Work Text:
always had the logistics handled. Elena had a color-coded dashboard that tracked operations across both cities in real time, with automated alerts for supply shortfalls, staffing gaps, and budget variances, and she reviewed it every morning at 5:45 AM with a cup of black coffee and the expression of a woman who had been put on this earth to optimize things and was deeply satisfied with her success.
The problem was that Jason was one person, and Fawcett had made him realize how much of Gotham's operation had been running on his personal presence rather than his systems. In Fawcett, he'd built from scratch - designed the infrastructure to function without him at the center, because he'd known from the start that he couldn't be there full-time. In Gotham, he'd built around himself, because in Gotham he'd been at war and the general needed to be on the field.
Now the general was trying to be in two places at once, and it was-
"You look tired," Billy said, from the kitchen table, where he was eating cereal and doing biology homework simultaneously, which was a multitasking skill he'd developed as Captain Marvel and which Jason found both impressive and slightly alarming.
"I'm fine."
"You got in at 3 AM. I heard the door."
"You should've been asleep."
"I was. I have super hearing."
"You have super hearing when you're transformed."
"I have regular hearing that's been calibrated by years of sleeping in unsafe places, which is basically the same thing."
Jason looked at him over his coffee. Billy looked back, crunching Cheerios with implacable calm.
"Gotham needed me last night," Jason said. "Situation at the docks. Remy handled the ground operation, but I needed to be there for the negotiation piece."
"You can't keep doing the 1 AM Gotham run every other night. You're going to burn out."
"I don't burn out."
"Everyone burns out. Solomon's wisdom. Also common sense."
Jason opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. The kid was right. The kid was annoyingly, consistently, inconveniently right, because the Wisdom of Solomon was apparently less about grand philosophical insight and more about a supernatural ability to identify when Jason Todd was full of shit.
"I'm promoting Remy," Jason said. "Full operational authority for Gotham when I'm not there. Dev keeps the territory running, Inez keeps the Lantern. Elena stays overarching. Marco's solid enough to run Fawcett day-to-day."
"So you're delegating."
"I'm restructuring."
"You're delegating and calling it restructuring because you have control issues."
"I'm going to take away your cereal."
"You're not, because Mrs. Chen sent the cereal and you're more scared of her than you are of Talia al Ghul."
This was, horrifyingly, true.
jaybird: i'm delegating gotham operations to remy
dickie: wow
jaybird: don't
dickie: i didn't say anything
jaybird: you were about to say something about personal growth
dickie: i was going to say that remy's a good choice and this is a smart operational decision
jaybird: oh
dickie: AND that it represents significant personal growth
jaybird: there it is
dickie: baby's first delegation 🎉
jaybird: i've delegated before
dickie: you've ASSIGNED before. delegating means trusting someone to make decisions you're not supervising. that's different. that's growth
jaybird: i hate that you're right and i hate that you framed it that way
dickie: the twelve year old told you to do it didn't he
jaybird: he said i have control issues
dickie: he's TWELVE and he CLOCKED you
jaybird: solomon's wisdom is CHEATING
THE CALL
Hal Jordan had been staring at his phone for forty-five minutes.
This was unusual for Hal Jordan, who was generally a man of action, decisiveness, and a willingness to fly directly into situations that would kill a normal person. Hal Jordan had faced down Parallax, the embodiment of fear itself. Hal Jordan had arm-wrestled a sentient planet. Hal Jordan had once told the Guardians of the Universe to go fuck themselves, in those exact words, in front of the entire Green Lantern Corps.
Hal Jordan could not figure out how to start a phone call with a twenty-three-year-old crime lord about community development.
"Just call him," Barry said. He was sitting on Hal's couch, being patient, which was Barry's superpower even more than the speed. Barry could be patient on a molecular level. Individual atoms of Barry Allen were patient.
"I don't know what to say."
"'Hello' is traditional."
"He's going to think it's a trap."
"Probably. And then you'll explain that it's not, and he'll either believe you or he won't, and either way you'll have tried."
"What if he laughs at me?"
Barry looked at him. "Hal. You've been punched through a building by Sinestro. You can handle being laughed at by a guy who was Robin."
"Being punched through a building is straightforward. This is-" Hal gestured vaguely. "-vulnerable."
"Yes. That's the point."
Hal looked at his phone. Looked at the ceiling. Looked at his phone again.
"You could text first," Barry offered. "Feel it out."
"I don't have his number."
"I got it from Dick."
"You-" Hal stared at him. "When?"
"Right after the meeting. While you were having your existential crisis in the hallway, I was being practical." Barry held out a Post-it note. "Dick says Jason's expecting the call. Marvel apparently told him."
"Marvel told him that I-"
"Dick told Marvel. Marvel told Jason. Dick told me. I'm telling you. The communication chain is longer than it needs to be but everyone's in the loop." Barry paused. "Dick also says Jason thinks it's hilarious that you're nervous."
"How does he know I'm nervous?"
"Because Dick knows you. And because Jason apparently said, and I quote, 'if the guy who punches fear for a living is scared to make a phone call about soup kitchens, that tells you everything about what's wrong with the hero community.'"
Hal absorbed this. "He's not wrong."
"No. He's not."
Hal picked up the phone. Dialed.
It rang twice.
"Jordan." Jason's voice was flat, neutral, the verbal equivalent of a locked door with a peephole. "Marvel said you'd call."
"Yeah. Hi. I, uh." Hal looked at Barry. Barry gave him a thumbs up. "I want to talk about Coast City."
"What about it?"
"There's a neighborhood. The Burroughs. Low-income, high crime, underfunded schools, the whole thing. I've been-" He took a breath. "I've been punching drug dealers there for fifteen years and nothing's changed. I heard what you did in Fawcett and I want to know how."
The silence on the other end was evaluative. Hal could feel himself being assessed, and he didn't love it, but he stayed on the line because this mattered more than his comfort.
"You want to know how," Jason repeated.
"Yeah."
"The how isn't the hard part, Jordan. The how is logistics - funding, staffing, infrastructure. Elena can teach a goldfish how to set up a nonprofit. The hard part is the why."
"The why?"
"Why do you want to do this? Because you feel guilty? Because the League meeting embarrassed you? Because you want to prove something?"
Hal bristled. "Does it matter?"
"Yeah, it matters. Guilt burns out in six months. Embarrassment burns out faster. The only thing that sustains this work is giving a shit - actually, materially, inconveniently giving a shit about people whose problems aren't solved by punching. And I need to know if you give a shit or if you're going to set up a soup kitchen, get bored when it's hard, and leave a community worse off than you found them because you raised expectations you couldn't meet."
The silence stretched. Barry, who could hear both sides of the conversation at super-speed, watched Hal's face cycle through irritation, defensiveness, and then - slowly - recognition.
"There's a kid," Hal said. "In the Burroughs. His name's Marcus. He's fourteen. I've - I fly through there on patrol, and I see him on this corner, every night. He's a lookout for one of the local crews. And every time I see him I think - I could arrest the guys he works for. I could arrest him. I could fly in and clean out the whole block in thirty seconds."
"But?"
"But I'd come back the next week and there'd be a different kid on that corner. Because the corner still needs a lookout and there's still a kid who needs money and nobody's built anything that gives him another option." He paused. "That's been bothering me for three years. It's not guilt. It's - I look at that kid and I think, this is a failure of imagination. I can imagine anything. The ring makes it real. And I never once imagined a world where Marcus didn't need to stand on that corner."
Jason was quiet for a long time.
"Okay," he said. His voice had shifted - not warm, exactly, not yet, but the door had opened a crack. "Okay. You give a shit. That's a start."
"So you'll help?"
"I'll consult. This can't be a Hood operation - I don't have the bandwidth for a third city, and Coast City's your responsibility. But I'll help you build the infrastructure. Elena will design the organizational structure. Marco can come out for a few weeks to set up the first shelter, and I'll send Dani to build your documentation framework. And-" He paused. "Is Allen there?"
Barry blinked. "Yes?"
"Good. I need someone with a brain on the ground. Jordan's going to want to construct everything out of green light and enthusiasm, and that's not how buildings work."
"Hey," Hal said.
"Tell me I'm wrong."
"...you're not wrong."
"Allen. You're CSI, right? You do forensic analysis?"
"Yes," Barry said, leaning closer to the phone.
"The Burroughs has a crime ecosystem. It works like any ecosystem - interconnected, self-reinforcing. You can't just remove the predators and expect the rest to rebalance. You need to understand the whole system before you intervene, or you'll create a vacuum that something worse fills."
"You want me to map it," Barry said. "The way you'd map a crime scene. Every connection, every dependency."
"Exactly. Your speed means you can do in a week what took my team months in Gotham. Walk the neighborhood. Talk to people. Map the economics - who employs who, where the money flows, what the legitimate businesses look like, what the underground ones look like. I need a complete picture before I can help Jordan design an intervention."
Barry and Hal looked at each other. Barry's eyes were bright - not the Speed Force bright, but the scientist bright.
"When do we start?" Barry said.
"Yesterday. But today works too."
jaybird: hal jordan just called me
dickie: AND???
jaybird: he's serious. he's actually serious. he's got a kid in the burroughs - a lookout, fourteen - and he's been thinking about that kid for three years
dickie: oh
jaybird: yeah
dickie: so you're helping
jaybird: i'm consulting. elena's designing. marco's doing on-site setup. barry's mapping the neighborhood
dickie: barry's involved?
jaybird: barry's PERFECT for this. forensic analysis of a crime ecosystem. he can walk every block in an hour, talk to everyone, build a complete picture. it's literally his skill set applied sideways
dickie: you sound excited
jaybird: i'm not excited. i'm professionally engaged
dickie: you're EXCITED. you're building a FRANCHISE
jaybird: it's not a franchise. each city's operation is locally owned and operated. i'm providing a methodology and initial support structure
dickie: that's literally what a franchise is
jaybird: it's a CONSULTANCY
dickie: Red Hood: Criminal Consulting LLC
jaybird: Elena is not going to call it that
dickie: elena cam call it whatever she wants, elena is the backbone of your empire and we all know it
jaybird: ....fair
dickie: does bruce know?
jaybird: does bruce know what? that two of his justice league friends called me for help with community development? no. and i don't care if he does
dickie: you really don't, do you
jaybird: no dick. i really don't. i spent years wanting him to see me and now i'm too busy building things to care whether he's watching
dickie: that's
dickie: that's really healthy actually
jaybird: don't sound so surprised
dickie: sorry it's just. you know. growth
jaybird: i swear to god if you say personal growth one more time
dickie: OPERATIONAL MATURITY
jaybird: goodnight
WONDER WOMAN VISITS FAWCETT
Diana Prince arrived in Fawcett City on a Thursday morning, in civilian clothes, carrying a notebook.
This was notable for several reasons. First, Diana rarely did anything in civilian clothes. That she'd chosen to come as Diana rather than Wonder Woman was a deliberate signal: I'm here to learn, not to inspect.
Second, the notebook. Diana had a memory that rivaled the Library of Alexandria and did not, strictly speaking, need a notebook. She brought one because she'd learned, in her decades among humans, that the act of writing was an act of attention, and people responded to being attended to.
Third - and this was the part that nobody had anticipated - she'd emailed ahead.
"She emailed," Jason said, staring at his phone.
"That's polite," Billy said.
"She emailed Elena."
"Well, Elena runs operations. It makes sense to go through the operational lead."
"She asked Elena to prepare a briefing document on our organizational structure, funding model, and community outcomes metrics. And Elena - Elena-" Jason looked like he was experiencing a complex emotion. "Elena responded. With a forty-page PDF. With appendices."
"Elena's been waiting for someone to ask."
"Elena's been waiting for someone worthy of her forty-page PDF."
"Same thing."
Jason was not wrong to be slightly awed. Elena and Diana had, through a series of increasingly detailed emails, developed a rapport that could best be described as two extremely competent women recognizing each other across a crowded field and nodding. By the time Diana actually arrived in Fawcett, she had read the entire PDF, annotated it, and sent back follow-up questions that Elena described as "the first intelligent questions anyone's asked me about this operation, including you, boss."
Jason had chosen not to be offended by this.
Diana met Jason at the laundromat apartment at nine o'clock sharp.
"Red Hood," she said.
"Wonder Woman." He paused. "You can call me Jason. If we're doing the civilian thing."
"Diana." She shook his hand. Her grip was firm in the way that said I could crush every bone in your hand and I am choosing not to and we both know it and that's fine. "Thank you for having me."
"Thank you for emailing ahead. Most Leaguers skip that step."
"Most Leaguers lack manners."
He liked her immediately, which surprised him. Jason's relationship with the League was - complicated was a generous word. Adversarial was more accurate. But Diana had done something that none of the others had thought to do: she'd treated his operation as a professional enterprise worth engaging with on its own terms. She hadn't come to evaluate or approve or supervise. She'd come to study.
"Elena's set up a full tour," Jason said. "Shelters, clinic, pantry, the Garazzo Security Solutions office-"
"The converted protection racket."
"The converted protection racket, yes. And Billy wants to show you something at the community center, but he won't tell me what."
"Billy." Diana's expression was careful. "Captain Marvel."
"When he's not wearing the cape. It's - look, I know you don't know his identity, and I'm not going to out him. He'll meet you as Captain Marvel for the tour. But if he decides to trust you with the rest, that's his call."
"Of course." Diana paused. "He's young, isn't he."
It wasn't a question. Diana was a warrior and a princess and a diplomat; she read people the way other people read books. She'd sat across from Captain Marvel in the meeting and watched him talk about shelters and soup with an earnestness that most adults had long since lost, and she'd heard Barry's careful probing about the civilian identity, and she'd done the math.
"That's his story to tell," Jason said.
"It is. But I want you to know - whatever I see here today, I will protect."
Jason looked at her. Diana looked back. Certain things didn't need to be said, but Diana said them anyway, because she believed that things worth meaning were worth saying.
"Okay," Jason said. "Let's go."
The tour took seven hours.
It was supposed to take three. It took seven because Diana asked questions, and Diana's questions were not the surface-level questions of someone performing interest. They were the deep, structural, operational questions of someone who was genuinely thinking about how to adapt this model for a different context.
At the shelter, she spent an hour with Marco, discussing intake protocols, security design, and the philosophy behind the semi-private sleeping areas. Marco, who was not easily impressed, was impressed.
"She asked about sight lines," he told Jason afterward, with the slightly dazed expression of a man who'd just found a kindred spirit in an unexpected place. "From a trauma-informed design perspective. She wanted to know how the layout affects residents' sense of safety. Nobody asks that. Building inspectors don't ask that. She asked."
"She's a warrior," Jason said. "Warriors think about defensible positions."
"She's a warrior who thinks about defensible positions for other people. That's different."
At the clinic, Diana spoke with both doctors for forty-five minutes about the integration of mental health services with primary care, and about the specific challenges of providing medical treatment to populations with deep institutional distrust. She took notes. She asked about medication access, about follow-up protocols, about the relationship between the clinic and the detox programs.
"Her follow-up questions were better than most of the questions I got in residency," said Dr. Pham, the clinic director. "Who is this woman?"
"A friend," Jason said, and was startled to realize he might mean it.
At the food pantry, Diana met Mrs. Chen.
This was the moment Jason had been slightly worried about, because Mrs. Chen was a force of nature who operated on her own terms and did not adjust those terms for anybody, and Diana was a literal demigod with thousands of years of authority behind her. The potential for a clash of titanium-grade personalities was real.
What actually happened was that Mrs. Chen took one look at Diana, said "You're too thin, sit down," and served her braised pork with extra rice.
Diana ate every bite.
"This is exceptional," Diana said, with the genuine reverence of someone who had eaten at the tables of gods and was not exaggerating.
"Of course it is," said Mrs. Chen.
They talked for an hour. About food sourcing, about community nutrition, about the logistics of feeding three hundred families a week on a budget that would make a government program weep. Mrs. Chen showed Diana her supplier relationships, her inventory system (handwritten, in a ledger, because Mrs. Chen did not trust computers and nobody had dared suggest she should), and her recipe binder.
"This binder," Diana said, holding it with the care one might give a historical artifact, "represents more practical wisdom than most of the texts in Themyscira's library."
Mrs. Chen looked at her. Nodded once. "You can have copies."
Jason, watching from the doorway, texted Dick.
jaybird: wonder woman and mrs chen are bonding
dickie: oh no
jaybird: oh YES. diana called mrs chen's recipe binder more wise than the library of themyscira. mrs chen offered her copies. they've been talking for an hour
dickie: this is either the best thing that's ever happened or the beginning of an unstoppable alliance that will reshape civilization
jaybird: it's both
dickie: of course it is
jaybird: mrs chen told diana she's too thin
dickie: she told WONDER WOMAN she's too THIN
jaybird: diana accepted it gracefully and ate two servings of braised pork
dickie: this is the crossover event of the century and nobody in the league knows it's happening
jaybird: bruce doesn't get to know about this
dickie: obviously. this is sacred
At the Garazzo Security Solutions office, Diana met Tommy Garazzo.
Tommy had been briefed. Jason had told him a VIP was visiting, someone important, someone he needed to be professional for. Tommy had put on a clean bowling shirt - the nice one, the one without the mustard stain - and had told Pete to "act normal, for the love of God."
Pete was standing in the corner looking like he'd been taxidermied.
"Mr. Garazzo," Diana said, shaking his hand. "I understand you've transitioned from... a previous business model."
"Yeah, we, uh." Tommy glanced at Jason. Jason's expression conveyed nothing helpful. "We used to do protection. Now we do security. Legit. Licensed and everything."
"What prompted the change?"
"Him." Tommy pointed at Jason. "He came in with a better offer. Made more sense. Less - you know. Less breaking things."
"And your employees? They adapted?"
"Most of 'em. A few guys didn't want to go straight, and that's - you know, that's their choice. But most of the guys, they were only in the racket because it was the only gig going. Give 'em a paycheck and a uniform and a reason not to feel like shit about themselves, turns out they're pretty good at actual security work."
Diana was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Mr. Garazzo, in my experience, the hardest thing a warrior can do is put down his weapons and build something instead. You should be proud."
Tommy Garazzo, fifty-four-year-old former mob boss from Fawcett City, turned a shade of pink that Jason had not previously seen in nature.
"She's alright," Tommy told Jason afterward, in the parking lot. "The tall lady. She's alright."
"I'll let her know."
"Don't tell her I blushed."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
jaybird: tommy garazzo blushed
dickie: at what
jaybird: diana told him he should be proud of going legit. called him a warrior
dickie: wonder woman called a bowling alley mob boss a warrior and he BLUSHED
jaybird: crimson. actual crimson. pete didn't know what to do
dickie: pete's never seen tommy express a human emotion before has he
jaybird: pete looked like he was watching his brother get abducted by aliens. supportive but confused
dickie: "supportive but confused" is the garazzo family motto
The last stop was the community center, where Captain Marvel was waiting.
He was in full regalia - the cape, the lightning bolt, the golden glow - and he was standing in front of a room that had been set up with chairs and a projector and what appeared to be a poster-board display, the kind a kid might make for a school science fair.
"I made a presentation," Captain Marvel said, beaming.
Jason stared. "You made a presentation."
"About the Fawcett model! With data! Elena helped me with the charts." He pointed to the poster board. It was titled COMMUNITY-BASED INTERVENTION FRAMEWORK: THE FAWCETT MODEL in neat block letters, with hand-drawn charts and color-coded sections and small lightning bolt stickers in the corners.
"There are stickers," Jason said.
"The stickers are organizational. Each color represents a different operational domain."
Diana looked at the poster board. She looked at Captain Marvel. And her expression did something that Jason had never seen Wonder Woman's expression do before: it softened. Not in condescension - Diana did not condescend - but in recognition. The recognition of someone seeing something true and tender and brave in the midst of a world that didn't always deserve it.
"Tell me about your framework, Captain," she said, and sat down in one of the chairs, and gave him her full attention.
Captain Marvel presented for forty-five minutes. The data was solid - Elena's influence - and the analysis was surprisingly sophisticated, informed by both Solomon's wisdom and the street-level understanding of someone who'd lived inside the systems being discussed. He talked about intervention timelines, about the importance of demand-side approaches to drug markets, about the conversion of criminal infrastructure into legitimate enterprise.
But he also talked about soup. And dinosaur sheets. And a girl named Tasha who was nine months sober and had just gotten her GED. And a man named Chris who'd gone from dealing meth to managing a food pantry and who'd told Marco, just last week, that it was the first job he'd ever been proud of.
He talked about these things because he was twelve and the Wisdom of Solomon was powerful but the heart of Billy Batson was more powerful, and Billy Batson knew - with the certainty of someone who'd slept in cardboard and eaten from dumpsters and still, somehow, believed in goodness - that the numbers only mattered because of the people they represented.
Diana listened to every word. She asked questions. She took notes. At the end, she stood, and walked to the front of the room, and looked at the poster board with its stickers and hand-drawn charts.
"This is excellent work," she said. "May I take photographs? I'd like to share this framework with my consultants in Themyscira."
Captain Marvel's grin could have powered the Eastern Seaboard.
"I have handouts!" he said, and produced a stack of neatly stapled packets from behind the podium.
Jason looked at the ceiling. The ceiling offered no guidance.
jaybird: he made handouts
dickie: who made handouts
jaybird: billy. captain marvel. he made a PRESENTATION with a POSTER BOARD and HANDOUTS for wonder woman. there are lightning bolt stickers
dickie: oh my GOD
jaybird: elena helped with the charts. the data is actually really good. the delivery is. i mean. he's twelve. he did a SCHOOL PRESENTATION for WONDER WOMAN about OUR CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE
dickie: i'm going to cry
jaybird: diana's taking PHOTOS of the POSTER BOARD to share with THEMYSCIRA
dickie: the amazons are going to receive a community development framework decorated with lightning bolt stickers
jaybird: and handouts. stapled. he stapled them himself. i watched him do it last night and didn't know what it was for
dickie: jason
jaybird: what
dickie: you know what
jaybird: don't say it
dickie: he did a presentation to impress you and diana. like a kid showing his parents what he did at school
jaybird: i said don't say it
dickie: 🦕
jaybird: i'm not having this conversation
dickie: too late it's happening. how did it feel watching your kid do a presentation for wonder woman
jaybird: he's not my kid
dickie: he's doing school presentations with stickers and you're critiquing his data visualization. he's your kid
jaybird: elena helped with the data visualization
dickie: and YOU helped with the living-in-a-house-and-eating-meals-and-having-a-future part
jaybird: ...
jaybird: it was a good presentation
dickie: i know it was ❤️
After the presentation, Diana and Marvel walked through the neighborhood together. Jason hung back - partly because he wanted them to talk freely, and partly because Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel walking through a revitalized neighborhood was the kind of image that didn't need a crime lord in a leather jacket cluttering it up.
They talked for a long time. Jason watched from a distance, and even without hearing the words, he could read the body language: Diana steady and attentive, Marvel animated, gesturing at buildings and corners and people. At one point, Marvel introduced Diana to the woman in the red hoodie - the one who'd first found Billy on Miller Street, all those months ago. The woman shook Diana's hand and Diana said something that made her laugh.
When they returned, Diana's expression was thoughtful in a way that Jason recognized as the precursor to significant action.
"I have questions," she told Jason. "Operational questions. About scaling this model to a context with different cultural assumptions and power structures."
"Themyscira."
"And beyond. There are communities in Man's World that I've protected from threats but never - " She paused, choosing her words with deliberation. "I've protected them from extraordinary threats. Invasions, monsters, catastrophes. I have never protected them from the ordinary ones. Poverty. Addiction. Neglect. I think - I think perhaps I've been defining 'threat' too narrowly."
"You and everybody else," Jason said, not unkindly.
"Yes. But I intend to stop." She looked at him with those ancient, clear eyes. "You've built something valuable, Jason. I don't say that lightly. I've seen empires and I've seen ruins and I've seen the difference between structures built to control and structures built to support. This is the latter. It's flawed and it's small and it's funded questionably-"
"Elena prefers 'creatively'-"
"-and it works. And I think it works because you built it with someone who understands need not as an abstraction but as a lived experience. The two of you - the strategist and the - " She glanced back toward Marvel, who was helping Mrs. Chen unload a delivery van because of course he was. "The champion. You complement each other."
"He's a good kid."
Diana smiled. "He's a remarkable person. As are you." She extended her hand. "I'll be in touch. Elena and I have a follow-up call scheduled."
"Of course you do."
"She's extraordinary."
"I know."
"You should pay her more."
"She sets her own salary. I'm scared to look at it."
Diana laughed - a real laugh, warm and full - and for one surreal moment Jason thought: I just made Wonder Woman laugh. In my city. On a street that used to have a protection racket and now has a security company and a food pantry and a basketball court where a meth lab used to be.
What is my life.
THE BURROUGHS: WEEK ONE
Barry Allen arrived in Coast City's Burroughs neighborhood on a Tuesday morning, wearing running shoes and a button-down shirt and the expression of a man who had decided to be thorough about something.
He was not in costume. Jason had been specific about this: "You walk the Burroughs as Barry Allen, not the Flash. People don't open up to heroes. They open up to neighbors."
Barry walked every block. Not at superspeed - at regular speed, which was harder for him than most people realized. Barry's relationship with slowness was like a fish's relationship with dry land: technically survivable, deeply uncomfortable. But he understood why it mattered. You couldn't map a community from the outside. You had to be in it, at its pace, on its terms.
He bought coffee at a bodega on the corner of Kessler and Fifth. He sat on a bench and watched the morning unfold. He talked to the bodega owner - a man named Samuel who'd been there for twenty-two years and who, after twenty minutes of casual conversation, told Barry more about the Burroughs' economic ecosystem than six months of police reports could have.
The drug trade ran through three main nodes. The biggest was controlled by a man called Dion, who operated out of a laundromat (Barry noted the irony) and who was, by Samuel's account, "not evil, just there." The protection came from an outfit called the K Street Boys, who were less organized than the Garazzos and more violent. The legitimate economy was skeletal: Samuel's bodega, a barbershop, a check-cashing place, a church.
"There used to be more," Samuel said. "Ten years ago, there were shops all the way down Fifth. Now it's just me and Clarence at the barbershop. Nobody wants to open a business where the kids on the corner are holding."
"What would change that?" Barry asked.
Samuel looked at him like he'd asked what color the sky was. "Safety. Jobs. Something for the kids to do. It's not complicated. People act like the hood is some big mystery. It's not a mystery. It's a resource problem. Give people resources and they'll build a neighborhood. Take the resources away and they'll survive however they can."
Barry wrote this down. Not because he'd forget it - he had an eidetic memory - but because Jason had told him to take visible notes, because it showed people you were taking them seriously.
He walked for four days. He talked to Samuel and Clarence the barber and Pastor Williams at the church and a woman named Jane who ran an unlicensed daycare out of her apartment because the nearest licensed one was forty minutes away by bus. He talked to teenagers on corners and mothers on stoops and an elderly veteran named Mr. Balogun who'd been writing letters to the city council about the broken streetlights for seven years and had never received a response.
He did not talk to Marcus, the lookout kid Hal had mentioned. Not yet. That would come later, when there was something to offer besides conversation.
At the end of the week, Barry sat in Hal's apartment and spread his notes across the kitchen table - a complete map of the Burroughs' ecosystem, every connection, every dependency, every pressure point and leverage point, annotated with the forensic precision that made Barry Allen one of the best crime scene analysts in the country.
"This is incredible," Hal said, paging through it. "This is - you mapped everything."
"The economics are simpler than Fawcett was. Which makes sense - Fawcett had multi-generational organized crime. The Burroughs has evolved its own structures organically. It's more like an ecosystem than an organization." Barry pointed to a cluster of connections on the map. "The drug trade, the protection racket, and the legitimate economy are all interdependent. You can't disrupt one without affecting the others. But-" He tapped a node. "-there's a keystone here. The K Street Boys. They're the coercive element. Remove the coercion and the system has room to reorganize."
"Remove how?"
"Not by punching," Barry said. "Jason was clear about that. We need to provide an alternative structure first. Something that makes the K Street Boys' protection unnecessary."
"A security company," Hal said. "Like the Garazzo thing."
"Maybe. Or maybe something different. The Burroughs isn't Fawcett. Samuel's been there twenty-two years - he knows what the neighborhood needs. Jane runs a daycare that serves thirty kids and she does it out of her apartment because nobody ever gave her the resources to do it properly. Pastor Williams has a church that could be a community center if it had funding. The pieces are already there, Hal. They've always been there. They just need-"
"Someone to put them together."
"Yes."
Hal looked at the map. He looked at the window, in the direction of the Burroughs, three miles away. He looked at his ring - the most powerful weapon in the universe, capable of creating anything he could imagine.
He imagined a community center.
He imagined a properly funded daycare.
He imagined streetlights that worked and a corner where Marcus didn't have to stand.
"Okay," Hal said. "Let's call Elena."
jaybird: barry mapped the burroughs in four days
dickie: four DAYS?
jaybird: complete ecosystem analysis. every economic connection, every social structure, every pressure point. forensic-grade community intelligence. it's better than what my team did in gotham in three MONTHS
dickie: superspeed
jaybird: not just superspeed. superspeed helps with the walking, but the analysis is all him. the guy's a genius, dick. a SPECIFIC kind of genius that is exactly what this work needs. he talked to a bodega owner for twenty minutes and extracted more actionable intelligence than hal's ring could produce in a year
dickie: you're fanboying
jaybird: i am not FANBOYING i am PROFESSIONALLY APPRECIATING a colleague's skill set
dickie: you're fanboying over barry allen
jaybird: barry allen is a forensic scientist with superspeed and an eidetic memory who just single-handedly produced a community assessment that elena called "the best fieldwork i've ever reviewed, and i've reviewed my own." i am APPROPRIATELY impressed
dickie: elena said that?
jaybird: elena doesn't give compliments. elena gives performance evaluations. barry allen just got the first positive performance evaluation of elena's career
dickie: elena has now complimented diana AND barry. her standards are astronomically high and two justice leaguers have met them. bruce would never meet them
jaybird: bruce would get a three-page memo about his organizational deficiencies and a recommended reading list
dickie: i'd pay to see that
jaybird: elena would charge admission
dickie: how's hal doing with all this
jaybird: hal's doing something i wasn't expecting
dickie: what
jaybird: he's listening. he's actually listening. he's not charging in, he's not trying to solve everything with the ring, he's sitting with barry's data and THINKING about it. he asked questions today that were - i mean, they were basic, but they were the RIGHT basic questions. the ones that show you're actually engaging with the problem instead of performing engagement
dickie: huh
jaybird: yeah. huh.
dickie: so you've got diana studying the model, barry mapping coast city, hal actually listening for once, and billy running fawcett day-to-day with your team
jaybird: and gotham's stable with remy and elena overseeing
dickie: jason
jaybird: what
dickie: you know what this is right
jaybird: it's a consulting practice
dickie: it's a MOVEMENT. you started in crime alley with one shelter and a guy who makes soup. now wonder woman is adapting your model for the amazons, green lantern and the flash are building a coast city branch, and captain marvel is doing presentations with stickers. you're changing how heroes think about what they DO
jaybird: that's. a lot
dickie: too much?
jaybird: no just. a lot to think about
jaybird: i just wanted people to not die, dick. that's all it was at the start. i was angry and i wanted people in my neighborhood to stop dying from things that were preventable. that was the whole mission
dickie: and now?
jaybird: now i'm eating dinner with a twelve year old demigod and consulting for the justice league and wonder woman has mrs chen's braised pork recipe
jaybird: i don't know what this is anymore but it's not what i planned
dickie: maybe that's good
jaybird: yeah
jaybird: yeah maybe it is
BRUCE: WATCHING
Batman did not go to Fawcett.
He wanted to. The desire sat in his chest like a stone, heavy and constant, the gravitational pull of a father toward a son he'd failed. But Captain Marvel had said no, and Clark had backed him, and Bruce - for all his faults, for all the ways he'd broken things and the things he'd broken - understood jurisdiction. Understood boundaries. Understood, on some level he couldn't articulate, that showing up uninvited would be exactly the kind of thing that had driven Jason away in the first place.
So he watched from a distance.
He tracked the community aid fund request - submitted by Elena Reyes (Columbia MBA, former JPMorgan analyst, now apparently the most terrifying nonprofit administrator in America), reviewed by Clark, approved without objection. The request was precise, professional, and included a projected impact assessment that made Bruce's own grant proposals look like napkin scribbles.
He read the quarterly reports. Elena sent them to the League, because Elena was the kind of person who believed in transparency as an operational tool, and because Elena had correctly calculated that data-driven reporting would do more to legitimize the operation in Batman's eyes than any amount of personal reassurance.
She was right. Bruce hated that she was right.
He noticed - of course he noticed, he noticed everything, that was the problem - when Diana returned from Fawcett with photographs on her phone that she showed Clark, and when Clark smiled at those photographs in a way that was warm and private and not meant for Bruce.
He noticed when Barry started spending weekends in Coast City instead of Central City, and when Barry's case clearance rate temporarily dipped because he was spending his analytical bandwidth on community ecosystem mapping instead of forensic analysis.
He noticed when Hal - Hal - started reading books about community development. Actual books. Physical books, with dog-eared pages, left on the Watchtower break room table where anyone could see them. Where Bruce could see them. Community as Resilience: Urban Development Beyond Policing and The Ecology of Safety and a well-thumbed copy of Gang Leader for a Day that had Post-it notes in it.
Hal Jordan was using Post-it notes. For learning. Bruce didn't know what to do with this information.
He noticed when Dick - his Dick, his first, his golden boy - spent more and more time on his phone during League meetings, smiling at his screen with the conspiratorial delight of someone who was part of something that Bruce was not.
And he noticed - this was the one that cut deepest, the one that kept him up at night in the Cave with the bats wheeling overhead and Alfred's tea going cold on the console - he noticed that none of them tried to include him.
Not because they were punishing him. That would have been easier to process - Bruce understood punishment, understood exclusion as a weapon. This was different. This was simply... a door that was open to everyone and that Bruce couldn't walk through, because walking through it would require him to be someone he didn't know how to be.
It would require him to say: I was wrong. About Jason. About what heroism means. About the belief that control and fear were the only tools that worked.
He couldn't say that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But he could do other things.
The community aid fund request was approved in three days, which was a League record. Bruce didn't mention that he'd personally fast-tracked it.
A shipment of medical equipment arrived at the Fawcett clinic - top of the line, better than what most urban hospitals had. There was no note. Dr. Pham assumed it was from the grant. Elena, who tracked every dollar with predatory attention, knew it wasn't. She didn't say anything. She filed it under "anonymous donation" and updated her spreadsheet.
A consultant from the Wayne Foundation - officially on sabbatical, working "independently" - showed up in Coast City and offered Barry and Hal pro bono guidance on nonprofit formation, zoning variances, and community development tax credits. The consultant, when asked who'd sent her, said "I'm between projects" and smiled in a way that was clearly rehearsed.
Barry figured it out in about ten seconds but said nothing.
Hal didn't figure it out at all, because Hal was busy imagining community centers and had stopped paying attention to things that didn't matter.
dickie: bruce fast-tracked the grant
jaybird: i know. elena told me
dickie: medical equipment showed up at the fawcett clinic. unmarked. top shelf
jaybird: i know that too
dickie: wayne foundation consultant in coast city helping hal and barry
jaybird: yeah
dickie: he's helping. in the only way he knows how. from the outside, through layers, without having to say the words
jaybird: i know dick
dickie: does it. is it enough?
jaybird: it's not about enough. it's not about him. that's what i keep trying to explain. i'm not building this to prove something to bruce. i'm not waiting for bruce to approve of me. i spent years doing that and it killed me. literally. i died, dick. i literally died
dickie: i know
jaybird: so no, it's not about whether bruce's anonymous donations are "enough." his journey with this is HIS journey. i hope he gets there. i genuinely do. but i'm not going to stop building to wait for him, and i'm not going to slow down to make him comfortable, and i'm not going to pretend that his approval is the thing that makes this real
jaybird: it was real when mrs chen fed the first person at the pantry. it was real when tasha got sober. it was real when billy slept in a bed for the first time in three years. it's been real this whole time. bruce seeing it doesn't make it MORE real
dickie: yeah
dickie: yeah, okay
jaybird: i don't say that to be cruel
dickie: i know you don't
jaybird: i love him. but i can't make his peace for him. he has to do that himself
dickie: when did you get so wise
jaybird: i live with a kid who has the literal wisdom of solomon. it rubs off
dickie: 😂
jaybird: also i think elena's been putting self-help books in my office
dickie: ELENA
jaybird: i found "Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No" on my desk last tuesday. no note. just there. like it materialized
dickie: elena is managing your personal growth the way she manages your budget
jaybird: with ruthless efficiency and zero sentiment, yes
dickie: i love elena
jaybird: everyone loves elena. elena tolerates everyone.
FAWCETT: EVENING
Jason came home late - not 3 AM Gotham late, just normal late, the kind of late that happens when you spend the day running a community organization and consulting for two different superhero partnerships and coordinating with an Amazon princess about cross-cultural applications of your nonprofit model.
Billy was asleep on the couch, textbook open on his chest, pencil still in his hand. The TV was on, playing something animated. His socks had dinosaurs on them. Not because of Mrs. Chen this time - because Billy had bought them himself, at a store, with money Jason gave him, in an act of consumer autonomy that Jason had found unreasonably moving and would never admit to finding unreasonably moving.
Jason took the textbook off his chest. Put a blanket over him. Turned off the TV.
Stood there for a moment.
This kid had walked into his territory, alone, trusting in a community he'd heard about on Reddit. He'd eaten Mrs. Chen's pork and slept in a bunk next to a girl in detox and asked the questions a homeless preteen would ask because he was one. He'd gone back to the Justice League and said nothing. He'd investigated his own city's criminal infrastructure with the Wisdom of Solomon and the street sense of a child who'd raised himself. He'd called Roy Harper on the phone, polite as anything, and asked to meet. He'd sat across from Jason in a diner and said I want you to come to Fawcett.
And Jason - who had built an empire out of rage, who had clawed his way out of the ground and declared war on everything that had failed him - had said yes. Because a twelve-year-old with ancient powers and no shoes that fit had asked him to, and something in Jason had recognized something in Billy, and the recognition had been enough.
Now Diana was adapting their model. Hal and Barry were building in Coast City. Elena had a budget and a mission and the cold fire in her eyes that meant she was about to optimize something that had never been optimized before. Mrs. Chen was planning a Fawcett branch. Tommy Garazzo's security company had just hired its twentieth employee. Tasha was nine months sober. Chris ran a food pantry. Marcus, the kid on the corner in the Burroughs, didn't know it yet, but someone was coming for him. Not with handcuffs or a sermon or a power ring. With a chair and a meal and a question: what do you need?
Jason looked at Billy, asleep in dinosaur socks, and thought: this is what I was supposed to do.
Not the crime lord part. Not the guns or the territory or the war.
This.
He went to the kitchen. Made tea, because Mrs. Chen had gotten him into tea and he was not strong enough to resist Mrs. Chen. Sat at the table with his notebook and Elena's latest report and started planning the next expansion.
Outside, Fawcett was quiet.
In Coast City, Hal Jordan was imagining.
In Themyscira, Diana was writing.
In Gotham, Bruce Wayne sat in the dark and typed, slowly, with two fingers.