Chapter Text
London, 23:47.
The rain fell in that peculiar way only London rain knows how to fall — not a downpour, not a drizzle, but a steady, whispering insistence against the tall sash windows of the secure flat in Southwark. Asha Davidson sat cross-legged on the worn Persian rug she had dragged back from one of her last assignments in Delhi, the one her handler had pretended not to notice. The flat smelled faintly of sandalwood incense she had lit earlier and the metallic tang of the rain slipping through the cracked skylight she kept forgetting to have fixed.
Her acoustic guitar rested against her thigh, the warm mahogany still humming from the last chord she had played — a slow, minor riff that always settled the static in her blood after a long day of simulations. Her fingers, callused in all the right places from years of strings and far sharper things, traced idle patterns along the fretboard. The dark straight fall of her hair curtained one side of her face, still damp from the shower, and when she tilted her head the overhead lamp caught the deep brown of her eyes — the colour of strong Assam tea held up to sunlight, edged with something sharper, something that had seen too many fires.
The secure tablet on the low coffee table chimed once. Then twice.
Asha’s gaze flicked to it without moving her head. The screen glowed a soft, institutional blue. IMF encryption, level seven. She had seen that shade of blue far too many times to pretend it ever brought good news.
With a quiet sigh she set the guitar aside, rose in one fluid motion — the kind of motion that came from muscle memory trained on rooftops and training mats in Themyscira — and crossed the room barefoot. The wooden floorboards were cool beneath her feet. She tapped the acceptance sequence, and the tablet’s camera flickered to life.
The face that appeared was not her usual handler.
Bruce Wayne.
Even through the encrypted feed the man managed to look both exhausted and immaculate, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw doing nothing to soften the steel in his eyes. The background was the Batcave, of course — she could just make out the edge of the giant penny and the low thrum of servers that never slept.
“Miss Davidson,” he said, voice clipped, the accent polished Gotham money layered over years of Oxford. British enough to pass, but she had always heard the American underneath. “I won’t waste your time with pleasantries.”
Asha folded her arms, one hip cocked. “You never do.”
A flicker of something — irritation? reluctant respect? — crossed his face before it smoothed away. “Then I’ll be direct. Jason Todd is in Monaco. Red Bull Racing has him under contract for the rest of the season. Publicly he’s their golden boy: champagne, casinos, podiums. Privately…” Bruce’s jaw tightened. “He’s slipping. Again.”
The name landed like a blade between her ribs.
Jason Todd.
Asha felt the old, familiar flare behind her sternum — half rage, half something she refused to name. She had crossed paths with the Red Hood three times before. Each encounter had left scorch marks. He shot first, asked questions never. She preferred silence and precision. They had never agreed on anything except that the other was an absolute pain in the arse.
She kept her voice level. “And this concerns me because…?”
“Because the Syndicate has eyes on him. They believe he’s vulnerable. And because I need someone who can keep him breathing long enough for him to be useful.” Bruce leaned forward, the feed sharpening on the scar that bisected his left eyebrow. “Your primary objective is protection. Shadow him. Intervene only when necessary. Do not engage him directly unless absolutely required. He cannot know you’re there.”
Asha let out a short, humourless laugh. “You want me to babysit the Red Hood without him noticing. In Monaco. During race week.”
“I want you to do your job,” Bruce replied, flat. “The same way you did in Marrakesh. The same way you did in Prague.”
She remembered Prague. The way the snow had tasted of iron and the way Jason had walked straight into a trap because he was too angry to see the wires. She had pulled him out then, too, from the shadows, never letting him see her face. He still didn’t know it had been her.
The tablet pinged again. A secondary file unlocked.
Bruce continued, “There is, however, a complication.”
Of course there was.
“Tomorrow morning the Syndicate will move a relic. An artefact. Ancient. Non-lethal in the conventional sense, but capable of… influencing decisions on a scale we cannot allow. The Joker, Riddler, Bane, Poison Ivy and Dent are all converging on Monaco to claim it. If they succeed, the power balance in every intelligence network from here to Hong Kong shifts permanently.”
Asha’s fingers tightened on her arms.
“And Jason,” Bruce said, quieter now, “is already inside their perimeter. Whether he realises it or not.”
The silence stretched. Rain drummed harder against the glass.
Asha stared at the man who had once dragged her out of the ashes of her parents’ house and handed her to Selina with the quiet instruction, “Teach her how to land on her feet.” She owed him everything and nothing at all.
“So the protection detail,” she said slowly, “is no longer solo.”
“No,” Bruce confirmed. “When the artifact surfaces, you will make contact. You will work together. No arguments. No grandstanding. No bullets unless there is no other choice — and even then, only the ones he carries.” A pause. “I trust you to keep him in line.”
Asha’s smile was small, sharp, and entirely without warmth. “You trust me to do the impossible, then.”
“Precisely.”
The screen flickered. A new line of text scrolled across it in crisp white letters:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is twofold.
Protect Jason Todd.
Retrieve the relic before the Syndicate weaponises it.
This message will self-destruct in ten seconds.
Asha watched the countdown tick down, the familiar ritual almost comforting. At zero the tablet emitted a soft hiss, the screen blooming into harmless static before going dark. She exhaled through her nose, the sound loud in the quiet flat.
She crossed back to the guitar, lifted it, and played a single, ringing note that vibrated through the strings and into her bones.
Jason Todd.
The last time she had seen him — really seen him — he had been bleeding in an alley in Gotham, helmet cracked, laughing through a split lip while she pressed gauze to his side and told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he got himself killed she would drag him back just to kill him again. He had called her “Princess” in that drawl that made her want to punch him and kiss him in equal measure. She had walked away without answering.
And now she was being sent to stand between him and the worst Gotham had to offer.
Asha set the guitar down, moved to the wardrobe, and began laying out clothes suitable for Monaco in May: silk camisoles that looked innocent and hid knives, tailored trousers that allowed full range of motion, the diamond necklace Selina had given her on her eighteenth birthday — thin, elegant, and strong enough to garrotte a man twice her size if needed.
She caught her reflection in the darkened window. Rain traced silver paths down the glass, fracturing her image into pieces. Dark hair, brown eyes, the faint scar along her left collarbone that only showed when the light hit just so.
She touched the place where the scar began, remembering flames and smoke and small hands reaching for a door that would never open again.
Then she straightened, rolled her shoulders, and let the mask of calm precision slide into place.
“Fine,” she murmured to the empty flat, voice low and edged with that competitive steel that had earned her every mark on her record. “You want me to protect the idiot? I’ll protect the idiot.”
A small, dangerous smile curved her lips.
“And if he makes my job difficult…”
She picked up the guitar case — the one with the false bottom and the compartment perfectly sized for a suppressed Glock — and snapped it shut.
“…then he can explain himself to Bruce when I drag his arrogant arse back in one piece.”
Outside, the rain kept falling.
Inside, Asha Davidson began packing for Monaco.
And somewhere across the Channel, Jason Todd was probably winning another poker hand, flashing that infuriating grin, completely unaware that the one person who hated him almost as much as he hated being controlled had just been ordered to keep him alive.
The game, as they say, was on.