Chapter Text
Harper fell against her mattress with a thud and closed her eyes.
She was still in her armour and there was sticky blood drying down the side of her face, but she couldn’t be fucked to get changed. She only had a few hours to sleep before she needed to pick Cullen up from school, and she fully intended on using them to their full extent.
She’d just gotten kind of comfortable when her phone buzzed on the nightstand beside her.
She tried to ignore it, but the thought of an unread message sitting there was eating at her. After a moment, she sighed and rolled over, picking her phone up and unlocking it.
It was a text from Duke Thomas, who she mostly only saw around and didn’t much interact with. It was weird he’d be texting her at seven o’clock in the morning. She swiped through screens until she got to her messages and opened it.
It read:
HELP!!!!!!!!
She tapped her nails against her phone case. She could ignore it. She could totally ignore it. He’d probably sent the same text to the rest of the vigilantes he knew, hoping someone would bite.
Her phone buzzed again.
Harper! I’m fucked!
She frowned. Okay, maybe he hadn’t messaged everyone else, then.
She typed back:
u good bruh??
And waited.
Her phone rang.
She stared at it, bewildered. Okay, this was getting weirder by the second. With only a second’s hesitation, she answered, bringing the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Harper, thank God,” Duke sounded exhausted. “I’m – fuck. I’m hit.”
“What do you mean,” Harper sat upright, “You’re ‘hit’?”
“I mean, Harper,” Duke enunciated the next few words very clearly, “I have been shot. By a firearm. I am in an alleyway in Park Row without my uniform and I need you to come and get me.”
Harper took a second to mull this over, because honestly this series of statements elicited more questions than answers. Why had he been shot? Who had shot him? Where was his costume? Why hadn’t he called literally anyone else?
“I’ll be there in ten,” she said. “Do you want me in my uniform, or-”
“Civvies,” Duke panted. “Harper? Can you hurry? I’m getting kind of lightheaded.”
Harper swallowed and ended the call. She tore off her mask and started digging through her laundry hamper for something that was clean enough to head down the road in. Park Row was only the next suburb over – she’d be there in no time. She could only hope she didn’t make it there too late.
Four minutes later, donned in black cargo pants and a hoodie, Harper ducked her head as she climbed into her car. She navigated the streets with ease, keeping her eyes peeled as she passed every alley and laneway that lined the streets of Park Row. Finally, she spotted a still-wet bloody handprint on the brick of the old cinema, and she pulled to the side, killing the engine.
She headed down the alleyway cautiously, hyperaware that she had no weapons but the taser that hung from her beltloop. Her hands curled into automatic fists as she picked her way past broken glass and blown tires; finally, she found Duke, slumped behind a dumpster with no shirt, clutching at his shoulder. A mess of blood was drying to his chest.
“Hey,” Harper squatted in front of him, tilting his chin up so she could check him over for other injuries. “Hey, Duke. Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” he mumbled. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot.
“What happened?”
“Can we get out of here first?” The roughness of his tone surprised Harper. She had always known Duke to be quite carefree. Still, she nodded, helping him to his feet.
“Where’s your-”
“In the dumpster,” he said. “I couldn’t risk somebody finding me in it.”
Harper nodded. With a quick glance around to check nobody was watching, she pulled Duke’s bloodied costume from the trash, balling it up and tucking it under one arm. She guided him towards her car, letting him slump into the passenger seat and close his eyes.
She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. She knew taking him to the Batcave would be her best bet, but she was getting the sense he didn’t want the others to know about this, whatever it was. So, with that thought in mind, she headed back to her apartment.
“I haven’t exactly got state of the art medical facilities, but my kitchen’s clean and I keep a pretty well-stocked first aid kit,” she said as they got to the top of the stairs. She unlocked the door and ushered him inside, closing it and deadbolting it behind them. You could never be too careful in Gotham, something she’d learned from a very young age.
Duke eased himself into one of her rickety kitchen chairs, still clutching his shoulder. Wordlessly, she headed for the sink, stripping out of her hoodie and washing her hands up to the elbows with antibacterial soap. She wasn’t a doctor. But she’d worked with enough of them that she knew how to at least minimise the risk of infection.
Once her hands were clean, she reached under the sink and pulled out the first aid kit.
“That’s not a first aid kit,” Duke said. “I’m pretty sure they issue those in the military.”
Harper unzipped it with a wry smile, getting out the saline, tweezers, and gauze. She assembled everything on the table in a neat little production line, then squatted in front of him, tweezers in hand.
“Give us a look,” she said. He withdrew his hand slowly, revealing a jagged hole just below his collarbone. With a thoughtful hum, Harper started probing it with the tweezers, feeling around for the slug buried inside. When she was sure she’d found it, she looked up at him. His face had gone ashen and sweat beaded along his brow.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” he swallowed, closing his eyes.
She dug the tweezers into the wound and moved it until the tips had grasped onto the bullet wedged deep into the tissue. She gave it an experimental tug and was pleased when it came out in one piece. Dropping it into the little dish sitting on the table with a soft clink, she grabbed the saline and began to irrigate the wound.
Duke gritted his teeth but said nothing. Harper appreciated that. It took a certain level of mental discipline to do their line of work, and she personally – only to herself, never to anyone else – had kind of had the belief that Duke was a bit soft. He was tender hearted, she knew that much, and had always struck her as more of a lover than a fighter. The way he was sitting in her chair now, though, rigid and unmoving as she flushed the bullet hole in his shoulder, had her rethinking that belief.
“Almost done,” she said, pressing gauze against the wound to stem any of the final dregs of blood and saline that leaked out of it. When she was satisfied it had stopped bleeding completely, she stuck a waterproof dressing over it. “That should be good for a few days.”
“Thanks,” Duke said. His face was still pale, so she headed for the fridge, pulling out a carton of OJ and grabbing a cup from the dish rack.
“Here.”
“Thanks,” Duke said again, downing most of the glass in seconds.
A little colour returned to his face, so Harper dropped into the seat opposite him, playing with the plastic wrapper the dressing had been in. She wanted to ask. She wanted to know how exactly Duke had gotten shot. But she was trying to practice patience, see. So, she waited until he was ready to tell her.
“Nice place,” he commented, looking around. She knew he was being polite. Even though Bruce was paying her rent, she’d insisted on sticking to the streets that were familiar to her, to the part of Gotham she’d carved out as home. It meant her apartment kind of sucked. She was okay with that, though. It was hers. That was what mattered.
“It’s not much, but it’s home,” she replied with a shrug, reaching up to turn the daith piercing in her ear. Duke took another sip of his orange juice, watching her carefully. He was sizing her up. They didn’t interact much, her and Duke Thomas. It wasn’t by design. That was just how their cards had been played.
“You got a copy of yesterday’s newspaper?”
Harper snorted. “Do I look like the kind of person who gets the paper to you?”
“No. It’d just make my life easier if you did. Pass your phone.”
She handed him her phone wordlessly, and he opened the browser, thumbs hitting the screen rapidly as he typed something in. He was silent for about two minutes, still typing, then handed it back to her.
It was open on the Gotham Gazette’s website, to yesterday’s crossword. Duke had helpfully solved it, and Harper studied it for a few moments, squinting. She ran a finger down the screen in a straight line, mouthing the letters to herself, before she looked up.
“The first letter of every word spells out Gotham City Bank,” she said.
“Sure does.”
“So you went there.”
“Sure did.”
“That’s how you got shot?”
He shrugged. “I was on the roof of the bank, checking for any disturbed entry points, when I heard a gun fire. I was too slow to dodge the bullet, and even using my ghost vision I didn’t catch a glimpse of the shooter’s face.”
Ghost vision? Harper was going to ask about that later. She knew Duke was a meta, of course, but she’d never seen him use his powers.
Harper returned to her phone, swiping across the screen to see who had written the crossword. Helpfully, the Gotham Gazette had a little byline beneath the crossword title that said This crossword was submitted by reader Harrow Brunt. Thanks, Harrow!
“Get me a pen and paper.”
Duke looked around the room helplessly. “Where…?”
“The third drawer down should have a notebook and pen in it.”
Duke got to his feet and dug through her kitchen drawer until he’d produced a notebook and pen. He handed them to her, watching curiously as she scribbled HARROW BRUNT at the top of the page and started crossing out letters as she wrote them down. She kept going, cycling through a couple of attempts before she scrawled down the one she knew was right. She dropped the notebook and pen on the table and got to her feet, hands on her hips.
“Fuck,” she said.
Duke leaned over and read what she’d written, pursing his lips together.
“Fuck,” he agreed.
“What do we do?”
“Tell Batman, I guess.”
Harper was not a fan of that idea. Bruce was busy, and besides, they didn’t know for sure what was going on here. They just had a crossword and a bullet wound to go off, and that didn’t seem like enough to bring in the cavalry just yet.
“Should we, uh…” Duke looked uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. “Should we tell Steph?”
“Absolutely not,” Harper said firmly. “She’s still recovering from what he did. It would wreck her.”
He nodded, in clear agreeance. Steph had survived death once again, but that didn’t mean they needed to remind her of the trauma so soon after it had happened. Harper’s fingers traced over her messy letters, spelling out the name neither of them wanted to face:
ARTHUR BROWN.
“The crossword, the anagram,” she said slowly, her gaze meeting Duke’s. “It’s his MO. Clues, and all that. Right?”
“Right,” Duke said. “He’s a Riddler knockoff, basically. Less obsessive-compulsive about the whole thing, though.”
“Which makes him more unpredictable.” Harper dropped back down into her chair, pushing the hair back off her forehead. “Why would he shoot you, though? What’s the angle? Were you the target, or was he trying to finish the job on Steph?”
“I don’t know,” Duke said with a thoughtful hum. “We should do some research. See when he was released from Blackgate, what his movements have been since then. Have you got a laptop?”
Harper nodded, getting to her feet. “I’ll check in with everyone else, make sure they’re okay.”
Duke followed her to her bedroom, stopping in the doorway as she flicked on the light switch. The blinds were down and curtains drawn in anticipation of her sleeping the morning away. She supposed that wasn’t happening now. This was more pressing.
Harper couldn’t help but try to see her room through Duke’s eyes as she headed for the desk. Single bed, plain grey comforter and pillowcases. A corkboard above the desk that had little on it but pinned receipts for computer parts. A desk that was cluttered with aforementioned computer parts, a tower in pieces, and a monitor that didn’t work, with a laptop tucked on the shelf beneath. A Pale Waves poster on the wardrobe door. Body armour laying discarded on the floor beside her laundry hamper. A purple smear on the wall from the last time she’d dyed her hair.
It didn’t look like much. She hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time making it homely.
“Don’t mind the mess,” she said, grabbing the laptop and powering it up. She sat on her bed, handing it over to Duke once it was started up and logged in before grabbing her phone. She fired off quick texts to the others – Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph, Cass, Damian – that just said the same thing:
how was patrol last nite?
It was quick, succinct, and got to the point. If any of them had run into any trouble, she’d know soon.
Unsurprisingly, Steph was the first to text back. She always had her phone in hand, even when she was meant to be sleeping.
Good! Got churros with Cass! 😊 You?
“Steph and Cass are fine,” she said, watching as Duke’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he hacked into the Blackgate Penitentiary server and pulled up the prisoner transfers list. He leaned back, reading the screen with a furrowed brow.
“Brown, Arthur,” he read out. “Status, released. Good behaviour and time served.”
“He tried to kill his daughter,” Harper hissed, clenching her fists. She was protective of Steph. She couldn’t help it. “That’s such bullshit.”
Duke exhaled slowly, setting the laptop aside. He looked up at her, and for a second his irises flashed gold, before fading back into a warm brown.
“What do we do?”
“We catch him,” Harper said with determination. “We catch him, and we put him away for good.”
“Hell yeah,” Duke lifted his fist, and with some surprise Harper bumped it. “We got this.”
She leaned back, thumping her head against the wall, exhaling slowly. She wasn’t sure where to start.
Her phone dinged – Jason.
Fine. Go to sleep.
She sent him back a thumbs up and checked her other messages. Nothing yet from Damian, Dick, or Tim, but Tim had a tendency to crash after weekend patrol and Damian probably had school. She wasn’t sure where Dick would be, but she could only hope he was safe.
“Harper?”
“Yeah, Duke?” She looked up.
“Where do we start?”
Harper bit the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know.”