Chapter Text
The Breakup happens not with a bang but with a whimper. There are no shouting matches or thrown dishes or passionate declarations of hatred or love. There’s no blame or accusation, no meager excuses offered with tears. In fact, neither of you talk about anything at all until the End.
It started as a missed date—Raincheck, please, Jason would write, texting you with the notepad emoji, the one with the pencil; you’d thought it was cute until you thought it wasn’t enough—then two then three. You canceled the reservation for your birthday dinner when Parademons came in through a Boom Tube in Central City. You weren’t able to get him a Christmas gift on time because you were running support evac in Metropolis when Luthor’s experiment went awry. Neither of you were even on the same planet for your anniversary.
The worst of it all is that there’s no single date or event to pinpoint the Start of the End. There’s nothing you can blame or redo or fix. There’s only loneliness and then nothing at all, the cracks in your relationship growing into fissures too large to ignore.
After six months of dinners gone cold and listless pondering, you catch him on a relatively calm night (by Gotham standards, at least; there’s no active breakout or crime spree, just a routine check-up on the city). You were coming back in from patrol. He was getting ready to go out.
“I don’t know if this is working out,” you say. You stand in the kitchen nursing a cup of rapidly cooling chamomile tea.
“The new comm?” he asks. Jason doesn’t look up from where he’s slipping knives into sleeves, guns into holsters. He’s a pragmatist in practice; his suit is entirely practical, not a single space wasted. “Yeah, I keep getting this static or something every time Babs tries to switch the line. It’s kind of annoying.”
“No, I mean this.” Your grip clenches the mug. “Us.”
He looks up at you. He hasn’t put the domino or the helmet on yet, so you get the full effect of his stare. His eyes are otherworldly, brilliantly green, like shining emeralds under curated museum lights or lush, rolling hills of grass in untouched prairieland.
In the early days, the two of you used to spend Sunday mornings lounging around in your bed. The sheets tangled between your legs, your head resting on his chest. You used to lay there, listening to the rhythmic da-dum, da-dum of his heartbeat, comforted by the fact he was safe and with you. He’d turn your face up to his and gently press his lips onto yours.
You would look into his eyes, the love there. You’ve never seen a color like it before.
You worry you’ll never see it again.
“Oh,” he says.
“It’s just— I think we’re too busy. We’ve been too busy for a long while. I mean, we aren’t even in the same state most of the time, and I can’t remember the last time the two of us had, like, three hours together, just the two of us. Whenever we see each other, we’re at work or talking about work or something like that. It’s important for us, as individuals, to have something more than what we do, and I think we deserve that.”
It comes out of you fast like water gushing out of a leak in a broken dam. You ramble slightly more than you’d intended, but you have to say it now while you have the courage because you won’t be able to get it out otherwise. You don’t want to let Jason go; you can’t stay with him either.
He’s silent for a beat too long, so you give him a gentle prod just to be sure he heard you. “Jay?”
He blinks. Once, not too long ago, you would reach out and brush his face with your knuckles the same way his long eyelashes do. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay?” you repeat. That could mean anything.
“Okay,” he says again. “You’re right.”
You’ve never dated anyone else before, much less broken up with someone, but you’re not sure it’s supposed to go like this. In the movies, there’s more tension, more passion. More joie de vivre that you’re not sure either of you have anymore after years of tackling Gotham’s dirt.
Foolishly, you wonder for half a second if it’s because what you had wasn’t worth fighting for in the first place, but you push that thought aside almost immediately. That can’t be right, because despite everything, you’re still in love with Jason Todd. Against all odds, you know he still loves you too.
But sometimes love isn’t enough.
He quickly finishes suiting up then pushes your apartment window open. Half inside, half out, he turns back on instinct, jerking like a laggy video game, and looks at you again. The muscle memory of calling back a teasing I love you, honey is still written in his bones. The impulse to run over to the window and say goodbye is there in yours.
One last time, for old time’s sake, you go through the routine.
With soft, padding footsteps, you walk to him and hold the rigid hardware of his mask in your two hands. You ghost your lips over its forehead. “I love you, too. Stay safe.”
You’re glad you can’t see his face. It breaks your heart to break his heart.
Jason looks at you for a beat too long then, as if sense has overruled him, he turns to the Gotham skyline and goes away.
“Sparrow, on your six.”
Oracle’s voice crackles in your ear through the earpiece, and on her command, you quickly turn. You move on instinct, your fist moving before your mind can command it and landing on Maroni’s henchman. His nose breaks under your fist, and he stumbles back, clutching his face. You slam the hilt of your dagger down on his head to knock him unconscious.
Afterwards, you reach up and fiddle with the earpiece. It really was less comfortable than the old one. You’d have to send in a tech request to get yours refitted.
It’s your ninth anniversary as one of Gotham’s (in)famous vigilantes, but it’s just like any other night for you. Suit up, knock out a couple of bad guys; rinse, repeat. Another dusk-to-dawn shift of running around rooftops and making sure nothing’s too out of order until you scramble back home, your back aching from the somersaults and your brain lagging half a second behind your body from the lack of sleep.
It’s been two months since you broke up with Jason, and you’re still not over him.
These days, you’re not in any hurry for your shifts to end. All that’s waiting for you is a cold, empty bed and sitcom reruns that play on loop until you pass out from exhaustion. Once a week, you’ll decide to treat yourself to Chinese food packed in slightly-leaky cardboard containers and gorge yourself on that instead of microwaveable meals. You spend your days in a listless haze.
One of the henchmen is more daring than the others, lifting a handgun and firing a couple of badly aimed shots towards you. “Where’s your pal?” he snarls.
You easily dodge. “Got a bunch of friends, bud. Gotta be more specific than that.”
He huffs a laugh, cocky in the way people who know they’ve already lost are. “Your boyfriend,” he says tauntingly. “Red Hood. Haven’t seen him with you lately.”
There’s no way he actually knew the two of you were dating, not with Bruce’s neuroses and Barbara meticulously flags any online sleuths that get a little too close to the truth. It stings nonetheless.
You and Jason used to patrol together. In the early days, when the two of you were less busy, you’d make a date out of it. You’d bring sandwiches over from the deli he liked by Monolith Square; he’d get coffee from your favorite place in Cherry Hill. You used to picnic on rooftops and watch the cars from above.
There’s none of that these days, obviously.
You deftly rip the gun out of his hands then pistolwhip him over the head.
He stumbles back, clutching the growing egg on his scalp. “Jesus, bitch! Watch the noggin.”
You punch him square in the face, knocking him out. His bloody nose sprays over your gloves. “It’s not nice to call women ‘bitches.’”
“You’re not usually this violent, Sparrow,” Oracle remarks. There’s no judgement in her tone, just careful observation.
You flex your wrist. You’d hit him quite hard. “Just ticked me off a little, that’s all. Anything else for tonight?”
“I heard about…the breakup. You doing okay?” Barbara asks cautiously. You notice she didn’t answer your question.
“‘M fine,” you say in a measured tone. You’re not angry or bitter or anything like that, and even if you were, you wouldn’t have the right to be. You broke up with him, technically. “What’s next?”
You hear the remnants of a sigh, most of the noise filtered out by voice recognition. “You just the last of it there. Head back. I’ll send Red Robin to clean this up.”
“I can do it. Just give me the coords.”
“No,” she insists. There’s more static, an odd silence in the conversation where you know she’s muted herself or put herself on another line with someone else. It’s nothing new or odd, so you don’t comment. “Come back to the Cave ASAP. There’s a situation here.”
You kick at his crumpled form to check if the thug is unconscious, just for good measure, making sure to dig the point of your steel-toe boots under his rib. Satisfied, you shoot your grappling hook. “On it.”
Your unofficial-official parking spot that you’ve claimed for yourself is a couple feet away from Batman’s giant penny. You used to worry it would fall over and crush your bike, but now you find Honest Abe’s copper stare slightly endearing, if a bit creepy.
Clambering off the seat, you turn off the ignition. Just as you open your mouth to call out your arrival, you get hit by a heat-seeking missile.
“Mommy!”
Okay, not a heat-seeking missile. It’s a kid no more than three and a half feet tall, barely coming up to your hip, but she latches herself around your waist in a surprisingly strong two-armed grip for a child. Maybe like one of those flying monkeys then, the ones that jump off branches from tree to tree.
“You’re finally here! I’ve been waiting foreeverrrr for you to get here even though they told me it was only gonna be five minutes and Daddy told me five minutes is five sixty seconds so I counted to sixty ten times but you still weren’t here.”
The kid says it all in a single breath without even stumbling on a single word. You’re almost impressed.
“Mommy?” you repeat, dumbstruck.
“I see you’ve met Cathy,” Bruce says from across the room. He’s standing at the bottom of the stairs, fully suited but with the cowl pulled down to reveal his face.
You can’t read his expression, but then again, you hardly ever can.
Cathy starts squeezing you, looking up at you then bouncing her legs up and down. “Up,” she says.
You blink at her.
“Up, please,” she corrects.
You blink again but acquiesce, leaning down to carry her in your arms. You’re so gobsmacked you don’t even question how or why she thinks you’re her mother. You’re fully suited up, your face still covered. You could be anyone, but she thinks you’re her mother.
It happens to kids sometimes while you’re in the field. In the middle of a traumatic event like a crumbling building or open fire in the Bowery, they’ll call out for their parents; the first person who offers their hand usually gets the moniker too.
“I’m not your mommy,” you say kindly, not wanting to break her heart, “but we can help you find her.”
Cathy grins, and she gives you three soft pats on your shoulder. “You’re so silly, Mommy.”
You choose to ignore that comment and try to focus on triage. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“Well, I was playing outside and I saw a rock and I bended down ‘cuz I wanted to show you, but when I looked up, I was at the library even though I was at home with you. And then I remembered you told me sometimes weird things can happen but you have to be brave, and I also remembered Grampa said I can go to his house anytime I wanted and I saw it on the hill so I asked for directions and someone drived me here and also I said ‘thank you,’ because you said I have to watch my manners. And then, I told Grampa to call you and Daddy but he was playing the same game you tried to play where you trick me and say you don’t know who I am, but I know it’s because you just want me to be safe in case a bad guy tries to take me because we can’t let other people know who you are. Then he gave me a hot cocoa and said you and Daddy were on your way, and then you came here and now I’m telling you this story and we’re waiting for dad.”
Cathy’s exposé comes a mile a minute, and at the end of her recap, she takes a big gulp of air. Proud of herself, she gives you a wide grin. One of her front teeth is missing.
This kind of thing can happen too, where kids get lost in their imagination and confuse real life for their playtime scenarios. Nothing new.
“B, wanna fill me in on the rest of it?” you ask, adjusting her in your arms.
He sighs then walks closer to you, offering his arms out to carry the girl for you. Instead, she tightens her hold around your neck, and you shift your body slightly and shrug.
“To be honest, she gave you a pretty good rundown. I did a couple of tests on her shoe. Temporal abnormalities, plus the fact that brand doesn’t exist.”
“...Okay?”
“I mean, the shoes don’t exist yet. The most plausible explanation is that she got sent back in time. Probably got caught in the crossfire of a fight.”
You take note of her socked, shoeless feet and decide to rip off the bandaid. “And… a DNA test?”
Bruce points to the corner of the cave set up for forensic analysis and other various machines. There are several micropipetters underneath the fume hood. Your hairbrush sits on the table beside. “Ran a couple PCRs. Ninety-nine point nine percent match, inclusion."
“Bruce.” Your tone is serious. “What are you trying to say?”
“Cathy is your daughter.”
You swallow. “And her father?”
The garage to the Cave triggers, and a motorcycle zooms in. It parks in its assigned spot: next to you, between your bike and the coin.
Jason lifts his helmet, lifting a hand to readjust his hair and pulling off his domino mask. “This better be good, B. I was in the middle of something.”
He gets caught in your line of sight. You look away.
“What’s all this?”
“Daddy!” Cathy says, squirming until you put her down then throwing herself at Jason’s leg.
He gapes.
Bruce sighs. “As I was saying.”