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Outside the windshield, autumn wind snaps around unyielding buildings. It plucks leaves from the yellow dipped trees lining the street with the carelessness of a love scorned twenty-something picking petals from a daisy.
Four tiny, handmade felt cats swing from the rearview mirror. Two gray and two orange, all of them put together with the shaky stitching of a child. They sway as Elenor turns off of 7th Avenue and onto Hartle Lane.
A faint, earthy smell drifts from the cup of coffee she hadn't managed to start on this morning.
She lets herself sink into the sounds of distant car horns, flashes of music and the hum of her car. Nora says she's a “dramatic city-slicker” to not play music when she drives. Elenor’s typical response is to call Nora a trusting country bumpkin. Fifteen years together and the insult still makes Nora sputter.
Brick and concrete buildings loom around her, weakly reflecting gray clouds in their panes. Patches of deep, cobalt blue peek past the sheet of gray sky like their own type of star. A few scattered panes glowing the citrus shade of the last few people working late.
Somewhere beyond the giants around her, the sun has dipped below the horizon.
She knows Nora got home from work, and Holly from school, soon enough for the two of them to watch it set through the holes in the clouds.
Elenor will likely get home to a pitcher of sweet tea on the table, two empty glasses frosting over on the balcony table, and laughter in the kitchen.
Her phone briefly lighting up on the passenger seat is all the warning she gets before the ringer screeches. The sound of bells breaks through the clammer of the city like a hammer to the window. She glances at it only to see a blank gray profile filling the screen.
‘Incoming Call…’
‘Unknown caller’
She sighs into the empty car.
Streetlights start flickering to life as Elenor reaches blindly for her phone with one hand, eyes on the road. (She’s certain the streetlights here get turned on later than is legal. If there's ever a news story exposing corruption of the power district, Nora will owe her five bucks).
Holly changed her ringtone for her the last two times Elenor got sick of the same thing. But she refuses to do it again. Something about not letting her and Nora become “dependent in old age.” The little shit.
If asked, Elenor will say she’s kept this one as a form of protest. In reality, she gave up on her third round with the devil brick.
She finally gets a hold of the thing, right as it goes silent.
She huffs, and it's then that she notices it, her hold on her phone going lax.
The street lights illuminate the narrow sidewalks and towering stone facades. In the new light, she watches a couple duck into an alley and a man pick up his kid to rush into a side street.
Other drivers are noticing as well. A minivan in front of her swerves to turn left, then a truck peels to the right, tires screeching.
Hartle Lane is all but draining of life.
Her heart rate picks up.
“Hello, Elenor,” a voice speaks, directly into her ear.
She yelps, phone flying from her hand. It lands on the floor of the car with a dull thump. Her now free hand jerks to grip the steering wheel, and she turns to see where the voice is coming from.
“It's me, uh, it's Juila I mean.”
The car is empty, the voice is coming from the floor, the blank brown of her phone case mocks her.
Then, the words register, and Elenor blinks, dumbfounded.
The last time she’d heard Julia’s voice was when she visited their parents months ago. She’d walked into the living room to see Mom walking around, phone in hand, like she talks to Julia all the time. Julia’s voice had been tinny, but unmistakable through Mom’s phone speaker.
It's been far longer since she’s heard her sister's voice directed at her. That had been in a voicemail three years ago. In which she told Elenor she would not like to meet her niece, but to tell the kid hi for her.
Five years ago Elenor’s dentist advised her to stop grinding her teeth if she wanted to keep them. She’s been doing a bang up job of listening to that warning the past five years. In fact, the last time she recalls eating tooth dust was during the aforementioned 'tell the kid hi for me' voicemail.
And right now.
“This is not-” she starts to spit out, but Julia continues, unbothered.
“I’m going to be in Gotham from the 20th to the 25th, and, If you could call me back, um. I just wondered if you'd like to meet someplace?”
Elenor lets out a sharp breath, a near laugh at the absurdity of it all. Of course, she accidentally starts a voicemail, and it's Julia. Of course it's at a bad time. Of course she’s saying words Elenor ached for when she was fifteen, that she doesn't anymore.
She tries to parse if people are fleeing in a particular direction.
She tries to tune out the voice.
Both yield no success.
“Mom says your store is doing well. So, I’m happy for you, and I’m sorry I-” Julia’s voice warbles there. Like it did when they were kids running around Robinson park. All scraped knees and wood chips and Julia trying to convince her that climbing trees is a bad idea, as she looked up at her from the base of one.
Well she never fucking fell did she?
Her jaw protests as the voicemail drags on. She’d bet her car that Julia doesn’t even know her store's name.
She switches lanes.
“I really hope this is your number still…”
Elenor once stacked herself a nice wall of unanswered calls to Julia. One brick at a time. Glued them together with a mortar made of all the times they hid in the clothing racks of stores together. Made of summer afternoons spent reading on the brown sofa with her. Made of the bracelet she found tucked underneath her pillow the night Julia went off to her fancy fucking college. Made of a hundred hopeful nostalgias.
It was a wall she talked at, over and over, with no answer.
She sweeps her gaze side to side. Eyes narrowing at alleyways.
“Get back to me if you can, please.”
The background hum of the voicemail cuts off.
People vacating a street can mean anything from ‘residual weariness’ to ‘there is a group of clowns gleefully throwing lethal projectiles at innocents two blocks over.’
Elenor has seen both, and she’s not keen on another clown incident.
She’ll take a longer route home. She’ll eat the curry Nora’s been so excited about preparing with Holly. Ask the two of them how the sunset was, and pick up glasses from the balcony to put in the sink.
She’ll forget about lifeless streets, and unanswered calls.
She looks at her rear view mirror, an empty road meets her. The felt cats watch her. Most of them have wonky googly-eyes, knocked askew by the many uneven layers of reapplied glue it’s taken to keep them on.
She and Julia both made a few, gathered at the rickety fold out table of the apartment they grew up in.
The day had ended in Julia and Dad getting in a shouting match.
Well, really it ended in a little yellow cat getting lobbed at Dad’s head, but it had been nice before that.
Her grip on the wheel tightens.
She wonders if Julia kept any of the cats she’d made that day, or if she’d left them behind like she did everything else in Gotham.
It's a stupid thing to get mad about, but that it’s stupid only makes her all the more pissed.
The cats wobble with the car as she turns left, onto Grafton street. Hopefully away from whatever twisted shit is about to go down.
Grafton street greets her with a group of chubby pigeons.
The sound of gunfire meets her like a glass shard meets teeth.
She brakes hard, tires screeching, seat belt digging into her skin.
The pigeons desert the street in a swath of motion and coos.
People say that the pigeons in Gotham are actually the most evolved version of a Gothamite you could be.
Stuck on the ground as she is, with her heartbeat in her ears, she’s liable to agree.
She strains to hear the direction the shots are coming from, it’s hard to place. The longer she stays still the worse this will be.
A small baggy drifts across the road in her headlights. It gets caught halfway in one of the many potholes obscured by oily rainwater.
The bag sinks down to get frozen come winter.
The gunshots are coming from somewhere ahead of her, and they are getting closer, closer, closer.
She starts a u-turn, a solid Gotham retreat strategy, textbook really. It will have her on the right side of the road and everything, she's practically a saint.
She's sideways in the street when an armored van rages out of an alley to her right.
It's a huge grey thing, with masked men sticking out of the windows like leeches. One man poking out of the top has a machine gun in his hands.
Bullets ricochet off the concrete, sending a spray into the buildings. Windows shatter, glass scattering into the street.
The vans heavy duty tires turn towards her, gunfire cutting out
Headlights wash through the side windows of her car, painting the interior in stark black and white.
“Shit!”
She can’t see behind her worth a fuck, but she slams into reverse. Screeches backwards until her back right tire thumps up the sidewalk. Her seat belt digs into the juncture of her collarbone and neck.
The van swerves to hit her, clipping her headlight with a sharp crunch, jerking her car and jostling her in her seat as it roars past. The briefest flash of triumphant yelling reaches her ears past all the other noise.
Her chest heaves. She doesn’t look where the van goes, scowls at the dark maw of the alley it came out of instead. Readies herself to dodge whatever flies out.
She once got away from a van full of Joker henchmen while the clowns inside shot capsules of Joker Gas at her, and every other car in sight. She can handle whatever may be chasing that van.
She ignores her white-knuckled hands.
There's movement, at the entry of the alley, but it's… small. Definitely not a car.
She’s ready for a fucking clown, a werewolf on steroids, another wave of mutant rats.
She lets out a shaky breath as a person shaped thing staggers into the street, right into the glow of her now singular headlight.
They look up at her like… well like a human caught in a headlight.
They’re hunched, with one arm held tight to their ribs. The bright red of their costume blends with the blood vivid against their pale face. A domino mask reflects empty white eyes at her.
A bat.
She's seen this one in the news, in images blurred by motion, or as a smudge of a figure on her television set.
Elenor used to sit on the sofa, enraptured by Batman and Robin’s fights on the tv. Julia would sit with her, holding her close, and muttering street names, worried they might end up bringing the brawl near their apartment.
It's Red Robin. Clearer than any picture she’s ever seen. His teeth are grit, hair flung every which way with blood and sweat.
Framed by broken glass.
She imagines this is what spotting an endangered species feels like.
His cape is missing.
Despite there being little chance he can see her past the light, she feels like he’s staring into her soul.
Not one to be outdone, she stares right back.
Gotham respects the rules of nature in that, spotting a single speck of any bright color is much like spotting a poison dart frog jumping directly at you.
Which is to say: you dodge, or you die.
So, when faced with any person in a bright costume and despite whatever ‘team’ they claim to be on, Elenor prefers to keep them in her rearview. Nothing but a squeal of tires to let them know she was even near.
Outside, with blood dripping to the pavement, Red Robin’s shoulders relax.
She’s not sure why she doesn’t floor it when the bright red danger man moves out of her headlights, nor when he hobbles over to the passenger side door of her car. Glass crunching beneath his feet.
He knocks on the window with rapid taps. The streetlights backlight him, making his face near inscrutable.
She’s a fucking idiot; Nora is going to skin her alive.
She taps to roll the window down into a sliver of an opening.
Before the Gotham breeze hits her, the man is talking “Please let me borrow your car!”
He sounds young.
He sounds breathless and exhausted, words slurring just enough to be concerning.
He sounds young.
Elenor goes completely still, processing.
Then it's like something electrocutes her, and she’s talking. Almost yelling in her shock.
“What? No! You sound like a ten year old!”
Elenor can just barely make out his lips thinning into an unhappy line. The kid leans hard against the side of the car, smearing blood on the window.
Do vigilantes call ambulances? Is all that blood his?
“They have my- Robin, please, they have Robin.” His voice cracks mid sentence. Desperation leaks from his tone and pours cold fear down her spine.
Robin, they have Robin. The stabby, bite-sized Robin who once told a reporter after a fight that he would rather ‘defenestrate Batman' than answer any of the reporters 'dimwitted questions’.
She’d chuckled when Holly had shown her the video, but the way the camera had to pan so far down to focus on Robin's baby fat filled face hadn’t escaped her.
Who the fuck is watching these children?
Shit.
“Where's Batman?”
The kid’s face twists, lip curling, and he speaks so fast in his impatience she nearly loses what he says. “He’s not here! I was in charge of Robin- they took him, please.”
She’s silent for a moment, and in that moment the kids face shutters. He starts to straighten up from his lean.
The snap-click of the doors unlocking makes him freeze, and settles her resolve.
All in one, tiny sound.
“Get in.”
She is not going to let Robin suffer, but she’s not going to let this kid save him alone either.
He fumbles with the handle for a moment, but gets it open. Landing in the seat with a frantic movement, and a hissed curse.
He slams the door shut before turning, poised to crawl into the driver's seat.
He gets this look on his face when he sees she’s not moved an inch. A flicker of confusion, and then a look of dawning horror similar to the one Julia used to give her when they were younger.
Well tough shit kid.
“Buckle up,” she demands, putting the car in drive.
“Wait no!-”
She executes her U-turn with force. Red Robin tilts into the door and then the seat. He finally gets his bearings by smacking a hand onto the dashboard, just in time for them to lurch to a stop at the T-intersection she came from.
“Please let me drive!” the kid shouts, in a tone that suggests he already knows this isn't a battle he'll win.
Good, if he wanted to win he should have tried a full ten seconds ago, before her mind got made up.
“Seatbelt!” she chides, scanning for the van.
On the whole, the street has been wisely abandoned. Even the citrus lights have gone out.
Shattered windows leave a trail for half a block.
She hopes they’ve run out of bullets.
Two blocks down the way she came from, she spots the van turning left, disappearing onto 7th avenue.
She wonders if they’ll have crashed by the time she gets there. Given 7th avenue is a three lane one-way that they are going the wrong way down.
Her jaw grinds again.
She flies around the corner and floors it.
The click of Red Robin’s seat belt is faint over the wind blasting through the cracked open window. Crisp fall air fills the car with the unique combo of rain and rotting trash.
This is absolutely not the first time she’s wildly disregarded traffic laws. This is Gotham after all.
But it is the first time she's done so heading towards trouble.
Her ribs buzz with adrenaline as she starts to shave off the bare minimum amount of speed needed for them to turn onto 7th.
They go over a particularly big pothole. Red Robin slams the hand he had on the dashboard up onto the roof to steady himself as they both get shook like loose change.
Blood flings onto the center console with the move. Not to mention the red handprint he left stamped on the dash like shitty Halloween décor.
They swing onto 7th avenue with squealing tires.
It’s a long stretch of road, and the van is four blocks ahead. Distinctly not in a fourteen car pile up.
Cars are swerving out of its way. Then darting off onto side streets like bats to the safety of tree hollows.
So many car horns are blasting that it’s almost like music. If music were bad, and also viciously satisfying. She hopes the van driver's head is about to split with all the chaos.
She puts the pedal to the floor again, locks onto the van with almost single minded determination.
Almost, because with each flash of a streetlight gone by, the blood on the center console shines.
The leather of the steering wheel is tacky under her grip.
“How hurt are you!” she asks over the wind.
“If you're gonna do this, focus on the van!” the kid shouts divisively.
The dismissive tone sets off sirens not too dissimilar to Arkham’s in her head.
“Oh-ho no you don’t!” she argues, voice going a bit high, “I would argue my question could use some attention!”
She chances a few glances at him.
The kid doesn’t even look up at her answer. “Not right now it doesn't! Drive!” he yells, the little fucker.
A sheen of sweat is covering his forehead. He’s trying to fiddle with what looks like a small gun, tilting it towards the streetlights to see. His grip on it is loose enough she worries he’ll drop it.
She didn’t know this one carried guns, but she’s got no objections for the dicks that kidnapped a child.
She drives.
The van is a bulky giant compared to her smaller, lighter car, and the opposing traffic isn't doing the kidnappers any favors either. She's eating the concrete up compared to them, they’re only a block away.
“Just, a bit closer, and I'll shoot a tracker at them!” He sounds wheezy. She starts running through the fastest routes to hospitals in her head. “Then we pull over, okay?!” he says as he rolls the window down completely.
The thrash of wind stings her eyes.
The whole car now smells separately of blood, sweat, and Gotham, which is saying something given how often the three overlap.
“If we pull over at a hospital, sure!” she says over the sea of car horns washing over them. She can even hear police sirens in the distance.
He doesn't answer, just leans halfway out the window. Which is such a bastard move that she gets jettisoned back to her own teenage years.
How the hell did her family deal with her?
On second thought, when did she turn into a nearly reasonable person? Nora is the reasonable one, that’s like tenth on the list of reasons why she married her.
Even though he can’t hear her, she shouts anyway, “I’ll assume that’s shithead for: ‘Absolutely Ms. Civilian ma’am, I would love to survive long enough-” she jerks out of the way of a massive pothole, nearly sending the kid back into his seat, “-to clean my bloodstains out of your passenger seat!”
They’re close enough now that the swerving cars are flying by them. Her functioning headlight is hitting the back of the van.
It's then that the van starts swaying on the road.
Red Robin slams back inside the car gracelessly.
“Okay new plan! Just get as close as you can!”
“What’s happening!”
He laughs, in a way that’s almost gasping, “Robin’s awake!”
Elenor can’t tell if it's relief or rib injury that's making him sound like that.
She’s also not sure how a bit of swaying can have him so certain, but the knot in her chest subsides.
“Thank fuck!”
Once they’re about a car's length away, Red Robin puts a hand on the wheel. His blood covered glove sticks to her sweater sleeve, marring the bright yellow fabric with red.
The back doors of the van burst open, and standing at the threshold is a tiny, frowning kid. With an arm up to shield his cowled eyes from the headlight.
There are about five people knocked out behind him.
She thumps the wheel with the palm of one hand. "Fucking hell yes! Good job kid!"
They get closer, one of the van doors bangs into the front of her car.
Red Robin lets go of the wheel and sticks his head out of the window. Then yells at the top of his (hopefully uninjured) lungs, “ROBIN, JUMP!”
Robin's face goes blank for a second, his arm lowering.
Then he nods, steps back, and leaps.
She'd close her eyes if she could. But she sees it all, the flashes of cars moving around them, the van doors swinging, and a kid who could not be older than fourteen jumping from one moving vehicle to another.
He slams onto the hood. Grips the gap between the windshield and hood with green gloves, cape snapping in the wind.
Elenor lets off the gas, the van keeps going. She tries to find an opening to turn.
Red Robin flings the passenger side door open with a heaving effort, and hangs half outside of it. One hand clasping the grab bar, the other reaching for Robin to help him crawl towards the relative safety of the car interior.
He grunts when Robin crashes into the car on top of him, but wraps his arms around the smaller kid and pulls the door shut.
Then he rolls up the window, it seals with a resounding thwomp.
“Are you hurt, brat?” Red Robin asks, his voice strangled.
Elenor finds an opening, and veers into an alley with a squeal of tires.
Her heart slows as car horns get more distant.
“...Other than residual symptoms of the tranquilizer, I am unharmed.” Elenor lets out a breath of relief at that, causing the kid to look her way. He stares a hole into her head.
She can feel him actively prioritize his concerns, then turn his gaze to Red Robin.
“They will not follow us,” he says it like a question, “and unless the GCPD is entirely incompetent, they will pursue soon.”
As if to emphasize the kids point, red and blue rush past behind them, sirens blaring.
There's a moment of silence, then, "You are injured.”
Red Robin lets out a weary sigh, she's reminded of a similar one she got from Julia when she picked Elenor up after an unadvised night out past curfew.
“I have a small gash.”
“Where?”
“Ribcage, lower right side.”
There's a bit of shuffling, then a sharp intake of breath.
“That is not a small gash you imbecile!” Robin bites out, she’s never heard a child sound so venomous.
“Whoops, could have sworn it was.” Said imbecile chuckles, then sucks in a pained breath in time with the creaking of the seat getting leaned back.
The back and forth reminds her of a cold day in January, one teeming with 80s hangover cures, and her sister.
Why can’t Julia vacate her fucking head?
She comes up to a stop sign, and in perfect compliance with the law, she stops.
The brake pedal is an old and dear friend.
The felt cats are tangled around the rearview mirror.
She idles there, and turns over to her passengers.
Red Robin’s head is lax against his own shoulder. His face is skewed in what could be pain, or annoyance, but with the mask on, she can’t tell if he’s even conscious.
Robin is taking up the half of the seat next to the door. He's facing Red Robin, and holding gauze tight against the injured vigilante’s side. He glowers at the wound like its existence is a personal offense to god.
“Are you gonna drink that?” Red Robin asks.
She startles, surprised he’s still conscious. The question is so out of the blue that she stares blankly. Police sirens fade out in the background.
At her lack of response, he brings up his arm to point at the coffee she neglected this morning.
“No? Its from this mor-”
“Sweet,” he interrupts, and grabs the paper cup. He downs about half the contents in one gulp, the soggy green paper crumpling a bit in his hand.
He puts what's left back in the cupholder. “Thanks.”
“Is she another one of your international friends? From your ‘trip’?” Robin spits out, his tone stings her in the crossfire, dredging up memories of bitter voicemails recorded on late nights. Words she can’t take back, and never thought she’d want to.
“No, this is- uh.” He leans a bit towards her, like he’s inspecting a small and insulting tattoo on her face. “What's your name?”
“...Elenor Pratchett.”
“This is Elenor Prachett.” He leans back, head lolling to face Robin. “I met her about thirty-eight minutes after you got kidnapped.”
Robin rears back a bit, stopping a hair's breadth short of knocking his head on the roof of the car.
He looks like a tourist trying to sort out bus routes. “How are you alive?” he whispers, so low that had they not been within the confines of the car, it would have been lost to the breeze.
--------
In the end, she does not take them to a hospital.
Instead, she rolls to a stop in front of a brick apartment building. It looks a lot like the one she grew up in, with tall, thin windows, and rusted railing bracing a set of crumbling stairs.
Red Hood pulls up on a motorcycle not but three minutes later.
While he’s power-walking to the car, Red Robin (who's still conscious) takes a deep breath.
“What changed your mind?”
“Hm?” She turns from watching the newcomer to look at him, but he’s facing the roof, boneless.
“You weren’t going to help me, what changed?” he says it like it’s for a survey. Like he needs to know it for the next time he's alone on the street, bleeding rivulets from his forehead and chasing someone irreplaceable.
“...You’re a kid, both of you are.” She catches Robin's face turning sour at that. “Plus you look like you have a concussion, and I like this car.”
Red Robin puffs out a half laugh, and gives a light hum of agreement. They fall into silence again.
Robin pulls the door handle, and he’s one foot out the car when she blurts the thing that's been chewing her heart the most.
“You two remind me of me and my sister, you know, when we were younger.”
Robin's head whips to her, door bumping against his leg where he’d placed it on the pavement.
“We are not-” he starts, but then his mouth shuts with an audible click. He stares down at his hand, where he's putting pressure on Red Robin's wound.
She lets him off the hook by giving an ambiguous nod. “Well, you two hold on to each other, okay?”
Hood grips the top of the car door then, and Robin slips out to stand rigid on the sidewalk without a word, arms crossed, Red Robin's only reaction to her words is to furrow his brows.
Red Hood (who looks rather haggard himself) has to crouch pretty far to inspect Red Robin's side. He sighs before placing his hand where Robin’s was.
With her quick assurance that she’s without so much as a bruise (A lie, that pothole had been brutal), Hood maneuvers Red Robin out of the car and into his arms. Red Robin hisses in pain at one of the bigger moves.
“Sorry kid.” Hood’s voice is monotone and gruff, it makes his words seem like a threat. But Red Robin looks as relaxed as a person with a gash in his side could possibly look, his head lowered to Hood's shoulder.
“I've had worse, Hood.”
The words make her wince, and tense all at once.
“I’ll see all of you around, yeah?” she asks, mouth caught between a smile of reassurance and a frown of worry, words hovering in similar indecision.
Red Robin smiles though, dried blood flaking off of his cheek. “You will, and-” he hesitates for a second, face pinching, before he shifts to look into the car again, then relaxing. “I’ll be holding on.”
“Thanks again, for the coffee.”
She nods, and with that Red Hood carries Red Robin up the shoddy stairs of the apartment building.
Robin marches stiffly beside the two, but before the apartment door shuts, she manages to spot a green cup held tight in one of his hands.
Her cup holder is empty.
She sits in the silence of the street for a while, then sends Nora a text to let her know she’s okay, and she’ll be home soon.
The remnants of adrenaline shake out through her hands. She untangles the felt cats from where they got caught on the mirror.
She goes to her call history and dials Julia’s number.
Her sister picks up on the first ring.
“Is this Elenor?” Julia asks tentatively, some of her pretentious classical music is getting picked up through the speakers.
“Yeah, It’s me.’ she taps her fingers on the wheel to the music. “I know a great sushi place.”
Julia fucking hates sushi.
“Where is it?”
…
Maybe she did keep those cats.