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Jason was a fairy. He was 6.2 inches tall. He had translucent gossamer wings, and antennae, and he slept in the hollow of a tree in Robinson Park.
He was also the Red fuckin’ Hood.
He was luckier than most. He had been homeless, orphaned as a kid, yeah. Wound up in the fucking pet stores, because humans thought fairies were goddamn pets.
And then he got sold. Not to a small child or a lonely little old lady, but to the League of Assassins as magical cannon fodder. Instead of siphoning off all his blood, chopping off his wings, and grinding up his bones into pixie dust, Talia found him. Thought he had potential.
She trained him up. Taught him to use his powers to fight. He specialized in stealth. In offensive and defensive magic. Brought him to trainers, teachers of all types.
He was considered to be Talia’s pet, yeah. But at least no one would ever dare destroy one of Talia’s possessions. There was a certain safety, in that.
There were worse fates.
He had relative freedom, too. His last trainers had been the All Caste, before Talia finally declared him ready and turned him loose. Now, the Red Hood had a mission. A global one.
He was going to free his goddamn brethren. Incite an uprising, if he had too. The days of fairies being kept as humans’ pets were over.
Would be over. Soon.
And he was starting in Gotham.
He geared up. Masked up. Strapped his dual swords to his back and jumped out of his tree, taking flight midway through the fall.
It was time to head to a pet store.
Fairy cages were-- naturally-- fairy-proofed. Like cat carriers, they presumed a certain level of intelligence from their inhabitants, and thus relied on other methods to secure them.
Fairies also usually had innate magical abilities. Not every fairy was a magic user, but enough of them were that building around magic was common sense. So, fairy cages were secured with wards. Apotropaic magic. A woven rope of daisies along every edge and seam of the cage-- impassable, essentially a magic forcefield. Combined with lab-grown four-leaf clovers, to force the fairies into visibility.
They were mild apotropaics, all told. Iron was a strong enough one to poison fairies to death, with prolonged enough exposure. Like Kryptonite for Supers.
The cages also looked pretty. With the braided flowers and clovers. Fairy-like. They sold better that way. It’s probably why they were made of soft pine wood rather than stainless steel. More naturalistic.
The Red Hood stole into the pet store at 3:00 AM local time. Well after hours. Animals snapped to attention at his presence. Birds woke up, flapping wings and cawing. Dogs leapt to their feet and barked.
Jason flew past them all to the fairy section of the pet store. The fairy cages were large. Enclosures, almost. They were full of cottagecore-ass furniture made of fabric leaves and flower petals. Plastic fucking twigs.
At least they had that. The fairies inside couldn’t touch the cages at all, lined with apotropaics as they were. Without the little dollhouse furniture, they would have no way to rest. Would be forced to fly or levitate full-time.
Some pet stores did that. Less ethical ones. It made the fairies desperate to be sold. They would say and do anything to try and convince passing humans to buy them.
The act never lasted long. The end result was traumatized, exhausted fairies being turned over to local animal shelters.
Those were next on Red Hood’s list.
For now, though, he got out his massive, human-size wooden lockpicks and used magic to levitate them over to the nearest fairy cage. The girl inside was sitting cross-legged on a little leafy doll bed, staring at him with dark eyes. She didn’t seem hopeful or suspicious. As if she didn’t care anymore what happened to her, one way or the other.
“I’m getting you out,” Jason said.
She said nothing. Just kept watching.
The lock clicked open, and the door swung out. Jason flew back a few inches, careful to avoid the noxious daisies. God, he didn’t know how they could stand being in there.
The girl stayed completely still. Just sitting on the bed.
“It’s not a test,” he said. “C’mon, get up. Get out of there.”
She buzzed her wings to stretch them. Kept a careful eye on their peripheries as she flew through the cage door. Silent and perfectly obedient. It was freaking Jason out, to be honest.
She hovered a wingsbreadth behind him, still so utterly silent. Jason swallowed.
He moved on to the next cage.
Fairies were expensive. High maintenance. Hard to come by, for poachers-- though breeding mills were starting to become a thing. Anyway, the point was that this pet store in particular did not have terribly many fairies. Jason freed five others, in addition to the first girl, and that was all of them.
A fairy with short blue hair rushed to hug her little brother, both of them crying and talking over each other. A young teenager hovered awkwardly, alone and separate from the rest of the group. A blonde girl rushed over to the silent one with the dark eyes and took her hand fiercely, like she was afraid it would be ripped away.
A little fairy who couldn’t be older than ten hugged her arms around herself, with no one else to hold her.
Jason couldn’t deal with that.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Mia,” she said. “I think. My-- I think I used to be called Maps, though.”
“Alright, Maps. You wanna fly on my back?”
Her eyes widened. “Really? But I’m not a baby.”
He grinned. “You look little enough to me. C’mon, hop on.”
She barreled into his back fast enough to knock the wind out of him. Little arms looped around his neck. A face buried between his shoulderblades. Maps let her wings rest, and Jason took her weight and flew for them both, the way parents did with small children.
They flew straight out the front door.
It’s easy enough to sense fairy rings, if you have the magic for it. Jason led them all north.
Thirteen miles and they would be free. Jason personally had never been to Elphame, being an Earth-born fairy, but he had heard good things. And really, how much worse could it be?
Businesses and restaurants gave way to apartments. Gave way townhouses, then spread out, single-family homes, with yards and everything. The yards got bigger, the houses further back, and the houses themselves increased in size and glamor as well. Being mansions with immaculately maintained yards.
Finally, stands of trees became more common, until Jason could safely say they were in the woods proper. The two boys were flagging by now, having been flying all night and all morning. They were younger than the girls-- except for Maps, of course.
Maps was so fucking tiny. She was asleep and snoring lightly, snuggled between Jason’s wings.
They didn’t talk much while they flew. Conserved their breath and energy. This wasn’t exactly a social occasion. They had exchanged introductions on the way out of the pet store, and that was it.
Cass. Steph. Harper. Cullen. Duke. Maps.
Red Hood.
The magic got thicker in the air the deeper into the woods they went. Jason could taste it on the back of his tongue, could practically see the motes of it glittering.
They were almost at the fairy ring when things got weird.
The woods stopped being woods and turned into a manicured, groomed parkland. Tiny fairy-sized trails everywhere, paved with planks of wood. There were even handrails. Ponds and pools everywhere. Flowers bigger than was normal-- for Earth, anyway.
These were Elphamian flowers. Huge. Blooms over a foot long in diameter-- big enough to sleep in. The sort of flowers that were pollinated by fairies rather than bees and wasps.
There were buildings and houses, too. Carved wood in round towers rather than the blocky rectangles that humans made their buildings. Fat round domes up on stilts, with actual glass windows and working doors. Lines of string lights were looped between dowel rods all along the wooden paths, lighting them up easily.
There was a damn playground, sized for fairy children.
“What the fuck,” Cullen said.
That about summed up Jason’s thoughts, too.
Thudding and muffled curses sounded from inside the largest of the towers. Jason bristled and tensed. Cass pushed forward and adopted a ready stance, hovering in front of them all.
“Damian!” a man’s voice shouted. A sprite burst out of balcony doors high up in the tallest tower, followed quickly by a man who grabbed him by arm and yanked the kid back behind himself.
The man stared down at them. The little kid peeked his head out from behind him.
That kid didn’t have any wings. No antennae, neither. Jason narrowed his eyes.
“What is this place?” he demanded. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who am I? Who are you?” the man asked. His wings buzzed in agitation, antennae prickling up.
A woman rolled out onto the balcony next. In a fairy-sized wheelchair. Her left wing was mangled, torn and ragged and warped.
Their little group all bowed and curtsied at the appearance of who must be the lady of this realm. She was the picture of regal composure, her chair styled as a mobile throne, and a crown of bluebells on her head.
“I would have your names, strangers,” she said.
One by one, they all gave her a name to call them by. Out of respect to a landed lady, Jason introduced himself as exactly that, rather than hiding behind his new name Red Hood.
It meant that his crowd of rescuees now had two of his six names, but that was fine. That was nothing. Less than half, he reassured himself.
“You may call me Queen Barbara,” the lady said. “This is my king, Dick, and Prince Damian. By the right of hospitality, I now declare you honored guests in my queendom.”
“Our sincerest thanks, Your Majesty,” Harper said. “You honor us greatly. We are but travelers passing through this realm, in search of a dimensional portal to Elphame. We did not anticipate crossing such an esteemed queendom, and would never have entered without your permission had we known of it, Your Majesty.”
“This is the Bluebell Court,” Queen Barbara said. “We were gifted these lands by the human Bruce Wayne. They were formerly of his estate. We can lead you to the portal, should you like.”
“You can also stay here,” King Dick said. “As my queen said, this land was donated to us by my adoptive father, Bruce Wayne. It was intended to be a free and equal community for any fae who need it. You are welcome to stay as residents and become members of this Court.”
“You honor us greatly,” Harper said, curtsying again. She had to have been Elphame-born. She knew way more about fairy hospitality and courtesy than Jason did. The rest of their little crowd followed her suit and bowed and curtsied accordingly.
Fuck, Jason shoulda studied etiquette back in the League.
“I accept on behalf of myself and my brother,” Harper said, resting a hand on Cullen’s shoulder. Cullen nodded seriously.
It occurred to Jason that that was potentially a red flag. That the only two fairies who he knew hadn’t been born on Earth were not interested in returning to Elphame, their presumed former home.
Okay, okay: so what he knew. Fairy society was matriarchal and feudal in structure. Noble courts abounded, ruled by queens with absolute power. Courtiers stirred up drama at will, but violence was rare-- the fae tended towards legal and magical trickery instead.
War was not a concern, and natural forces and magic were valued above all else. This was the Bluebell Court. That meant there must be a giant bluebell tree somewhere-- the seat of Queen Barbara’s power, the magical center of the Realm.
Earthen bluebells were wildflowers, not trees. But Elphamian plants played by different rules, and fairy courts were centered around trees.
“I accept too,” Maps piped up from Jason’s back. She scrambled down to hover with her own four wings.
“Uh, yeah. Me as well,” Duke said.
“May we have some time to consider it?” Steph asked, still holding Cass’ hand. “This is not a decision to take lightly, and I would like to give it its due consideration.”
“Of course,” Queen Barbara said.
Then she looked to Jason.
He was not going to panic. He thought fast, mind racing.
A fairy court, on Earth, in the middle of a human’s land. A human who King Dick identified as his adoptive father. A human who must have either built or commissioned the larger structures within this realm.
Bruce Wayne was a vaguely familiar name, but he couldn’t place where he had heard it before.
An Earth-based court would be invaluable to his mission’s operations. He could use this Realm as a base while he cleaned up Gotham by force.
“I accept,” he said.
King Dick smiled.
