking about what they thought about the text. But Ives was riveted when the youth pastor, a twenty-something ginger in cool clothes and with a hip haircut, read from John 21. But as the pastor read from the book, Ives couldn’t help but keep glancing at Ari. She was riveted too. And Ives realized why in retrospect.

“The reason Jesus asked Peter ‘Do you love me?’ three different times,” said the youth pastor, “is because in the original Greek, Jesus uses three different Greek words which all translate as ‘love’ in English. But those Greek words for love represent different kinds of love. Saying ‘I love pizza’ and ‘I love you, mom’ are very different!

“So, Jesus used words which mean love of friends, love of family, and love of God. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him in the same manner as these three things, he was helping to rehabilitate Peter from when Peter disowned Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’s arrest. So, even though Peter’s feelings were hurt by what Jesus was saying, Jesus was really trying to help Peter. Jesus was trying to help Peter to refocus his purpose in life, to get him back into the sort of groove which God wants all believers to be in.”

The youth pastor continued, saying, “That groove is the unconditional love for both God and neighbor. Jesus was trying to tell Peter that both are necessary, they don’t conflict, and that God feels that way too.”

Here, Ives saw Ari tense up just a little, and she put a hand over her heart.

“We all have someone in our lives who has disappointed us, or who we disappointed ourselves,” said the pastor. “But God promises that even though we might disappoint him, he’ll never stop loving us. And he’ll never disappoint us. We need to treat other people with the kind of unconditional, all-powerful love that God has for us. That means forgiving people who have wronged us and asking for forgiveness from people we’ve wronged. Jesus performed the ultimate act of forgiveness when he died on the cross. It’s only fair that we follow his example, even in the smallest way, and forgive the people in our lives who have disappointed us.”

An audible gulp came from Ari, and she said nothing for the rest of the study.

After the study concluded, Ives and Ari walked through the cool evening of early spring in New Jersey. It was an unusually warm spring this year, and Ives and Ari didn’t even have to wear jackets. Ives walked Ari to her dorm, and was about to politely say goodnight to her, when Ari turned back and ran over to him.

“Ives?” she said.

“…Yes? …Ari?” said Ives. He felt himself getting very hot under the collar. In spite of everything, their afternoon and evening together had been perfect.

Ari grabbed Ives in a hug, and Ives hugged back immediately this time. “Oh, Ives,” she said quietly. “It’s Tim. Tim, I… I want to find him. And… and ask him to come to church. Can you help me?”

Chapter Text

The hotel room had been comfortable, but the safehouse was better. Abbot sat on the sofa as Whisper prepared him some hot tea. She had long since been cleaned up and given real food, but she was still in a weakened state. But her powers allowed her to recover quickly, given adequate nutrition and rest. They were back at the farmhouse in Massachusetts, and Whisper had been given a week of rest and relaxation following their return to the states. Abbot had helped.

 “No more booze for you, mister!” she said as she gave Abbot his mint tea.

 “Damn right,” muttered Abbot, taking a deep sip. It had sugar in it. He could get used to that.

The noise of someone banging on the door of the room they’d been given in the safehouse echoed in Abbot’s ears. “Finish up already!” said the voice of Pru in her rough British tones. “The Ghost is going to be here in ten minutes!”

Right, thought Abbot. Back to work.

Abbot had never met the White Ghost who now stood before him and the Seven Men of Death. He’d been in the same room as the late Dusaan al Ghul a few times, but he hadn’t even heard through the grapevine that there was a new ghost in town. This White Ghost was a humorless, sword-toting tool wearing a muddy-green oni-mask which made him look like a tool.

But now, in the early morning hours of a chilly spring day in that farmhouse in western Massachusetts, Abbot was ready to do business. He had a job again, and he wanted to do it.

“You all know very well,” said the White Ghost in his gravelly voice, “that the master has done a thorough job cleaning house, as it were. With Leviathan finally buried, the League of Assassins is stable again.” White Ghost, who was standing in front of Abbot, Whisper, and the seated Seven Men of Death in the farmhouse’s cramped living room, bowed his head.

“Stability, however,” said White Ghost, “does not mean normalcy. We were in the shadows before, but now we are genuinely underground. Before, we were a conspiracy theory. Now, we are a known unknown.” White Ghost looked back up at his audience. “I imagine,” said Ghost, “that you can understand why the master thought a revision of this team’s roster was necessary. More than ever, he needs people in his corner who are trustworthy.”

Abbot scanned the assembled persons around the room. He’d worked with the Seven Men of Death before, but their current line-up consisted of people whom he’d mostly had no prior contact with. Alpha, Dragon Fly, Mesi, Merlyn, Detonator, Maduvu, and a woman named Pru. Mostly new faces, even to a veteran operative like Abbot. But Abbot knew that Ra’s only picked the best-of-the-best. How the best-of-the-best would fare against their new target, however, was, on a good day, a coin flip.

“The master did not trust Mister Tim Drake,” said Ghost, holding up a grainy photograph of the teen in his Red Robin costume. “Nor did I. But Drake worked with us, briefly, during that inexecrable fiasco with the Council of Spiders. And he stabbed us in the back. The master thought he would produce a worthy heir, and kept us from murdering him when he was at our mercy.”

Even though the White Ghost was wearing a full-face mask, Abbot wagered that the man was glowering darkly. “The Great Ra’s al Ghul has resolved to never make that mistake again,” said the Ghost. Ghost took some more photographs and papers off the glass coffee table which was at the center of the room. “We know,” said Ghost, “that the collapse of Batman Incorporated has been followed by the sudden retreat of the civilian alter egos of the Batman’s immediate network of allies into seclusion. This has prevented us from carrying out this new policy of killing everyone who tries to stop our plans. The Demon’s Head has adopted a zero-tolerance policy on his enemies, and no longer harbors the idea that any hero of this age will ever be a reliable ally.

“His first act in accordance with this new doctrine is to make an example of those who reject our olive branch. We gave the Batman and his children a chance to join. They declined. More than that, they have, in the past, repeatedly, been welcomed into the fold on an informal basis, and have systematically abused that tacit sense of fellowship to harm our organization. We will not make that mistake again, and we will start amending that mistake by inserting a bullet into the skull of Mister Tim Drake.”

“Eh, question,” said Merlyn, a purple-clad archer. “Why Drake? Why not go for the big guy himself? He’s the primary offender. Hell, we can even go for that cat-slut the Bat hangs around with, if making that guy suffer is what we’re doing.”

“Do you really think that this team,” said Ghost, “is equipped to neutralize the Detective?”

The assembled hardcore killers, veterans of dozens of engagements, from barroom brawls to pitched battles during real wars, all looked around at each other, seriously thinking over the White Ghost’s question. Finally, they all returned their attention to the Ghost, and all said one thing, almost unanimously, in a uniformly glum tone of voice: “No.”

“Thank you,” said the White Ghost. “For your information, the master intends to deal with the Batman personally. We have been tasked with dealing with Drake. Drake refused to cooperate with our master’s plans, and violated even the flimsy, assumed trust that we had with him. He must be found and punished. The master has further plans for the remaining Children of the Bat.”

Abbot picked that moment to speak up. “Right,” he said. “We find Tim Drake and knock him off. Good. Sweeto. But, eh… just one question. Where the hell is he?”

The Ghost growled out his next words. “That, my friend,” said Ghost, “is why you are here.”

The White Ghost began to walk back towards the front door of the farmhouse, where a column of SUVs was gathered. “I understand that you can shapeshift into a wolf,” said the Ghost. “So use your wolf-sized-nose to sniff out that wretched twat whom our master once desired to give him a nephew.” Ghost turned as he stood in the door. “The intelligence materials are all there on that coffee table and at your disposal, and another safehouse outside of Gotham City is waiting for you, with the necessary equipment you’ll need to complete your mission.”

Here, just a sliver of levity crept into Ghost’s voice as he spoke one more thing before he left. It was enough to make Abbot’s flesh crawl. “When you find Drake,” said Ghost, “tell him ‘See you in Hell’ for me.”

Chapter Text

They had sat down on a nearby bench to talk the matter over, and Ari had made it clear to Ives what she wanted to do.

“Tim and I… things didn’t end well,” she said. “But… I want there to be a better ending. I want… I want to make amends. I don’t want to date him again, or… or anything… but…” Here, Ari cleared her throat, and Ives from that point on could hear iron in her voice. “But I’m ready to put it all behind,” she said. “When Tim rejected me on that night, it wasn’t because he didn’t want me. He did love me, and he believed that it wasn’t right to do what I wanted to do, not at our age, not in that context. I know that now.

“And now… I want to find him. I want to tell him that I forgive him for all that grief, because… because I think that he’d forgive me too for my role in that mess. I knew him well enough and long enough to know that.”

Inside, Ives felt thunderstruck. Ari had changed. The insecure, short-tempered schoolgirl from five years ago was a completely different person. Sure hasn’t felt like five years, he thought to himself.

But Ari… she’d grown up. She still had bad memories, memories which still came back to haunt her, but all the same… this new Ari was strong enough to give her personal demons as much of a licking as they could ever give her. And when she fought, she grinned.

Ives liked that. A lot.

“How can I help you?” said Ives.

Ari smiled, and said, “Do you know Tim’s phone number? I don’t think the two of us even had cell phones when we were dating.”

Ives shook his head. “No,” he said. “Well… I could try to find it, going through my email backlog and contacts data, but the phone number I do have on record for Tim isn’t serviceable. I tried calling him on his birthday earlier this year, both his cell, his parents’ old apartment… I even tried going through Gotham High, but they can’t legally give me his contact information. Privacy laws and stuff like that.”

“You’ve done a lot of work already,” said Ari. She smiled all the more. She got up to walk to her dorm room. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” she said. “We can work out a plan.”

Ives had tried to get in touch with Tim over the last year or so. He’d wanted to invite him to his high school grad party, but Tim had completely fallen off the map.

It was no choice at all. Ari’s mission was his mission, and Ives was going to do his part.

“Would you like to meet in front of the college library tomorrow?” said Ives. “Two o’clock? We might be able to use the high-speed Wi-Fi they have there. That could help.”

“It’s a deal,” said Ari. “I’ll see you then, Ives.”

She gave him a tight side-hug, and then got up to walk into the dorm building, waving goodbye to him as she walked away.

***

Ives and Ari met at the library the next day, where they reserved a study room, got out their laptops and notepads, and got to work.

Ives was always saddened a little whenever he went to the Burnside College Library and Media Center. It was just so empty all the time, at least among the bookstacks. Plenty of people were lounging on plush chairs or parked at computer stations. But nobody was checking out any books. To Ives, the library was a candy store. But it seemed that his fellow students had as much interest in those books as Ives had in football.

But he had serious work to do.

“I dug through all my emails last night,” said Ives, while Ari typed notes on her laptop. “Tim and I used to email back-and-forth a lot when we were in high school, and we kept in touch when he went to Brentwood, and then when he moved into the city after that, and we got at it again during high school again, even after he dropped out! But… he just totally went dark after that stuff with Batman Incorporated or whatever which was happening in Gotham last year. Gosh, I wish I watched the news more…”

“What about, eh… Facebook and social media?” said Ari. “I know you weren’t able to find Tim’s phone number, but he was a huge tech geek. I’d be blown away if he never got wired at some point.”

“I can check,” said Ives, punching his fingers against the keys of his laptop. A few search engine searches later, they found something.

“There’s at least two-dozen profiles on FB for a ‘Tim Drake,’” said Ives, scrolling down. He shook his head as Ari looked over his shoulder. “None of these look like him,” said Ives. He clicked on a few, and rattled off what he found as Ari typed up their notes. “Nothing,” said Ives, sitting back in his chair. “They all either look totally different, or are too young or too old. Zilch.”

Ari looked back over to Ives’s screen. “What about that one?” she said, pointing to a profile listing with no picture.

Ives peered at the listing. Sure enough, there was a blank profile with the words “Tim Drake” on it, with nothing else listed, not even a profile picture or a place of residence.

“That’s just a ghost account,” said Ives. “Somebody set up an account, and then forgot about it.”

“Maybe Tim did that,” said Ari. “He obviously was keeping busy at… whatever he was doing… so maybe he did set up a Facebook page, because he’s a tech geek, but life got in the way.” Ari shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said.

Ives nodded. That was a very excellent point. “Okay,” said Ives. “Maybe we’ll find something.” He clicked on the profile.

The Tim Drake profile was indeed a total blank space. Just a name and a vacant picture. It didn’t list a location, a birthday, or even a single post, update, share, or like.

But it did have one important thing.

“He has some people on his friend list,” said Ives, clicking on the “Friends” section of the Facebook profile. There was one friend. The profile picture featured a blonde girl in a purple beanie doing the duck-lips and holding up a peace sign with her right hand.

“Stephanie? Stephanie Brown?” said Ives. “That’s… that’s Tim’s girlfriend!”

Ari gasped. “He got a new… and a blonde? So… is that why…”

But she shook her head rapidly. “Look, never mind, we’re still going to find him. Message that… that person.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s…  yeah, Stephanie,” said Ives, sitting back in his chair. “Stephanie… a lot of weird stuff was going on with Stephanie. Almost as weird as… as whatever Tim had going on in the background this whole time.”

Ari cocked her head to one side. “Weird?” she said. “How do you mean?”

“Well… she died, for one thing,” said Ives. “And then… and then she was back a year or two later.”

Ari, who had looked mildly confused, became visibly shocked. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “She… died? Why? What happened?”

“She was beaten to death,” said Ives, settling back into his chair. “This is when I first lost track of Tim. His dad was murdered, his stepmom was put in the hospital, Bruce Wayne adopted him… and in the middle of all that, Stephanie died. I didn’t attend the funeral or everything, but it was on the news. Stephanie was actually a superhero or something. Not too many details were out, but her dad was a criminal who went on GCN and basically tried to organize a lynch mob targeted at Batman.

“I only know about it because my mom told me when she tried to get in touch with Mr. Drake, Tim’s dad, and found out from the school that Tim’s dad was dead. Tim just totally dropped out of my life around that time, and he… he only told me so much when we met up again at Gotham High. And then… suddenly Stephanie was back. She visited our school a few times, and I think she was getting her GED or something, and Tim was still kind-of dating Zoanne still, and… man, it was… there was just… just a lot of drama. Not between Tim and Zoanne and me, just with whatever was going on behind the scenes with Tim, and maybe Stephanie. And Tim… he didn’t talk about it all that much. He… he only wanted to talk about me and Zoanne. He never talked about himself.”

Ari looked very thoughtful then. “Yeah,” she said. “Tim… he never did make himself the center of attention, and he… he wasn’t jealous, not… not clingy. He… he was… selfless.”

But then, Ari said with a start, “Wait… who’s Zoanne?”

Inwardly, Ives groaned. “Another one of Tim’s girlfriends,” he said. “From Gotham High. They kind of broke up after he fell asleep on a rollercoaster ride with her.”

“A rollercoaster?!”

“Yeah, I know. But yeah, they were still friends right before he just disappeared, and before he broke up with her for real. She’s studying pre-med at Rutgers right now.”

Ari didn’t say anything at first. But then she started laughing, snickering a little at first, before bursting out into hysterical giggling.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh… ha ha!” she said, shaking her head and grabbing her chest.

“Ari?” said Ives.

“Oh, oh, it’s… it’s just…” Ari finally managed to catch her breath, and said, “It’s so good to know that I’m not Tim's only confused ex-girlfriend.”

Ives couldn’t help but laugh at that too. Soon, the two of them were doubled over in hysterics, and they only calmed down and stopped when a concerned librarian came over and politely asked them to keep quiet.

Once the two of them had gotten their respective breaths back, Ives turned back to his laptop. “Right,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll send out a message to Stephanie. Hopefully she’ll get it.”

Ives went to Stephanie’s Facebook page, clicked the Facebook Messenger button, and typed up a short message, before pressing “enter.”

Ari looked over Ives’ shoulder as he scrolled down the screen. “It looks like we’ll be able to reach her,” said Ari. “She just updated her profile three days ago. Is… is that a Star Wars meme?”

“Guess so,” said Ives. “I never took Stephanie for the type to be into that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“You know… nerd stuff. I only met Stephanie a few times, but I… I guess I never got to know her well enough to… see if she liked that kind of thing. …Oh, for goodness sake, I didn’t know her well enough to know about anything she liked.”

“Relax, Ives, relax,” said Ari, putting a hand on Ives’s shoulder. “Stephanie was Tim’s girlfriend. And… and so was I. They were both obviously hiding something, and… and well, for Tim’s sake, perhaps we should try finding out. This may be a huge case of being… busybodies, I guess, but Tim’s our friend. We need to find him and help him.”

Ives looked back at the screen, and stared at it, the screen still displaying Stephanie’s Facebook page. She had indeed shared a Star Wars meme, featuring a joke about Obi-Wan Kenobi having the high ground. It was kind of funny.

But Ives didn’t laugh. The situation was beginning to get less and less funny the longer they were in it. It was just then that he realized that Ari’s hand was still on his shoulder. He looked at her, and absently put his hand on hers. Ari blinked, and slowly took it away, before looking away demurely.

Ives sighed, looking away himself. I… I’m not sure where this will go, he thought. Me… me and Ari, I mean.

And then: Except I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Chapter Text

The backroads route from western Massachusetts to central New Jersey was long, scenic, and inconspicuous. That’s why Abbot had picked that option.

The team of nine, made up of Abbot, Whisper, and the Seven Men of Death, had traded in their SUV convoy for two white cargo vans emblazoned with the logo of a fake plumbing supplies company. Another attempt to be inconspicuous. But he had to deal with grumblings about “micromanagers” and “freakin’ paranoiacs” from his team, what with the orders from on high to ditch the more colorful costumes some of them were wearing.

“This is complete horsepucky,” Detonator had said as he, Abbot, and Mesi sat in the back of one of the vans. Pru was driving and Whisper was in the passenger seat, and the rest of the team had piled into the other van. All were in plainclothes, meaning shirts, jackets, and jeans. No body armor, visible weapons, spandex, or masks.

“Seriously,” said Detonator, “why the disguises? It’s psycho! We live in a world where aliens, Greek gods, and magic acronyms are normal. Why do we have to pretend like that’s not true with us?”

Detonator was an explosives expert. He had been in jail for arson before joining the League of Assassins four years ago, and he was as hot and volatile as the weapons he specialized in. He normally wore clusters of grenades on his belt like they were a fanny pack. Abbot had read his file, and he was just glad that Detonator wasn’t the craziest person he’d worked with.

“Not everyone lives in Gotham or Fawcett City or Markovia or Kahndaq,” said Mesi, one of the few members of the team who looked and sounded surprisingly normal. She could easily pass as just another young woman, a perfectly normal Ethiopian migrant to the American east coast. She would fit right in at her new job in Gotham.

“But we’re going to Gotham,” said Detonator. The van trundled along through the smooth highway they were on which snaked through the interior of the northeast. “So please tell me,” said Detonator, “what the point of all this extra secrecy is? We’re going to the center of the crazy. Hell, it’s not even seen as crazy over there! We’d fit just right in without these… friggin’ disguises we have to wear.”

“Not anymore,” said Abbot. “You want to talk about Greek gods? There’s a serious case of the departure of the gods going on right now. The world’s changing, and it’s changing in a way that even someone like the master finds unsettling. The crazy may be normal in some places, even a lot of places, but that crazy is beginning to go away. We have to change too if we want to survive. So shut the hell up, Detonator.”

Detonator just growled and shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “But what the hell is ‘the departure of the gods?’”

“Mythology jargon,” muttered Mesi. “A common story in the mythology of ancient cultures is stories about the gods and other supernatural beings leaving this world, which is usually used as an explanation for why you don’t see the gods walking around doing stuff today. Abbot is saying that that’s what’s happening in real life with the larger superhero community, and the supervillains too. The Blackest Night is when it started, and it’s not slowing down.”

Silence engulfed the van, and Detonator gave Mesi a thousand-yard stare.

“How’d you learn all that garbage?” said Detonator after a moment.

Mesi scoffed, and rolled her eyes. “I read, smart guy.”

Abbot sat back in his seat in the back of the cramped cargo van. His rear end was beginning to go numb from sitting in a moving car all morning, but he could take it. He’d made sure that Whisper had gotten one of the coveted passenger seats, and he was just glad that his status as the group’s official shot-caller allowed him to give her some extra comfort.

The minute all of this is over, thought Abbot, I’m going to ask the master if he’ll give me and Whisper some real digs. A place where the two of us can just call home. I… God, I love her.

The road trip eventually wound down, and the two cargo vans arrived at their destination. Gotham City, New Jersey. The two vans had an easy time navigating through the late afternoon traffic, what with the fact that they were going into the city, towards their safehouse in Tricorner, while everyone else was heading to the suburbs and bedroom communities on the Gotham River’s west bank. Abbot’s team was in the right place at the right time.

It was beginning to get dusky when Abbot crawled out of the back of the van he’d ridden in. The safehouse was par for the course for villain hideouts: a disused warehouse in a declining industrial park tied to the railyards. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was the name of the game.

Abbot took a moment to take in the atmosphere as he and his companions headed toward the warehouse. He remembered how spectacularly ugly Gotham had been before NML, with the ostentatious art deco buildings polluting the financial district and spreading out into the rest of the city. One good thing about the quake that had preceded NML was that it had provided a justification for rebuilding large swaths of the city from the ground up. The result? A vibrant, modern metropolis with just enough of the old, art deco nightmare left over to spice things up. Gotham City wasn’t scary anymore. It was cool.

“You miss this town?” said Whisper, who had walked up to Abbot while he was lost in his brief moment of innocent wonder.

“Believe it or not, yes,” said Abbot, letting out a smile in spite of himself. “I lived here for five years. I was always on mission, under cover, but it was… home. I worked out in the morning, ate at the same greasy spoon for breakfast, grabbed lunch from the same bodega most of the time... went to dinner at the same Thai food joint every night…” Abbot put an arm around Whisper, and gave her a whisper of his own. “Met you through work…”

Whisper chuckled, and stepped away. “We’re going to have to have a long talk about… about us, after this. Dating at work is notoriously fraught, and… and the master wants to avoid that kind of behind-the-scenes conflict.” Whisper continued walking towards the warehouse, where the Seven Men of Death were all standing near the side-door, waiting for Abbot to unlock it with the passcode. “Our little office romance…” she said as she and Abbot walked together, “…it’s not going to last if we don’t set boundaries, or whatever they say about this sort of thing in internet self-help articles.”

Abbot was about to say, “You read internet self-help articles?” when he was interrupted by a shout from Pru, the English woman with a shaved head.

“Get a bloody room already, and after we get into this bloody room!” she yelled.

“Keep it down, will you?” said Abbot, coming up to the door. “I’ll get us in.”

The group entered the warehouse, where they were met by some League members, two dark-suited Iranian men, who directed them to the equipment stored in the warehouse. There were folding tables with computers on them and long extension cords snaking over to the wall, swivel chairs, racks of weapons and ammo, from M-16s to katanas, bunk beds, a sofa in front of a TV, and a large fridge.

“Bathroom’s that way,” said one of the League members, pointing to the far end of the mostly bare warehouse. “It has a shower. I’m Behrooz, that’s Ali. Welcome to the League of Assassins’ Gotham City cell. All glory to the Demon’s Head.”

***

The next morning, after the League members had all gotten a decent amount of sleep, Abbot gave the briefing.

“You all know why we’re here,” he said, putting a grainy picture of Tim Drake on a whiteboard which was behind him. “We need to find Drake and neutralize him. Drake is an A-list Bat. Former Robin, leader of the Teen Titans, personally trained by the Batman. Our last bit of intelligence says that he was in charge of the Outsiders for a while.”

“So how are we going to get to him?” said Alpha. “He’s got to behind a lot of barbed wire by now."

Alpha was another hothead whom Abbot had been settled with. Abbot knew that the guy’s attitude probably meant that it might be difficult to get the skinny little twit to follow orders. But Alpha knew how to shoot a gun, throw a punch, and drive dangerously, and he could do all of those things very, very well. Abbot could work with that.

“That’s the question of the day,” said Abbot. “Our intelligence reports that Drake hasn’t been seen with either the Outsiders or the Teen Titans for more than a year. The last time any of our guys saw him in the company of the rest of the Bats was during the last gasps of Batman Incorporated and Leviathan, here in Gotham. One of our surveillance drones spotted him at Wayne Manor when the Bats were holding an impromptu funeral for that little cuss Damian. His last appearance with the Teen Titans was during the Legion of Doom attack in San Francisco.”

Abbot picked up another photo, which featured Drake walking into a nice, spruced up townhouse. “This picture,” said Abbot, taping it to the white board behind him, “is from the last time our people saw Drake. Walking into his house-base in Park Row. He never came out. Our guys went in to look, and he was gone. No sign of a struggle. We speculate that he may have had a secret exit leading underground, maybe to one of Batman’s satellite caves, or a subway system or drainage junction maybe. We just don’t know.”

“Think we should go back there and look some more?” said Merlyn. “That house-base might have fallen off the map for the rest of the Bats too. We might have free rein to turn the place totally upside-down if we want to.” Merlyn, the purple-clad archer who’d spent his life being a thorn in Green Arrow’s side, was easily the elder statesman of the Seven. Abbot respected his opinion.

“That’s definitely on our to-do list,” said Abbot. “Merlyn, you and Detonator can get right on that.”

Abbot grabbed some more papers off of the table, shuffling through them. “We’ve got several leads which we need to cover,” said Abbot, “some active, some more low-key, but all strong possibilities.” Abbot scanned the content of the reports in his hand. “We made a fake identity and past for Mesi, and we’ve gotten her a job in the mailroom at Wayne Enterprises. The last cover job that Drake ever had was CEO of the company. He’s obviously not punching a clock there anymore, but we might find useful information if we get some eyes in there. Best case scenario, we get info on him from some Batman Incorporated files that are still lying around there, maybe find a mid-level executive we can bribe or coerce into helping us.”

“What about Fox?” said Whisper. “Tamara, I mean. She’s still at Wayne Enterprises, right?”

“Yes,” said Abbot, “which brings us to our next lead, the Fox family.” Abbot taped another picture to the whiteboard, showing the Fox family exiting their mansion in Bristol. “This picture is from when our guys were keeping an eye on the Foxes last Easter,” he said. “Lucius Fox is the real power at Wayne Enterprises, CEO or Chairman of the Board or whatever. It’s unclear whether he knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman, but he was heavily involved with Batman Incorporated, and one of his kids was a no-name Bat for a while. Eh… Batwing. Yeah, that’s right. But more to our purposes, Fox’s daughter Tamara was romantically involved with Drake within the last year prior to his going missing, and she’s been working at Wayne Enterprises since she graduated from Gotham U. If we can zero in on her, we might get more information.”

Abbot pointed to Dragon Fly, saying, “DF, you and Maduvu dog the Foxes. Keep things quiet, and focus on Tamara. Lucius is still on our list of famous people, but Tamara takes priority.”

The lithe, dark-haired Dragon Fly rolled her eyes, while the lean Maduvu, with his long, prematurely white hair and white beard, leered at her.

“And there’s Wayne Manor, of course,” said Abbot. “Pru, you and Whisper are on stakeout duty there. Ali and Behrooz and some of our other guys here in Gotham have been keeping an eye on it for the last eight months, and there’s nothing. Not that butler guy, not Wayne, not any of the Bat-kids, nothing. It’s boarded up and there’s chains on the gates. The Batcave is equally inaccessible. The entrance hidden in the backwoods adjacent to the manor has been collapsed, probably dynamited. Nobody has been see going in or out of that damn thing.”

“Maybe they’re using the Justice League teleporter,” said Whisper. “Back-channeling through the JLA or the JLI, maybe?”

“Another strong possibility,” said Abbot. “Batman has been seen working with both the JLA and the JLI, so we know he’s not out of the picture yet. The World’s Greatest Detective is still in exactly that same place: the world. He’s just been gone from home for a long time.”

“So what are you going to do?” said Alpha.

“I’m going with you,” said Abbot. “We’re going to play dress-up as DEO agents and pay a visit to this reporter chick.” Abbot put another photo up on the whiteboard, featuring a pretty redhead, about forty. “Vicki Vale,” said Abbot, “is a reporter at The Gotham Gazette, and a confirmed former paramour of Wayne. The master himself had a run-in with her after Wayne came back from the dead, right before Batman Inc. got started. She was investigating the Bat-Family and collecting information on all of their real names. We know first-hand from the Demon’s Head that she succeeded, but that the Bat convinced her to keep quiet.”

“So she knows that Drake is Red Robin or Robin or whatever,” said Alpha. “What does she know that we don’t?”

“Possibly a lot,” said Abbot. “We also know that she was personally running around trying to find Drake specifically during her little crusade. If we can either get her to talk to us by playing fake-Feds, or can get her to start making calls in a bugged room or actually going out to meet people, then she might lead us to something big. Worst case scenario, we search her home office and see if we can find any good info.”

Abbot looked around at his assembled subordinates. “Everyone got that? If you have questions, get yappy now.”

“One question.”

Abbot looked over in Pru’s direction. She’d been totally silent, even when Abbot had mentioned that she got stakeout duty with Whisper. “Yes, Pru,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Why aren’t we trailing Stephanie Brown?” said Pru. “Batgirl? She used to be Drake’s girlfriend. Long-time girlfriend. We know she’s still active in Gotham.”

Abbot drew a blank. “…Stephanie… Brown?” he said. “Batgirl? Isn’t Cassandra Cain Batgirl or something?”

“It didn’t make it into our intelligence briefs,” said Pru lowly. “I tried to bring it up with the Ghost, but he’s still ticked off at me for playing double-agent with Drake and telling the master and not him. God, that man is a tool.”

“…You were a double-agent,” said Abbot evenly. “Working with Drake. And Ghost thought we didn’t need to know.”

“It’s like I said,” said Pru. “The man is an absolute freaking toolbox.” Pru’s comment elicited a chorus of agreement from the other Seven Men of Death.

“And I forgot,” said Pru, more pointedly, “that you were doing temp-work for bloody Intergaang when all of this was happening. Yes, the Batman got Cain to give up being Batgirl to accommodate Brown getting the job. I have no clue why. Cain’s been hacking it as a vigilante in Hong Kong, but she was spotted in Gotham during that fiasco with the bridge terrorist.”

“But getting back to Brown…” said Abbot, choosing to overlook the comment about Intergaang. He knew he deserved being called out for that.

“Ali and Behrooz might know something,” said Pru. “Last time I checked, Brown was still active as Batgirl, and she and Drake were being as nice to each other as hormonal teenagers who are ex-girlfriend and ex-boyfriend as can be. I think she’s a college student.”

Abbot nodded. “Alright, fine,” he said. “You’re on Brown. I’ll talk to Ali and Behrooz about it with you. You and Whisper can dog Brown, and Ali and Behrooz can do stakeout duty at the manor.” Abbot looked around. “Okay, that’s everything,” he said. “Everybody good?”

Everybody was good.

Chapter Text

Hello, Stephanie! I hope you are doing well! This is Sebastian Ives, and old friend of Tim Drake, who I think you were dating for a while. I’m trying to find Tim, because I’d like to meet up with him and find out how he’s doing. Do you think you could help me?

That was the message which Ives had typed into Facebook Messenger as soon as he had rebooted his own dormant Facebook account, which he had been able to quickly get back into as he and Ari sat in their study room in the library together. He had actually been friends with Stephanie via Facebook, but he’d never used the site much. He hadn’t even used it much since before everything that happened during War Games or… or whatever that crazy event out of a hundred crazy events had been called.

“So… what are you thinking, Ari?” said Ives. “If Tim’s hiding something from us, and… I think he is… That… that’s got to be the case. It… and it has something to do with Stephanie. But beyond that, we don’t know anything. It’s…” Ives sighed heavily and collapsed back in the rough wooden chair. The study room felt like it was suddenly getting genuinely claustrophobic. “It’s just a huge load on my mind right now,” said Ives.

“Ives?” said Ari. “This… this whole thing, everything, is what we’ll have to talk to Tim about when or if we find him.” Ari bit her lip, and squirmed in her seat. “I just… I think… I think that, all of this time, he’s been hiding something. He’s… he’s had consistent problems with this sort of thing, stretching across multiple intimate relationships and life situations. He’s been constantly trying to cover something up, and… and I don’t think he ever wanted to hurt us. He has a secret. And… and whatever it is, it’s a secret that he thought was important enough to hide from even the people closest to him. Important enough that even if his family and social life were totally destroyed… it would still be worth it if the secret was kept safe. And… and we both know that he’s not… not a drug dealer or an alcoholic… or anything horrible like that. He can’t be those things! We know him! And yet… we don’t. We…”

Ari then sat bolt upright, and, almost shouting, said, “Oh my God! Tim is Batman!”

Ives looked over at Ari, wearing a totally bewildered expression. “…What?” he said.

“I remember now!” said Ari, getting up and pacing about what little floor space there was in the small study room. “I remember, seeing on the news during War Games, that they said that… Black Face, or… or whatever…”

“Black Mask, Ari.”

“Right, right, Black Mask, they say he murdered that girl who was Robin, who was actually Stephanie, and everyone knew that, right? I remembered the girl-Robin part, but not the Stephanie thing.”

“Right…” said Ives. He thought he could see where this was going.

“And then, what if… what if Tim was actually Batman, and was constantly sneaking behind everyone’s backs because he had a secret identity? And it makes total sense! He was Batman, and Stephanie was Robin, and they were crimefighting lovers together and— and—”

Ari suddenly stopped speaking. She shook her head, collapsed back in her chair, and said, “No. That’s crazy. Batman’s like… thirty. Everybody knows that. I… I really ought to watch the news more.”

Ives tried to suppress a laugh, but failed. “Ari,” he said, “you have to be crazy to be a performance artist.”

Ari blushed a deep red, and let out a nervous smile, revealing immaculate teeth. “Dang right, Ives,” she said.

Ives then realized that he and Ari were staring straight at each other. He was just on the verge of moving his head forward, but he stopped. No, he thought. Not… not now. Not… not while doing what we’re doing.

Ives and Ari agreed to call it a day, citing homework and studying they each had to do. They walked out of the library together, and they were about to go in opposite directions, towards their dorms, when Ari turned around to look at Ives. “I’m… I’m available to talk, whenever you like, Ives,” she said. “And… if you ever want to grab lunch, or dinner, or… or breakfast, or… or whatever! I’m open.”

Ives felt a lump in his throat. How could he say no to that? And they had exchanged numbers the previous night…

“That would be spectacular,” said Ives. “I’ll call you tonight.” He flashed his best cheesy grin, and Ari laughed out loud. Then they said their goodbyes, and departed.

As Ives walked toward his dorm hall in the spring mid-afternoon, he couldn’t get that laugh out of his head. I’m… I think I’m in love, he said. Is… is this… this thing that’s happening… is that… is that how falling in love works?

He whistled his favorite song all the way to the dorm.

***

Ives did call Ari that night, who reported that she had been doing some serious Googling on her own time, and had dug up some old news articles using the library’s internet archive.

“It’s all right here,” Ari said over the phone as Ives paced about in his room. Fortunately, his roommate was a party animal, and that roommate was off being a party animal somewhere else. “Stephanie was outed as Robin after her parents told everyone on TV, and then the papers picked it up! Her parents were Arthur and Crystal Brown, and yes, her dad was a criminal, a supervillain. Um… yeah, Cluemaster. But there’s nothing in the news about Stephanie coming back to life. I guess everyone in her personal life knew about that, but nobody in the news decided to pick it up. Do you think we should try talking to those reporters or something?”

“I’m not so sure,” said Ives. “Odds are people like reporters are super busy, and some of them may not even be working at the same papers and TV stations where they were working when this stuff happ—”

But then, a thought entered into his mind. Reporters? he thought. Yes! Reporters!

“Ari?” said Ives, very excited. “I just remembered something! I totally forgot!”

“What is it, Ives?”

“When Tim dropped out of school for the millionth time, there was this reporter chick from The Gotham Gazette who showed up at our school and tried to get information out of me and Zoanne, about Tim. Uh… yeah, she was trying to find Tim. She was really pushy, and she sounded like she thought we were hiding something. But we just kept telling her that we had no idea where Tim was, and we hoped that he was safe too. Her name… gosh, I… I can call Zoanne. I still have her number. She’d know what that reporter-person’s name was.”

“You do that, Ives,” said Ari. “And keep an eye out for a reply from Stephanie. I’ll see if I can find anything else on my end. Keep me posted!”

“Anything for you, Ari,” said Ives, before he could activate the filter between his brain and his mouth. His face then suddenly felt very hot. “Uh, Ari, I… that… I didn’t mean it—”

“Cool your jets, Ives!” said Ari, giggling as she talked. “It’s okay to flirt.”

Ives swallowed hard. So the feeling was mutual. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ari,” he said. “I… good night!”

“Good night!” said Ari cheerfully, and then Ives hung up.

***

It was time for Math 302 again, and Ives was having trouble paying attention. He simply had other things on his mind. Tim, Stephanie, Ari. Especially Ari.

Okay, that’s it, he thought as he was packing up after class to head out. I’m going to ask her out. Not a joke, totally gonna do it.

Ives had just gotten out his phone to send Ari a text, when he saw something that he’d missed: The Facebook messenger app, which he’d made sure to install on his phone when he’d gotten back to his dorm yesterday, said that he had a message. He had turned the phone on silent during the class, and it must have come on without him noticing.

Hastily opening the messenger app, he found what he was looking for: Stephanie Brown had replied.

It read: “Hi, Ives. Good 2 hear from u. i think we should talk. Pls call me at this number so we can talk. Can’t do this over txt.”

Ives frowned. Why did Stephanie want to talk on the phone? Was it serious? He began to sweat. Maybe something horrible had happened to Tim. Or maybe Tim was Batman, and Stephanie didn’t want to tell him over text. It’s the same problem, he thought as he walked back to his dorm. He’d need to do this in private. What the heck do I know about Tim Drake? What the heck do I know about Stephanie Brown?

He reached his dorm, set his books down, and made the call. It was answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” came the reply. It was a girl about his age, he was sure.

“Stephanie Brown?” said Ives. “This is Ives, Sebastian Ives, Tim Drake’s best friend from high school. I got your text, and… and I was hoping you could help me find Tim.”

A sigh on the other side. “Ives…” she said. “…Did you know anything about… about what Tim did a lot of the time when he wasn’t hanging out with friends?”

Ives furrowed his brow. “Why would I?” he said. “That’s… that’s kind of the definition of something a friend wouldn’t really know.”

“Well… yeah. Ives… I talked to my… my boss, I guess… she’s pretty much my boss… and she said I could tell you.”

“Tell… tell me what?” said Ives. “You’re scaring me, Stephanie. Please, just… just… spit it out, I guess.”

Silence. Then, Stephanie said, “Ives, are you aware that Tim has been operating as a masked vigilante since he was thirteen?”

Chapter Text

Ari’s theory had been true. Sort of.

“Can… can you repeat that again? Please?” said Ives.

“Tim was Robin, and later Red Robin,” said Stephanie. “He’s been working as a masked vigilante, with Batman, since he was a kid. Well… a younger kid. And I was too.”

Ives stumbled over to his bed, and sat down with a thud. “This… you’re lying,” said Ives. “You’re freaking lying!”

“I wish I was,” said Stephanie. “But it’s true. Tim’s been Batman’s number-two for years. Or at least, he was. Batman’s not really a thing anymore. Not in Gotham.”

“I… I want proof,” said Ives. He was rarely angry, but this was a special occasion. “I want some kind of guarantee that this isn’t some sick joke. Stephanie, I and… and a friend of mine and Tim’s looked you up online. You were Robin, or something, and then you died! I was slightly more stupid in high school than I am now, and I know it didn’t come up when you and Tim were on speaking terms or… or whatever, when you came back… but… but you came back from something! Or were you ever dead?!”

“I understand how you feel,” said Stephanie. “And I was never dead, though he thought I died too. It’s… it’s complicated. If I’m going to tell you all of this, I don’t want it to be over the phone.”

“Then we’ll meet, in person,” said Ives, still fuming. “And… and where is Tim? Can you at least tell me that? Or did he die too?”

“Ives, I know this hurts, but I promise you, Tim’s fine. Please, I… meet me in Robinson Park, downtown, this Saturday, and we’ll meet and talk there.”

Ives tried to cool down. It was hard. His world was beginning to break. “Stephanie…” he said, trying to calm down, “is this really a matter of huge secrecy?”

“It actually is,” said Stephanie. “You… I’m sorry. This is perfectly understandable. I’ve been in your exact position a million times.”

“Is that so?” growled Ives. Ives never growled. Unless he did. “I want answers, and I want them now! I’m tired of these games, I’m tired of the hurt that I’ve been through, that Zoanne’s been through, that Ari’s been through—”

“Wait, wait,” said Stephanie. “You’re working with Zoanne? From Tim’s high school? And who… who’s Ari?”

“Ari is Tim’s ex-girlfriend,” said Ives, before he could stop the words from coming out of his mouth.

“Oh my God,” said Stephanie. “You’re working with Tim’s ex-girlfriends to find him? The three of you?”

“No!” shouted Ives, really shouting. “Just… just me and Ari. We met at Burnside College, and we want to find Tim so Ari can make up with him. Get closure, or whatever they call it. Ari… Ari dumped him when they were dating, right before NML.”

More silence. Then a sigh. “Tim has always been a ladies’ man,” she said. She sounded just a little bitter. “We started dating near the beginning of NML. We didn’t even know each other’s secret identities at the time. We were both superheroing, and we only got to know each other behind our masks after that time when— when Bruce Wayne was accused of murder. Do you remember that?”

“No.”

“Yeah. So… you’ll meet me in Robinson Park, this Saturday. And… and are you bringing that girl? Ari?”

“Yes,” said Ives crisply. “That’s a non-negotiable. If anyone deserves to hear the truth behind all of this, it’s her. Do you have any idea what Ari went through when Tim was dating her? She’s gone through capital-H Hell. …Now that I think about it, it all kind of makes sense. Tim being late all the time, Tim falling asleep at odd times, unexplained injuries, all those times he just disappeared for days with no good excuse. And… and when he wound up stranded in No Man’s Land… just… oh my God… oh my friggin’ God, did he seriously go into NML on purpose? As Robin? Just to…”

“Yes, he did,” said Stephanie. “We’re going to talk about all of that when you meet me. Please. Just… we need to talk about this privately. I know you’re upset, and I would be too. Heck, I have been upset during all this stuff. I’m just saying, being a superhero will kill your dating life unless your significant other is also a superhero, and even that’s no guarantee.”

“Huh,” said Ives. “Is that what Tim told you when he and Ari broke up?”

Silence. Then: “Ives… we’ll talk. Please, I promise you, I will help you find Tim, and we’ll all talk this over. Please, just… we’ll get it all straightened out. If it’s any consolation, I would feel exactly the same way if I were you, or for that matter, Ari. Tim was just as hurt by all of this then as you are now. He suffered plenty, and not just almost getting eaten by Killer Croc.”

“What?!”

“Calm down, Ives! I’m sorry! Just… just come, okay?”

Ives collapsed backwards onto his bed, cell phone still to his ear. “Robinson Park,” he said. “You want to meet in Robinson Park, right?”

***

Ives had never once thought of visiting Ari in her dorm before. But when he called her to tell her that he’d been called by Stephanie, he decided to take a leaf from Stephanie’s book and tell her what he’d heard himself.

“Is it really that bad?” Ari had said over the phone. “Tim… is he…?”

“He’s alive,” said Ives, “or at least that’s what Stephanie says. I promise you, you’ll want to hear this in person.”

And so Ives hiked across campus to Ari’s dorm building, went to her dorm, and they sat down, with the door closed, and talked.

Ari was speechless.

“This… this isn’t happening,” she said. “I… it never… even that time when I said that Tim was Batman, I was almost joking. But… oh— oh—”

To Ives’s great alarm, Ari suddenly got up, and ran over to the dorm window, pushing it open and then vomiting out of it into the cool spring morning air.

“Ari!” said Ives. He ran over where she was, and gathered up her hair in a ponytail, while she continued to throw up. She wretched for at least five minutes, before straightening up.

“I’m… I’m okay,” she said finally. “I’m… I need a towel.”

Ives nodded, guiding her over to her bed, and following her instructions to get a towel to her.

“Do you… do you still want to go meet Stephanie?” said Ives. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No, no,” said Ari, shaking her head, “I will go with you. I’m… I’m going to see this through. I want to know the truth as much as you do.” Ari breathed in, and let out some tears. “I still want to invite Tim to church, and… and clear the air between us. I want… I want to get to the point where I can stop not wanting to ever see him again.”

Ives nodded, and put an arm around Ari. She leaned towards him, and he held her close. They did not kiss, or fondle, or anything of the kind. They just sat there, on the edge of Ari’s bed, close together. This is what Ari needs, thought Ives. And… and maybe it’s what I need too.

***

Ives and Ari had gotten into Ives’ car on Saturday morning, and were now making the commute to Robinson Park.

“Turn here,” Ari had said as they drove into the city. She was navigating and Ives was driving. It was the weekend, and Ives had told his parents that he was going on a date. And… it sort of counted as a date. He and Ari were going somewhere to share an important experience. That’s basically what a date was… right?

I’ll tell mom and dad everything when I know everything, he thought to himself. I’m not going to copy Tim’s mistake.

“Did Stephanie pick the meeting location, Ives?”

“Um, yeah,” said Ives, as he steered the car towards the exit that led towards Robinson Park. “Stephanie said that meeting in a public place was for our benefit. I guess it makes me feel… a little safer.”

Ari exhaled loudly, and settled back in her seat. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “My… my ex-boyfriend… works for Batman. And I dumped him.”

“You deserved better, Ari,” said Ives. “Ten times better. And… and we’re going to find out if Tim felt the same way.”

Ari looked at him, and said, “That’s sweet of you, Ives.”

Ives gulped hard. He’d never had a girlfriend before. He’d been out with Callie a few times back in high school, but she had declined to enter to an official boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.

Insomuch as a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship can be official, thought Ives.

The drive continued, until Ives and Ari were able to find a parking spot within walking distance of the park. It was downtown, and finding parking was always a pain, even on a cold Saturday morning. He went over to a parking meter, a neat digital one which took credit cards.

Ives noted the WayneTech logo on the rim of the machine, and couldn’t help but wonder exactly how long it had taken the techno-wizards there to assemble the electronic parking meter. WayneTech isn’t the first company to have put something like this together, he thought. But they did make a better one.

“Ives? Are we going?”

Ives perked up his ears, and took the slip which the permit machine had printed out. “Yeah, just one sec, Ari,” said Ives, taking the slip and taping it to the inside of his car window. The stickers could be attached and removed at will, and there was elastic around the edges which allowed the sticker to face outward for the benefit of meter maids. It even had a barcode on it which could be used to look up the buyer’s information in the event of an emergency.

Ives and Ari continued on. They had to park three blocks west of Robinson Park, but a little bit of extra walking wasn’t much of a price to pay for this occasion.

Ives and Ari were just getting into the thickening crowds of people characteristic of a large, east coast city, when Ari said over the din, “I saw you looking pretty hard at that parking meter machine over there. Was there something wrong with it?”

“Oh, no,” said Ives, continuing to walk along. “If anything, there were a million things right with it! WayneTech never fails to impress. That machine can give verbal instructions in multiple languages, and can automatically adapt to whatever location it’s put in to communicate in the top ten languages of whatever ZIP code it’s in. It’s portable, can be retrofitted to be stationary, and it’s powered by an electric battery. It sends an automatic signal to a central hub whenever it’s beginning to get low on battery life, which tells the company that they need to send a technician to change the battery. And the camera installed in it as an anti-theft device is equipped with facial recognition software which can be used by police to match thieves to multiple central databases.”

“You seem to know a lot about what went in to making that machine,” said Ari. “You’d be great at being… oh, what’s it… yeah, a mechanical engineer. Why don’t you just major in engineering?”

“Well, yeah,” said Ives, rolling his eyes, “but what’s an engineer going to do to make inner city schools less dangerous? Or get dark money out of politics? Or… or to reform criminal law so that maniacs like Joker and Two-Face get the death penalty already?”

“What is anyone going to do to make sure things like that get done?” said Ari. “Ives… for someone who’s an absolute brain, you’re still kind of dense.”

Ives scoffed. “Thanks a lot, Ari,” he said.

“No, no, don’t take it the wrong way,” said Ari. She held up her smartphone. “I mean, look at this phone,” she said. “Some engineers and doctors and scientists, or… or whatever, they went to a lot of trouble to create this phone. And now we’re using it to get from Point A to Point B. And some other engineers and scientists made that electronic parking meter over there. And it was engineers and scientists who made the car we just drove to get here, and paved the roads, and invented traffic lights! Imagine trying to drive around without traffic lights!”

Ives nodded. “Okay, so… engineers, scientists… they do plenty to make the world a better place.”

Ari laughed, and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, no, duh!” she said cheerfully. “Seriously, Ives, you don’t even need to invent the next lifesaving medicine or new safety feature for some type of machine they use in factories or… or something. My Uncle Vari? He made a big difference in people’s lives just by inventing a business.”

“Inventing a business?”

“Yeah, he opened a deli in Gotham Heights during NML. Thousands of people were going back-and-forth every day, trying to get the heck out of dodge or just try to get somewhere period. And all those people had to eat something. So Uncle Vari set up his deli, even though he didn’t need the money for the most part, and was able to make a profit by providing fresh sandwiches and hot chili to hungry commuters. That’s why my family came to America at all! In America, you can make a living by doing something which makes somebody else’s life better.”

Ives let all of that sink in. “Wow, I… I never thought about it that way. It seems… it seems so obvious. I never would have guessed.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re a boy!”

Ives and Ari both got a laugh out of that.

But they finally got to the park. Robinson Park had undergone a significant facelift in recent years. NML had left it ravaged almost beyond repair, and even when Poison Ivy had been evicted from the location, everyone avoided the park for at least a year. Even as the passage of years almost made No Man’s Land just a bad dream, the park remained in significant disrepair. But newly elected mayor Christopher Nakano had made urban revitalization a priority, and that included cleaning up Robinson Park. The result, chiefly due to the fact that Wayne Enterprises had taken on the job, was a thriving, beautiful park with statuary gardens, playgrounds, scenic walking paths, and more. These days, Robinson Park drew comparisons to Central Park, and attracted more than its fair share of tourists.

And so it was that Ives and Ari found themselves walking over to the statues of Thomas and Martha Wayne in one corner of the park, mostly free of visitors. Perhaps the low foot traffic in that spot was why Stephanie had picked it. As Ives and Ari walked down the path leading there, Ives wondered if it would be wise to try and hold Ari’s hand. He glanced over at her, gulped, and then extended his palm.

His hand grasped hers, and Ari looked at him, her expression blank at first. But that blank expression gave way to a smile. Ives nodded, and gave Ari’s hand a brief, tight squeeze. She squeezed back, and the two continued down the path, hand-in-hand.

When they got to the statue, a blonde-haired twenty-something in a purple windbreaker was waiting for them. Stephanie. Ives could mostly recognize her from her Facebook profile picture.

“Stephanie Brown?” said Ives as he and Ari came up to the girl.

The girl turned to look at them, and said, “Ives? And… Ari?”

“Yes, I am Ari,” said Ari, giving Stephanie a cold glare which made even Ives quiver.

“Uh, yeah, and I’m Ives,” said Ives. “But… but you knew that. I think.”

“Relax, Ives,” said Stephanie. Stephanie turned to Ari, and said, “Ari? I… I’m glad to meet you. And… I’m sorry. For everything you must have gone through. I don’t know all the details, but I think I can guess a lot of it.”

“Oh really?” said Ari.

“Yes, yes, really,” said Stephanie, obviously trying to be patient.

Ives peered over at Ari, hoping he was giving her a look which said, Try to keep a cool head, Ari, please please, please. They were still holding hands.

“Uh, look,” said Stephanie, gesturing over to a nearby bench, “let’s go over to that bench. We can sit down a little. Okay? We’re in a pretty out-of-the-way corner of the park, and… and I think this would be a good place to sit and talk. Would… would you two be okay with that?”

Ari sighed, and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I… Ives already gave me the short version, which I guess is the version you gave him. So… why don’t we both get the long version? Would that be good, Stephanie?”

Stephanie bit her lip, and bobbed her head up and down, before going over to the bench with them, after which the three of them sat down. “Okay,” said Stephanie, “I first want you to know that all of this stuff is going to sound really weird. It’s going to sound like… like a soap opera. Seriously. Days of Our Lives with fistfights and explosions.”

Ives let out a sigh of his own, and said, “Stephanie, I sometimes think that life is a soap opera. Just... start at the beginning, and finish at the end.”

“Pft,” said Stephanie. “’The beginning.’ There’s a lot of beginnings in this story of mine. But… but I’ll start with Tim’s beginning. I have permission to talk about that. Uh… ready?”

“Ready,” said Ari.

“Crystal,” said Ives. “Just… we’re listening. So… talk. Okay?”

And so Stephanie talked.

Chapter Text

The building where The Gotham Gazette was housed was one of the bizarre, art-deco structures which had been all over the city prior to the quake which preceded NML. It didn’t look so bad.

But that’s not what Abbot was thinking as he and Alpha walked down the sidewalk toward the doors leading into that building’s lobby. Instead, he was thinking about how uncomfortable his clothes were.

Abbot’s suit was deliberately too small. It constricted his breathing to the point where he had to keep the top portion of the collar unbuttoned and significantly loosen his tie. It was part of the disguise get-up which Ali and Behrooz had given them. He and Alpha were disguised as DEO agents, and DEO agents, said Ali, were overworked and underpaid. For guys like DEO agents, ill-fitting suits were the least of their problems, but such suits were also things they would likely have.

He took some comfort in the fact that his partner in his current task, Alpha, was having no picnic either. Where Abbot’s problem mainly lay in his constrictive suit-and-tie squeezing into his bulky frame, Alpha had to deal with the problems presented by a tall, lanky body and long limbs. His suit was also too small, and it showed.

“If we were going undercover as FBI,” muttered Alpha as they walked into The Gotham Gazette building, “we wouldn’t have this problem. Feds have way better suits than this.”

“A, no guarantee,” said Abbot, “and B, DEO makes more sense in this op. Our snitches in the DEO say that they’ve investigated Batman before, and someone like Vale probably knows at least rumors of something like that happening. The Bats are capes, the DEO investigates capes. Ergo, the federal law enforcement body which would be dispatched to investigate the Bats is the DEO. Comprende, amigo?”

“Psh,” said Alpha, “what-the-hell ever. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Right, all right,” said Abbot, as the two began to approach the Gazette building’s front desk. “Just let me do the talking.”

“What, and I get to just play human stage prop?”

Abbot looked Alpha right in the eye. “Alpha?” said Abbot. “Do you actually want to do any of the talking?”

Alpha thought for a minute. “No,” he said.

“Good,” said Abbot. “If I need you, I’ll ask for your help. Odds are I will, but we stick to the plan for now. Worst case scenario, we end up playing good-cop-bad-cop. You like that?”

“Righto, Jack. I’m with ya.”

Abbot and Alpha showed their badges, identifying Abbot as “Matt Costigan” and the Asian-American Alpha as “Josh Hu.” The front desk receptionist made a call, and then sent them up. An elevator ride later, they were in the offices of The Gotham Gazette.

The Gotham Gazette, like all print publications, was in a period of transition. The internet had changed things, but not everything. For plenty of people, The Gotham Gazette was their paper. From homebound senior citizens who liked to think that they were informed because they read the Gazette and watched MSNBC to the new crops of yuppies who had moved to the area for work wanting to get their local news in a decidedly authentic fashion, there were plenty of people who still read the Gazette’s print edition.

Not that Abbot cared, nor did Alpha, to the best of his knowledge. All he was concerned with at the moment was finding someone who wrote for the Gazette: staff reporter Vicki Vale.

Abbot had shown his fake DEO badge to the managing editor, who shepherded them to Vale’s office. When Abbot and Alpha got to Vale’s office, and she had an office rather than a cubicle, she was talking on two phones, one a landline phone cradled between her shoulder and her head and the other a cellphone held to her head, and she was using her free hand to write down notes.

Holy God, thought Abbot, this Vale chick is crazy.

“Vick?” said the managing editor, a bearded, heavyset man in a rumpled suit-and-tie. “You’ve got visitors.”

Vale looked up, saw Abbot holding up his badge, nodded, and efficiently excused herself from her phone calls. She put down her phones, turned toward them and away from her cluttered desk and the desktop computer which occupied it, and said, “Let me guess. You two are here to ask about the Batman.”

Abbot felt himself go numb. That was unexpected.

But then Alpha spoke up. “Yeah, you’re right on the ball, lady” he said. “I’m Agent Hu, and this is Agent Costigan. Do you have any idea what kind of hell the Bats have been raising? We know you’re the numero uno reporter chick on the Bat-beat. We’ve got a big enough file on you to fill up a whole cabinet drawer.”

“Is it bigger than the file they have on me in the Gazette’s morgue?” said Vale. “Please. I’ve been visited by all of you guys. GCPD, DEO, FBI, ARGUS, the friggin’ ATF… they all want what I know. And what do I know?” Vale just grinned. “Lawyer. Also, I suspect that the NSA is keeping tabs on me too. Can’t confirm it, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“This is serious,” said Abbot. They needed to retake control of the situation. He then said the magic phrase. “We can do this the easy way…” said Abbot, deliberately inserting some grit into his voice, “…or the hard way.”

“Whoah, calm down, Costy,” said Alpha, holding up a pair of flattened hands in Abbot’s direction. “Last time we did things ‘the hard way,’ Rubio got royally ticked at us.”

“The hard way being… what, exactly?” said Vale. “Good cop, bad cop, right? Nice try.”

Abbot fumed. This was not going the way he had hoped. “We were hoping you’d be a bit more cooperative,” said Abbot. “We just want to ask you some questions, and then if you don’t cooperate, we come back with a warrant.”

“Fine,” said Vale. “I’m an open book. What do you want to know?”

“Where is Tim Drake? He’s wanted for multiple federal offenses.”

“Why would I know where Tim is? Just because I used to date his foster dad?”

“That was our basic assumption,” said Alpha.

“Look, dude,” said Vale, leaning further back in her chair and putting her hands on her head. “If you want to find somebody, you might want to try Google. Get with the times, Uncle Sticky.”

“’Get with the times?’” said Alpha. “You work at a friggin’ newspaper. What would you know about ‘getting with the times?’”

“Does that fact that I have an Instagram account mean anything?” said Vale sweetly. “Do you even know what Instagram is? I use it to take pictures of the old art deco monstrosities that didn’t get knocked down by the quake. I actually find them kind of endearing to look at. Things were different before the quake. Hell, things were different before Knightfall.”

“What in God’s name is ‘Knightfall’?” said Alpha.

Vale just scoffed. “Same answer, Uncle Sticky: Google it.” Vale turned back to her desk, and picked up her landline phone again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I’m trying to figure out who the arsonist was who burned down the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Devil’s Square last week. It might be Deacon Blackfire teaming up with Firefly, but no guarantee. Those two are both wackos, but the only thing they have in common is that they both have the word ‘fire’ in their names. My source at Arkham, however, says that they were spending a lot of time together before they both escaped last month. Might be front-page material.” Vale picked up her cell phone, dialed, and propped the landline between her head and left shoulder. “Good day, gents. See you later when you get that warrant.”

Abbot looked at Alpha, and nodded. The two then walked out without a word.

When they reached their car, an old sedan, another gift from Ali and Behrooz, they began to talk once they both sat down inside of it. “Jesus Christ, man,” said Alpha. “That sucked.”

“Tell me about it,” said Abbot, who was in the driver’s seat, while Alpha occupied the passenger seat. Abbot really, really wanted a drink. “That Vale chick,” he said, grabbing a bag of sunflower seeds off of the back seat, “is tough as nails. It’s like she knew we were coming.”

“What makes you think she didn’t?” said Alpha. “I read her file before we came here. She’s been on the scene of a million Bat-disasters since the beginning of the Batman’s career. She’s like, an O.G. within the Bat-Family.”

“We know that,” said Abbot, munching on the sunflower seeds. They were a present from Whisper. Something to replace his drinking habit. “We know that she knows what the IDs of all the bats are, and we also know what those IDs are. The idea is to trick her into doing something stupid, like calling one of the Bats on her tapped office phone line, or saying anything interesting at all in her bugged office, or going out and about, after which we begin tailing her.”

Alpha shook his head. “Look, man,” he said, “do you really think she’s dumb enough to do any of that crap? I’m telling you, if we can get stonewalled by a former lingerie model with roughly the physique of a bendy straw, then how the hell are we going to even find Drake, never mind insert a bullet into his skull?”

Abbot massaged his temples, and leaned back in his seat. “Walk by faith, not by sight,” he said.

“What?”

“Something I heard on a televangelist channel once.”

“…You watch televangelist channels?”

“It was on in this bar I was in once. The owner was a very crazy man of God.”

Just then, Alpha’s flip phone rang. The ringtone was “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas. Alpha hastily picked up the phone and answered it, while Abbot collapsed back in his seat. This was pathetic.

“Yeah?” said Alpha into his phone. Abbot could hear the noise of the caller, meaning that whoever was talking to Alpha was speaking very, very loudly. Alpha said, “Wait, slow down… what? Are… are you sure? …Okay. Call everyone else. We’ll meet you there. …Uh-huh.”

Alpha clapped his flip phone shut, and hastily reached under his seat for something. “Drive!” said Alpha. “We need to go to Robinson Park. Pru and Whisper say they’ve seen Drake and Brown meeting up there.”

Abbot was suddenly jolted back into the present at the mention of the word “Drake.” “Drake is at Robinson Park,” said Abbot, “out in the open… with his ex?”

“That’s what she said,” said Alpha with a smirk. He’d pulled an Uzi out from under his seat, and he was loading it with a clip. “Now drive already!”

Abbot gunned the engine, and bit down as they drove towards Robinson Park. He was already trying to plot out what could be done given the barebones nature of the intel he’d been given. Pru and Whisper had spotted Drake. Drake needed to die. But the Master didn’t want a public spectacle, meaning… what, exactly? Maybe they could just walk up and shoot Drake and then get the hell out of dodge. Mission accomplished.

But from the outset, Abbot knew that something was wrong. Drake, just out in public, with his ex-girlfriend? He smelled a rat. Whisper and Pru may have made the call, and they might have something to go on, but something was very, very wrong with this situation. It was too easy.

When Abbot and Alpha arrived at Robinson Park, they exited the car. Alpha was still hefting his Uzi, clearing the chamber as he got out of the passenger door.

“Put that thing away, Jack,” growled Abbot to Alpha. “No bullets start flying until we do recon.” Alpha obliged, returning the Uzi to its spot under the passenger seat. Alpha still had a Glock in a shoulder holster underneath his coat.

To Abbot’s total bewilderment, he saw the last thing he expected: The Seven Men of Death, minus Whisper and Pru, congregated around one of the statues. Like they were just waiting for something to happen.

"Hey,” he said, striding up to them, “what the hell is this? A friggin’ family reunion? Where’s Drake?”

Mesi looked at him, an odd look on her face. “I thought you knew. I’m here because Pru called us and told us to come here to nail Drake. I was waiting for your greenlight.

“Yeah, same here,” said Merlyn, who shouldered his way forward to talk to Abbot. “Whisper called me and Detonator and told us to come here. Abbot, what’s going on?”

Abbot shook his head, and looked around. Something was very, very wrong. He sniffed the air, summoning the smallest vestiges of his wolf form. He could detect the scent of angry, sweaty men, rushing toward them from the edges of the park.

Abbot looked around, counting his men. They were all here… but where was Pru?

“Where are Pru and Whisper?” said Abbot to Merlyn.

“I… I dunno,” began Merlyn. But then he stopped, looking off in another direction. “Ah, son of a…”

And the shouts began.

Chapter Text

Ives and Ari had heard the long version. They had both interrupted to ask questions, at frequent intervals, but eventually, the entire story had been laid out. Thanks to Stephanie, Ives and Ari now knew everything.

Almost everything.

“So, Tim figured out who Batman was, but we don’t get to know that part?” said Ives.

“Yes,” said Stephanie. “My boss made that clear.”

“Your boss, meaning… what’s her name… Oracle?” said Ives.

“Yes,” said Stephanie. “Oracle is calling the shots behind the scenes these days. She and B-Man kind of had a falling out after Batman Inc. went down the tubes, and now she’s dealing with clean-up now that the man himself is out of the picture.”

“Okay,” said Ari, “and Tim… Tim… just, wow. I never knew about any of this stuff. Tim really was a superhero, and… and I dumped him!”

Stephanie said, “Wait, you dumped Tim?”

“…Yes,” said Ari.

Stephanie cocked her head to one side, and said, “Huh. That… that makes me feel a little better about… I’m sorry, stealing your boyfriend’s heart.”

“Yeah, I… I just wish… I just wish he’d told me about all of this stuff!” said Ari. “I mean, in any other world, especially fourteen-year-old Ari’s world… this would have been super cool!”

“You… you think this would have been… cool?” said Ives.

“Like I said, fourteen-year-old Ari would have thought so,” said Ari. “I’m not so sure now. To be truthful, I think this all sounds kind of… nightmarish… the more I think about it, but… Tim went through a lot, and I had no idea, and… I think I would have cut him a lot more slack if I just… knew.”

Stephanie nodded, and said, “Look, I can relate. I didn’t even know what Tim’s real name was until we’d been dating in costume for, like, eight months. Gosh, how long did NML last? A year?”

“Look, just… forget that for now,” said Ives. “Batman Inc. is gone, Batman himself is not something you can talk about, but Tim is alright, and… and you know where Tim is.”

“Yes,” said Stephanie. “I know where Tim is. He’s—”

Just then, Stephanie stopped talking, and put a hand under her hair, to where her long blonde hair was covering her right ear.

“Goth Girl 3 here,” said Stephanie.

“What?” said Ives.

Stephanie waved her hand at Ives and gave him a dirty look. She looked tense now. “Where?” she said, sounding a little surprised. She removed her hand, and looked around slightly. “Shoot,” she said, putting her hand back to her ear. “Okay, I’ll get them to safety. We might need to get up, up, and away. Goth Girl 3 out.”

Stephanie, taking her hand away from her ear, slowly got up, and said, “We need to go. Now.”

Ives tensed up. “What’s the matter?” he said.

“There’s bad guys over there,” said Stephanie in a strangely cheerful, smiling manner. She continued wearing her grin, but Ives could swear her eyes looked icy and steely. She’s putting on a show, he thought.

“Uh, yes,” said Ives, grabbing Ari by the hand and helping her up. “Lead the way to safety, Steph.”

“Ives?” said Ari.

“Come on, this way, boy and girl!” said Stephanie as she walked down the path, still cheery and perky.

Ives looked at Ari, and mouthed the words, “Play along.”

Ari nodded, grinned, and surprised Ives by wrapping her arm around him. Ives decided to go with it, as he and Ari walked after Stephanie, arms around each other’s shoulders.

“Is this a bit much?” whispered Ari through smiling teeth.

“Let’s find out later,” said Ives.

The two walked quickly after Stephanie, Stephanie leading the way and making sure that they were able to keep up. The three went down the path, with Stephanie going progressively faster as they reached the border of Robinson Park. She didn’t look to the left or to the right, but she just went forward. Ives craned his neck past Ari, thinking that maybe there was something he ought to try and see. But he didn’t see anything.

Eventually, the three of them arrived at nearby parking lot, and Stephanie led them to a purple Mini Cooper, which looked like it had seen better days. It had the black hulk of a plastic kayak mounted on the roof via a roof rack. Ives guessed it made sense that someone like Stephanie was the physical, outdoorsy type.

Stephanie opened the door to the backseat, and said to them, “Get in, please. We’re not safe here.”

Ives was about to ask why precisely they weren’t safe there, when a very scary sound made him think better of it.

The sound of a gunshot echoed through the air, coming from the general direction of the location they had just left.

“Shoot!” said Stephanie. She went over to Ives and Ari, and pushed them towards the car, saying, “Come on! Get in the car, you two! Do you want to be shot by ninjas?”

More gunshots echoed from the park, and the sounds of yells and gunfire filtered in from the distance behind them. Ives said to Ari, “Come on, let’s get into the car, Ari…”

“Right!” said Ari, and the two piled into the backseat of Stephanie’s car, Ives closing the door behind them and Stephanie getting into the front seat.

“Okay,” said Stephanie as the three of them buckled up. “This ain’t the Batmobile, but it’s the best we’ve got. You two ever been in a car chase before?”

And just as Ives was pulling the car door shut, he saw something straight out of a dream he might have had after going to bed on a stomach full of anchovy pizza: A giant werewolf bounding across the lot towards them, teeth bared and eyes green and crazed.

***

Dozens of armed men in SWAT gear, bearing the words “FBI” and “DEO” on their ballistic vests, swarmed the area, pounding across the stretches grass which Abbot realized too little too late were almost devoid of civilians. The civilians who were there had gotten up, whipped out handguns, and were leading the charge against them.

“On the ground!” yelled one FBI SWAT officer, pointing his gun straight at Abbot. “On the ground now!”

Abbot yelled, “Scatter!”

The good news for Abbot was that he still had an ace in the hole: his werewolf act. Shouldering his way towards the waves of FBI and DEO SWAT teams which were headed his way, he summoned his wolf form, changing into it quicker than he perhaps ever had done. He could feel the burning in his stomach and the strangely thrilling pain which he felt when his nose and mouth morphed into the narrow snout of a wolf. His clothes shredded apart, and he felt the new, primal strength in his arms and legs. Heading towards the large hedge which separated the edge of the park from an empty lot, he made a titanic leap, and landed on the other side.

Abbot clattered across the roof of a parked Prius and then onto the cement pavement of a new, clean parking lot. He then took off on all fours across the lot, also devoid of civilians. He could dimly make out sirens and flashing lights of police cars off on the far borders of the lot, obviously intending to keep civilians out of the area. He then did the only thing he could do right now: Follow his nose.

Abbot sniffed as he ran, and found what he was looking for: The smell of a snake. Whisper’s perfumy, enticingly noxious scent was coming from just up ahead. He could root it out, and if he could find Whisper, then that would solve a lot of problems.

He bounded up along the borders of the park, and he could hear gunshots firing. Perhaps one of those shots was from the report of Alpha’s Glock. He didn’t know. He did know that somewhere, in the bushes up ahead, was his favorite rattlesnake.

Whisper nearly ran into him as she came up from around the edge of a car, in human form.

“Get over there! Now!” she said, pointing off in another direction.

“What’s over there?” said Abbot.

“It’s Brown! I’ve been listening to her going down memory lane with these two kids for half-an-hour! Pru was supposed to update you!”

Abbot shook his head, it not being lost on him that, if nothing else, they had been set up. By Pru, probably. They had been led right into a DEO-FBI sting. But if Brown was here…

“Quick, pick me up!” she said, and Alpha saw that Whisper was beginning to mold into snake form already.

“Whisper?” said Abbot.

“Just pick me up and get over to that purple Mini Cooper with the cracked windshield!” said Whisper, literally hissing as she shrunk down, now almost totally in snake form.

Abbot decided that now was not the time for a strategy session. Now was the time to follow orders and do what needed to be done in this moment.

And so he did.

Chapter Text

Ives had not been this terrified since that time he had been cornered by some kind of monster in an abandoned building in pre-NML Gotham with Hudson, back in junior high. They’d been saved by Robin. Meaning that they’d been saved by Tim. Good of Tim to do that.

The reason Ives was terrified now, as Stephanie manically drove the car down the street, doing sixty in a school zone, was because he’d managed to glimpse what looked like a giant wolf bounding toward their car as Stephanie hurriedly pulled out of the lot and zoomed off.

But it hadn’t been fast enough. The werewolf thing had landed right on top of the car’s roof, and was now clawing at the sides.

“Seatbelts!” barked Stephanie, and Ives didn’t need to be told twice. He put on his seatbelt, and he had enough of his wits about him to efficiently reach over and buckle Ari’s too.

Ari was not having the best time either. She was screaming, understandably panicked as the giant wolf clawed at the roof and windows of the zooming Mini Cooper. She was alternating between hysterically yelling and hysterically shouting “Omigoshomigohsomigosh.”

Then, Ari grabbed Ives, and Ives grabbed her. They held each other tightly. If it weren’t for the terrifying nature of the situation, Ives probably would have immediately noted that such a physical arrangement was entirely new to him. He’d never held a girl before, and that time when he’d hugged Ari while they sat on her bed digesting Stephanie’s message didn’t count.

But now, the car rammed forward, swerving past and around other cars, and the only thing Ives could do was to try and be a little manlier than usual for Ari’s sake. He needed to help her in at least that way.

Help.

Suddenly, Ives had an idea.

Ives very uncomfortably reached with his right hand into his right jacket pocket, which, thankfully, was not on the side of his body which was pressed against Ari’s. He then pulled out his smartphone, swiped to the emergency call screen, and pressed three buttons. Ari was still screaming. The car was still racing. The wolf on the roof was still trying to break through the windows.

Are those windows shatterproof or something? thought Ives. Those giant claws should have at least made a scratch by now.

But then somebody answered the phone.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Um, yeah, hi,” said Ives, “I’m in a car which is driving down… uh, Fourth and Grand, just off Robinson Park, and there’s a giant wolf on the roof of our car, trying to kill us… oh my gosh!”

The wolf had finally managed to make a crack in one of the windows. Stephanie was still driving like a maniac, and now they were headed towards the Sprang Bridge. An ugly, furry claw grabbed the inside of the car, clawing at the ceiling, and Ari kept screaming.

“Please stay calm, sir,” said the nine-one-one operator, a consummate professional. “Officers have already been dispatched to Robinson Park, and we have officers enroute to your location. Are you still on Fourth and Grand?”

“We’re heading towards the Sprang Bridge—” began Ives, but then he said, “Oh my gosh!”

Stephanie had just turned off from the Sprang Bridge, roaring over a barrier wall and flying into the air.

And they didn’t go crashing to the ground. They flew. They were sailing through the air, flying. Ives could feel the beating of the air coming in through the smashed window, which was being closed up, along with the other passenger car windows, with steel sheets coming up out of the doors to cover them. He could feel the rumbling of what he recognized as an airplane engine emanating from the body of the car. The giant wolf had been thrown off the roof when they had left the Sprang Bridge behind.

“Hello? Sir?” said the operator. “There’s a lot of noise coming through your end.”

“Um… I think… I think we’re okay?” said Ives. He looked down at Ari, who was still squeezing onto him for dear life.

“Let me take over, Ives,” said Stephanie, a bit more calmly now. “Nice job doing the smart, normal thing, though. It’s good to see that you still have a cool head.”

Stephanie pressed a button on her console, and the voice of the nine-one-one operator became audible through the car’s speakers.

“Dispatch,” said Stephanie, “this is Officer Wray. We’ve arrived on site and the assailant is neutralized. The boy who called you is safe.”

Ives listened to Stephanie talk to the nine-one-one operator, and as the conversation was closed, he looked down at where they were. They were in a literal flying car, and they were soaring above downtown Gotham. This day had gotten incredibly surreal incredibly fast. Ari had stopped screaming, and was now just looking around, just as scared as Ives was. She didn’t stop holding onto him.

Finally, Ives shook his head, and in the bizarre, oddly quiet calm of the flying car’s interior, he said, “Stephanie? What. The Hell. Is going on?”

***

The first thing Abbot noticed when he woke up was that he had no clothes on. That probably explained why he felt so cold. The caked blood on his nose wasn’t very comforting either. He could vaguely feel being lifted up onto some kind of board, and then being carried into a very small room. He could see a cold, bright morning sky above him, and he could make out the trappings of a nice backyard.

As the rumbling of nearby voices began to register in his brain, he finally came to himself. I fell off a flying car one-hundred feet above a riverside residential neighborhood, he thought as he felt the trundling and sirens of what he now realized was an ambulance echo around him. He now realized that the voices talking above him belonged to three paramedics. I landed in some upper-middle class family’s backyard. He was finally beginning to feel real pain. I was in wolf-form just long enough to survive the fall. Lucky… friggin’ lucky me. Just… I just hope Whisper was just as lucky.

And then: I need a drink.

As he finally got his wits more or less about him, he was able to finally do one important thing: Talk.

“Hey, uh… what’s going on?” he said out loud. That’s it, play dumb.

“Hey, he’s awake,” said one of the paramedics. “Sir?” he said. “I’m a paramedic, and there’s been an accident, but you’re okay. Can I please ask you some questions?”

Abbot had training for situations like this. He remembered most of it.

“What is your name?” said the paramedic.

“Matt… Matthew Seamus Costigan.”

“Okay. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Abbot decided that it was now time to play dumber. “Ah, man,” he said, “I need a friggin’ drink…”

“Okay, keep calm sir. We’ll get you some water. We have some bottled water right here.”

Abbot couldn’t help but let out a snigger. Water. Ha. That actually sounded good right now.

The ambulance eventually reached a hospital, and Abbot was zipped through to the emergency room. Despite pretending to be mostly out of it, he could clearly hear the hospital staff referring to him as a “John Doe,” and he could feel them dressing him in a hospital gown as he was carried to a bed somewhere in the bowels of St. Luke’s Hospital of Gotham City. On the whole, what was happening now wasn’t the worst experience he’d ever had. The incident three weeks ago with the League members picking him up in that bar before dragging him off to be tortured came to mind.

Abbot finally regained almost all of his faculties in the dimly lit hospital room. The bright, fluorescent lights of the outer hallway crept in, barely getting past the venetian blinds installed over the windows facing the hallway. He looked around, saw that there was nobody nearby, and also saw that there was a little box attached to a cord laying on his chest. He presumably had to press the button on it to summon help.

Perhaps it would be wise to be subtle about what was going on. He pressed the button.

A nurse came in several seconds later, and began taking his information. Name? Matthew Seamus Costigan. Date of birth? September 17, 1979. Emergency contact? Adeel Ali. Relationship to Patient? Domestic partner.

Abbot was glad that he had a decent cover story, but he still felt squeamish about the idea that part of it meant pretending to be Ali’s boyfriend. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was a flourish added by Ra’s. It felt like his kind of funny, if the man even had a sense of humor.

After getting some blood taken and being inspected by a doctor, Abbot was finally allowed to give Ali a call. He wasn’t surprised that the medical staff didn’t ask him about how he happened to wind up naked in some guy’s riverside backyard. That job belonged to the cops, and the cops were busy with the nonsense going on in Robinson Park right now.

Abbot winced when he saw the television that was in the hospital room playing news footage of the aftermath of the Robinson Park incident. The incident was still breaking and the TV people didn’t have anything solid to go on yet, but the reporter lady on the TV was saying something about “multiple wanted criminals arrested.” Abbot prayed to Ra’s that there had been no fatalities. The only murder investigation that the Master wanted to deal with circumventing was Drake’s, and it hadn’t happened yet. And Whisper… where was she? Did her impromptu plan work?

“Ali here,” came Ali’s voice from the other end of the line.

“Hey, yeah, this is Matt, Adeel,” said Abbot, glancing up at the nurse who was standing off in the corner. Abbot gave the emergency passphrase, saying, “Did you remember to buy peppermint tea?”

“Peppermint tea” was what Abbot and his teammates were meant to say if they needed extraction. It was helpful if they needed to talk on the phone while undercover among enemies, or while calling on a phone which they knew was tapped, or simply in a public place where they were under close scrutiny, like this hospital room. Somebody further up in the League’s administration had come up with the phrase, which made sense, since Abbot knew that all of the League’s top managers were huge tea-drinkers. It was an Asian thing.

“Yeah, I bought some peppermint tea,” said Ali. “Are you alright? Where are you?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Abbot. “I’m at the hospital. Uh… St. Luke’s, downtown. I just found myself in the weirdest place after drinking all last night. That was a hell of a party, am I right, sweetums?”

Abbot took just a little perverse joy in Ali’s sighing into the phone. “Right, sweetums,” said Ali dryly. “I’ll be right over there. Also, your dad called. He wants to talk as soon as possible.”

Abbot stiffened up, and felt his blood run cold.

“Dad” was code for Ra’s al Ghul.

Chapter Text

The flying car made landfall a few miles north of Bristol, landing on an out-of-the-way coastal highway and reverting to car form. Stephanie then began driving back towards Bristol, and finally began answering the questions she’d agreed to talk over once they weren’t flying around a dense urban area.

“You got the long version of Tim’s story,” said Stephanie as they drove down the almost totally deserted highway, “so here’s the short version of the Network’s story. The Network was originally a bunch of Bat-Family allies working together to fight crime in Gotham after Batman went missing a while back. Well, Batman came back, and the Network was kind of dormant for a while. But after Batman Inc. went the way of the dodo and B-Man went off to do his own thing, Oracle reorganized the Network. Oracle’s now using the Network to clean up the mess that Bru— uh, that… that Batman left when he went on his new adventure.”

“And what new adventure is that?” said Ives.

“Classified, civilian,” said Stephanie. “I don’t have permission to tell you anything other than that.”

“So where’s Tim?” said Ari. She’d just about recovered from the attack, the car chase, and the flying. She’d managed to stop grabbing Ives, and had blushed heavily when she realized what she had been doing.

“Tim’s in Ossaville,” said Stephanie. “It’s this one-horse town in west Pennsylvania where an old Bat-Family hangout is. I don’t know. I just know that the last time I saw Tim, he… he just wanted to be left alone. I’m… I’m honestly worried about him.”

“No effing spit, lady,” said Ives. “How do you think we feel?”

“Ives, be nice,” said Ari. “Stephanie’s doing everything she can to help us. The least you could do is thank her for saving our lives.”

Ives opened his mouth to object, but then shut it. Ari was right. “I’m sorry, Stephanie,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

“I forgive you, Ives,” said Stephanie. “No hard feelings.”

Ives sighed, and leaned back in the seat. His butt was feeling numb after sitting rooted in the same spot for what felt like forever. “So… where are we going now, Steph?” said Ives.

“Old Gotham,” said Stephanie. “There’s a satellite Batcave there, and we need to go there to regroup. I talked to Oracle on my radio while we were flying over here, and she wants to talk to you both, pronto.”

“Talk to us both about what?” said Ives. “You? Tim? And what’s a ‘Batcave?’”

Then he had a thought.

“Are you… going to wipe our memories or something?” said Ives. “Can that be done?”

Stephanie laughed. “Oh my gosh, Ives,” she said. “What do you think this is? Men In Black? We don’t have mind erasing tech. If we did, this entire situation probably would never have happened. Heck, Batman would probably be just Batman, and maybe Alfred and the Commish, if he had access to mind erasing tech. I’ll bet he would have loved to have some on hand in his younger days, before everyone and their dog knew The Secret.”

“What’s ‘the secret?’” said Ari. “And who’s Alfred?”

“It’s The Secret,” said Stephanie. “And I’ve probably said too much already.”

“No spit, Sherlock,” said a voice coming from the car radio. It was a woman’s voice. “Stephanie, how much info do you intend to leak to these kids?”

“Who is that?” said Ives.

“Babs— I mean, Oracle, why are you on speaker?” said Stephanie, slightly alarmed, fiddling with the buttons on her console.

“I’m on speaker?” said the voice, whom Ives guessed was the mysterious “Oracle.” “Why am I on speaker, Stephanie?”

“That’s what I just asked you!”

“Ugh, leave me on,” said Oracle. “Sebastian Ives? Ariana Dzerchenko? Are you listening?”

“I’m here,” said Ives. “Who are you? Oracle?”

“I’m here,” said Ari firmly.

“Okay, good,” said Oracle. “And yes, Sebastian, I’m Oracle.”

“He actually goes by Ives,” said Ari, beginning to frown a little. “And I go by Ari.”

“Okay, Ives, Ari,” said Oracle. She sighed over the radio. Ives guessed she sounded nice enough. “Okay, look…” said Oracle. “We’re going to get you two some face time with Tim, I promise you. Stephanie told me everything before this debacle started. This… this is just one more bit of fallout from Batman’s mess that we’re cleaning up puddle-by-puddle. You won’t know everything, but you will get to see Tim again. Just bear with us for a little longer. I want to talk about this in person. Does that sound okay?”

Ives looked at Ari. She nodded. Ives then said, “Yeah, we’re good.”

“I’ll wait to talk to a human,” said Ari.

The sound of a very nice laugh came over the speakers. “Yeah, I know,” said Oracle. “I hate robocalls too.”

Oracle’s voice turned serious again. “Also, Ives? Ari? Do you have anyone who knows that you two went to Robinson Park today?”

“My parents know,” said Ives. “They think Ari and I went on a date.”

“You told your parents we went on a date?” said Ari.

Ives turned bright red. “Well… I… I needed a cover story…”

“Never mind, Ives,” said Ari, shaking her head. “We’ll have… a long talk about that later. Oracle? I told my aunt I was going downtown for a birthday party at this restaurant.”

“Okay, good,” said Oracle. “Ives? Ari? Call your parents and tell them that you both went to a friend’s apartment in Old Gotham. That… that disaster, at Robinson Park, is all over the news, and odds are that anyone who knows you were down there is terrified.”

“Wait, you want us to lie to our parents?” said Ives.

Another sigh from Oracle’s end. “Welcome to our world, Ives,” she said. “You can tell them… an abbreviated version, later. Swear then to secrecy without telling them any… really big secrets. We’ll work something out. Gosh, everybody and their dog does know about The Secret.”

Ives groaned, and collapsed backwards into his seat. “Great,” he said. “’Be like Tim,’ huh?”

“We’ll talk more at the ‘apartment’ in Old Gotham,” said Oracle. “Oracle out.”

The sound of an electronic beep went off, and the connection ended.

Stephanie, who had been silent until that moment, pulled the car up to a roadside gas station which they had just come up too. “We need to get gas,” said Stephanie. “This thing’s engineered to run on regular Texas crude, mini-aircraft or not. You two can get out and stretch if you want, I guess.”

Stephanie drove her car up to the gas station, parked it, and got out to put gas in its tank. As she was walking up to the terminal, Ives walked up behind her and said, “Where did you say Tim was again? I want to see if I can pull it up on Google Maps.”

“Ossaville, Pennsylvania,” said Stephanie. “Population, fifty-six. I don’t know if even the Google gods can help you find it, but good friggin’ luck. Now, please, call your parents.”

Ives nodded, told Ari what Tim had said, and they both took out their smartphones. Ives and Ari called their parents, gave them Oracle’s cover story, and were very careful to emphasize that they were far away from the gang fight at Robinson Park when it had happened about two hours ago. They promised that they would check in as soon as they could.

When Ives got off the phone with his mom, he felt sick to his stomach. So much for not repeating Tim’s mistake. Would he be caught up in Tim’s double life too? Would he have to become a superhero?

I don’t think cancer survivors can become superheroes, he thought, looking over at Ari, who had just gotten done talking to her aunt. Ari was walking over to him, hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, biting her lip. Stephanie was standing over at the gas pump, dully looking at the digital display on the terminal.

Ives made eye contact with Ari, and said meekly, “So, you wanted to have a long talk?”

Ari, who looked like she had been in the same sort of daze Ives had been, seemed to wake up a little when Ives mentioned that subject. “Oh, yeah,” she said, coming up to Ives face-to-face. She put a hand on his shoulder, and looked him in the eye. “I’m a drama major,” she said. “We’ve just been through a lot of drama. In the drama clubs I’ve been in, we’ve talked a lot about contrast. The two of us? Very different people? Both total strangers to this type of situation? That’s… that’s dramatic, don’t you think?”

Ives felt himself getting red in the face. Ari had put her hand on his shoulder before, but this time, her touch was a bit more… comfortable. Soft. Her thumb was quivering slightly on his shirt. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, Ari,” said Ives.

“I’m saying that…” Ari seemed to hesitate, before taking her arm back. “Look, I… if we get through this, we’ll be bonded by trauma. And… and maybe really, really… bonded.”

It dawned on Ives what Ari was trying to say. He thought he liked it. “You want to be boyfriend-girlfriend?” he said, in the most awkward way such a phrase had ever been said in the world, or so he thought.

Ari giggled, and burst into a smile, before grabbing Ives around the head and planting a kiss on him, full on the mouth. Ives was very surprised, and found himself backpedaling. He felt totally flabbergasted, and he wasn’t even closing his eyes, or hugging Ari back. But he happened to see Stephanie glaring at him in his peripheral vision. She was miming a hug and mouthing the words, “Just kiss her!”

Ives decided to follow Stephanie’s suggestion. He returned Ari’s hug and leaned into the kiss, which Ari still hadn’t stopped giving him.

It felt very, very good.

Chapter Text

A suit and tie that fit. That was a sight for Abbot’s very sore eyes when Ali and Behrooz arrived at the hospital. He was glad that they’d taken the time to get him some clothes from his personal overnight bag, which they presented to him when they arrived at the hospital.

When he finished dressing in his slightly cleaner clothes, he left with Ali and Behrooz, checked out of the hospital, and walked with them through the parking garage beneath the building. They were heading for the white van they presumably had driven from where they’d been staking out Wayne Manor. Both were still wearing dark business suits. Abbot imagined that the three of them looked very spiffy. It was like being in a Bond film. He remembered liking Bond films when he was a kid.

“Took you two long enough,” said Abbot as he walked with Ali and Behrooz through the parking garage.

“Never call me ‘sweetums’ again, Abbot,” said Ali. “If you do, I will blow your brains out.”

Abbot rolled his eyes, and scoffed. “I’d like to see you try, mook,” he said.

“I welcome the challenge, F-lister.”

Abbot decided to let that one go. In a day and age where Gotham City wasn’t tearing itself apart despite Batman being MIA, he was seriously reconsidering who precisely qualified for which tier, at least at this level of operations.

When they finally got to the van, Ali beeped it with his key fob, and opened the van’s back doors. “You get to sit in the back,” said Ali. Ali then took out a flip phone, punched a number into it, and held it up to his ear.

“Greetings, Master,” said Ali into the phone after a few seconds, and Abbot knew exactly to whom Ali was talking. “Yes, he’s here,” said Ali. “Yes, we’re in a secure location. Would you like to talk to him now? …Yes, Master.”

Ali gestured towards the inside of the van, which Abbot saw contained a mobile surveillance unit, complete with special chairs grafted to the floor of the van. “Get in,” said Ali. “The Demon’s Head is on the phone. This phone is specially designed to get great reception despite being two levels down in an urban parking garage.”

Abbot nodded, took the flip phone, and climbed into the back of the van, putting the phone to his ear as Ali closed the door behind him. A glass pane separated the back of the van from the driver’s compartment.

“Yes, Master?” said Abbot. He steeled himself for what was coming.

“Abbot,” said Ra’s al Ghul, in a smooth, cold voice which came through the phone like a needle. “It is good to see that you are safe and sound. That is far more than you deserve.”

“Yes, Master,” said Abbot.

“Are you going to try and explain yourself?” said Ra’s. “No excuse is better than a bad one, but perhaps you have a good excuse.”

“Master,” said Abbot, “I just got into the back of the van. The only thing I know about what the result of the fight in the park was is what I heard from GCN on the hospital’s TV. I’m pretty in the dark. All I know is that Pru and Whisper were keeping an eye on Stephanie Brown, then Pru called everyone to the spot because Drake had been spotted there. Then we all got caught up in an FBI-DEO dragnet, and I fled the scene and told everyone else to scatter. I… I strongly suspect that Pru is playing double agent for the feds, or triple-agent, or… or whatever. My only excuse is that my intel was garbled, and so was my plan of action. The op was sloppy. That’s all I can say.”

“Well said, Abbot,” replied Ra’s. “Now, allow me to update you. The Seven Men of Death, minus one Prudence Wood, are now all in Wilson Correctional Facility in downtown Gotham City. They will soon be en route to Blackgate Penitentiary. The League’s top operational unit is… oh, how do you put it? Ah, yes. The League of Assassins’ top operational unit has been ‘busted.’ Do you have any idea what that means for the League?”

Abbot swallowed hard. “It means that we have six top guys… and gals, I guess… in the custody of mainstream law enforcement. Meaning that there are now six people who could become stoolpigeons, which could severely endanger the League’s American operations.”

“The League’s operations period,” growled Ra’s. “The Seven Men of Death as currently composed are the best of the best, insofar as any of the League’s people can be ‘the best’ at anything in this world. I know that very well now. At any rate, our top batch of rank-and-file operatives is now in jail. They know important things, and I only trust so many of them to not leap at the chance to get a little less jailtime by betraying the League’s secrets. Considering that many of them have warrants out for their arrest for many serious crimes, both in America and elsewhere, that could be a lot of jailtime they would all be risking by not turning state’s evidence. Now, if you were in my boots, what would you do to the person responsible for managing that group in the event of a situation like this?”

Abbot knew that he had to choose his words carefully. Very carefully. “Master,” he said, “if I were in your boots, I would order the team to regroup and conduct a postmortem. Information and other factors might be in play which might allow a salvageable good to come out of the situation.”

Silence on the other end. And then: “Continue, Abbot.”

Abbot cleared his throat, and said, “The Seven Men of Death may be in jail, yes, that’s true, and Pru might have turned FBI informant, that’s also true. Odds are that the feds know about our safehouse now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re homeless now, as it were. But I am almost certain that we now have at least one possible method of accomplishing this mission’s objective. We still have a way to find Tim Drake.”

“And what would that be?” said Ra’s.

Abbot decided to take a gamble. He would tell a joke. “Master,” he said, “have you ever seen the movie Snakes on a Plane?”

***

Ari finally pulled her head back, and Ives, still embracing his new old friend, and she was more than a friend now, began to realize what they had just done. They were still standing in the parking lot of the gas station, and Ives could see that Ari’s complexion was getting rosier and rosier. But a coy smile was also beginning to creep up her face. She looked so pretty when she smiled.

“Hi,” said Ari, with a snigger.

“Hi,” said Ives back, hollow, numb. But he then laughed in spite of himself. “So, dinner and a movie?” he said.

“Something a bit more creative than that,” said Ari slyly.

“Um… are you sure?” said Ives. Surely Ari didn’t mean…

Ari lost her smile, and then shook her head. “No! No!” she said. “Not… not like that. I mean a more creative date or outing. Like going to a karaoke bar, or having a picnic, or something. Dinner and a movie just seems so run-of-the-mill. I… oh, never mind.”

And Ari kissed Ives again, this time a quick peck. The two then came apart, and realized that Stephanie was still hanging back, looking away, but with a smile of her own on her face.

“Um… do you mind?” said Ives. “I know it’s technically a PDA, but still…”

“Right, right,” said Stephanie, throwing up her hands. “Look, the tank’s full, and we have a thirty-minute drive ahead of us. You two… you have something going on, and I’m cool with that. I honestly think Tim would be too. But seriously, we have to go.”

Ives nodded, looked over at Ari, who was smiling again, and then felt a smile of his own creep up his face. He could get used to this. Clasping Ari’s hand in his, the two climbed into the back of the Mini Cooper, and Stephanie climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine was started, the car pulled away, and they got back onto the main road.

“Huh, that’s weird,” said Ari as they pulled away from the gas station.

“What’s weird?” said Ives. “I mean… weirder than everything that just happened to us.”

“Oh,” said Ari, shaking her head, “it’s nothing. I just… I thought I saw a snake slithering around in the bushes outside of the gas station, just as we left. Do snakes hang around coastal highways? I thought they were just in, like… forests, or something.”

Ives shook his head, and pulled out his phone. “I’ll Google it,” he said. He looked at Ari, who was still holding his hand, and said, “Or… we could go to the zoo.”

Ari laughed, and squeezed Ives’s hand tighter.

In the front seat, Stephanie groaned. “Get a room, already,” she said. “A room of your own! This one’s mine!”

Chapter Text

The drive down to Old Gotham was quiet and peaceful. Ives liked that. He and Ari didn’t talk much, there being a lot to digest from the last two hours. Stephanie kept quiet too. They were all still trying to recover from everything that had just happened. But Ives was okay with a little downtime for a while. He had a girlfriend, after all. That was nice.

They finally got to Old Gotham. Ives had read that Old Gotham had been constructed on a stronger section of bedrock than the rest of the city. The result was that the earthquake which had preceded NML hadn’t knocked down most of the ancient tenements which populated Old Gotham. The same graffitied, dilapidated brick and concrete buildings which had been there twenty-five years ago were still there today. But urban renewal had cut out roughly a third of them, and crime overall was down, as it was throughout the rest of the city. Jack Ryder had nothing but good things to say about Mayor Nakano’s revitalization efforts, and Ives imagined that Ryder was right on the mark about it.

The building which Stephanie drove them to was one of the new buildings, and had a retractable garage door facing the street. Stephanie steered the Mini Cooper up next to it, pressed a button on her key fob, and the door opened after a few seconds. When the door was completely open, Stephanie steered her car into the garage, and down a lit, concrete ramp, evidently leading into a garage further under the building. The garage door closed behind them, slowly and noisily.

“Is this the… uh, the bat-cave?” said Ives.

“Not the Batcave,” said Stephanie, “just a satellite batcave. B-Man had a—” But then Stephanie stopped, shook her head, and said, “Sorry, I’ve said too much.”

“Right, right,” said Ives, rolling his eyes. “I guess I’ll just have to make up most of the stuff in the tell-all book I’ll be writing after all of this is over.”

That made Ari laugh out loud, and Stephanie laughed too. Ives felt happy that he’d managed to make two pretty girls laugh.

The incline led down into a larger, underground parking garage, where a series of strange vehicles, which Ives guessed were the special types of cars and motorcycles which Batman used, were parked about. A lot of them looked like they had been collecting dust for a while. The only vehicle there which looked like it had been in regular use was a non-descript white van bearing the markings of a soft-drink company.

Near this white van, a young man with graying red hair in a dark jacket and black jeans, with a face pockmarked with healed scratches and scrapes, was loitering uneasily. The red-headed young man did not look like he was in a good mood.

When Stephanie parked her car and turned off the engine, she turned around in her seat and said to Ives and Ari, “Okay, we’re going to all go talk to… eh, to Oracle. Yeah, Oracle. You both ready?”

“Who is that out there?” said Ari quietly. Ives suddenly realized that Ari and he could very well now be in the lions’ den.

“That’s Jason,” said Stephanie softly, “he’s a friend. He won’t hurt you, and neither will I or anyone else here. Let’s go, okay?”

Ives saw Ari gulp, and then look at him. Ives nodded. “Let’s go,” he said. Ari and he then got out of the car, and went with Stephanie further into the drab parking garage. Ari immediately grabbed Ives’s hand, which Ives took firmly.

Looking back at the Mini Cooper, Ives now was able to get a much better look at the kayak mounted on its roof. He now saw what went into making the car fly. “Do you have an airplane engine built into that kayak?” said Ives.

“That’s actually exactly it,” said the red-head whom Stephanie had identified as “Jason.” The red-head walked up to Ives, cracking a smile. “I’m Jason,” he said. “I taught Stephanie how to fly that thing.”

“Did you build it?” said Ives. “I mean… a personal aircraft which can turn into a car? That’s… that’s an engineering marvel! For… for lack of a better term. If you mass-produced it, you could revolutionize consumer travel in less than a decade!”

Jason snickered, and put his hands in his jacket pockets. “It cost three-hundred grand to build that thing,” said Jason. “It works for us as a one-off, but the R.O.I. probably wouldn’t be much given the sticker-price we’d have to put on it.”

Jason looked away, and Ives saw that he suddenly wore a look of restrained melancholy. “And no,” he said, “I… I didn’t build it. My… little brother, my late little brother… he’s the one who cracked the code to building a flying Batmobile.”

“That’s the Batmobile?” said Ari, who had been listening to the conversation. “The Batmobile is a Mini Cooper?”

Jason shook his head, and put up his hands. “I think I’d better not say anything else,” he said. “The… the boss… would be very ticked at me.”

“Oracle, you mean?” said Ives.

“Dammit Stephanie!” barked Jason, whirling on his blonde-haired cohort. “How much have you told them? How do they know who Oracle is?”

“Bab— Oracle gave me permission to tell them that much,” said Stephanie, looking a little cross. “I mean, what am I supposed to do? Tell them to call her ‘General’ or ‘ma’am?’”

“Wait, are you guys working for the military?” said Ives.

“No!” said Jason, shaking his head, before burying it in his hands. “Ugh…” he said. But then he took a deep breath, recollected himself, and turned back to Ives. “Look, I’m sorry about that… Ives, right? Sebastian Ives? Oracle gave me a quick rundown on your situation last night.”

“Yeah, I’m Ives,” said Ives. He gestured to Ari, who was still bowing her head nervously. “This is Ari.”

Jason nodded. He still wasn’t smiling. “It’s a pleasure. I… please. I’ve gotten to a time in my life where any friends of Tim are friends of mine. I’m good with you both, and I know the gist of how you all got caught up in this. Here… let’s get you two upstairs, okay?”

Ives nodded, and gave Ari’s hand an affectionate squeeze. Jason seemed to notice the gesture, and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The four of them –Ives, Ari, Stephanie, and Jason— went over to a door with a keypad in one wall of the garage. Jason punched in a series of numbers on the keypad, and the door clicked open. Jason led them through it into a drab, cement-walled stairwell, and led them all up two flights of stairs, until they came to another door, with no keypad. They went through it, and found themselves in a bare apartment.

That is to say, it was bare of sofas, mirrors, pictures, armchairs, and the other flotsam and jetsam which an ordinary inner-city living space might have. Instead, there were only folding tables with computers and modems on them, along with a few file cabinets, and some whiteboards with webs of pictures and notes taped to it, straight out of an episode of CSI. In the center of it all was a thirty-something female ginger wearing glasses, sitting in an armless wheelchair. She was waiting for them.

“Hello, Ives, Ari,” said the woman. “I’m…. Oracle. And I’m going to help you get in touch with Tim.”

“Is ‘Oracle’ your real name?” said Ari quizzically.

Oracle laughed out loud and shook her head. “God, no,” she said with a smile. “You’re not ready for the big secrets yet, or… or bigger secrets than you already know.” Oracle held up her hands, and said, “Look, I… I just want to apologize for you two almost getting killed at Robinson Park. We were supposed to coordinating with… the cops, and they failed to tell us that… the bad guys… would be in Robinson Park the minute they pulled off their little mousetrap.”

“Wait,” said Ives, “you… you sent Stephanie to meet with us in the middle of a sting operation? You knew that giant wolf thing was coming for us?”

“No, no, no,” said Oracle, maneuvering her wheelchair to get closer to Ives. “It was all a huge misunderstanding. Chase— I mean, our very good law enforcement friend… she never tells me anything, even though I tell her plenty. They didn’t tell us anything about this little stunt of theirs until literally the last minute.” Oracle flashed a frostier look, and Ives decided he’d prefer not to get on this chick’s bad side. “Jesus, working with Waller’s crowd is a nightmare,” she muttered to herself, and Ives decided to pretend not to have heard that. He didn’t know who “Waller” was, and he hoped he’d never have to find out.

Oracle then said, “Look, I’ll keep it simple. The giant wolf thing… yeah, we’re on that. We’ll see if we can nail down just what the heck was going on, but… yeah.” Oracle cleared her throat, and then spoke again. “Okay, you’ve heard the past. Now hear the present. Tim worked for Batman as Robin. Batman quit being Batman. Tim quit being Robin, or… Red Robin. Or whatever. Tim went to this ho-dunk town in west Pennsylvania called Ossaville to just crash. That was eight months ago. He hasn’t returned any calls from anyone on our team. The last we heard from him was when he sent me an email on Christmas saying, ‘I’m fine.’ Two little words. You now know as much as I do, or at least, you know as much as I do which I am willing to tell you. Tim… I don’t know what he’d tell you, but at this point, that’s his business.”

Ives nodded slowly. He had barely thought of Batman as more than a lurid news item less than three days ago, and now he was talking to someone who clearly had a very personal stake in who Batman was as a person. And Tim was exactly like that too. Except Ives had never known.

“Okay,” said Ives. “…Thank you for telling us all this. Can we please… go? I think Ari and I might have a road trip ahead of us.”

Suddenly, Ives remembered something. “Ah, shoot!” said Ives. “My car is still parked downtown, at Robinson Park!” Ives dug his smartphone out of his jacket pocket, and looked at the time. “Man, I only fed the meter for four hours,” he said. “Shoot, I’m gonna get a ticket…”

“If you get a ticket, we’ll pay,” said Oracle. Oracle looked over at Jason and said, “Jason, can you please get Ives and Ari here back downtown? Take the van.”

“Sure,” said Jason. Jason turned to leave the room, beckoning to Ives and Ari, who were still holding hands. “Let’s go, boys and girls,” he said. “You do have a road trip ahead of you. Ossaville’s a good hundred miles away from here.”

“Do you have a phone number for Tim?” said Ari. “The one we have is out-of-service.”

“Yeah, I’ve gotcha,” said Oracle, pushing her wheelchair towards one of the tables. “Get out your phone and you can punch it in to your contacts data.”

Jason stopped at that point, and went back over to Oracle. “Uh… Oracle…” he said. “A word.”

“Sure,” said Oracle. She rolled in her wheelchair to the other side of the room, Jason walking beside her. Ives looked at Stephanie as Jason and Oracle engaged in what sounded like intense whispering. Stephanie just shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands, wearing a confused look.

I wonder just how much these guys are on the same page, thought Ives.

Finally, after a solid two minutes of whispering, Oracle and Jason ended their powwow, and returned to wear Ari and Ives were. “Okay,” said Jason. “I’ll bring you both back downtown. Oracle here will give you Tim’s current number, and then… then you can do what you want. Just don’t look for more trouble than you’ve already gotten.”

Ari snickered, and spoke up, saying, “Trouble ain’t bad if bad is good.”

Jason gave Ari a funny look. “…What?” he said.

Ari shook her head, and laughed a little more. “Nothing,” she just said. “Just something I heard on a TV show once.”

Jason said, “Right, right. Let’s… let’s get you two downtown.”

Ives turned to Ari, and said, “If we’re in for a hundred-mile road trip, we might not be able to get back to Burnside in time for Monday morning classes.”

As Ari and Ives, still holding hands, followed Jason back to the stairwell, Ari replied, “Ives? Burnside is a party college. Two more students missing class on Monday morning isn’t going to ring anyone’s alarm bells.”

Chapter Text

Whisper had wrapped her snake form around the bars of Brown’s car’s roof rack, ridden out the car chase and its flight, had slunk away from its landing spot after hearing what she’d needed to hear, and then, after resuming human form, begged a change of clothes and a phone call from the gas station proprietor after Brown had left with the kids. Abbot, Ali, and Behrooz had driven out to the area north of Bristol to pick her up, and the four reunited a good four hours after the incident at Robinson Park.

When Whisper and Abbot had told their whole story to Ra’s al Ghul using the speaker function of the modified flip-phone supplied by Ali, the result was very relieving to Abbot.

“Abbot, Abbot, Abbot,” said Ra’s soothingly, or as soothingly as a voice on speaker on a flip-phone could be. “And Whisper, Whisper, Whisper. I knew it was a wise idea to bring you two back into the fold. It is exceedingly difficult for someone in my line of work to get good help, and I am happy to say that I have done exactly that right now.”

“It is our aim to please, Master,” said Whisper. She and Abbot were sitting in the back seat of Ali and Behrooz’s surveillance van, parked in the lot of a Big Belly Burger on the edge of Bristol. Ali had gone in to get them a bite to eat. They’d already stopped by a local Target to get Whisper some new clothes, which was a new experience for Abbot. But that matter had been resolved happily. As for the matter with Ra’s, such was almost the case.

“Do you want us to make tracks for this Ossaville place?” said Abbot.

“Yes,” said Ra’s. “But you’ll need reinforcements. I have contacted our New York cell, and they have already dispatched a team to travel to that location. You will meet them partway there, and then you will both go to Ossaville together, after which you will find Drake and end him.”

“What intel do we have on that town?” said Whisper. “Brown and those two kids, whoever they were, said that it was small and out-of-the-way.”

“It is completely off our radar, as it were,” said Ra’s. “I can say that much. A team of gun-toting assassins is not going to go unnoticed by such a roadside hamlet, but you’ll face little resistance from the locals. Perhaps a few hunting enthusiasts might break out their shotguns, but your team should be able to take care of such roadblocks. At any rate, do not be anything less than thorough. We’re still trying to clean up the mess which the episode in Robinson Park created. Mr. Ali and Mr. Behrooz, for one thing, no longer have a home. They’ll be going with you.”

“Is there anyone else in the Gotham cell who needs evac?” said Abbot.

“Yes,” said Ra’s, “but they are already on their way out. Our agents in Gotham have drilled for situations like this, and most of them are already out of harm’s way.” Here, Ra’s paused slightly. “That said… a few of our assassins have already been caught up in the FBI-DEO dragnet which ensnared the Seven. Once we have a precise headcount on which of our agents have been arrested and which of them haven’t, we’ll conduct a post-mortem.

“In the meantime, you two have a job to do. Head for Philadelphia, meet League members coming down from New York, and then go to Ossaville, where you will search for Drake, and where you will either kill him or find out where he’s gone from there. You have your marching orders. So march.”

But just before Ra’s closed off the line, he said, “Abbot, Whisper… the bit of resourcefulness you showed with your snake form and Brown’s car… it is a solid feather in your caps at the moment, but it will be an even bigger feather once you find Drake and neutralize him. Remember that.”

And Ra’s hung up.

Abbot breathed out hard, and leaned back in his chair in the back of the van. He was glad to, at the moment, to be back in Ra’s’ good books. And it was all thanks to Whisper’s ad hoc plan. Whisper had been happy to share the credit with Abbot, which made him happy. God in Heaven, he thought to himself, I wanna marry her.

“Kyle? You there?”

Abbot heard Whisper’s words, and returned his attention to the moment. “Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “I think you ordered a bacon burger?”

“Guilty!” said Whisper, flashing a smile. “Honest to God,” she said, “that was the one thing I was craving while I was locked up in that jail. A greasy, deep-fried American burger, with extra, extra bacon.”

“Trust me,” said Abbot, putting a friendly arm around Whisper’s shoulders, “I know how you feel.”

Ali returned shortly with their food, and the four of them got a good bite to eat. After Abbot filled in Ali and Behrooz about Ra’s’ message, the four got ready to hit the road.

“Another day, another road trip,” said Whisper as she settled into a spot on the floor of the back of the van. “Jesus, I could use a nap…”

“I’m here,” said Abbot, sitting down beside Whisper and hugging her close. His large, bulky frame provided an excellent cushion for Whisper’s lithe and slender form.

“Yeah,” said Whisper, smiling a toothy grin. She leaned over and licked Abbot’s cheek with her forked tongue, and then cuddled up closer to Abbot. “Yeah,” she said, laying her head on Abbot’s shoulder. “You’re here.”

***

Fortunately for Ives and Ari, Ives’s car had not been towed or ticketed. It turned out that Ives had actually fed the meter for five hours, leaving them with a good twenty minutes to spare when they reached the spot where the car had been parked. In the distance, police cars could still be seen congregating around Robinson Park, and Ives wagered that they had a lot of clean-up to do, what with the incident earlier that day with the assassins or bad guys or whatever that Oracle woman preferred to call them.

“…and Tim’s digs are at this old fort thing on the outskirts of the town,” said Jason as he walked Ives and Ari back to where Ives’s car had been parked. “It’s accessible by a private road branching off from the road leading out of the town to the west. There’s a chain-link fence bordering the property, including a gate across the road. You’ll need to try and contact Tim when you get there for him to unlock it. There’s security cameras and motion detectors set up around the area, so he’ll probably see you way before you see him.”

“Wait, ‘a fort thing?’” said Ives. “You mean like a castle?”

Jason sighed. “It’s a bit involved,” he said. “The short version is that it used to be part of a bad guy organization, then one of our guys started hanging around there, and then we forgot about it after that guy kicked the bucket, and then Tim found out about it when he decided to call it quits, and he asked us for permission to go and hang out there, and we did and he did. So… yeah. You’ll be looking for a castle-like building sitting out on some hill.”

Ives shook his head, and said, “Okay, okay. We… Ari and I had better get moving, I guess.”

Jason then dug into his back pocket, and pulled out a wallet. He opened the wallet, and said, “Look, I understand that this totally doesn’t make up for… everything, but it’s the least we can do to help you.” Jason took some cash out of his wallet and gave it to Ives. “Here,” he said. “This should cover travel expenses, food and gas and hotels and all.”

Ives’s eyes bulged when he took the money and counted it. “Fifteen-hundred?” he said. “That’s what you’ve got for pocket money?”

“Our line of work requires big spending,” said Jason. He let out a smile, and said, “Just don’t spend it all in one place, okay?” Jason opened the passenger seat door for Ari, who climbed in. She didn’t thank him.

Before Ives went over to the driver’s side door, Jason said to him, “Ives? When… when you see Tim… tell him I said ‘Hi.’”

“…I will, Jason,” said Ives. He wasn’t sure what else to say to Jason, but then an idea popped into his head. “God bless,” said Ives.

Jason smirked. “Thanks,” he said. “God’s help would be really nice to have, all things considered.”

Ives then climbed into the car, pulled away from the curb, and drove away. Ari had been very quiet for the entire trip from Old Gotham to downtown, and she was very quiet now.

Ives looked over at Ari when they came to a red light, and said, “So, how do you feel about this, Ari? Are… do you still want to go see Tim?”

Ari nodded quickly, and said, “Yes, Ives. I want to reconcile with Tim, and be friends again, and tell him I forgive him. And… and I hope he understands that his best friend is… with me, now.”

Ives gulped. He was still getting used to that idea. “Let’s… let’s take it slow,” he said. “I… I just don’t want to… do… you know… I don’t want to mess up.”

Ari snickered, and said, “Ives, you’ve been doing everything exactly right. You’ve been there, you’ve done more than enough, and you’re not afraid to do more. I’m… I’m glad you’re here.”

Ives’s heart warmed, and he said, “Okay. …So, a karaoke bar, huh? Does Burnside have any that minors can go into?”

Ari scrunched up her face in thought, and said, “…I don’t know. I’d have to look it up. Maybe they’d let us in if we agreed not to order any drinks?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Ives as he steered the car towards the ramp out of Gotham. “And… and do you think we should let our parents know where we’re going?”

Ari started to speak, but then stopped. She thought for a moment, and then said, “It might be best not to worry them, but… we’re going to have to tell them about all of this eventually. Or at least tell them a little… I think. I mean, what will we even say?”

Ives groaned, and said, “Man, gosh. I can just imagine the conversation. ‘Sorry, mom and dad, but my best friend from high school was actually a masked vigilante. My sort-of-girlfriend and I found out about it when we tried to find him and meet up with him, and after a few harrowing episodes, we found him and made peace. That’s all we can tell you. Do you trust us?’”

Ari said, “That’s… that’s actually not too far off-the-mark from what I had in mind. And… ‘sort-of-girlfriend?’”

Ives felt his face burn, and he said, “Ari, that’s… that’s not what I—”

“Relax, Ives,” said Ari, and she laughed, her lovely, musical laugh very pleasing to Ives’s ears. “I know you’re new to this sort of thing. And… I’m ready to take it slow too.”

Ives replied, “Okay. Just… yeah. As soon as we park somewhere, I’ll Google to see if there’s… a karaoke bar… in Burnside.”

Ari pulled out her smartphone, and started mashing buttons. “Way ahead of you, Ives,” she said.

Ives summoned every ounce of charisma he had, and said, doing his best Daniel Craig impression, “Call me Sebastian, honeybunch.”

Ari laughed hysterically, grabbing her sides and slapping her knees, and Ives laughed with her.

Maybe this little road trip of theirs would turn out to be a pretty good first date.

Chapter Text

Ives and Ari drove out of Gotham, heading west, up through New Jersey towards the state line with Pennsylvania. Ossaville was about one hundred miles away from Gotham, and Ives hoped they could get there by nightfall. He didn’t know what Ari and he would be looking at in terms of accommodations for the night. That particular subject made his heart skip a beat when he thought of it, but he put the matter aside.

Afternoon began to turn into evening, and they stopped at a roadside burger joint to grab some dinner. They were about to start eating in the car, when Ari said, “Do you mind if I pray before we eat?”

Ives nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “I… I honestly think we’re going to need the big guy’s help on this one.”

Ari nodded, and she closed her eyes, folded her hands, and bowed her head, Ives following along with the same motions.

“Dear Jesus,” she said, “thank you for this food, and bless the people who sold it to us. We pray for safe travels, and we thank you for keeping us safe already. We… we pray for Tim, Stephanie, Jason, and Oracle, and ask that you keep them safe too. And… and I ask that Ives and I will have a beautiful relationship. Amen.”

“Amen,” said Ives, and the two began eating.

As Ives munched on his burger, he said to Ari, “I guess I’ll be going to church with you, now that we’re an item.”

Ari said, “…Yeah. That’s… my parents would prefer that I date a Christian. Wanting to avoid being unequally yoked and all that.”

Ives said, “Unequally… come again?”

“Oh,” said Ari, as she swallowed her a bite of her burger. “It’s something out of the Bible. It says that Christians should marry other Christians, and if they don’t, it means that the relationship might not go well, because… they’re ‘unequally yoked.’ Like, two oxen which aren’t able to move in sync, because they’re not hitched up to the plow in the same way. A romantic relationship between two people with different worldviews or belief systems might not end happily.”

“Yeah, I dig that,” said Ives. “I… my parents probably wouldn’t mind if I started going to church anyway. They’re friendly to that sort of thing.”

Ari giggled, and said, “That’s… that’s good. A good Christian girl and a good Christian boy. I… I don’t know about getting married or not, but… it’s something to consider.”

“Taking it slow, taking it slow,” said Ives, biting into his burger again. “I mean… yeah. This is one crazy date that we’ve been on for the last few days.”

Ari laughed again, this time with her mouth full of cheeseburger. She swallowed her food, before saying, “Yeah, no stuff, Sherlock. I… I honestly don’t think it’s bad. We’re bonding! And… it’s an adventure. A scary adventure, maybe, but still an adventure.”

Ives finished his burger, and got ready to start the car again. “So,” he said, “do I start calling you pet names like ‘sweetie’ and ‘dear?’”

Ari said with a smile, “Only if you want too. I… I think that just comes naturally. Yeah, just… let’s take it slow. You had the right idea. I… my, we’re saying that a lot.”

Ives smiled back, leaned over from his spot in the driver’s seat, and gave Ari a quick peck on the lips, which she returned, and the two snickered some more. They then drove away from the roadside burger joint, and got back on the road.

The drive to Ossaville was filled with Ives and Ari talking and laughing, getting to know each other better, or better than they already did. It was a lively conversation, and Ives enjoyed himself.

“So, why drama?” said Ives. “I mean, I know you’ve always been interested in theater, all the time I’ve known you, but… why? What draws you to it?”

Ari replied, “I can’t really put my finger on it totally, but I guess I just like the idea of getting into other people’s shoes. Trying to imagine, and then demonstrate, what it’s like to be another person. Beyond that, acting requires a lot of energy, a lot of passion. I honestly think it’s quite a rush trying to memorize lines and then reciting them in sync with other actors on the stage. I just find it to be kind of thrilling.”

Ives said, “So, you’re a thrill-seeker, eh?”

Ari laughed, and said, “No, not like that. I can’t stand rollercoasters, honestly. I don’t want to go skydiving, or bungie jumping, or stuff like that. I just like the kind of fun and excitement that acting on stage gives me. And like I said, I like trying to imagine what it’s like to be another person. It’s good and good for you!”

“’Good for you?’” said Ives. “How do you mean?”

Ari shrugged, and said, “I mean… it helps you build empathy. Acting, pretending to be another person, gives you perspective. It helps you to see things from other people’s point of view, and that’s helpful in the real world. You can greatly improve your everyday relationships if you are able to understand where people are coming from. And… and acting helps you do that.”

Ives blew out a breath, and said, “Yeah… I… I see your point. And… for the record… I’m not big on rollercoasters, skydiving, or bungie jumping either.”

Ari said, snickering delightfully, “I’m glad we have something in common, Ives.” She leaned back in her chair, and then said, “So, what do you find exciting?”

Ives said, “Well, solving a really tough math problem is kind of my idea of exciting. Just sitting there at my desk, using every trick in the book to try and figure out how to find X, and to find X correctly. I know that sounds really nerdy, but a great math equation, scribbled on a whiteboard… that kind of thing just looks beautiful to me.”

Ari said, “It’s okay for you to be into nerdy stuff like that, Ives. I mean, you’re a nerd! That’s just the way God made you, and whatever God makes is good. You’re just being yourself, and yourself is a really good thing.”

Ives kept his eyes on the road ahead. It was almost nighttime, and they’d be coming to their exit off of the highway soon. “Maybe there’s some kind of play about the life of Einstein or something,” said Ives. “I’ve read a few biographies about him. He was actually a… pretty colorful character.”

“Oh, colorful,” said Ari. “Colorful like outlandish, or colorful like obscene?”

“A little bit in the middle, actually…”

Ari laughed, and said, “I’ll Google it later, okay?”

Ari’s cell phone then said, “In one mile, take Exit 52B towards highway 472 towards Ossaville.”

“Righto, Siri,” said Ives, turning on his car’s blinker and steering it towards the correct lane. They got off the freeway, and went further into the countryside.

Another fifteen minutes of driving later, they came within sight of their destination. Even in the dusky twilight of early evening, Ives could see that it was a rich, green portion of countryside. They drove past a sign which read, “Ossaville – Population 56.”

“Only fifty-six people?” said Ari. “It must be a really small town.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s even less than that,” said Ives. “That sign was ancient. I just hope we don’t find ourselves in a ghost town.”

“Don’t ghost towns only exist in the desert or something?” said Ari.

Ives thought for a moment. “Eh…” he said. “I don’t know. Westerns aren’t really my thing. I like kung fu movies.”

Ari nodded, and sat back quietly as they came up to the first few buildings of a very small town. “Here we are, I guess,” she said to Ives.

“Yeah,” said Ives. “Here we are.”

Ives steered the car through Ossaville’s darkened streets, which were lit only by the odd porchlight. It was indeed very small and empty. A lone dive bar with a flickering neon sign saying “Beer” was on the street. Most of the storefronts were boarded up, and the streets were deserted. Ives had imagined that there wouldn’t be much foot traffic at this time of night, but he felt disquieted anyway. They passed a grungy, spired chapel with peeling white paint as they left the main part of the town, heading west, further into the hills.

“Jason said that the… castle or fort thing,” said Ives, “was on the outskirts of town, accessible by a private road.”

“Like that one?” said Ari, pointing towards their right. Sure enough, just ahead of them, there was a sign mounted next to the road which read, “Private Road – Do Not Enter – Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.” Ives’s headlights managed to illuminate a dirt road leading off the dirt road they were on, out into the darkened woodland.

Ives gulped. “Driving at night kind of scares me, honestly,” he said.

“Scarier than being chased by a giant wolf while in a flying car?” asked Ari.

Ives scoffed in spite of himself. “Point taken,” he said. He steered the car down the road, hoping that they wouldn’t get prosecuted at some point.

Ten minutes of slow driving later, they came within sight of their destination: A chain-link fence blocking the road. Ives peered ahead, and noted the wheels on the section of fence which was on the road. There was a padlock on a latch on the left side of the gate, and a large sign mounted on the gate which read, “Property of Wayne Enterprises. No Trespassing.” A paragraph of smaller print, which Ives guessed was just legalese, was printed below these larger words. The Wayne Enterprises logo was on the sign.

“Any idea why Tim’s hanging out on Wayne Enterprises property?” said Ari.

“Maybe it has something to do with Batman Incorporated,” said Ives, gently putting the car in park in front of the gate. “Bruce Wayne was funding it, until it went ‘down the tubes,’ as Stephanie put it. Maybe Tim’s new digs are fringe benefits from that time in his life. Honestly, who knows?”

Ives turned off the car, pulled a large flashlight from out under his seat, and got out of the driver’s seat. His dad was always making sure the cars in the family were stocked with such emergency devices. Ives turned on the flashlight, now needed to illuminate the area which was no longer lit up by the car’s headlights. He helped Ari get out of the passenger-side door, and the two then went over to the gate. The bright, LED glare from the flashlight cut a swathe through the darkness, illuminating the area perfectly.

“You ready for this?” said Ives.

Ari nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

“Okay,” said Ives. He took a deep breath, and shined the flashlight around. It honestly felt like they were in a bad horror movie. But when Ives looked up above the gate, he spotted what he was looking for: a surveillance camera mounted on a steel pole.

Ives looked up at the camera, pointed it out to Ari, and began waving his hands. “Hello? Tim?” said Ives. “Tim Drake? Tim Wayne? Tim Drake-Wayne? Timothy Jackson Drake? Robin? You there? It’s your old buddy Ives, and your old… gal-pal, Ari. Hello?”

Ari said, “’Gal-pal?’”

“Well, you’re not his girlfriend anymore…”

“Okay, okay.”

And then, the response. A squeaking sound came out of a plastic box mounted near the gate, which Ives hadn’t noticed before. It was an intercom, and a green light on it had just turned on.

“Who is this?” said a garbled, but very familiar voice.

“Tim!” said Ari. “Are you in there? Are you okay?”

“Wait — Ari?!” said the voice of Tim over the speaker. “Ives? Holy God, I… yeah, hang on a sec…”

A burst of static came out of the box. Ives looked at Ari, who had an uneasy look on her face. “Moment of truth,” he said.

“Damn right,” said Ari.

In the distance, beyond the gate they were at, further up the road, a burst of light appeared in the darkness, slowly increasing in brightness and size, and then Ives heard the noise of a car driving down a dirt road. A few minutes later, the large, bright yellow lights of a larger car illuminated where Ives and Ari were. The car stopped, lights still on, and someone climbed out of the driver’s side door, walking up in front of the headlights of what Ives guessed was some kind of land rover or SUV. The person who had climbed out of the car was black against the blinding lights, but Ives immediately recognized who it was. He’d been friends with him too long to fail to do so.

“Tim?” said Ives.

“Ives!” said Tim, who sounded genuinely excited. “And… Ari? Oh God, it’s been… how long has it been? Oh… oh my God!”

Tim, still silhouetted against his land rover’s bright yellow lights, took out some keys and unlocked the padlock which was keeping the gate closed. He slid the gate aside, rushed over to Ives, and bear hugged him.

“Whoa, boy!” said Ives as Tim squeezed him a bit too hard. “I’m glad to see you too!”

Tim put Ives down, and then he turned to Ari, and gave her a big hug. Ari hugged him back, and Ives realized he’d have to tell Tim a very important thing as soon as he could.

“It’s been ages,” said Tim, and Ives could see, in the light of Tim’s SUV, his old friend. Tim had put on a little weight, but otherwise looked hale and hearty. He was smiling and happy. “I… I guess I should ask you how you found out I’m here,” he said. “Please, it’s getting cold out here. Follow me in your car and we’ll go up to the aerie.”

“You mean the castle thing?” said Ari.

Tim did a double-take, and said, “Wait… how… how much do you know? I… I don’t mean to be angry or anything but… did Babs send you?”

“Who’s ‘Babs?’” said Ari.

Tim stood there for a moment, and then shook his head. “Look, never mind,” he said, gesturing towards the dirt road ahead, “we’ll talk inside. I’ll bet you two could go for a big bowl of hot beef ramen right now.”

Chapter Text

It was a short drive down the dirt road to what Tim called “the aerie.” Ives and Ari followed Tim’s SUV in their car, and they eventually came to the main building. It was indeed like a castle, it being about the size of a three-story suburban house. Ives couldn’t see much of it, it being almost pitch black out by now. But Tim led them to a garage door, which opened for them, and Ives drove his car in after Tim’s SUV into the garage. Bright lights emitted from the garage they were driving into.

Once they had entered and exited their cars, Tim got out of his SUV, and closed the garage door behind them. It was a spacious if mostly empty garage, with some cardboard boxes stacked about, a large refrigerator in one corner, and a tall, transparent cylinder mounted in the corner, plus two motorcycles, one red and one black.

But Ives was focused on something else, and it wasn’t any of these things.

“Tim?” said Ives. “We… we need to have a chat. Ari and I have gone through a lot to find you.”

Tim sighed, and gestured towards a side door in the garage. “Do you want to chat in the kitchen upstairs? There are some nice, cushioned couches and armchairs up there. Probably beats standing around.”

Ives and Ari agreed to this, and they followed Tim up a flight of stairs, into a large, open room which contained a dining room and a living room. There were indeed plush sofas and armchairs, and a very spartan kitchen. Tim, Ives, and Ari sat down in this living room together.

“You obviously have a big story to tell,” said Tim. “And… I imagine you came to find me because of the story I have which I never told you.”

“Something like that,” said Ives. He glanced over at Ari. “Ari, you’re on.”

Ari looked up, and Ives saw that she was crying. “Tim,” she said. “When I dumped you, back in high school, I had no idea you were Robin. I had no idea what kind of pain you were going through which I didn’t know about.”

Tim’s face suddenly went white as a sheet when he heard the word “Robin.”

“You… you know,” said Tim. “You know about my secret identity.”

“Yes, Tim,” said Ives, reaching over to take Ari’s hand. He was sitting next to her on a sofa, facing Tim, who was seated in an armchair. “We tracked down Stephanie, she told us everything, and then we got chased by a giant wolf, and then we met Oracle and Jason, they told us a little more, which is not much, on the whole, but… yes. We know about you being Robin, and all the heck you went through.”

Ari cleared her throat, and, still crying, said, “Tim, I forgive you for all the drama that our relationship caused, and Stephanie and I don’t hate each other, and neither of us hate you. I just want you to know that.”

There happened to be a box of tissues on a table next to Tim, and Tim reached over and grabbed it, before handing it to Ari, who took it, before giving a hard blow into a clump of them.

“Yeah, that’s about everything,” said Ari. “And… yeah. I forgive you. And as my way of showing that I mean it, I’d like you to come to church with Ives and me. We recently got together romantically, we’re taking it slow, as we have repeatedly said to each other, and we want to both be friends with you again. Would you like to come to church with us?”

Tim was silent. He bowed his head, shifted in his seat, and then stood up. Wordlessly, he walked over to a nearby coffee table, and picked up a nondescript brown brook that was on it, and which Ives almost immediately recognized.

“I’ve been reading this, guys,” said Tim quietly, extending the leather-covered book to Ives.

On its cover, the book had, in embossed, gold-colored lettering, two words: “Holy Bible.”

Ives raised an eyebrow, and showed it to Ari, who immediately gasped. “Tim?” she said. “You’re a Christian?”

“Yeah,” said Tim, going back to his spot on the sofa. “I walk over to the chapel in town every Sunday. There’s only eight people besides me and the pastor, but I like it. I’ve been helping them get basic IT infrastructure set up. The town has a website now, and all fifteen of Ossaville’s residents have Facebook profiles, thanks to yours truly. Pastor Jim’s Sunday sermons dating back to last Thanksgiving are all on YouTube, so that’s nice. I’ve just about cornered the market on Bible commentaries and theology textbooks. I have a huge bookcase full of them in the other room, and I’ve read almost all of them. I even went to Israel last summer, and not to investigate a terror cell or anything.”

Tim let out a big huff, and Ives saw that Tim was clearly feeling a heavy load slide off his chest. “So… yeah,” said Tim. “I’d love to go to church with you guys. I think it’s about time I started leaving this shadow I’ve locked myself into. And I’m happy for you both.”

Tim looked at Ives, shot a grin at him, and said, “Ives, you dog! You are very, very lucky. Don’t break her heart, okay?”

And, a bit more seriously, Tim said to Ari, “I’m sorry Ari, for everything. And… since you know about Stephanie, I guess I have a lot to be sorry for. My only defense is that for the most part, the craziness which was an overwhelmingly large part of my life for the longest time didn’t hurt you nearly as much as it could have. Thank you for forgiving me.”

Tim got up from his chair, and said, “Let me put the hot water on. Let’s talk about this over dinner. Okay?”

Ari sniffed loudly, and she and Ives got up to follow Tim towards the kitchen. “I’d love that, Tim,” she said. “I think you mentioned ramen?”

***

Conducting an op in the middle of the night was not Abbot’s favorite thing to do. As a matter of fact, it was a living nightmare most of the time. It required a lot of moving parts, chiefly surveillance drones, reliable comm systems, night-vision equipment, and good intel on the area where the op was taking place. It took a long time to get all of these things in place, and trying to throw it all together within hours was just not possible.

But in the face of all that, Abbot knew that the smart thing to do would be to run a night op. It was a perfect case of striking the iron while it was hot.

“If we attack that fort thing up there by night,” he said to his team as they assembled on a deserted dirt road, “we’ll be hidden by the darkness and will be able to get in unexpectedly. Drake probably has security systems in place which will warn him that we’re coming, but this is our one chance to catch him flat-footed. He’s definitely going to see us if we hang around here for longer than we already have, never mind if we dawdle until morning.”

Abbot’s team consisted of him, Whisper, Ali, Behrooz, and ten League operatives who had come down from New York. They were all decked out in tactical gear. It was now solidly in the middle of the night, and Abbot hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. He’d gotten in a quick power nap on the road trip from Gotham to Philadelphia and from Philadelphia to Ossaville, but he still felt altogether exhausted.

“I could scout ahead,” said Whisper. “I’d take on my snake form, go into the interior of the compound, and report back with what I’ve heard.”

“Very good idea, Whisper,” said Abbot. “My wolf form could probably sniff out our guy if I got close enough, but your bit of intel gathering could be our best bet right now. Just make it quick.”

Whisper nodded, and went off into the woods. Abbot watched her go, and he couldn’t help but feel a little worried. Whisper could take care of herself, but… anything could go wrong. He’d gotten to the stage where the idea of anything terrible happening to her was his worst nightmare, even more of a nightmare than running a night op.

Abbot turned to Ali, who was standing next to him. Ali, like Behrooz, was carrying a handgun and wearing a ballistic vest over his shirt and tie. “Ali,” said Abbot, “if both Whisper and I buy the farm or get captured, you have tactical command.”

“Okay,” said Ali sedately. “You think that could really happen, Abbot? You know the Bats and their no-kill rule.”

“Not ruling out any possibilities,” said Abbot. “For all we know, Drake’s gone off the same deep end that Wayne went off after Batman Inc. went kaput. Our best bet is to strike hard and strike fast.” Abbot took a handgun off of his belt, and the handgun’s grip felt good in his hand. “Even a year ago,” said Abbot, “things might have been different. There might have been something about the Bats which was worth being scared of.” Abbot gestured towards the fence, just visible beyond the lights of their cars. “But things have changed,” he said. “The gods are going away, and that leaves us mortals to pick up the pieces.”

The rest of the team stared at him blankly. Then they all broke out in sputtering laughter, the sound of which was muffled by the cloth tactical masks they were wearing under their helmets.

“You’re buying into that gods crap?” said one of the team members, who had a flat California accent. “Drake’s just some kid dressed up in bullet-proof spandex. Let’s just get in there and shoot this little son-of-a—”

“Shut the hell up,” said Abbot. “I have seen things which you haven’t, mook. I know what we’re going up against, and you do not.”

“Whoa, whoa,” said the Californian, “calm the eff down, dude. Let’s just be professional, okay?”

“I will,” growled Abbot. “And professionalism starts with respecting the chain of command.”

“You know, last time I checked,” said another one of the team members, a female New Yorker, “you’re on probation, right? White Ghost said that before we left the city.”

Abbot fumed inwardly. That guy again. “Look, whatever,” he said. “Let’s just get a move on.” Abbot turned to Behrooz, and said, “Behrooz, what have we got on the drone with the infrared cameras?”

Behrooz, who had been holding a large, tablet-like device, was studying the screen of it intently. “Whatever building is up there,” said Behrooz, “it’s got thick stone walls which our bird’s optics can’t punch through.”

“Are there any entrances in the fence?” said Abbot.

“Yeah,” said Behrooz. “We’ve got a south entrance, which is just up the dirt road from here, and a north entrance. I can see that much. There’s a wooden shack with what I think is a generator in it, and… oh. A chopper.”

“What?” said Abbot.

“A helicopter,” said Behrooz. “There’s a helicopter pad just north of the fort, and there’s some kind of helicopter on it. Probably one of those specialized aircraft which the Batman and his associates are so fond of. Should we take that out first?”

“Another good idea,” said Abbot. He turned back to the rest of the team. “Alright,” he said. “As soon as Whisper gets back, we’ll split into two groups. Whisper and Ali will take five of you guys up around to the north entrance, bust through the gate with the wire-cutters you have in your van, and then disable the helicopter. Once that’s done, my team will break through the south entrance and… storm the castle, I guess. We’ll converge on the castle itself and blow open an entrance using plastic explosives, if necessary. You all good on that?”

The other ten assassins all muttered their assent. A few minutes later, Whisper returned, clothed. Abbot wagered she’d changed back into her clothes after returning to the spot in the wood where she’d assumed snake form.

“It’s certainly built like a fortress,” said Whisper, sounding as tired as Abbot felt. “The windows are few and small, the walls are thick as Lex Luthor’s skull, and the doors are all locked shut. But I didn’t detect any lethal defenses or anything, though. No machine guns hidden in the shrubbery or any crap like that. I spotted security cameras and motion detectors, but that was about it.” Whisper took in a deep breath, and leaned against one of the vans. “Whether we go in there slow or fast, they’ll know we’re coming if they’re paying attention.”

“Who’s ‘they?’” said Abbot.

Whisper shook her head, and straightened up, having gotten her breath back. “Drake and those two college kids, Ives and Ari, I guess,” she said. “They got here first. I got a good whiff of two sweaty young guys and the girl’s eucalyptus perfume. Thank you, Ra’s al Ghul, for the superpowers.”

Abbot swore under his breath. “Fine, we’ll go in now,” he said. “Whisper, you and Behrooz take a team around to the north side of the compound and kill that helicopter. Ali and I will take the other five of our guys this way, from the south. We’ll converge at the fort thing. So move!”

The teams all broke up, and Abbot made sure to pull Whisper aside long enough to give her a quick kiss on the forehead. He didn’t care if everyone else saw. “Stay safe, babe,” he said.

Whisper broke out into a snickering fit. “’Babe?’”

“What, do you prefer ‘whore?’”

Whisper lightly socked Abbot on the arm. “Jerk,” she said, before taking a handgun from a waiting Behrooz. “I’ll see you after this,” she said, flashing her signature smirk.

Even with half her face scarred over, Abbot still felt the power of that smirk.

“Seriously Kyle,” Whisper said, “don’t worry. We’ve got this in the bag.”

***

Tim had been right. A hot bowl of beef ramen had been exactly what Ives and Ari needed after almost two hours on the road. Ives happily accepted the bowl which Tim provided, and Ari did the same. Tim, ever the gracious host, had cooked the ramen and then served it to Ives and Ari, with a bowl of apple slices with peanut butter on the side.

“You know,” said Ives as he swallowed his first spoonful of noodles, “I’d have thought that a guy like you would have a healthier diet.”

Tim smiled, and said, “A guy like me? How do you mean?”

“Well, you know… vigilante crimefighter, athletic type…”

“I’m out of that game,” said Tim, and Ives thought he sounded just a bit sad. By this time, they had been updating each other for the better part of two hours, over multiple bowls of ramen, and bowls of chips and salsa too, plus other very unhealthy snacks.

“So you had a falling out with Batman?” said Ari. “Did you two have a fight or something?”

“Not a fight,” said Tim, “but we did have a big argument.”

Ives saw Ari give Tim a funny look. “That’s kind of what I… meant?” she said.

Tim let out a laugh, and then said, “Oh! Yeah, we heroes get into a lot of punch-ups with each other. Happens a lot more often… or happened a lot more often… than you’d think.” Tim downed a glass of milk, and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Yeah,” said Tim, “the larger superhero community is in a period of downsizing and transition right now, kind of like newspapers, I guess.

“Superman’s doing a lot more work, the Justice League is getting its books totally in order for the first time in what feels like decades, and the normal people of the world have collectively had their fill of superheroes and supervillains running roughshod over everything. People just want it all to end.”

“Normal people,” said Ives. “You mean like the FBI and the government or whatever?”

“Yeah,” said Tim. “No more of these shadowy secret agent types with scary sounding names, like ARGUS and Checkmate. This one guy, his name is Ra’s al Ghul, you don’t know who he is… yeah, I heard through the grapevine that he’s set to go on a lot of most wanted lists all over the world.”

“So the superheroes and supervillains are just going away?” said Ari.

“They’re not so much going away as much as the normal people are coming in,” said Tim. “There’s not going to be enough room for everyone. It used to be, for the longest time, that groups like the FBI and groups like the Justice League operated in solidly different spheres. The cops and the FBI or whatever focus on regular crime, the supers focus on… super-crime.

“But things are changing. The super-sphere has finally started to bleed into the normal-sphere for the first time in decades, and the normal people, who don’t live in Gotham or Metropolis or Star City, are getting really fed up with it. Final Crisis? The Blackest Night? Batman Incorporated? It’s all causing a huge backlash against all varieties of supers, and the powers that be in Washington, D.C. and its foreign equivalents are listening.”

Here, Tim took a deep breath, scooped some ramen noodles and broth into his mouth, and swallowed. “To put it in a nutshell,” he said, “the crazy part of the world is going to have to start accepting and tolerating the sane part of the world, not the other way around. The sane world is invading the crazy world for the first time since… ever.”

Just then, a claxon went off, sending out the kind of loud, blaring noise which Ives normally associated with high school fire drills.

“What’s going on?” said Ari, shouting above the earsplitting noise of the claxon. “Is there a fire?”

Tim seemed to tense up, but then got his wits about him. “Ives, Ari!” he said. “Follow me back to the garage!”

Tim ran ahead, with Ives and Ari obeying his command and running after him. Once they returned to the garage, Tim went over to the glass cylinder device which Ives had spotted earlier and started punching buttons on a computer mounted near it.

“Quick! Get in!” said Tim. “The aerie has been compromised!”

Ives and Ari rushed after Tim into the cylinder, and Tim closed the glass sliding door built into side of the glass cylinder, sealing the three of them inside. Ives saw Tim press a button, and then everything changed.

He felt a sudden wave of nausea as he came to himself in a darkened room. He could hear Ari and Tim breathing next to him, and as he stumbled forward, he ran into the cylinder’s glass wall. The noise of the claxon was gone, and it was in fact dead quiet.

“Where are we?” said Ives weakly.

“Hang on a sec…” said Tim, reaching past Ives and Ari to flip a switch on the wall of the glass cylinder. The cylinder opened, and the three stumbled out of it into a carpeted, darkened apartment.

“Teleporter,” said Tim. “I used it to take us back to my safehouse in Gotham. We’re back in Gotham now. If you feel a little sick, that’s okay. Teleporting gives a lot of people upset stomachs.”

Ari opened her mouth to object, but then stopped, and shook her head. “Tim,” she said, “I actually don’t think anything could surprise me now. A teleporter, huh?”

“You own a teleporter?” said Ives.

“Yeah,” said Tim. “JLA hand-me-down. Batman got a few extra ones from them and passed them around to key Batman Inc. players, including me, just before it collapsed in on itself. And nobody can use it unless they know the right access code. Those bad guys won’t be coming in after us.”

“So… we’re in Gotham,” said Ives. “And my car is still in Ossaville.”

“We’ll take care of your car,” said Tim. “As for what just happened… let me pull up the security camera feed over here.” Tim went over to a wall, and flipped a light-switch, revealing a spacious, nicely furnished apartment. Ives could see out the window that they were indeed in a busy, inner-city neighborhood.

“Well,” said Ives, turning to Ari, “we did tell our parents that we went to a friend’s apartment in Old Gotham…”

Ari nodded, looking a little green in the face herself. “Is, is there…” began Ari, holding her arms over her stomach. “A bath…?”

Ari then threw up all over the carpet, and Ives instinctively scooped up her long dark hair into a ponytail. I should try making a career out of this, he thought.

Tim poked his head in from the room he’d disappeared into, before darting over, saying to them, “The bathroom is this way!”

Ari’s nausea, as Tim had explained, was a product of her being teleported for the first time. Having a stomach full of junk food hadn’t helped. But Ives fortunately had a stronger stomach.

Once Ari had finished retching and had gotten cleaned up, they all sat down at a dining table in Tim’s apartment.

“So… about that alarm thing back in Ossaville,” said Ives. “What happened exactly?”

“Oh,” said Tim, “just a… uh… a bunch of bad guys. Trying to kill me, probably. The cops will take care of it.”

Chapter Text

They had cut through the fence. They had charged through the grounds. They had gotten right up to the front door of the aerie. They had been met with no resistance. No gunfire, no gas grenades, no electrified mats hidden under the grass, nothing. The aerie was completely ordinary in terms of how the property was constructed.

It also had perfectly ordinary security measures, in the form of an alarm system which activated when the door was broken into when the said alarm was armed.

When Abbot and his team and taken a step back from the front door of the aerie to stand away from the explosives that were about to blow it open, he had been mentally preparing himself for everything. He anticipated a fight. A chase. Perhaps some kind of cat-and-mouse act. He had been prepared for anything… except what actually happened.

Even before the front door had been blown open, the alarm had sounded. Abbot didn’t find that unexpected. He was just surprised that such an alarm hadn’t gone off sooner. It was almost as if someone was waiting for them to prepare to blow stuff up.

But when they blew open the doors, all of them wearing earplugs to protect their eardrums from the noise of gunfire and explosives, it happened.

As Abbot and his team stormed into the aerie, he heard the sound of helicopters, and a very angry man speaking into a bullhorn.

“Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up!” said the deep voice of the angry man. “You are completely surrounded! This is the state troopers, and we will respond with lethal force if you resist arrest! Put down your weapons and surrender now!”

Abbot, who had just detected the scent of three teenagers coming from deeper into the aerie, thanks to his enhanced wolf-form senses, froze. The Feds again? he thought. Jesus Christ, how does this keep happening? How do we keep getting scooped up by the friggin’ cops? We’re ninja for God’s sake!

“Abbot!” said Ali, who had gone further into the aerie, before returning, “there’s nobody here! And there’s a teleporter in the garage!”

“There’s cops out there!” said Abbot. “Goddamn it, we’re trapped!”

“Did Drake know we were coming?” said the Californian, who was in Abbot’s squad.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Abbot, putting his hand on the earpiece. “We have a way out for at least some of us.”

“Say what?” said the Californian, but Abbot ignored him.

“Whisper, you hear me?” said Abbot into the earpiece he was wearing. He stepped slightly away from his subordinates, to make sure they didn’t hear him.

“I’m here, Kyle,” said Whisper, her voice garbled but understandable. “The Feds are around and over us. How did this happen?”

“Don’t blow up that helicopter,” said Abbot. “We’re getting out of here with it. How many people can it hold?”

“Wait a minute,” said Whisper. After a few seconds, she said, “It can hold six, including the pilot. Who’s going?”

“First come, first served,” said Abbot lowly. “I’ll see you at the north entrance.” Abbot then turned to look at his team. “Intel from the other group,” he said to them. “There’s a secret escape hatch behind a false wall in the garage. You six get down there and try to get out. I’ll hold off the feds when they storm this place. Go!”

Ali nodded, and made a slight bow. “Danger before dishonor,” he said. “Thank you for choosing danger.”

“Give ‘em hell, Abbot,” said the Californian, before running back toward the garage with the others.

Abbot felt his stomach churn as he ran deeper into the aerie after his team had gone to the garage. Those men trusted him, if only shakily, and he’d stabbed them in the back with his tall tale about a “secret escape hatch.” They would be in custody soon, while he got away.

But Whisper and I will be safe, he thought. That’s what matters. It’s the only thing which matters, to me or otherwise.

Abbot managed to follow his nose to the back entrance, and burst out of the back door of the aerie. He came upon Whisper starting up the helicopter, the propellor sending out waves of air around the area as she flipped switches in the pilot’s seat. He had to struggle to get to the helicopter, a Bat-Copter, to get technical, but he managed to climb into the back.

It was empty.

“Where’s your crew?” he said to Whisper as he got comfortable in the seat behind her.

“They volunteered to hold off the cops,” shouted Whisper as the helicopter began to lift off. “I told them that the other group had wounded who needed evac. Where’s your crew?”

Abbot had little in the way of a conscience, but it started bothering him now. “They volunteered to do that too,” he said. “Mine are a good bunch.”

Whisper said nothing, but simply lifted the helicopter upward. Abbot could see other helicopters, marked with the colors and symbols of the Pennsylvania State Troopers, floating about. But this was a Bat-Copter. And a Bat-Copter could make a J-Turn at Mach Five.

Whisper was a competent pilot. She could work with that.

The helicopter zoomed away, just barely missing two of the helicopters being flown by the feds or the cops or whoever they were. Abbot didn’t care. He was too busy trying to stay alive. He managed to buckle his seat belt before they started zooming across the darkened countryside of rural Pennsylvania. He didn’t take time to do any sightseeing.

But then, the situation got worse. Again.

The sound of a loud, sputtering engine came into Abbot’s ears, just barely audible above the Bat-Copter’s swirling rotors. Said rotors slowly wound down, and Abbot could just hear Whisper shouting and cussing. She was saying several words which, insofar as Abbot knew, could never be said on television.

“What’s the matter?” yelled Abbot, as the Bat-Copter began to droop closer to the ground. It finally managed to make a rough though mostly safe landing in a farm field about four miles from the aerie.

Abbot got his breath back, and climbed out of the Bat-Copter, Whisper doing the same. His heart was beating faster than a speeding bullet.

“Well? What happened?” shouted Abbot. “Why aren’t we flying?”

“That thing,” shouted Whisper back, “is out of gas! What happened is that we lost!”

Abbot didn’t reply. He was totally bewildered. At least when the Seven had been trapped in Robinson Park, they’d had Ali, Behrooz, and the scattered members of the Gotham cell waiting in the wings. Now it was just him and Whisper standing in an empty field next to a Bat-Copter which, despite being souped up and state-of-the-art, still required regular doses of gas. Drake evidently had been neglecting to supply that dose, much to Abbot’s extreme displeasure.

The song “Eye of the Tiger” began to play.

“Your cell phone is ringing,” hissed Whisper, and Abbot saw her forked tongue in the moonlight.

Abbot fished the cell phone out of his pants pocket. He was still wearing the ballistic vest he’d had on during the incident at the aerie, and it was constricting his breathing. “Who is this?” he said, and he was completely thrown when he heard the voice of his caller.

“It’s Pru,” said Pru over the cell phone, her cockney accent filtering through the flip-phone’s cheap soundbox. “If you want to live, come over to the highway and get into the SUV I’m driving.”

Abbot looked around, Whisper having come over to his side to listen to the conversation. “You sold us out!” he said hotly into the phone.

“I did no such thing,” said Pru. “The Master was happy to find out a few hours ago, and which your girlfriend neglected to tell you, that I was doing my business behind a nearby shrub when the fiasco at Robinson Park occurred. I literally got caught with my pants down. I almost got arrested for bloody indecent exposure. The good news is that the cops who were reading me the riot act delayed me from returning to the scene of the dragnet, which allowed me to escape. Now, get over to the highway opposite that radish field you’re in before the police helicopters follow you here, you pair of sods!”

Abbot then heard the sound of a car horn honking, and turned in the direction it came from. Sure enough, on the highway on the far end of the field they were in, there was a black SUV with its headlights on.

“No time to explain!” said Abbot, clapping the flip-phone shut. “Get to that SUV over there now!”

Abbot ran ahead, and Whisper followed behind, cussing up a storm again. They arrived at the SUV, and climbed into the back, after which the SUV zoomed off down the road.

Pru was in the driver’s seat, and Abbot couldn’t make out her expression in the darkness.

“How did you find us?” he said.

“You’re going to die slowly,” said Whisper, her voice filled with venom, figuratively and literally.

“Not as slowly as you will after all this is over,” said Pru. “The Master is very, very ticked at how this whole situation turned out. So much for avoiding public spectacles, eh?”

Abbot collapsed back in his seat, and stared at the ceiling. Whisper was right. They had lost.

***

Ives had been having a very good dream before he woke up. He remembered just enough to let out a smile as he lay in bed. He’d been standing in his parents’ house, and someone had knocked on the door. He’d answered it, and Ari was there. In his dream, Ari had grabbed him in a hug, and Ives hugged back, the two whirling around the living room, hugging each other tightly. Then they had tumbled onto the floor, with Ari landing on top of Ives. One of them had said, “I love you.” The other said, “I love you too.”

The problem was that, when Ives woke up to the scent of bacon and eggs cooking, he couldn’t remember which of those two lines had been spoken by himself and Ari in the dream. Had he said “I love you” or had Ari said that first? Who had replied to confirm that the feeling was mutual? And as the memory of the dream’s finer points faded away as he woke up, he was beginning to forget whether the words “I love you too” had been spoken at all.

But as the blur of deep sleep began to leave him, and Ives fished around for his glasses, he remembered everything. Sluggishly, he sat up in the bed of the guest room he’d been sleeping in at Tim’s large, Park Row apartment, and got up. He had gone to sleep wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing all day yesterday, and he looked at the clock radio on the nightstand next to the bed he’d been in. It read “12:52 PM – Sun.”

One o’clock…? thought Ives. As everything that had happened in just the last twenty-four hours registered in his now very-rested mind, he took a deep breath.

Ari was his girlfriend. Tim, him, and she were all friends again. And… there was something cooking in the other room?

Ives could hear the sounds of lively talking coming from further into the apartment. Ives, now having finished adjusting his glasses on his face, walked from the guest room into the kitchen to find Ari sitting at the dining table with Tim, the two eating plates of bacon, waffles, and eggs. And Stephanie was there too, standing at the kitchen counter, operating a waffle iron and frying up more bacon and eggs in a large frying pan.

“And he arose!” said Ari, getting up from her spot. She went over and kissed Ives on the lips, and then stepped back, putting a hand over her mouth. “Oh,” she said, giggling. “Just really happy to see you, Sebastian.”

Ives, now fully awake, grabbed Ari in a hug, twirling her around as she protested lightly. Ives set her down and kissed her on the forehead, before saying, “I love you.”

Ari giggled some more, and said, to Ives’s mild distress, “Taking it slow, right?”

And then she said: “I love you too.”

“D’aw,” said Stephanie, who had come over from the kitchen, carrying an extra plate of food. “Breakfast is served, lovebirds,” she said, setting the dish at an empty spot. “Eat up Ives,” she said. “Sleeping for fourteen hours creates quite an appetite in my experience.”

“Heck yeah,” said Ives, sitting down to eat.

“’Heck?’” said Stephanie with a wry smile. “Not something stronger?” She gave Ives a fork, and then went over to sit down next to Tim with a plate of her own. By this time, Ari had sat down again, and all four were now seated at the table, eating what Ives realized was lunch.

It turned out that Tim had called Oracle the night before, after getting Ives and Ari settled into the guest rooms they’d each slept in. (Tim had elected to sleep on the couch.) He’d told Oracle everything, and had gotten new information from her.

“So… the cops were camped out at that place before we even came there?” said Ives.

“Yeah,” said Tim. “They’ve got a snitch in the… bad guy team that was there, who’s been telling the cops everything. I don’t know much beyond that, though.”

Tim stretched back, and put an arm around Stephanie, who rolled her eyes and smiled. She looked like she didn’t dislike the gesture. “But I’m out of that game,” said Tim. “I just talk shop with old friends every now and then.”

Ives grinned, nodded, and dug into his waffles. Death-defying adventure or not, the present situation was the definition of idyllic.

The four had a great conversation, all getting up to date about the details of the whole adventure, start-to-finish, beginning with how Tim became Robin, how Tim met both Ari and Stephanie, and how Ives had met Ari at Burnside, and other topics related to a large swathe of personal history of which at least half of the table’s occupants were totally ignorant.

Finally, at three o’clock in the afternoon, it had all come out. Ives and Ari were holding hands under the table, and Tim and Stephanie had scooched together a little more closely.

Then, Ari spoke.

“So,” she said, “the church I go to, it’s called ‘the Revolution Church.’ It’s one of those hip, evangelical churches… it has an evening service we could go to. And then maybe we could… all do something nice together?”

Ives grinned, and he saw Tim and Stephanie grin in return. He could get used to the situation they were now in.

“That would be just awesome,” said Tim, and Stephanie nodded in agreement. Tim looked over at Ari, and Ives felt just a hint of apprehension when Ari looked away from him demurely.

Don’t be jealous, don’t be jealous… he thought to himself.

“What did you have in mind for ‘doing something nice together?’” said Ives, feigning aloofness.

Ari squeezed his hand, the two of them still holding hands under the table. “I thought you’d never ask!” she said, and then let out that beautiful, beautiful laugh Ives loved so much.

This was going to be fun.

***

The room was dark. Ives wasn’t quite sure what to do in this sort of situation, but he was close enough to Ari to make out her features. He was ready.

“I’ve never done this before,” said Ives.

“Me neither,” said Ari, grinning. “We’ll have fun doing it together.”

Ives nodded, and then turned to look behind him. The room was still very dark. “Stephanie? Tim?” he said. “Where are you two? Get over here so we can all do this together already!”

“I’m setting up the equipment right now!” said the voice of Tim, and he could hear Stephanie giggling.

“This?” said Stephanie, coming over to where Ives and Ari were. “You sure?”

“I decided on it,” said Ives. “Come on, it will be fun.”

“Ready, Ives,” said Ari, who sounded very, very happy.

Ives grinned, nodded, and lifted the microphone to his lips. “Turn on the music and the overhead already!” he said.

The music started, and the lyrics to the song they were all singing in the karaoke bar stall they were in began to appear on the lit screen in front of them. Ives began to sing. He wasn’t the musical type, but who was in a place like this? What type of truly musical person would resort to a karaoke bar? And since when did that even matter when the goal was to have innocent fun?

And they were having lots of innocent fun.

As Ives, Ari, Tim, and Stephanie belted out the lyrics to the song Ives had chosen, he having gotten first dibs, Ives felt nothing short of pure joy. They’d found Tim, he and Ari were a couple, and Tim and Stephanie were getting back together again. Their happy ending had arrived, and the credits were beginning to roll.

And the end credits song was by Bon Jovi.

“ She says, we've got to hold on to what we've got!
It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not!
We've got each other and that's a lot for love!
We'll give it a shot!  

Woah, we're half way there!
Woah, livin' on a prayer!
Take my hand, we'll make it I swear!
Woah, livin' on a prayer!”

Chapter Text

They weren’t followed. Abbot couldn’t hear any helicopters coming up behind them. No sirens, no patrol cars, no roadblocks, nothing. Someone less experienced (or at least less jaded) than Abbot would have a perfectly good reason to believe that they were in the green zone.

But Abbot didn’t go to sleep. He was still hyped up on adrenaline even as they arrived at the farmhouse in western Massachusetts where this whole thing had started for him. A part of him hoped that this whole misadventure had been just one more of the many weird dreams which he’d had when sleeping off a few pints of beer. Except for the parts with Whisper. He wouldn’t mind if those had been real.

Speaking of Whisper, she was in much the same boat that Abbot was. She looked almost strung out, similar to how she’d often been when she’d been on that juice that Ra’s had been feeding her for years. She had more-or-less complete control of her powers now, not that Abbot totally understood the weird science which tied into that nonsense. But what mattered was that he and Whisper were in about the same situation they’d been in three weeks ago: wordlessly sitting next to each other in a moving car while in miserable physical condition.

But at least she isn’t giving me the finger, thought Abbot.

They arrived at the farmhouse. It was dawn by the time they’d arrived. Abbot hadn’t slept in almost thirty hours, and hadn’t eaten in twenty. He was wasted. But he had to keep going.

“This way, mates,” said Pru, getting out of the SUV and heading towards the farmhouse. Abbot noted the other SUVs parked nearby, along with the League members in light tactical gear. Urban camouflage, he thought dimly, having just enough sense to recall a passage from a special warfare handbook he’d read once during his army days. He actually would have preferred to be in Afghanistan now. At least he had a clear idea of where the green zone had been over there.

Pru led them into the farmhouse, one of the League members unlocking the door to let them in. “Dad’s inside,” said the man, a tall, bearded Russian.

Abbot felt his stomach churn. Great, he thought. Another dad talk.

Abbot and Whisper followed Pru into the farmhouse, and when they came into the main sitting room, they came face-to-face with Ra’s al Ghul and the White Ghost.

But when Ra’s al Ghul turned to face them, his expression wasn’t one of anger. It was one of amused satisfaction.

“Ah, Abbot, Whisper,” said Ra’s. He nodded to Pru. “Miss Wood,” he said. He was… smiling?

Why is he smiling? thought Abbot. Is he going to be dipping into his sadistic side? I’m almost sure he has one.

“I am actually very glad that I won’t have to stab you in the back of the head,” said Ra’s. He sounded downright breezy. “You both performed excellently. A few major foul-ups, but you salvaged it! I’ll make sure that you get a nice villa, and I’ll be glad to officiate your nuptials myself, if that’s what you two have in mind for your future. Would you prefer Montenegro or the Virgin Islands?”

“…Master?” said Abbot. He was honestly dumbfounded. “Is… is everything alright?”

“Oh, perfectly,” said Ra’s. He was still smiling. He was genuinely happy.

And then, Ra’s al Ghul said four words which signaled to Abbot that it was all over for good.

“Now, where is Drake?” said Ra’s. “If he’s in your car, you can bring him into the farmhouse. I’d be glad to allow you to watch while I slit his throat.”

Abbot felt himself shaking. Something was very, very wrong. “We don’t have Drake,” he said. “Pru told us that you were planning to kill Whisper and me when we got here.”

Ra’s al Ghul’s pleasant expression and demeanor immediately melted away. “You don’t have…” His voice trailed off.

Ra’s whirled on the White Ghost, who had been standing, still and quiet, a few steps behind Ra’s. “What is the meaning of this, Ghost?” said Ra’s, his voice in this instance more of a growl than Abbot could ever hope to produce. “You said that Drake had been, and I quote, ‘miraculously captured.’ You said that he would be arriving with these three ‘heroes,’ these three ‘shadow warriors’ worthy of the Tokugawa clan! Are you trying to test my patience?!”

And then, the White Ghost spoke, and Abbot’s world imploded even more than it already had.

“Ra’s,” said the White Ghost, “testing your patience is just a little extra fun when it comes to this sort of thing.”

The White Ghost’s voice was not in the gravelly, angry tone which Abbot was used too. It didn’t even have the sharp yipes on the vowels which were characteristic of a someone with both a baritone and a Turkish accent.

No. This was the voice of a very different person.

And Abbot soon knew for sure who that person was.

“You…” said Abbot, and he could hear Whisper gasping behind him.

The White Ghost whipped out his scimitar and held it to Ra’s neck, before ripping off his green oni mask.

“The cops will be here soon,” said the man who was revealed to have been wearing the mask. Abbot recognized him from a thousand surveillance pictures and videos, and a precious few brawls he’d barely gotten out of.

“The League of Assassins getting its lunch eaten by the Pennsylvania State Troopers of all people,” said the blue-eyed, dark-haired man who now held the sword to Ra’s’ throat, “is honestly something I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of thinking about. I look forward to seeing how Israeli authorities will handle your Jerusalem cell. The NYPD will be interesting to watch too.”

“Detective,” growled Ra’s, before wincing as the maskless Batman dug his very sharp scimitar ever-so-slightly into Ra’s’ skin.

Abbot could already hear the helicopters coming, and the now familiar sound of angry men shouting, with scattered gunfire coming from outside. Whisper grabbed onto him, and Pru carefully took out her gun, laid it on the floor, knelt down, and put her hands up on her shaved head.

The departure of the gods, Abbot thought. And the Bat-God is leading the way out.

“No,” said the man who was called the Dark Knight, the Caped Crusader, and by Ra’s, simply The Detective, and who now held a sword to the neck of the Demon’s Head.

“You’re behind on your intel,” this man said. “I’m not ‘The Detective.’ And not ‘the Batman.’ None of those. Just Bruce Wayne.”

The End… For Now.