Chapter Text
Tim analyzes the Joker’s latest message, searching for any clues in the audio or encrypted in the media file. The Joker’s messages have all been disappointing so far, providing little in the way of hints as to where he is or what his ultimate goal is besides general mayhem. It’s unusual for him to avoid confrontation, which means everything’s likely to come to a head eventually. Probably in the most dramatic way possible.
The Joker would never skip the grand finale, after all, and his preferred audience always seems to include Batman. Tim stares at the screen, a pucker in his brow as he considers the message content. The newest video appeared on TickTalk almost ten minutes ago and shows the Joker lounging with one arm draped over the shoulders of a weeping angel memorial statue at the Kane Crypts.
Making a face at having to see the Joker’s creepiness in action yet again, he presses play. The things he does for this job…
On the monitor, the insane clown slaps the unfortunate weeping angel on the back. “Buck up, chump—things are just gonna get worse from here.” He winks, then flashes his trademark forced grin and addresses the camera, madness burning in his empty eyes. “Welcome back to the show of your lives, Gotham! So, maybe the last one was a bit of a flop, too—I admit, I should’ve known the weres wouldn’t last long without the full moon. But hey, you got to enjoy the mayhem for a few days before they changed back, right? And I heard a cop got bitten, so it’s not a total loss! HA HA HA!”
Tim snorts and rolls his eyes. Apparently the Joker’s intel isn’t perfect. Detective Bullock had to get rabies shots because he was bitten by a sewer rat the size of a dog. Those things are vicious and diseased, but not magical and definitely not the result of the Joker’s dumb plot. People have to get rabies shots for rat bites all the time, Gotham being what it is.
On screen, the Joker elbows the angel and slaps its back again, chortling. “But don’t boo me off the stage just yet—I’ve got something even better that’ll really lift your spirits tonight! So let’s really get in the spirit and do what comes supernaturally!” His face twists in a cadaverous grin and his voice drops to a rough whisper. “Tonight, Gotham, I can see right through you, and you don’t have a ghost of a chance.” His red lips stretch in a painful-looking grimace no one sane would ever compare to a smile and he starts to laugh as the footage cuts out. “HA HA—”
Tim shivers, and it has nothing to do with the creeping cold of the Batcave. This is the fourth Saturday in October, and midnight is less than fifteen minutes away. He glances to the other screens, checking the status of the others on patrol while keeping an eye on Alfred, who is upstairs humming a pleasant tune as he mixes the batter for midnight cookies.
Batman is partnered with Robin again while Batgirl and Black Bat are flying together. There was a huge argument earlier over whether Nightwing and Red Hood—both of them affected by the magic and thus potentially compromised—should be allowed to patrol at all, since the team is rapidly running out of team members unaffected by the spell to partner with those who are. Eventually a compromise was reached and they reluctantly agreed to keep a private line to Oracle open at all times, just in case.
At this rate, they really are going to run out of members of the team to keep an eye on everyone who’s been affected by the Joker’s spells. Although, Dick and Steph changed back to normal a few days ago as the full moon waned and the tests aren’t turning up any lingering effects so far. Maybe Bruce will relax the rules and take them off special status soon.
Knowing him, probably not.
Tim huffs a quiet laugh. At least the Joker doesn’t seem to have everything in hand, considering the way the weres changing back to normal seems to have taken him by surprise, too. His disappointment at the various monsters failing to wreak havoc seems genuine. By those indications, it looks like his plan is already going awry.
“Nightwing and Red Hood, report.” This is the fifth time so far tonight Batman’s gravelly voice has spoken over the comms with that command, and Nightwing and Red Hood immediately begin complaining about him babysitting them.
Yeah, there’s no chance B’s taking anyone off special status until this thing is over. Tim sighs. With any luck, no one else will be affected tonight and they’ll be able to make things work.
There’s so much to do. He still needs to figure out a long term solution for concealing Jason’s and Damian’s heritage from Bruce. Whatever subtle glamor Talia and Ra’s put on the pair of them to hide it before is gone for good now, blasted away by the Joker’s spell. The genetic markers are visible now and will show up the next time Bruce performs a genetic analysis on either of them. Which he might do at any time, because lack of boundaries and invasive surveillance is practically his love language.
Ugh. Maybe he can get in touch with Pru and see if she knows anything about the magic the al Ghuls use to conceal their heritage, and they can just reapply it to Jason and Damian for now until they figure out something better. Maybe they can find a way to deactivate the ghoul heritage somehow, so it won’t show up? Jason’s samples from back when he was Robin look completely human, the ghoul aspect apparently not having been activated until his death.
Except if they did that, maybe the next time something happens to him, he won’t come back.
No. Tim grimaces, unwilling to even imagine the horror of losing Jason. That’s unacceptable. Whatever Bruce’s prejudices against monsters, they can’t possibly be worth putting Jason at unnecessary risk. They’ll have to find another way.
Thinking of Jason, his mind briefly touches on the tension between them lately, which he fully blames on the way Steph and Dick decided to tease them about their supposed relationship last week. Ugh. It’s not really surprising that they picked up on his crush, but it sucks that it’s made things weird with Jason now. He’ll just have to do a better job hiding it from now on, to avoid making things even more uncomfortable between them. Hopefully the others will let it go in time.
Tim bites his lip, mentally switching to another track while that problem keeps turning in the back of his mind. Besides all of that, he’s been spending some of his time researching the family trees of others in the city who have been affected by the spell. What he’s found so far is fascinating. Ten percent of the affected people have known monster heritage, if only a trace in some cases. That fact lends weight to his theory that the spell is more likely to affect people with some magical ancestry. About half of them aren’t sure what, exactly, their magical heritage is, but for the others, what they transformed into matches their ancestry.
Now, if only he could figure out what conditions might predict the other ninety percent of transformations—the people with no magical ancestry, like Alfred, Dick, and Steph. If he could figure out a commonality among those cases, it would make it a lot easier to figure out who else could be at risk going forward. He might even be able to develop some kind of protection against the spell.
Tim does his best not to dwell on the fact that he, Cass, Babs, and Bruce are the only ones left who haven’t been touched by the magic. The chill in his heart spreads like ice as his mind worries at the content of the Joker’s message and informs him that if he does change into a monster tonight, it’s almost certainly going to be the form of a ghost.
Great.
Ghost would be the most useless transformation yet. At least Alfred is still able to do all his usual activities, as are Jason and Damian. Steph had a few days without opposable thumbs, but she made up for it by terrorizing bad guys with her nightmarish form, giving Black Bat rides across the rooftops, and shedding fur all over the Batcave.
Even Dick got to enjoy flying for real and pooped on Bruce’s head.
If Tim changes into a ghost, he won’t be able to use computers or do anything. He couldn’t even drink coffee. The idea of being intangible is a special kind of terrifying to him, considering how much of his child was spent unseen, unheard, and unmissed. Shaking his head, he pushes that uncomfortable truth away and releases a shuddering sigh. What are the odds of it happening, anyway? He needs to focus on doing what he can to solve the mystery, not worry about the aspects he can’t yet control.
He turns to the other screen, checking a map of Gotham City with each burial ground flagged. It’s overlain by models showing the waves of transformation which have occurred each Saturday night this month, as tracked by location-linked social media posts and Oracle’s cameras. Two of the waves are centered around each of the cemeteries which have appeared in Joker’s messages so far—the First Families Historic Cemetery and the Saint Genesius Burial Ground. Another wave of transformations, the vampires from the first night, is centered around the Gotham Cathedral Churchyard.
Oracle’s efforts over the past weeks to establish complete surveillance at all of Gotham’s numerous burial grounds have not gone well. Something seems to be interfering with her tech. Ugh, magic sucks.
Chances are, the next wave of transformations will ripple out from the Kane Crypts, where the latest message was recorded. All of the Bats are stationed in and around the burial site to search for the Joker. Logically, the epicenter of the spell’s effects must be where the spell focus was when the spell was triggered. And if the spell focus is physically present when the spell is triggered, it stands to reason the Joker will be there, too.
Goosebumps rise on his skin as he glances at the clock and sees that it’s midnight. Each previous wave of transformations began in the vicinity of a graveyard, and then spread out to eventually cover all of Gotham. The time difference between the first and last transformations recorded in each wave was only about five minutes.
Tim hears a soft drumming sound and twitches, then feels ridiculous when he sees it’s his own fingertips on the table. Whoops. He’s wound up so tight right now, he’s not sure he’ll be able to get anything else done over the next five minutes. Well, whatever. Once the spell window passes and nothing happens, he’ll just dig in again and do whatever he can to help solve this thing. The heritage link is interesting and could potentially help suss out the Joker’s ultimate plan, since the mayhem and gore he was expecting along the way seems to be off the menu.
Good thing Gothamites are so jaded and used to this kind of crap. No one seems to be buying into the Joker’s attempt to turn them into monsters and watch them all tear each other apart.
Tim takes a deep breath and forces himself to focus. Nothing’s going to happen, he tells himself fiercely.
Leaning back in his chair, he thinks out loud, trying not to notice the tremor in his voice. “We’re coming up to another full moon next Saturday night—the second full moon of the month, happening on October 31st. That has to mean something. Some kind of culmination or escalation of the spell, maybe.” The fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he imagines nightmare scenarios like all of the transformed people losing their autonomy and succumbing to the monstrous instincts planted in them by whatever dark magic the Joker is wielding.
Frowning, he wonders what the final wave of monsters will be. Every weekend, the waves of transformation have all been the same general class of monster. Vampires and liches the first weekend; zombies, undead, and ghouls the second; weres of all kinds during the third; and this weekend—Tim’s vision goes hazy for a moment.
He sighs and reaches up to rub at his eyes because he’s clearly been staring at the screen for too long again. Then he freezes in shock because holy shit his hand just went through his face. “What the what?” he yelps, leaping to his feet. Oh god, it actually happened. He’s a ghost. The fact that he overshoots and rises a few feet to hover in the air does nothing to soothe his general sense of terror and alarm.
Neither does Cass, who chooses that moment to drift through the wall opposite him as calmly as though she gets turned into a ghost every day. She’s semi-transparent and seems to be wearing a floaty white gown.
“Cass?” he croaks, then feels relieved that he can actually speak. He hadn’t even gotten around to imagining the horror of being locked in an insubstantial form, unable to use his voice to communicate. “You’re a ghost, too?” He looks down at himself and is relieved to see he’s wearing a ghostly version of the sweats and t-shirt he was wearing when he transformed. The actual clothes are still lying on his chair in a sad, huddled little heap.
She shakes her head. “Wraith.”
He blinks, not really sure what the difference is there. Taxonomic classification of semi-mythical monsters has never been one of his particular interests. “Wait, how do you even know that? Am I a wraith?”
“No.” She tilts her head. “Wraith because of what Shiva did to me. Killed me, cursed me to wraith, raised me again. Wraiths are made. Ghosts are born.”
There are so many concerning things about that statement, he doesn’t even know where to begin. “We’ll come back to that first part later, because it smacks of untold trauma and I think we’ll need to be solid for that. Can’t drink margaritas like this. Can we?” He glances down at his see-through body and shudders. Yeah, probably best to wait on the margaritas. “As for the second part—what do you mean, ghosts are born?”
She opens her mouth and then closes it, looking conflicted like she always does when she’s having trouble finding her words. “Ghosts… can only become, when born,” she tries.
He frowns, trying to parse out what she’s attempting to get across. “Only people with some kind of magical heritage including a genetic propensity to become ghosts can rise as ghosts after they die?” he guesses.
Cass looks relieved. “You have,” she says, nodding.
He thinks if he were flesh right now, the bottom would be dropping out of his stomach. “What do you mean?” If he has some kind of ghostly heritage, wouldn’t that mean at least one of his parents could have turned into a ghost after they died? If so, where are they now?
She looks down, the corners of her mouth tilting down. “I am wraith, so I see. Your mother.”
That’s…
Well, Tim’s not really sure what he feels about that right now. “Wait, you knew I was part ghost? Why didn’t you ever tell me?” His eyebrows draw together. “And why didn’t you let me know about my mother?”
Her expression darkens. “She not say nice things.”
Considering everything he remembers about Janet Drake, he’s willing to accept that as an explanation. Knowing Cass, she didn’t appreciate the doubtless blistering stream of invective every time Tim did something Janet found disappointing. Which was probably all the time.
In light of that, it isn’t so surprising Cass never chose to bring this up with him before. “Okay.” He pauses, a new wave of horror rolling through him. “Wait, she isn’t still here, is she?” He does not want to have to face his mother right now. Or ever, really.
Cass shakes her head, giving him a gentle smile. “No. Went to watch her favorite digs last year.”
Phew, that’s a relief. The last thing he needs or wants is his dead mother critiquing his life choices. Terrible they may be at times, but they’re his, damn it.
The roar of an approaching engine interrupts them and they both turn to watch as the Batmobile peels into the Cave, screeching to halt near the Batcomputer at a crazy angle. The door swings open and Batman stumbles out, then charges toward the computer. He’s speaking rapidly into his comm and Tim realizes with a jolt he hasn’t been able to hear the comms since he was transformed. His comm unit is lying on top of his clothes, which still lie pooled in the chair he was sitting in before the transformation.
Batman stumbles to a halt in front of the empty chair, staring at it. His mouth twists as he reaches out a shaking hand, barely touching the material of Tim’s worn band t-shirt before jerking back. “Tim’s gone, too,” he says into the comm in an awful, hollow voice. He stares, then buckles to the ground as his knees seem to give way. He reaches for the shirt, dragging it toward him and cradling it to his chest. His shoulders are shaking.
Tim clears his throat, feeling both touched by the show of emotion and tremendously awkward. “Uh, hey B,” he says.
Batman’s head whips around to face him. After a long moment, he reaches up and shoves back the cowl as though unable to believe unless he sees them with his own eyes. “Tim? Cass?” He rises to his feet, the empty shirt tumbling to the ground. “Are you alright? Are you in any pain?” He reaches out a hand for them and then freezes, clearly realizing he won’t be able to make contact.
Cass shakes her head and gives him a soft smile, drifting slowly forward. “Fine. We’re fine.” She reaches out and pats him on the arm, making him jump, eyes wide.
“I felt that! You can still interact with matter?” His eyes narrow, an analytical expression crossing his face. He clearly wants to do experiments to determine the extent of their abilities.
“How come I can’t do that?” Tim complains. He would still be able to do his research, and wow, he could pull off the most amazing pranks while he’s like this if only he could go solid when needed.
“Practice,” Cass tells him, making him wonder how long, exactly, Lady Shiva kept her in this form before raising her back to life as a human. His horror at what his sister has endured is only matched by his amazement at the awesome, kind person she somehow became in spite of everything. “Concentrate.”
He frowns in concentration, trying to imagine his hand is solid as he reaches out to Bruce. “Huh,” he says, pleased at the sensation of physical touch. Then he really looks at what he’s doing and blushes when he realizes he’s poking at a bemused-looking Bruce’s forehead with his index finger. “Oh, sorry B.”
Bruce’s lips curve in the faintest suggestion of a smile and he shakes his head. “No, it’s fine.” He reaches up and rests his hand on Tim’s, his other hand closing over Cass’s on his arm. “I’m just glad you’re both still here.”
The Cave fills with the roar of multiple engines as Red Hood, Nightwing, and Batgirl all ride in, parking their motorcycles right by the Batmobile. A self-driving car pulls in after them and Robin disembarks before slamming the door and stomping toward them. “I know how to drive myself, you know.”
“No,” several voices chorus. Robin’s lower lip protrudes in a petulant frown that everyone ignores as they converge on the group by the Batcomputer.
Red Hood’s eyes are locked on Tim. “You’re really okay, baby bird?” he says, crowding up close and hovering his hands over him like he wants to check him for wounds but knows it won’t do any good in his current state. “Fuck, baby, when I heard Blondie on the comm panicking because Cass just disappeared, that sucked balls, but then you weren’t answering and we thought you were gone, too—”
Tim reaches up and concentrates so he can take Red Hood’s hands where they’re still hovering in front of him. “I’m really okay, Jay,” he says, squeezing gently. His nonexistent heart gives a surge of relief at the evidence that no matter how weird things are between them right now, Jason still cares.
“Whoa,” Nightwing says, reaching out to try to poke at Tim’s forehead. His finger goes right through. “It’s like you’re just making part of yourself tangible right now. How are you doing that? Is this going to be like that unchained melody scene from Ghost?” He smirks and winks. “Should we give you two some privacy?”
Tim bats ineffectually at his hand. It feels weird when things pass through where his head should be. “Quit it!”
“Boys,” Bruce says with a long-suffering sigh.
“Did you guys end up finding anything at the graveyard?” Tim asks, suddenly remembering they’re in the middle of a case.
Shaking her head, Batgirl makes a face. “Nope. There was no sign of the Joker in or around the graveyard, and then we were all caught up with the drama of making sure you guys were okay.”
Bruce frowns. “I am beginning to suspect there is a time delay on the Joker’s device—one which allows him to record his message, trigger the spell, and then make his escape while the timer, as it were, ticks down prior to spell detonation.”
Nightwing nods slowly. “Makes sense. So, next time we stake out every graveyard in Gotham he hasn’t hit yet a few hours before the show? That way it doesn’t matter if something shorts out our surveillance equipment because we’ll be there to catch him in the act.”
Bruce’s lips twitch into an almost-smile. It’s infinitely more appealing than the Joker’s, but somehow, just as threatening.
“Cool,” Tim says, experimenting with how much of himself he can make solid as he leans into Jason’s side. Jason obligingly wraps a big, beefy arm around him and tucks him in closer. He feels warm and safe.
Maybe being a ghost isn’t so bad after all.