Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Soooo, quick note, this is my first time writing a crossover. This is also my first time writing any Batfamily or MLB fanfiction in general. Everything I know about DC (apart from general facts) comes from ao3, and all my current knowledge about MLB is from ao3 maribat fanfics and watching the first two seasons, like, four years ago. So I'm really just winging it here.

Also, just wanted to say I'm really bad at updating schedules. Like, REALLY bad. Like, I'll post something, disappear for 5 months, come back with an apology for disappearing and say I'll update soon, then not post anything for the rest of year. So if anyone ever finds this and decides it's worthy of an update, you'll just have to yell at me in the comments. That usually does the trick.

Anyways, here's to hoping this brain of mine spits out something worth reading! Enjoy!

Chapter Text

"The Zoo?"

"That's what I said."

Nightwing rolled his eyes. "I know that's what you said, I'm just...surprised. The last incident we had there was a hold-up in the reptile house, and that was a while ago."

He took one last glance at the scene below him. Perched on a nearby rooftop, he could see the police apprehending the already detained criminals. "Doesn't the Zoo have their own security team? Why call us?"

"This sounds like more than just your average break-in," Oracle said into his earpiece as he began going rooftop to rooftop en route of his new destination. "Camera footage shows a baseball bat-wielding, skimpy-outfitted, pig-tailed female heading towards the hyena habitat."

Nightwing faltered mid-air, causing him to nearly miss the next ledge. "Harley? But she's been inactive for almost a decade."

"That's what I thought. Still, security thought it necessary to call it in. Can't say I blame them. If Harley Quinn's back on the streets, we need to know about it."

_________

The sky was polluted and bleak as always, not a glance of the moon nor stars in sight, and the only thing cutting through the heavy darkness was the flickering streetlights lining the sidewalks. Gotham was a dangerous place in general, but at night? It was as if the very ground itself would swallow you whole if it had the chance, shadows chased you around every corner, and the air was so thick with the putrid stench of evil it was suffocating.

The city's vigilantes knew this well, as did its citizens, so it was always easy to tell that the only people wandering alone at night were either tourists or suicidal. Thankfully, the streets were quiet tonight, so Nightwing was able to make it to Gotham City Zoo quickly. He stopped by the security office hoping to gather more information about what he was up against, but the officer inside simply pointed him in the general direction and went back to his computer.

Nightwing sighed deeply, but, like Oracle had said, he couldn't exactly blame him. If this really was Harley Quinn, then it was best to stay as far away from the situation as possible and leave it to the experts.

Which usually meant Batman, but seeing as he was currently on a date, the title of "expert" fell to him.

Silently and swiftly he made his way to the hyena enclosure. Keeping to the shadows, he was able to spot the "employee's only" door on a small side building side swung wide open. Which wasn't unexpected, but it was strange that the entire door handle seemed to be missing.

Suddenly, a crash and a yelp sounded through the stillness of the night followed by a string of slanged curses.

Even from a few yards away, Nightwing was able to hear the loud exclamations of "Dagnabbit, what the freakin' heck is this crappy thing doin' here?"

The voice sounded young, feminine, and lightly accented with a familiar New Jersey lilt.

Assuming it was safe to proceed with caution, seeing as his target didn't seem to possess much of the art of subtly, he approached carefully and peered inside.

Though the room -storage by the looks of it- was dimly lit he was able to make out the shape of a young girl matching the description Oracle had given him lying in the midst of a bunch of toppled boxes.

She looked agitated, one hand rubbing the side of her head while the other grouped aimlessly through the air before landing on the edge of a box, which she intended to use to hoist herself up. But the box was unstable and crashed on top of her as soon as she put pressure on it.

She yelped again and groaned. After she finally managed to successfully heave herself to her feet, she noticed the vigilante standing in the doorway and immediately lost her footing and fell right back into the box pile.

Instead of getting back up, however, she froze. Though the top half of her was blocked by boxes, he could see her legs had gone still and the violent huffs of her agitated breathing had dissappeared.

Seconds passed in silence before he cautiously stepped further unto the room and asked, "Um...are you okay?"

Before he'd finished speaking, the legs were quickly pulled back and she was gone from his vision completely.

He blinked.

And then, all of his senses were suddenly on alert as the vigilante part of his brain informed him that he was alone in a room with a supposed enemy he could not see. Despite the fact that she seemed young and inexperienced, Nightwing had learned long ago to never underestimate anyone, especially Gothamites. He'd seen children younger than her gouge out eyes and bite off fingers to defend themselves from traffickers. Parents and teens shooting would-be kidnappers from less than 2-yards to protect their families. He'd witnessed the elderly break kneecaps with metal coated canes and walk away from attempted muggings completely unscathed. There was a reason most self defense classes (those that weren't being used as a mob front or secretly training you for a murder cult) were usually more affordable than those outside of Gotham. Bruce Wayne had even founded a few himself.

Say what you want about Gotham, but we take care of our own. In a weird, don't-murder-me-and-I-won't-murder-you, kind of way.

Suddenly the door slammed shut behind him and the last shreds of light vanished as the room was shrouded in darkness. He spun around only to be met with a strong sour smell and a small metal object colliding with his temple hard enough to send him stumbling back and over a long skinny pole and crashing into the pile of boxes, much like the girl had done minutes earlier.

Thankfully it wasn't hard enough to knock him out and he moved to haul himself up and into a defensive position, despite the stars dancing in his vision and the pounding in his head. That was definitely gonna bruise.

The door was now open and the dark silhouette of the girl was all he could see of her features, but he heared the smile in her voice when she said, "Sorry, Dickie, you ain't catchin' me tonight."

Nightwing's brows drew together as he tried to make sense of her words, but his mind was getting fuzzy and he realized with a start that he was still on the floor. He tried to move, but his limbs felt like they had been cemented to the ground. Whatever that sour substance was (as he now realized it must have been from her), it had rendered him completely useless.

Her words rang in his head like a gong over and over and he knew there was something wrong about she had said, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

That was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness and falling into a stale darkness as reality faded away.

Chapter Text

The chill night wind nipped at her face as she landed silently on the roof of an apartment building. Despite Summer being only a few weeks away, Gotham had apparently missed the memo and continued to bombard them with nightly Spring breezes.

She uncovered a box hidden under a tarp in a dark corner of the roof and swapped out the contents with some of her own items. After replacing the tarp, she descended over the side of the building with practiced ease and slipped into a window on the 3rd floor.

The room she found herself in was dark, her surroundings barely perceptible except for the halo of bright light coming from beyond the slightly ajarred door. Noiselessly, she crept towards it. Muffled sounds of laughter and conversation filtered in from the next room. A floorboard creaked beneath her and she froze, but the distant idle chatter droned on without pause so she continued. When she reached the door she spotted two figures lounging comfortably on a couch, their backs to her. Slowly, cautiously, she made her way out of the dark room and towards her victim's, careful not to-

"Hiya, Sweetheart!" Harley Quinn's pale face turned to her from her spot on the couch at the same time as the smirking one of her best friend seated beside her. Both women had on their matching light blue daisy covered pajamas. "You're just in time, the movie just started."

Marinette deflated and grumbled as she rounded the couch and settled herself between her mom and her honorary aunt. "How do you always know I'm there?"

Ivy chuckled and shifted slightly to adjust for the added weight to the cushion. Her long red hair had been twisted into a simple braid and flipped over her shoulder. "Years of experience, Bug."

"And a crap ton of paranoia," added Harley with a cackle.

"Well I am actually getting better! Just tonight I was able to successfully evade a nosy bird and escape unidentified," said Marinette proudly.

"Oh?" Ivy raised a brow and shared a look with Harley. "Which nosy bird was it?"

"The blue-jay from Bludhaven, Dick Grayson. I think he was covering for Batman while he's out with Aunt Selina. Though I'm not sure why the others couldn't do it just fine by themselves."

"Selina said the sassy purple one twisted her ankle yestaday and the baby bird hasn't been allowed outta the cave since the Riddler fiasco last week," said Harley, mentally storing Marinette's story for later.

"I heard Scarecrow has been busy lately, giving those goody-two-shoes a run for their money. They probably didn't want to lose a big job just because they were understaffed," Ivy added almost absentmindedly as her attention was now on the screen.

"I guess that makes sense," Marinette said. She grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table in front of them and made herself comfortable on the couch by draping her legs over Ivy's lap and resting her head on Harley's shoulder as she also turned her attention to the old black-and-white western playing out on the TV.

Harley and Ivy shared another quick look over her head. Their interactions with the bats and the birds have been few and far between these past few years, - the few being Selina and Ivy and their respective romantic endeavors and Roguish antics, the far being Harley seeing as she was now a law abiding citizen with no significant reason for coming in contact with them - ever since Marinette started going out on nightly runs on her own. They had decided to try to avoid any chance of a confrontation until Marinette said she was ready. She knew who they were under the mask, had discovered their identities quite some time ago and, apart from being on a one-sided first name basis and acting as if she knew them all personally (all from the comfort of home of course), she had never previously shown any interest in actually getting to know them. The fact that she had not only had her first run in with one of them but had only thought to mention it as a throwaway comment was worrying.

Firstly, Marinette being this calm about anything usually meant something was wrong. There was something she wasn't telling them. And by the amount of nonchalance she had said it with, it was something serious.

Second, it meant she was now on their radar. And with a sense of fashion very similar to Harley, it was safe to assume they might be getting visitors very soon.

***

All things considered, Marinette thought the night was going pretty well. Sure, she hadn't actually succeeded in her little escapade to the Zoo, and her first meeting with Nightwing hadn't gone exactly how she'd always imagined, but considering her track record, it was definitely a Top 10 in "Marinette's Best First Impressions". At least this time everyone involved was fully clothed, which was more than she could say for number 14. She still shuddered at the thought. She'd only been one at the time, but still! She knew her mom still kept the pictures somewhere, despite her many desperate attempts to destroy all evidence.

Anyways, yeah, all things considered, things were going great so far.

Right up until almost half way through the movie, when Marinette heard the jiggle of the front door handle as someone unlocked it from the other side.

Huh, Selina wasn't supposed to be back until...well, later. But she knew it had to be Selina because she hadn't heard anyone in the hallway until now, and no one else in their apartment building was that quiet when they walked. Most of their neighbors *cough* the Frittersons *cough* sounded like a herd of uncoordinated elephants having a dance party every time they passed their door.

Sure enough, when the door swung open it was Selina who strode in, the picture of confidence and grace that Marinette envied as always in a shimmering black dress and shiny golden heels.

Harley, who'd also noticed the jiggling doorknob, furrowed her brow questionably at the sight of her friend. "Selina? You're back early. Somethin' happen?"

Selina laughed lightly. "You could say that. I've just spent the last hour or so traipsing about Gotham looking for a little lost birdy."

"Birdy? I thought you were more into cats?" questioned Harley as Marinette nodded along with a matching confused expression.

"Not that kind of bird," said Selina as she rolled her eyes and kicked off her heels.

Ivy, who'd picked up on her meaning quicker than the other two, asked tightly. "It wouldn't happen to have been a blue bird, would it?"

Selina nodded. "Yeah. Bruce got a call half way through dinner saying one of his boys was missing. Next thing I know, we're in the batmobile following a tracker that led us on a wild goose chase all across town. How'd you know?"

"What?!" Marinette jumped to her feet, the popcorn bowl that had at some point been transferred to her lap during the movie nearly a mess on the floor if not for Harley's lightning quick reflexes grabbing it before it tipped over completely. "Did you find him? Where's Batman now? What tracker?"

Selina strode across the room and grasped Marinett's shoulders to steady her nervous pacing. "Woah, woah, Mari, calm down. Yes, we found him. Well, kind of-"

"Kind of?! What do you mean 'kind of'?! Did you only find half of him? Is he even still alive?"

"If he wasn't alive, I wouldn't have left Bruce alone to come back here. He's fine, Mari. He called in about 10 minutes ago, so Bruce dropped me off and headed to meet him at the cave. What's going on with you?"

Ivy took this moment to answer Selina's earlier question. "Marinette told us earlier that she met the blue-jay on her run tonight. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say she didn't tell us everything,” she said with a raised brow.

“I…may have left out a few minor details,” Marinette admitted.

“If these details have anything to do with the disappearance of a Bludhaven slash Gotham hero, I’d say they're a little more than minor. What did ya do to him?” asked Harley, a barely concealed curiosity lacing her tone as she leaned forward in her seat.

“I don’t know! I didn’t think I did anything. It shouldn’t have…it couldn’t-”

“Why don’t you just start from the beginning and tell us the whole story,” prompted Selina.

“Okay.” Marinette took a deep breath. “I was at the Zoo, just mindin' my own business, and I must have set off some alarm or somethin' because next thing I know, bam! there he was. He asked if I was okay, because I had tripped-"

"Of course," Ivy snorted.

“-and I panicked and sprayed him with my stunning spray-”

“Is that the one that stuns people, or the one that makes whoever you spray think you’re the most amazing person on Earth?” asked Harley.

“The one that stuns people, though now I wish I’d thought to use the other one.“ Marinette giggled at the thought of the vigilante fawning over her. It definitely would have moved the encounter up a few numbers in her first meetings list.

“What happened after you stunned him?” Selina asked, trying to keep the story on track.

“Right, so, I hit him with the stuff, he went down, I started to leave, but then turned back to make sure he was alright -which he was- and I said…I said…” Marinette’s face paled and her eyes widened when her words came back to her.

Oh.

Oh no.

Selina frowned. “What did you say?”

Marinette moved her hand to cover her mouth. How could she have been so careless?

“Marinette, what did you say to him?” Harley suddenly sounded almost as nervous as Marinette felt.

“I…” she dropped her hand and looked at each of them in turn. “I called him by his name. His real name.”

“Aw, Mari,” lamented Harley as Selina hummed forebodingly. Ivy just face palmed.

“And I'm also just realizing I left my finger print covered, initial signed ball bat on the ground after I fell.”

Selina ran a hand over her face. “Well, this just got a whole lot more complicated.”

“What I don’t understand,” Harley said when the moment of relizationing horror had passed. “is how did ya get away after callin’ him by his real name? That funky woozy spritzy stuff doesn’t last that long. Why didn’t he come after ya?”

“I didn’t think anything of it at the time, so I didn’t stick around to find out. I dunno know why he didn’t follow me. Or why he went missing after I left him. I told you all I know.”

Ivy, who’d been uncharacteristically silent for the past few minutes, asked. “Can I see what you used to spray him with?”

Marinette nodded and ran back to her room to retrieve the small black and red spotted backpack she’d dropped on the floor after she entered through the window. She returned to the living room and handed it to Ivy. “It’s the purple one.”

The redhead sifted through some of the contents before pulling out two spray cans. Both were wrapped in slightly varying shades of purple duck tape around the center. “The lighter one or the darker one?”

Marinette furrowed her brows. Since when did she have two different purples? She stepped forward and grabbed both of them. Popping the cap off of the darker one, she brought it a small distance from her nose and sniffed lightly. She immediately pulled it back when her vision blurred and her head started spinning. Seeing her reaction, Ivy took it back and, being immune to the effects as it was made from her own plants, smelled it more closely.

She made a face at the sour aroma. “That’s definitely not just a stunning mix. This stuff could put the Joker and all his immunities in a coma. I think you may have used the wrong one.”

Marinette reached for the can again and studied both of them intently in her hands. “In my defense,” she said after a moment, “it was very dark.”

“Only you, Honey, only you.” Harley chuckled and stood up to wrap an arm around her daughter's neck.

Marinette opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by a buzzing sound.

Selina moved to the coffee table where she’d layed her handbag earlier and fished out her phone. When she saw who was calling, she looked up at them. “It’s Bruce.”

“Don’t answer it!” exclaimed Marinette, lunging for the phone. Selina instinctively side stepped her easily and the raven haired girl crashed face first to the floor.

“Sorry, reflex,” said Selina, as she offered Marinette a hand to help her up. “I have to answer, Mari. He knows I’m still awake, if I don’t pick up, he’ll be here in less than ten minutes just to make sure I’m still alive.” She accepted the call and held it up to her ear.

The following few minutes were tense with anticipation as Marinette, nursing a sore cheekbone, Harley, and Ivy waited to see if she’d been discovered. Selina didn’t talk much, only the occasional hum, a “yes” or “no”, and at one point a surprised “Really?” followed by a laugh, so maybe the jig wasn’t up yet.

“Well ladies,” said Selina when she finally hung up. “I have good news and bad news.”

Marinette stopped pacing and covered her eyes with both hands. “I need a little hope, Lina. Give me the good news first.”

Selina smiled a little at her dramatics. “Bruce said he finally found out why the tracker had said Nightwing was on the other side of town. I’m assuming your little techy friend gave you something to take out the cameras at the Zoo?”

“Yeah, but I don't know how it works. Max is a literal genius, I just stick the thing to the thingy, push a button and voila. Electronic device down.”

“Whatever he made really packed a punch to the security feed, so there's really no way to tell for sure what happened, but apparently something in your knockout spray also acts as a sort of catnip, and some adorable little guy ended up swallowing the tracker. We’ve been chasing a cat all around town all evening. And if Bruce had just listened to me when I asked to stop and pick up some strays, this whole ordeal might have been resolved a lot sooner.”

“Yes, cause how dare he stop you from getting anymore fur balls for our already cramped apartment,” laughed Ivy sarcastically.

“Like you have any room to talk, Miss ‘every inch of solid surface must be covered in something green and smelly’. Your ferns are getting out of hand, Pamela.”

Ivy jumped out of her seat and jabbed a finger at Selina, ready to retort with some scalding come-back, when Marinette stepped in between them. “I think we're focusing on the wrong point here. How on Earth did a cat swallow a tracker and manage to make it all the way across town before anyone noticed they were chasing an animal?”

“Bruce said he thinks the cat was following a trail of some kind. I didn't say anything, but I thought it could have been tracking that stuff in your bag. It might have even followed you to the Zoo to begin with.”

“That…kinda makes sense. If you don't think about it too hard.”

“What's the bad news?” inquired Harley, sounding slightly nervous.

“The bad news is that no one has questioned Nightwing about what happened yet, so we can't be sure of what all he knows. He could still remember enough to find you. Bruce said he was on his way back, and he’ll call me back if he gets any more information,” Selina said. “We’re not off the hook yet.”

Marinette rung her hands together and began pacing again. “So, what do we do now? Wait till they find us? Come clean? Run for the border?”

“Let’s save running for the border as a last resort,” Ivy put in. “But until we reach that point, I’m not sure there's much we can do. Apart from, as you said, ‘coming clean’. Which I’m assuming we’re not planning on doing?”

No one said anything as they all made eye contact in silent agreement. No freakin way were they admitting to anything yet. Not unless the bats had direct proof against them. And Marinette did NOT want her first meeting with Batman to be on account of her assaulting his oldest child. Plus, what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, right?

Marinette took a deep breath. This was fine. It was all gonna be fine. No one knew what happened but them four. If they were careful enough they could carry this to their graves. There was nothing to w-

The muffled buzzing rang out again as Selina’s phone screen lit up in her hand with a call. She glanced at it, then furrowed her brows in concern. “It’s Bruce again.”

Okay, maybe there was something to worry about.

“Hey baby, any news?” Selina tried to keep her tone neutral when she held the phone up to her ear, but even Marinette's untrained ears could hear the slight strain in her voice. She could only hope Batman took it as concern for Dick.

That hope was quickly squashed when the Catwoman's face fell to seriousness. Her gaze flickered to Harley as she said. “Are you sure?”

Another minute passed, probably the most nerve-wracking of Marinette’s entire fourteen almost fifteen years of existence, as Selina's facial expressions seemed to go through the five stages of grief. “Bruce, what are you-"

The deep muffled voice on the other end of the phone grew louder as it cut her off. Selina sighed, then said. “Yeah, alright, see you then.” She ended the call but continued to stare at the screen for a moment. Finally, she made eye contact with Ivy and Harley.

“Bruce wants us to stop by the manor tomorrow.” She looked at Marinette. “And he asked us to bring our little friend with us.”

Well crap.

Chapter Text

Something was wrong.

As soon as he'd regained consciousness, he could sense the alarm blaring at the back of his mind, screaming at him that something was wrong and he needed to fix it.

If only he could remember what it was.

Unfortunately, the only thing Nightwing could remember about the past half hour was getting called to the Zoo by Oracle, confronting the young girl, and then, suddenly, waking up (never mind the fact that he didn’t recall falling asleep in the first place) on a cold hard floor, alone (he was aware enough to know that), with a headache of uncomfortable proportions, and an extremely concerning sense of impending doom.

A daunting experience, for sure. But, as his training demanded of him, first things first.

Nightwing sat up slowly and put a finger to his comm, but the line was completely dead. He slipped the device off his ear to make sure it was even still on and in one piece. It was, so why wasn’t it working?

A quick visual search of the room answered that question when he spotted a small grey box messily duct taped to one of the dead security cameras in the far corner of the ceiling. An EMP of that size couldn’t have much of a range, so Nightwing raised to his unsteady feet and stumbled out the door before resetting his comm. He was more than relieved to see the little light on it switch on. He fitted it back to his ear and spoke.

"Guys, I-"

"Dick! Where have you-"

"Nightwing, what happened-"

"Guys-"

"What the $#%& dude-"

"Grayson, have you lost-"

"How did-"

"Guys!"

The line went silent for a moment before a new voice piped up. "Dick, are you alright?"

Nighwing’s expression went from exasperated to surprised. "Kori? How are you on the-"

"I'm on the batcave's link with Spoiler and Robin, are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay." He flinched as the static of a collective sigh crackled in his ear. "I'm still at the Zoo. She must have got away, but-"

"You're still at the Zoo?"

"Who got away?"

“I don’t know-”

"You went to the Zoo without me?"

"How long have you-"

"Can I please finish a sentence?!"

The line went quiet again, except for a small whispered 'sorry' from Stephanie. He breathed deeply, inhaling and exhaling slowly to ease another flair up of headaches and to organize his thoughts.

"I don't know who she was. No one we've seen before. A wanna-be Harley Quinn most likely. She must have hit me with some sort of knockout gas. How long have I been unresponsive?"

"About 53 minutes," answered Oracle.

"I've been out for almost an hour?!"

"We’ll explain more when you get to the cave. Orphan's on her way to your location now. She should be there any second."

"Here."

He hoped beyond all hope that no one heard him shriek like a teenage girl at a Taylor Swift concert as Cass seemingly materialized beside him. The snickering in his ear told him otherwise, but he chose to ignore it in favor of clutching his heart and regulating his breathing to get his heart rate back to a normal speed.

Cass simply smiled and waved.

"I assume she's with you now then," said Oracle. "Head back to the cave, you can brief us there."

"Roger that, O. See you then." The line switched off. He turned to Cass and smiled but she was frowning.

'You're hurt,' she signed.

"Just a minor headache," he said, offering a smile he knew did nothing to reassure her. "Nothing a good ol' fashion aspirin won't fix. We've got to get back anyways, they're waiting for us."

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded and followed him back towards the entrance.

***

The low rumble of the motorbike echoing off stone walls simmered to a soft hum as the two vigilantes slowed to a stop inside the batcave. The drive back had been a blur for Dick, which was unusual, but he was blaming whatever the girl had used to put him to sleep was still having an effect. Even before Cass could switch off the ignition, they were swarmed by concerned faces and prodding questions, the majority of which were directed at Dick.

Damian reached them first, demanding to know why on earth he would do something as stupid as going alone and how dare you go to the Zoo without me-

Tim and Jason got to them a close second, questioning how the target got away and only I'm allowed to disappear like that, @$$#&%%-

Stephanie was the next to join in on the interrogation (crutches were not the fastest form of transportation), hobbling close enough to latch onto Tim's arm for additional support while she asked the real important questions like how badly did you get your butt kicked and how embarrassing was it to be taken down by a knockoff Harley Quinn look-alike-

Alfred, the Saint he is, easily dispersed the mob by clearing his throat disapprovingly and waving a hand in Dicks direction. "First and foremost, Master Dick requires medical attention if he is to answer all your questions properly." Alfred moved to his side. "I have a spot waiting for you in the infirmary."

Dick wanted to protest that he was fine -it was only a few bumps and bruises, nothing to worry about- but with Cass at one arm and Alfred at the other all but dragging him to the infirmary, he quickly thought better of it and shut his mouth. After being made to sit on the edge of one of the medical beds, Alfred began running the mandatory post-Rouge-confrontation check-up to prove everything was working as it should.

Just as Dick thought the side of his face had gone numb from holding the ice pack to his throbbing temple for so long, and Alfred had finished securing a bandage to cover the puncture wound where he had drawn blood for a sample test, a pink and orange blur bolted into the room and nearly knocked him backwards with the force of the hug his wife now had tightened around him.

“Don’t you ever do that ever again,” Kori whispered as she pulled back slightly to kiss him hard on the lips as his arms instinctively wrapped around her.

"Ew, you guys, there are children present," groaned Stephanie from the entrance, accompanied by the soft thumps of her purple crutches as she slowly made her way into the room.

"Aw, you don't mind, do you Damian?" asked Dick when they had finally pulled away from each other. Damian wisely ignored the question in favor of returning to his spot typing away at the batcomputer.

"I was talking about me." Stephanie hopped up onto the bed across from them and set her crutches aside. Tim sat beside her, hair still slightly damp from his after patrol shower, dressed in purple horse printed pajamas identical to Steph’s, and she immediately took advantage by scooching onto his lap. In the tangle of limbs and matching pj’s, you could hardly tell where one began and the other ended. "And besides, in a couple more months, you'll have a whole new child you'll have to watch out for," she said, motioning to Kori's rounded stomach.

The couple smiled widely as they always did at the reminder of their ever growing family. Dick opened his mouth to respond, probably with something sappy, when the roar of the unmuffled batmobile came thundering into the cave, followed by the open and close of the vehicle's door. Hardly second later, Bruce appeared in the entryway, dressed in complete Batman apparel except for the cowl. His entire countenance eased when he spotted Dick and he sagged against the door frame before stepping further into the room.

Kori moved aside for Dick to stand and meet Bruce half way where the two embraced.

“I’m fine, Bruce. Just a few bumps and scrapes,” said Dick when they parted.

Bruce eyed the bruise forming on his son’s temple. “I’ll let Alfred be the judge of that.” Bruce clapped him on the back and headed to where the butler hovered over the computer analyzing Dick’s blood test results.

“Is that a cat?”

Damian’s question made Bruce pause and turn back around. Sure enough, a small, round black ball of fur rested in the crook of Bruce's arm. “Ah, yes. Damian, could you…” he maneuvered the small creature to his hands and held it out to his youngest son.

Damian crossed the room in a second and snatched the newly woken cat from his fathers gloved fingers and cradled it gently against his chest.

“Keep an eye on it,” said Bruce. “And run it through the scanner and x-ray. I have good reason to believe it has something that belongs to us.”

Damian made a confused face but did as his father said while Bruce turned back to Alfred.

“Wait a minute, did I just see Bruce bring an animal in there?” Jason’s voice called from outside the infirmary. He popped his head around the corner and raised a brow when he spotted the cat in Damian’s arms. “Please tell me that’s not Selina Kyle.”

“Of course not. I just got off the phone with Selina before I arrived,” Bruce said, glancing toward him. “All animal shifting villains are currently locked up in Arkham. It’s a real cat.”

Jason still didn’t look convinced. “Then why…is it here?”

“Wait, that’s not Selina?” asked Stephanie.

“To be completely honest, I assumed it was her too before he called it ‘it’,” admitted Tim.

“Show of hands, who all thought Bruce’s girlfriend had been turned into a cat?” said Jason, raising his hand. Tim and Stephanie followed suit, while Bruce just shook his head and sighed.

“You do have a very strange city, Bruce,” Kori said, raising her own hand in the air.

“Tt.” Damian rolled his eyes as he set the cat on an examination table in a corner of the room. “You’re all fools. ‘It’ is a ‘he’. I highly doubt Catwoman would have been transformed into a male cat.”

“Well, excuse us for not knowing the gender of a cat just by looking at it. Not all of us are animal nerds, Damian,” retorted Tim.

Tim and Damian continued to bicker, somehow eventually landing on the topic of the ethics of public indecency -with Stephanie randomly inputting her widely obscure opinions on the matter-, while Jason made a well timed exit to return to whatever it was that he had been doing.

And Dick…hadn’t even noticed Bruce had been holding a cat at all. And when did Damian show up? Was the sleeping gas really still affecting him that much?

“Are you okay?”

Dick blinked back to reality as he realized he’d been glaring at the floor. Kori stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder.

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” he told her. “I guess I’m still a little discombobulated from the sleeping gas. That stuff really packs a wallop.”

“As it would appear,” said Alfred as he and Bruce looked over the freshly printed out test results. He offered the paper to Dick. “It seems Miss Isley had a hand in creating whatever concoction was used to subdue you. And a quite powerful one at that.”

“Poison Ivy?” asked Tim as he broke eye contact with Damian after they’d fallen into a glaring contest, face twisted in confusion. “Where would a B-list thief get something of hers? She doesn’t usually sell her pollens, especially not something of that caliber.”

“Babs told us the perp was dressed like Harley Quinn,” Stephanie said. “I'm guessing we can scratch a knock-off Poison Ivy off the list?”

Dick shook his head. “Definitely not another knock-off. Now that I think about it, waking up did feel awfully similar to something of her effects.”

“Speaking of the incident, is he clear, Alfred?” Barbra’s voice spoke over the cave's security sound system from the speaker in the corner of the ceiling.

“We will have to keep an eye on him with that substance still in his bloodstream, but you all may proceed with your questions,” the butler said.

Dick braced himself for a repeat of the chaos of the comms earlier that night, but none came. They all just stared, and he realized they expected him to do all the talking.

“Uh, well…to be completely honest, it’s all a little fuzzy. I remember going to the Zoo, and I faintly recall hearing the thief yelling about something, but everything after that is a blur.”

“Then it looks like it’s up to the mask cam now,” said Bruce, plucking Dick’s previously discarded domino mask off the side table and striding out of the room towards the batcomputer.

“Wait a minute, Bruce, “ said Dick, and Bruce stopped in the doorway. “She used an EMP to take out the cameras and my comm, it might have messed with the recording as well.”

“This one,” said Cass, melting out of the background and handing Bruce the small grey box.

Dick’s eyes went wide. “When did you…?”

“Before I scared you. You didn’t see me,” she signed.
“The mask cams are all automatically downloaded to a locked file, but this explains why Barbra couldn’t find the latest footage when we were trying to find you,” said Bruce as he took the device from Cass and turned it around in his hand. “The cams also store all its footage offline within itself with the latest of our anti-EMP tech, so it should still be intact. Did you find anything else, Cass?”

Cass reached back and picked up a red and black polka-dotted baseball bat that had been leaning up against the wall where she was standing.

Now, there’s feeling vulnerable, and then there’s finding out you’ve had practically no spacial awareness for the past thirty minutes kind of compromising, because how in the world did he not notice Cass had a baseball bat with her for the entire ride home?

Kori slipped her hand into his and squeezed, and he realized he must have been glaring at the floor again.
Bruce gripped the bat by the club end with his still gloved hands. “We’ll have to set this aside to take fingerprints. Right now, I’d like to know what’s in here,” he said, holding up Dick’s domino once again.

As it turned out, Bruce was right about the cam, and minutes later they were all huddled around the large screen as the recording played out before them.

Dick watches through his own eyes, his memory slowly catching up, as he recalls each event that unfolds. His rooftop transit to the Zoo, the clumsy thief’s loud exclamations, her fiasco with the boxes, and finally the split-second clip of her swiftly disappearing into the shadows, and therefore out of view, before popping back up to spray and clobber him with something. He watched the footage go shaky as video-him tripped and fell to the ground, unable to get back up.

It was at this point that Dick felt that feeling of wrongness return in almost full force, and he realized that whatever it was that had unsettled him had happened around this time. Which didn’t make sense, because the recording was almost over. They couldn’t even see her anymore through this angle, and the visuals were going dark and fuzzy as he had begun to lose consciousness. And then she said it.

"Sorry, Dickie, you ain't catchin' me tonight."

The air around the batcomputer grew tense and still and several people sucked in a breath as her words sunk in. Bruce rewound and enhanced the sound to hear her say it clearly three more times. No one said a word, all of them still reeling and wondering the where’s, when’s, and how could she possibly-

Jason, who had just got out of the shower and was now violently rubbing his hair with a towel, walked up behind them and asked, “Hey, what’d I miss?”

Dick was the first to answer, his voice tight and strained. “She…she called me Dick."

Jason scoffed. "Well that was rude."

Eight heads turned to stare at him for an uncomfortably long second before realization hit him and he frowned. “Oh.”

This interaction was enough to break the trance that they’d fallen into. Bruce suddenly stood up and stiffly walked to the batmobile and retrieved a phone before stepping further away and making a call. He had apparently put something together faster than they had.

“Is now a good time to mention I found your tracker?” said Damian, holding up the kitten under it’s- his front legs so that the rest of him flopped limply in midair. “He ingested it. I believe he likes the taste of the sleeping pollen spray”

Dick was quite taken aback. For one, was his tracker not on his person anymore? Feeling around the seam of his suit's collar, he discovered that not only was the spot where his tracker was supposed to be sewn in was, in fact, no longer there, but also that he was indeed covered in the orange spray residue (which clashed horrible with the black and blue). For two, is that what Bruce meant when he said the cat had something that belonged to them? Three, what did he mean, the cat liked the taste of the sleeping pollen spray? How was the cat still alive?? And the fourth, final, and most important one.…what?

Before anyone could respond to that wild revelation, Bruce’s loud, angry voice echoed through the cave accompanied by the sound of him slamming his fist into the side of the batmobile thoroughly silenced any comment anyone was about to make.

“Don’t lie to me, Selina!”

His next few words were too quiet to hear, but his posture and face looked no more relaxed when he ended the call.

“Trouble in paradise?” asked Jason.

Bruce tucked the phone into his utility belt and started walking towards the locker rooms to change. “Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman will be visiting the manor tomorrow. And they’ll be bringing a guest.”

Alfred, who had moved on to coaxing Dick back to the infirmary, raised a brow “A guest, Sir?”

Bruce didn’t slow his pace. “I don’t imagine she’ll be staying long.”

“I see,” said Alfred, though it was more to himself since Bruce had disappeared out of earshot.

No one said much after that. Dick and Kori followed Alfred back to the infirmary. Jason took the baseball bat for the fingerprint check, while Tim got to work on the strange EMP. Stephanie and Damian played with the cat on the floor till Cass finished changing and the three of them went upstairs to set up a place for it, because as far as they were concerned, Bruce didn’t say they couldn’t keep him, which was a yes in their book.

No one questioned on what grounds or how Bruce had put together the connection between Selina and her friends to what happened, though eventually they would all come to the same conclusion of there being too many common denominators -a fake Harley Quinn running around with real Poison Ivy pollens that attracts cats- for them to not know anything about it.

Though one thing was abundantly clear. Regardless of what happened tomorrow, things were about to change.
Whether it was for the better or the worse was yet to be seen.

Chapter Text

~

“Bruce wants us to stop by the manor tomorrow.” Selina looked at Marinette. “And he asked us to bring our little friend with us.”

Well crap. ~

Of all the things Marinette expected would come out of a quick snatch and grab from the Zoo, an unfortunate chance encounter with Nightwing and a catalyst of events that would lead up to her possibly meeting Batman was not one of them.

Sure, she always knew she'd have to meet him and his family eventually - it wasn't as if she expected to stay under the radar forever, this was Batman for goodness sake - but she at least would have liked it to happen under better circumstances. This was definitely…less than ideal. Now she'd have to meet him as the one who hurt someone he loved and caused a rift between him and Selina. At least before, she would have just been a stranger with a compelling backstory, but now she was the bad guy.

Is that how they would see her? Nothing more than a potential problem that needed to be squashed before it could become a real threat? Would she ever be anything more than the one who hurt Nightwing and destroyed Batman’s relationship?

Aw heck, had she just ruined any chances she had with them?

The thought stopped her brain in its tracks. Crap, she was a monster. Of course Batman would want nothing to do with her after all she’d done. That moment at the Zoo when Dick had spoken to her from the doorway had been a dream come true. She’d always imagined what it would be like to finally meet one of the famed vigilantes, even have a conversation with one, but now those dreams had been crushed under the weight of her own mistakes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Marinette.

Why did she have to say his name? She was better than that. For years, her mom, Selina, and Ivy, have kept secret after secret and she blows it all on her first go.

And now her and her entire family would be paying the price for it.

No. This was her mistake. She needed to be the one to take the blame.

With that thought and the beginning of a plan forming in her mind, Marinette zoned back into the conversation just as her mom, very animatedly, was saying,

“Why, that no good, entitled, two-faced, lily-livered, manipulatin’, over-dramatic, self-centered, diabolical, untrustworthy, selfish jerk!”

Ivy tossed her braid over her shoulder and scoffed. “That's putting it mildly. If he really thinks he can just order us around like one of his cronies, he’s got another thing coming.”

Selina looked up from where she had been staring at the phone. The call had shaken her, but she recovered in time to say her piece. “Hold on a second, ladies, think about it. Is it really unfair of him to ask this?”

Harley whirled on her. “Really, Selina? You’re taking his side?!”

“I am not taking sides, I’m just trying to understand. I know what it’s like to find out someone you trusted has been keeping a huge secret from you. He has every reason to be mad at us. I’m mad at us that we let this go on for so long and now it’s come to this. I told you we should have dealt with this sooner!”

Harley sneered and pointed a finger at her. “That’s not fair. You know why I couldn’t do that.”

Selina put her hands on her hips and tilted her head, her dark pixie cut swaying with the movement. “What I know is that you've been using that same sorry excuse for the past fourteen years, and it’s about dang time somebody forced your hand.”

“Here we go again,” Ivy muttered, flopping back down on the couch.

Harley reared up for another shot, but Marinette stepped in between them. This was an argument she’d heard many, many times before, though usually it was reserved for when they thought she wasn’t listening. The walls of the apartment weren’t necessarily thin, but they definitely weren’t soundproof by any means. She could remember the long nights she spent pressed against her bedroom door trying to make out what was being said on the other side, and almost always it was about her. About this. Eventually, she learned to stop listening. But now, here they were again, and Marinette had to do something. “Please don’t fight over this. This is all my fault, I need to fix it. Maybe I can go and try to talk to him and-”

“Absolutely not,” declared Harley, before she turned around and stalked down the hall towards her own bedroom.

Marinette followed, Selina and Ivy close behind. “We can’t just ignore him, Mom, he knows where we live.”

“Not for much longer,” Harley said as she opened her bedroom door and flipped on the light. She threw open her closet and began pulling clothes off the rack.

Her mom’s room was a mess on a good day, with clothes, the occasional hyena, and various other knick-knacks littering the floor, and Marinette almost tripped three times just trying to get through the door. She eventually stumbled her way in and sat on the bed. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Packin’,” said Harley. “If we leave tonight we can make it as far as Vermont by mornin’ and you won’t have to talk nobody into nothin’.”

Marinette’s eyes widened. Ivy sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Harls, I thought we agreed to leave running for the border as a last resort.”

“This is our last resort, Ivy!” Harley exclaimed, shoving an armful of clothes into a hot pink duffle bag she’d also gotten from the closet. “If he knows about Marinette, it's only a matter of time ‘til he finds out who she is! Every second we waste yappin’ around is another second Batsy could sic his posse of feral birds on us and it’ll all be over!”

Selina crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “And your solution is to just leave the country? You know that won’t stop him from tracking you down.”

Harley paused her frantic raid of the closet. “You’re right.” She reached back in and drug out a larger suitcase. “Honey, repack your bag. We're goin’ back to France.”

Marinette sighed. “We just got back from France, Mom. I don’t think Grandma and Grandpa could handle us showing up again so soon after our last visit. Especially considering how the last one ended.” She shuddered at the memory of how her mom had decided to swiftly and surely handle a grouchy customer at the bakery leading to Grandma Sabine having to talk them down from calling the police. All was forgiven, but needless to say, her grandparents could definitely use a break from their shenanigans. “And Mr. Dent can only owe you so many favors before he decides to stop funding our trips.”

“He won’t if he knows what’s good for him.” Harley zipped up the now-stuffed duffle bag, set it aside, and reached for another.

Marinette hopped off the bed and grabbed both her mom’s hands before she could dive back into the closet. “He won’t have to, because we're not going anywhere. I can do this, Mom.”

Harley froze at the determination in her daughter's voice, her eyes widening as they locked with Marinette’s and she gripped her hands back desperately. “No, honey, you don’t have to do that, we can fix this. We can leave tonight and-”

“No, we can’t,” Marinette interrupted, desperate to make her mom understand. “Aunt Selina’s right, there’s nowhere we can go where he can’t find us. We can’t run from this, not this time.”

Selina walked up beside her and placed a gentle hand on her right shoulder, the previous animosity between her and Harley momentarily forgotten. “Are you sure, Mari? Once you do this, there’s no turning back.”

“There’s already no turning back. This started the moment I got clumsy enough to let Nightwing spot me in that stupid storage room.”

‘And I intend to finish it,’ she thought to herself.

Ivy stepped to her other side and nudged her arm. “Whatever you decide, we support you, and we’re here for you. Right, Harley?” she looked pointedly at her friend.

Harley hesitated, looking between all of them, and she gnawed her lip, internally battling with herself over what she wanted to do and what she knew she needed to do.

Finally, she sighed and released her grip on Marinette’s hands to cup her face. “Of course I’m always here for you. You know that. But I can’t let you go. This is not your fault, and you shouldn’t have to suffer just ‘cause he got a bad attitude over you bestin’ one of his boys. We’ll figure this out, but I’m not givin’ up just yet.”

Marinette wanted to beg her mom to let her do this, but there was no arguing with Harley Quinn once she made up her mind.

“Well, now that that’s settled, I for one am tired of letting grumpy old men ruin our evening. We still have a movie to finish,” declared Ivy. Selina, who had initially bristled at Harley’s description of Batman’s ‘attitude’, looked like she still had some choice words, but thankfully she held them back as they all shuffled out the door and back into the living room.

Once they had settled themselves once more in front of the TV - Harley, Ivy, and Marinette in their previous spots while Selina took the armchair - they resumed their regular Friday night activity. But it wasn’t the same as before, with an overlaying tension tugging between them all, it made it almost impossible to focus on the movie.

Marinette hated it. She hated it when her family fought. And she hated when she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Not tonight, anyway. But she had a plan. A crazy one, but a plan all the same.

After the movie, Ivy and Selina left to go to their own shared apartment across the hall, with a promise that they'd be back in the morning to discuss the situation further, and they would decide what to do from there. Batman hadn’t said they had to meet him first thing in the morning, after all. They still had time. Marinette and Harley just went straight to bed, even though both of them knew they wouldn't be getting any sleep that night.

~~~

She was right.

It was exactly 2:14 AM, and she hadn’t slept a wink. A million different thoughts and scenarios repeated themselves over and over again as she tossed and turned in her bed, each one coming to a catastrophic conclusion of hopelessness and despair. Any hope she had of forgetting about all her troubles for a few hours was a fantasy she’d long given up on.

How on earth was she going to fix this?

She now had a plan on how to deal with Batman and his family, but her family? She didn’t know just how many more fights they could have about the same dang topic till somebody snapped and did something they wouldn’t be able to push to the side for the sake of civility. That evening had been far from the more intense arguments she’d overheard, and she could only imagine how much worse they were about to get. Or, she realized with a horrifying start, how they and all other forms of communication could stop altogether.

She hadn’t realized she’d started falling deep into a rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios until she was snapped out of it by the muffled sound of someone crying.

Marinette’s heart plummeted into her stomach. It took all of two seconds of consideration before she was out of bed and down the hall, only pausing briefly by her moms door to compose herself before slowly turning the knob and letting herself in.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight that greeted her, but it hurt to see all the same. Her mom sat curled up against the head of the bed, arms curled around her blanketed legs. Her face shot up from being pressed into her knees when she heard the sound of the door, and she quickly unfolded herself and wiped at her eyes in a desperate attempt to appear as if she hadn’t been sobbing only a second earlier.

“Hey, cupcake,” she said in a deceptively level voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Please don’t do that. Don’t pretend you’re okay.” Marinette crawled into the bed and wrapped her arms around her, tucking herself under her mom’s chin. “It’s just me.”

A shaky breath and a few seconds later, Marinette felt Harley melt into the hug, felt tear drops drip onto her shoulder and arms as they both broke in each other's embrace, mother and daughter clinging together like a lifeline.

“I’m so sorry, Marinette,” Harley whispered into her hair. “I'm so, so, sorry this is happening. I promised I wouldn’t let…that I wouldn’t…” her voice broke, and she stopped trying.

Marinette didn’t know how long they sat like that. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. But what Marinette did know was that any doubts she might have had about her plan, that moment only strengthened her resolve and confirmed it.

She knew what she had to do.