Chapter Text
Emily Prentiss had been to Gotham once, as a teenager, for a gala at the Wayne family estate. She remembered the high walls, the creepy portraits of old, white men staring down from every hallway, and the twenty-something Bruce Wayne who drank and danced more than he spoke to anyone. She never spoke to him directly, glued to her mother's side in a black dress that was not appropriate for a thirteen-year-old, but he'd sent a small, friendly smile her way once, when she'd been caught biting at her fingernails by the punch table.
Mostly, she remembered the butler. He kept refilling her sparkling water without being asked and called her "Young Miss" with a patience that made her feel, for one night, like the most important person in the room.
The jet was quiet now, twenty-some years later, only the hum of the engines and Garcia humming something under her breath as she set up. Emily flipped through the thick file in her lap— images of mutilated bodies, bloodied weapons, toxins with names she didn't recognize and didn't try to. She skimmed past the worst of it and kept going.
"What the hell is this case?" she asked, glancing around at her team.
"And why didn't we get to it sooner?" Morgan said, furrowing his brow at his own copy.
Garcia stood, walking to the front of the cabin. "Well, my spectacular friends, our adventures take us to Gotham City, New Jersey. Where our unsub has been committing various heinous crimes left and right for about twenty years." She clicked her laptop, and an image filled the screen— a man with a narrow white face, a wide red smile, and bright green hair. His eyes were unnerving even through the photograph, like they weren't quite looking at the camera so much as through it.
"That's unsettling," Emily said. "It's unusual for us to know an unsub's identity before we even land."
"Everything about this evildoer is unsettling and unusual." Garcia's face scrunched. "Gotham PD calls him ‘the Joker’, which is not nearly as fun as it sounds. Kill count's estimated in the hundreds, with about a dozen different methods— he gets creative," she said, taking a breath as more images flashed across the screen. "Local officials know his crimes are connected because he either leaves a playing card at the scene or waits around for a local vigilante to show up and stop him."
"Local vigilante. Like Batman?" Morgan asked.
Reid sat forward. "Batman and the Joker have had a back-and-forth for almost thirty years now. A lot of online forums criticize Batman for not just killing him, given the body count, but Batman doesn't kill— that's the line for him, even though some of the other vigilantes in Gotham, like the Red Hood, don't hold to it. It's actually really fascinating, when you think about it, that two people can live in the same city, fight the same criminals, and land on such different— "
"Reid," Morgan said.
"Right. Sorry."
Hotch had gone quiet somewhere around the third crime scene photo, the muscle in his jaw working the way it did when a case was going to be worse than the paperwork let on. "Twenty years," he said, more to himself than anyone. "How does someone operate for twenty years without a single arrest holding?"
"Gotham's conviction rate is its own kind of crime scene," Rossi said. "I did a lecture there once. Half the DA's office quit within five years. What made this land on our desk? And why so late?" Rossi asked.
"He was officially charged four days ago with the murder of fifteen-year-old Jason Todd, in Ethiopia," Garcia said, and something in her voice went careful. "Jason and his adoptive father, Bruce Wayne, are Gotham residents. They'd gone to Ethiopia to help Jason track down his birth mother. The Joker kidnapped both of them, beat the victim with a crowbar, and blew up the warehouse they were being held in— with both of them inside, killing both of them."
"The murders happened four years ago," JJ said, taking over, her voice quieter. "Between the crime scene being overseas, the lack of a stable judicial system on the ground, and the fact that he technically crossed state lines to get here, it took this long for the charge to work its way into a system that could actually prosecute it. It only slid across my desk this week."
Hotch closed his file. "Given the crime rate in Gotham, the police commissioner has arranged for us to stay in Mr. Wayne's home while we work the case. He's offered his manor, and his family's cooperation." He looked around at all of them. "So please, be on your best behavior."
"We always are," Garcia said, grinning.
"Any concerns about optics?" Rossi asked. "Billionaire's house, federal agents camped out in it— press is going to have a field day either way."
"The commissioner's handling the press," Hotch said. "Our job is the case."
Emily stared down at the photo of the boy— grainy, but she could still make out the little front curls on his forehead, the joy in his eyes, a suit that was a size too big for him. She wondered what kind of person could hurt someone this small, this obviously kind, a kid who only wanted to find his own mother. Only someone unraveled all the way through could do that.
"What are you thinking about?" Reid asked, moving a chess piece on the small travel board in front of him without looking up.
Emily sighed and closed the file. "I met Mr. Wayne once. When I was a teenager. My mom got invited to a gala he was throwing." She turned her water glass slowly on the tray table. "He lost both his parents to a mugging when he was a kid. I never thought he'd be the type to adopt one, and then the kid dies. How much loss can one person take before something in them just— gives?"
Garcia reached over and put a hand on Emily's knee. "I lost my parents too. And there was a stretch where I thought I'd lost one of my best friends." Her voice was steady in a way that made the words land harder. "I don't think we should measure people by how much they've lost. I think we measure by how much love they have. I'm sure Mr. Wayne's had plenty of that in his life."
"I sure hope so," Rossi said, "because otherwise this case is going to be a lot harder than it needs to be."
—
Wayne Manor was, to say the least, enormous— even under cover of night, even from the end of a driveway long enough that Emily had time to review the case file a second time and check the three texts from her mother that were still sitting, unanswered, on read. The Gothic architecture made her think of Italy again: high spires, arched windows, and stained glass catching moonlight it had no business catching.
"Everyone, remember Mr. Wayne is the parent of a victim," Hotch said, pulling up in front of the entrance. "It's important to keep in mind that he's grieving, and our presence here can be a painful reminder of that."
"I read on the way over that Mr. Wayne has six kids, five of them adopted, including the victim," Reid added. "Might be worth keeping in mind too."
The team unloaded from the van one at a time, Morgan helping Garcia down with an exaggerated bow and a kiss to the back of her hand that made her swoon at him. JJ fell into step beside Emily, giving her a reassuring smile, blue eyes bright enough that Emily could've gotten lost in them if she let herself.
She didn't say anything. Just smiled back and followed Hotch and Rossi's lead up to the front doors. The moon hung bright and heavy above them, a thin scattering of clouds drifting past it, and a cold breeze cut through the yard that made Emily feel thirteen again, standing in a dress that wasn't hers in a life that wasn't hers either. She hadn't expected to be back here as anything but a memory. She definitely hadn't expected it to be for this.
Hotch knocked, and Emily could've sworn she heard it echo somewhere deep inside the house. It only took a few seconds before one of the massive doors swung open, warm air rolling out along with the smell of lavender.
A young man answered— maybe mid-twenties, dark hair, sharp eyes, a grin that lit up his whole face before it started to fade. "Oh. You are not who I was expecting."
Hotch offered a hand. "Aaron Hotchner, Behavioral Analysis Unit, FBI. Commissioner Gordon told us Bruce Wayne offered to let us stay here while we investigate."
The young man shook it. "Right, yeah, B' mentioned that. I was expecting my girlfriend, not a small army of federal agents."
"Is it Babs?" another voice yelled from somewhere behind him.
"No!" he yelled back, before turning around with the same grin restored. "I'm Richard. Everyone calls me Dick."
A second man came up behind him— younger, with a shock of white hair at the front and a build that said he spent a lot more time lifting than running. His eyebrows shot up at the sight of the team crowding the doorway. "What the hell did Damian do?"
Dick barked out a laugh and elbowed him. "You're hilarious. These are the agents Gordon called in for the Joker thing, since GCPD and the bats can't seem to get a handle on him. Behavioral analysts."
"Right, Bruce mentioned that. I was not listening," the man admitted.
"And are you one of Mr. Wayne's kids?" Rossi asked.
The man snorted like that was funny. "No— no, I'm, uh. Todd Harper."
Dick gave him a sideways look that lasted a beat too long. "Right. Todd's a family friend. I'm Bruce's oldest," he said, recovering smoothly.
"Are you two going to let our guests in, or should I do it myself?" An older man's voice, from somewhere behind them both— a man in a suit pressed sharp enough to cut something, not a wrinkle on him. Both younger men jumped and stepped aside like they'd been caught doing something. Dick pulled the door the rest of the way open.
The manor was every bit as large as Emily remembered. High walls, higher ceilings, a chandelier that threw soft light across the room, and stained glass that was somehow even more striking from the inside, painting patterns across the dark tile.
"I am Alfred Pennyworth. Master Bruce's butler."
"Aaron Hotchner. These are agents Rossi, Morgan, Jareau, Prentiss, Garcia, and Doctor Reid"
"A pleasure. I can show you to your rooms, if you'd like to settle in first."
"We'd prefer to get started if there's somewhere we can set up," Hotch said.
"Somewhere with internet, ideally," Garcia said, hefting her laptop case.
"B' has a spare office right this way," Dick offered.
"I think Timberlina took that one," Todd said.
Reid mouthed the name at Garcia. She just shrugged.
"Well, Timberlina's gonna have to use the office he actually has upstairs," Dick said. "We'll walk them over, Alfie."
Alfred inclined his head. "As you wish. I'll be in the kitchen preparing dinner. Does anyone have allergies or dietary preferences I should account for?"
"Vegetarian, please and thank you," Garcia said, smiling.
"I'm already preparing a separate vegetarian dish for young Master Damian. It will be no trouble to make it two portions." He offered Garcia a faint smile of his own.
"This way," Dick said, and led them off, Todd trying to trip him twice before they'd even cleared the entryway.
The halls were more lived-in than Emily remembered— more art, some of it clearly from childhood and clumsily framed anyway, family photos with real smiles instead of posed ones, the occasional scuff or dent low on the wall that a house full of children left behind whether or not anyone meant to. It didn't look like a museum anymore. It looked, strangely, like somewhere people actually grew up.
They reached a large office at the end of the hall. A dark-skinned teenager slouched on the couch; folded into the chair across from him, laptop balanced on his knees, sat a slightly older, paler teenager.
The older one glanced up first. "What did Damian do?"
The other one threw a pillow at his head without looking. "No, dumbass, it's the agents B' was going on about, can't you tell? They've got the judgy eyes." He sat up straighter.
"He never actually told me the day," the older one said, closing his laptop and standing. "And don't tell Damian I said that." He caught the pillow and lobbed it back. "I'm Tim."
"He told you the day, like, five separate times yesterday alone," the other said, setting the pillow neatly on the arm of the couch. "I'm Duke."
"Duke, Tim— scatter. Go do whatever teenagers do somewhere that isn't this room," Todd said.
"Oh, fuck you, old man," Duke muttered, already halfway out the door.
"I'm three years older than you— "
"Might as well be a century," Tim said, not even looking back as he followed.
"I heard that!" Todd called after him.
"Glad to hear your ears still work!"
Dick cleared his throat as if none of that had happened. "So there's two more of B's kids. Tim's fourth age-wise but was adopted third, Duke's second-youngest and the newest addition— it's complicated, don't worry about the order. You'll meet the last two at dinner. Cass is at dance practice and Damian's supposedly doing homework. Can I get anyone anything?"
"When you get the chance, we'd love to speak with Mr. Wayne," Rossi said. "He has a unique perspective on the Joker that could help us."
Todd's throat cleared, sharper than before. "How so?"
"His son was a victim," JJ said, gently. "We find it useful to speak with victims' families early. It helps us build a victimology."
Dick nodded. "I'll send him down— think he's still in his office upstairs." He glanced sideways at Todd, who'd gone quiet, and put a hand on his shoulder. "C'mon."
Hotch looked around at the rest of them once the door shut. "Let's get set up."
"What else do we know about the Joker?" Morgan asked, dropping into one of the chairs.
Garcia claimed the one Tim had left warm and opened her laptop on the desk.
"He almost certainly has a high IQ, but he makes no real effort to hide his identity, and he favors blitz attacks over planning," Reid said, already at the chalkboard, writing ORGANIZED / ASOCIAL in blocky letters.
"No current close relationships on record either," Emily added.
"Well. Except for one Mr. Batman, apparently," Garcia said.
"What do we actually know about Batman?"
Garcia turned her laptop around. "So glad you asked. This Caped Crusader's been active in Gotham for about thirty years. FBI's working profile has him as a white male, mid-forties, likely experienced some kind of injustice as a child that set this whole thing off. Probably employed, definitely well-educated. He's got— and I cannot stress this enough— a fleet of vehicles, including an actual Batmobile, which, come on, how cool is that? He maintains relationships. Blends into Gotham society during the day. Nobody's cracked the identity in thirty years."
"He's also got a lot of vigilante alliances," Reid added. "Robin, Nightwing, Batwoman, Black Bat, Red Robin, Signal, Red Hood, Spoiler, Huntress, an entity everyone just refers to as Oracle, Batwing— and a couple of reformed criminals too, Catwoman, Harley Quinn. That's just in Gotham."
"So we should probably be careful walking around this city," Morgan said.
"The crime rate already had that covered," Reid said.
"For what it's worth," Emily said, "a city that produces this many vigilantes usually has a reason for it. Might be worth asking what Gotham's failing at, structurally, before we ask what the Joker's failing at, psychologically."
"Noted," Hotch said. "Add it to the board."
"On the bright side," Garcia said, "at least one of the vigilantes appears to actively hate this guy back. That's more cooperation than we usually get walking in cold."
"Assuming Batman cooperates with federal agents at all," Morgan said. "Thirty years of nobody knowing who he is under the mask doesn't exactly scream team player. Let alone the citizens."
"Which is why I offered to let all of you stay here."
They turned toward the voice. An older man stood in the doorway, salt-and-pepper streaks through his hair, a long-sleeved turtleneck and dress pants that looked more comfortable than formal. He looked nothing like the twenty-something Emily remembered from the gala, and yet his smile was the same— kind, and a little too practiced.
"Apologies for the interruption. My son mentioned you wanted to speak with me, and I assumed I should also say hello to my guests before Alfred hears I didn't. Gothamites aren’t usually welcoming to outsiders." He gave a short laugh.
"Jennifer Jareau— JJ's fine. We spoke on the phone." JJ shook his hand. "These are agents Hotchner, Rossi, Prentiss, Garcia, Morgan, and Reid"
"A pleasure to meet all of you. I understand you've already met some of my children— I hope that wasn't too much of a warning sign about staying here. Dick's only visiting until he lands a job, the rest live here full-time." His eyes moved across the room, and stopped on Emily. "Have we met?"
Emily cleared her throat. "My mother and I came to a gala here, when I was a teenager."
"I remember you. You were very nervous, and your mother was— "
"Yeah. I know," she said, quickly. "I'm a lot less nervous now. And I wear a lot less eyeliner."
"Is there somewhere you'd feel comfortable talking?" JJ asked him.
"The conservatory clears my head, usually," Bruce said.
"That works. Emily?" JJ said, already stepping toward the door. Emily nodded and followed the two of them out, back into the manor's maze of corridors— past more photographs, more small dents in the plaster, and Emily found herself wondering what it took for a house to accumulate that many years of use, that many small collisions.
The conservatory was easy enough to find. Bruce held the door and let them go in first— a room built almost entirely of glass, night sky spread out overhead, couches and potted plants arranged around a low coffee table.
On one of the couches sat a boy who couldn't have been older than eleven, a cat curled against his side. He had dark hair, a focused expression aimed at the homework spread in front of him, and one hand steady on the cat's back while the other kept writing. He only looked up when Bruce cleared his throat.
"Hello, Father, and company," he said, not moving.
"Dick told me you were doing homework in your room," Bruce said, arms crossing.
"That's what I tell Richard so he'll stop hovering with snacks. That is what Pennyworth is for. When is Richard finding employment again? I would like him to move out."
Bruce sighed. "I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to. Agents Jareau and Prentiss, this is my youngest, Damian."
"Hello, Agents," Damian said, already back to his page.
"Do you mind if I speak with them in here about Jason?" Bruce asked, sitting beside him.
"Don't mind me or Alfred," Damian said, and kept petting the cat, which Emily realized, belatedly, was also apparently named Alfred.
Emily and JJ took the couch across from them.
"I have a cat," Emily offered. "His name's Sergio. He likes to sit on my paperwork while I fill it out. Mostly right on top of the part I'm trying to read."
Damian glanced up properly for the first time. "Do you have photographs?"
"Oh, do I."
Damian set his pencil down— rarer, Emily suspected, than anyone in this house would admit— and shifted just close enough to see the screen better, one hand still resting on the cat like he needed the contact more than it did.
She pulled up her phone while Bruce talked, and let Damian scroll while Bruce told them what had happened in Ethiopia. She heard the cracks in his voice when he got to the part about carrying his son's body, the shallow, careful way he said the word grave, like it cost him something to get through and he'd budgeted just enough breath to do it. And underneath all of that was something else— something that made the whole account feel oddly settled, like a story he'd told enough times that the edges had worn smooth.
Emily knew grief. She'd learned it in the back of an ambulance after Ian Doyle, and it had never once let itself be filed away— she still carried it, some days heavier than others, every single one of them. Bruce didn't talk like that. He talked like his son was only temporarily gone. Like a wound that had already closed. This was not a man still grieving, not the way Emily understood grieving to work, and she filed that away without knowing yet what to do with it.
The door opened. A blonde girl with a mess of curls and an even bigger smile pushed through it.
"Hello, ladies, and you two dudes," she said, crossing the room to shake JJ's hand, then Emily's. "Alfred sent me to round everyone up for dinner, and you four are my last stop. There's a man out there with the rest of your team who has extremely angry eyebrows. I felt very judged, and that's saying something, considering my track record."
Bruce exhaled through his nose. "Steph. Why are you here?"
"Cass invited me. And J— Todd said I'm always welcome."
"Todd doesn't live here, if you'll recall," Damian said, not looking up.
"Cass does, and I wanted to see my girlfriend. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Toddler?"
"I am eleven, you immature swine."
"My bad. Between the height and the attitude, I had you pegged for four."
Bruce cleared his throat before Damian could fire back, one hand coming up to rest— lightly, almost fondly— over his mouth. "Who's hungry?"
—
Alfred had extended the dining room table to seat seven more people, small floral centerpieces spaced evenly down its length, food already laid out and steaming by the time everyone filed in. The team settled in around a mismatched assortment of Waynes, and for a few minutes it was just the sound of forks and someone— Garcia, probably— humming again under her breath.
JJ leaned in close enough that only Emily could hear her. "This is either the strangest case we've ever worked, or the strangest family we've ever met."
"Jury's still out on which," Emily murmured back, and JJ's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile, close enough that Emily felt it more than saw it.
"Hey, B', Conner's coming over tomorrow," Tim said, not glancing up from his plate.
"Not even gonna ask if he can?" Dick said. A redhead had joined him at some point, introduced simply as Barbara, who had already commandeered Garcia's attention with some technical opinion about her setup that Emily couldn't follow and didn't try to.
"One, when have you ever asked before your partners came over? Two, when did you start going by B’? Three, he'd climb in through a window anyway, this is a courtesy," Tim said.
"Does he know we have guests?" Bruce asked, taking a sip of his wine.
"Yeah, he said he'll actually use the front door this time. Like a civilized person. His words," Tim said.
"How much can you actually lift?" Morgan asked, out of nowhere, looking at Todd.
"Morgan," Hotch said.
"No, it's fine," Todd said, waving a hand. "I don't know the exact number, but I could pick these two up at the same time and walk around with them." He pointed at Dick and Tim.
"No, you can't," Dick said, already sounding personally affronted.
"I absolutely can," Todd said. "Up. C'mon, get up."
Dick started to stand. So, unfortunately, did Tim. Bruce said nothing at all, like this was a Tuesday.
"Sit down," Cassandra said. She'd been introduced along with Barbara a few minutes earlier, and had said maybe six words since— but her voice cut clean through the noise, and she was smiling at the agents even as she leveled a flat look at the boys.
"You can't just— "
"I said sit down." She didn't raise her voice. Todd let go of Dick's collar and sat, and Dick sat down half a second later, earning a flick to the back of the head from Barbara for good measure, and so did Tim.
Emily glanced at Rossi, who glanced back at her with the exact same expression— the one that said this was, without question, going in the file, right alongside everything else they'd need to unpack about this family later.
"So, in conclusion," Stephanie said, "he's pretty strong."
"I still want to see him arm-wrestle Bane," Duke said.
"Who's Bane?" Rossi asked.
"A criminal, grew up on Santa Prisca— some sources say he was actually born in the prison there and made to serve out his father's life sentence for him," Reid said. "Committed his first murder inside, spent a long stretch in solitary, worked his way to the top of the prison hierarchy. Eventually the warden started experimenting on him medically, and they ended up injecting him with an experimental steroid compound. He came to Gotham not long after and started his own crime spree."
The table stared at him.
He cleared his throat. "I read Batman's case notes, the ones GCPD has on file. They don't go into how the compound affected his cognition, though, which I'd genuinely love to know, if anyone here happens to."
Tim grinned at him like he'd passed some kind of test. "I like him. Can we keep him?"
"He's our favorite resident genius," JJ said.
"I take mild offense to that," Garcia said, not looking up from whatever Barbara had pulled up on her screen.
"You're our resident favorite everything else," Morgan said, and Garcia blew him a kiss without breaking eye contact with the laptop.
“I can explain the affects on his brain after dinner, no one sleeps in Gotham anyway,” Tim said.
"Don't," Morgan said. "We will lose him for the rest of the night in his notes."
"I wish we could lose Timothy,” Damian muttered from the far end of the table, homework apparently abandoned in favor of dinner.
"The nightlife's really that active?" Hotch asked.
Bruce nodded. "I was actually going to suggest it, if none of you are too tired— Gotham's known for it. Might help to see the city the way it actually runs, not just the parts that make it into a case file."
"We do have a meeting with the commissioner in an hour," Hotch said.
"Speaking of," JJ said. "The Joker's had a lot of known associates over the years. Who would you all recommend we track down first?"
"Harley Quinn," they said, nearly in unison, like it had been rehearsed.
"Really? Because I've seen her track record," Garcia said, a little skeptically.
"She's the one who got closest to him, out of anybody," Barbara said. "He made her who she was, more or less— but she's been helping the Bats for a few years now."
"I don't think she's actually killed anyone recently," Stephanie added. "From what I've heard, anyway. Fair warning, though— she won't talk to male feds. At all."
Emily sighed, already doing the math on who that left. "I guess we're talking to Harley Quinn."