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When the call came in, Bruce had just stopped a convenience store robbery and was nearly done tying the two perpetrators to a lamppost for the police to pick up. One had put a bullet in the clerk’s arm, a vicious and unnecessary act that would send the man to the hospital, so he wound the rope a little tighter than usual, shot his grappling hook skyward, and answered his comms mid-air.
“Oracle,” Bruce said as he landed on the roof. “Did you find anything on the Park Row case?”
“Not yet,” Barbara replied, her voice computerized and distorted. “Robin needs you to look at something, though. Sending you the address now.”
His belt pinged, and Bruce pulled out his communicator and read the address on the screen, committing it to memory. “Look at what?” he asked.
“You’ll see. I gotta go—Nightwing’s calling,” Barbara said hurriedly. “Oracle out.”
The line went dead before Bruce could ask again, and he frowned to himself and silently swung off the roof in the direction of the address. Tim wasn’t hurt, wasn’t in danger. If there were even a chance of that, Barbara wouldn’t have sounded so calm. Possibilities ranged and branched: Tim hadn’t told Barbara, in which case he either didn’t know what he was dealing with or didn’t have the time to describe it; Tim had told Barbara, in which case she couldn’t or didn’t want to explain it to him…
Or, either Tim or Barbara had decided not to tell him what ‘it’ was because he wouldn’t like it, and therefore might not go.
Bruce’s lip curled as he took the roofs across the city, the night air rushing past doing little to cool his frustration. He bagged it for now, sealed it up tight. Time enough for that when and it if was warranted.
Ten minutes later, he landed on the rooftop of a warehouse corresponding to the address he’d been given. Crouching low, Bruce made his way over to the skylight and found Tim centered beneath the circle of illumination coming from the one hanging lamp. He had his arms at his sides, his stance relaxed—but his fingers worried at the edge of his cape. Bruce debated calling him on comms for a second, but he was here, and Tim was here, and that would ultimately be a waste of time. Instead, he opened the skylight and dropped through.
At his sudden descent, Tim jumped away and landed at the edge of the circle of light. “Oh, good. You’re here,” he said, just a little bit breathless.
For absolutely no reason Bruce could discern. “Oracle called. You wanted me to look at something?”
“Uh, yeah. Well.” Tim swallowed. “Not just me.”
Lights snapped on across the warehouse before Bruce could ask, laying bare all but the deepest corners. Much closer than that stood several figures that had remained silent and invisible in the dark. If he’d been looking for them, if he’d paid attention to the shadows and waited for the inevitable whispers of sound and flickers of movement, Bruce would have picked up on their presence, but he’d been focused on Tim.
He’d trusted Tim.
Now, he was paying the price of letting his guard down.
A few yards away, Spoiler leaned against a pillar with the Red Hood to one side, Huntress to the other. Bruce had never seen the three of them in the same room before and had never thought to spare some gratitude for that until this very moment. Beyond that, Nightwing was dropping down from the rafters to Bruce’s right, Batgirl to his left, meeting in the center and taking up a position about equidistant between Robin and the other three.
The clank of armor announced another arrival—Azrael, who took a position a little apart from the rest, and who, the last Bruce had heard, was on the other side of the world. Unexpected, but nothing compared to the next one to walk in: a thin man of average height wearing a worn jacket and a balaclava. Even so, Bruce would recognize him anywhere, his stature, his gait. He’d known it from his earliest memories and throughout his childhood and again for most of his adult life.
As if he were simply answering the door or the phone or going to any other number of mundane tasks around the manor, Alfred walked across the dusty warehouse floor with even strides and came to a stop near Nightwing. Behind him, a screen flicked to life, a flat monitor affixed to the pillar Spoiler was still leaning against. The picture resolved, and Oracle’s symbol filled it.
Bruce’s mind reeled, trying to take the input and generate an output that made sense. All of them—everyone alive and active, all who operated in Gotham under the mantle of the Bat. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. The rest of them he could perhaps explain, could attribute to some threat that had drawn them all to the same point and from there to the decision to bring him in, but not Alfred. He only ventured into the field as a very last resort, operating otherwise solely from the Cave.
Setting his shock aside, Bruce drew in a breath, and then caught a flicker of movement form the corner of his eye. He turned in time for the approach of two more people, quite literally out of left field. A blonde woman, wearing fishnets and a green leotard with a giant question mark emblazoned across the chest, and a man easily twice her size in clown makeup. Bruce stiffened on instinct, but the attack didn’t come. Neither held any weapons, and they were both heavily outnumbered.
Query, one of the Riddler’s girls, and Curly, a themed lackey to the Joker. An ice-water chill went down Bruce’s spine. The Riddler and the Joker together always spelled a recipe for disaster, but if their scheming had turned two of their most loyal turncoat and had gathered every vigilante in Gotham under the same roof, it had to be apocalyptic. The whole city in danger, likely on the verge of utter destruction.
Keeping Query and Curly in his periphery, Bruce turned back to his people and asked, “Where’s the problem?”
“Actually, Batman,” Spoiler said, stepping forward a little as Tim stepped back, so they ended up shoulder so shoulder. “The problem’s right here.”
“What,” Bruce said flatly.
Red Hood answered, his voice modulated through his helmet. “We decided that since you’re determined to act like the boss of us…”
“…we’ve decided to treat you like one,” Huntress finished for him.
The full mask of the Spoiler suit didn’t let Bruce see Stephanie’s face, and the Red Hood’s helmet similarly hid Jason’s, but the Huntress only wore a domino, and Helena was smirking smugly enough for all three of them. Beneath the weight of his cowl, the hair on the back of Bruce’s neck did its best to stand on end.
“What,” he said again.
Robin lifted his chin. “We’ve voted to unionize.”
“Excuse me,” Bruce said for variety. “You can’t unionize. You’re not employees.”
“Actually,” a voice said, and Bruce looked sideways to see Query pulling a folder out of her purse, “They do meet the legal definition.”
“What are you doing here?” Bruce demanded between his teeth, rounding on an acceptable outlet for his mounting rage. “What is this?”
Query began to flip through the folder, unruffled. “I’m president of I.H.U. Local 1331, International Henchpeople United, representing lackeys, goons, and minions in the larger Gotham-Blüdhaven metropolitan area.”
“And I’m a union steward,” Curly added, the opposite of helpfully.
Bruce’s mouth worked. “They’re not—” He spun back to the others. “You’re not henchpeople!”
“There was some debate about that, but per our bylaws, they do qualify,” Query said. “A henchperson is in the employ of, operates under, or takes orders from a self-styled villain, supervillain, mastermind, mafia don, mob boss, crime boss, or other supervisor to perform illegal activities in exchange for some form of compensation.”
“She means you gotta break the law,” Curly said.
“We don’t break the law. We’re not criminals,” Bruce explained, trying and failing to figure out how he’d landed in one of the most absurd situations of his life. “We stop criminals.”
“Vigilantism is still illegal,” Query said implacably. “Then there’s breaking and entering, destruction of property, you get the idea.”
A spasm went through Bruce’s jaw, and he forced it to unclench. “I have an understanding with the police.”
“Law’s still on the books, and you’re breaking it,” Curly said. He mimed bending and breaking something in front of his face, complete with a cracking noise.
“I don’t pay them,” Bruce said, grasping for the other side of the argument. “We don’t do what we do for money.”
“You did upgrade my suit,” Spoiler ventured.
Huntress tossed her dark hair behind her shoulder. “Yeah. Mine too.”
“You bought me a car, Batman,” Robin reminded him. “And not just any car—the Redbird’s like a mini Batmobile.”
“I’ve gotten six bikes in the last two years,” Nightwing chimed in.
“Maybe if you stopped crashing them,” Huntress muttered.
Nightwing smiled at her charmingly and shrugged with his palms up.
“The point is, you’ve provided all of us with suits and equipment, at the very least,” Azrael said.
“Not to mention the training,” Oracle said through the screen. “Even those of us who knew how to do the work didn’t necessarily know how to do it in Gotham.”
A rustle of agreement went through the room. Even Batgirl tilted her head in support, which for someone as habitually silent as Cassandra, spoke volumes. Bruce squinted at her, but the stitched-up mask gave nothing away.
“This isn’t serious. You can’t be serious,” Bruce said. He wheeled around and stalked up to Nightwing. “You’re working with Azrael against me? Azrael?”
From the very start, Dick had hated Jean-Paul—part of it Bruce’s own fault, for giving Batman to a relative unknown after his injury instead of first offering it to the man who had once been his first Robin and best protégé. Most of it, though, was Jean-Paul’s own for going, as Tim would put it, completely off the rails. He’d been insane, true enough, but that didn’t erase the damage he’d done. Once Bruce had returned, he’d taken his mantle back, redirected Jean-Paul into Azrael, and largely forgiven what there was to be forgiven.
But, as far as he knew, Dick never had.
In the dirty light of the warehouse, Nightwing crossed his arms. “You don’t have to like everyone in your union,” he said. “You just have to share the same goal.”
Bruce glared at him, trying to formulate a response to that, when he caught sight of Robin instead. “Robin,” he said, turning to him. “You’re willing to work with Red Hood? After what he did to you?”
“You mean beating me up and knocking me out?” Robin asked. “I’ve been beaten up way worse on patrol. He didn’t even break any bones.”
“I didn’t even break any bones,” Red Hood echoed, faux-innocent.
“Besides, he was going through some stuff at the time,” Robin said dismissively.
What Tim meant was an unexpected resurrection following a violent death—and Bruce could understand that, if not what Jason did after. Tim, as usual, was too forgiving for his own good.
“And you’ve literally used knock-out gas on me before just to avoid talking to me,” Robin went on.
Bristling, Bruce ground out, “That wasn’t to avoid talking to you, that was—” For Tim’s own protection when Bruce Wayne was falsely charged with murder and on the run, but Batman couldn’t very well bring that up in present company.
He turned back to the room at large. “Red Hood is a murderer,” Bruce reminded them, something that shouldn’t need a reminder. “Is that really something the rest of you are willing to accept?”
“I agreed to tone it down if we can get a chapter on you staying the fuck out of my territory in the CBA,” Red Hood said with a half-shrug.
“That’s collective bargaining agreement,” Query told him.
As if Bruce didn’t know that. “Unions are corrupt. They’re barely any better than gangs,” he said. “Nightwing, I would have thought your experience with the Blüdhaven police would have taught you as much.”
The lenses of Nightwing’s domino mask narrowed, but he’d had enough public run-ins with the BPD to make the oblique reference to the time he’d worked there to uncover corruption reasonably safe.
“Mostly, what that taught me is the police are already in the pockets of the people who own everything,” Nightwing said. “You can’t apply that to everyone else.”
“The Gotham PD keeps finding ways to re-corrupt itself despite long-standing best efforts to clean up the force,” Oracle added from the screen—meaning, though few knew it, the efforts of Barbara’s own father as police commissioner. “The police union can only reflect what’s there.”
“Any organization has the potential to become corrupt,” Huntress said.
Spoiler nodded once and added, “A union is only as good as the people in it.”
Those two had to be the ringleaders: Helena, Bruce knew, was an active member of the teachers’ union at the elementary school where she worked, and Stephanie’s mother was a nurse at a unionized hospital. Less involved than Helena, perhaps, but still enough so to impart the necessary knowledge to her daughter as Stephanie was growing up. That was, just enough to be dangerous.
Even so, if targeting Azrael and Red Hood hadn’t worked, trying the same thing again would only make him appear foolish and grasping and weak. Bruce needed to be strong—to be what he was. Solid and fixed and reliable.
He squared his shoulders, and balled his hands to fists at his sides, and he loomed. Looming was an acquired skill, but one Bruce excelled at; he could project his presence in a way that seemed to draw the shadows to him. No small number of petty criminals had been terrified out of their bad behavior by his profile alone.
In his deepest growl, he asked, “What, exactly, do you all hope to gain from this?”
“I am so glad you asked,” Query said sweetly.
Her heels clicked busily against the concrete floor as she walked over, for all the world like any young professional crossing the grand entrance to the big Wayne Enterprises building downtown. Bruce glared at her through the lenses of his cowl, but Query simply handed him a stapled stack of paper and returned to her position by Curly, as if she had forgotten just how many times Batman had thrown her in prison.
Once she’d stopped moving, Bruce looked down to the stack of paper. The line at the top read: List of Demands.
Below that followed a series of headings and smaller print. Flipping through the pages, Bruce skimmed them cursorily. Communications Access. Suits and Equipment. Sharing of Information. Benching.
At Benching, he paused and began reading. Benching may occur due to injury or emotional impairment. In the case of a patrol-preventing injury, the injured party may continue to provide support as they are capable and the support is needed. While any member of management (the Batman) or the bargaining unit may file a complaint of emotional impairment, the individual in question will be afforded the right of self-defense, and benching in such cases shall be decided by a majority vote of the bargaining unit.
He scoffed and looked up, letting his gaze settle on each of his people in turn. “You need me. You all need me,” Bruce said. He brandished the so-called ‘list of demands’ like a weapon. “Suits. Equipment. Training. You admit yourselves what I’ve done for you, and this is how you repay me?”
“Working with you has its benefits,” Huntress admitted. “That’s the only reason we’re having this conversation, and it’s also not the issue.”
“It’s you unilaterally deciding that you’re in charge of every vigilante in Gotham,” Red Hood finished for her.
“You’re not the only one from here, or the only one with reasons to put on a suit,” Spoiler tacked on.
Robin swallowed visibly, but spoke up anyway. “We’ve tried to talk to you about this before,” he said. “You just won’t listen.”
“I have been doing this—” Bruce paused to get his voice under control as it started to rise. “—longer than some of you have been alive. I make the decisions because I know best. I created Batman, I built Batman without any of you.” He let that sit and asked, “Where would any of you be without me?”
“Where would you be without us?” Batgirl asked, and Bruce blinked at her in surprise—the last one he’d have expected to talk. “You started alone. That’s true. But you depend on us now. You can’t handle Gotham alone anymore. It’s gotten too big.”
“She’s right,” Oracle added. “When’s the last time you’ve patrolled without calling me?”
Nightwing took a step forward, his arms still crossed. “How many times have I heard that Batman needs a Robin?” he asked.
In response, Red Hood snapped his fingers and pointed, and Robin clicked his tongue, and Spoiler put her hands on her hips. Bruce ignored them with effort and took a breath—he couldn’t let them get under his skin. He looked at Nightwing again and saw his first Robin, so young back then, so enthusiastic for the work. An ache pulsed in Bruce’s chest, and he looked away.
“Also, it doesn’t matter where we’d be without you. Don’t try and sunk-cost fallacy us into putting up with your bullshit,” Red Hood said. “We’re here now, and what matters is where we go next.”
“You think we don’t have any other options if you shut us out?” Huntress asked rhetorically. “We’re prepared to set up a workers’ collective and keep the city safe with or without you.”
“It will be difficult, but not impossible to set up other bases of operations,” Azrael said.
“And alternative revenue streams,” Oracle added from her screen.
With her hacking skills, that wasn’t an idle threat. Oracle could steal, scam, or blackmail her way into millions in an afternoon. For all Bruce knew, she already had. Robin, while not quite at Oracle’s level of skill and talent, also knew his way around a computer and past network security, and with Huntress’ family fortune and Nightwing’s trust fund and the money Alfred had been squirreling away for years and Azrael’s connections to an ancient order—
A cold chill went down Bruce’s spine. They could actually do it—or at least try to do it. But trying was all it would be, and Gotham would pay the price for their inevitable failure.
“You wouldn’t last two weeks,” Bruce said definitively. “And you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking you’re my only option. I have other allies, and I can have your routes covered and the city safe before you ever get off the ground.”
“Wow, he’s already threatening to use scabs. That’s gotta be some kinda record,” Query remarked. “Curly, what do we think of scabs?”
The big clown cracked his knuckles. “If you ain’t workin’ with the union in this town, you ain’t workin’ at all.”
“Who’s going to stop me?” Bruce asked, and, witheringly as he could, “You?”
“Not me,” Curly said. “All of us.”
“You use informants, right?” Query asked. “I mean, you ask the good people of Gotham for information? Word gets out you’re using scabs, you’ll find a lot of your wells have dried right up.”
Curly grinned through his red-painted mouth. “Dock workers. Factory workers. Postal workers. Construction. Sanitation. Retail,” he said. “Doctors, nurses, teachers, bus drivers—who’s left?”
“After that, not much,” Query said.
“Enough,” Bruce growled. He turned his attention away from the two representatives—the two criminals—and back to his flock. “I’ve worked alone before. I can do it again,” he said. “We’ll see who needs who.”
“Completely alone?” the man in the balaclava asked. “I’m certain I don’t remember that.”
It took Bruce a full ten seconds to answer, to remember how to breathe. “ Agent A,” he said, short and clipped. “Nightwing. Sidebar. Now.”
“You can’t just—” Query began.
“They’ll be ok,” Robin said. “Let them go.”
Just as well, as Bruce was already stalking over to a distant corner of the warehouse, ‘Agent A’ and Nightwing in tow. He stopped a little past his estimate of where Query and Curly would fall out of earshot, not to mention those he hadn’t yet trusted with his identity. Back to the rest of the warehouse to forestall the possibility of anyone reading his lips, Bruce tore into Alfred first.
“Everyone else, everyone else, I could maybe understand getting pulled into this harebrained scheme, but you?” Bruce demanded. “This isn’t like the times you’ve quit.”
“I’ve been considering quitting again,” Alfred said. “This seemed a viable alternative. Perhaps together, we can convince you of what I’ve failed to impart myself.”
Bruce sighed through his nose. “Which is?”
“That you can’t do it alone. That you need to stop being so bloody stubborn,” Alfred said. He inclined his head towards the list of demands still clutched in Bruce’s fist and asked, “Have you perhaps had the chance to read the section on Benching?”
“By majority rule?” Bruce asked, letting his contempt into his voice.
“Yes. It was my idea to extend that rule to you,” Alfred said. “It was one of the main things that got me on board, as it were.”
The slap of betrayal made Bruce want to scream. He kept his voice even instead and asked, “So if I say no to this, you’re going to leave again?”
“In a sense,” Alfred said. “You see, I’m only here in my capacity as your Agent A. Your right hand—your chief henchperson, if I’m to use their nomenclature. My other work will continue outside of that, unless, of course, I’m dismissed. I must say, sir, it does present a tempting prospect. Breakfast at seven, lunch at noon, dinner at five, taking calls, managing the day cleaners and the groundskeepers—and sleeping through the night, of course. All useful ways I can spend my time outside of that cold and drafty Cave.”
“You’d miss it,” Bruce said simply—because Alfred would.
The fabric of the balaclava moved as if Alfred smiled beneath it. “I’m old enough to miss many things,” he said. “Before I entered my current line of work, I was a stage actor, as you might recall. I was a proud member of our Actors’ Guild, and I was secretary for our local for several years. As such, I’m finding all this”—he gestured to the rest of the warehouse—“more familiar than you might think.”
“You remember the early days—both of you,” Bruce said, drawing Nightwing in. “After all this time, you have to know you’re not my…” He wasn’t going to say henchpeople. “…employees. I value the work you do, but that’s not why I value you.” He took in a breath and said, “You’re my family.”
“Out of these suits, we’re family,” Nightwing said. “When we’re in them, you’ve always made it very clear who’s in charge.”
“I let you call the shots in Blüdhaven,” Bruce countered.
A sardonic smile tugged at Nightwing’s mouth. “Exactly. You let me,” he said. “I don’t let you call the shots in Gotham.”
“What part of this convinced you?” Bruce asked, still looking for a foothold, a crack in the exterior.
“It’s a little bit of everything everyone’s said, but mostly? It’s the Titans,” Nightwing told him. “Leading my own team. To make it work, I had to learn how to talk to them, and more importantly, I had to learn how to listen—something I don’t think you ever did.” He shrugged and said, “If this is what it takes, then so be it.”
Bruce huffed. “Joining an organization of criminals? The very thing we fight against?”
“Honestly, having an in with the local hench-community has a good chance of making our jobs easier,” Nightwing said.
That—wasn’t entirely wrong. Bruce frowned imperiously, spun on his heel, and marched back over to everyone else with his cape billowing behind him. His mind was already jumping ahead to Lucius Fox, to the lawyers he would ask for advice. The precursor to Wayne Enterprises had unionized in his great-grandfather’s time, leaving him decades of contract negotiations to study. While it was never something he’d been involved with personally, he had absorbed enough over the years to learn the basics.
“Did you all sign cards?” he asked.
“Right here,” Query answered before anyone else could.
She held the folder out to him, and Bruce didn’t take it so much as snatch it out of her hand. He flipped through the cards inside, all nine of them, more than the thirty percent required by law. If it were a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises unionizing, he could still delay it with a vote—but all his people were here. Any delay would be measured in minutes, and would only make him appear petulant.
“You’ve all made your point. It’s clear there are some thing we need to discuss,” Bruce said, lifting up the now wrinkled ‘list of demands’ with his free hand. “I will need some time to review this.”
“So…you’ll come to the table?” Robin asked.
“Yes,” Bruce replied. “I’ll come to the table.”
A whisper of excitement went through the room—smiles on the faces Bruce could see, spines straighter, shoulders relaxing. For his part, he tried not to look too much like he’d just bitten a lemon.
“Excellent,” Query said, clapping her hands once. “We’ll be in touch. Curly?”
With a nod, he turned, and they walked together out of the warehouse. Query’s heels clicked all the way into the shadows, and then a metal door creaked open before closing on a dull thud. Bruce wondered idly if he could forestall this by tracking down those two and turning them into the police, but he probably wasn’t that lucky.
“As for the rest of you,” he said, looking to his people. “It’s still early. I believe you all have places to be.”
The lights went out, save for the single bulb over Bruce’s head, the same spotlight-circle he’d seen when he first arrived. Around him, the gathering broke apart, melting away into the shadows. Even Oracle’s screen vanished off the pillar in a blink, the thin square of it tucked under Red Hood’s arm before he disappeared with a silence that belied his size. Robin was the last to go like he’d been the first to arrive, looking as if he wanted to say something until he gave into the tug of Spoiler’s hand on his elbow. They fell back, leaving Bruce alone and the warehouse in deserted silence.
He let out a long, slow sigh, lifted the ‘list of demands’ again, and started to read.
***