Archive of Our Own

In the ultimate bit of cosmic irony, Jason had been in space when Dick died. Later, and only in private, he would be reduced to fits of giggles when he thought about it, about how obviously there was some kind of higher power manipulating the course of his life to create such a perfect parallel of circumstances.

Eerie had been there with him and Kori, saving Roy and the entire freaking galaxy (suck it, JL), and once they’d made their way back to Earth atmo, when they started getting the 24/7 news coverage of Dick Grayson, masked vigilante turned dead man, she’d gone rigid and white, like a carved piece of ivory.

For a week, Jason had been forced to dose her with the mix of SSRIs and sedatives that kept her powers from making them all miserable and suicidal. Not that they weren’t all feeling something about Dick Grayson’s demise, but compared to kinda former best friend/kinda former girlfriend/kinda former brother, Eerie’s connection to Dick was clear cut, and she mourned him like a motherfucker.

But when Jason suggested taking her back to Gotham, once she seemed to be able to hold her shit together, she’d vehemently refused. “Bludhaven,” she said. “I’ve got work to do.”

Jason didn’t know what had happened between Bruce and Eerie after the asshole’d dragged him out to the desert, but given the way her jaw clenched up every time B was mentioned, he had to assume it was bad. As far as he knew, she hadn’t set foot in Gotham since. Jason knew a thing or two about not being able to deal with B’s shit anymore, but he wished she’d go back home where she had some kind of net rather than running around Gotham’s bitchy little sister of a city on her own. He knew Tim had her place bugged — the Replacement had only blushed a little when he mentioned that he’d disconnected the feeds in the bedroom after Jason had come back from his amnesiac assassin extravaganza — so she wasn’t completely solo when Jay wasn’t in town, but he worried.

It’d been nearly three months since Dick’s death and two weeks since the last time Jay had been in the Haven. He’d needed to do upkeep on his various holdings in Europe — the safe houses, the intel sources, the money laundering operations, the weapons and drug dealers — and sometimes the best way to make sure all the people on his payroll were actually doing what he was paying them to do was to just show up and shoot someone if things weren’t just how he expected them to be. It hadn’t been a bad trip (he’d only had to shoot three people this time, and only one was an out-and-out execution) but he’d missed his girl. Eerie had thrown herself into some new project looking into crooked judges, which was a good sign all things considered. Drowning yourself in work maybe wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, but it was a way of coping.

Sure enough, when Jason let himself in off the fire escape, he was greeted by a sprawling wall of photos and post-it notes documenting what he assumed was all prosecution of organized crime in the last ten years or so. Eerie’s hearty little laptop was perched on the coffee table, a pair of headphones tangled at its side along with a styrofoam take-out box that reeked of garlic in the best way. It was early afternoon, when all good vigilantes would be catching up on their sleep, and Jason found Eerie in bed, sheets tangled around her shoulders and feet exposed, just like she liked it. She roused when he sat down on the bed, blinking up at him, then reaching out to grab his jacket. “You’re early,” she mumbled, pulling herself to curl around him until her head rested on his thigh.

“No I’m not,” he replied, smiling as he tried to smooth down an obstinate cowlick at the crown of her head. “You just suck at figuring out time zones.”

“Nuh-uh.” She pressed into his hand. “Your ETA was Eastern Standard. You’re early.”

“So maybe I forged some diplomatic documents to get through customs faster...”

Eerie snorted. “And not have your favorite toys taken away?”

“That too.”

She burrowed her face into his leg, and the low-level arousal that had been hounding him all the way across the Atlantic as he imagined this homecoming flared up into something more urgent. He trailed his hand down her neck and shoulder, sliding the sheet to reveal Eerie’s bare skin, and she twisted to put more of herself on view for him, smiling with her eyes still closed. She reached up to pull him down into a kiss, fingers scratching at the back of his neck, and her lips were chapped and she definitely had morning breath, but Jason’s lips were also chapped and he had trans-Atlantic flight breath and, really, he didn’t give a damn when her warm, wet tongue was pressing against his in such a satisfying and familiar way. “Missed you,” he whispered when he pulled away, struggling to get out of his jacket.

She smiled again and tugged at his earlobe. “Missed you too.”

There were still a few hours until sundown when Eerie extracted herself from Jason’s arms and padded to the shower. She turned on the water to warm up, then gave herself a once over in the mirror. The bruises from last week’s weapons deal had just about faded, and the stitches had dissolved from the knife wound she’d taken while trying to deescalate a gang fight. Jason had commented on neither while they’d been having sex, but she was just waiting for him to bring it up. Like he had any room to talk. Like he never took out his feelings via anonymous violence on the scum of the Earth.

Bludhaven hadn’t been able to get the best of Dick. Maybe it had chew him up and spit him out, but he’d bounced back like the ball of rubber he was. Like hell she’d let it get the best of her.

So while she stood under the water, she’d planned her evening. She was hoping Jason would be willing to give one of the legal clerks she’d been keeping an eye on the Red Hood treatment; the guy had some kind of connection to the Japes family that she hadn’t been able to establish. Ever since the Untitled had been taken out of the picture, the local organized crime had gotten a bit more chaotic. In fact, Eerie had begun to suspect that Bludhaven’s last big hitter, Blockbuster, had either been under the Untitled’s influence until his demise or he had been eliminated by the Untitled to pave the way for her control of the city. Following his death, there had been a period of relative calm — cops took their bribes, all the gangs played nice, not too many civilians died, and so forth. But all that was over: the Morning Oysters and Bludhaven Reds were in all-out war at the moment, with Emily Japes sitting primly on the sidelines waiting to clean up whoever emerged as the victor. Meanwhile, Eerie was doing her best how to solve the local law enforcement problem. She had the police pretty well documented and had even found some folks who could take her key pieces of intel and turn it into actual changes in staffing, but the courts system was just as dirty. She was still trying to figure out how to intervene, a prospect made more daunting by the fact that at the upper levels, judges were elected, and at the lower levels, judges were appointed by those upper level judges. Arguably, the structure should make her job easier — replace the judges at the top with good people, and the problems at the lower levels were more likely to disappear. But replacing the people at the top might involve election tampering, and Eerie may have said that she’d given up on her ideals of democracy the day that she decided to put on a mask, but she wasn’t that far gone yet...

Jason was gone from the bed when she emerged from the bathroom, cloud of steam trailing after her into the chilly atmosphere of the apartment in early autumn. She could hear his voice in the living room, crisp phrases to someone on the phone — someone he didn’t seem to want to be talking to. She stopped dressing, stomach clenching in dread, and clutching a shirt to her chest, she walked down the hallway until she could see him.

And the twisted, turning, coiled line that connected Jay and Bruce Wayne.

She waited until he’d ended the call before she spat, “What does that bastard want now?”

Jason looked over his shoulder at her, but he didn’t move. “There’s a situation. Said he needed help.”

Eerie chewed on her lower lip and made a deliberate effort to rein in her anger. “Are you going?”

Jason shrugged, looking awkward and wrong-footed. “I mean, he only asks for help when shit is really bad.”

And if Jason was willing to forgive B enough to come at his call, Eerie could too. “Alright,” she said, after taking a deep breath. “Your gear bag is in the hallway closet ceiling, above the loose tile.”

Jason frowned as he turned to face her fully. “You get worried about someone finding it?”

It was her turn to shrug. “Some nights, having a few extra steps between me and a gun was a good idea.”

“Jesus, Eerie,” Jason said, taking two sudden steps forward until Eerie held up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t, Jay,” she said, unable to look him in the eye. “Don’t, not now. Yeah, I’m still all fucked up over Damien and Dick, but I’m dealing with it, okay? I’m handling it.”

“But you could, I dunno, fucking tell me?” His voice was weighty with equal parts concern and annoyance.

She snorted. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, J, tonight I can’t decide if I want to kill a bunch of crooked cops or off myself.’ Great way to convince you that I don’t need constant supervision. Besides...” She hazarded a quick glance at him. “I did tell you, just not, like, directly. All those calls when I knew you’d be working to ask about mundane stupid shit like which X-Files episode has Scully singing Three Dog Night? I just needed to hear someone else keeping it together, you know?”

He frowned. “I didn’t always answer your calls.”

“And that’s okay, because then I’d try Tim, or Barbara, or sometimes even my fucking parents...” She sighed, meeting his eyes evenly. “I’m making it, okay? I’m coping.”

His response was to kiss her, hands cupped around her cheeks, pulling her body flush against him. “Yeah,” he said huskily after a long moment, his forehead resting against hers. “You’re making it. But just so we’re clear, if you go on your first bad-guy-killing spree without me, I am going to deeply pissed.”

Eerie laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Also,” he went on, “I’m pretty sure that’s the episode where Mulder and Scully find the tree people and Mulder thinks they were, like, conquistadors or something.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Also, I can find another place to keep the guns if you want.”

“It’s... been less of a concern the last couple of weeks.”

Jason kissed her again, and in it she felt all the things he didn’t say — how much he would miss her if she were gone, how lost he would feel — because he didn’t want to add his own needs and fears and baggage on top of what she was already carrying. They’d never said the word “love,” but Eerie felt it then, felt it in the way he pressed his skin to hers and in the way her lungs swelled like she was getting a good clean breath of air after a nightmare. She allowed herself long seconds to bask in that feeling of buoyancy, of equilibrium, before she gently pulled away, grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. Jason smiled back, and fuck it was good to not see anything like pity or concern or sympathy in his eyes — just the belief that she was, in fact, making it.

“You ready to go see what’s got B’s panties in a bunch?” he asked.

“Like a fucking boss.”

They took Eerie’s beat-up Toyota to Gotham, then hit one of Jason’s safe houses to suit up and grab a bike now that the sun had gone down. Kairos needed the added protection of the hood, mask, and cowl to face Bruce, but even with it, she felt edgy and ill as she clung to Hood’s waist, zipping across the bridge toward the Manor. When they pulled to a halt in the Cave, Batgirl and Red Robin were already there, talking quietly near the main console. “He called you too?” Red asked, arms crossing over his chest.

“Yeah, must be bad,” Hood agreed as Kairos pulled off her helmet and set it next to the bike.

Batgirl snorted. “Hood.” Her line to Jason whipped back and forth like a cat’s tail when it can’t decide if you’re friend or foe.

Hood nodded. “BG.” His line to Barbara was smooth with resignation and even a hint of camaraderie. After all, who could understand her better than him?

“How’re things in the Haven?” she asked Kairos, who had come up to stand rigidly at the edge of the group.

“Gang war,” Kairos replied. “I’ve managed to get some of the worst cops ousted from the force, but they usually end up as enforcers in the gangs, so it’s kind of a lose-lose?”

“Bludhaven’s always been a lose-lose,” Red Robin said. His line to Dick was razor sharp and taut with pain.

Kairos dropped her eyes to the floor, not looking at anyone.

They all heard the steps descending down the stairs from the study: Bruce’s soft weight, the gentle clip-clip-clip of Alfred’s pristinely shined shoes, and Titus’s claws clacking against the stone. No one said anything until the two men had made their way to the bottom and Bruce broke the silence. “Glad you’re all here.” Then he stopped. “Eerie?”

Kairos raised her eyes to Bruce’s face. He was in the suit, but the cowl was down, and he didn’t have the bruises, but his face was set in the same hard lines as the last time she’d seen him, right after he’d dumped Jason in the desert. “Yeah?” she said, letting her resentment shine clear in her voice.

“I didn’t call you.”

She shrugged. “Got word you needed help.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “This isn’t something you can help with.”

She shrugged again. “I’ll be the judge of that, if you don’t mind.”

There was a stretch of silence, as Bruce shifted his weight again. His lines to the others in the cave were crackling with static, jerking into screechy points that were part hope and part fear. “Fine,” he said, but nothing about what she saw said it was fine.

Bruce didn’t want her here. Bruce was afraid of her being here.

Which meant Bruce had a secret he knew she’d find.

“The last time we altogether in the cave, it was because Talia was calling the shots,” he said. “But tonight, I want to set some of those wrongs right.”

“Like dissecting Frankenstein?” Red Robin asked.

“And bringing me to the Magdala Valley on a sightseeing trip to reminisce about the good old days of crowbars and explosions?” Hood added.

“And leaving us to clean up your mess after you tear a swath of ‘vengeance’ through the city wide enough to fly a space shuttle through?” Batgirl chimed in.

Kairos said nothing, too focused on picking through Bruce’s threads, one-by-one. Damian’s loomed large, surging with a hope that even the dam of cynicism couldn’t hold back. There was Catwoman, still full of dirty-little-secret vibes, nothing new. Here was the line to Dick, filled with guilt, and love, and...

“You still have every right to be angry over what happened,” Bruce was saying. “I was grieving, but that was no excuse for my actions.”

“And how about before that?” Red cut in. “How about all the cut-outs and loopholes with Batman Inc.? All the left hand-right hand shit? I mean, I get the need for secrecy when you’re taking on an international crime organization, but you really thought you couldn’t tell us?”

...And no grief. There was no grief in his line to Dick. When Damian had died, his line had been nothing but grief for days and weeks, and even now with all the hope drowning everything else out, little burrs of sadness and loss still clung to the thread. But with Dick, there was sadness with no loss. There was guilt with no grief.

“You’re right.” Bruce made the admission with a deep seriousness. “Things... things would perhaps have been different if there hadn’t been so much misinformation.” He swallowed. “But I want this to be a completely new start. We’ve been broken long enough.”

Dick wasn’t dead. Dick wasn’t dead!

Kairos swayed a little, caught herself against the console chair, limbs suddenly rushing with heat as she fought against a queasy stomach in the face of a completely new reality, one in which her best friend hadn’t died.

“From here on out,” she heard Bruce say from miles away, “good or bad — the truth rules.”

Why hadn’t Bruce told them that Dick wasn’t dead?

“Until it doesn’t,” Batgirl replied, skepticism coating her words. “Until another situation pops up that justifies you going dark on us in more ways than one.”

“Like when you think telling us will get us hurt,” Red Robin added.

“Or when you’ve done something you know will piss us off,” Hood chimed in.

The relief that had been coursing through her only seconds ago was immediately replaced by a sense of rage that she had become entirely too comfortable with in the last few months. Why the fuck was Bruce lying to them about Dick being dead?

“I promise that nothing gets held back,” Bruce vowed. “We speak our mind no matter what the cost. We keep strong through—“

“Unconditional truth,” Batgirl demanded.

“Unconditional truth, now and forever, Bruce, otherwise this is all a load of shit,” Hood seconded.

Maybe Dick had asked Bruce to keep this secret? No, nothing about that made sense. Dick needed his people like fish needed water. Even if he’d had to go into hiding after his unmasking, he’d want them to know he was okay. It’d kill him to think they were grieving over him...

“Absolutely,” Bruce agreed. “You have my word. But this doesn’t change the fact that I’m still going to be incredibly tough on all of you when we work together.”

“Well, dreams die hard,” Hood quipped.

“But, most of all,” Bruce went on, “I’ll be toughest on myself.”

All the guilt along the line to Dick meant that Bruce had forced him into this fake death. He knew that Dick would follow his every order if he said the right words, and he’d said them all and now Dick was who-knew-where without any kind of net because all his friends thought he was dead.

“So...” Bruce was saying as Kairos clamped her teeth down on a snarl and locked her elbows and knees to keep herself from trying to ram her fist down the goddamn Batman’s throat. “Are we good?”

There was a long silence, when Kairos could hear the blood in her ears and her ragged breathing, but no one else seemed to notice because Babs pulled down her cowl, saying, “Yes.” Tim followed, domino mask making a sucking sound as he peeled it off his face. Even Jason took off the hood with a muttered “yeah.”

Bruce’s eyes turned to Kairos, and she knew that he knew that she knew, saw the resignation there. “Eerie?” he asked softly.

“I dunno, Bruce,” she said, surprised by how level her voice sounded. “I’ve always been an existentialist in these matters, or have you forgotten?”

Everyone was looking at her now, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was giving Bruce a chance to right his wrongs and if he didn’t, she’d make sure they all knew him for the hypocrite he was.

Titus padded a few steps toward her, then planted himself at her feet, glaring at Bruce with a low rumble in his throat.

Bruce’s jaw worked, then he nodded, once. Took a deep breath. Said, “Dick isn’t dead.”

“What?” Barbara snapped.

“We had to stop his heart, to disengage the bomb,” Bruce went on, quickly, like ripping off a bandage. “Afterwards, we started it again. But Dick needed to disappear completely. And I...” He faltered, and Kairos saw the guilt rise and fall like a tide, knew that Bruce had been living with that tide, steady as the moon, for the last three months. “I needed someone to infiltrate Spyral. If you all didn’t think Dick was dead, I was worried he would be tempted to contact you, and that could have been — would have been — extremely risky.”

“Dick’s alive,” Tim said. The revelation had hit him like it had Kairos and he leaned against the console behind him. “Like, really alive?”

“Yes. He’s not necessarily safe, but he’s alive and well.”

Barbara was pacing, and Kairos caught glimpses of the bolts of anger and affection that sparked off her in all directions before looking to Bruce again. He seemed wrung out, relieved and exhausted and restless and still thrumming with that heartbeat of hope for Damian. Jason was at her side, watching her closely, so she gave him a little wink to say that all was well, then leveled her own ultimatum. “It’s always been my policy to keep my mouth shut,” she said to Bruce, “but I won’t be your secret keeper any more. If you’re going to promise unconditional truth, then I will hold you to that.”

Bruce held her gaze for a moment, then his face softened into something almost like a smile. “I understand.”

She gave her own single, sharp nod; divested herself of hood, cowl, and mask; and said, “So, what’s up with Damian?”

“Damian isn’t dead either?!” Barbara yelled.

“He is,” Bruce assured her quickly, moving to the console and tapping a few keys. “Damian’s and Talia’s bodies were stolen from their graves. I’ve been hunting them down for days.”

“By whom?” Barbara asked.

A photo of R’as al-Ghul filled the giant screen. “Him.”

“Well fuck,” Jason swore. “No wonder that bastard was so intent on claiming the Well of Sins. You think he’s gonna try to bring them back that way?”

“The Lazarus Pit below Nanda Parbat would have brought them back as his puppets, completely under his control,” Bruce answered. “I was able to stop him before that happened, but we were then attacked by forces from Apokolips who took Damian’s body with them.”

“Apokolips?” Eerie screwed up her face. “What would they want with Damian’s body?”

Bruce sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“We want to hear it,” Tim said in a tone that brooked no argument, and Jason immediately backed him up. “Damn right we do.”

Another sigh, this one accompanied by a small smile. “Alfred?”

“A stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches coming right up, Master Bruce,” the butler promptly replied.

As the roar of motorcycles faded down the tunnels leading under the river, Bruce lifted his eyes to the stalactites that lined the cave’s roof. “Heard your stomach growl. Want a sandwich?”

“Sure!” Dick chirped as he dropped out of the shadows. “Spyral’s cafeteria sucks.”

“You didn’t want to see everyone earlier?” Honestly, Bruce had been expecting for Dick to make one of his more dramatic entrances in a long history of dramatic entrances, but his son had remained out of sight.

“I’m happy they don’t think I’m dead anymore,” Dick answered as he plucked a PB&J of the plate. “But I’m not ready for all the crying.”

BRuce snorted. “I have a hard time seeing them shedding any tears over your return. You’re more likely to get punched.”

“I meant me, and the punching is certainly another deterrent.” Dick gave a sheepish smile. “Besides, there’s more important things for them to be worrying about tonight.”

Bruce only grunted.

“I imagine there’s no talking you out of this?” Dick asked as he crouched to rub Titus’s jowls.

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

Bruce looked at the calculations that covered the console screen. “No changing what was,” he said, “but with what I’ve learned, I’m damn well going to try to change what will be.” His throat started to tighten, and he forced himself to take an even breath. “As Damian’s father, I owe him at least that.”

“You know how much Damian meant to me, Bruce,” his son said.

What Dick meant was that he, too, cared deeply about Damian, but what Bruce remembered was Eerie screaming at him that he didn’t get a monopoly on grief before storming out of the cave. What he remembered was Batgirl offering to sacrifice herself to his mission if it meant he’d get his shit together, the accusation in Tim’s eyes as he put an end to the inhuman things his adoptive father was doing to Frankenstein...

“Just say the word,” Dick was saying, “and I’m at your side on Apokolips to the bitter end.”

Bruce had treated their grief like it was nothing, but when he’d asked for their faith again, they gave it.

He would right these wrongs.

He laid a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “I know that, Dick, but I need you to make me a promise.”

“About the cape and cowl.” It wasn’t a question.

“You wore it well before.” Maybe Bruce hadn’t been around to see it in person, but he’d studied the records on Dick’s tenure as Batman with satisfaction and pride.

“And if you want me to wear it again, I will,” Dick assured him. There was no hesitation, no lack of confidence. Dick had grown sure enough of himself to lay his fears of being subsumed by Bruce to rest. “There’ll always be a Batman in Gotham, Bruce.”

“And the family?”

“Seriously?” Dick laughed. “I’ve got more experience keeping this family together than you do.”

Bruce frowned. “True.”

He wanted to right these wrongs. But right now, right now he needed to bring Damian home.

He shook his head, sliding his concerns about Tim slipping away and repairing trust with Barbara and how to possibly get Jason to come home and whether or not Eerie would ever agree to come work for him again into a box and placing it carefully on a shelf in the closet space of his mind. “I also need a favor.”

Dick pulled a second sandwich in half, sharing with Titus who chomped awkwardly at the stickiness. “Ask away.”

So trusting, Dick. So sure of himself. Maybe operating without the usual safety net had been good for him. “I need you to use Spyral to initiate several untraceable distractions.”

“What kind of distractions?”

“The kind that get the attention of four different individuals in four different parts of the world.” Bruce laid out his plan while Dick consumed yet another sandwich. It wasn’t at all elaborate and Dick was getting ready to slink off back to his erstwhile masters within five minutes. “I’ll make sure that I leave details on how to contact you,” Bruce said. “In case I don’t make it back.”

Dick nodded. “Good luck, Bruce.” He turned to leave... and ran straight into Alfred.

A beat of silence, then without either one saying a word, they were hugging, Dick stooping slightly to wrap his arms around the older man’s thin shoulders. “It is so good to see you, Master Richard,” Alfred whispered.

“Those sandwiches were top notch,” Dick said in return.

Sure enough, Dick’s face was wet when he pulled away. Alfred beamed at him before rubbing a thumb quickly across his cheeks. “I trust you’ll be back before too long? Perhaps for the holidays?”

“I’ll see what I can do, Alfred,” Dick said, and Bruce heard the same weight in the words as when Dick had promised there would always be a Batman in Gotham.

Once Dick had left, Alfred came to stand next to Batman at the console. There was a silence for a long moment, a silence that built around Bruce’s shoulders and neck until he felt like it would stifle him. Then Alfred cleared his throat and he felt like he could breathe again, even if just for a moment before the lecture started. “I have always trust you, Master Bruce,” Alfred started, “to be as honest with me as you felt was suitable. I have trusted that whatever secrets you kept were kept for good reason. But this deceit surrounding Master Dick’s passing...” The old man trailed off as he choked up. He steadied himself with a breath, and Bruce felt another layer of guilt that he would have to scrape off and store away so he could focus on the mission. “This deceit has been unacceptably cruel, and I expect it never to happen again in the future.”

“Never again, Alfred,” Bruce said. He would right these wrongs. “You have my word.”

“Very good, sir.” Alfred took another breath, and Bruce heard the rustle of cloth as he settled his shoulder under his crisp jacket. “Shall we get you prepared for the jump to the Watchtower?”

They were almost to the tunnel exit when Hood gunned ahead of the others before pulling his bike around with a squeal of tires to block the route, effectively putting a halt to Bruce’s orders. “So we give that bastard, what, another three minutes to get his whole suicide mission on the road, then we go back to save his stupid ass?” he said once everyone had cut their engines and he could be heard without using the comms.

“Better make it five,” Red Robin said, taking a look at his wrist where of course he had a tiny computer strapped. Replacement couldn’t go anywhere without his gadgets. “There hasn’t been any zeta beam activity in the area yet.”

Batgirl shook out her hair as she pulled off her helmet, and Hood had a weird moment of nostalgia for how often that exact same sight had made its way into his pubescent wet dreams. He glanced at Kairos guiltily, not knowing if she’d notice or not, but his girlfriend was lost in thought. “Something’s up,” she said. “This is about more than just getting Damian’s body.” Her brow creased. “I think he thinks he can actually bring him back.”

Hood’s stomach lurched. “Who is he gonna fuck up to do it this time?”

Kairos shook her head emphatically. “It’s different — the threads are different. Last time he was lashing out in the dark, but this time... it’s like he knows something.”

“Like how he knew Dick wasn’t dead?” Batgirl said, and her body was so rigid that Red Hood suddenly found himself wondering if Kairos wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been coping well with the loss. Barbara had probably been feeling like she was almost getting the hang of this new life when Dick’s death pulled the rug out from under her again.

“Just so we’re all on the same page,” Red Robin said, “this one little kumbaya moment does not let B off the hook. We believe this ‘absolute truth’ thing when he starts, ya know, actually telling the truth. But...” Red Robin sighed, like the next words were about to cost him something. “We’re not doing this for B. We’re doing this for Damian.”

“For Demon Spawn,” Hood agreed. “Kid’s a little psycho, but he’s our little psycho.”

“So what?” Batgirl said. “We wait for B to leave, then figure out how to open our own boom tube to Apokolips? I know I don’t have that kind of tech lying around.”

“Cyborg can open a boom tube,” Red replied. “We just need to figure out some way to persuade him to help us out.”

Hood grimaced under his helmet. “If he wasn’t going to do it for B, I don’t think he’ll do it for us.” He looked to Kairos again. “Unless you’ve got any favors you could call in?”

She twisted her mouth in thought. “I’ve got ‘come get rid of this weird virus on my computer’ favors, but no ‘come open a channel to an alien world’ favors.”

Red Robin’s wrist beeped. “There’s the zeta beam,” he said, after checking it. He pulled his helmet back on, Batgirl and Kairos echoing the movement. Sometimes Hood really enjoyed the simplicity of having a single piece of multifunctional headgear.

Alfred was feeding the animals when they arrived back in the Cave proper. “Ah yes, right on time,” he said, looking over his shoulder from where he was measuring out dog kibble in bowl.

Hood snorted. “How’d you know we’d come back?” he asked.

“Because you’re family,” Alfred answered without hesitation, and Hood could see that, despite everything, he was still included when Alfred used the word.

“We’re not letting Batman do this alone,” Batgirl said.

“Yeah,” Hood quipped, to hide the sudden rush of warmth in his chest at the look Alfred had given him, “who knows what he hasn’t told us yet.”

“Indeed,” the butler agreed drily.

“The problem is transportation.” Red Robin was already at work on the console. “Cyborg can open a boom tube, but we need to get him to do it.”

“I may be able to assist in that department,” Alfred said, leading Red Hood to one of the vaults that lined the walls of the Cave. A retinal and voice scan revealed a collection of identically sized and shaped boxes, each marked with the emblem of a Justice League member. Hood whistled. “Not paranoid at all, is he?”

“Everyone calls Superman a Boy Scout,” Batgirl said behind him, “but B’s the one who really took ‘always be prepared’ to heart.”

While Batgirl and Red Robin took a look at whatever horror B had in Cyborg’s box and Alfred went to find Batcow her daily hay, Hood pulled Kairos into a shadowy nook. “You know you’re not coming with us, right?” he said. “You’re not going to fight about it, are you?”

She barked a little laugh. “Are you kidding? I’ve read the files on Apokolips. I’d be as helpful there as knot on a log.” She shook her head. “I’ll stay here, keep an eye on things. We should probably call in Batwing if he’s available, maybe see if we can get Batwoman in the loop too.”

Jason pulled his helmet off so he could kiss her. “In a world full of stubborn assholes with savior complexes, you’re a breath of fresh air, E.”

She rolled her eyes. “Someone’s gotta do it, and Alfred deserves a break every now and again.” She was smiling when she said it, but her face slowly fell into something darker, like she wasn’t able to keep the mask in place. “You okay?” Jason asked.

She scrunched her nose, choosing her words carefully. “I’m angry and hurt by Bruce’s lies. I’m overjoyed that Dick apparently isn’t dead. I’m a roiling mess of ill-conceived hope and anticipation over whatever is going to happen with Damian. And I’m scared half to death that you won’t come back to me.”

Jason pressed his forehead to hers in what was becoming an increasingly familiar gesture of comfort and intimacy. “I came back to life once just for spite,” he said. “I’d like to see anything try to stop me from getting back to you.” He grinned. “In the words of Toto, it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.”

Kairos fought to keep her mouth from twitching. “There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do?” she asked.

“Damn straight.”

Red Robin had just about figured out how to hook Batman’s Cyborg-zapper into the Internet 3.0 rig when Batgirl said, “It’s weird seeing Jason with somebody.”

“Oh?” He glanced up to where she was looking and saw Jason, sans helmet, and Kairos with their faces pressed close. “I guess it’s always weird to see somebody you’ve known for a long time in a relationship.”

“I just always figured that, of all you bat boys, Dick would be the one to figure out how to make domestic bliss work,” she went on, then glanced his way. “No offense.”

Red Robin grimaced. “None taken.” He’d be the first one to agree that romantic happiness did not seem to be in the cards for Tim Drake, at least not so long as R’as al-Ghul was breathing down his neck. He’d been a little surprised to hear that R’as had been so busy otherwise; the routine ninja ambushes had not let up in the slightest. Maybe the old man just scheduled them on his Google calendar months in advance so he wouldn’t forget. “There’s no reason Dick can’t find domestic bliss, since he’s not, ya know, dead.” Red zip-tied the paralyzer unit to one of the rig’s legs so the cords could reach. “No reason you can’t either.”

The silence that followed told Red that he’d hit the mark. He didn’t know much about what had happened between Barbara and Dick since her surgery and return to the Batgirl uniform, but he knew it had made them both unhappy. It wasn’t so much that he believed Dick and Barbara belonged together — he’d give them 50/50 odds for making it work long-term — but they did seem to fit together in a way that could make a romantic and domestic partnership. Maybe it was the shared history; maybe it was the fact that they’d had enough time to grow around each other as well as grow up. Whatever it was, it meant that the two of them were destined to circle each other like Pluto and Charon until they either smashed into each other or one of them got pulled into someone else’s gravitational field.

“I’m going back to school,” Batgirl said suddenly. “Masters in Criminology at Gotham U. I start in a couple of weeks.”

Red Robin nodded. “They’ve got a decent program.” He reached into to slide the paralyzers wires into the appropriate slots on the rig, but with a flash of annoyance found that his hand had grown too big for the small space without removing the paneling. “Give me a hand with this.”

Batgirl shifted to take over the task. “At first, being back on the street was a rush,” she went on. “I thought that I was getting back to my old self...”

“But then you realized that old self wasn’t there anymore,” Red supplied. He’d had the same realization after Bruce had returned from his time traveling and Tim found he couldn’t quite slip back into his former role, not after Damian, not after R’as.

Batgirl nodded, and Red heard the snick that said everything was in place. He started the diagnostic scan on the Internet 3.0 interface to make sure everything was in working order. “I’d spent more time as Oracle than Batgirl,” she said. “And I think that maybe I did more good as Oracle. I mean, B could find a replacement Batgirl. He couldn’t find a replacement Oracle.”

“So you learn to hybridize. Play to your strengths.” Dick had been able to find a replacement Robin. He hadn’t been able to find a replacement Tim Drake, head of R&D for Wayne Enterprises. He hadn’t been able to find a replacement Detective.

“Yeah, I guess that’s the idea.” Batgirl watched the screen over his shoulder — Red was always going to be the short Robin, if Damian really did make it back from the dead. “Eerie did her masters at GU,” he said idly, tapping through menus.

“She helped me with my application,” Batgirl replied, pointing to one of the numbers on the screen. “That voltage seems really high.”

“High for organic matter,” Red agreed, “but at least half of Cyborg’s neuro-network is machine. Hence, the name.”

“I know, but we don’t want to run the risk of frying the boom tube components. That range? I’d give it an 80% chance of overloading.”

Red considered, then acquiesced. “You’re probably right.” He made some adjustments.

By the time they were both satisfied with the set-up, Hood and Kairos had finished their heart-to-heart. “We good on this front?” Hood asked, fiddling with one of his thigh holsters.

Red nodded. “We get him to hook in, trigger the paralyzer unit, then he spends the next few hours reliving his fondest memories.” He shrugged. “Now we just need to get him here.”

“I’ve got some ideas about that,” Kairos said, “but we also need to arrange for things here in Gotham while y’all are away. Batgirl, you’ll need to track down Batwoman, get her into our comms loop. Hood’ll call Batwing and arrange his travel. Sound good?”

Kairos never gave orders, Red reflected. She just outlined a possible course of action, then asked if everyone thought it was acceptable, and somehow people never said no, because usually her course of action was the most logical one.

So Batgirl took off for Gotham and Hood pulled out his phone and moved away to make some calls. Kairos turned to him. “So, I’m thinking that maybe before he left, Bruce created some really bad problem with the local network that’s making things through the whole city go on the fritz?” She was waving her hands slightly, like she did when she was talking about things she was having trouble visualizing. “Like some kind of computer problem that me and Alfred can’t make heads or tails of? And of course, you’d be on the other side of the country, and Oracle is defunct, so I’m, like, calling Cyborg on that ‘get this virus off my computer’ favor?”

“You are so bad with computers,” Red said, moving to the console.

“Which is why I’m delegating?” She gave him an uncertain smile. “What do you think?”

Red logged into the system and started pulling up the most recent records. “Should work. Just let me see what I can do here... Huh.”

“Huh?”

“Justice League members have been dispatched across the globe in response to sightings of various super villains, but when they got there it was... holographs?”

“Holographs? Seriously?”

“Yeah, but like really good ones.” Red downloaded the analysis from the Watchtower servers, then looked over the specs with raised eyebrows. “Like really good ones.”

“You think it was B?” Kairos asked.

“Doubt it. This is beyond him. But maybe not beyond Spyral?” Red snorted. “I guess we weren’t the only help B called in tonight.”

“Technically, he didn’t call me,” Kairos said. “I”m just a party crashed. Anyway, does this help us at all?”

“Sure does.” Red got to work, digging up the local rouge gallery files, including the detailed biometric data of the heaviest hitters. “I’ll just use the Spyral skeleton to create some holographs to scatter around Gotham. Then you call up Cyborg and tell him that B left a mess and you don’t know what to do.”

Kairos nodded. “How long will it take you?”

“Should be done by the time BG gets back.”

Kairos fidgeted next to him as he worked, but he didn’t mind. “Did you mean what you said?” he asked. “About not keeping B’s secrets anymore.”

“I will resurrect the fucking family group chat to air every last bit of his bullshit, if that’s what it takes,” she said vehemently.

“That might be a bit extreme.” The family group chat had originally been Dick’s idea, but it had quickly devolved into a nuclear war zone.

She shrugged. “There have to be consequences.”

“You’re acting like losing the family would actually mean something to him,” Red said, adjusting the positioning of a Killer Croc that would pop up right in front of City Hall.

“I know it would.”

And Red realized that this was the first secret Kairos would tell — that whether he acted all ‘my way or no way’ or not, Bruce actually cared that he had the backing of the family. He sighed, corrected the coloring of Scarecrow’s hood, and said, “I guess we’ll see what happens when he doesn’t have an immediate need for us.”

“Yeah,” Kairos agreed, “I guess we’ll see.”

They pulled the whole thing off beautifully, really, Kairos reflected as Batgirl made some final adjustments to Cyborg’s boom tube maker so it would hone in on whatever coordinates B had used. She had no idea how Batgirl had gotten those coordinates, but she’d learned long ago that, especially when Tim and Barbara were in a room together, it was easier to believe it was magic than to try to understand.

Batwing was enroute, with an ETA of 6 hours, in a Batman Inc. jet. Batwoman had a comm device and Alfred had already pinged her to take care of an outbreak of gang violence near the docks. As soon as Red Robin, Batgirl, and Red Hood were underway, Kairos would be joining her, which was an unsettling prospect in and of itself — she’d had zero interaction with Batwoman and a ton of respect for the woman, so she was a little worried she might fan-girl all over the place.

Of course, all of that was beside the fact that pretty much everyone she gave a damn about was either on or about to be on an alien planet fighting for their lives.

She couldn’t even muster a giggle or a groan when Hood made a bad Star Wars joke.

At least they’d have a little extra protection from the modified Robin suits Alfred found. Between that and the fact they’d be together when they went through, Kairos had to believe they’d come out alright.

“Okay, I think I got it,” Batgirl was saying. “The Cyborg schematic says all I haveta do is—“

And they all got a lesson on why it was called a boom tube.

For a second no one moved, then Red said, “Alright, no time like the present.” He started forward, Batgirl on his heels, but before Hood could move into position on drag, Kairos grabbed his arm. “Jay,” she said, fighting back the fear in her throat, the impulse to ask him not to go. Instead, something else came out. “I love you, okay? I can’t let you go without knowing that.”

She couldn’t read his face, not with the hood on, but he tapped his forehead to hers. “I’ll be back,” he said. “I promise.”

He took off at a trot, but Kairos didn’t see him disappear through the portal because Cyborg knocked her aside and Titus was barking and Alfred was yelling and then the strange, other-worldly light was gone and it was just her and Alfred the butler and Alfred the cat and Batcow, staring at nothing.

“Well then,” Alfred said. “I suppose you should go assist Batwoman at Dixon Docks.”

Kairos patrolled like she never had before in Gotham, but her time in Bludhaven had served her well for the kinds of everyday violence and mayhem the city couldn’t seem to function without. Batwoman and Batwing did the heavy lifting, and Kairos only said maybe one or two things to Batwoman that left her wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

“Does Batman keep you under a rock?” Batwoman asked after one of these unfortunate comments (and after having to save her from getting brained by what looked to be one of Penguin’s goons).

“Yes,” Kairos agreed. “He kind of does.”

“Kairos primarily works as an investigative consultant,” Penny One chimed in, ostensibly coming to her rescue. “But under the circumstances, it’s all hands on deck.”

“And what are those circumstances exactly?” Batwoman asked, efficiently zip-tying two grunts together. “Batgirl was vague.”

“Batman went on a suicide mission to save Robin,” Kairos said, thumbing through a few wallets. She’d started doing this in Bludhaven and had discovered you could get a lot of information from what the run-of-the-mill muscle kept on his person. “Other bats went after him to try to make it not a suicide mission.”

“I heard Robin was dead.”

“Hopefully not.”

Batwoman threw her hands up in the air. “This is why I never joined up with the whole—“ she gestured wildly in Kairos’s general direction “—Bat family thing. You’re weird. All of you.”

“Oh yeah,” Kairos agreed emphatically. “So weird. You should definitely stay away. And whatever you do, don’t give Batman the least little hint that he can say or do anything to influence your actions because that man is the Platonic definition of the whole inch-mile scenario.”

Batwoman snorted.

“Also,” Kairos said, because her mouth was just running like crazy now in an attempt to keep something from accumulating in her chest until her rib cage exploded in a mess of blood and guts and eternal sadness, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Total bullshit.”

Batwoman snorted again. “Thanks?”

“I mean,” Kairos went on, and what the fuck was wrong with her? “God, what do I mean? I think it’s because I’m a queer woman who’s currently in a relationship with a man, so I feel like I have to work extra hard to perform my queerness and solidarity?”

Batwoman looked at her.

“Also that man may have been one of the bats who went off the try to make Batman’s suicide mission into not a suicide mission?” Kairos could hear her voice rising with every layer of question that she ascribed to what were, in fact, facts. “And instead might have turned a suicide mission into a mass suicide mission?”

Her vision got funny, kind of colorless and slow, and she was suddenly aware of exactly how quickly she was breathing, but that wasn’t weird, was it? She’d just been fighting bad guys, so of course her heart rate was up. This wasn’t a panic attack at all...

“Okay,” Batwoman was saying, and she was holding both of Kairos’s arms, forcing the younger woman to face her, “just breathe. Okay? Just focus on breathing.”

So Kairos did, closing her eyes and counting in... two... three... four... and out... two... three.. four... five... six... and in... two... three... four... and out... two... three... four... five... six...

“This man you’re with,” Batwoman said. “Did Batman keep him under a rock too?”

Kairos pictured the tombstone that had set over Jason’s grave. “Uh...”

“No,” Penny One cut in. “He most certainly did not.”

“Then he’s probably fine,” Batwoman said. “And you’ve got your own mission right now.”

It was sound advice, but Kairos had never been as good as the others at compartmentalizing, at focusing on the mission. The anxiety kept sneaking up — when she was keeping an eye the monitors while Alfred caught a few hours of sleep, when she was making a sandwich, when she was sitting on top of Gotham Cathedral with nothing to do but watch the people below and wonder what the hell was taking so long because it had been two days — and then she focused on the sound of Jason’s voice saying “Like fucking bosses... Like fucking bosses...” A new mantra of sorts for when she needed her mind to focus on the task at hand and not all the what-ifs.

She was making a circuit around City Hall when the first energy anomaly happened, the console’s warning sounding loudly through her comms. After alerting Batwing and Batwoman that she and Penny One — who wasn’t answering her calls — were out of play, she drove as fast as she dared back north, back to the tunnel system, back to the cave...

Which looked like a disaster area when she screeched to halt in the garage. Some part of her brain did a head count, and when it came up with one more than she was expecting, every last bit of fear suddenly washed away.

“Eerie!” Damian yelled, and he threw himself at her in a rib-crushing hug that she returned just as fiercely.

“God damn it, you little asshole,” she breathed, clutching him to her and clenching her eyes against tears. “Dying to get out of writing a fucking essay? Like no one’s ever tried that one before.”

“Tt,” Damian said as he pulled back. “The essay was almost finished anyway.”

“I’m fine!” Bruce was saying as he slapped at Alfred’s hands. Barbara, Tim, and Jason were watching like they had a betting pool going.

“You are not, sir,” the butler insisted as he dabbed at one of a number of ruptured boils on Bruce’s face and arms. Eerie started pulling off gear and handing it to Damian as she approached the med bay. “You want me to start telling some of your other secrets, B?” she asked.

Bruce froze, eyes darting between Alfred and Damian and the cluster of bats eyeing him from the sidelines, then he settled himself, resentment clear in his body language. “Alfred should be making dinner,” he grumbled. “To celebrate.”

“Good idea,” Eerie agreed. She looked to the butler. “I can take care of him, if you want.”

After a moment of unspoken agreements — namely that Bruce would not be leaving that spot until all his injuries had been tended to — Alfred headed upstairs with Tim and Barbara in his wake. Damian continued to hover near his father, and that, more than Eerie’s threats, probably kept Bruce in place as she cleaned and medicated and bandaged his wounds and gave him a round of antibiotic and steroid shots. “Is this how it’s going to be now?” he asked softly at one point when Damian was distracted with checking on Batcow. “I don’t do what you like and you threaten to tell all?”

Eerie pursed her lips, then said, voice equally soft, “No. At least, I don’t want it to be.” She lifted an eyebrow as she swabbed an antiseptic wipe on his bicep. “But you’ve got to stop lying to them, Bruce.”

“I know,” he said. “I don’t... I want things to be different, but after Jason, and then Damian, and then Dick...” His voice broke suddenly, and he had to swallow several times before he could continue. “I’m not strong enough.”

Eerie sighed. “I know that, and you know that,” she said matter-of-fact. “But to them? It looks a hell of a lot different. It looks like a lack of trust. It looks like disinterest or disappointment or you being a self-centered asshole who only sees the mission.”

Bruce looked even more defeated than before, and Eerie felt her heart break for a man who had just managed to drag his son out of the grave and still stood to lose the rest of his family. “I had this dream one time,” she said, collecting up the various bits of paper and plastic and needles that needed to be disposed of. “It was all really weird and possibly had something to do with the fact that I may have been suffering from hypothermia in the Himalayas at the time.” Bruce raised an eyebrow at her but said nothing. “There was an old woman in the dream, and she told me that I spent too much time thinking with my eyes,” Eerie continued. “That I needed to think more with my skin.” She frowned. “I’m still not sure what that means for me, but for you? You’ve spent so much of your life responding to what you see, crafting your responses to the input you’re getting from others around you for the best possible outcome. You need to spend more time crafting your responses based on what you feel.”

Bruce didn’t say anything in response, at least not to her, but when he got up off the exam table, he went straight to Damian and took the boy in his arms again.

“The old woman,” Jason said behind her. “Was she all short and wrinkled and blunt as a stone coming straight at your face?”

Eerie grinned at the description. “She looked like what you see when you think of Ducra, yes.” She started to clean the med bay surfaces with antiseptic wipes; no need to let whatever alien germs Bruce had contracted populate their space. “She also had some very pointed words about how empathy is the antithesis of self-preservation and how I need to learn to look out for myself so I can pass on my genes or something.”

Jason looked thoughtful when she turned around, but she couldn’t stand the line that was splitting apart his brow, so she grabbed his hand. “You came back,” she said.

He seemed to shake off whatever flight of fancy had taken him because he immediately grinned down at her. “I told you, I keep my promises.” Then his face got solemn again. “Before I left, you said some things—“

Eerie’s eyes widened. “Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly. Honestly, she’d been so worried that he might die light years away that she hadn’t even thought about the fact that he hadn’t answered a profession of love in the traditional way. “It was a thing I wanted to say. I wasn’t expecting anything.”

“No, just... shut up a second, okay?” Jason trailed off, closing his eyes like he was really focusing. “I didn’t want to say anything, because I was worried it was all just — just ‘my boyfriend is going into a life-threatening situation’ impulsiveness.”

“Like ‘we didn’t die’ horniness?” Eerie asked, because she didn’t always do well when people asked her to shut up.

“Yes, exactly like that.” Jason stepped a little closer. “So I wanted you to be able to take it back, if you wanted, but if you don’t?”

He looked at her and she shook her head.

“Then I want you to know that I love you too.”

That was followed, of course, by a kiss, which was then followed another, and maybe another, which was then followed by Damian saying, “I must insist on a certain level of decorum in the Cave.” The kid was making a disgusted face with his hands planted on his hips. “And in my presence in general.”

“Jesus, baby bat!” Jason groaned. “Why you gotta be such a cock block?”

“Language, Jason,” Bruce intoned.

The spread that Alfred had whipped up on such short notice was impressive, but Jason had long ago accepted that he was never going to get used to how much food could be found in the Manor. Of course, the whole thing was vegetarian, which was a little bit of a let-down because Christ on a pogo stick he could go for a chili dog. But Eerie’s hand was in his, and when she sat in the chair next to him, she scooted a little closer.

Replacement was regaling Demon Spawn with a play-by-play of Titus’s feats of strength and prowess on Apokolips and Alfred was doling out generous slices of chocolate cake topped with mountains of whipped cream when none other than Dick Grayson erupted into the dining room to wrap Damian up in the kind of surprise hug they’d all learned to watch for. The kid was enthusiastic to return to gesture, and Jason was struck for a moment by how much of a kid there still was under those layers of assassin training and brattiness and pride. It shouldn’t have come as a shock — even after he’d been hardened by the streets, something as simple as popcorn and a movie with Bruce had been enough to soften a lot of the veneer.

“Ah, Master Richard,” Alfred said, “just in time for dessert, as usual.”

“You know it, Alfie,” Dick answered, but before he could get another word out, Barbara had darted into his space and slapped him firmly across the face. “If you ever, ever let him talk you into something so ridiculously stupid ever again,” the redhead hissed, “I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth and force you to listen to the mixed tape you made me when we were fourteen.”

Dick visibly paled, which brought a huge grin to Jay’s face. “You still have that?” he mumbled.

“And multiple digital backups,” she assured him smugly. Then she hugged him tightly. “I’m so glad to see you, Boy Wonder.”

Tim got his hug next, though he did it without threats or really any commentary at all, then Eerie, who was equally silent, but Jason could tell by the set of her jaw that she was trying very hard not to cry. Once they had broken off the embrace, Jason made a big show of pushing back from the table, sauntering over to his big brother, and clamping both his hands on Dick’s biceps. “Dick,” he said, forcing solemnity into his voice and fighting to keep the corners of his mouth down, “I want you to know that when you died, I was in space with Roy and Kori.”

For a moment, Dick’s eyes were blank with confusion, then the older man snorted out a little giggle. That was all it took to set Jason off, and the two of them clutched each other and laughed until Jason’s sides were killing him and Dick had tears streaming down his face. “I guess,” his brother gasped, “I guess this makes us even, Little Wing.”

“Sure, Dickiebird,” Jason panted. “Clean slate.”