Archive of Our Own

The first rule of BatBurger, according to Mark, was don’t flirt with Nightwing.

Livia would have laughed, just to be polite, if the manager had said it like a joke. Instead, he’d said it with all the gravity of someone announcing an incoming hurricane.

“He’ll flirt with you first,” Mark told her. “But it’s a bit. Don’t feed the bit. You flirt back, I get complaints, and then I’ll have HR breathing down my neck.”

Livia blinked. “Are we talking, like, the Nightwing?”

Mark gave her a flat look over his clipboard. “Do you think we have another one?”

“I thought . . . isn’t he supposed to be in Blüdhaven?”

“Good luck telling him that,” he scoffed.

That had been at orientation, somewhere between the “how to unclog the milkshake machine” demo and the part about what to do if a supervillain held up the drive-thru again. Mark had walked her through everything, from the reinforced glass to the secure back exit to, finally, the tiny black button hidden under the counter shaped unmistakably like the Bat symbol.

“If you see one of them bleeding,” he said, “don’t say anything. Don’t freak out. Just press this.”

“And then what?” Livia asked.

“Then the big guy knows.”

“The big guy as in—”

“Yeah. Him. He pays us extra if we let him know his kids are hurt. So, you know, fingers crossed.”

“Cool,” Livia said faintly.

It all sounded, frankly, a lot more ridiculous than she had anticipated.

Not that Metropolis didn’t have its own brand of bizarre. Alien invasions were a semi-regular occurrence there, after all. She was used to giant killer robots trying to destroy downtown every other month. She’d once seen Superman carry a collapsing bridge with one hand like it was a wet sponge.

But still. Gotham was different. Gotham was like if someone had taken all of Metropolis’s bright optimism and dunked it in tar.

It was one thing to know that there was a nonzero chance she’d come face-to-face with one of the city’s capes, and another to know that it was an inevitability. Quite another thing entirely for the manager to tell her as much, with all the weariness of a man who’d died inside years ago but kept clocking in anyway.

Because the Batman and his brood were regular customers, apparently. Regular enough that they had a dedicated chapter in the employee manual.

Livia was still half-convinced she’d imagined that part of her training until her third night on the job. She’d just finished topping off a basket of onion rings when her coworker, Rekha, called her to man the cash register.

“Heads up,” Rekha said. “He’s here.”

“Who?” Livia asked, glancing at the door.

“You’ll see,” Rekha said, smirking like she’d been waiting all night for this.

The bell above the door chimed, and in walked Nightwing, striding inside like this was a normal thing to do at 1 AM, the blue stripes of his suit gleaming faintly under the fluorescent lights. He got in line like everyone else, casually chatting with the two teens ahead of him about last week’s baseball match. He was shorter than Livia had expected, but he moved with the kind of easy confidence that made people stare.

“Evening, ladies,” Nightwing said when he reached the counter, grin wide and stupidly dazzling. “Don’t suppose you’ve got anything on the menu that’s as pretty as your service staff?”

Rekha wrinkled her nose. “Sweetheart, you’ve used that one before.”

“Oh, come on.” He placed a hand over his heart, dramatically wounded. “I’m giving you a compliment!”

“Then compliment the fries.”

“Your fries are gorgeous.”

“Careful,” Rekha said, unimpressed. “You’ll scare the newbie.”

Livia made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh, might have been her dignity dying.

Nightwing’s attention snapped to her. His grin widened just enough that she momentarily forgot how to breathe.

“Hey there, newbie,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows like he was chatting with an old friend. “Got room in the fryer for one more hot snack?”

Livia froze. Somewhere behind her, she heard Carlos, the fry cook, groan.

It was the sort of line that would have made her roll her eyes if any of the boys back home had said it. But this was Nightwing. Actual, real-life Nightwing, with his distractingly tight suit and a face that should qualify as an OSHA hazard.

He was—well. The orientation hadn’t prepared her for this.

Rekha elbowed her, and Livia realized too late that she was supposed to be taking his order.

“Welcome to BatBurger,” she stammered, barely managing to plaster on her most neutral customer-service smile. “What can I get for you tonight?”

“Tough crowd,” Nightwing said, voice low and playful. “All right, hit me with a BatBurger combo. Extra pickles. And”—he winked—“your best judgment on whether or not I deserve a free smile with that.”

Her mouth opened before her brain caught up. “I think you’ve already used up your smile quota for the night, sir.”

Rekha snorted.

Nightwing laughed, the sound bright and disarming. “Fair enough. Extra pickles, one smileless combo.”

“Would you—uh—like to Jokerize your fries?”

“Always. Oh, and add two milkshakes, please.”

“What flavor?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

“Sure thing,” Livia said, still flustered.

When she handed over his food, he dropped a folded twenty in the tip jar, winked again, and said, “I’ll remember this betrayal, newbie.”

Her brain scrambled to come up with something—anything—witty to say back, but all that came out was a weak, “Uh-huh.”

Rekha coughed meaningfully beside her. Nightwing, apparently satisfied, gave them a two-fingered salute and sauntered out. The second the door closed behind him, Carlos stepped out of the kitchen.

“Total menace,” he said, shaking his head fondly. “Every time, man. Every time he says something like that, I wonder if he’s actually funny or if I’m just tired.”

“Both,” Rekha said. She turned to Livia with a knowing look, unmistakable even under the plastic domino mask.

“I wasn’t—” Livia started, cheeks hot.

“He does that to everyone,” Rekha said. “It’s like a reflex. Like how pigeons coo.”

Livia buried her face in her hands. “Pigeons don’t have abs.”

Rekha patted her shoulder sympathetically. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

“Welcome to Gotham,” Carlos said.

By the end of her first week, Livia had memorized her schedule down to the minute: clock in at 9:45 PM, mop the back corner no one used, prep the fries, serve half-asleep construction workers and drunk teenagers until early morning, then start on cleanup. Between classes, assignments, and this job, sleep was more of a polite suggestion than an actual activity.

During lulls, she sat in the back booth to sketch and catch up on coursework, tapping her pencil against the napkin holder, wondering what her parents would think if they could see her now. Maybe they’d call it a phase. Maybe they’d say she’d thrown away her future.

There was a part of her that kept expecting to wake up back in Metropolis. But no, it hadn’t been a dream when she saw Red Robin on a motorcycle, waving at her out the drive-thru window. And yes, that really was Spoiler apologizing for tracking mud and glitter all over the freshly mopped floor. And no, there was no need to call the police, because that kid with a sword was just Robin arguing with Mark about the tofu options on the kids’ menu.

One by one, the brightly-colored menagerie of Bats came and went like clockwork.

There was Robin, who always got one of the Bat-Mite veggie meals and insisted he didn’t want the toy. Always, without fail, Rekha would look at him dead in the eye and drop the toy in the box anyway, and always, without fail, Robin would click his tongue, grab the box, and stomp out without another word.

On other nights, there was Signal, who didn’t come in often—according to Carlos, he usually came by during the day—but was absurdly polite when he did, and usually arm-in-arm with Batgirl.

Sometimes Red Robin and Spoiler would sit in the corner booth, scrolling on their phones like any tired regular. Livia would bring over their tray, fries generously Jokerized, and Red Robin would nod with a smile while Spoiler sang along to whatever pop song was playing over the speakers.

And of course, there was Nightwing, who would sometimes stop by just to eat at the counter, chatting with Rekha about whatever gossip had made the local news while Livia refilled ketchup bottles. On slow nights, he’d even get Carlos to come out of the kitchen, asking about Carlos’s husband and kids, and Mark would have to ply him with the restaurant’s collectible cups to get him to leave.

“Oh, you’re from the bright side of the bay!” Nightwing said to Livia one night, when the conversation wandered. “How’s the sun over there?”

Livia felt something in her chest tighten.

“Still intact, last I checked,” she managed to say, before Mark thankfully emerged from the back and shooed him off the counter.

On one memorable occasion, the drive-thru headset crackled to life at around midnight, though the monitors showed no one was outside the building. Just as Livia started to wonder if the intercom was haunted—if maybe Mark hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said the milkshake machine was cursed—she heard a robotic voice placing an order for half a dozen boxes of Robin Nuggets and Night-Wings. Fifteen minutes later, Batgirl swung by. Literally swung by—she landed on the roof and startled the crew by dangling upside down out the window like an actual bat.

“Order for Oracle?” she said.

As Livia handed over the takeout bags, Batgirl stared at her, assessing, expression unreadable under the cowl. She was silent for so long that Livia felt her pulse kick up.

“You’re new,” Batgirl said finally. Her voice was soft, but had that edge of quiet authority that made Livia’s spine straighten.

“Yeah,” Livia said, too quickly. “Four weeks now.”

Batgirl nodded. “You know self-defense?”

“Uh . . . no, not really.”

“Want to?”

“Don’t encourage her,” Carlos said from the grill.

Batgirl ignored him. “I offer lessons.”

Livia scraped her words together. “Like, free lessons?”

“Yes.”

“She says that to everyone,” Carlos warned. “Last time, she almost broke Rekha’s wrist.”

“It was a learning experience,” Batgirl said.

Rekha called from the counter, “I learned not to let her teach me things!”

Batgirl cocked her head—Livia got the distinct impression she was smiling under the mask—then took her food and disappeared into the night.

Livia had lived in Gotham for precisely one month and four days before she got a job at BatBurger. Rent was due. Tuition was due. Everything was due. But the pay was decent, and her classes at Gotham University didn’t leave time for much else.

It wasn’t glamorous, but it beat living back in Metropolis, where her brother still sent passive-aggressive emails about “realistic career choices.” Livia sent none back.

Her family hadn’t taken the move well, to say the least. They had a plan for her life: business degree, internship, a cushy but boring desk job, then marriage to someone equally boring but well-dressed. All the makings of a safe future in Metropolis high society.

Livia’s plan was: don’t suffocate.

So now here she was, spending her nights dressed in a cheap Wonder Woman costume, serving burgers and fries with seasoning named after a domestic terrorist.

“Why Gotham?” her mother had demanded during their last call, perfectly manicured voice sharp as glass. “You could’ve transferred anywhere else. It’s a cesspool.”

Livia had said something about wanting to see how real people lived, about wanting to make her own way in the world. Her mother had laughed, brittle and cold. Her father had simply stopped taking her calls.

When she’d turned down the internship to switch majors at Gotham U, her father hadn’t shouted. He’d just looked at her, his face colder than she’d ever seen it, and said, “You’ll come back once you realize there’s nothing there.”

There was plenty here, Livia thought now. Mostly rats and the faint smell of frying oil that clung in her hair. But there was also independence, and money that didn’t come with a body count, and a future that didn’t involve quarterly reports and corporate philanthropy that only existed for tax breaks.

Sure, maybe sometimes, when she lay awake in her shoebox apartment, so very different from the home she’d left behind, she wondered if she’d made a huge mistake. But other times, when she looked around at the city through the restaurant’s bulletproof glass, she thought maybe this was exactly where she needed to be.

Even if it came with a side of probable mugging.

Somehow, impossibly, Rekha was right: Livia did get used to it. Not just the flirting—though she was learning to brace herself against Nightwing’s more ridiculous quips—but the steady absurdity that came with BatBurger’s masked clientele.

Red Hood, though, was an exception.

He came in as often as the others, but Livia made herself scarce whenever he did, retreating to the kitchen with Carlos or pretending to rearrange the condiment station when she was lucky enough to not be manning the register. She had heard enough stories about him to be wary, stories so gruesome they’d made their way across the bay. Those months he’d spent spilling blood on the streets, fighting against mob bosses and gangsters and Batman himself . . . the dead bodies he’d left in his wake . . .

Never mind that Red Hood had apparently traded his criminal empire for the red bat on his chest—Livia would rather be safe than sorry.

Rekha didn’t have such qualms. If anything, Rekha—sharp, no-nonsense Rekha, who didn’t even bat an eye at Nightwing’s come-ons—smiled a little wider, turned a little pinker, whenever Red Hood approached the counter.

“Mark never said I couldn’t flirt with him,” Rekha said defensively, when Livia caught her slipping a napkin with her number inside his takeout bag.

“But why would you?” Livia said, incredulous. “He has more guns on him than a military convoy!”

“So what? Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the arms under that jacket.”

“I was too busy trying not to have a heart attack.”

Rekha rolled her eyes. “Come on, he didn’t even seem mad.”

Red Hood never seemed anything, was the thing. His helmet made it impossible to tell, and his voice modulator made him sound too flat, too neutral. Talking to him was like talking to a brick wall.

A very tall, very broad-shouldered, very armed brick wall.

Livia cast an expectant glance at Carlos, who just shrugged.

“Hey, so long as the guy keeps tipping, I’m not complaining,” he said.

That, Livia couldn’t argue with. Red Hood never put anything less than a hundred in the tip jar, no matter how little he ordered.

Not that it made him any less intimidating. Customers stiffened in their seats, sitting straight as a blade each time he came in. Sometimes Livia found herself holding her breath, exhaling only when the door swung shut behind his retreating back.

The first time she’d had to take his order, her voice had come out an octave too high, and she’d wanted nothing more than to crawl into the walk-in freezer. The words had been halfway up her throat—Do you want to Jokerize those fries?—before her brain slammed on the brakes, and Mark’s voice from orientation hit her like divine intervention.

“Don’t ask Red Hood if he wants his fries Jokerized,” he’d said grimly. “He does, but he’s not gonna say it. Just do it. Don’t mention it.”

Livia hadn’t asked what would happen if she did. After all those stories about decapitated heads in duffel bags, she wasn’t eager to find out.

October crept in slowly, under the weight of grey skies and cooling air. Midterms followed close behind. Livia was at the register, wiping down the counter and trying to remember if she’d submitted her portfolio or just dreamt that she did.

The restaurant was mostly empty—a tired nurse, a few truckers, one drunk guy asleep over his burger—when the bell rang and Red Robin walked in. His cape was torn, and he had one arm clutched awkwardly at his side.

“Evening,” he said, voice too casual. “Can I get a BatBurger Deluxe?”

It took Livia a second to realize he was bleeding. Not much, just a thin line down his arm where the suit was torn. But still.

That was blood.

That was actual blood where blood shouldn’t be.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

He looked down at his arm. “It’s fine.”

Was it? It didn’t look fine. Nerves buzzing, Livia glanced behind her, but Rekha was too busy refilling the soda fountain to notice her silent plea for help.

Out of habit, Livia punched the order in. She found herself slipping into the rhythm—bun, patty, cheese, wrap, bag—even as her thoughts tangled into knots.

Because Mark had said to press the button under the counter if any the Bats were bleeding, but . . . how much bleeding?

Did a nosebleed count? A paper cut? Or did he only mean stab wounds? What if there was, like, a minimum blood requirement Livia didn’t know about? If she pressed the button for something minor, would Batman show up to yell at her? Would she get fired for overreacting?

Because it didn’t look like Red Robin was going to keel over. He was still standing. Talking. Ordering a cheeseburger.

Before Livia could make up her mind, Rekha silently brushed past her, calm as ever, and pressed the button under the counter.

There was a soft click.

Red Robin sighed. “Seriously? It’s barely a scratch.”

“Sorry, champ,” Rekha said, as she returned to the soda fountain like nothing happened. “Policy.”

He muttered something under his breath about how she didn’t sound very sorry, took his tray, and went to sit down.

Two minutes later, a shadow darkened the door, and Batman stepped inside.

Livia felt her stomach drop. Someone gasped, loud enough that the drunk guy by the window startled awake. Every customer in the building seemed to freeze in their seats, some openly gaping, others pointedly looking away.

But Rekha didn’t even look up from the soda fountain. She just said, “Spoiler hasn’t paid her tab yet,” as Carlos popped his head out of the kitchen to give Batman a little wave.

Batman grunted and nodded at them, before he turned, with his hands on his hips, to Red Robin. The two exchanged a silent look that felt like an entire argument condensed into one heartbeat.

Then Red Robin stood, shot an exasperated look at Rekha, and followed Batman out the door, their capes billowing behind them.

Livia could only stare. For all that Mark had warned her about Batman’s kids, he hadn’t said anything about Batman himself. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that she hadn’t actually considered the possibility of seeing him outside of news clips. Of seeing him here, in the flesh, like this was just any other average Tuesday night.

The stories that had reached Metropolis had never been able to decide on what Batman really was. If he was some sort of living shadow or a cursed demon or something beyond this world. If he was even real at all.

And now—well.

Now Livia had her answer. Batman was . . . just a guy.

Granted, he was a guy who knew at least two dozen ways to incapacitate her, but he was still very much a guy. Not an alien or a supernatural cryptid, but some middle-aged man in a bat costume. The kind of guy who did the same disappointed dad pose she’d seen her own father do a thousand times before.

It was all terribly anticlimactic.

“Does this . . . happen a lot?” Livia asked hesitantly.

“Often enough,” Rekha said, in the same tone she’d used to explain fire safety and where to find the mop bucket.

“Huh,” Livia said. She went back to wiping the counter.

On the Thursday before Thanksgiving, the Bats decided to eat in.

They almost never did. Usually, they came in fast—order, leave a generous tip, then vanish into the night to punch some goons or crash through a skylight or do some other daring, newsworthy feat. Tonight, though, they had taken over the biggest booth near the window, trays spread out, fries disappearing by the handful.

Nightwing was laughing at something Spoiler said, head tipped back, perfect teeth glinting under the lights. Red Robin snorted soda through his nose. Robin had a tablet out, half-eating, half-doing whatever it was kid vigilantes his age did on their screens.

Livia tried not to stare. She’d gotten better at that. Mostly.

But it still hit her as weirdly human, watching them share fries and argue about sauces. She’d seen them fight crime on live feeds and news reports, and now Spoiler was teasing Robin about stealing onion rings. It was ridiculous and domestic and, for some reason, it made her throat ache.

Livia tore her gaze away and busied herself with cleaning the soda fountain.

The restaurant had been emptying out since midnight, just a slow drip of takeout orders and the hum of the fryer to keep her from falling asleep behind the counter. Most of the regulars had already left for the holidays, gone with their families or off to somewhere warmer.

Even her coworkers had plans. Rekha was going to spend the weekend with some old high school friends in New York. Carlos was having relatives over from Blüdhaven.

Meanwhile, Livia’s phone kept buzzing in her apron pocket, full of unread messages and group chats she was trying and failing to ignore. Classmates planning Friendsgiving dinners, others organizing presentations. One of them asked if anyone wanted to meet for “just one more review session before break.”

She wasn’t sure if she’d even make it home before sunrise, much less have the energy for studying.

There was another burst of laughter from the booth. Nightwing was talking with his hands, miming something that made Red Robin snicker, while Robin scowled deeper and swatted at him.

I used to have that.

The thought slipped in before Livia could stop it. She tried to shake it off, but the sound of their laughter cut through the static hum of the kitchen, hitting something in her chest she hadn’t realized was still sore.

She’d grown up with noise like that. Family dinners, holiday music. Her mother’s perfectly curated table settings, crystal and silverware and arguments polished to a shine. All gone now, left behind in that too big house across the bay, with her father’s awards and her brother’s certificates and their blatant disappointment.

The last text from home was a single line: We just don’t understand your choices anymore.

Anger crackled beneath her skin. Her choices. Like she’d gone out of her way to betray them by wanting something different.

Livia tightened her grip on the rag and scrubbed the soda fountain with mechanical focus. The rhythmic squeak of cloth on plastic was almost soothing.

But then the fryer popped behind her, and she flinched hard enough she almost knocked over a bucket of ice.

Rekha, who was refilling the napkin dispensers, gave her a look. “You good?”

“Fine,” Livia said immediately. “Just—long day.”

Rekha raised an eyebrow but didn’t push it. “Take a break before you pass out. I got this.”

“We close in an hour.”

“Perfect timing,” Rekha said dryly.

Livia hesitated, glancing toward the booth again. Nightwing caught her eye and waved, flashing that impossible movie-star grin. She waved back out of reflex, just as Spoiler leaned around him to beam and call out, “Hey, you guys still have the pumpkin milkshake thing?”

“Uh—yeah,” Livia answered. “Seasonal item.”

“Awesome! One for me, and make it a double whip if you can. He”—Spoiler jerked a thumb at Red Robin, who made a face at her—“keeps telling me I won’t finish it. I’m proving a point.”

“Sure,” Livia said, because what else could she say to that?

She moved toward the register to key in the order, but Rekha got there first.

“Go,” Rekha insisted, shooing Livia away. “I’ll hold the fort.”

Livia mumbled something that might have been thanks, grabbed her jacket, and slipped out the side door before she could change her mind.

Outside, the air was sharp enough to bite. Livia leaned against the brick wall beside the restaurant, digging through her pockets for the lighter and the half-crumpled cigarette pack she’d bought last week on a whim.

It took a few tries before the flame caught.

She didn’t smoke. Not really. She’d tried it once in high school to impress a girl, and she’d spent the next ten minutes coughing up her dignity. Since then, the only times she’d picked up a cigarette were at parties, when everyone had one between their fingers and joining in seemed like the thing to do.

There was no one to impress now. But there was a group project due tomorrow. Two of her classmates had already stopped replying to emails. The essay for her literature elective was still half a page short. Finals were creeping closer. And now Thanksgiving—another reminder that everyone else was going home to something, and she wasn’t.

The first drag made her cough, the smoke stinging her throat. She grimaced and tried again.

Somewhere above her, the neon BatBurger sign buzzed and sputtered, painting the alley an oily yellow. For a while, it was just her and the sound of the city: the wail of a distant siren, the low rumble of a passing train, the quiet scratch of wind over gravel.

Livia let the smoke curl out in a sigh, watching it disappear into the night.

“Those things’ll kill you,” a low, mechanical voice called from above.

She nearly screamed.

“Jesus Christ—”

“Not quite,” the voice said.

Livia spun toward the sound.

Red Hood sat on the fire escape a few stories up, legs dangling casually over the edge.

Her heart jumped. She hadn’t heard him land or climb or whatever he did to get there. He might’ve been there the whole time—she’d been too distracted to notice.

“Oh, you—uh,” she said, the words catching. “You scared me. Sir.”

He leaned forward, helmet gleaming faintly under the neon lights. “I didn’t peg you for a smoker.”

She felt her face warm. “I’m not. I don’t really . . . I mean, I’m on break.”

He made a noise that could have been a laugh or just static. “Didn’t say I was judging. I used to smoke too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. When I was a kid.”

That threw her. She couldn’t imagine any version of him as a kid. It just didn’t compute.

“You were—what, twelve and buying cigarettes?” she said. It was the least embarrassing thing her brain could manage.

“Something like that,” he said, like it wasn’t the weirdest confession ever. “My dad made me quit.”

Livia didn’t know what to do with that, so she looked down at the cigarette instead. She started to put it out, suddenly self-conscious, but his voice stopped her.

“You got another one?”

She looked up again. “What?”

“I haven’t smoked in years,” he said, shrugging. “Figure it’s a good night for bad habits.”

Before she could answer, he dropped from the fire escape as easily as stepping off a curb, landing with unsettling quiet.

Livia stiffened instinctively. It shouldn’t have been possible for him to move like that, graceful and ghostlike. Not for someone with his bulk and all that armor.

But there he was. Red Hood stood in front of her, only a few feet away and without a counter to separate them.

A car passed on the main street, headlights washing briefly over the alley. For a second, the red of his helmet looked almost alive, a flicker of color against the gray brick.

After a beat, she fumbled for her pack and held it out. Red Hood took a cigarette, twirling it between gloved fingers. Then, without ceremony, he reached up, popped the helmet loose with a quiet hiss, and lifted it off.

Her breath stuttered.

Livia wasn’t sure what she expected. Scars, maybe, or some hardened veteran type. Some grizzled older guy with a weathered face and a thousand-yard stare. But the guy under the helmet was startlingly young. He couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than her, with messy black hair, a sharp jaw, and sharper cheekbones. Handsome, in an intimidating but almost boyish sort of way.

Red Hood caught her staring. His lips quirked up in a smile. “Disappointed?”

“No,” she blurted, then added lamely, “I just . . . I didn’t expect you to actually have a face under there.”

That earned her a soft huff of amusement. He leaned back against the wall beside her, lighting his cigarette off hers. For a moment, as the orange glow flickered across his face, he was close enough that she could see gray strands threaded through the curls falling over his forehead.

“You’re not . . . with them?” Livia asked before she could think better of it, jerking her head toward the restaurant.

Red Hood took a drag, exhaling into the night air. “With who?”

“The—uh. The others. Inside.”

“They’re fine without me.”

That wasn’t the answer Livia had hoped to hear. She took another drag of her cigarette, trying to play it cool. “So you’re just . . . hanging out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said easily. “Why aren’t you inside? It’s freezing.”

“I’m on break.”

“Yeah, you said that.” He shot her a sidelong glance. “Bad night?”

“Is there another kind in Gotham?”

He actually chuckled at that. A low, warm sound that made her heart give a wild kick.

Livia exhaled smoke, pretending that the sight of him didn’t still set her on edge. She wasn’t sure what to do—if she should stand there, if she should leave. You didn’t just chat with Red Hood. Not like with Nightwing or Spoiler or any of the other Bats. Not unless you wanted to end up on the wrong side of a headline.

But nothing about his face, even with the domino mask over his eyes, matched the brutal reputation she’d heard from her coworkers during graveyard lulls or from the gossip whispered around campus. He didn’t look like a guy who ran the city’s underworld when he felt like it and shot people when he didn’t.

Then again, she didn’t think middle schoolers should stay up past midnight to fight crime either, so what did she know?

Livia forced her voice steady. “It’s just school stuff. And . . . life stuff.”

“Ah,” Red Hood said knowingly. “The usual existential spiral. Doesn’t look like nicotine’s your go-to coping mechanism.”

“Yeah, well. Coffee stopped working.”

He hummed. It could’ve meant agreement or disinterest, she couldn’t tell.

“You’re not going home for the holidays?” he asked.

She looked away, arms crossed. The chill bit at her fingers. “Not this year.”

“Bet that went over well with your folks.”

“Nothing’s gone over well with them since I got here.”

“You have to admit, Gotham for Metropolis is one hell of a downgrade,” he said wryly.

She let out an involuntary snort. “Rent’s cheaper, though. Not that they care about that.”

Livia could have left it there—should have left it there, probably. But the cold night and the thought of that unfinished essay and her mother’s text all twisted inside her, piling up into something restless and sour behind her ribs.

“They don’t approve of pretty much everything I’m doing,” she continued, the words tumbling faster now that she’d started. “My parents wanted me to study finance. My dad is—he’s on some board. One of those big corporate types. But I wanted—” She hesitated. “Something different. Something mine.”

There was a pause, long enough that she almost regretted saying so much. But then Red Hood said, softly, “Sounds like a good reason to leave.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. It does.”

Livia bit the inside of her cheek. “It doesn’t always feel like it.”

“What do you mean?”

“They said it was a waste, being here. My friends back home—they’ve got internships lined up, jobs waiting for them when they graduate. I could’ve had that too. But now I’m here, barely scraping through the semester, and I just—I can’t help but think what if—”

Her voice cracked. She hadn’t meant it to. She took another shaky drag to cover it.

It startled her, how easily it came out. She didn’t talk like this—not to coworkers, not to classmates. Certainly not to masked vigilantes.

But the Bats’ laughter still echoed in her ears, overlapping with old memories she didn’t want to replay. The dinners she’d missed. The calls she hadn’t returned. The brittle silence that had filled her parents’ living room the night she told them she wasn’t going back to Metropolis University that fall.

The confession crawled its way up her throat before she could think to swallow. “Sometimes I think maybe they were right.”

“They weren’t,” Red Hood said, immediate and firm.

Livia gave a dry laugh. “You don’t even know what I’m studying.”

“Community arts.”

She looked at him, surprised. “How did you . . .”

He shrugged. “It’s in your file.”

“My file,” she repeated, baffled.

Red Hood flicked ash onto the concrete, head tilted. “What, Mark didn’t tell you? Red Robin did a background check. He does it with everyone.”

Mark did tell her, come to think of it. She just hadn’t known what to make of it at the time, unsure whether or not to take his warnings to heart. She didn’t know what to feel about it now, that she’d apparently had a stalker for who knew how long and she hadn’t even noticed.

Curiosity got the better of her. “What did he find?”

“Your father is Dr. William Lowell. He’s on LexCorp’s board of directors and runs R&D for their pharmaceutical division. Your mother, Leonor, is a senior legal consultant—handles their patents, NDAs, that sort of thing. And your brother, Logan, he’s an up-and-coming exec, already halfway up their corporate ladder. You, Olivia Lowell . . .”

Livia felt color rise in her cheeks. His voice was maddeningly even, his expression so perfectly blank that he might as well have been wearing his helmet. She couldn’t tell if he was pitying her or judging her or if he simply didn’t care one way or another.

Red Hood took another slow drag and exhaled. The smoke curled upward, pale against the dark.

“You were supposed to be right up there with him,” he said. “Guess LexCorp’s kind of a family business, huh?”

“Guess so,” she muttered. She stared at the glowing end of her cigarette, unsure why she was still talking to him. “Sorry. That was—I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. It’s just . . . this time of year, you know? Makes you think about the people who aren’t calling you.”

“Family’s complicated. You can love ‘em and still need to walk away.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“You could say that.”

There was something in his tone—something quiet, almost wistful—that made her glance at him again. He was looking up at the narrow slice of sky above them, at the thick layer of clouds catching city light.

Then he said, absently, “I always wanted to go to college.”

Livia blinked, startled. “Really?”

“Had a few ideas. Didn’t make it that far.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say life went sideways,” he said, his gaze still fixed upward. “And by the time it stopped spinning, I’d already missed my chance.”

She frowned. “For college?”

“For being normal.” He let out a cough of a laugh. “For—hell, I don’t know. The boring stuff. The good kind of boring.”

“Who says you missed it? You could still go.”

But as she said it, it sounded unreal even to her own ears. Red Hood—crime lord and occasional vigilante, with all his guns and his weapons and his armor, that Red Hood—actually going to college? Try as she might, she couldn’t picture it, couldn’t picture him without the mask. She couldn’t imagine any of the Bats without theirs either. She knew, logically, that they probably had day jobs or something—lives outside of their nightly escapades—but it sounded as surreal as the thought of seeing one of her teachers in the wild.

As if sensing her train of thought, Red Hood glanced down at her, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Sure. I’ll put down ‘Hood, Red’ on the application.”

He said it so flippantly, so dismissively, that Livia felt a surge of annoyance. “Well, why not? What would you have studied?”

He didn’t answer right away, and as the silence stretched, she wondered, with no small amount of alarm, if she’d pushed too far. Though she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt the weight of his attention—felt some quiet change that she couldn’t pinpoint to anything on his face.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said at last. “Some of us run out of chances for that sort of thing.”

There it was again, that soft, rueful voice. Livia wanted to say something, wanted to tell him he was wrong, but she couldn’t find the words. The wind picked up before she could, and she fought back a shiver, feeling gooseflesh ripple across her arms beneath her thin jacket.

Red Hood noticed. He straightened, stubbed out his cigarette against his gauntlet, and tossed it neatly into the trash can beside the door.

“You should head back inside before you freeze,” he said, the moment of tension—if that was what it was—shaken off like a dusting of snow. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“Anytime,” she said automatically, then realized how stupid that sounded. “I mean—uh—not that I—”

He was already moving, stepping back toward the fire escape as he slid his helmet back on. The click of the seal made something about him seem distant again. She hadn’t realized he’d seemed less so—less terrifying, less remote—until that expressionless face looked back at her.

“For what it’s worth,” Red Hood said, voice returning to that low, unreadable rasp, “you made the right call. Leaving. Doing your own thing. Even if it hurts like hell.”

Livia swallowed hard. Her heart was so heavy it felt bruised against her ribs. “You really think so?”

“Sometimes you have to burn a few bridges just to see who tries to follow.”

She laughed despite herself, a quick startled sound that felt too loud in the alley.

“No offense,” she said, stubbing out her own cigarette against the wall, “but coming from you, that kind of sounds like a threat.”

He made that strange sound again, something that might have been a laugh or a grunt or just noise, distorted through the modulator. And then, between one breath and the next, he was gone, vanishing upward into the dark, silent as a ghost.

Livia stood there for a moment, the cold biting at her fingers, the faint smell of smoke lingering in the air. Then she pulled her jacket tighter and went back inside.