Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pounding on the door woke Jason.

“Yo, yo, fucker, what the hell, your phone die?”

Jason moved and groaned—must have taken a hit or three on patrol last night. Wasn’t Roy at the door, either, and Jason couldn’t think of anyone else likely to call him fucker in casual conversation.

His arms were cold—he’d slept in jeans and a t-shirt. Not his armor, at least, that was a bitch to sleep in, but his helmet stared at him from the pillow, where another face should be. He stared back.

Well, maybe he’d just forgotten to restock this safehouse with pajamas after his last laundry run.

Ugh.

The voice outside continued. “Come on, man, we got a job, come on—” Jason really couldn’t place it; he wondered if maybe the speaker had the wrong door.

Oh, man, he thought, finding out you woke up the Red Hood and called him fucker—but the amusement was darkened by the realization that he’d need to find another safehouse. This one had been perfect for his needs, even if—

He squinted; the room looked weird. Must be the light, or one of those hits was to his head… whatever. He pulled the sheet over his helmet, instinctively cautious, and pushed up to his feet, ignoring the way his back protested.

“Come on, fucker, come on—” Man was whining now, and probably waking up the nice Chilean couple across the hall, too, and Jason didn’t even think the amusement factor would make dealing with this asshat worthwhile. But he got out of bed anyway, frowning at the pangs of soreness as he stretched—usually he remembered, if he took a beating this bad—

“Jay, seriously, I’ve been texting you for hours; we got called in—”

Jason’s head cocked involuntarily as he stumbled through the poky bachelor apartment—Jay? he wondered. Maybe it’s a trick, somehow, a plot to get me vulnerable or—

He barked his shin on the table leg and swore. Had somebody moved the table overnight? Maybe he’d shoved at it or fallen on it or—Jason really looked around for the first time since waking and thought, clearly: Oh. No. Shit.

He could hear the mental periods, like the gongs of fate.

This wasn’t the safehouse.

He’d gone to the wrong apartment.

He’d crashed in the wrong apartment. Talk about vulnerable.

And he didn’t even remember it?

That was—usually, if he was hurt that bad, the Bats carted him off to the Manor. He usually woke up from nights like this in the Cave, or the guest room that was officially-unofficially his (Bruce’s shrine to the-boy-that-was being, still, too weighed down with years-old grief for Jason to feel comfortable in it again). He usually got a patch job from Alfred and, in the morning, a sitrep from Timbo and an unrelenting hug from Dickface, unless he could claim cracked ribs. They were big on… family, and togetherness, and all that sort of Hallmark stuff, and they—the fuck, he’d taken a beating and they’d just let him wander off on his own? With a head wound?

Didn’t ring true.

…were the Bats alright? He should check, shouldn’t he—

“Jay, open up!”

Just as soon as he dealt with this idiot.

“Jason fucking Todd!”

Oh, dealing with this idiot was going to be fun.

Jason reached for his by-the-door gun, and it wasn’t there, because this wasn’t his apartment. He shrugged. Wouldn’t make much difference, in the end. Gun would be faster, but if this guy really wanted him dead he could have shot through the door. It wasn’t like Jason was some kind of slouch at hand-to-hand, if it came to that.

Someone started yelling down the hall. Presumably someone else who’d been woken by this bawling jerkoff, though Jason couldn’t make out their words. He waited out two more knocks and one more “Where are you, man?”, and then he pulled the door open sharp as a shot.

The man on the other side looked like a fish, was Jason’s first impression. Watery grey eyes bulging and mouth half-open, tongue just visible—he’d been about to start whining again, it looked like. A full head shorter than Jason, and scrawny in the old-school Crime Alley way that Jason half-remembered from his childhood. The Italian mobsters that ruled Gotham, before the city got weird: they had big enforcers and little guys. Little weasels. Eels.

This guy was an eel.

“Okay,” Jason said. “I’m up. Now.” He let a smile stretch slowly across his face. “What the fuck do you want?”

Eelman blinked at him. “What?”

“You have been calling me. A lot. Why?”

“No?” Eelman said. “No? No, fuck no, I—”

“You’ve been yellin’ my name for three minutes, asshole.”

“Ass—what the fuck. Are you—where’s Jay?”

“What?”

“Jason. Todd.”

Jason thought, hard, about just slamming this door in the idiot’s face. Instead he gestured to himself, up and down. “Present. Who’s asking?”

Eelman blinked his weepy eyes. “You’re… you’re Jason Todd?”

Well, that didn’t answer his question. Jason treated Eelman to his toothiest grin.

“Holy fuck,” Eelman said, insufficiently cowed. “What happened to you, man?”

Jason blinked. Something must have happened, after all; he’d taken a beating, right? Been abandoned by the Bats, broken into somebody’s apartment and passed out and been found there by someone who came looking for him—

Keep your friends close.

He stepped aside and waved Eelman through the door. “I dunno,” he said, as Eelman slipped through, wary, eyes on Jason, like some kind of hunted woodland creature. “Took a hit to the head, I think.”

“I saw you three weeks ago, man,” Eelman said. “A hit to the head… What the fuck.”

“Really could use an explanation or two, friend,” said Jason. Take the opportunity; you’ve set this up, asshole, don’t waste it when I’m handing you a silver platter—

“You grew,” Eelman said, voice reverent. “You—you sure you’re Jason Todd? You’re not his older brother or nothing?”

“Jesus,” Jason said.

“We were the same height!” Eelman said, and then added, “I was taller.”

Jason stared at him, incredulous. Jason had been 6'3" since he’d shaken off the green. Before that, Jason had been fifteen years old and malnourished.

Officially, if this was some kind of mind game, it was the weirdest one Jason had ever been part of.

“Three weeks,” Eelman said again. “You get shot up with super soldier serum or something?”

Jason frowned at him. “That’s not a thing. Bane venom, okay, but—”

“What?”

“What what?”

They stared in mutual incomprehension until Eelman said, “D’you recognize me?”

Jason didn’t answer for long enough that it was effectively a no.

“Man, what the fuck,” Eelman muttered. “Okay, Jason Bourne, what do you know?”

“Jason Bourne?”

“Yeah, cause he had amnesia after secret government… look, let’s just see, okay? What do you remember?”

Yeah. No. Jason wasn’t falling for this. He stayed silent.

Eelman made a face at him. “What, they take away all your personality too?”

Jason raised an eyebrow and Eelman cringed back.

“Jesus,” he said, “you can’t—we gotta come up with a cover story, man, we got a job. Oh, shit—” His white face paled further. “Tell me you remember the job, yeah?”

Jason cracked his neck. “Sure,” he lied.

“Right. Right, of course, cause nobody forgets Falcone, right?”

Jason concealed the twitch. “Sure.”

“Right. Right. Okay. So, we got a job. We say you’re… you got on some weird supplements, on a trip out of town. Right? Over to Metropolis or something—” He winced.

“We gotta go with Metropolis?” Jason said, doubtful, playing up the we.

“They got all the weird shit, man; oh, or Central City?”

“Central,” Jason said, definite, but— “Wait. What you mean, Metropolis has the weird shit?”

“Well, course they do! I mean, Central’s got its share of super weird shit too, all them speeders, and Star with Robin Hood and whatnot, but Metropolis—” Eelman winced again, habitually. “Come on, they’ve got a alien who flies and has laser eyes. What do we got? We got nothing, that’s what we got. Bout time Gotham got its own vigilante, amiright?”

***

If Jason had heard a record-scratch right then, he wouldn’t have been more surprised.

***

He said, “Right.”

“Well, anyway,” Eelman said. “Point is. I’m Dylan, you’re Jay, you got hit with something in Central—you didn’t tell me you were going?”

“This is a cover story, Dylan,” said Jason.

“Oh. Yeah. You’re amnesia guy. You got hit with something in Central and now you’re—” Dylan’s once-over was neither flattering nor subtle. “You’re jacked, man. You’re, like, big.”

Jason raised his eyebrow again, and Eelman Dylan flushed.

“Whatever,” he said. “You’re Jay, I’m Dylan, we work for Falcone, and we got a job. You coming or you want to sit on your ass playin’ Concentration til the rest of the crew start wondering if we ditched ‘em for greener pastures?”

Jason was leaning more and more towards not a mind game, but he didn’t like the options that left. He figured, better to play along. For now, at least. “Yeah,” he said. “Right behind you.”

Eelman—Dylan—grimaced, but didn’t protest, and led the way out of the apartment. As Jason crossed the threshold, Dylan asked, “You ain’t locking up?”

Jason nearly replied, “I’m the Red Hood,” before he caught himself. Whatever this was, it wasn’t his territory. Wasn’t his place or his safehouse; he wasn’t free to let his guard down here.

He said, “Slipped my mind.”

Dylan said, “Right,” doubtful, and Jason tried to be inconspicuous about hunting for the key.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Dylan, shoving the door back open and grabbing a keyring from a corkboard behind the door. “Jason fucking Bourne.”

***

Dylan drove like he was trying to overcome a death wish through aversion therapy. Jason had gone along with him, in an attempt to get his bearings, but Jason was currently debating whether hurling himself from the moving car would be the safer option. Jason was no stranger to exciting driving, obviously, but Dylan was clearly trying to set some kind of—

“Jesus,” Jason said, as they took a corner at nearly thirty miles an hour. “You want to get us where we’re going, or you want to end up wedged in a wall in—”

“Wall’s better than Eli wondering where we are,” Dylan replied.

“Eli,” Jason said, slowly. Something else was bugging him; something in the city, in the air. He couldn’t place it—it wasn’t toxin or gas or even anything out of the ordinary, nothing he could put his finger on. Something in the background; something so obvious he hadn’t seen it yet—

“Look, if you don’t remember Eli, I don’t know, what the fuck, pretend you do, okay? This job was our way up the ladder, don’t fuck it up cause you took a daytrip to Central.”

Jason squinted at him. He couldn’t tell if Dylan remembered that he himself had made up the story about Central City no more than fifteen minutes ago. Flexible attitude to reality, there, Dylan.

“Eli Garibaldi,” Jason said, questioning, and Dylan relaxed a little. “Big guy.”

Dylan snorted in derision, barrelling north over the Tri-Gate Bridge. “Not as big as you, now, Jason.” Pretty clear he was harping on the Bourne thing still.

Jason laughed, kinda, and pushed away what he was thinking. Need more data, still, he told himself, with a voice that sounded like Bruce’s. But Eli…

Yeah, Jason remembered Eli Garibaldi. Eli Garibaldi used to be the deputy head of Johnny Viti’s operation. Never made it to heading one of his own, though, because… well. Because the last thing Jason remembered about Eli Garibaldi was Eli Garibaldi’s head, staring at him out of a duffel bag.

Eli Garibaldi.

Alive.

In Gotham.

Working for Falcone.

Despite the Bats’ propensity for it, coming back to life really wasn’t all that common. And Dylan, whatever else he might be, seemed excitable. He’d probably have mentioned, if Garibaldi had recently been reanimated.

No Red Hood, here, thought Jason, ignoring his cautious Bruce-shaped instinct to hold off on conclusions. No vigilantes in Gotham at all.

So… what happened to Bruce?

More urgently, if not more important: was he looking at time travel or dimension fuckery? Dylan knew someone named Jason Todd, but maybe—or maybe it was a magic spell? Maybe all of this was in his head, which would suck, because he had more than enough messed up in there already—

“Garibaldi,” Jason said again.

“What?” said Dylan, rounding another corner at Mach 3. Stupid way for the Red Hood to die, Jason thought, in an accident after all this—

He said, “Nothing.”

***

The clock in Dylan’s car said 12:53 pm when he finally pulled to a stop outside a curling rink. Jason breathed again and pointed at the clock. “Clock’s busted,” he said.

Dylan looked at him strangely. “What?”

“12:53 pm.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s dark.”

“It’s Gotham.”

Which, yeah, fair. Jason squinted at the sky. “Huh. Thought it was after sunset.” He paused. “Eli Garibaldi’s meeting us in the middle of the day?”

“He’s not meeting just us, and why wouldn’t he? That super soldier stuff make you nocturnal or something?”

Jason almost laughed. He said, “Or something,” and Dylan shot him a dubious glare. Jason shrugged. “Seems weird, to do stuff midday, is all.”

“Okay,” Dylan said. “Whatever.” He got out of the car.

So, Dylan, Jason thought. Excitable, flexible attitude to reality, rolls with shit pretty damn well—pretty unconvincingly well, really; if Dylan had been working for Jason and brought along someone without any kind of real vetting at all, just based on the assertion that something unspecified but weird had happened… well. If Dylan had been working for Jason, Dylan would have been out of a job.

But Jason wasn’t empowered to fire Dylan and, well, Falcone deserved the enforcers he could get.

And you could say this about Dylan: he could drive. It had taken them only—

Oh shit.

That had been what Jason had been seeing. What had been lurking in the back of his mind, and he should have picked up on faster, except that everything was so messed up that it hadn’t really registered as weird.

They weren’t in Crime Alley. He hadn’t come from Crime Alley. He couldn’t imagine a Jason Todd, any Jason Todd, who didn’t live in Crime Alley. Didn’t have it in his bones.

But they’d come from the south. “We’re by the docks,” he said, getting out of the car himself.

“Yeah?”

We’re west of the stadium. No connection to the Alley at all.

He’d been dead, for a bit, which of course he didn’t remember, and then he’d been briefly undead, and then he’d been Pit-mad, but through it all, except maybe the dead part, Jason had known where he’d come from. If this world’s—spell’s?—Jason, if he wasn’t from the Alley…

It was like the planet had turned beneath Jason’s feet.

Dylan said, “You got more weird geography stuff? Garibaldi’s waiting.”

***

Garibaldi was.

In the very animate and non-decapitated flesh. The makings of a crew were gathered around him: a couple of heavies, a greasy guy who was probably a driver or in IT, a gunman. Lanky guy in a suit, an accountant or maybe a lawyer. The sort the mafia kept on retainer.

Jason gave the room in general a nod.

“You’re late,” said Garibaldi. Not so high up he wouldn’t talk for himself, then, that was good. His eyebrows beetled over dark, deep-set eyes, surveying Jason. “And you brought a friend?”

His tone was ominous and Dylan jerked up. But then, instead of the (stupid) story about Central City, Dylan blurted: “Jason’s got the flu! This is his cousin. Uh. John.”

“John,” repeated Garibaldi, and the look he was giving Dylan almost made Jason regret killing him. Dylan flushed. “Huh,” Garibaldi said, turning his attention to Jason. “You going with that?”

“Nah,” said Jason. “I’m Jason.”

The accountant-maybe-lawyer looked hard at him, but Garibaldi just nodded, with the impersonal mien of the guy in charge. Not making things a thing, not yet. Jason knew the look, because he’d given the look. Garibaldi said, “Didn’t you used to be smaller?”

Jason shrugged. “Didn’t we all?”

Eli grinned, sharp. “Recently.”

Jason shrugged again. “Pills.”

A pause. “No way?”

“Yeah,” Jason said, improvising wildly, “guy I knew in Central, he was working on a supplement.”

“Huh.”

“Kinda unstable, though—”

“But you’ll get more of it?”

Aw, shit, now the Falcones would be wanting magic steroids. Jason tried, “Was a one-off sorta deal—”

Eli interrupted. “One pill for that?”

Jason was getting the sense that other-Jason-Todd was, uh, not a particularly impressive physical specimen. Well, he thought, somewhat irrationally, s’what happens when you turn your back on the Alley.

He thought fast. Central was weird, Dylan had said, speeders and things, so hopefully they had their share of explosions too: “Yeah, see,” he tried, “his lab got raided, and it kinda blew up. I’ll see if anybody salvaged anything, but I ain’ hopeful.”

“You do that,” said Eli.

“Well, like I said. S’a bit unstable. He’d only just figured it out. I was patient zero, kinda. And he died in the raid.”

“Just like Captain America,” said the lawyer / accountant, a craggy-faced man with a rude smile. Face destined for a duffel bag, if ever there was one.

“Um,” said Jason, drawing it out. “I mean, I guess, if you’re a nerd?” That was the second Marvel reference someone had made this morning, and if this was a dream or particularly weird dimension fuckery, and Captain America was real—But the rudeness had done its job. The lawyer looked irritated but Eli just snorted.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s see if it’s any use.” He half-turned away. “But also,” he said over his shoulder. “Miller.” Dylan stiffened. “The next time you bring in somebody I’ve never seen before, you’re gonna want a better heads-up than jus’ walking in. And the next time you—either of you—lie to me, or hide anything from me, or try to…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

Chapter Text

After that, Eli got down to details. Jason appreciated it, actually, as a connoisseur appreciates a good wine. Nothing earth-shattering, maybe, but Eli was clear, precise, knew what he wanted. Jason could see the organization in it, admire the logic, even if the purpose wasn’t—well. Falcone. Fuck it.

Wasn’t what he would have chosen.

Unless he—some version of him—had?

Whatever. He’d figure that out when he wasn’t surrounded by thugs who didn’t report to him.

A shipment this evening. Coming in at the north docks and being moved, smoothly, by the dockworkers just like normal, onto the trucks coming into the city from the west. The trucks would head right back out once full: contracts out in the plains, apparently. They were just facilitating the transfer. Not that Falcone wasn’t taking a cut, of course.

The heavies were heavies, guards in case the dock patrol decided their palms hadn’t been oiled enough. Greaseboy, who really should wash his hair, had a stack of forged manifests to apply. Dylan, no surprises, was there to drive the crew around. And Jason—

“You still got any aim?” Eli said.

Jason shrugged. “Yeah.”

“You sure, or that the unstable part? Cause if my sniper craps out on me cause he wanted to turn into fucking Terminator—”

“I got aim,” Jason said, letting a hint of the Red Hood show.

Eli measured him, and turned away.

***

Whether it was something that Eli had communicated without Jason’s notice, or whether Dylan’d just taken it upon himself, Jason had a shadow all day. Dylan drove back to ‘his’ (i.e., other-Jason’s) apartment and flung himself down on the couch. “Hey, you turn into, like, some weird Central City metahumanoid thing,” he said, with a grin, “I wanna see.”

The drive back from Garibaldi’s meeting place had included several complicated detours that probably weren’t necessary, unless the GCPD monitored the red-light-camera system as closely as Bruce and Barbara did—

Jason’s back tightened as he made tea. Shitty bagged stuff, too, that claimed it was orange pekoe but had as much in common with Camellia sinensis as a grease-stained takeout carton had with a redwood.

He gave up hope of a teapot after a couple minutes’ surreptitious searching, and put two teabags in each mug. Dylan gave him another doubtful look and Jason got out a saucepan.

“Man,” said Dylan. “What the fuck.”

“Boiling water,” Jason replied. Who doesn’t have a kettle—

“Microwave. S’right there. Or is it like, you get to close to a microwave you’ll shrink back down?”

“Microwaves don’t leak radiation, if they’re not broken,” Jason said.

“Well,” said Dylan. “I knew a guy who always stood right next to his when he was getting lunch, and then, bam! Cancer.”

Jason nodded without speaking, and continued filling up his saucepan.

The afternoon passed pretty much the same way; Dylan obnoxiously present and wary and Jason with—if nothing else, an excuse for tripping over half the things in the studio apartment. But no excuse for the questions he really needed to ask—where’s Bruce Wayne; where’s Crime Alley; what the fuck is going on—

Jason found a frozen pizza and cooked it for dinner. The fridge was… sad.

They left again at quarter to seven, when Gotham’s omnipresent fog had swelled into every crevice. Dylan’s only concession to the soup was turning on his wipers. Jason had grabbed the rifle bag from under the bed before leaving—at least there was something Sad Jason got right. Neat, cleaned, organized. Respectable.

For killing people from a great distance, Bruce’s voice said in his head. With no warning, or explanation, or chance for mercy.

Fuck you, brain-Bruce. Bruce had never understood that mercy, sometimes, was easier from a distance.

Oh. Jason was waxing philosophic.

He wondered if the thought was as deep and metaphorical as it sounded in his head.

The job was anti-climatic. Ship came in. Containers were moved off it. One of them was opened up and crates in it were moved to another container. That other container stayed at the docks, but the first one and four others got greaseboy’s special papers and were hooked up to special trucks. The trucks left. The dockworkers continued swinging the rest of the ship’s cargo through the air.

Jason watched it all through his scope, grudgingly approving. No incidents, no cops, no fights, no egos. No need for Dylan’s brand of get-awaying. Just a smooth, insignificant job, in the end.

Jason wondered what they were moving, and how far it would go.

He waited a sensible five minutes, and an over-cautious ten. The heavies moved out on their own, though Jason saw greaseboy sliding into Dylan’s passenger seat. Jason idly covered their general departure.

Not that, if he was reading this city right, they’d really had anything to worry about. No Bats; no vigilantes; no organization, and ninety-five percent of the cops dirty or scared or both. About the only thing that Garibaldi’s people needed to fear were other gangs.

And that rationalization—cause, hey, you didn’t die and come back to life with a preternatural rage-monster in your brain, and adjust to its presence (mostly), without being able to recognize when you were rationalizing—that rationalization was convenient.

Because it let Jason avoid the question he’d been avoiding for… well, all day, really.

Namely.

What the fuck would he have done if something had gone wrong.

He wasn’t going to shoot a cop, not a cop trying to take down the mobs in Gotham. And he’d never really wanted to be part of the gangs, let alone be the pointy end of the spear that started a (new? a-nother?) gang war, and whatever world he was in, whatever reality, he didn’t have nearly enough intel yet. Not to be making decisions like that.

Foot shots, he decided, too late to make a difference. He’d aim around everybody’s feet, aim at the containers; set up a racket and hope they scared easy enough.

Fuck.

Well, if he kept in with Dylan (and Garibaldi, jesus), he might get another chance to test his resolve.

Fifteen minutes after the truck left (more time than he needed and, really, enough to draw attention if this city had any competent oversight), Jason packed his rifle in the smooth movements that he… was going to have to practice, more, if he was going to keep up this cosplay as sad-Jason-the-sniper.

Rifles were fine for distance work, but Jason-Jason had always been more of a hands-on kinda guy.

Still. It wasn’t like he was choppy.

Dylan and greaseboy were long gone, and Jason pitied greaseboy the experience. Dylan hadn’t offered Jason a lift, and Garibaldi hadn’t brought it up in planning, and Jason was mildly embarrassed and relieved by turns. Relieved, that he didn’t have to survive Dylan’s interpretation of the rules of the road, and embarrassed, that sad-Jason apparently had a ritual where he wandered the city, completely alone, after every job.

Headphones and fucking emo music, Jason thought uncharitably. And without specificity; he didn’t actually know any emo music.

But sad-Jason probably did.

Jason was also. Ah. Mildly embarrassed to admit that he was not. Entirely. Sure of himself on these streets. He’d seen worse, of course; twenty months in Nanda Parbat was more than enough to accustom you to randomized assault, weird posturing, unpredictable stabs in the back (and the sides, and the front, and the neck…)—but Jason didn’t know this place, not the way he knew Crime Alley.

There wasn’t even a Crime Alley—

No. Okay. Spiraling.

His intel sucked.

And by that he meant, his intel was what he’d been able to prise out of Dylan without obvious fishing. Dylan wasn’t exactly a steel trap, but he was pretty suspicious, and Jason had pushed the ‘steroid-induced amnesia’ line pretty far that morning. And, Jesus, Jason thought a second time: if Jason were running things here, and someone who just looked kinda like one of his people, but bigger, showed up claiming amnesia and weird-substance intake… well. Jason would cancel the fucking job.

He wondered again what had been in those crates.

They were rolling with it! That fact made a heavy mark in the this-is-a-stupid-dream column in his head, because everyone he met seemed briefly nonplussed by what was, apparently, an extremely noticeable physical transformation, and then just moved on. It had the kind of weird illogic that you found in dreams, and, speaking of dreams, Garibaldi was a good symbolic note for his subconscious to play with…

Or maybe Garibaldi really was just shit at this sort of thing. Jason could have been his own cousin, or just some guy with a vaguely similar face—Jason would never have stood for this. Dylan was dumb, fine, and so maybe in his arrogant way Garibaldi was too. Doomed to a duffel bag in every world? Jason thought, and frowned at the thought.

He wasn’t… he didn’t regret it, exactly. The duffel bag had a point, and it made its point, very effectively, and Garibaldi and the others hadn’t been a loss to society. Not exactly.

But that made it sound… a whole lot more sane than it had been.

Jason didn’t enjoy remembering the Pit. Or remembering fighting it back, the times it pushed forward now, or remembering the time, the work he’d had to put in, just to compensate for the urge to kill, rend, maim. Just to learn to talk to another human person without tearing out their throat.

He didn’t enjoy remembering the League.

***

He made it back to sad-Jason’s apartment without incident. Alone now, he took inventory.

By 10 pm, he’d decided that the name sad-Jason was going to stick. The guy didn’t own a single vegetable. His laptop made noises like an industrial drill when Jason booted it up, and displayed a flickering Windows XP login screen. No password. The desktop background was the rolling green hill of Jason’s childhood, the one that came preset.

Sad-Jason had been in the middle of updating his resume, it seemed; a string of part-time jobs and a vague “General Contract Services”, which wasn’t a bad way to describe sniping for Falcone. But.

Jason wouldn’t hire him, let’s say.

The most recent part-time job had an end date a couple of weeks back, so maybe sad-Jason would actually have had the time to go to Central and get super-soldiered up. Maybe Garibaldi had actually bought the explanation.

Maybe.

Sad-Jason’s bedside table had a cupboard with a magazine file containing—oh, ugh, man—neatly sorted and well-fondled porn mags. They were cheap ones, not that Jason looked closely. But every one was probably at least two years old.

Not good at splurging, was he.

Sad-Jason’s Internet was out. Jason found a bill, overdue, and a cancellation notice, and wondered what the fuck sad-Jason did with his money. Alright, ammo was expensive, but—

Sad-Jason’s phone, which he’d left plugged in, was a flip phone of a kind Jason hadn’t even been sure they still made.

Sad-Jason at least had decent taste in books. Somewhat eclectic, with a copy of David Copperfield shoved up next to Naked Lunch next to The Prophet, and Jason couldn’t quite work out the organizing principle, but he’d forgive sad-Jason’s sad porn stash in view of Ms. Austen. Random knick-knacks on the shelves, and—

Jason’s breath came out like he’d been punched.

Jason wasn’t the sort of person who liked pictures. Jason was legally dead, for gods’ sake: there were only so many ways you could dodge photographic proof of your existence and a lot of them boiled down to ‘say Clayface’, ‘deny deny deny’, and/or ‘steal or burn the evidence’. Tim could get away with picture-taking, because Jason owed him, and Alfred, had he shown any inclination to record family history, could have done so without Jason’s protest. Because he was Alfred.

But Jason wasn’t big on pictures, overall, and so none of his safehouses had family photos. None of his apartments. Who would be in them, anyway?

In the photos or in the apartments.

But sad-Jason.

Sad-Jason had him beat, on this one thing.

The bookshelf by the couch, with the good books on it, held a white plastic photo frame that needed dusting.

She was older, in the photo, silver creeping into her black hair and her face more lined, but it wasn’t like he could forget. Or mistake her. Older than he remembered; older than she’d ever been: arm-in-arm with a man Jason didn’t recognize, Catherine Todd smiled out of the frame.

Chapter Text

Jason needed intel. He needed data on which to base his rapidly solidifying conclusion (dimension travel, it must be; his subconscious had its issues but doing this to him, even if he were in a coma…).  He looked away from the photo.

He needed intel.

To get intel, given that there was no evidence that sad-Jason had any contacts outside of Dylan and… whatever Garibaldi entailed, and certainly nothing like the Red Hood’s networks, Jason needed internet. And sad-Jason didn’t have any, and it was late—not late, not by Jason’s standards, but late by most people’s, and this Gotham wasn’t his—

Goddammit. He’d deal with all of this in the morning.

If he was still here when he woke up.

***

He was still at sad-Jason’s, the next morning. He had put himself to bed just before midnight, and woken himself up around seven—that was, probably, the best legacy of his League training, being able to sleep and wake on command. Can’t have assassins getting snoozy, after all; can’t have them wasting opportunities for rest, either. Sleep when you can, and only when you can, that was the League.

And so Jason woke on sad-Jason’s couch, where he’d retreated with a pillow in a clean pillowcase and the topmost blanket from sad-Jason’s bed.

Sad-Jason’s popcorn ceiling stared back at him.

Okay, Jason thought, not moving yet. What are my datapoints supporting dimension travel?

1. Alternate self.
2. Alternate Gotham.
3. No Batman.
4. Apparently consistent flow of time reasons against a dream-state—although, he reasoned, I only have myself to verify that against. Would I know if I was missing time here? He frowned. Reason 4’s a maybe, then.
5. Not very many logical inconsistencies, not like in most dreams—except that I grew a foot and didn’t faze anybody. Which is, again, weird.

He frowned internally, again. Nothing conclusive, then. And nothing that I can remember that felt like dimensional travel. He’d only done it once before, and he’d been violently sick that time. Even Dick, who bounced between realities with Wally for sheer fun, said it still left him queasy.

Okay, what happened there? Jason tried. Night before last, or—the last thing I remember before waking up here yesterday. He closed his eyes to concentrate.

He opened his eyes.

He didn’t know.

***

The last thing Jason could say with confidence, he’d been leaving the Cave. He’d stopped in to deliver a flash drive to Timbo, faster and safer (and, Jason thought resentfully, easier) than breaking the data into chunks small enough for Red Robin’s SecureDrop. Which would still be huge chunks, but—the data was renderings and video and would take hours to tear apart and stitch back together and, sometimes, driving really was the simplest way.

He’d passed the flash drive on; nodded to Tim; seen no one else. Pulled out of the Cave, his bike purring. Made it away from the Cave, far from the Manor, maybe back to his apartment?—but there his memory stopped.

No flash of light. No nausea, no sensation. Nothing after that, at all, until Dylan was banging on sad-Jason’s door.

Wildly inconclusive.

He needed more intel.

***

10 am found Jason crossing the entrance hall of the Gotham Public Library just as it opened. His wrist felt naked without the Bat-access dive watch he'd been using for years—he wondered why it hadn't made the trip over here and the helmet had. He had a coffee, a flash drive he’d picked up at CVS, and a crick in his back from sad-Jason’s lumpy couch. Well. His back, at least, he could stretch.

He made for a computer kiosk and was relieved to find it publicly accessible. No login or library card required. Google was Google, too—Dick had once ended up in an alternate reality that exclusively used Netscape Search. So. That could have been worse.

Brain-Bruce muttered Conclusions, Jason. You’re getting ahead of yourself again. Jason grumbled back at him.

The thing was, if he was in a coma-dream that just looked a lot like an alternate dimension… well, playing along wouldn’t hurt, would it?

He took a gulp of his coffee and faced off with the Google homescreen.

Batman, that was first, because it was an obvious try.

            Batman (Kurdish: Êlih^[3]) is a Kurdish-majority city^[4] in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey and the capital of Batman Province. It lies on a plateau, 540 meters (1,772 feet) above sea level…

Yup. Okay.

Justice League.

            The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

            A League of their Own.

            did you mean: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)?

Superman.

…Okay, so at least Clark was here. Or, at least, Jason thought in brain-Bruce’s direction and with irritated precision, Superman was active in Metropolis.

Jason downloaded the ten most recent Superman articles—two Lois Lane profiles and eight international headlines shouting, in effect, Superman Saved The Day! While hunting around the Daily Planet’s site, he also grabbed a few pieces by Clark Kent: an article on a janitorial strike, a human-interest piece about the aftermath of Superman-saving-the-day—Jason smiled ruefully.

He’s not yours, brain-Bruce cautioned. He won’t know you, Jaylad.

Anyway.

The Flash.

Oh, good, Dylan was just an idiot, and people here called Barry and his family speedsters, not speeders like they were about to get tickets from a traffic cop.

A sudden thought, Dylan and the accountant guy both referencing Captain America, supersoldiers—

No, he saw. No, Marvel Comics were still comics and those guys just thought along disturbingly similar lines. No Avengers here; Jason hadn’t fallen into some kind of comic-book fantasy-land.

Pity. Mighta been fun.

Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow—yeah, okay, Oliver did have the goatee in any universe, apparently. Everyone was here, successful, safe.

Everybody except Bruce.

Jason breathed in. He could—it would be easy. Bruce Wayne. All he had to do was type Bruce Wayne and—

“You finding everything you need?” a voice asked.

Jason turned, and couldn’t answer.

“Something wrong?” she said, wariness creeping higher in her tone and tension stiffening her posture. She wore a fitted blue jacket, a yellow blouse. Her glasses. A nametag on a lanyard, as though he’d need it.

“No,” he said. “No, just good to see you.” Good to see you standing, he added in his head.

But Barbara had drawn back, and good to see you was really weirdly intimate, and he wasn’t looking forward to a ban from the library, so he added, “Sorry. Long night. I’m—um, I’m new to the city, I mean. Fog’s messing with my head, I guess.”

She softened slightly, although she remained alert. Even alert, of course, she was softer than his Barbara, even than his Barbara before the wheelchair. This one didn’t live in Gotham, not really; not the Gotham of the Bat, the Clown Prince, the gas mask training that started in Pre-K.

Jesus, Jason thought, why do any of us live there?

“Fog can do that,” Barbara said. “Do you need help with anything specific?”

“Um. Yeah, yeah—do you got any maps?” She looked at the computer. He shrugged. “Paper’s easier to carry around. And my phone data is shit.” Non-existent, and shittily so.

“There’s a couple at the desk,” she said. “Just give me a minute.”

“Yeah,” said Jason. “Sure.”

He kept his eyes on her. He had the strangest sense that, if he looked away too long, she’d vanish. Or dissolve into salt, or something equally tragic—

She shot him a glance from the desk, sharp and cold, and Jason remembered that she was a cop’s daughter and this was a mafia town.

“One map of Gotham, all yours,” Barbara smiled professionally. “It’s a little bit tourist-focused but—”

“Naw,” Jason said, starting to unfold it. “I like seeing the sights.”

Her smile stretched, briefly, and he wondered what she thought he meant.

“Speaking of,” he said, running his finger over the north island. Edging around the question, trying to get to it from an angle. “Are these—like, Newtown, Chinatown, are these the names that real people use, or are they just official names and everyone calls Newtown, I dunno, ‘out east’ or something?”

Barbara looked bemused. “Real names,” she said. “As far as I know, at least, they’re all names that real people use.” Jason could see it as her natural curiosity battled with, and defeated, her sense of wariness. She said, “If there’s somewhere specific you need to go—?”

“No—um. Well. Crime Alley?”

Barbara blinked.

“I’m not a—like, I just heard the name?” Jason tried to save the interaction without coming right out with I’m not a criminal, which even to Babs would be a lie too far.

Not your Babs, said brain-Bruce.

Jason continued, “Was just thinkin’ I should probably stay away from somewhere called that.”

She laughed. “Sounds like everybody should.”

“Yeah, well.” That was… probably true, but Jason’s patriotism was piqued. The Alley was his, now more than ever. He took a breath, kept it shallow, kept his voice light. “I guess that, uh, Crime Alley’s not a place in town?”

“Not that I’ve heard of, no.”

“Huh.” He prodded Park Row on the map with his finger. “What’s this one?”

She looked pained, her blue eyes tight. “It’s Park Row. Look, it says.”

“Oh.”

And she took pity. “It’s definitely—well. I can’t say it’s crime-free, but if you’re thinking street crime, that’s not where you’d find it.”

His shoulders tightened. “I’m not looking for—”

“No,” Barbara said. “No, of course you’re not.” She pushed out her cheek with her tongue. “Look,” she said, looking around quickly, “can I give you some advice?” There was no one in hearing distance.

Jason shrugged.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re new in town?”

He shrugged again, one shoulder this time. “Yeah?”

“Well. Gotham’s not like other places. Gotham is—Gotham doesn’t have heroes.”

He frowned at her. “Yeah. Got that.”

“Do you?” She was looking hard at him.

“What?”

“I don’t—” She shook her head. “You look familiar, is the thing.”

Well, if sad-Jason’s internet had been down for a while, made sense a librarian would know him—

“Nah,” Jason said. “New in town.”

“I see people, sometimes,” Babs said carefully. “They’re new in town. And they’re here to… well. They’re going to fix things. They think they’re going to be Gotham’s heroes.” She shrugged again. “That’s not Gotham. We don’t—”

“No heroes here.”

“Exactly. I don’t—I don’t see them much, after that, if you see what I mean.”

Jason tapped Park Row a couple of times, and trailed his finger down the map, slowly, through Little Italy, all the way down to Tricorner.

“There’s a lot of people in this city,” Barbara said, following his finger with her gaze, “who don’t believe in heroes. Who… wouldn’t want to.”

Jason smiled, rueful. “You warning me off a life of righteousness?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” she said. “It’s just, you’re new in town. You might not know how things work here yet.”

He grinned. “Good thing I ran into you, then. Why can’t every city servant be so helpful?”

She hummed, eyes not letting anything show. “Well, it’s Gotham,” she said. “Everyone’s on someone’s payroll; mine’s just the public one.” At that, her eyes did soften for a minute. “Everyone, that is, but the Waynes.”

Jason didn’t even need brain-Bruce to say Not your Babs, on that one, because his Babs would never have missed the way he tensed. “The Waynes?”

“Wayne Enterprises. You can’t be that new in town—”

“No, of course I’ve heard of it—”

“Well, the Waynes are their own payroll, I suppose. But it’s—maybe this isn’t fair, but maybe it’s easier to stick to your ethics when you don’t risk anything to have them.” She caught Jason’s questioning face. “He’d love a place called Crime Alley, I bet, be right up his—” She laughed. “I suppose if you did want to be a hero, that’s where I’d say you should start.”

Jason gave her a crooked, sheepish, careful smile. “Not sure I’m following?”

“Gotham’s hero, such as he is. No leaping tall buildings, but—well, it’s mostly not what’s outside of our buildings that’s the problem. Down by Tricorner, if you’re interested. That’s where you’ll find Bruce Wayne.”

Chapter Text

Bruce was alive. Bruce was a doctor, apparently: he’d gone to med school to ‘live up to the blessings’ that being a billionaire brought with it. He had—Jason’s jaw had clenched, reading this—he had no kids. He ran a free clinic down near Tricorner ‘to give back to Gotham’ and the press was uniformly positive. No drunken binges. No silly flings with models to shore up a cover he hated; no nonsensical monologues on the relative merits of Carrara marble and Calacatta marble; just respectable, decent probity and good works.

The clinic (the Wayne Clinic, unsurprisingly) was funded by Wayne Enterprises, where Bruce had some undisclosed number of shares and voting rights. The Chairman of the Board had nothing but praise for Bruce’s efforts to relieve the multifarious health crises in Gotham, and—

Jason looked away.

“Something wrong?” Barbara asked. She’d started in on some shelving, nearby.

“Nope. Just…”

Just, what a universe.

The Gotham Gazette went on to quote the board chairman, Thomas Wayne, in more approving detail, and Jason felt ill. The article was—he checked the computer’s timestamp—the article had been written last month.

He went back to Google. Martha Wayne.

Also alive.

Murder Park Row.

Unhelpful—

murder Park Row Waynes.

attack Park Row Waynes.

Park Row Waynes.

They’d gone to a benefit, all three of them, eight weeks ago.

Jason breathed carefully.

The death of Bruce’s parents, of course, had led Bruce to Batman. In some universes, according to Dick, someone else had died that night—when Martha died, Thomas had taken up the cowl. When Bruce—Jason closed his eyes—where Bruce had died, Martha herself had put on the suit. But… no one?

Somehow, for whatever reason, Gotham’s mobs hadn’t gone after the Waynes. Or had never succeeded. And Gotham had no Batman, and Bruce had no kids, and sad-Jason was sad-Jason and had his—

Jason looked at the keyboard.

He typed in Catherine Todd.

She had a LinkedIn. She hadn’t updated it lately, but she was a law clerk. He smiled.

Dick Grayson Gotham.

Nothing. Did that mean he wasn’t in Gotham or—

Flying Graysons.

Oh.

Aerialists’ Fall Shocks Circusgoers, Leaves Son Orphan.

So they hadn’t been as lucky as the Waynes.

He couldn’t find anything more on Dick—at least, he couldn’t from the library terminal, not with Barbara curious and close by. He’d have to sort something out soon—he’d have to make decisions.

He rolled his neck, feeling the tendons stretch and shift. He had hoped, when he went to sleep last night, that this would have turned out to be a dream; that he’d wake up in a safehouse, in the Cave, on the goddamn Watchtower—somewhere safe, at least. Maybe this would have been a hallucination, a trap, a drug—or maybe it would have been real, but they worked out how to get him back—

They’d have to notice that you’re gone, first, a voice inside him whispered. He stamped on it.

But. Didn’t seem like he was gonna be bouncing back after all. Seemed like he was, maybe, here for the duration. He needed a plan.

His shoulder twinged.

Okay. Jason’s plan, step one: Find sad-Jason’s clean sheets and never sleep on that couch again.

Step zero, though: finish up here. Check—

Kori Anders was a bartender in San Francisco who still used Facebook. Roy Harper—oh, god, Roy—no. Maybe that was a different Roy. Wasn’t like it was the world’s least common name.

He’d look. He’d figure out sad-Jason’s money situation and get a computer setup that didn’t involve Babs’ watching eyes (for once), and he’d figure out—

It’s a different Roy, brain-Bruce said. Even if it’s this dimension’s counterpart. He’s not yours, Jason.

There was a thump. Barbara looked over quickly, wariness flaring—Jason had slammed his fist into the table. “Sorry,” he said.

Man, 32, Arrested in Liquor Store Armed Robbery and Shooting.

“Look,” Barbara said, “if you need someplace to—to deal with things. Whatever’s— whyever you came here, I mean. I don’t know if you do, or what. But, the thing is, the library is open to the public but it’s not—” She paused. “There are kids here.” She looked around. “Not right now, okay, but I mean—”

“You mean, not the place to work through whatever I’m working through.”

“You looking for someone?”

“Huh?”

“People who come to Gotham, sometimes. It’s cause they’re looking for someone. For, you know, runaways. Brothers or—”

“Kind of, yeah.” He took the out gratefully. “Couple friends I thought might be around, but I’m having trouble finding them.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Good luck.”

He appreciated that she didn’t try to tell him that things would work out.

Damian Wayne. Damian Wayne Bruce Wayne.

Nothing on the demon brat, which wasn’t too surprising. B never lost his parents, never went walkabout, never met Talia—oh hell, is the League a thing here?—so no Dami.

Well. Dami-Dami was fine. Jason didn’t need to be sad; he just needed to get back there.

Last but—whatever lies the kid told himself—not least:

Tim Drake.

“Is everything alright?” asked Barbara, a while later, and Jason realized that he’d just been staring at the screen. For a—for a long time, actually—

“Bad news?” she asked.

He managed, “Yeah.”

“Your friends?”

Jason chorused along with brain-Bruce, not your friends, but it didn’t matter because— “Yeah. He’s dead.”

“Oh.” Barbara said something else, but Jason couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. Drake Heir Taken!

Kidnapping of Tim Drake!

Heir to Drake Industries Taken from Archaeological Site!!

No Sign of Tim Drake?

Kidnapping Gone Wrong!

Drakes Return to Gotham; Ask for Privacy.

and

Five Years Ago: Remembering Tim Drake.

That last one was from the Gotham Academy newspaper. Tim’s face—younger than Timbo was now, certainly; probably about the age he’d been when Jason returned—stared out of the screen.

Not your Tim, see?

But all Jason could think was, They finally took him along, and it got him killed.

Oh Timbo.

Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Step—well, he’d have to figure out where it fit in the plan. But somewhere in the plan, now, was going to be talk to the Drakes.

Chapter Text

It was about noon when Jason made it home—no, made it back to sad-Jason’s. He couldn’t afford to get complacent with his thinking, couldn't let himself adjust to being here; there was a reason he still listened to brain-Bruce.

He’d picked up a cheap spiral notebook at the CVS this morning, when he’d got the USB. Luckily, sad-Jason had pens, and had tap set up on his credit card. Jason could sit, and process a little, and write down his plan.

Step 1. Find the clean sheets and remake the bed.

Maybe it wasn’t the most important thing he could do, but it wasn’t thinking and, at the moment, he didn’t want to think.

Step 1. Find the clean sheets and remake the bed.

Step 1 done, although there had only been one extra sheet set in the cupboard and it was heavy flannel. Sad-Jason probably washed a set and put it straight back on the same day. As soon as he figured out how laundry was handled here, Jason would get the thin sheets washed and put the flannels back in storage.

In the meantime, he’d be warm.

Step 2. Figure out what the fuck’s going on with sad-Jason’s money.

The thing was, Jason knew himself.

Okay, he didn’t know this version of himself, this sad sniper who didn’t grow up in Crime Alley, who’d never watched the Bat fly across the endless backdrop of the stars, who’d never died or come home too late to save his mom—who willingly worked for Falcone—

But some things were constant, right?

And one of the constant things, Jason felt reasonably certain, was that he was frugal. But, another of those constant things: within his frugality, he liked his creature comforts. Liked a nice mug of tea; a good homemade meal. He might—might—cancel his internet in some fit of prudence, but he’d never let the bills pile up until the internet got canceled for him. That wasn’t frugal; that was poor.

Jason had been poor before. It hadn’t been fun.

He couldn’t imagine doing it willingly.

Sad-Jason’s phone vibrated where Jason had plugged it into the charger. He had it charging every spare second; he was taking nothing for granted with his one useful link to sad-Jason’s life. He picked the flip-phone up.

A text from a contact cleverly named Bank, displayed without even entering a password; okay. Sad-Jason wasn’t the best at security, fine.

Deposit Alert, the text ran. $1300 to CHQ.

Well. If that was from the job last night, he and Dylan had got higher up the chain than Jason’d thought. If it was from something else, he—well, then he would need to find out what, especially if it was for a job not yet done. But the size of it… figuring out sad-Jason’s finances was now absolutely priority one.

As it happened, figuring that out took most of the afternoon and involved a freaking phone book that he went out for and ripped off the first payphone he could find. As far as Jason could tell, sad-Jason banked by going in to the bank in person. Jason settled for calling the bank helpline like a retiree.

Jason really hadn’t realized how much, in normal life, he relied on the internet. But then again, phone banking, in some significant and important ways, was better than in-person and even than internet. He’d always been charming, after all.

“My internet’s a bad connection,” he explained to Sondra. “Never trust it.”

Sondra had started working at the call center during college. They had chatted easily since he got her on the line; remembering her name and making a point to use it had endeared him to her from the start. She’d studied marketing. But she lived in a fairly rural stretch of Illinois, she said, and hadn’t wanted to move, and there wasn’t all that much to market there, and job security was nothing to shrug off. She was the call center’s floor manager, now; Jason had been upgraded past first-tier support by his combination of charm, technical ability, and the fact that many of his basic security answers were interdimensionally correct. Thank god.

In that respect, at least, the fates appeared to be on his side. He’d guessed randomly at a PIN number, trusting the guiding hand of the multiverse would bring him and sad-Jason into alignment on that, and the multiverse had.

Charm got him around most of the other issues, even though there were some things Jason just couldn’t say. What school did you go to in sixth grade? Well, I was briefly homeless but that’s probably not true here and is definitely not the answer, because I lie about that whenever I can— “Moved schools a lot back then. Had… three? I think? That year? But—I’m pretty sure I would have said Connaught. Or Lawrence Elkins.” He was looking at Barbara’s map and hoping the fates were friendly once again.

“If you had to pick one?” Sondra said, in a relaxed customer-service voice. “Last one of these, I promise.” Helpful, friendly. Not at all suspicious. He’d feel bad if his intentions weren’t (relatively) noble.

Although, no: if he wasn’t noble, he probably wouldn’t feel bad at all.

“Elkins,” he said with confidence. “Lawrence Elkins.” It sounded like Lawrence Welk and made him laugh.

“Yep!” said Sondra. “Too bad about your internet,” she added off-handedly, typing something. “That must be frustrating.”

Smile, empathize, care—or make them think you do.

“Well,” Jason shrugged, although she couldn’t see. “It’s Gotham.”

But Sondra said, “Oh?” brightly and without flinching, and Jason was a little bit shaken, again, by the realization that Gotham, here, was just a place. Gotham was a city, not a codeword for weird.

“Anyway,” he said, recovering. “Just checking on my withdrawals and—I got a deposit alert this afternoon?”

“Of course,” said Sondra. “Can you confirm the amount for me?”

“Thirteen hundred?”

“Exactly. And—” She paused. “Yes, Mr. Todd, your auto-payment is scheduled for later this week.”

“Right,” said Jason, slowly. “The auto-payment.”

“Nine fifty, twice a month.”

“Thanks.”

“Is there anything else that I can help with today, Mr. Todd?”

“Yeah. Cancel it.”

“What?”

“The autopayment. Can you cancel it still?”

“Uh, I suppose that I can. You’re approving the cancelation?”

“Formally, yes.”

“In that case,” another pause, “autopayment is canceled.”

“Great, thanks.”

“Is there anything else I can assist with?”

“Not at the moment. You’ve been a huge help, Sondra, thank you.”

“Well, that’s my job!”

They exchanged a few more pleasantries and the call ended. Jason figured canceling the payment was a reasonable risk; poking the dragon, you might call it. When that money never showed, whoever was expecting it would come looking.

And that, in its way, would lead to some answers.

Nine fifty, twice a month—that was nearly two thousand each month to an unknown cause. Plus whatever this place cost in rent, plus upkeep… looked like he’d found sad-Jason’s money drain. All that remained was to figure out where it was draining to.

In the meantime, Step 3. Reclaim Gotham.

He didn’t like not owning these streets. He really didn’t like not belonging here, he didn’t like it at all; he needed to get a feel for the place, learn how the city breathed.

And most importantly, he needed to fix things—maybe there wasn’t a Batman, or a—oh hell, he should have checked if there was a Joker—oh hell—but Dylan would have mentioned that, probably?—but either way. Either way, and regardless of how long he was here, and despite the fact that this place is not yours, thank you brain: Jason was not going to leave Gotham to Falcone.

If there was going to be a mob in Gotham, it was going to be the Red Hood’s.

So. Step 3—he underlined it on the page, and then tapped his pen, and then added a letter. And wrote another step, to appease brain-Bruce and brain-himself, and to not get carried away—

Step 3A. Reclaim Gotham.

Step 3B. Get home.

Two concurrent plans. Each needing elaborating. Possibly conflicting—if he left, would he leave a power vacuum? If he stayed—you will not stay, said brain-Bruce. Step 3A is temporary.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. He did want to get home. But.

Wherever you go, Master Jason, wherever you are—

It had been one of the bad days, at school, early on. He was rich, kinda, but only because he was literally Bruce Wayne’s pity project, and everybody knew it. And fuck (language, Master Jason, please), he’d been homeless five months ago, and he’d been cold, and he’d found his mom facedown and—anyway, it wasn’t like rich idiots being mean was the worst thing he’d ever faced. But he didn’t know how to—he knew how to fight on the streets, with fists and words, insults and gravel and mud, but those were insults like blunt instruments and his new colleagues at Gotham Academy wielded insults like bamboo shoots under the fingernails.

He didn’t belong, and everybody knew it.

It had all come out in the kitchen, because Alfred never paid attention but always heard. Not like Bruce, who watched and thought and worried; no, Alfred just kept going, as though he’d heard it all before. As though you could never surprise him.

He’d been beating the eggs for a cheese soufflé while Jason stammered his troubles out over cocoa.

Jason had eventually run out of troubles and Alfred asked him to measure the salt and the smoked paprika into a prep bowl, and then to grate the cheese. And then Alfred said, voice as firm as English oak, “You belong wherever you put yourself, Master Jason. Wherever you go in life, wherever you are, you will belong there and I have every faith that you will make that place your own. If your schoolmates are cruel? Well. It is not their school, Master Jason, it is yours. Let them know it.”

It had helped. It hadn’t been perfect; there had still of course been times that Jason wavered or backed down. But—it is yours—

Sorry, brain-Bruce.

Besides which, the Red Hood had a chance of figuring out what the hell had brought him here. Did Jason have that chance if he stayed nothing more than Eli Garibaldi’s freshly promoted sniper? Did sad-Jason, wherever he was, stand a chance of being any use?

Not likely.

Chapter Text

His takeover attempt would have to start with proper intel, and that meant making friends. Preferably with people who didn’t know sad-Jason at all, or well.

He started at a bar.

D’Antonio’s, it was called, deep in the helpfully labeled Little Italy—honestly, wasn’t this some kind of cliché? Had this Gotham really never got past the Godfather phase of organized crime?

Brain-Bruce, venomous, whispered Penguin, and Jason supposed he didn’t have much room to mock.

D’Antonio’s was not a high-class mob bar, either way, but it was full of exactly the right sort of people. Bruisers with beer guts and meticulously trimmed facial hair; women in tank tops and tattoos and a department store’s worth of cubic zirconia each. The waitresses wore short black skirts and tall heels and put up with a distressing amount of blatant disrespect—Jason could see it even as he walked in. The bartender clocked him in return, eyes sharp; not exactly reaching for a shotgun, but not inclined to welcome either.

Jason made it easy for him, walking right up to the bar and planting himself on an empty high-top chair. He’d extracted two hundred in cash from sad-Jason’s savings account on his way here, which would be nice and not trackable. Only an interim solution to the money issue, certainly, but it’d do for the night.

The nearest patrons shifted slightly. This was a bar that had regulars, and Jason knew how he looked. He wouldn’t trust himself wandering in either.

“What can I get you?” The bartender was neatly dressed: flashy grey shirt, black vest and tie. Really playing up the gangland image, not that it fit the room at all. The room itself was utilitarian. Too bright. Felt like a converted school room, almost; something institutional. Needed a bit more luxe.

The bartender stuck out, as a result.

The corners of his mouth were up.

He wasn’t smiling.

Jason said, “Beer?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Cheapest thing on tap?”

“You got it.” His eyes were assessing.

Jason waited in silence. He wasn’t disappointed as the bartender began to gently prod: “You new around here?”

“Just got into town,” Jason said, which would hold up against his supposed ‘Central City accident’ cover too, if it had to.

He could feel the man look him over and draw conclusions, but maybe he’d finally found the Gothamites of this reality with any common sense. They didn’t immediately start offering him illegal jobs, at least.

“Nice place here,” said Jason.

“We like it,” said a voice from down the bar.

“Well,” Jason said. “You should.”

***

He lingered, drinking slowly, and not having much luck. He’d been right about what the waitresses put up with, and after an hour at the bar, he was grinding his fist into his thigh to stop himself from getting involved. He could feel the green writhing at the edge of his vision, and forced it to back off.

“Hey,” he said at one point, drawing the bartender’s attention. “You heard of the Joker?”

The man frowned, but didn’t tense. “The Steve Miller band?”

“What?”

“Studio album?”

“Yeah, no. Never mind.”

Breathe, Jay, said brain-Bruce.

His focus was broken by the sudden arrival of a young man, hair heavily gelled—he’s your age, Jason’s brain pointed out, but young wasn’t a word that seemed to apply to Jason anymore and this guy was nothing but. The guy smiled, revealing too many teeth.

“Hey,” he said.

Jason nodded.

“So,” the guy continued. “Point is, you want to make some cash?”

Jason shrugged. “I ain’t opposed. But I got limits—”

“You’re new in town, you said. Somebody wanted to see you or something?”

“Maybe.” Hadn’t been what he’d said, but Toothy was talkative.

“Anybody I know?”

Another shrug. “I got some work through an acquaintance. Working for his uncle Carmine.” Wasn’t like that was subtle, but it wasn’t meant to be; tonight was an intel op, not a piss-off-and-double-cross-Carmine-Falcone night.

That one was coming, of course.

The name-drop had done its work, though; Toothy had paled for a half-second and then smiled even broader, and the bartender’s shoulders had relaxed.

“You wanna make something on the side, while you’re in town?” Toothy pressed.

Jason grinned. “Sure.”

Toothy gave him an address on Lime Street in Tricorner. He said, “Tomorrow night. Eleven. Bring an icepack.”

Jason’s raised eyebrow followed him back to a table in the far corner filled with other young and hungry wannabes. Then Jason turned to the bartender.

“You know what this is?” he asked, meaning the appointment.

The bartender blinked at him. “First rule of Fight Club.”

Jason closed his eyes. “Don’t tell me it’s an actual fight club. Oh my god.”

The man snorted. “Trik likes his fighters. You got a look about you like you know what you’re doing.”

Jason opened his eyes. “How bored are you?”

“Me, I’m having a great time. But Trik—Patrick—he makes good cash off the ring.”

“That was Patrick?” Toothy?

“Yeah.” The bartender’s turn to raise his eyebrows; he said “Uncle Carmine?” carefully.

“That a problem?”

“Nope. You wanna watch out for the ring, though. Buncha uncles got money in it.”

The warning was appreciated but irrelevant: Jason was not looking to actually sign up for amateur fight night. Trik could be useful, maybe—Jason would put in an appearance, shake some hands, make some connections, but… Talia would laugh herself to pieces if he stepped into a ring with guys like these.

He nodded at the bartender. “Thanks,” he said, putting down his mostly empty second pint. “I’m Red, by the way.”

“Ethan,” the bartender said, a wry sound in his voice. “Thanks for dropping in.”

Jason stood up, feeling his muscles slide into place.

***

The next project was to walk the streets. The fog wasn’t as bad tonight as it had been yesterday, and Jason was hopeful he’d find more of the working girls out and about. Maybe he should have asked Ethan where the girls hung out, but… ‘randy would-be john’ wasn’t really the image he was looking to set up.

Didn’t matter, anyway. Gotham wasn’t that different. He found the first group on Elm, near Cassidy, and not too far from D’Antonio’s. Half a dozen women were standing in ones and twos, strategically spaced apart, each with their own small patch of turf—though not so distanced that they couldn’t watch out for each other, couldn’t watch and resent and strategize.

Jason approached the nearest two. An Asian redhead and a short white blonde, both in obvious wigs. The redhead wore neon green fishnets.

Jason said, “Hey.”

The women turned to him. The redhead seemed to be going for Julia Roberts in the first ten minutes of Pretty Woman; her blonde friend had her wig done in two braids and was wearing plaid hot pants. A naughty schoolgirl sort of thing.

They looked him over appraisingly.

“Hey,” Julia Roberts purred.

“How’s business?” Jason asked, not responding to their interest. It had been—confusing, mostly, when he’d been starting out as the Hood. He hadn’t been in much of a state to recognize interest, half-high on Lazarus anger as he usually was, gripped by insecurity, rage, and magic. Women’s interest—and men’s, for that matter—hadn’t broken through the verdant fury, and when it had—

Well. He’d been fifteen when he died. He hadn’t been naïve, but…

And then being reanimated had made it hard, even once he’d figured himself out a little more. Being Bruce’s kid had made it hard. Batman’s kid…

Being fucking busy, keeping Gotham together and keeping the Bats from getting in too deep and keeping the Alley safe—he’d never really had time for real, that was the thing. And he wasn’t thrilled to accept fake, and never from the people he protected.

So he’d got good, even if just by accident, at ignoring the looks he got.

“Business is good,” said the schoolgirl.

“Depends what you’re looking for, handsome,” the redhead added.

He smiled, brushing the compliment off. “No,” he said, “I mean it.”

The redhead said, “What?”

“You get treated well? You doing okay?”

“Oh holy fuck,” said the blonde, turning away in disgust.

“Ain’ trying to save you,” said Jason, holding his palms up and letting the Alley slip forward in his voice. “F’you need help, though. Might be able to help you out.”

“We got help, mister,” Julia said.

“Yeah, well, you want more, you leave a message at D’Antonio’s. Tell Ethan it’s for Red. You spread the word?”

“Fuck off,” said the schoolgirl, and Jason retreated with a grin.

***

Not a terrible start. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all, nor did an oak spring into beauty like a reed.

Nor did a takeover of a criminal empire, or two, happen overnight. He’d chat. He’d mingle. He’d wander by the fight club tomorrow, try not to snicker at these poor dumb idiots, imagine them sparring with Antheil or Lady Shiva. Or even with Dick, who made up for his relative lack of training with sheer natural talent and a wellspring of fury.

And then slowly but surely—he could see how it would go—Jason would work himself into the heart of Gotham’s underworld, and he’d build up his position so that, one day—if he wasn’t home before then—the helmet would come out from under sad-Jason’s bed.

Chapter Text

The fight club in Tricorner was set up in a disused warehouse, because of course it was. Because there were, in fact, some constants across the multiverse, and one was that Gotham had more disused warehouses than it knew what to do with.

It was bright, though; Jason was used to empty warehouses filled with shadows and the sweep of capes but, like D’Antonio’s last night, this place had gone too far in the other direction. Spotlights flooded the main floor, like Patrick and the others putting on this shindy were saying they had no need to hide.

Jason passed a beat cop still in uniform, and figured Patrick and the others might be right.

A decent crowd; a couple of faces Jason recognized from the bar the night before. One of D’Antonio’s waitresses had a side gig (or maybe D’Antonio’s was the side gig, who knew), and was mingling, holding a stack of papers, taking bets old-school. The guys in the ring when Jason arrived weren’t doing too badly; pretty evenly matched, no visible blood (yet), sweat starting to catch in their eyebrows. Running down the necks, dripping from the hair.

Jason rolled his shoulders.

Dylan had arrived at sad-Jason’s apartment that morning; it became clear to Jason that Dylan viewed sad-Jason’s space as his own. He’d slumped about, shod feet up on the couch, dropping potato chip crumbs all over the carpet, and talking. Incessantly, and inanely, and, as best Jason could tell, about video games. Specifically: video games that Jason had never heard of and that Dylan and sad-Jason had, apparently, played a lot. Every time Jason tried to steer him towards a topic of more interest (Garibaldi, for instance, or who is sad-Jason paying lots of money to), Dylan countered with a suspicious look at Jason’s bulk and evaded the question.

If Dylan hadn’t been an idiot, Jason might have thought he was doing it on purpose.

Jason had mentioned the fight club and a look slithered through Dylan’s eyes, one that Jason couldn’t quite read. Dylan had shrugged it off though, saying something about a job he’d found—don’t need you, man, he laughed, closeup stuff, or I woulda brought you in—and he’d peeled himself off Jason’s couch shortly before five pm.

And at that point, it wasn’t like Jason had any other plans.

One of Garibaldi’s bruisers stood on the other side of the ring. His eyes met Jason’s, held, moved on.

“You in to bet?” the waitress asked, and Jason looked down towards her.

And directly into her cleavage.

He reoriented his gaze with a wince, which didn’t endear him to her. “You betting, you beating, or you beating one off?”

He winced again. “Just getting the lay of the land,” he said.

She looked him over derisively and turned away.

Jason grabbed a red plastic cup full of unidentified alcohol from the bar for the bargain price of nine dollars—jesus, why were they even bothering to run a mob here, just open a normal bar and overcharge people that way—although, as an unknown quantity, the prices he was paying were probably artificially high. His cautious sip didn’t help him figure out what the cup contained, and he decided to hang on to it for show and dump the contents in the first even slightly plausible receptacle he found.

He mingled.

It was weird, being out like this without the helmet. He wasn’t used to being this… open, anymore. No one looked twice; of course they didn’t, but no one said jAsON toDd? or Red HOOD or—

He’d never be here, unmasked, in his Gotham.

The lights, overbright, made the other people seem unreal.

He mingled, and conveniently sloshed most of his drink into a trash can as he passed it.

“Hey big guy,” said Patrick the fight promoter. If not for the mafia context, Jason would have said it was flirtatious. He wasn’t particularly intrigued by Patrick, though; didn’t feel like meeting him in kind.

He simply nodded.

Patrick had a coterie of willowy sycophants around him. “You fighting?” a blond one asked, running his eyes up and down Jason’s frame, and—if these mobs were like Gotham’s old mobs, they weren’t exactly up to date with LGBT inclusivity, so Jason was surprised—but maybe fight nights were a free-for-all.

He shrugged.

Patrick said, “This is the planned stuff,” jerking his head towards the fighters. They’d gone down in a bastardized jiu jitsu grapple sequence and Jason, with his back to them, could only keep track of the fight now by listening to the grunts. “But after this, there’s free rounds. Anybody can go up. Taking all comers. Marco—” He pointed to a guy the size of a house. “Marco’s the champion from last time round. Go till you drop, nothing off limits except, you know…” He unhelpfully trailed off, and Jason did not know, and it was probably pertinent—no, it was not pertinent, he wasn’t here to fight. Nor to make a splash, not before he wanted to.

He’d been rushed into enough things in his life, thank you. 

Whatever.

“Ain’t much of a fighter,” he said now.

“Bag is large,” Patrick said. “Heh. Eight large, actually.”

Jesus, like he was in a goddamn movie.

“M’okay,” said Jason, which, considering sad-Jason’s finances was probably not true, but—

Patrick frowned and so did his sycophants. “You think about it, yeah?”

Jason shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe.”

A toothy grin. “Maybe’s great.”

Jason got away from Patrick after that. Something was off, here; he could tell by the way the base of his skull was twitching. Yeah, fine; he knew he looked like he could handle himself in a fight, but Patrick was… pushy.

Eight thousand, though.

He stewed it over, eventually heading back to the ring. Eyeing Marco from a careful distance.

Marco, he was pleased to see, was sizing up him in return.

Marco had thirty pounds on Jason, maybe? Thirty-five? No way it was all muscle, but even still. Pretty similar in height; Marco’d have the advantage if they got in close. Jason’d have to stay loose on his feet—he could step in near the end of the free bouts. Let the small fry soften Marco up a little.

Eight thousand, after all. Could go a long way to whatever sad-Jason was into.

Could get him breathing room, time away from the fucking mob; time to find Barry Allen or Cyborg or someone and talk (listen to) interdimensional physics.

And—he looked at Marco—it would be fun, in its way. Jason didn’t imagine that Marco, or anyone else here, had anything even approximating training, but—it had been a while since he’d had a decent bare-knuckle fight. He wasn’t gonna give up his guns, not long-term, or his bombs or comms or intel, and he didn’t think that Bruce should abandon the batarangs, but—

There was something about bodies, with nothing else. You learned to understand the other person.

You learned to understand yourself.

He grinned, and rolled his neck.

***

Marco was good.

Jason had known it, watching him take down one contender after another. Marco might be big, but he wasn’t slow; carried his weight lightly, unless and until he turned into a battering ram. But Jason had been right, too, that Marco didn’t have much training, if he had any. His skill was the kind that said I’m big and I’ve been big for years. On the streets of this Gotham, that was probably all he needed.

Jason, in contrast, had the kind of skill that said I learned to survive the League of Assassins, and I know that big doesn’t always win.

Marco’d been through four others by the time Jason caught Patrick’s eye. Patrick smiled, something sly in it, and Jason again had the feeling of missing something significant. He put it aside, for now.

Marco’s fourth shouldn’t have even tried. He was a welterweight, if that, and Marco was clearly going easy on him, but it wouldn’t be long.

It wasn’t long.

The welterweight went down hard, and tapped out, and was dragged up by friends and carried off. He was grinning wildly through bloody teeth.

You learn to understand yourself, Jason thought again.

“Red!” Patrick called. Jason straightened. “You’re up.” There were rustles through the crowd as bets were placed.

Jason let himself take his time; Marco had grabbed a water bottle, a towel. Had turned away, as though to say he didn’t care who came up next. Jason shrugged off his jacket and looked around for a—

“Let me,” said Patrick’s blond. Jason raised an eyebrow and the man fluttered his eyelashes. Jason handed over the jacket.

Would it be so bad? Jason wondered absently. The blond—he should get his name—alright, maybe not him, because Patrick frankly gave Jason the creeps and blond guy was creeps-inducing by association, but—

It was hard, being the Red Hood. Romance was hard—he snickered to himself as he stretched out his back, mirroring Marco across the ring. Romance, like he was Bathsheba Everdeen or Madame Bovary or someone—no, not fair, Bathsheba was pretty cool by the end of the book. But still.

The Red Hood couldn’t really date.

And he respected sex workers, one hundred percent, and he honestly didn’t see the shame in it—worse things you could do, he knew, far worse. But the Red Hood had to be a protector, and impartial, and so that wasn’t an option either.

And he couldn’t just take off the mask: Jason knew himself, understood himself (all those fights). Bruce might be able to draw lines between Bruce and Brucie and Batman and whoever else he had to be, but Jason—

Jason was all of it, all at once, all the time.

If he ever took off the mask, there’d be loose ends. He’d have to find someone who could cope with all of it—he wouldn’t be able to have anything meaningful with someone who didn’t know—and the only people who knew were the hero community, and much as he loved them all, the prospects were slim.

There was Roy. Or—maybe there was Roy. There was maybe-Roy, and when Jason got home, they’d have a chat about the amount of maybe in that maybe.

Or, at least, maybe they would.

Yeah. Dating was hard, and Jason had been dead, and then out of his mind with magical poisonous hate, and now Jason was busy. Dating in an alternate universe? Something easy and deliberately casual and not meaningful? Not wrapped up with Bruce and the Joker and Batman and, for anyone in the hero community, their own grief and trauma and history and morals and—

Ugh.

Might be worth thinking about, if he was around for a bit, was all. He’d already changed things here so—

“You up, Red?” Patrick said. Jason nodded at him. Across the ring, Marco shifted his weight.

Patrick backed up and said, “All yours,” to both of them, and there was a long quiet moment.

The corner of Marco’s mouth went up slowly, and Jason let his arms hang loose. They started to circle.

Jason kept it light. He could see that Marco was making mostly the same calculations he had, just in reverse: that Jason was (a little bit) smaller, faster, (a lot) better trained. Less drained, too; not that any of Marco’s fights had been grueling, but Jason’d had none. So Marco’s best chance was to get in close and finish fast—and that was exactly what Jason wasn’t letting him do.

He wove, he jabbed, he dodged. Marco landed a solid hit to his kidneys that Jason would definitely feel tomorrow, but Jason managed a sharp knifehand to Marco’s elbow as he came in with it and so they were about even. They kept going, inconclusive.

There were mutters around the room. Jason wasn’t sure how long the fight had lasted, but he could tell it was the longest so far; the spectators were getting restless. It was also the least bloody of the fights of the night, because he knew what he was doing and wasn’t just going to walk into a haymaker with his nose—but he wanted to play the audience, win them, make them remember the Red Hood. Not let them wander off in boredom.

Time for a closing strategy. He let Marco get in tight and left his own left hand in grabbing range.

Marco took the bait, going for some kind of barroom armbar takedown thing that had never known a dojo. But it put him off balance and Jason lashed out as he was pulled round, his heel connecting with the inside of Marco’s knee.

Marco staggered.

Jason, still turning with the momentum of the spin Marco had started, finished the turn by loading all his weight onto his inner forearm and bringing it down on Marco’s neck, just under his ear.

Marco dropped.

There was a hush.

It shouldn’t have—the nerve strike was an old move; Jason knew it well, it should be fine—

Marco blinked muzzily from where he lay on the ground, and Jason relaxed.

***

As Jason had predicted, nobody came forward after Marco went down. Next time, if he did this a next time, he’d have competition, people gunning for him. But at the moment, people were a little too startled by Marco’s sudden fall to feel like stepping up.

Patrick was grinning, long and slanted, and across the room, Garibaldi’s bruiser shifted his weight.

“Looks like we got a winner tonight, boys,” Patrick crowed. “And ladies,” he added with a leer.

Jason rolled his shoulders.

***

He collected his winnings. Eight, it turned out, was the whole pot, and there were a lot of people who got a cut from that, and after it all his ‘winnings’ were just barely five thousand—but it was still a solid chunk of cash and not obviously covered in blood.

Nobody’d died.

Five thousand would go a long way to getting sad-Jason some better sheets.

The blond guy, Patrick’s friend, had Jason under a watchful eye, and one of the waitresses was staring, wasn’t she, from across the room, and he’d won, sure, but this was ridiculous; it was too much attention, he didn’t get it, he didn’t like it—

He pocketed the money, zipping up the inside pocket of his jacket, where it’d probably be safe. Unless they—well, he should head out, probably.

And he shouldn’t have gone along with Patrick’s nudges; he knew Patrick had something going on, was getting too much out of him being in the ring, and Jason didn’t know what—

Not knowing, in a mob town, was a great way to pick the wrong side. Or any side; any side that wasn’t his own was the wrong side here—

If this had been his own Gotham—but just because there weren’t sentient plants here, just because the sewers were apparently safe to walk through (other than being, y’know, sewers)—that didn’t mean things were safe.

He’d got arrogant, somewhere. Started treating this like a day trip, like a vacation. He’d been daydreaming about romance and one-night stands, for gods’ sake. Lost sight of the risks, because they were so much less fantastic than the ones he knew.

It wasn’t like it wasn’t reasonable, exactly, but it was fucking stupid. Ethan had warned him, at the bar last night: buncha uncles got money in. Wasn’t likely any of the uncles had money on Jason Todd to win.

Even if weird drugs from a guy in Central City who’s dead now could account for an adult growth spurt and added muscle mass, sad-Jason had probably never been an MMA fighter in waiting.

A drug letting him take down Marco? And still be coherent?

Fuck, he needed to get out of here.

He smiled tightly at the waitress/hostess whose chest he’d accidentally ogled and then accidentally grimaced at. She was much friendlier after his fight, but he didn’t have time. Long-suffering, she pointed him towards a side entrance, dim and deserted.

Most of the crowd was still drinking, lushy and fight-high, as he made his way through. Marco’d been pulled upright. Someone had found him a bag of fucking frozen peas, because these people were amateurs and didn’t recognize a goddamn nerve strike and also didn’t know how to stock a decent medkit—

They’d be dead in minutes, in Gotham, Jason thought, which he would concede was an overstatement, but honestly—and here he was running away from absolute morons and—

The door opened outwards and hit something, a weird resistance. Jason shoved, and heard a yelp, and thought Fuck. He pushed harder, reaching down to find the Pit, and pressed out into the warm night air—

“He’s movin’!” the guy behind the door said. “Can’t hold ‘im—Dave, you got—”

There were other shapes lurking in the shadows, and Jason spared an instant to hate that waitress—no way they’d staked out every entrance, she’d sent him here—and another instant, to think, once more, how goddamn stupid he’d been, and then it was six on one, and he had no weapons, and his night vision was still reeling from the blazing floodlights inside—he shut his eyes and refocused his senses and only did so soon enough to pick up on someone coming at him from his four, coming fast, and he turned to meet it, pivoting on his left foot to land again in a ready stance but—

Oh shit—

What perfect fucking timing—

While Jason’s right foot was still in motion, the crowbar moved in a long sweep to connect with his left leg, just above his ankle, and—

Forehand or backhand?

—it caught his right leg on the way back up.

Jason swore, and went down, and someone kicked him in the head.

Chapter Text

Recent behavior notwithstanding, Jason was not an actual idiot. So when he woke this time, he didn’t snap his eyes open and blunder his way into a mob turf war he wanted no part of.

No. Because he was already smack in the middle of one.

Because he was, in fact, an actual idiot.

At least, he was in the middle of a mob argument when he woke up. Hadn’t moved yet, he didn’t think; he couldn’t have been out long. Only long enough they’d pulled his arms back, cuffed them roughly—no, it was tape. That’d be a bitch to get off, and the angle was bad, and someone was crouched over him with a knee in the small of his back, and his wrists were bound up between his shoulder blades. His cheek scraped against the rough asphalt of the alleyway.

He tried not to think about the likelihood of bacterial infection.

“Look, I don’t care where we take him,” someone was saying, as Jason’s mind ticked over into functional. “We gotta get him somewhere before he starts moving again.”

“Yeah, what you think he is?” someone else said. Maybe Dave. “I don’t care what kinda spooky shit he’s got, he’s down for a hour at least—”

“We’re taking him to Harbor,” said another voice. Commanding. Sort of familiar; Jason squeezed his eyes closed further, trying to remember.

“To Harbor? Harbor’s Maroni’s territory,” whined—

Aw shit.

Whined Dylan.

“This ain’t Maroni’s problem,” the little weasel continued. “This is Falcone’s call, first.”

The commanding voice—oh. Garibaldi’s accountant, that’s who it was—spoke again. “There are multiple parties engaged in this matter, Mr. Miller. And Mr. Maroni made a significant investment in the outcome of tonight’s event. Mr. Falcone’s claim is secondary—”

“You wanna tell him that?” one of the others, Dave again.

“Gentlemen,” the accountant said. “First come, first serve.”

Okay, that was unpleasant, and also Jason’s cue. “I don’t get a vote?” he asked, and the guy kneeling on him startled, driving that knee in harder.

“Fuck,” said the first voice. “Thought you said he wouldn’t wake up!”

“I can kick him again,” Dave offered and Jason, irrationally, laughed.

“Good evening, Mr. Todd,” the accountant said after a moment, his voice lower down and closer to Jason’s head. Jason creaked his eyes open and saw the man’s shoes, his calves and thighs held in a shaky crouch. If Jason twisted sharply—probably could split the tape if he dislodged knee-guy fast enough, could grab the accountant by the legs, bring him down, and he was the controlling voice here, that was clear, so taking him out would—“You’ve had some work done lately.”

“Told you,” Jason said. “Guy in Central.”

The accountant sighed. “Please, Mr. Todd, we’re not that stupid.”

Jason thought he heard Dylan, faintly, cough.

“S’true,” Jason said.

“Well, then, I’m sure Mr. Maroni would be happy to work with you to determine exactly how it happened.” The exactly was laden with so much secondary meaning that Jason could practically hear the scalpels. “You cost a lot of people a lot of money, you know.”

Jason did not particularly care.

“Harbor,” the accountant said, rising inelegantly. “Now.”

This time nobody protested. Jason heard shuffling that could have been Dave readying another kick, and tried to adjust his head to minimize the damage—he had no faith at all that Dave knew how to do this without giving people concussions. And Jason reached down for the green again, because he wasn’t going to be shipped off to ‘the Harbor’ like some kind of—

“What the fuck is this,” someone else said, from far away. End of the alley, Jason figured. At his back.

There was a shift among the assembled, like a collective, silent, intake of breath.

“Casaleone?” the new voice said. It was Garibaldi. “I asked a question. What the fuck is this.”

The accountant, Casaleone, cleared his throat. “Eli,” he began.

“Don’t,” Garibaldi snapped. “What kind of bright idea was it to jump the fucking timetable, huh? You think anyone’s gonna appreciate—”

“He fucked up the ring,” said probably-Dave. “He took out Marco.”

The accountant added, “Mr. Maroni—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Garibaldi. “Mr. Maroni, Vito, is not a moron. The syndicate is not incompetent.” Jason filed that away; if Maroni and Falcone were actively cooperating with each other—“How do you think he got here?” Garibaldi asked. “You think the fucker found this all by himself?”

Casaleone didn’t reply.

“Next time you want to show initiative,” Eli continued, “and this goes for all of you, fucking ask first.”

“Mr. Garibaldi,” knee-guy rumbled, and the others chorused after him.

“Go,” said Garibaldi, sounding tired. “Get the hell out of here.”

The change of pressure as knee-guy stood up was a relief, as were the sounds of a dozen retreating feet.

“Get him up,” Garibaldi said, as the footsteps faded, and new hands grabbed Jason by the arms. Two of Garibaldi’s guys, one on either side, hauling him upright.

Jason winced, infinitesimally, as he put weight on his left ankle—the crowbar hadn’t shattered it, he—he knew how that felt—but the joint wasn’t ready for action either. A quick inventory, as it didn’t seem like the next thing to happen would be another punch: right calf bruised; Marco’s kidney jab; some other bruising to his gut, both from Marco and from Casaleone’s goons; probably not a concussion, his head didn’t feel swimmy, but Dave’s boot wasn’t a great way to end the night and he’d want to keep an eye on it…

Enough to be going on with. Not enough to keep him down.

One of Garibaldi’s guys slit the tape on Jason’s wrists, and he pulled his arms free, stretching. The enforcers backed up, giving him distance and an unfettered shot at their boss.

Garibaldi was watching closely.

“Okay,” said Jason. “I’ll bite. What the fuck is this?”

Garibaldi smiled, something tired in the jowly crease in his face. “Gotham doesn’t have metas.”

Jason blinked at the apparent non-sequitur. “And—?”

“Gotham has businessmen. You understand?”

“I’m not a meta.”

“Whatever the fuck you are. Metropolis got an alien, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, in the lottery of life, they got a big flying blue guy, and that was great. You know what they have now?”

“What?”

“A fuckton of aliens. Aliens everywhere. Random fucking people getting turned into radioactive crazies every other Tuesday.”

Jason might argue with the phrasing, but the point seemed fair.

“Central got a guy who runs fast, right?” Garibaldi continued. He didn’t wait for Jason to offer a perfunctory agreement this time, going on: “And now they’ve got a fucking talking gorilla.” He delivered it with emphasis, and okay, but it still didn’t clarify—

“Okay,” Jason said slowly. “Not sure I’m seein’—”

“Gotham, kid,” said Garibaldi, “does not want a talking gorilla. Gotham wants predictability. Gotham wants… no disruption to the ordinary course of business.”

Ah. Okay. Jason got it. “Gotham wants me on a leash.” At least, the parts of Gotham who were uncles did.

Garibaldi shrugged. “There are ways for this to be a mutually beneficial partnership.”

“And Marco? Patrick?” Clearly a test he’d swanned right into—

Garibaldi shrugged again. “You’ve got skills, however you got them. Vito’s ambitious, but no one who I… speak for wants to make another…” He waved in Jason’s general direction. “Random elements are chaos, Jason, and Gotham doesn’t like chaos. Can I call you Jason?”

I cut off your head to make a point, once.

“Sure,” Jason said. “You can call me Jason.”

“See, Jason, whatever… happened, we can be civilized about things. I think you’ll find that there are opportunities available, when things are civilized, that wouldn’t be available elsewhere.”

“Follow your orders or leave town, that it, Sheriff?”

Garibaldi laughed shortly. “I don’t know, you could try the gorilla.” His eyes were calm. “We’re interested, Jason, is the point, and we’d like to give you a hand up. You spit on it?” He shrugged. “That’s your call.”

Jason nodded, slowly. “You got a timeline?”

“We’ll be in touch.” Garibaldi frowned, and added, “By the way. Dylan Miller… Get better friends.”

Chapter Text

Garibaldi and his men left Jason alone in the alley after that, and Jason felt like a slapped-down kid. He’d been so goddamn certain of himself, paid so little attention, written so many people off—it wasn’t like he’d liked Dylan. But it stung.

And for all his arrogance, what he had to show for it was a tender ankle and an ultimatum.

He clenched his jaw and started walking.

One of Pratchett’s lines ran through his head as he made his way through the alleys and back streets of Tricorner, a line he’d always appreciated: if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized. (Brain-Bruce, unsurprisingly, did not approve.) If Gotham’s underworld was ruled by a syndicate—if the families here had shelved their differences in favor of collaboration—yeah. Jason could understand that they wouldn’t necessarily want a ton of—he smiled wryly—caped crusaders messing up what they had going on. And the arms-race that Garibaldi alluded to: you start with a Superman, you end up with Bizarro and Zod and Darkseid.

You start with Batman, you get a Joker.

So he could understand the mobs wanting to approach this like businesspeople. Not looking to slice him open and throw more wildcards into their carefully organized deck. It was better than the alternative, he supposed; if Casaleone had got his way, Jason might already be strapped to a table in some Frankenstein’s garage.

Well. He wouldn’t be, of course.

The green wouldn’t let them get that far.

But, if Garibaldi was willing to kid-glove things, that was a massacre avoided and that was all to the good.

Just that—it messed with Jason’s plans. Broke his whole uncertain timeline, his strategy; he’d have to regroup, revamp; Step 3A—Reclaim Gotham was a hell of a lot more delicate than he’d planned.

He’d have to be cautious. Now he knew there were eyes on him; now he knew he couldn’t move too fast, too shockingly—unless he just went for it? Something messy, showy, big?

What was bigger than a duffel bag?

And was relatively murder-free?

That wasn’t brain-Bruce asking, Jason realized grudgingly; that was him. Talia would have called it going soft, but… whatever.

Yeah, there were people who deserved to die. The Joker, obviously. And yeah, there were people who—who might not deserve death, exactly, on a cosmic scale; who might be redeemable in some world or another or who just needed time or needed Jesus or needed whatever the fuck—but the thing was, their redemption wasn’t Jason’s problem.

And sometimes you couldn’t wait. Sometimes, you couldn’t stand back and say maybe next time will be better. Sometimes, it wasn’t that they deserved to die, or even that they didn’t deserve to live. Sometimes it was just that, the world without them was a slightly better place.

Are you certain of that, Jason, brain-Bruce asked, and brain-Bruce never sounded so much like real Bruce as when he and Jason got into philosophical debates—you’re forgetting something in your calculus, son.

Jason grunted. Bruce, real Bruce, had said that, but had never explained what it was that Jason was forgetting, and Jason had never quite worked out what it was that Bruce thought he’d missed.

Anyway. Jason figured he was right. Mostly. Some people, it wasn’t… personal. Wasn’t even really about them. Just—like Eli Garibaldi, in another life. Like a duffel bag of seconds-in-command. It was just… expedient.

And then, when he found himself thinking like that, about killing people like expedience—which had happened more and more, the more he grew into the Red Hood—he realized how much he sounded like a fucking fascist. It was alright to think that way when you were under the boot, was the thing; you could view your oppressors’ deaths without passion from underneath them. But when you got on top—when the green receded, and killing for convenience started to feel like punching down—

So. He didn’t have as much of a stomach for murder outright, as he’d used to. Maybe.

A whisper in the back of his head, brain-Bruce: there you go.

And an actual whisper, outside his head: “Hsst!”

Jason stopped, sharp, and turned to the source of the sound. A dumpster at his ten, behind a Chinese restaurant; he was a few blocks from the fight club now and he hadn’t been followed.  They must have been lying in wait—

“Red?” came a little voice from behind the dumpster, and Jason relaxed. “Are you Red?” the kid said again.

“Yeah,” said Jason.

The kid’s head appeared. Jesus. Nine years old at most, terribly scrawny, face a layer of grime around big eyes, and a beanie pulled down over the ears even though it wasn’t cold. “You hurt,” the kid said, warily.

Jason, automatic, said, “I don’t hurt kids.”

“Nooo,” said the kid, annoyed. “You are hurt, right?”

Jason wasn’t really, not by Jason’s standards—“What’s it to you?” he asked, ‘cause no street kid would just reach out—

A patter of small feet racing down the alley towards them, and tiny yells, and suddenly Jason was surrounded by urchins.

“I got him first!” Beanie-kid yelped.

“What the fidget,” Jason said, as a dozen gremlins raced about, hollering.

“I got him, he’s mine,” Beanie said again.

“Not fair,” one of the other kids wailed, “you always get the best ones, Audey—”

“And it’s my dumpster,” said another one, much bigger, thirteen maybe, and if he made a move for Beanie-kid, Jason was gonna have to step in—

He started clapping, slow and intentional, like a goddamn schoolteacher, until all eyes were on him. “Okay,” Jason said. “What is going on?”

Audey, Beanie-kid, looked at him and said, “You’re my bounty!”

***

It took a while, but eventually Jason figured out that the Lord of the Flies shit was non-lethal. From garbled explanations, he deduced that the kids were unofficially employed as runners in Tricorner and got paid, in meals and snacks and school supplies, for delivering news and/or people of interest. Which was fucking stupid and optimistic of whoever set it up, and likely to get them hurt, and—

Oh fuck, put like that…

Audey, who was probably three baths away from terminally cute and not nearly as jaded as he’d thought, grabbed his hand and pulled.

Jason felt it would be mean to refuse—had this been how Bruce felt all those years ago?—so he let the kids herd him along a few more streets to a two-storey stuccoed building, separate from its neighbors, with carefully tended flowerbeds and a neat black and gold sign affixed to the fence.

The Wayne Clinic.

Yep. Fuck.

Audey and the honor guard pulled him around to the back door, lit by a bright sulfur-yellow light, and Jason thought, maybe he’s not even here—

“Good evening,” said not-Bruce, pulling open the back door and not seeming remotely fazed to find a horde of streetkids staring up at him, or Jason stuck in the middle.

It wasn’t Bruce; it was like Barbara, not nearly as tough, not as trained, without the same darkness or readiness or grief. Smaller, also, less impossibly muscular.

“Doctor Wayne,” said Audey, very serious, “this is Red! He fought Marco and he won—”

“And then he fought off nine guys at once with crowbars!” the dumpster-owner put in.

“It was fifteen guys,” Audey glared, not to be outdone. “And I got him and he’s my bounty and he’s hurt. And I got him first!”

Not-Bruce was, very carefully, not smiling. “In that case. Fifteen men with crowbars, I think, makes up at least fifteen dinners? Come on in, all of you; you know where to go.”

The kids streamed past him, leaving Jason blinking in the sulfur glow. Bruce’s—not Bruce’s, goddamnit—expression flattened as he regarded the—well, thug, Jason figured—at his door. “You’re injured?” not-Bruce asked.

Jason kept his voice empty, didn’t let it betray him. “S’nothing.” (One fucking word, if his voice shook enough to betray him—)

“The kids like feeling useful,” not-Bruce said. “You don’t have to come in. But there’s no charge if you do.”

“Past their bedtime,” Jason said. “And one day, they’re gonna grab the wrong bounty and they’re gonna get hurt.”

“Not today?”

And it wasn’t Bruce asking and this guy didn’t know him and Jason still couldn’t stop the instinctive flash of shame, pain, disappointment—Bruce had never trusted him, not in years, not really—Jason gritted out, “I don’t hurt kids.”

And not-Bruce just raised an eyebrow, no idea what his question had done, and said, “Good.” Then he added, “I am a doctor, Mr. Red, and, if you’re in need of medical attention, this may be the safest place in Gotham for you. Feel free to come in.”

He turned, leaving his back open, and it was both so very Bruce and so unlike Bruce at all (so confident in his assessments, so free of the paranoia that led him to mistrust by default) that Jason could barely remember how to move. He shuffled through the door, turning to let it close gently behind him.

His ankle was getting pretty annoying.

“This way,” said not-Bruce, lightly, moving down the hall. He pushed open the door to a small room, a plum-colored exam table covered in butcher’s paper taking up most of one wall. There were locked cupboards reaching the ceiling along two of the walls, making the room seem even smaller, and a TV table with a desktop setup, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a box of nitrile gloves.

Not-Bruce waited in the door and Jason had to brush past him. Barely fit; just because this Bruce wasn’t Batman didn’t mean he wasn’t built. With both him and Jason inside it, the exam room felt like a closet.

Jason leaned against the exam table. Not-Bruce gave him a look, and sat at his computer, joggling the mouse.

“I’m assuming if I asked for a name, you’d say Red?”

Jason shrugged. “Mister Red is good.”

Bruce snorted lightly. “Doctor-patient privilege, Mister Red. I keep confidences.”

“I don’t give ‘em.”

“Your prerogative.” He unlocked one of the cupboards and pulled out a clipboard. “We’ll skip full new patient intake, since this is evidently an ER visit, but—any allergies to standard medications?”

Jason shook his head, and not-Bruce made a note.

“Any serious trauma that you know of at the moment? I’ll do a general check, but I mean things I can’t treat here. Any gaping wounds, severe cramping, compound fractures.”

Jason’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“The kids are usually good about spotting that sort of thing, but it’s best you understand my limits. You’ve got a gash on your cheek.”

“Yeah.”

Not-Bruce let the silence stretch. “And?”

“And nothing OTCs and a brace won’t fix, probly.”

Not-Bruce nodded, business-like. “Then we’ll get to that.” He put the clipboard down. “Finally, and this is the important question: are you here to kill me?”

Jason blinked.

“I’m a doctor, Mr. Red,” Not-Bruce flashed his teeth, “but I’m a doctor in the heart of Gotham. We’ve largely reached an understanding, the gangs and I; I keep the kids away from them, where I can, I patch them up for free, I don’t ask questions, and they leave me to my work. But you, sir… You’re new in town. You’re big; you’re a fighter, clearly; you took down Marco and now you’re here.”

“And fifteen men with crowbars,” Jason added, and it startled a real laugh out of Not-Bruce.

“Marco’s the more impressive conquest, to those children,” he said. “How many was it, really?”

“Five or six. Only one crowbar. Just—bad lighting. Caught me off guard.”

Not-Bruce’s eyes were assessing, and then he nodded. “Alright, then. Where’d they hit?”

Jason rattled off his injuries, hopping the couple inches onto the exam table with his good leg. Not-Bruce didn’t comment on the list, clearly not surprised that Jason had a clue, and just said,

“Mind if I take a look?” He brandished a penlight.

Jason shrugged.

While Not-Bruce was hovering by Jason’s head, shining the light into his left eye, Jason asked, “What were you gonna do if I was here to kill you?”

Not-Bruce didn’t flinch. He said, “Survive,” mildly, and Jason huffed a laugh.

“Any info on the how?”

“Why should I reveal my secrets?” Not-Bruce grinned. A quick flash, and it made Jason’s heart ache—“After all,” Not-Bruce continued, “you never actually answered.”

“Not here to kill you,” said Jason.

“Good.” Not-Bruce palpated his swelling ankle expertly and went back to his cupboards, emerging with an Ace bandage, an icepack, and a bottle of Tylenol. “Hold these,” he said, peremptorily pushing the bandage and the icepack into Jason’s hands. Jason yelped, stupidly: it was cold.

“You got a cooler in there?” he asked, resting the icepack over his ankle and placing the bandage down on his lap.

Not-Bruce looked at him. “Freezer drawer. And a refrigerating cabinet. Why?”

Jason blinked at the cupboard again: it was lined with pine veneer like any cupboard in any office.

“Ah,” said Not-Bruce, unlocking one of the other cupboards and sliding the door back so it easily folded into the wall, “am I to take it you don’t know who I am?” This cupboard concealed a wash station; Not-Bruce filled a small paper cup with water from the sink and turned back. He held the cup out; Jason took it.

“Two acetaminophen for now,” Not-Bruce said, shaking them into Jason’s free hand, “and take them with the water; taking pills dry might look tough but it takes them longer to work, don’t prove you’re stupid trying to be a hero—”

Jason grinned, swallowing the pills and the water together. “Say that often?” he asked.

Not-Bruce snorted again. “Pass me your leg.” He bound the ankle firmly, as well as Jason could have done himself, and then said: “The internal injuries I can’t do much for except to say, careful pain management, ice on the bruises as they come up, and watch out for anything more substantial. Cramps, vomiting, blood in your urine or stool.”

Jason made a face.

“If you don’t want the consequences, Mr. Red, don’t start the fight.”

Jason gave a half-shrug and tried to say, “Not sure I did,” but Not-Bruce merely looked at him.

“You’re new to Gotham, aren’t you?” said Not-Bruce.

“Why d’you say that?”

“I expect we would have met before, had you been around a while.”

Jason laughed. “Yeah. New. Sorta.”

“Well,” Not-Bruce said. “I’m not.”

***

It was an excellent ending line, enigmatic and weighty, cryptic enough to be a Batman goodbye—but then Not-Bruce ruined it by saying, “Ice fifteen minutes on, fifteen off, and keep your weight off that ankle as much as you can. I’d offer you a crutch but I don’t expect you’d accept it.”

Jason snorted in agreement and let Not-Bruce walk him out the front. “Mr. Red,” Not-Bruce said as he departed. “Gotham’s not an easy place, if you’re looking to avoid consequences.”

Jason took that in, and sent back his own closing line with a sense of finality. “Who said I was?”

Chapter Text

The first thing Jason did, when he entered sad-Jason’s apartment, was lock the door. The second thing was get the list on which his admittedly half-assed plan was written. The third, get another piece of paper, a blank one; the fourth, get another other piece. He set the blank pages side-by-side and attended to the fifth thing he had to do: fishing the cash out of his jacket pocket.

The goons in the alley hadn’t taken it, which suggested very strongly that Jason had missed some kind of side deal. 5k was nice, and meaningful for Jason, yeah; but Casaleone had said Jason cost a lot of money, and Jason didn’t think the mob’s accountant would be that irritated for less than five figures.

And, besides. Wasn’t like Jason hadn’t missed a… whole lot of other things.

Backroom deals at a backroom game? He’d almost be disappointed if there weren’t any.

Aw, well. He’d regroup; he knew how to. He’d regrouped before. Hell, he’d died before and still come out of it a winner.

…eventually.

He counted the cash: $5340 in miscellaneous bills. Stacked it neatly, laid it down horizontal on the far side of his papers, like the world’s most expensive dessert fork. And then he wrote neatly on the left-hand page:

Jason’s Plan
To Run Gotham’s Underworld
(revised)

1. Cash → Computer
2. Computer → Money
3. Money → Gear
4. Gear → Red Hood
5. Red Hood → Syndicate

Steps 1 to 3, at least, were straight-forward enough. Step 1, well… 5k would get him a decent setup and a tolerable hotspot stick. Step 2: unless things were really different here, he could crack open an account or two. Especially since he already had one in mind.

Step 3, self-explanatory; as was Step 4. Step 5—Step 5 would take some elucidation, certainly.

But 1 and 2 he could tackle tomorrow.

He drew a nice thick line under Step 5 and turned to his other blank page.

Jason Todd’s Plan

To Get Home

1. Assume you are under (relatively) competent surveillance at all times.
2. Agree to Garibaldi’s terms, for delay. (For more delay, don’t agree to all terms. Negotiate a little. Annoy.)
3. Complete Plan To Run Underworld. Once safe to act, contact Superman. Convince him of good intentions. Make him help. (Blackmail with identity if good intentions does not work?)
4. Go from there.

That would do nicely. Clark was easy enough to contact, but he was stubborn and righteous and liable to need time to be convinced to believe Jason. If he called for Superman now, he’d tip his hand. Besides leaving Gotham in the hands of the syndicate, which couldn’t be good for it.

Plus, who’s to say if this Superman was even righteous, really—

Jason cut off the thought. Nothing he’d seen in his research, however brief, supported the conclusion that this version of Clark was any less good than the one he knew. Worrying over that without evidence was just borrowing trouble, as Alfred would say.

No, the surveillance was a better reason.

After all, if he’d been dealing with a fractious new element in his Gotham, and said fractious new element had been visited by Superman and seemed to be trying to turn State’s evidence, or superhero’s evidence at least—well. He’d probably have had to shoot the fractious new element in the head.

Certainly in his early days, he would have.

And the fight club had been… really, an embarrassingly public challenge that he hadn’t meant to make.

His list of minor enemies was, actually, he thought, pretty impressive for a handful of days in town. Dylan, Casaleone, Patrick the fight promoter, that waitress, Falcone and Maroni and whoever else sat in on the syndicate’s board meetings… well, the syndicate might not see him as an enemy, in fairness—(yet)—but they at least thought he was a wild card. Garibaldi, same thing.

And his list of allies was thin. Barbara, sort of, although she was not anywhere near the action and shouldn’t be; he’d keep her out of it, safe, walking, if he had to take on Casaleone’s goons every damn night. And a nine-year-old street kid who just wanted dinner, and probably dessert. Bruce—not-Bruce—christ, he needed to find a better name for not-Bruce than not-Bruce. And, last on the list, Garibaldi. Sorta. Maybe. For a limited time, and only if Jason played his cards right.

Christ.

No Dick, no Demon-brat, no Tim—his jaw clenched, and he resolved again to look up Jack and Janet Drake once he got his computer situation sorted out. Tomorrow. And he’d… what? Threaten them for never loving Timbo enough?

Not your Timbo, Jason chorused along with brain-Bruce.

And hell. Maybe Tim’s death here… hell, but maybe it had been a coincidence.

***

Christ, Jason missed his brothers.

***

Okay.

Pathos over.

He folded up the papers, wrapped them around the cash, and tucked them into his jacket. He’d burn them tomorrow, but it helped to see the plans laid out. Gave him a sense of orderliness, neatness, control.

He zipped up the jacket; in the unlikely but not impossible event he was interrupted while he slept, he wanted the lists to be as hard to access as possible.

He didn’t like most of this, really; didn’t like having to wait for timetables he couldn’t control; didn’t like—

How had he got here? What, exactly, had happened, and how could he be sure it wasn’t going to happen again? If it did turn out to be some kind of plot—well. Maybe sad-Jason had landed in the Red Hood’s place and was finding real-Gotham equally surreal, just backwards. Jason, there, had died, after all, which was probably a lot to wake up to.

Jason settled into the lumpy mattress, telling himself don’t borrow trouble.

***

He bought a pack of cigarettes and a zippo at the magazine shop on the corner the next morning, and set fire to his lists. He’d like to keep them around and cross things off, but—laying out your plans to double-cross the mob and carrying them about with you was an easy way to commit suicide.

He watched, the whole time, until the papers were soft grey ash, the same color as the sky.

He’d spotted a computer shop when he’d been out before; it was the sort of place that had been set up in the eighties and expected people to be able to rig their own CPU from spare parts. Cables, color-coded, hung from the pegboard wall in neat coils; stacks upon stacks of plastic-cased components made walking treacherous. But it was exactly what he was looking for, and the proprietor, a grizzled man with beady eyes and curly white hair kept out of his face by a headband, took cash.

By ten-thirty in the morning, Jason had all the pieces that he needed for his setup. By one pm, he had his setup set up, and by three, he had found a way into Bruce Wayne’s private accounts.

It wasn’t foolproof, but he was banking (hah, banking) on the continuity of the multiverse and the friendly hand of fate, which had already been so helpful. Not-Bruce did, in fact, bank with the same bank as Bruce-Bruce, and kept the same account number, and—well, okay, Not-Bruce didn’t use the same cipher series to regularly and automatically alter his password, but—he used the original base phrase.

Which, amusingly, was The Visitors from Outer Space, widely considered the best Grey Ghost episode ever produced.   

Typing that in, through a convincingly spoofed VPN, got Jason directly to not-Bruce’s main accounts page. He spent another forty-five minutes setting up an interlocking trail of GoFundMes, Kofis, and crypto addresses that ultimately redirected to sad-Jason’s account or to a new Amazon profile or to other crypto addresses—and then he winced.

He said, “Sorry, not-Bruce,” and spent the next three hours moving two hundred thousand, in smaller transactions, into sad-Jason’s wallets.

By ten pm, Jason had rented a storage unit that he planned to turn into a temporary HQ, and placed orders for a variety of legitimate (and less-legitimate) necessities through a network of affiliate shipping points that he was honestly quite proud to have pulled together on such short notice. Some of his usual suppliers were available and willing to take new orders. Some things, too, he could just purchase from sporting goods stores or basic “all money good” distributors. A few of his standards though (the really fun stuff, mostly)—they were custom-designed, and it’d take a while to win his suppliers’ trust. Again.

He sighed a little.

Once, Dick had gotten transported to a universe where his alter was a kindergarten teacher. He was there for a week and said it was the most relaxed week he could remember, even with potty-training and hair-pulling and don’t eat that.

Dick got that, Jason grumbled to himself, and Jason got this.

Well. He’d be able to put together something approximating the Red Hood when all the orders came in, at least. Stand a chance.

Get some damn security on the door, here. Get a safehouse or two. Add to sad-Jason’s gun collection—the rifle was very nice but probably the only thing in the apartment that cost more than sixty bucks. Jason would eat Bruce’s cowl, reinforcement and radio ears and all, if the bed and the couch hadn’t been found on a curb somewhere.

He glared at the closed door.

Yeah. Some guns. Would help a lot.

He wondered absently if the All-Blades had made it to this universe. The dematerialized except in the presence of true evil thing was, yes, extremely cool and also absolutely helped him justify his actions when they showed up (it’s true evil, Bruce; look, reality says so)—but it made their presence unhelpfully hard to recognize when true evil wasn’t around.

Well. He’d just have to find some true evil here and check.

He stood up, stretched, debated going out or staying in. Evil’d be outside, if he felt like hunting it down now. And (to paraphrase good old Will a little), the coward dies a thousand times, after all, and the valiant only once.

But Jason already had his one, so… maybe that made him valiant by default. And, duelling Shakespeare, Falstaff to the fore: Discretion is the better part of valor.

He could visit the ladies, Julia Roberts and the schoolgirl, see how they were holding up. Or find Audey and see if something better couldn’t be worked out for them and the rugrats, something more than dragging passers-by off to Not-Bruce.

Or you could go see Not-Bruce—

No.

It wouldn’t mean anything, if he did.

Not your Bruce.

No, Jason was tired, and sore after yesterday, and an early night wasn’t a bad plan anyway. And overnight shipping was nothing to sneeze at, either. And there was surveillance—he could rig up an alarm network and a jamming array once his equipment arrived, but he’d be pushing, probably, trying to press at the syndicate’s borders before then. And too much time with Not-Bruce would be—

***

No.

Chapter Text

Pounding on the door woke Jason.

This time, he barely flinched as he rose and picked his way through the room. No one yelling his name this time but, if this was fucking Dylan Miller, they’d have words.

That reckoning, like a few others in this town, was overdue.

“Yeah?” Jason said, careful. Not too careful; Casaleone wouldn’t knock and Garibaldi would knock politely. Whoever this was, they weren’t already shooting and so they probably weren’t here to do so.

But god, he wanted defenses on that door. If only so he could sleep for once.

“Jay?” someone said, and it wasn’t Miller, or Garibaldi or the accountant or any other voice he knew. Jason pulled open the door to find a man in short sleeves, a yuppie more or less, middle-aged and familiar and—

Oh. Yeah. Staring.

New guy said, “Who—what—who are you?”

Jason shrugged. “Who you expecting?”

“I—my—Jason, he’s—what are you doing in his apartment?” New guy was fierce and freaked-out.

Same old song. Jason debated.

“I’m a friend,” he said eventually, because mad-scientist-in-Central-who’s-dead-now had sort of run its course.

“Are you?” the older man said. Why was he familiar, fuck. Not one of Garibaldi’s, not someone from the fight. Not from the bar, either—somebody Jason knew from home, in an alternate-universe form, maybe? Ugh, this was frustrating.

“Yeah, well—” Jason said, and then he noticed the man was backing away. “What you doin’?”

The man stopped short and, oh shit, that was real fear on his face. “Look,” he said, “please, I don’t know who you are, but Jason’s—if there’s something—I won’t go to the police but we don’t have much money—if Jay did something that you’re… please.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed on their own. “Not gonna hurt you,” he tried, but the man didn’t relax. Jason tried again: “Not gonna hurt Jason either.”

The man swallowed, and didn’t speak. He looked nervously right and left, and the glimpse of his profile was enough—

“Oh,” said Jason, clocking the wedding ring. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” the man gasped.

Jason smiled his best non-threatening smile, even meaning it, more or less. “Won’t you come in?”

The man blanched.

“Seriously,” said Jason. “It’s fine. You’re, uh—you’re Catherine’s husband, right?”

Catherine Todd’s husband was maybe thirty seconds from being sick all over sad-Jason’s hallway. “She’s—please, look, I—”

“What’s your name?” Jason tried, in the careful voice reserved for panicking civilians.

“I—please, whoever you are, please leave us out of this, Jason’s—I don’t know what he’s—”

“Sir,” Jason said, abandoning his civilian-calming voice and going straight to Red-Hood’s-authority. It was the right call, as the man’s shoulders went back and he straightened and stopped babbling. Jason continued, filling every word with intensity: “I am not interested in hurting you or any of your family. I don’t want to keep having this discussion in a hallway. I am asking you to please come into the apartment now.”

The man’s jaw trembled and then he nodded. More like a twitch, really.

“Okay,” Jason said, stepping back. Even odds whether the man was going to book it or—

Alright, he stepped forward. Thank god. Jason really didn’t think a flying tackle would endear him to his step-father.

Jason shifted to let him pass, gestured broadly to the couch. “Have a seat. Coffee?”

“No, thank you.” Catherine Todd’s husband licked his lips.

“Mind if I do? You woke me up.”

He got a sharp, frightened look at that, and sighed. And noticed how (should Jason call the guy Mr. Todd?) darted his eyes at the bed, and then flicked them back to Jason, and around the shabby little space—

“Are you—” He drew the obvious conclusion from a single, rumpled bed in his stepson’s apartment, but couldn’t fully voice it.

“Jesus,” said Jason. “I’m making coffee.”

“Okay,” the man mumbled.

Jason waited until the coffee had finished burbling into the carafe. He wasn’t Timbo; most of his mornings started with a sensible sweet milky tea, but—some days you needed what you needed. In this case, high-octane sludge.

He poured himself a mug and gulped it straight, burning his tongue, but smiling internally because Stepdad’s eyes had widened.

“Okay,” Jason said, repositioning himself to lean against the door. The fact that he was trapping Stepdad in wasn’t lost on Stepdad. “Let’s start again,” Jason tried. “What’s your name, sir?”

“My first name or—”

“Yeah. Sure. Let’s start there.”

“Um,” Stepdad said. “Uh. It’s Todd.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like you weren’t too sure there.”

“No,” Todd said. “No, it’s definitely—I’m definitely Todd. Todd. Peters.”

Jesus Christ.

“Todd Peters,” Jason drawled. “Isn’t it interesting that that’s exactly the same alias Jason Peter Todd likes using when he thinks the person that he’s talking to is a moron?”

If it was possible for Stepdad to go paler, he did.

“I’ll allow it, for now,” said Jason. “Can I ask you why you’re here, Mister Todd Peters, at—” He looked down for his watch and was annoyed, again, that he hadn’t had it with him when he crossed (or fell, or whatever). “At early, on a weekday?”

Todd’s jaw tightened again. “I was worried,” he said, and let the subtext and I guess I was right to be speak for itself.

“Okay—” Jason offered, letting the word hang. Basic negotiation / intimidation / interrogation technique, making others want to fill the space.

Todd’s face twitched. “He’s my—”

Jason didn’t give him any help.

“He sends us money,” Todd finally said. “He’s—the last few months—”

Oh, hell, Jason thought, because he could see the real Catherine now, his Catherine, in his mind’s eye; his mother much younger than she should have been, much younger than anyone should die. He’d been too young himself, of course, to realize just how young his mother was; but here she’d made it. Survived Willis; gotten out of—never been in Crime Alley; found this Todd guy, who might be a bit of a dumbass but who was trying, probably—

Jason had wondered what would happen when he plugged up sad-Jason’s nineteen-hundred-a-month drain. Looked like he just found out.

And hey, Jason had money now, courtesy of not-Bruce, his unwitting not-father-figure. Might as well use some of it to help out not-his stepdad.

“Who’s got you?” he asked, and Todd looked confused. Jason elaborated, “Maroni? Falcone? Somebody else? I can cover it. Just let me know what they have you for.”

Understanding failed to dawn across Todd’s face, and a thin tendril of remembered grief wormed its way round Jason’s heart.

“Is it drugs?” he asked, dreading the answer. If Catherine had been spared everything else only to end up the same—

But that insinuation, at least, got a reaction out of Todd. “What? No!”

“Okay,” said Jason, doing his best to disguise the flood of relief. “Okay, not debts, not drugs… what you and the wife taking money from her kid for, Mister Peters?”

Mister Peters flushed. “It’s not—like that—”

Jason looked around at the little apartment, with its lumpy bed and no internet, and said, “No? Cause Jay here isn’t doing great, it doesn’t—”

“Did you hurt him?”

“And we’re back to that—”

“Where is he?”

“My question time, right now, sir—”

“What have you done with my son?” Peters demanded, lurching awkwardly to his feet, and Jason flinched.

(Not at the physical threat, obviously; Peters was to Marco what an elderly spaniel was to a mastiff. Hell, even Audey could probably manage to take Peters out if the gremlin tried. No. His flinch was at the son.)

“Okay,” Jason said. “Is Catherine alright?”

“How dare you act like—”

“No, you know what, let’s just try from a different angle, yeah? Sit back down?”

“Who the hell do you think you are—”

Deep breath. Just let him have it. “Okay. My name is Jason Todd.”

Peters stared for a moment, looking intently at Jason’s face. “What the—”

“I woke up here four—five?—days ago. This is day five. In my universe—well, we don’t need to do details. But. Things are different, there.”

“In your—”

“Superman’s real,” Jason said. “Superman, you know that, and magic, and a whole ton of things like that. Dimension travel can’t be the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard of—”

Peters’ knees gave out, and he landed on sad-Jason’s couch with a thump and a wheezing of springs.

Chapter Text

“Fuck you,” Peters said, finding his voice pretty quickly after hitting the couch. Jason felt a little proud, having brought an uptight yuppie to such a point. But. Also annoyed.

“What,” he said, “s’true.”

“You expect me to believe that… that you’re—”

Jason grinned savagely. “Not from around here. Yeah. I mean, come on, is it really the weirdest thing?”

Peters stared at him, wild. “Yes,” he said with emphasis. “This isn’t… this is Gotham.”

At that, Jason laughed outright. Peters’ face had gone a strange sort of greyish color and he looked at Jason in desperation. Jason waved it off. “No worries,” he said. “Just—trust me, that would be funny if you knew why. Had to be there.” He shook his head. “But honestly, guy the other day was just telling me how, in Central, they’ve got Gorilla Grodd.”

Peters looked at him blankly.

“Big talking gorilla. Math genius or something. But the point is, Grodd’s also a dimension traveler, so I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s something that never happens.”

Peters blinked and mouthed talking gorilla to himself. Jason concluded he was one of those people who didn’t ever check the news.

“Anyway,” Jason said—

“Where’s my son?” Peters demanded, back to square one, apparently having put the physics and metaphysics of the multiverse aside as being too complicated to cope with.

Jason sighed. “I really don’t—”

“Fuck you, where is Jason—”

“Well,” said Jason, “it’s not actually incest but you’re really not my type.”

Peters flushed and looked again at sad-Jason’s bed.

“Will you listen,” Jason said. “I woke up here. I determined that the most likely explanation was a dimensional transfer—”

“Most likely—”

“Most likely. I am a Jason Todd. I am not your Jason Todd. I am also not sleeping with your Jason Todd. Not sure why you care, since you milk him for almost two thousand a month and he can barely afford bread, but I have never met, let alone fucked your Jason Todd, and I would very much appreciate it if you stopped having some kind of homophobic panic and just told me your freaking name!” He was shouting by the end, which was embarrassing.

Peters stared at him, and Jason couldn’t tell what he was about to say. Probably I’m not homophobic, that was a good predictable response. Might even be true; even an accepting father-figure might blanch at someone who looked like Jason right now. Size aside, there was the fact that he probably still looked like he’d been kicked in the head the night before last, after winning a bare-knuckle cage match and being betrayed by all manner of not-really-friends.

But Peters said, instead, “You don’t know my name,” and it sounded small.

“What?”

“You don’t—you don’t know me. If you were Jason, you’d know me.”

Oh hell.

“No,” Jason said, reaching for his talking-to-victims voice again.

“And why’s that?”

“I… my mom… Catherine Todd, in my, in my universe, okay? She—”

“It killed her,” said Peters, and his voice was hollow.

“What?”

Peters muttered, lost in some private world, “Is that what this is, then? Some message from, from God or fate or—that there isn’t any point in—”

“What killed her?” Jason demanded, and Peters turned his face up, looking haunted.

“The cancer.”

Jason felt his knees give out, and he said, “No,” desperate and hard but also—so, horribly, relieved—

“No?” Peters whispered.

“My mom died when I was eleven,” Jason said. “She OD’d.”

“What?”

“She never met you.”

“Catty’s not a drug addict—”

“S’a big multiverse, Todd—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Jason’s lip curled. “Ah, well, looks like some things are the same. Willis Todd’s a bastard wherever you go.”

“Did he—”

“He was in jail. And then he died.”

Peters’ jaw tightened. “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear it.” He passed a hand firmly over his jaw. “Prove it.”

“Prove…”

“Prove that you’re Jason. Say something only he’d know.”

“It doesn’t work like that; there are things that might be the same but things that are different and I don’t know which are which—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It really does.”

“Please. Just… something.”

Jason took a breath. He couldn’t see what this would prove, really, but Peters was having an extended shock, so—“She’s not Jason’s mom,” he said. “Except… except in every way that matters.”

Peters stared.

Jason’s jaw worked. Apparently, that had done what rationality and logic had failed to do, and Peters was on board. Despite the fact that Jason could have found that out simply by hunting down the relevant birth records.

Nevertheless, Peters said, “How did you… my God,” and stared up at Jason like the world was ending.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “You got a name?”

“It’s Bill.”

“Hi, Bill. Nice to meet you. I’m Jason Todd.”

***

Bill, when he recovered, was decent company. Better than Dylan Miller at least, not to say that was a high bar. But it helped, Jason thought, having someone to talk to, even if it was someone who couldn’t follow along and who seemed to be teetering between stunned and terrified the whole time.

Actually, that had been why Jason had told him. There was the chance that Bill was some kind of plant, another one of Casaleone’s spies, but—it had been real fear that Jason had seen on his face. If Bill could act that well, Jason rationalized, he’d be acting somewhere, New York, LA. Not shilling for the mob in fucking chaos-free Gotham.

“Okay,” Jason said. “Let’s figure this out. Because it’s pretty clear to me that whatever setup you had with sad-Jason’s not sustainable—” Shit.

“Sad Jason?”

“Yeah, well. You didn’t see his fridge.”

Bill let it rest and then said, “Is this not weird for you?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t—is this something you’re used to? You just worked out that dimension traveling was probably what happened—”

Jason shrugged. “I’ve never done it. But maybe it’s a little more common in my Gotham than here.”

Bill just looked at him.

“The thing still is. Sad-Jason’s sending you money for, uh—”

“A private room. Good care.”

“Right. But—” Jason gestured at the studio. “He doesn’t have much, right? The only thing of value in this whole damn room’s the fucking rifle and I don’t think he even liked it all that much.” Bill winced at the word rifle; yeah, if he was a mob plant, he was Laurence Olivier. “So. How much do you need?”

“We’re making do—”

“Bill, for fuck’s sake—”

“We don’t want any blood money, we’re not—Catty would hate it if—”

“She doesn’t know what he does.”

“No.”

“Jesus. Only you? What you think he’s been sending, if not payouts?”

Bill stammered, “He said—he said he could cut down. Find some spare change in the couch, reduce expenses…”

“Jesus. Well, I guess Jason Todd’s dogged stupidity is another multiversal constant.” He looked around again. “This what cutting down means to you?”

“I, um… I haven’t been over in a while. Not since he started. For, you know, working for… You know.”

For Falcone: that was months, at least, if not years.

“Right,” Jason said. “Okay. I’ve come into a little money—”

“Did you kill someone?”

Jesus. “No.”

“Then—”

“I stole it. From someone very specific who I can probably convince to turn it into a retroactive loan, if the topic comes up.”

Bill goggled.

“So. How much do you need?”

***

Bill took his scheduled $950, and no more, despite Jason’s protests. He asked if it could be made… well, words had failed him there, but Jason got the gist. Made to look like it hadn’t just been stolen. He also did not seem to be on-board with Jason’s it’s alright, honestly, I got this, and Jason supposed that was fair.

But come on.

Even odds that Not-Bruce wouldn’t notice; 200K was a completely reasonable investment amount in his bracket. Oddly, Jason had learned that rich people were more sensitive to smaller values: ask one for five dollars and they’d act like you were trying to cut out their tongue. Steal five hundred thousand? If they noticed it at all, they figured their money managers ‘moved some things around’.

God, it made things easier though.

Besides, it was basically the equivalent of pulling a twenty from your parents’ wallets (not that Jason endorsed petty inter-familial larceny, but he’d seen Hallmark specials). Mildly reprehensible, but Bill didn’t need to look at him like he was a murderer—

Okay yes, he was, but that was not the point.

Anyway. Bill was eventually persuaded that taking stolen money to help his hospitalized wife—and, jesus, Jason would be dealing with that little bombshell soon—was not morally worse than taking a hitman’s money, even if he’d successfully clung to his just-plausible deniability before Jason’s appearance had thrown a spanner in the works.

And sad-Jason’s disappearance—that was another thing that Jason was going to have to figure out. Christ.

The thing was, there hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary! His memory gap had filled in since his arrival, and now…it all felt like it was accounted for?

After dropping the flash drive off for Tim, a normal patrol, with nothing especially unusual for early spring. Foggy and a bit damp, visibility middling but not low. Safe to swing without night vision.

Couple assholes pressuring a woman outside a bar, but they backed off easy enough on hearing Jason’s friendly drawl from the rooftop. Didn’t even have to shoot them.

A couple shots fired in warning, at some idiot trying to knock over Zuboff’s bodega with a pistol that probably last saw action in the Revolutionary War. Kid had been scared out of his sneakers to see the Red Hood. He’d gone nearly every color of the rainbow, quickly, on being told that Zuboff’s was close enough to the Alley to count as Hood’s territory, on all the maps that mattered. Plus, Mr. Zuboff was a darling, and made tiny Russian pishki donuts that were covered in, basically, crack.

(It wasn’t crack. It was powdered sugar. Jason had checked.)

(Gotham.)

But GCPD was happy enough to take the kid off the Red Hood’s hands and very happy to find him all in one piece. The sergeant even gave Jason a nod in thanks as his partner bundled the kid into the patrol car. Jason, somewhat awkwardly, had nodded back.

He’d kept one ear on the Bats’ comms, like always, but nothing interesting was going on elsewhere in the city either. A quiet night, and you wouldn’t find him complaining—the less excitement, the better the chances that people were… were safe at home. Were staying in with their families. Getting a good night’s sleep before they went to work in the morning, working for people who weren’t the Joker or Black Mask or—who were just normal. Who were trying.

The quieter the nights, it seemed to Jason, the better the chance that what they did, what they were doing—that the crime-fighting and the endless patrol and the constant vigilance—on quiet nights, Jason allowed himself to think that, maybe, what they did was working.

And that, maybe, one day, Bruce would hang up the cowl, and do so without mourning what was left undone.

Jason had missed a lot of things, between the Joker and Talia and the Pit and all his own… Well. He’d missed a lot of growing up, between one thing and another. If you wanted to start even earlier, Willis and the Alley had made things weird in that respect too. But Jason had…

They said the last step in growing up was learning to see your parents as adults.

So. Teenage Jason had managed that, at least. Somewhere between dying and… not.

Bill, Catherine’s husband, was watching him warily.

“Look,” Jason said. “I swear, in the unlikely event this blows back on me—” If Not-Bruce gets his head out of his clinic to poke his personal financial statements— “I will keep you guys out of it. I swear.” And then, because he couldn’t help it: “How is she?”

Bill worked his jaw. “It’s not—it’s. It’s okay.”

“It’s not—?”

“Terminal. It’s not terminal. It shouldn’t be. They caught it early; it’s just that it’s—look. Jason. What happens now?”

“What?”

“If you’re here from—from somewhere else, then… when you go back, or when Jay… Did you switch places? Or—”

Jason thought. He’d gone home, real home, to his real apartment and not a safehouse, after his quiet patrol. He’d had a quick hot shower to ease the strain from his muscles and settled into bed with a glass of water and a Louise Penny mystery. A reread, but that didn’t matter.

And then he’d woken up to Dylan Miller.

“I don’t know,” he said now. “Didn’t exactly talk it over with him.” Because, true, Jason had been the subject of Unexplained Magical Incidents before (cough-cough-coffin), but—

Bill said, “What?”

“Right,” said Jason. “I think this—whatever caused this, I mean. I think it was on this end.”

“What?”

***

Jason laid out his reasoning, and was forced to concede that it wasn’t strong. But it felt true and, if there was one thing Jason had, it was instinct.

Lemmings have an ‘instinct’, too—

They do not, Jason told brain-Bruce firmly. That’s an urban legend, Bruce.

Brain-Bruce hmphed. Regardless. Instinct is—

A useful tool when honed through experience, I know.

And what experience of dimension travel do you have? You have never—

I read the goddam reports, Bruce!

No, not Bruce. But not Not-Bruce, either; brain-Bruce—Christ, why were there so many Bruces and why had he picked such stupid names for them—

Bill said, “You okay there, son?”

Jason nodded. “Yeah.”

“Spaced on me a little bit.”

“Yeah. Happens sometimes. I—you know, I talk to myself a bit. In my head.”

Bill took that in stride. “Your head talk back?”

“Uh. Yeah, I guess—”

Bill said, “Huh,” and Jason felt he needed to explain. He didn’t hear voices, not really, it was just—

“My—uh. You know the angels on the shoulder thing? Better and worse instincts?”

Bill said, “Huh,” again but it sounded more like a “Yuh,” so Jason continued.

“Anyway. I don’t know. Mine have—a sort of—somebody I trained with shows up to tell me off when I’m not thinking clearly.”

Bill nodded slowly. Then said, “Good guy?”

It was so unexpected that Jason laughed. “Yeah. Yeah. I just attribute—you know—all my cautious thoughts to the version of him that lives in my head.” And periodically get into fights with him, also, and also if he’s the good angel, the devil on my shoulder is literally out for blood—

He felt the Pit stir, and took a deep breath to push it back down.

He regrouped. “Anyway. It’s a lot, probably, especially if you’re not… you’re actually taking all this pretty well. But. My point is, or was: I don’t know what happened to Jason. Your Jason, I mean. And right now—” He opened his hands, taking in the apartment with the gesture. “Right now, I’m not in a great place to get anywhere in terms of figuring it out. But I have a plan, and once things are a little bit more in motion, I’ll be able to. You know. Start.”

Not, honestly, his most heartening speech.

“And I’ll keep you out of it,” he added. “You and—” He caught himself before the mom but kind of thought that Bill guessed what he’d been about to say.

Bill nodded.

***

Okay. Somewhere in his mental copy of the Plan to Run Underworld, as a substep of Step 5, Jason made a little note. Bill and Catherine. Exit strategy.

He made himself a proper cup of tea after Bill left, sweet and milky and boiled orange in a way that would horrify Alfred but brought out all those tannins, and sighed. Catherine Todd’s medical records, that was another thing he needed to look into. See what Wayne money, judiciously applied, could do.

Jason’d given Bill one of his three new burner phones, and programmed in the number of one of the other two. Sad-Jason didn’t have much contact with his parents, seeing as it took a few days for Bill to show up and even then he only had come round because the money stopped. As such, Bill making call after call to Jason now would look suspicious, to anybody listening in. Which Jason had to assume they were.

Bill had gone an unpleasant yellowish color at that.

Of course, if Bill just didn’t call, didn’t show up blustering again or seeking answers, they wouldn’t have an issue. But if Jason knew worried yuppie types at all—there were gonna be a lot of calls.

He resigned himself to slotting Multiversal Travel 101 into his plan somewhere.

Chapter Text

Jason sat with his tea a while after Bill left. He was not enjoying this enforced lying-low; every instinct he had wanted him out on the street, laying claim to his Gotham, making it his by the sheer force of his presence. But not without gear—he had a jacket, for chrissake, a jacket and his helmet and nothing more. He—

He looked, in sudden shock, at the shoebox under sad-Jason’s bed, next to the rifle case. The shoebox was the ignominious hiding place of the Red Hood helmet, neatly packed against the day he could wear it openly—good foresight, he complimented himself, keeping it hidden from Dylan. Dylan wouldn’t have recognized it, not yet, but—if nobody could definitively place the Red Hood when he did show up on the scene, his runway would be at least a little longer.

But, the thing was: before he’d been here, the night before he’d woken at sad-Jason’s, he’d gone to bed. He’d been halfway through Louise’s A Rule Against Murder; neatly ended a chapter, slipped in a bookmark (all of Hamlet on the rectangle of card, in very, very, very tiny font—a gift from Alfred), and flicked off the light. And woken here.

But he had the helmet.

He wasn’t—it wasn’t like it was a teddy bear. He didn’t sleep with the damn thing unless he was expecting something exciting, or he couldn’t let down his guard. He didn’t—not at home. His helmet, at home, sat in the cupboard of the front hall credenza, where it belonged (and where it was out of sight of delivery people, canvassers, neighbors borrowing sugar, etc.).

He didn’t recall getting up to get it; didn’t recall anything fun being planned. He’d been wearing pajamas, too, sleepwear at least, the cotton shirt worn down so fine it was like silk. Not his jacket. Not jeans.

So.

The first irregularity. The first thing that could not be explained by simple, standard dimension travel.

A hole in his mind.

God damn it.

Not just accident, that was the thing. Not just a wrinkle in spacetime.

Someone—something—wanted him here.

Magic, then? One of those ‘transport-the-internal-essence’ spells?

Jason didn’t like magic much; too unpredictable, and too back-to-front. Literally, obviously, for Zatanna, but that wasn’t what he meant—there were too many options, usually, with magic. For example, when magic was involved, tossing a coin could go like this: sometimes it came down heads; sometimes tails; sometimes, it never came down at all; and other times it transformed into a parakeet and tried to bite your eyebrows off.

There was a certain level of expertise one needed in order to effectively navigate magical events. Jason wasn’t entirely at sea—the All-Blades helped; so did the Pit, much as he disliked relying on it—but he wasn’t prepared to face something like this alone.

He’d never missed John Constantine more.

***

Jason was digging, later, resigned to poking around this internet while he waited for his newly ordered gear to ship, looking for any evidence of dimension-shifting as a known magical phenomenon. Gorilla Grodd in Central—well, the trouble was that the news there was still stuck on mutant talking gorilla and this version of the Flash seemed to have omitted alternate universe  from his public remarks in the name of public sanity. Iris West had a recent piece chronicling the most prominent theories behind Grodd’s appearance:

• zoo animal caught in explosion;
• lab experiment gone wrong;
• Superman-re-creation attempt gone wrong;
• human clone gone very wrong—

Okay, what the hell was happening in Central? Seriously, these made Jason’s a guy gave me really awesome steroids and then died story sound plausible. But no hint of the gorilla’s dimension-hopping truth, and Jason couldn’t afford to go down and visit Barry for a while.

Were Jason to leave Gotham right now: Garibaldi would hear, loud and clear, that Jason was walking away and not planning to come back.

If he left Gotham right now, he’d have to fight to get back in at all.

He couldn’t get into Star Labs’ network, either; at least not easily. At home, he knew, Star operated with a carefully maintained air gap. They had a public-facing website, but if you wanted anything at all beyond the ‘About Us’, you had to go there in person and plug in.

It was exceedingly frustrating.

If Central was out, could Metropolis be in? Clark, after all, was not known for his tech-savvy, other than with Kryptonian tech, and that was so intuitive it barely counted. But then Clark knew that about himself, at least in Jason’s world, and he didn’t put cape-related info on his work servers. So hacking the Planet wouldn’t get Jason very far, unless there’d recently been dimension trouble down there. Hacking Clark’s Fortress, in contrast: well, it’d have the information, Jason was sure, but he’d cobbled this system together from stuff he’d found on Jerry the Suspicious Computer Shop Owner’s shelves. He’d pit it against the banks, with a generous helping of knowing the right passwords, but it wasn’t built for tangling with a Kryptonian AI’s security sensors. And hacking Clark’s personal laptop would probably yield a browser history pure as the driven snow and entirely free of interesting multiversal puzzles. (Also, if there was anything… less than pure on Uncle Clark’s machine, Jason did not want to know.)

Hacking Diana: no, she wore bronze gauntlets and kept no records at all of her various quests, not so far as Jason knew. And the others—well. Barry, Clark, and Diana were the big ones. If they had nothing—

Jason eventually found his way to parts of the dark web that talked about magic. He found the name John Constantine on a page covered with imprecations and convincing-sounding curses but, reading between the lines, he gathered that Constantine just owed the page’s author money. And Constantine himself was a nightmare to find if he didn’t wish to be found, and—if Jason’s little jaunt into the universe’s deep end hadn’t already attracted his attention, then Constantine was choosing not to be involved.

Zatanna, actually, Jason found more easily. She was a stage performer in Vegas. Enough tricks in her act that “Zatara: How is it **done?**” was the second-highest ranked post of all time on the r/Magic subreddit. She didn’t have an account, though, or at least not an obviously named one, nor could Jason find an account in her name on The Magician’s Forum.

He just wanted one simple explanation.

Just one.

Alright, yes, and he wanted to complete his plans and get home and—

But an explanation would be a start.

***

Despite all of the interesting revelations that the morning had brought, it wasn’t even ten-thirty when Jason found himself walking through the lobby of the Gotham Public Library once again.

This time, slightly less motivated by utter bewilderment than when he’d been here last, he didn’t stop himself from being drawn to one of the special displays. Charles Dickens was the focus of this one; David Copperfield, of course, and several other brick-like tomes, and a DVD of Dickens’ Women, and a smattering of works on ‘life in Victorian London’. Jason picked up a pretty pristine copy of Pickwick Papers and idly thumbed through it.

“Can I help you?” a voice said. Not Barbara.

Jason turned, bestowing his easiest and least-threatening smile on the newcomer. Short, dark-skinned, with close-cropped dark hair and a gold eyebrow stud. Definitely not someone who should be picking fights with giant thugs, but the brown eyes that met Jason’s made him certain that, if they were to get into it in any way but physical, he’d lose.

“Pickwick,” Jason said, hefting it. “Always meant to read this one, but—” but was killed and then a killer; got distracted.

The librarian smiled tightly. Jason wondered again whether it was library policy to scout out potential troublemakers before trouble started. If so, he thought that policy was pretty dumb.

But then again, that might just be Barbara’s habit and whoever this was had picked it up from her—

“You like Charles Dickens?” the librarian said, and something in Jason that he thought was long dead flared to life.

So he’d been a Crime Alley kid; an elementary school dropout; a junkie’s son and an occasional drug runner and pickpocket so mom could get what she needed. So, yeah, he’d shoplifted every so often—every week, every day—jerky and candy and if he could manage it, apples and onions and potatoes if they fell from the produce bins and he could surreptitiously slip them in his pockets. So he dumpster-dived; so he sounded like the Alley; so, before, he’d been tiny and feral and now he was huge; so he still looked like he’d been some Hell’s Angel’s punching bag—

So the fuck what?

He wasn’t illiterate. Libraries weren’t supposed—he shouldn’t need to defend himself, not here.

He let his smile shift, closer to the shark, and said, “Something wrong with Dickens?”

The librarian shifted a little but didn’t back off. “Of course not.”

“Something wrong with me liking Dickens?”

“Of course not,” again, but this time it was patronizing, as though Jason couldn’t really understand the complexity of a novel thicker than, say, the Hardy Boys.

And the worst of it was, Jason couldn’t even bristle without proving the librarian’s point. Physical responses only won physical contests; he’d learned that at Gotham Academy. In the rarified world of intellectual arguments, putting his shoulders back, snarling—those things would  mark him out as just as uncivilized as his denigrators suspected and feared.

(And also, brain-Bruce pointed out more rationally: in this situation, the librarian was only being rude. Quite rude, yeah, but full-on Red-Hood-is-angry, though cathartic, would be uncalled for.)

“Glad to hear it,” Jason said. “Wouldn’t want to think there’s anything wrong with me being here, looking at books. Wouldn’t want to think I was tramplin’ some kind of holy temple or something.”

He kept his tone deliberately light, but the librarian showed good sense for the first time, saying, “Sir—”

“Wouldn’t want to think I wasn’t good enough to be in a public place, lookin’ at a public book. Wouldn’t want to think I was unworthy or somethin’—"

“Sir, I assure you, I never suggested that you were un—unworthy—”

“I hope not!” Jason pounced on the sprung trap he’d laid out. “I should hope, after all, ‘I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should.’”

Perfect, he thought with vicious satisfaction as the librarian tried to work out a response. Perfect, and the perfect setup was made better when the librarian stammered,

“What?”

But Jason’s moment of triumph was stolen from him: Barbara said, “It’s a quote, Diva,” approaching from the left. “Barnaby Rudge,” she added.

“S’a good book,” Jason said, turning thirty degrees or so to let Barbara into the conversation. As he turned, her step faltered.

“Jesus,” she said. “What happened to you?”

Jason shrugged. It really wasn’t that bad (at least, what was visible wasn’t. His torso was a fun mix of bruising, but he’d managed to avoid most of the hits to his face)—“Got in a fight,” he said.

Babs’ mouth twisted and Diva, the other librarian, looked only slightly mollified.

“Hey, though,” Jason added, “the other guy had it worse. Well. The first other guy. But after that it was five against one. Five or sixish.”

There was a pause, and Jason reminded himself that this was Babs but not his Babs.

Eventually, she said, “Do you… need medical attention?”

He flashed a half-grin. “Nope. Got some.”

“Oh. Great.”

“Babs,” said the other librarian, firmly and without taking her eyes off Jason, “you know him?”

“He came in a while ago,” she said. “I got this, Diva.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, thanks. It’s Jay, right?”

“Yup.”

Diva didn’t leave.

Barbara smiled briskly, ignoring her colleague, and said, “Well, Jay, you looking to check that out?” She nodded at Pickwick Papers, still in Jason’s hand.

Jason smiled, teeth out, and said, “Absolutely.”

***

“Ya know, for a public servant, Diva’s not all that public-friendly.”

Barbara shot him a look. “Have you looked in a mirror, lately, Jay?”

“Five against one,” he repeated. “At least.” And then, because it was a little funny, still, he added, “Fifteen men with crowbars.”

She sent him another look and didn’t get the joke. Jason shrugged.

“Still,” he said, “caution’s one thing—although, honestly, your safety protocols are shit, both of you—don’t just walk up to people if you think they’re threats, god—but honestly it was pretty fucking clear she thought I was a moron based on…” He waved a hand up and down. “Based on how I look. And that just ain’t a good… s’not good. If it was a kid—if that had been me as a kid, I mean…”

Barbara was quiet.

“Libraries were important, when I was a kid.” And that was as much of it as he felt like getting into.

She said, “I’ll talk to her. Proof of address?”

Jason proffered a FINAL REMINDER internet bill. Barbara’s eyes narrowed, but she kindly didn’t comment as she looked at it.

“Jason Todd?” she said carefully.

“That is me.”

A quick tight smile, and, “You have ID?”

Jason winced internally, holding out sad-Jason’s Gotham Metro pass. “This work?”

“It’s a photo ID, so sure…” Barbara fell silent as she looked at the card.

“It’s a super old picture,” Jason said.

She said: “Okay.”

“But, like, you can see it’s me, right?”

She said, “Sure. Eyes and… eyes.”

Jason’s wince was external this time. “Sure,” he agreed.

“Okay,” said Barbara, typing the ID number into her system. “Okay, I’ll just get you set up with a new card, and then you and Mr. Pickwick can—”

“Actually,” Jason cut in, “when I came, that wasn’t really why. I wanted to talk to you.”

Her eyes shot up, sharp. She said, “I can’t help you.”

“What?” If anyone could find John Constantine, it was Babs.

“I told you,” she said, dropping her voice, “Gotham doesn’t play well with heroes.”

“Yeah, but I ain’t—”

“I can’t help you,” she said again, louder, and Jason realized what was going on. Quieter, now, she said, “My dad’s a cop. It’s not much, but there are—not everyone here is dirty, okay? If you talk to him—”

“No,” Jason said, matching her urgency, “no, I need your help with. Um. Research.”

"What?”

Not your Babs.

“I need—” He couldn’t say it. The words dimension travel just couldn’t be said. The words, I’m looking for a wizard—“No. Thank you, but no, I’m. Uh. Thinking of doing a Masters. At Gotham U. In English, I mean. Dickens, and stuff.”

She looked at him steadily, and then her gaze flicked to the FINAL REMINDER – PAYMENT DUE.

“So I need your help,” he explained. “Looking for scholarships and shit. There’s—I can’t ask anybody else.”

“Why Barnaby Rudge?”

“What?” Jason said, thrown by the change of topic.

“Pickwick’s better known. And probably better, objectively. So why did you read Barnaby first, so well you can quote it?”

Jason frowned, and told the truth. “Name sounds funnier.”

One of Barbara’s eyebrows went up.

“I was fourteen, okay?”

“Big book for fourteen.”

“Yeah, well, I was fourteen and pretentious. Besides, there was a mob and gin and—”

And actually, once things started happening in Barnaby, it had been gripping and kind of terrifying and he really should have been catching up on sleep instead of breathing in Dickens’ prose, but the Gordon Riots and poor Barnaby imprisoned and—

“Yeah, well,” he repeated. “It was big.”

That, finally, got a real smile from her. “I only read it once. Wasn’t my favorite.”

“Well,” he said. “I don’t know. I didn’t get this the first time, but I’ve reread since and… kinda… feel a little bad for Gordon, you know? He starts this… this whole vendetta, this whole campaign, and then it gets away from him and people get hurt and it all sort of takes on a life of its own—”

Barbara Gordon was looking at him.

“Uh,” he said with an awkward laugh. “That’s not—I mean, Gordon—that’s no relation, right?”

She blinked, and too late Jason realized that he shouldn’t know her last name.

“Okay,” she said, moving on, and that was weird, he knew she’d caught it, why wasn’t she bringing it up; “okay. You can write about Barnaby Rudge for scholarship essays. I actually have some literature here that the program coordinators bring round—”

***

Jason left the library with an unsettled feeling in his gut and a handful of pamphlets about applying for grad school in an alternate universe. As he headed for the subway, he felt the Pit whisper, like something brushing across the back of his neck. He stiffened, trying to look up at the nearest rooftops without being too obvious about it—

Nothing.

Dammit.

Chapter Text

So the library was a bust, really, unless he wanted to actually try for some higher education.

Not in the plan, brain-Bruce pointed out unnecessarily.

No shit, Jason thought back.

Pardon me. Did you or did you not just attempt to get Barbara Gordon, who in this reality seems to be a perfectly nice and relatively average public-system librarian, to turn into Oracle at the drop of a hat?

Okay. So now Jason was having an argument with himself, and was losing. He rubbed his temples.

He came out of the subway six blocks from sad-Jason’s. There was a closer stop, but he was mixing up his routes as much as possible. He was already tied down to one base of operations, after all; last thing he needed was to start coming and going predictably.

Okay, so, library and Babs were out. Bringing in Gordon senior—Jason considered it, honestly, for about twenty seconds longer than he should have before dismissing the option. Jim Gordon might be an honest cop, sure, but that wasn’t enough—hadn’t been enough, not even in Gotham-Prime. It hadn’t ever got him killed, but before the Bat he’d just been trying to keep his head above water. Jason wasn’t in much of a position to reach out, not yet, and even if he did, the proto-Red-Hood thing he was aiming for wouldn’t endear him to Uncle Jim.

So: Gordon senior, not an option. Babs not an option. No Clark, no Diana, no Constantine or Zatanna, no—no useful Bruce. No Talia, no pissed-off but potentially open-to-negotiations League—could he try the League? Some of his suppliers supplied them too, he knew—no. No, his only credential here was sad-Jason’s transit pass; no rep, no name, no reason for the League to listen or Talia to care. And, for that matter, Jason didn’t really want to get into bed with them again. The last experience hadn’t exactly been fulfilling.

No Dick. No—no Tim.

Just Bill, the confused yuppie sort of stepdad, who knew more of the truth than anyone else in this reality.

Well. Jason’d been alone before. Hell, the last time had been worse: then he’d had no money, no Bill, no place to stay. He’d be alright.

A shiver ran across his spine, again, as he got closer to the building. Sniper would be poetic, he thought.

He didn’t get shot at, which was annoying, honestly. At least then he could have dodged. But, still, nothing.

Just a feeling.

***

In sad-Jason’s apartment, he cracked his knuckles one after the other and looked around. Then he booted up the system and ordered a new mattress.

A couch with springs inside it; a table made of actual wood. Those excellent glass meal prep containers that you could freeze and put right in the oven (not straight out of the freezer, obviously, but—). A copy, now that he was thinking about it, of Barnaby Rudge.

He checked in on his various orders, too—most of the better home security stuff was coming in tomorrow. Munitions would be at certain drop points within the week. His tac setup—well, the storage unit would do as a main base until he got his hooks in somewhere bigger. Hopefully by the time he needed more space, he’d just be able to take Falcone’s.

At least by the end of tomorrow he’d be able to relax in his own apartment.

Sad-Jason’s apartment.

He rolled his shoulders, and went for groceries.

***

He cooked. He waited. He read a Nora Roberts book he’d picked up at the grocery store; needs must, after all.

At nine pm, he said, effectively, fuck it; threw on his boots and jacket; and went out.

So he should wait. So sue him.

***

 Julia Roberts was on the same corner he’d met her on before. Her friend, the schoolgirl with the blond braids, was nowhere to be seen.

“Evenin’,” Jason said, as he approached. He was looming and she was turned away, and, besides, he really wasn’t looking to freak anybody out.

Julia turned, and her eyes widened. So much for that, Jason thought.

“C’mon,” he said, deliberately holding onto an easy grin. “I look that bad?”

Her eyes narrowed back to normal, and she looked closely at his face. But she barely paused on the healing gash or the black eye. Huh.

“It’s not that,” said Julia.

 A pause. “Oh, come on, don’ leave me hanging.”

Her gaze leveled off, shut down. “Red.”

“S’me.”

“What you lookin’ for, Red?”

Jason shrugged. “My place ain’t far.”

She gave a half-shrug. “Heard you got some cash.”

He let his smile grow, answering the question she hadn’t quite asked. “So I did.”

“Charge by the hour.”

“Fun. Let’s say two hours?”

“Six hundred.”

Jason snorted. Like hell. “Sure,” he said anyway. “My place, motel, you got somewhere?”

Her eyes were sharp. “Let’s do yours.”

***

He slung an arm around her as they walked, like it was a date, like he might if he was really doing this. She was a little short for him, or he was tall for her; the comfortable position would be to rest his arm on her shoulders, but that wouldn’t help sell things for anybody watching. As it was, he could leave his hand just at the base of her ribs and pretend his fingers wanted to creep forward.

On the corner of sad-Jason’s block, the shiver went up Jason’s spine again. He didn’t look up, but Julia made her living reading people’s bodies and she tensed because he did.

“What is it?”

“Nothin’.”

“Red—”

“If I figure it out, I’ll let ya know. It’s just somebody—hell. Maybe I’m paranoid.”

Julia murmured, into his ear like this was real, “Way I hear things, you oughta be.”

He let a smile twitch the corner of his mouth.

They didn’t meet any of sad-Jason’s neighbors in the elevator, thankfully. (Jason took the stairs, of course, when it was just him; but if there was somebody watching—) Julia’s fishnets were blue tonight, and her skirt was basically a hand towel wrapped around her hips (crushed blue velvet, the Alfred that lived in his brain supplied). A black halter; a baggy, silky robe sort of thing—the point was: that she was a working girl, working, was obvious.

He unlocked sad-Jason’s door and showed her in with a mock bow.

She turned around once inside. “Here?” she said.

“Well, ain’t like we’ll be doin’ anything. Can’t recommend that mattress anyways—”

She blinked. “I meant—”

“You meant, is this really my place, din’ cha.”

She shrugged, bouncing in the halter top. “You beat Marco in a fair fight. You came round talking before that, and you came back. You wanna set yourself up as something, so…”

“’m getting furniture,” he said. “Deliveries are on the way.” He filled the kettle and set it to boil. “So.”

“Two hours to talk,” she said. “Six hundred.”

“What do you usually make?” He didn’t mind being over-charged, of course; not-Bruce’s cash would go to a good cause, but he’d need to know standard rates anyways, when things started going his way.

“Aw, honey,” she said. “Whatever the market will bear.”

He snorted.

“So.” She looked unsure, for the first time tonight. He’d been careful to leave a clear path between her and the door, wasn’t in her way, but it was such a small apartment and she was at an obvious disadvantage if he did try to get his money’s worth—

He grimaced.

“So,” she said again.

“So,” Jason agreed. “You want tea?”

***

Tea, the ritual of making it, helped. Even if it was a lemon-infused camomile beverage that had never seen a tea plant and that came in dusty bags. Jason could imagine Alfred’s quiet English resignation.

Jason poured himself the first mug, which wasn’t correct etiquette either, of course, but the shared teapot seemed to convince her of his bonafides.

“You came by,” she said, “the other day.”

“Yeah.”

“You were askin’ questions.”

“Yeah.”

“’Bout… how we’re treated. That sort of stuff.”

Jason nodded.

“Why d’you care?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

Her mouth twisted. “Trying to decide.”

Jason shrugged. Wasn’t like she’d be able to verify the story anyway; it all happened in a different universe. “Knew somebody once. Someone—she was smart.”

Julia was watching closely.

“She was a pro, and she made some decisions. Decided to trust somebody, you know?”

“Past tense?”

He shrugged again. “Yeah. The trusting got her killed.”

“How is this supposed to convince me?”

“Cause, see, she trusted the devil she knew.”

Julia thought for a moment, then asked, “You kill her?”

Jason saluted with his tea. “Nah. Devil did.” Jason had reacted, of course, and it had been one of his showier reactions. He’d been… not quite over the Pit, still, then, not used to accommodating it. And the showiness definitely left a mark on Gotham’s underworld (it wasn’t heads in a bag, but that really was a one-time thing)—regardless, the showiness had come too late for Cherry.

Julia drummed her fingers on the handle of her mug.

Jason waited.

“What’s your cut?” she asked. “If somebody was interested.”

Jason shrugged. “I just wanna help.”

“Just that?”

“You need me, sure. You hear something you wanna share, I’ll listen. You got a problem with a client, anybody, you give me a call.”

“All for the warm fuzzies.”

“Sure.”

“Bullshit.”

He shrugged again. “Ain’ about money, all the time. Sides, your line of work—it ain’t exactly blue-chip, sister.”

“Huh?”

“Look, there’s things I value more than money, alright?” Her face, already scowling, darkened further. “Not like that, either. I’m sure you’re nice but I don’t fish in my own pond.” If this was his own Gotham, if people already knew who he was, he could get away with something absurd and weighty (protection should never mean exploitation, he wanted to say). But coming out with that right now—Julia’d laugh.

“So,” she said.

“If it suits.” He sipped his tea. “And as it suits. Where it’s safe, I mean, convenient, I like knowing what’s happening on the street. And I figure you all, you get to know each other, and the streets, pretty well. So. Pay it forward, I figure.” 

“And if the devil comes around?”

“I’ll pay it back.”

She sat, thinking. Finally, she said, “Hell of an offer.”

He let it sit.

“I need to make that call tonight?” Her lips were pinched, lipstick slightly smeared on the edge of her mug. Probably the first time sad-Jason’s mug’s got close to makeup, Jason thought in passing.

“Nah,” Jason said. “Hell, you wanna double-dip a while, I’m good with that. I want intel. No strings, no catch. You need me, you let me know. I’m a soft touch anyway.”

She snorted, which was vaguely amusing as that was one of the truest things he’d said all evening.

“Oh. One thing.”

She froze.

“There is a catch. No kids.”

Her face worked. “There’s a lot of moms who—”

“Yeah, mine did, a bit. I mean, no kids on the street. That’s the rule. Don’t break it, don’t help people break it. Kid needs cash or help or whatever, you send that kid to—” He almost said, to me; he would have if this was normal, but he had a shitty and still unprotected studio apartment in a mostly civilian building and he was definitely in the crosshairs of at least sixty percent of Gotham’s criminal element, one way or another— “Wayne,” he finished. “Kids go to the Wayne Clinic. Anybody breaks that, they answer to me.”

Her look was measuring, careful. She said, slow, “I’ll pass the word.”

He nodded. “So you know. That’s, ah, advance notice. But that’s—anybody goes after kids, whether they’re one of mine or not, they’ll answer to me.”

She breathed out, her lips pursed.

“Sound fair?”

She didn’t say anything in return, didn’t give him names. Well. He could wait. “You like Nora Roberts?”

“What?”

“Hey, got two hours of your time. Put your feet up.”

“What?”

“Even with the walking, even with walking back, it’d only be forty minutes, Julia.”

“Who?”

“Oh. Good point. You got a name?”

“It’s not Vivian.” Her teeth flashed bright and white.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “The wig. And the skirt, come on.”

“It’s Sympathy.”

He nodded. “Sympathy. Nice.”

She smiled. “That’s the idea.”

He laughed. “Nora’s on the bedside table. Here.” He tossed the thick paperback over to her; it landed beside her on the couch.

"And that’s all you want?”

“Well, you don’t have to read it. But I’m gonna bake, if it’s all the same, and I’m terrible conversation when I’m cookin’.”

She blinked. “It’s ten pm.”

“And?”

She opened the book.

Chapter Text

The next day, the bulk of Jason’s security equipment arrived, and he spent the morning turning sad-Jason’s apartment into something he’d feel confident leaving for more than three hours at a time. He did get a couple weird looks from the neighbors: a mousy man near the elevator hurried out of Jason’s way, clutching to his chest a little dog that looked like a sheep.

But the weirdest encounter of the morning was with the neighbor Jason mentally labeled Mrs. Osborn. She was in her seventies, at least; tiny and bird-like; lived across the hall from sad-Jason’s; and violently reminded Jason of his second-grade teacher. She opened her door sharply, nearly startling Jason off the stepstool he’d got up on to install his new camera system and snapped, “Well, young man, if you damage the paintwork, Luka will hear of this.” She banging the door shut promptly afterwards.

Jason blinked. He wasn’t sure who Luka was, whether he’d just been threatened with his landlord or with the mob. He was also not sure why she cared. The hallway was fine, he guessed, utilitarian pinkish-beige walls and trodden-down carpet. Clearly hadn’t been renovated in years, if not decades, and a faint smell of mildew lingered around the vinyl ceiling tiles.

Wasn’t like it was the Sistine Chapel.

He finished up with the camera’s wiring and got down, knocking softly on Mrs. Osborn’s door. “Ma’am?”

She yanked the door open under his hand, as though she’d been lurking there this whole time. “What is it?” she spat upwards, squinting through small wire-framed glasses.

He carefully looked down, did not laugh, did not threaten. “I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you. I’ve, ah, been away for a while and I was just adding a few security measures to, uhm…”

“You’re a new tenant?” she demanded.

“Ah—”

“Because there are rules, young man, about subletting, and if young Jason Todd thinks that he can—”

"I’m his brother,” Jason said, which made another cover story to keep track of, but it seemed like the best of a bunch of bad options—“Jay’s out of town, and I’m looking after the place for a while.” Until I get him back, he added in his head. Until I fix this, until I go home.

She frowned. “You’re very loud.”

“I’ll try to do better, ma’am.”

“Thank you very much. And it’s Mrs. Osborn to you,” she added, slamming the door in his face.

Jason retreated and made sure sad-Jason’s door was firmly closed behind him before he snickered.

***

After Jason’s improvements, there were two fisheye cameras in the hallway, one in each lobby, and an external CCTV covering the main entrance, another on the roof. He’d hooked them up to rudimentary video analysis software—third-party, of course, he wasn’t Babs—and he’d have to train it on the building’s residents and frequent guests for the next couple of weeks, until he stopped getting notifications every time someone walked their dog. But, once trained, it’d give him a heads-up for strangers.

And, as it turned out, he had things set up not a moment too soon: he got to hit the ‘unwelcome’ button almost immediately, for Dylan fucking Miller.

...on the other hand...

He keyed in a sequence to the alarm, disarming the lobby doors, and buzzed the intercom. “Dylan.”

“Uh. Jay. Can I come up?”

“Door’s open.”

Dylan still looked regrettably fishlike, Jason thought, as Dylan let himself into the apartment and carefully stepped away from the door.

“Look,” Dylan said, “like, it wasn’t my plan. Casaleone—”

“You think I care?”

“No, I mean, I wanted to—”

“As I remember, you were arguing over who to throw me to. What were you trying to get out of it, Dylan? Get into Falcone’s good books or—”

“Jesus Christ, I want my friend back!”

Jason froze.

Dylan Miller the eelman looked just as taken aback, white showing all the way around his eyes. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “I—”

“Fuck,” said Jason. “Oh, fuck.”

***

He made tea, and it was good tea, full leaf and allowed to steep, and Dylan did not properly appreciate it.

But, then, Dylan wasn’t talking at all.

“So,” Jason said, once his tea was strong and sweet and milky. Dylan had sat when directed, all his fight expended in one yell, like a puppet with his strings cut.

Dylan looked at him.

Big, Jason thought. I’m big, and sad-Jason’s not, and I don’t know enough, and I fucked up the basic things, and…

And then I took out Marco. And what you saw—

“Do you really have amnesia?” Dylan asked, gripping the handle of his mug.

Jason shrugged. “There’s things I don’t remember.” He noted the angle of Dylan’s wrist, how it wasn’t like he planned to drink the tea, but like he planned to throw it.

Dylan’s jaw moved. “You’re not Jason. I—look, I’m not the, you know, I’m not the guy people go to for plans and shit, right? I drive. But I know Jay. Not like that, but I know him, and you’re not him. Amnesia or not.”

Jason let himself smile, just a bit. “What makes you say that?”

“That.”

“Uh—”

“Your face.”

Jason’s smile stretched. “I like my face. ‘Sides, it got bigger, what with the steroids in Central.”

“That’s my fucking story—I don’t mean that. Not bigger. I mean you look like—you’re doing it now—like you’re looking for somewhere to—like you’re gonna bite me or some shit.”

“Central’s a weird place.”

“Jesus—”

“Weird enough that weird steroids in Central worked on just about everyone in this town. Not on you and not on yuppie prep, but—”

“Bill?”

“You know Bill?”

“You’ve got his picture on the bookcase, man.”

Jason closed his eyes. Winced. “Point.”

“And…” Dylan’s tone was slower. “You called him that before. Real you, I mean. Called him yuppie-prep. Nicely, but—”

“I am real-me,” Jason said, unhelpful.

“I—I don’t…”

“This cannot leave here. This cannot go to Eli, this cannot go to Casaleone, this is me and you, Dylan, okay?”

“No—”

“I’m Jason, but I’m not your Jason. Bill knows too. I’m—”

“What?”

“Central’s weird.” Jason emphasized the words. “Metropolis is weird. Star is too. Everywhere’s weird.”

“And you—”

“I’m from somewhere weird. Weird Gotham.” He paused. “This Gotham is weird.”

“I don’t—”

“You and Jason,” Jason said, changing the subject and editing out his habitual sad. “You two together?”

Dylan blinked again, hard. “What?”

“Just a question.”

“I—no—I’m not—Jay’s not—”

“Bad if he was?”

Dylan looked at him, eyes wild, and didn’t answer the question. “What the fuck d’you mean, weird Gotham?”

“I didn’t hurt him,” Jason said. “I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m gonna get him back. Gonna do a lot of things, okay?”

“Man—”

“Alternate universe, my friend, and I’d say this is, like, Justice-League-type shit, but you don’t have one of those, so I need you to trust me. Think Superman-level, okay? And we stick with the steroids story? Keep Garibaldi happy?”

Dylan stared, wordless.

“Sound good?” Jason prodded, and Dylan still didn’t answer, so Jason replied on his behalf. “Sounds good.”

***

“Thing is,” Jason said after a few minutes—but Dylan had started to sip at the tea, and Jason counted that a victory—“thing is, I don’t want Garibaldi to know. Or Casaleone. Definitely not Falcone.”

Dylan met his eyes, what little color there was in his face draining away. “No,” he said, voice quiet. And then: “Superman?”

“What?”

“Do you know Superman? Or, um—”

Jason relented a little, shrugged. “Not here,” he said. “My Gotham, though, it’s sort of full of vigilantes.”

“You’re trying to get back.”

“I’m trying not to get beat to death in the meantime.” Been there, done that.

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Yeah, I’m sorry—”

“So the way it goes,” Jason continued over him, “way it goes, I have people there. And I am used to people like Casaleone, like Eli—” head in a bag— “I am used to dealing with Falcone and with guys like you. You’re getting a pass right now, Dylan, cause of the nonsense, but you should know that I was off-guard on fight night. Guard’s up now: come after me again and I will butcher you.”

The threat had its intended effect; Dylan looked ready to cry.

“Help me out, though, and we can get through all this, eh?”

Dylan’s jaw trembled. “Help you how?”

Jason smiled. “Tell me things, about this brave new world. Tell me who the players are, and tell me about the game.”

“I—”

Jason grabbed his notebook, sat back down. “Okay, so there’s Falcone.” He wrote the name at the top of a fresh page, circled it, and looked back up. “Who else?”

***

He kept Dylan off-balance enough to get information out of him, a web of mob ties and weak links interspersed with arrant gossip, and full of gaps where Dylan’s clearance was too low. The gossip could be useful; the gaps at least showed where something interesting lurked; and Dylan was too befuddled, generally, to balk at sharing.

Jason slipped a pingable tracker-bug onto Dylan’s jacket, though, as he showed him out the door.

Just in case.

Chapter Text

Dylan was halfway down the hall, nearly at the door of the-man-who-owned-the-dog-that-looked-like-a-sheep, when he stopped. Turned back. “Jay?” he said. “Forgot my keys.”

Jason could see the lanyard hanging from Dylan’s pocket, but he stepped back graciously, let Dylan back into the apartment. “So?” he asked as the door closed.

“Got another job,” said Dylan.

Jason raised his eyebrows. “Who does?”

“It’s Tommy Danello. Not Garibaldi, but the pay’s decent and it’s not breaking any rules—”

Except, Jason thought, you know, the law. “What’s the gig?”

“Protection during a deal. Nothing fancy.”

“And they sent you to ask me out? This fourth grade?”

Dylan flushed, as he seemed to do whenever sexuality was even hinted at, and stammered, “I—no, I said I got a guy. I wanted—”

“Dylan. Some advice? You can drive, man. But you are not great at lying. Crime is not the field for you.” Jason rolled his shoulders. “Alright, you can bring me in. Ambush me again, though—”

“I won’t!”

“I’ll be watching, anyway.” Jason nodded at the bed and what lay underneath it. “Through my scope, ya see.”

Dylan swallowed.

***

“You again,” said Diva the librarian.

Jason jerked his head upwards. “Barbara in?”

“She’s in the office. You need something?”

Jason shrugged. “S’not important.”

Diva stared at him, hard, and then turned away. Jason shrugged again. He had a goal this time.

He didn’t, obviously, need the library’s internet anymore. But he had an aim beyond that—

“How are the applications coming?”

Barbara must have headed his way as soon as Diva was in earshot of her. Jason smiled to himself.

“Still deciding,” he lied. “But that’s not what I was looking for. Um. I thought maybe you’d be able to give me a hand with something else?”

Barbara’s lips tightened; she said, “Maybe,” and Jason nodded.

“S’nothing bad. Or… d’you remember when I came here the first time?”

Her eyes were guarded. “You were looking for a friend.”

“Yeah. I thought maybe you might know something about what happened. Or, um, the people involved.”

She frowned. “Does this actually count as research help?”

“Kinda—”

“Because I have other patrons I should be assisting, but—”

“You got a break soon?”

She sighed. “Coffee in fifteen.”

Jason smiled.

***

“Okay,” said Barbara, settling down at a table by the library office. Not in the silent room, thankfully. She cupped her hands around a burgundy mug with a Gotham City Library decal on its side, and said, “About your friend.”

“Yeah. Um. Maybe it helps if I start with me. I was—I was basically a scholarship kid.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“No, but I met people I wouldn’t have met at all otherwise, and I made friends that I wouldn’t have known, and… basically, there was a kid I knew.”

Her face was tight. “Is this the friend who—”

“Died? Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah.” Jason swallowed. “Anyway, my story’s kinda… long, but the relevant part here is that I was a scholarship kid, and then a couple years later I had a—pretty much, let’s go with a trauma. The details aren’t super important, but a TBI, you know, brain injury?”

“Oh,” said Barbara.

“Yeah. Well. Recovery was a bitch and shi—and stuff. Sorry. I had to relearn a lot of things, including reading, and they had Dickens, so—”

“Barnaby Rudge with a brain injury?”

“I mean, I’d read it before. I guess some part of me remembered. Anyway.” Jason laughed, shortly. “Thing was, I was gone for a while, for recovery stuff and stuff, a few years, yeah? And then I got here, and Tim’s dead.”

Barbara blinked. “Tim?”

“Yeah. My… friend, I mean.”

“Do you mean Tim Drake?”

“I saw that he was kidnapped,” Jason offered.

Barbara said, “It was horrible. I’m sorry if you… I don’t know what you think I can help with, though—”

“Just wondering,” Jason said. “About Tim’s parents.”

“I didn’t exactly move in their circles—”

“No, but your dad might have mentioned something—I just, I don’t know if I’m missing something in the headlines or—”

“If you were a friend, why don’t you go to them? The Drakes, I mean.”

The corner of Jason’s mouth twitched up at Barbara’s clear scepticism. “Look,” he said, “I just… can you just tell me what you remember? Or help me find someone to talk to about it?”

Still doubtful, Barbara said, “Well, the Drakes are archaeologists. The company, Drake Industries—Jack Drake is the CEO but it’s one of those hands-off positions, I think. He and his wife spend a lot of time overseas. And a few years ago, Tim Drake went with them on a dig, and while he was there he was kidnapped and he… never came back.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “And what did his parents do?”

“What?”

“Your kid gets kidnapped and murdered and you do what?”

Barbara was looking confused again. “Jay, I’m not sure that—”

“They came back to town, right? But they haven’t stayed. They keep going back out on digs, even after their son died on one. Nobody’s thought that’s odd?” Something moved in Barbara’s eyes and he knew he’d scored a hit. “Have they changed up their security at all since? I mean, they must have, right?”

She said, “They must have. But I really don’t know, Jay—”

“Right, well. If you could keep an eye out—look, it’s actual research help. Call me a journalist. Not as reputable as Lois Lane, maybe, but—”

“Jay—”

“Anything you hear, Barbara. Please.”

Her eyes softened a little and she abruptly changed the subject. “When was your injury?”

“Um,” said Jason, “a few years ago.”

“Football?” She said it like a test, but Jason was startled into a laugh and couldn’t figure out what she was testing.

“No,” he smiled, “no, nothing that fun. It was—it was messy, I guess, and… far away.”

Her eyes were measuring him. “You met Tim at school.”

In one reality, it was true. “Yeah,” Jason said.

“And you were close, before he died? Or, I suppose, before you… got hurt?”

Less true, but now they were close, or close enough, after Jason died, so… “Sorta, yeah.”

Barbara hummed. “Well,” she allowed, “if I find anything interesting, journalistically, I’ll let you know. But Jay? I might just be a librarian, and I’m not sure what you are, but I’m not an idiot. Anything happens to the Drakes, I’ll be… very concerned.”

Jason met her gaze. “I don’t think anyone’s just a librarian.”

Barbara’s lips twitched.

***

In retrospect, it was possible that Jason had managed to give Barbara the impression that he and Tim had been kidnapped together and that his injury was a direct result. He ran his hand through his hair, tugging on his piebald forelock as was habit.

Another goddamn cover story to keep track of.

Still. Maybe she’d find something. Or mention it to Gordon senior, or… or maybe it was just what it seemed, and Tim’s death was just tragic happenstance, and his parents were simply dealing the best way they knew how. Somehow, though—

Jason doubted it.

***

Trusting Dylan Miller was… well. Jason’s list of allies was short, that was the thing. And, true, neither Dylan nor yuppie-prep Bill was his ideal backup, but needs must when the devil drives—and having them onside, where Jason could keep an eye on them, was probably better than them roaming free.

So, while Jason wasn’t exactly thrilled by the new developments, he was provisionally reserving judgment. And he was willing to get in a car driven by Dylan that evening, to make the trip down to Hovrick Tunnel for Danello’s job.

The job that ‘broke no rules’ was protection for a drug deal. In other words, Dylan dropped Jason off at the selected warehouse, early, a little over an hour before the show was meant to start, and Jason clambered up into the catwalks to set himself up a decent sniper’s nest. Dylan was quiet in the car and drove more like a normal person than a meerkat on speed, and didn’t seem to be planning Jason’s demise. He drove off, still sedate, to fetch Danello and crew.

A special deal, Jason had been told, with a Russian crew that was trying to gain a Gotham foothold. Falcone and the syndicate weren’t falling over to welcome the Russians in, but the Russians were bringing with them a very interesting designer formulation, high-purity, high-effect, and the syndicate was willing to deal. Danello’d been selected as the face of the operation, until and unless the Russians got settled in and earned themselves the right to treat with the big fish.

Jason frowned down at the warehouse floor. The place felt exposed—he wouldn’t have agreed to this, if he were the Russians, but then maybe they just really wanted Gotham. Hell, the place was exposed, which was the whole point; it was exposed to him and to his rifle sight, but… it still felt stupidly risky. Lots of doors, lots of entry points: Jason figured the lack of flying vigilantes made that less of a risk, but there really were a lot of windows and he’d have picked somewhere more controllable, for this sort of a thing.

Well. Far be it from Jason to critique the Russian mafia.

And it helped him, after all; he pushed open one of the windows and set up his nest not four feet away. Just in case he needed a quick exit.

He was set up forty-five minutes before he heard Dylan’s engine outside. Popped his head out of his nest just enough to watch Danello and co. walk in, Dylan with them. Dylan spotted him in the rafters, jerked his head; Danello, a big heavy-set guy, followed his gaze and nodded upwards. Jason nodded back, and Dylan slipped back out towards the car.

Far be it from Jason to critique the Gotham mob. But honestly, taking Dylan Miller’s word—

Though Jason was doing that, in his own way, too.

He pulled his head back into his nest, and waited.

***

The Russians arrived on schedule, four of them; two flunkies flanking two guys in suits. Not a show of strength, but a genuine negotiation. The lead Russian, narrow-chested and in his early thirties (ambition, Jason thought, or somebody’s son), smiled broadly in Danello’s direction.

“Good evening friends!” he beamed, his voice easy and unaccented.

“Mr. Gavril,” said Danello. “A pleasure.”

“Ah, what is business without pleasure, after all? Life should be pleasurable, do you not agree?”

Danello smiled in response, tolerant but not impressed. Jason watched the Russian flunkies through his scope; nobody’s hands were drifting to their hips, nobody shifting in worrying ways. So far so good.

“Agreed,” said Danello. “Now, we’ve heard some things about what you can bring us.”

If Gavril was displeased by the rapidity of the shift towards the business side of the evening, he didn’t show it. “Splish,” he said. “Smooth as a baby’s bottom. Nice, yes? A nice clean sense, for the more discerning.”

“Gotham has taste,” said Danello. “Discernment.”

“We have access to a stable supply, and could provide, oh, around—” But he stopped before naming the amount, his head turning, and then time hung suspended for an endless moment.

The silence shattered with the blaring of a car alarm; Dylan, Jason thought, and fuck, and muffled shouts from the other side of the building. A crash—a door busting in—the Russian flunkies whipped out their sidearms, aiming at Danello, and Jason sank three bullets into the concrete by their feet.

He could make out the shouts now. GCPD.

“You arranged this,” Gavril spat, his jollity seared away, as Danello’s crew scrambled for the rear door. “Gotham—phaugh.”

More yells, and the slap of running feet, and the Russians made towards the side door they’d come in through. The panic alarm cut off—Dylan must have just evaded the cops and Danello made it back. Almost before Dylan’s engine cut in, Jason started breaking down the rifle and his nest, now that the immediate job was done—

Now that he was being abandoned to the tender mercies of the GCPD—

The side door slammed behind the last Russian flunky, and Jason still had twenty—nineteen—seconds before he’d be packed, before the scene would be clean enough to make his escape—thirteen seconds—underneath him, the door to the main entrance flew open.

“GCPD!” someone bellowed, out of Jason’s eyeline.

Shit. Jason mentally revised his timer upwards; moving silently stole his speed. Thirty seconds, still, now, if he wasn’t spotted.

And he was full-face here, not even a domino. The helmet was still under sad-Jason’s bed.

The cop’s voice, muffled, said, “Fuck. They went out the back. Ramirez?” Another pause. “Shit. No answer. Ramirez. Preston? Saminoff, go and check on them. We have officers non-responsive—”

“Missed ‘em by half a minute, Detective,” someone else said glumly.

 “Still,” the first man said. “They were here. As long as Ramirez and Preston are—”

“We need more backup,” said Eeyore. “Or, you know, authorization. We can’t keep doing—”

His voice cut off, probably at a signal from the detective. Jason’s packing was nearly complete, and at this angle they wouldn’t see him either—he could make it to the window, there was a flat roof only one story down, and then he could parkour his way out of this cluster—

One of the cops moved forward, below him—stupid stupid ass, Jason thought, glaring a hole in the back of his head, walking out into the open, I could pick you off in a heartbeat, don’t even need a goddam rifle, could hit you with a 22, are you trying to get yourself—and the cop was looking, oh perfect, at the holes in the floor.

Jason saw the realization hit; the cop’s shoulders and neck tensed and he said, “Sniper.”

“Det—”

“The angle. They had a sniper,” said the detective, turning, like he wasn’t already enough of a target. “There might be evidence up—” He stopped, stiffening, as his eyes found Jason.

“Detective?” said Eeyore.

Jason let his hands close the rifle case on autopilot, fasten the latches, slide it into the duffel and slide the duffel around his shoulders, never taking his eyes from the cop’s face. He moved, soft, still half-unconscious, heading for the window, still not breaking eye contact with the detective. Who, himself, still hadn’t spoken.

“Detective?” Eeyore repeated, still out of view.

“They had a sniper covering the deal,” said Dick Grayson, and then Jason was out the window and gone.

Chapter Text

What the fuck. What the actual—

It was quiet behind him as Jason dropped and rolled onto the neighboring rooftops—or, at least, it wasn’t as loud as it should have been. No shouts, no sirens.

But it had been Dick; the universal differences hadn’t left much mark on him. Same lean build, his muscles running long along his bones, unlike Jason’s heavy solidity. Same eyes, cerulean blue; skin naturally tan, though paler in this Gotham. Fewer chances to get away for the weekend, Jason figured, as just Dick Grayson and not Richie Wayne.

Not that Dick’s vacations, usually, included much time on the beach.

And it wasn’t surprising, either, to find Dick as a cop.

But—

The surprising thing—

Dick had let him go.

Jason had been made, one hundred percent, no question. Dick had seen him in the catwalks, had looked directly at him, and had said nothing at all while he made his escape. If Jason had been aiming at him—no, even then, especially then, Dick-Stubborn-Grayson would have yelled and tried to dodge the freaking bullet. Silence…

The idea that Dick Grayson, in any reality, had ended up a dirty cop—

What the fuck.

***

And then there was the question, what was he doing at that warehouse? Why’d Dick and Eeyore and… Smirnoff? Samoff?... and Ramirez and whoever else Dick had tried to reach—how did they find out about the deal, and who were they working for?

Maybe they’d just been sent to mess it up. If so, they’d done that admirably: the fledging relationship between Gavril and the syndicate was shot to hell, even if the only bullets fired had been Jason’s. Be a hard thing, getting diplomatic relations back on a congenial footing.

Jason spared himself a moment of relief to be glad that was someone else’s job.

(For the moment. Until the Plan to Run Gotham’s Underworld took off.)

But it definitely seemed like Dick’s little squad had been operating off-book, if Eeyore’s complaining was anything to judge by. And while Dick taking creative license with the rulebook also wasn’t that surprising—

What, Jason repeated. The fuck.

***

Back at sad-Jason’s, the rifle safely stowed, Jason shot a text to Dylan. Just two question marks; he hoped Dylan had the sense not to put details in writing. Surprisingly, he did: Jason’s phone rang shortly after.

“Hey, Jay,” said Dylan, in something like a whimper.

“Hey. What the fuck?”

“Shit, man, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t—I didn’t turn on you or nothing, I swear—”

“Those were cops, Dylan. An’ you just left me?”

“Yeah, well, you got out fine, and Mr. Danello—”

“Yeah, whatever. Who were they?”

“What?”

“The cops. You know ‘em?”

There was a pause. “I didn’t see anybody, just the lights around the front. And then Mr. Danello came running, so…”

“Okay,” said Jason.

Dylan ventured, “Did, uh, you make anybody’s face? Cause, I mean, somebody might be interested in that, if you need the payout after all.”

“No,” said Jason. “No, didn’t see anybody. Made it out the window before they showed up.” He added, “The Russians?”

“Mr. Danello’s pissed.”

Jason hummed in understanding.

“And, Jay,” Dylan said, “he was. You know. Asking about you. After, I mean.”

Jason closed his eyes. “Fuck, Dylan, I didn’t sell anybody out to anybody.” He didn’t add That’s not the plan, though he thought it.

“Yeah,” said Dylan, drawing the word out. “Still. Um. You probably should, uh, talk to Mr. Danello. Or, you know, Garibaldi, since you’re all high and mighty and whatever. Maybe soon.”

“You got my back, right, Dylan?”

“Sure.”

And wasn’t that comforting.

***

Mr. Danello and Mr. Garibaldi wouldn’t keep, unfortunately; Jason had been hoping to stay in the rest of the night, but he picked himself up from sad-Jason’s couch and headed for D’Antonio’s bar.

Ethan was working, thankfully, and the crowd was a little thinner than it had been the last time Jason had visited. No Patrick and his hangers-on, at least.

“Red,” Ethan said, his tone carrying a little bit of poorly hidden surprise.

Jason settled in at the bar.

“Cheapest on tap?” Ethan asked, and Jason smiled.

“What the hell.”

“Comin’ right up.”

Jason tapped his fingernails against the wood of the bar while Ethan drew the pint. Jason’s arrival had been noticed by others in the bar, which was what he’d hoped to get tonight, so well done on that, but—it was a lot of attention to attract to Jason Todd’s unmasked face. He felt his shoulders tighten.

“So,” said Ethan, setting the pint glass down. “Heard you made Patrick a lot of money.”

Jason shrugged. “Guess so.”

“Huh.”

Jason took a drink. “That all you heard?”

Ethan tilted his head, pushed his upper lip out with his tongue. “Nope.”

“Anything recent?”

A one-shouldered shrug, but then Jason would be surprised if the interrupted deal was common knowledge yet. Probably had to go through several layers of the Syndicate first.

“Some,” Ethan said.

Jason let a smile catch at the corner of his mouth, said, “Fifteen men with crowbars?”

“You got a lot of people looking your way. Lotta uncles.”

“Yeah, about that.” Ethan tensed minutely and Jason continued: “Wouldn’t mind a chat with an uncle or two. Or—this metaphor’s escaping me, a little, but Cousin Eli, if you happen to see him around. Or know someone who knows someone, you know.” He deliberately pitched his voice a little loud, letting it carry to the onlookers, and the closest couple (slicked-back hair and rhinestones) shifted in their seats.

“Cousin Eli,” Ethan nodded.

“Like to have a chat with him. About… one he had with me. And about some interesting developments.”

Ethan said, “People pass through. I can maybe find somebody who knows somebody.”

“You give good advice, you know,” Jason said, draining his glass.

“Oh?”

“You told me to watch out for the ring.”

Ethan huffed, a breathy laugh, and waved Jason’s handful of bills aside. “On the house.”

Jason nodded. “Preciate it.”

“You want some more good advice?”

“Sure.”

“Leave Cousin Eli alone. The whole family, maybe.”

Jason smiled. “Can’t do that, Ethan. Family’s too important to turn your back on.”

Ethan nodded. “Well. Can’t say I didn’t try.”

The offer would get to Garibaldi, who mattered, and maybe to Danello, who didn’t really. It was enough to be going on with.

***

And while he was leaving D’Antonio’s, Jason put something together that—

Well, he thought. Wouldn’t that be a nice little twist of fate.

If he was right, then that would explain—okay, it still wouldn’t explain Dick-the-dirty-cop. But it might explain—

Well.

He’d visit the library again tomorrow.

Chapter Text

“Barnaby,” said Barbara, an easy smile on her face. “What brings you back so soon?”

Jason returned the smile, easy, light. “Just stopping by.” He’d slept till 9:15 after last night’s drama, pulled some clothes on, and left sad-Jason’s without breakfast, getting to the library for opening again.

Her smile didn’t flicker. “Well. I haven’t been able to get anywhere with, um. That research question you were asking about, yesterday.”

Jason squinted for a moment, before he remembered. The Drakes. “Right. I’m, ah—that would be fast, if you had, so don’t worry about it. Just… looking into something else.”

“Already?”

“Yeah. Well.”

“You need one of the computers? Or is this another local-knowledge sort of thing?” The ease had faded a little bit from her expression.

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess.”

She hummed. “You mind waiting till Jeff’s in to take the desk for me?”

He looked around: there were no other patrons. Still, perhaps throngs would descend at ten after ten on a Wednesday. “Not at all,” he said.

He ambled into the Fiction section and idly browsed for a quarter of an hour or so before Barbara appeared at the end of the aisle. “Barnaby,” she called, and he rose from where he’d been examining the lowest shelf.

This time, they went all the way into the office, and Barbara closed the door. “So,” she said, settling behind a desk. “What’s up?”

Jason didn’t sit, let himself loom. Kept his tone easy, though, as he said, “Had a weird thing happen last night.”

She laughed. “Maybe you want to see a doctor, then—”

“How’s Detective Grayson doing?”

She froze, a split-second’s worth of genuine fear crossing over her face. Then she was easy again, but Jason had what he needed.

“Who?” Barbara asked. “Oh, do you mean Doug Grayson?”

Jason raised one shoulder in a shrug, concealing his instinctive please please please be trying to lie, Babs, I can’t cope with Doug—“Do I? You know him, I guess?”

“Well, I told you my dad’s a cop. Sometimes he talks about people he works with. Like. Doug. I don’t know much more than that—”

“Sure.”

“Did you meet—” she faltered—“Doug?”

Jason grinned. “Sure did. Nice guy.” And now her face was worried.

He spotted the book on the edge of her desk and changed the subject. “You’re rereading?”

Barnaby Rudge.

She followed his gaze, grateful for the change. “You inspired me.”

“There’s worse things, I guess.”

“There are.”

“The Drakes,” he suggested, changing the topic again. “You won’t forget, right? Something—if there’s something…”

She said, “I won’t forget.”

He turned towards the door, but stopped as she added, “I don’t hear much, but people are talking, Barnaby.”

“Oh?”

She looked back at the book. “People say you’ve sold your soul to the devil, and I know not what.”

He followed her gaze, recognized the quote. He wondered if she’d looked it up specially, or if she was just getting there in her reread. It had been a quote that grabbed the mind, in Nanda Parbat, though he hadn’t—quite—been sane enough to understand why.

Not then.

Not like there was all that much to read in Nanda Parbat, either.

But his part of the quote was clear, and she was clearly waiting. With a half-smile, he finished the line, saying, “Well, we all have, haven’t we? If we were fewer in number, perhaps he would give better wages.”

He got a half-smile in return, but where his had felt almost… melancholic, hers was tight, still. Frightened.

Goddamn. That hadn’t been the point.

“Well,” she said, still looking at the book. “I suppose that’s the risk we agree to, right? That we’ll work for the devil and be underpaid.”

Jason weighed responses on his tongue, but in the ear of his mind they all sounded like threats. He settled on, “Is it agreement if all the choices are bad?”

She looked up, meeting his eyes, her pale blue-green ones reminding him, suddenly, of when they had first met. When little Jason, Dick’s little brother adopted under protest, had met Babs, Dick’s girlfriend then. When little Robin had met Batgirl.

He’d known, at the advanced age of twelve, that she was sharp as anyone he’d ever met before. He’d seen it in how Bruce (still Bruce, then, not yet promoted to Dad and not yet demoted—was it demotion?—not yet matured, let’s say, into B)—seen it in how Bruce listened to her. Carefully, thoughtfully: not the way he listened to Jason, understanding and proud; and not the way he listened to Dick, as though he wasn’t really listening but just planning his side of their next argument. No, Bruce listened to Babs like an equal.

There was some of that Babs, now, in Barbara’s eyes.

“Is it agreement if all choices are bad?” she repeated. Then she shrugged. “I think so. There are always other choices.”

Jason’s mouth twitched. “Good to know.”

She looked away.

“Anyway,” he said, turning back to the door. “Give my regards to Doug. If you see him.”

***

Okay. It was definitely the fucking library. There was definitely somebody keeping an eye on him as he entered and exited the building. They had tied him to the library, and from there they were tracking him, and he was pissed, and he couldn’t deal with this the way he usually would; he wasn’t prepared. But he could feel their sights, and he had too many enemies now to know who it might be, and he wished, again, and fruitlessly, that they’d just fucking shoot—

The green stirred within him and he let himself sink into the uninhibited adrenaline rush—

No. Not here. Not in the open. Hold fucking back.

In for three, hold for four, out for five.

In for three, hold for four, out for five.

The green receded.

He hated the breathing exercises. Hated them the way he hated the green itself and everything it represented. Hated more the fact that they fucking worked, that magical reincarnation and magic angry-drugs and magic fucking magic wasn’t even enough to get you interesting coping mechanisms. Hated feeling like the big dumb thug he—his dad had been.

Willis.

In for three, hold for four, out for five.

Breath controlled, green suppressed, eyes fucking eyes still on him in this far-off lost broken-down confused city where no one was where they should be—

He made for the nearest subway entrance and felt the watching presence melt away as he descended under the earth.

***

Sad-Jason’s mail carrier came early in the mornings, which was nice in its way. Meant Jason could swing by the mailroom when he got in midday and not get too many looks from the nine-to-five crowd, as he picked up package after package after package…

Fabric, today. A good pair of bike pants, the leather padded around the knees and hips, but without looking like he’d strapped on children’s kneepads, and with enough flex in the groin that he could still manage a decent kick. The bike would be the next real purchase, when he got a chance; he had his eye on a nice used bike at a dealership just outside the city—nice, meaning untraceable. Meaning, within the realm of the plausible for sad-Jason, still.

For now, bike pants. Boots. Cotton and black-out lining and a—

“Sewing machine,” he said to the woman also in the mailroom, making nice, hefting the largest package of the day.

Her eyes were rounded, curious. Deep brown in a darkly tanned and deeply lined East Asian face—Nepali, maybe, someone from the mountains at least. Sun-weathered, and incongruous in cloudy Gotham, and Jason couldn’t tell whether the lines were age or stress. Her hair, dyed an unconvincing auburn that was losing the fight to grey, was pulled back in a rough ponytail.

He said, “Gonna make myself some curtains.” He was off his game, his breathing perfectly under control because he still had to control it—a boring conversation with a boring neighbor—

Aw, hell, a boring neighbor waiting in his mailroom and not picking up her own mail—

He lowered the sewing machine.

She was short, plump, though that impression wasn’t helped by the way she was stuffed into a tightly buttoned tan jacket at least two sizes too small, or by the way she swung both arms back and forth from her shoulders, gently, rocking on her heels in countermotion. He could take her in a fight, hand-to-hand, sure; but a sewing machine was not a great offensive weapon and if she had any more complicated plans—

Though she didn’t seem to; she didn’t move. Jason kept the conversation going himself; only polite, after all. “Curtains,” he continued. “And a sewing machine cover. One of those quilted ones, you know? Maybe a tote bag, too. Got some good fat quarters in one of these—”

“Red?”

“Some of ‘em, probably. Although a few were grab bags, and I was just leaning for classic navy for the curtain material so—”

She broke a smile, or at least that was how he interpreted the expression, her top lip curling upwards and hooking on a canine. On another face he’d call it a sneer. “You’re Red,” and that wasn’t a question.

He shrugged, not really bothering with denial. “If I were?”

“Then Mr. Garibaldi would want to see you, Mr. Red.”

He wasn’t a fan of the way she said mister; it lacked the sardonic edge that not-Bruce used. But he said, “Time and place?”

“Tonight, Pier 12. 10 pm.”

“Looking forward to it.”

The sneer twitched around her canines and the coat creaked as she left the mailroom.

***

Fidget fidget fidget. He needed to get a real base together. The storage unit would do as a start, but he needed more boltholes, needed a safehouse or two without a mailroom; without his name on the lease. One, like the bike, untraceable.

He’d been waiting for Garibaldi to send somebody, sure, but—

Not a freaking house call. Come on.

***

He searched Dick Grayson again when he made it home. Still nothing more, not beyond the baby-acrobat-tragedy. Richard Grayson, same. Detective Grayson, GCPD—maybe he was undercover? Still, you’d think there would be something. Math club from high school, or—

It wasn’t like Jason was Oracle, or Timbo, or even Bruce, but he knew what he was doing. There ought to be something here.

He grimaced.

Doug Grayson.

Nada there too. Thank god.

So. Who the fuck had Babs been talking about?

She’d recognized the name Grayson, that much was clear; she knew more than she was letting on. She was trying to redirect him, but from what?

He made a pot of tea and worked his way into the GCPD’s personnel files. Their security was barely tolerable. Appallingly easy to get inside; he should write a rude note. Leave it in the Commissioner’s—the Commissioner here was someone named William Gallagher, apparently. Gordon was lead in Major Crimes.

Detective Doug or Dick or Richard Grayson still didn’t exist. And this was payroll, and they thought it was safe.

Jason rubbed his jaw and downloaded the files to analyze further on his own time. He could probably sort it out by process of elimination: winnow down the GCPD staff by rank, age, general reckless tendencies and complaints from superior officers… He snorted.

Okay. Okay, let’s think about this logically, okay. Dick, Dick’s analogue, was a cop and had seen Jay, bare-faced, and hadn’t—it had been Dick. He knew that. And Babs—not-Babs—was keeping secrets, obviously knew who he had meant, and could only come up with “Doug”; he wasn’t going crazy, it had just been a week, it was just dimension travel, it wasn’t permanent—

And a week wasn’t even that long, and the way time dilation worked across universes, hell, the Bats might not even have noticed he was gone yet—

It’s not like he was waiting for a fucking rescue—

They would have—

The way time dilation worked across universes, hell—

No. Stop it. They’d be there when he got back. It’d all be fine.

He reached for his mug, trying to steady himself, trying to hold on to Alfred’s calming reassurances in his head.

His fingers slipped, and the ceramic shattered on the floor.

***

Kelly was hard to surprise, and harder to startle. She’d worked with MSF for years before heeding her mother’s steadily more insistent requests to come-back-home. She’d seen the aftermath of earthquakes, and the steady, water-dripping erosion of day-to-day corruption, and, twice, Superman out of his neighborhood, rushing to the rescue. The grind of Gotham wasn’t all that bad, in comparison.

Tricorner was ugly, sure, but the job was a good fit for her. The hours were reasonable, and her boss was decent—he was so decent, really, that the word barely seemed enough. No fear at all: he walked around the place with what on a crueler man would be called arrogance, and when she’d first started here, she’d been afraid someone would take exception—but somehow on him it worked. 

She finished the nightly inventory and locked the stores. It was quarter past six, and the days might be getting longer but sunset still threatened—and besides, in Gotham, half the time, it was hard to tell when the sun was even up.

Her boss would be staying late tonight again, of course, and Tara and Alice who helped round the back were already in the kitchen, but there were no more scheduled appointments and Kelly was looking forward to an evening off.

(Partially. Off meant her mother, of course, and Kelly did enough in a day that the prospect of being a nursemaid all night too was… well, exhausting really. But. There were worse things.)

She knocked at his office door and waved. “Heading out.”

“Of course, Kelly. You’re in tomorrow?”

“Bright and early,” she said, as she’d said nearly every night since she started here three years ago.

“You should treat yourself sometime,” he replied, as he’d replied nearly every night since then. “Take a vacation for once.”

“You’re one to talk!” she called over her shoulder, heading for the front door as he laughed, the ritual complete. She opened the door and stopped short.

Kelly was hard to surprise, and it wasn’t the first time she’d found a giant thug on the doorstep, not even the first time someone had tried to shake them down. But the protection-racket people had mostly left the place alone the last year or so, and even when they were more common, they didn’t usually look…

Tense. Stressed. On the verge of, of something, something unrelated to the normal course of business.

A patient, then.

The young man smiled at her weakly, blinking a bit, and clearly doing his best to hide his own surprise. “Um,” he said. “Hi. Um.”

“Walk-in?” Kelly asked.

“Um. Yeah. Uh. I need—can I see the doctor?”

Chapter Text

“Good evening,” not-Bruce said.

The nurse had raised her eyebrows at Jason, but held the door open for him and said, “There,” pointing to a waiting room. She’d left him to sit on the plasticated couch (which, urgh, come down in the world a bit, not-Bruce, although it was probably very easy to clean) but hadn’t closed the waiting-room door. He felt kind of bad; she was obviously on her way out. And it really wasn’t like it was important, it wasn’t like he was having any kind of a medical emergency or anything, it wasn’t like he—

And, “Good evening,” said not-Bruce.

He was standing in the doorway, boxing Jason in. The nurse was somewhere behind him, well-shielded; Jason heard her say “Doctor?” with heavy distrust.

“Thank you,” said not-Bruce. “It’s fine.”

Jason didn’t miss that not-Bruce didn’t say her name in front of him. Good opsec—good enough.

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Have a good night,” said not-Bruce.

He let the silence stretch as she left the clinic.

“So,” said not-Bruce, eventually. “No blood, tonight?”

“S’only six,” said Jason, his voice creaking.

Something sharp flickered in Bruce’s eyes. “Come to the back.”

The same room as before, still as small, still with the butcher paper on the plum-colored exam pleather. The hallway from the front room was narrow too, crowded: not meant for two men their size. Jason shot not-Bruce a look— not meant for you, he thought, unhelpfully.

“So,” not-Bruce said again, when they were both settled in the exam room. “Are you experiencing complications from the other day, Mr. Red?”

Jason said, “I—” and then stopped. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Not-Bruce raised an eyebrow. “If you’re embarrassed, I can assure you it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” The eyebrow was a challenge and Jason huffed half a laugh through his teeth, saying, “No. It’s not…”

“Not what?” A Batman tone, curious and leading, like a teacher: and then what is your move? Where do you go once you’re in that hold?

Jason looked down at his own knees and said, “Not physical.”

There was a pause, long and frigid, and not-Bruce said, “Ah.” Another pause, and he added: “I could give you a referral, but my experience with treatment for the… not-physical form of complications is that they are best treated with honesty. Which, I suspect, would be contraindicated with your career.”

Jason didn’t reply.

“As it is, I can refer you to a therapist, with or without a degree; a defense lawyer; or an officer of the law.”

“I’m not—”

“Whichever way you choose, as I say, your best interests would be served by honesty. All of our interests, though I should note that if you are planning to go down any of those routes, I can think of several people who would be displeased by it, and I’d recommend—” He stopped himself, and shook his head. “If the complications are deeper-reaching ones, Mr. Red, of the soul and not the body, I strongly recommend leaving town. I have occasional contacts with the Federal—”

“Jesus,” Jason said, finding his voice. “Do you ever shut up?”

Both eyebrows that time, and not-Bruce’s shoulders rose—

“The feds,” said Jason. “Really.”

Bruce’s jaw twisted. “Therapy, then, I take it.” He reached for a pen.

“I’m not looking to assuage my guilt, asshole.” Bruce’s hand stopped. “ Guilt—I don’t have guilt—hah, bet assuage surprised you too.” Bruce was— not-Bruce was carefully, deliberately silent. Not Bruce, goddamn you, not—“Eff’s sake. I need a name.” He got a squint in return. “I can’t keep calling you—”

Not Thomas, not if Thomas was alive here. Not Tom either, same reason—and also Tom was… wrong. It wasn’t—

Bruce, Thomas, Patrick; Jason ran over Wayne family names in his head, pausing briefly (and with amusement) on Kenneth.

“There was an Edward too, wasn’t there?”

Yet-to-be-named-but-formerly-not-Bruce said, quite slowly, “Mr. Red, I believe that you are—”

“Bruce, Thomas, Patrick, Kenneth, and an Edward somewhere. But none of them are right for you—”

“Doctor Wayne works fine.”

Jason did laugh at that.

“Is there some reason,” continued Doctor Wayne, “that what you call me is important? You didn’t know who I was the other day; now you know my great-grandfather’s name—you’ve done your research quickly, evidently.”

Jason gave him points for the calm veneer, though he tracked the way not-Bruce’s eyes flicked to the door, the desk phone. He laughed again. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to Norman-Bates you or anything—”

“What—”

“—I just need a name that isn’t Bruce, cause I think I’m losing my mind a little bit and I need to be able to—” Jason stopped. Breathed out. “Okay. I realize that probably didn’t help with I’m not Norman.”

Not-Bruce looked at him, with Bruce’s piercing eyes, and Jason felt picked to the bone. “Alan,” not-Bruce said eventually. “My great-great-grandfather. Sufficiently removed?”

Jason tried it out in his mind, and then out loud. “I can work with Alan. We’ll say it’s like a nickname. Okay.”

“Alright,” Alan said, with caution. “Am I to take it that you don’t want a referral?”

Jason nodded. “Just you—just to talk to you, jesus. I… you remind me of my dad.”

Something like comprehension dawned in Alan’s eyes. “His name is Bruce.”

“I—yeah.”

“A young father, if I’m that alike.” The tone was doubting. Maybe faintly disapproving—

“Adopted.”

“Mm. You lost him recently?”

Jason blinked.

“I extrapolated.”

“Ah. He, uh… he lost me.”

Alan—it did fit him—Alan sighed. “Gotham is easy to get lost in, Mr. Red. Whatever is between you—I am not a father, but whatever is or was between you… if coming here has caused you such distress, I would suggest that you go home. Wherever that may be.” He looked at Jason’s clenched fists. “That’s not an option?”

“No. I… no.”

“Our parents often forgive what we cannot—”

“No.”

“Alright.” There was silence for a moment. “Edward was my great-uncle, by the way. Black sheep.”

Jason looked up and met Alan’s eyes. Smiled, a quick fleeting thing. “Maybe that shoulda been mine, then.”

The sharpness returned, flickering, but Alan didn’t comment. “So,” he said. “What can I help you with, Mr. Red?”

“Jason.”

“Jason.”

“I… I lost people, I mean I got lost, and I can’t get back. And I’m—I needed somethin’ that was… My brother’s dead. Half-broth… well. Not even really my brother, another kid my dad took in. He’s gone. And another of my brothers… fuck.” He let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know what I’m doin’ here.”

“Here in the clinic?”

Jason let his mouth twist, and enjoyed the sardonic feel of it. “Eh… here, here.”

“I have…” not-Bruce, Alan, started. “I don’t have much family.” It was an offering. “But I can’t imagine losing them.”

Jason opened his mouth and laughed instead, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Yeah. Sucks.”

“Jason.” Even his voice, christ, it wasn’t exactly but it was almost—“I can’t tell you what to do. I’ve given my advice, which is look to those close to you and don’t let pride build walls you can’t take down. Failing that—” He shrugged expressively. “I’m a doctor. I can’t assist in more… professional matters. And if you’re in need of money—”

“Ain’t that.”

“No? Because twenty-four hours after I met you, two hundred thousand left my accounts.”

Jason froze.

Alan—no, this was Bruce , almost, not-Bruce again—let it hang, long and implacable. Then: “You arrive three days later, gripped by remorse, insisting that my name is important, that my family is important, struggling to express yourself and saying you don’t intend to—how did you put it—Norman Bates me for reminding you of your father who—what? Turned you out of the family home? Much appreciated.”

Jason opened his mouth, got out, “Wasn’t me.”

“No? Well, no, according to the bank records it was me, Mr. Red. Which is curious, since, point one, I own the bank, and point two, I’ve never made a transfer to a cryptocurrency wallet in my life.”

Jason didn’t wince.

“I wouldn’t even know how. I do hope you bought a pretty monkey.”

“Mostly guns,” Jason said, breaking.

Not-Bruce’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ.”

“Look, I—”

“You’re admitting it?”

“Well, clearly—”

“I need to know how you got in.”

“Uh—”

“We’ll deal with the theft in a moment, but right now my concern is the security of my bank—”

“How are you real?” Jason pushed to his feet. Very aware of his own height, his own bulk, his own… looming. “You find out that—”

“I have obligations—” Alan hadn’t stood, wasn’t displaying any sign of recognizing the looming, didn’t seem fazed. Still, always, in control—

“Oh my freaking god,” Jason said, dropping down again. “I promise you, nobody else is getting in that way. Not to your accounts or anybody else’s. You call the cops, this makes the news, I deny everything and your bank loses what, five percent of its clients? Maybe more?”

“How did you get in.” The Robin-report voice; Jason wondered if that was how Alan had managed to corral Audey and the gremlins. It worked, still—

“Grey Ghost.”

Alan didn’t blink.

“The Visitors from Outer Space,” Jason explained. “You said it was your favorite.” He shrugged, trying to muster up a smile. “Know you better than you think.”

Alan continued to stare, then dragged his fingers inwards along his cheekbones, ending with them pressed against his upper lip. He said, carefully, “How?”

This hadn’t been in the plan. Bill hadn’t been in the plan, Dylan, but this—Bruce—if this was—

He shouldn’t have come.

“If you are going to Norman-Bates me,” Alan said with a tight smile, “I’d appreciate getting it over with. If this is some kind of, of very bizarre stalking, or an attempt by Falcone to force me out—”

“Audey,” said Jason.

He didn’t take offense at the flicker of fear on Alan’s face, the first one so far. 

“I said I wouldn’t hurt ‘em. I’m not gonna,” he clarified. “I just—can we say, I used to be like Audey? I mean, I needed help, and you gave me some.”

Alan squints. “I don’t remember that.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, well. You help a lot of people.”

“And I told you my favorite episode of a show that has been off the air for thirty years, and from that, what—ten, fifteen years later?—you deduce my bank passwords and buy guns?”

“And a sewing machine.”

Alan shook his head and stood up himself. It was much more impressive than Jason’s had been: Alan wasn’t as big, maybe, but Jason felt small—and Alan was between him and the door. Alan said: “I won’t be a party to whatever you’re planning. If you’re trying to—kill me.”

“Already said I wasn’t , last time—”

“No: kill me, before you kill anyone else with a weapon purchased in my name.”

“What? I—”

“This is not negotiable, Mr. Red. I may not be—I may be neutral, in Gotham’s darker corners; I may not raise a hand myself, but do not doubt for a moment that I can make whatever triumphant coup d’état you’re planning very difficult indeed. And I will.”

Jason blinked at him. “I…” he started. “I’ll minimize collateral damage.”

“Excuse me?”

“If I—look. You don’t know me, fine, but I promise I’m better than what you’ve got. I ain’t gonna hurt people who don’—if I don’t have to. But they’ll be comin’ after me, so I’ve gotta make a move myself. I’ll do my best not to…”

“There is a police force ,” Alan said, and Jason laughed.

“Come on, man, not really.”

“Please,” and then, “You’re so young.”

Jason—Jason was having trouble breathing. “Look,” he said. “I’m older than I.. older than I was, alright? I don’t want to hurt you, so please just, for once in your life, stay out of it. I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s really not about the money, Jason.”

“I got places to be.” He got up too, and god the ceiling was low and the walls were close and now was not the time for—

“Jason,” Alan said. “Why can’t you go home?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I’m sure your father, if he lost you, your brother—I’m sure they’d take you back. You can stop this.”

“Couldn’t last time.” He took a step forward, another; he’d shoulder ‘Alan’ out of the way if he had to—“You gonna call the cops on me?” Jason asked. “Which ones?”

The man took a step back. Left the door free. “I’m hoping I won’t have to.”

Jason huffed. “Up to you. But I ain’t gonna kill you either, you goddamn martyr. So, if that’s it—”

“Have a good night, Mr. Red.”

Jason’s mouth twitched.

***

Well.

Well, fuck.

That hadn’t been in the plan. It hadn’t gone to plan, hadn’t been thought through, had just been Jay grasping at—anything he could reach that felt familiar, and it hadn’t held true, and not-Bruce, Alan, was on to him, or fighting him, or an enemy now—god, didn’t he have enough of those already? Did he have to ruin everyone he—

Fuck.

Dick was playing some long game. Tim was dead. His mom was dying; his only ally of any usefulness at all was Dylan the wet fish; B was still a paranoid mistrustful bastard determined to see the worst in him—he wasn’t going to kill him, what the fuck—and he just—he couldn’t catch a fucking break in this place and—

Why can’t you go home?

God, thought Jason. If only I knew.

***

And he still had to meet with fucking Garibaldi at Pier 12.