Chapter Text
Gotham.
A hard city.
One only the hardiest of individuals could survive in.
Even the man who served as the city’s silent guardian had become hardened by it.
Of course, a mercurial clown hellbent on watching the world, and everyone in it, burn helped with that. The laughing man committed atrocity after atrocity for over a decade, none more despicable than beating a sixteen-year-old boy to death in an abandoned warehouse while a bomb counted down to zero.
All so he could add killing Robin to his already long list of greatest hits.
The Joker spent years stalking Robin. He set a multitude of contemptible traps to capture the Boy Wonder, used friends to lure him into buildings rigged to explode, and when those failed, hired the mercenary, Deathstroke to kill him. Initially, murdering Robin had been about bringing the Dark Knight down to the Joker’s level, forcing him to see; realize he was as insane as the rest of the inmates housed in Arkham.
In the Joker’s warped view, anyone could snap after having “one bad day”.
Shooting Robin following the failed heist of a rare jewel didn’t cause Batman to finally give in and kill him, though.
Resulting in the Joker becoming more obsessed with pushing the Dark Knight into breaking his “golden rule.”
A line he came increasingly close to stepping over in the months following the brutal death of Jason Todd.
He hasn’t crossed it, though.
Keyword: yet .
While the Clown Prince of Crime failed to push Batman over the edge, he had managed to turn him into a one-man wrecking crew.
Nobody was safe from Batman’s wrath.
Not even they — the children he welcomed into his home and the cartoon circus world that was his life — remained unscathed.
Instead of embracing them, as a normal parent would after suffering the tragic loss of a child, Bruce banished them from his home, and his life.
Dick retreated to Haly’s Circus to nurse his guilt and grief while her cousin, Barbara opted to simply disappear altogether.
As for her?
Well, she chose to remain and serve the city as Special Agent Raya Kean since she was no longer allowed to use her alter-ego, Fenix.
Batman could take away her mask, after all.
He had no control over her badge.
That particular decision remained solely up to the police commissioner.
Her refusal to comply with his order to leave Gotham went over about as well as new Coke did in the 80’s.
Batman confronted her outside Arkham a month after she failed to leave the city as he mandated.
Raya remained firm in her stance, however.
Gotham was her home as much as it was his .
And I’m going to serve and protect it despite what the Bat-ass says.
A sound — a barely discernible thwump — interrupted her dark musings.
There was only one man —outside of Batman — who’d drop down behind her like that.
Only he’d dare.
“Hello, bird boy.”
“How’d you know it was me and not B?”
“You’re not as heavy-footed as Batman for one.” Raya sent a teasing smirk over her shoulder. “And you don’t cast quite as menacing a shadow for another.”
Nightwing snorted a laugh as he joined her on the ledge. “Nobody casts as menacing a shadow as B.”
“I’ve had Superman loom over me a time or two.”
“You can at least reason with Superman.”
“Not when he’s under Ivy’s influence.”
“You were in Gotham for that?” Nightwing’s eyebrows shot up at her nod. “I thought Batman booted you out of the city?”
“He did,” she confirmed. “I refused to do as ordered.”
“I imagine he took that well.”
“He had the Riddler sending puzzle boxes to my uncle and other high ranking members of the GCPD, Scarecrow breaking into my grandfather’s laboratory and trying to synthesize the formula for Inceptive , a new villain named Hush running around, and Ivy off on another of her tangents with Superman under her spell.”
“He needed all the help he could get in other words.”
“Wasn’t happy about it,” Raya said as she turned back to the building three down from the one they were perched on, “but yes.”
“Never was one to say thank you.”
“Oh, he thanked me.”
“Lemme guess…” Nightwing’s tone was as dry as her own. “He ordered you to leave Gotham again?”
“You guessed it.”
“I see you obeyed.”
“Oh, I left.” Raya glanced over at his scoff. “What? I did.”
“Not because he ordered it.”
“Oh, I obeyed his order to the letter of the law.” Her lips twitched. “He ordered me to leave Gotham and I did just that.”
“You went to New York and worked on a case for Gil Arroyo, didn’t you?”
“See?” She flashed him a toothy grin. “I totes obeyed.”
“No, you just temporarily relocated yourself until the heat died down.”
“He only said to leave Gotham,” she pointed out. “Well, New York is definitely not Gotham.”
No other city came close to the city of Gotham.
With the exception, perhaps, of Blüdhaven.
Gotham’s almost identical evil twin.
Complete with its own masked hero to watch over it.
“Still we’re doing police work, though.”
“He never specified that I couldn't continue doing police work.” It wasn’t a lie. Bruce hadn’t told her she couldn’t continue working as a police officer. “He only ordered me to leave the city.”
Right before confiscating her armor and the assortment of gadgets she utilized as Fenix.
And locking me out of the Batcave and his life.
“You twisted his words to suit your purpose.”
“Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”
“I was known for disobeying orders.” Nightwing slanted an amused look at her. “You always obeyed them.”
“I did at one time but not anymore.”
Not since she had been fired, anyway.
His hand cupped the back of her neck. Massaged muscles tight as piano wire. “What’re you doing here then?”
“You know why I’m here, bird boy.”
“Jason.” Those fingers tightened. “Right?”
There was no need to confirm the answer, but she did so anyway with a simple, “Yes.”
“As a cop?”
“No.” Despite her badge being clipped to the waistband of her jeans and her service revolver in its holster beneath her jacket. “I’m not here as a cop.”
“What did you hope to achieve by coming here?”
“I had hoped to get here in time to talk with Jason. Convince him to let me help him.” Raya indicated the Batwing hovering nearby. “I arrived at the same time as he did, though.”
Dashing her hopes of preventing another confrontation between Jason and their mentor and adoptive parent.
“Rae…” Nightwing’s hand settled on her shoulder. Offering support and comfort desperately needed. “You’d only get hurt if you confronted Jason.”
“I don’t believe Jason will attack me.”
Not the way he attacked him and Bruce, anyway.
Raya fully expected a verbal barrage, however.
Jason easily matched Bruce and Dick in knowing what to say that’d rip people to shreds.
There was also a wealth of unresolved trauma driving the former Boy Wonder.
Anger, resentment, thoughts of having been forgotten, abandoned, simmered below the surface.
He was already a boy angry at the world. What the Joker did to him simply dumped kerosene atop that blaze.
Creating Jason’s new persona of Red Hood.
A vigilante hellbent on getting revenge on the man who murdered him and the one who failed to stop it from happening.
“The Jason we know is gone.” Those long fingers, as capable of delivering the same bone-crushing force as Batman slid back to her neck. “He’s the Red Hood now.”
“He might have assumed the identity of the Red Hood but he’s still our Jay-bee under that mask.”
“Our Jason died at the hands of the Joker over two years ago.”
Despite her hatred of them, tears welled.
Raya refused to let them fall, however.
She cried enough in the months since that pasty-faced freak took Jason from them.
She wouldn’t cry anymore.
“You’re wrong.” She blinked the moisture away. “He’s still our Jason. He’s just lost and needs someone to help him find his way home.”
“Rae…” Nightwing broke off, sighed. “He’s not Robin needing Fenix to bring him home.”
“No, he’s our brother,” she said. “And he needs our love and support while he heals from his ordeal.”
“He doesn’t want to be helped.” The fingers on her neck trembled. Her only clue as to his own emotional state. “He doesn’t want to heal.”
“You’re wrong.” She reached back to cover his gloved hand with her own. “He wanted us to save him from that warehouse and he wants us to save him now.”
“Rae…”
Whatever else Wing might’ve said was cut short when the building Batman and Jason were in erupted like Mt. St. Helens.
“No!” burst from Raya’s lips as plumes of smoke and flame billowed out of the massive hole left in one side of the building. “No no no !”
This couldn’t be happening.
Not again.
They weren’t this damn unlucky.
No family could be this unlucky.
Another explosion that ripped apart the velvet curtain overhead played through Raya’s mind as she stared at the destruction laid out before her.
Tendrils of smoke and flame slithered towards the starless sky in the same macabre dance.
Running.
She had been running.
Scrambling across the uneven terrain to reach the smoldering ruins.
Her breath rasped in her ears.
Loud, so loud.
Bands formed around her head, her chest.
Tightened until she could barely draw a decent breath.
Panic became an icy poker in her belly.
She could smell her own fear.
Jason had been her only thought. I got to get to Jason.
Too late.
They were too late.
They’d always be too late.
Again, she saw Jason as she'd last seen him: his bloody and broken body draped over Batman’s arms.
As if he was little more than a doll the Joker discarded once he got done playing with him.
No.
That wouldn’t be Jason’s fate.
Not this time.
She’d find him and ferry him away before the Grim Reaper could claim him.
Determination chased back Raya’s fear and panic.
Allowed her to focus.
Skills honed over a decade of mentoring with a man Ra’s al Ghul called The World’s Greatest Detective kicked in.
Batman might’ve taken her armor, but he hadn’t taken away who she was.
What she was.
She deconstructed the scene, examined the individual pieces, searched for the evidence as she had been taught.
The explosion occurred on the ninth floor of the building.
Happened near the middle based on the extinct of the damage.
Whatever incendiary device used wasn’t powerful enough to bring the entire building crumbling down.
Meaning whoever designed it hadn’t been looking to demolish the building.
Given the extraordinary number of times someone tried to blow Batman up, there was a good chance he managed to get out before the bomb went off.
What about Jason, though?
Had Batman time to grab him and get them both to safety?
Only one way to find out, she decided as she took a step forward. Nightwing hooked an arm around her waist to stop her before she could leap from the roof.
“Let me go!” She pushed at his arm to no avail. “I’m going to go search for them!”
“No.”
“No?” Raya whipped her head around to glare at him. “Who the hell are you to tell me no?”
“Your partner for one,” Wing shot back in a surprisingly neutral tone. “And your best friend for another.”
“My partner and best friend would help me find them…” Raya growled. “Not stop me.”
“I’ll go and search for them,” he told her as metal groaned and wood shrieked. “You call in what happened.”
“No, I’m…”
“Going to call in what happened,” he repeated as he stepped back. “While I go and find them.”
Raya told herself she only gave in because there wasn’t time to argue.
Not when Jason and Batman could be trapped in that building.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Don’t think we won’t talk about you ordering me around later, though.”
She found she was talking to the wind, though.
“Oh, you’re so gonna get it now, bird boy.”