Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Batman was the only vote against admitting the Red Hood to the Justice League.

“You haven’t even met him,” Flash complained, when the final tally was up on screen.

“And you have?”

Flash glanced around the room for support. “Well, yeah. We all have, I think. He floats around a bit, looking for trouble. Doesn’t usually work with us, but it’s not that weird these days to catch a glimpse of red on the rooftops when there’s a fight going down.”

There was a wave of general nods. Superman, rather gently, said, “he started showing up more when you were away.”

When he was dead. “He has a lot of blood on his hands. A lot of guns in them.”

“And for that we must be cautious,” agreed Wonder Woman. “But his fatality rates are down nearly to zero, and have been decreasing consistently since he partnered with Black Swan almost two years ago. It is my belief that Hood was an isolated, vulnerable young person, who did not know a better way to be. He seems now to have found a path I can respect, and I honor the change I see in him.”

He’d read the files on both of them. Two assassins, possibly League-trained, who’d been fighting Ra’s al Ghul for the better part of three years (at least in Hood’s case). While Bruce had been dead, they’d begun to make more public appearances, work with other heroes. Perhaps because their impossible war had succeeded. Nobody had seen the Demon’s Head since before Bruce got lost, and Talia, similarly, had fallen off the map.

“Hood is disobedient. Disrespectful.”

“You mean he doesn’t follow your rules,” Green Lantern corrected.

Wonder Woman, in the interests of keeping the peace, said, “we have no confirmed reports of him ever operating in Gotham, and, as a metahuman, if he agrees to join us, he won’t operate there without your permission. Recruitment is the best solution to have him more closely operating with us in matters of shared interest, and further from us when only one hero is required.”

Batman grunted. The vote was finished and, one way or the other, someone was going to be approaching Red Hood.

--

His files on Red Hood and Black Swan were… lacking. Most of their documented activity, particularly Swan’s, had occurred in his year of absence, and while Dick, Stephanie and Tim had filled out some reports on their contact with the two globe-trotting vigilantes, none were detailed, or contained any salient information beyond brief descriptions (Hood was male, white, tall, 18-23, American-accented, spoke Arabic and Spanish, used firearms extensively; Swan was female, Asian, short to average height, spoke with an ‘unrecognized’ accent, used ASL, and preferred hand-to-hand combat).

“Oracle, I need your files on Red Hood and Black Swan.”

They popped into existence on his desktop a second later:

Red Hood
Identity: Unknown
Known Aliases: N/A
Origin: Metahuman
Abilities: Unknown
Training: League of Assassins
Allegiance: Unknown, apparently independent
Known Associates: Black Swan
Known Enemies: Ra’s al Ghul, League of Assassins
Time Active: 3 years
Operating in Gotham: No
Physical Description: [see attached, courtesy of Arsenal]
Personality assessment: Prone to sudden outbursts of anger. Resistant to/untrusting of authority. Highly intelligent, with a particular aptitude for language. Very protective of children. [see attached, courtesy of Starfire]

Black Swan
Identity: Unknown
Known Aliases: N/A
Origin: Human
Training: League of Assassins (probable)
Allegiance: Unknown, apparently independent
Known Associates: Red Hood
Known Enemies: Ra’s al Ghul, League of Assassins
Time Active: 1.5-2 years
Operating in Gotham: Sometimes
Physical Description: [see attached, courtesy of Black Canary]
Personality assessment: Quiet, but friendly. Very responsive to the emotional reactions of others. Tendency to become overwhelmed in crowded settings. Protective of allies, willing to take strategic direction. [see attached, courtesy of Wonder Girl] [see attached, courtesy of Black Canary]

“They’re rudimentary. I’ve had to incorporate data from other contacts to fill out what I have since neither operates in Gotham with any frequency. Black Swan’s physical and personality descriptions are more thorough. She’s more social, although some descriptions suggest either selective mutism or limited English. Hood is less social. The only report I have of anyone seeing him without the helmet comes from Roy Harper, who remembers seeing him take off the helmet and blow it up in a combat situation. He was distracted at the time, and Hood was wearing a domino underneath the mask, but he remembers a patch of white hair and glowing green eyes.”

“Which is why the files describe Hood as a meta.”

“Bingo.”

There was far, far too little information. “What’s your personal assessment?”

“Of Hood or Swan?”

“Either.”

Barbara hummed, took a sip of her coffee. “I’ve thought about recruiting Swan for the Birds of Prey.”

“You like her.”

“She saved the commissioner’s life, once.”

“Here? In Gotham?” That wasn’t in his files.

“You were dead. Nightwing was with the JL, Robin was… off the map. A League assassin had been contracted, Swan took him down.”

So naturally, she liked Swan. “And Hood?”

“The name is–”

An alias once associated with the Joker. “A concern.”

“Yeah.” There was the sound of her typing. “But if you look at the accounts from Harper and Starfire, both independently suggest that Hood told them the name was after Robin Hood, but Robin was already taken.”

“A plausible explanation for the ‘hood’ element, but the ‘red’ is a discrepancy.”

“Unless you take the fairy tale, and the fact that Green Arrow already took the most overt Robin Hood aesthetic, into account. There isn’t much to suggest that Hood is a Gothamite. In fact, our earliest reports of action from him are all outside the US.” But it wouldn’t be the first time the Joker had operated outside of Gotham. Bruce knew, logically, that he was dead, murdered in his cell over three years ago, but there was a difference between knowing that and not looking for him over your shoulder.

“And no reports of a civilian identity? For either of them?”

“We don’t even know where they live permanently, if anywhere. It’s possible that this is their primary identity, if they were League-raised.”

“But they would still have names. Families.”

She sighed. “Don’t ask me to undermine the Justice League’s background check system. They have more than enough telepaths to know whether or not Red Hood is trustworthy.” To Bruce’s silence, she added. “I haven’t met them, but most of the rest of the Justice League has, and a bunch of other community members to boot. You have plenty to worry about here without micromanaging the recruitment of one metahuman who doesn’t even use his powers to fight.”

It was true. But it was also Bruce’s job to be prepared, and he hated the idea that there were two new vigilantes out there about whom he knew nothing.

--

“Wonder Woman.”

“Red Hood.”

The vigilante perched on the edge of a rooftop in Frankfurt, with what looked to be a tranquilizer gun in his hands.

“I heard you wanted to speak with me.”

“About an offer of admission to the Justice League.”

He fired, just once, through an open window in the building across the street and into the neck of a man sitting at a desk. As the man slumped over, Hood lowered his weapon and sat back.

“No.”

He wouldn’t be the first to refuse the offer, but Diana thought there was something more to it. Red Hood, for all his privacy and standoffish character, wasn’t truly solitary. He sought out other vigilantes to help them, and stayed and listened when they came to him of their own accord. Black Swan was more social again.

“Why not?”

He turned his helmet, slightly, and she guessed that he was meeting her eyes through the reflective glass.

“My privacy is more important than your team.”

He had done an incredible job maintaining it. Diana found the fact less disturbing than she knew Bruce did. On the couple occasions she’d crossed paths with the Red Hood, he’d been an essentially decent, good, man. Any remaining doubts had been more than assuaged by her meeting with Black Swan, a month earlier. Diana had offered Swan refuge, if she needed it.

“No,” Swan had responded, switching over to ASL. (I am safe. Hood and I protect each other.)

There had been a strength of faith in her that, more than anything, had won Diana’s trust.

“What guarantees for your privacy would you need, for us to begin building some measure of trust? For us to have a way to contact you if things go wrong, or for you to contact us, that does not require Superman, Flash and I to keep an active lookout for you.”

Even then, it had taken three days to find him.

He began taking apart his gun, cleaning it with a rag and placing the pieces and the rest of his darts in a case at his side. “No telepaths. No DNA sample. My identity stays a secret. Batman leaves me alone.”

“Why Batman in particular?”

“Because he’s the only one of you who has even the slightest chance of figuring out my other identity without reading my mind.”

“You don’t have that much confidence in the rest of us,” Diana said, but she was almost fighting a smile. There was something that amused her about Red Hood’s complete confidence, both in himself and in Bruce. The only person she knew who would have been so convinced that Bruce was the only competent investigator in the league was the man himself.

“The rest of you have had a year to figure it out and haven’t yet.”

That was true enough. “And we’ll respect your boundaries, if you agree to work with us and abide by some of our rules.”

“That too. But you’re not going to respect them unless I pass some kind of identity test, and I’m not giving you blood or fingerprints or access to my mind to confirm I’m not evil, so that’s a nonstarter. You can try with Black Swan, if you want. She’s… she values this more than I do.”

There was an undercurrent in his voice of begrudging acceptance, almost the way a child would say something ‘had to’ happen because they could see no other path.

“What about this?” She withdrew the lasso of truth. “We can set ground rules. I won’t ask for your name. Five questions, to see if I can trust you.”

“Three. And you won’t ask anything that could lead to my name, like where I’m from or who my parents are.”

“Agreed.”

He extended his hand and as she wrapped it, she considered. Diana didn’t need to know who he was, or where he was from, but Bruce would need some information, if she was going to convince him to back off. Diana needed, more than anything, a confirmation of intent.

“Why did you become a vigilante?”

She could see it working at him, drawing out the truth. “It’s the only way I know to help. With my skills… it’s the best thing I can do to help save people. And…” Like pulling a tooth, the last piece of his answer resisted the grasp of the lasso. “I really wanted my dad to be proud of me.”

Interesting. ‘The only way’ suggested that he might have tried to help in another way if he’d had the training. That meant that, at some point, he’d been forced into this training, his choices limited such that other doors were closed to him. Diana’s heart went out to him, and to Black Swan, whose trauma had long been obvious to her. Diana hoped that Hood’s father hadn’t been a source of that harm, for either of them.

“Why did you begin trying to use non-lethal methods?”

“Black Swan was scared that she would always be a killer. That her dad had made her into a weapon with one purpose. I wanted to show her that he was wrong. So now I try not to kill, for her.”

This answer seemed less pulled out of him than the other. This was something he knew consciously, had admitted to himself.

She savored the possibilities of her last question. There were many things she could have asked him: why take on Ra’s al Ghul? Where did he learn his skills? Why was he so willing to work with other heroes?

But instead, she asked a question both Bruce and Oracle had raised in their threat assessments. “Why do you use the name ‘the Red Hood’?”

In his first answer, he’d fought the lasso because he was not consciously aware of the answer to the question. This time, he knew and did not want to say, breath hitching with desperation as he tried and failed to pull his hands away.

Naturally, the lasso won. “I was scared of him. He destroyed me. I wanted to wear that reminder, to stop being afraid. Like my dad.”

His posture was stricken, horrified by his own words. Diana wanted so badly to ask a follow-up question, to demand what he meant by ‘he destroyed me’. Had it been a physical injury? Hood showed no obvious weaknesses in his fighting consistent with a severe one. Had it been torture? Or something more abstractly destroying, like the death of a loved one.

Diana reached out and began to unwrap him, holding his hand steady. Careful not to ask another question, she said, “I hope your father deserves your devotion to him.”

As the lasso fell away, he muttered bitterly, “he didn’t.”

“Then I’m sorry. Does Black Swan?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad. You’ll hear from me again soon.”

She could hear a smile in his tone. “No, I’ll reach out next time. The Justice League tipline will receive a message with a meeting location and the code–”

“Mnemosyne.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Then, strangely, he took out his phone and called emergency services. In precise German, he informed the operator that he’d just seen a man from an INTERPOL wanted list through the window of an eighth-storey apartment, gave the address, and hung up.

Lifting his case and stowing his phone, he turned to go.

“Goodnight, Hood.”

“Goodnight, Diana.”

And in the space between one breath and the next, he stepped over the edge of the roof, firing his grappling gun as he did so, and soon vanished entirely from her sight.

The next morning, the headlines informed her that a wealthy oil executive had been found at his desk by police, slumped over in front of his computer, in front of records showing that he’d been attempting to hire a hitman to take out his girlfriend’s husband. The alleged shooter who had tranquilized him (with a dissolving dart? Ridiculous) was never found.

How many of Red Hood’s actions were the same? Attributed to nobody in particular.

--

Diana had given him a lot to work with, in theory. A tangible connection between Hood and the Joker, albeit a hostile one, which suggested Hood was probably from Gotham originally. The existence of a father – dead, judging by the past tense – he admired. He considered a list of the Joker’s known victims and their family members, reduced it to those within the appropriate age range,, eliminated those known to be alive and in Gotham and those whose deaths had been confirmed by two or more witnesses, or by Batman, Robin, Nightwing, or Oracle. It was possible that, if insufficiently supervised, a death might have been faked by the League.

There were thirty people who had been hospitalized for severe injuries after Joker attacks, such that they might have in some sense been ‘destroyed’, who were now dispersed to unknown locations. There were eighteen known fatalities in the age range whose deaths had been witnessed by one or fewer people and might have been absconded with by the league. There were sixty family members of victims who matched the age range and had left Gotham either before or after losing their family members.

Over the course of the next month and a half, Bruce tracked down every single one of them, checked that graves had bodies in them, and ended up nowhere at all. It wasn’t really surprising. Even with the Joker dead for over three years, there were still so many victims they would never know.

--

Back when Bruce was dead and Dick was Batman, there was a window, right at the beginning, where Tim had left. They’d had an awful, blow-up fight, and Tim had walked out, and Dick had gone down to the cave, said to himself, “God, I’m turning into Bruce,” and then he’d put his fist through a very expensive monitor and cried for the first time since realizing that his dad was dead. Again. Just because Tim couldn’t accept it didn’t mean that Dick could deny it.

And then, because he was also still Dick Grayson, boy wonder, he got kidnapped the next night. The universe hated him.

“Fine, so the cowl doesn’t come off,” Martinelli said, as the third henchman nursing burnt fingertips skulked away. “But you’ll tell us who you are under it. Tony, get the syringe.” To Dick, he added, “sometimes, trading with Poison Ivy does pay off.”

Knowing Ivy, she probably hadn’t intended for whatever she traded to be used on Batman. Dick twisted his hands in his bonds, wondering if he could slip them by dislocating his thumb. Then the needle went into his neck and everything went fuzzy.

Someone was untying him, Dick registered. There’d been a lot of gunshots, an explosion full of shards of red plastic, and now someone was untying him. “Rob’n?”

The person started. “Fuck no. Come on… Batman. Let’s get you back to your batcar.”

“‘It’s’a batmobile.”

“Sure it is, batguy.”

“‘M serious. Named it myself.”

Whoever they were wrapped Dick’s arm around their shoulder. “Why’re you here?”

“Oracle’s worried on comms.”

Dick’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh no, and she can’t send Robin.”

“Why not?”

“I shouldn’t tell you that.”

They were outside the warehouse now, and the person sat Dick down on the back of a bike. “Call the batmobile. You’re way too out of it to be left here alone, or to take my bike back.”

“I’m not out of it,” he protested, but called the Batmobile anyways, because his arms hurt from being tied up too long. Then, finally, he looked at his rescuer and said, “oh, I’m hallucinating.”

Jason’s face, recognizable even with the mask on and the weird hair dye, was burned into his mind, always. Now it looked concerned. “You are?”

“Definitely. I’m sorry, Jay, but you’re dead.” He was crying now, he realized. Bruce was dead and Jay was dead and Tim was gone. “You’re gone, and I lost Robin too, and I can’t do this. Batman should have died with him.”

“So he is dead, then.”

“You’ll look after him, won’t you, Jay?”

“It’s not like he looked after me, did he?”

God, crying in the cowl was awful, he couldn’t wipe the tears away or anything. “He tried so hard to follow you, that first year. Please don’t let him be alone. Or… at least be there for Robin. He looked up to you so much.”

“The replacement is dead?”

“He just left,” Dick wailed, as the batmobile came around the corner. “And he’s not a replacement. I’m a replacement. He’s just another kid who needed the R. Like we did.”

“Why’d he leave?”

“He thinks B is still alive and he won’t stop saying it and I just can’t…”

“So you ditched him? Wing, you asshole.”

“I know. ‘M’a terrible brother an’ a bad Batman and–”

Jason manhandled him into the backseat of the batmobile and started to set the autopilot for home. “New compound, huh? Something you haven’t been trained against. Make sure you get a blood sample for O before it’s out of your system, and tell Ivy or whoever made it to knock it off.”

“Yeah. Gotta, with the… hallucinating.” As Jason stepped back out of the car and Dick’s vision started to go fuzzy, he asked, “you’ll look after Robin, right? He didn’t let you down, like we did.”

Jason sighed, long suffering. “Fine.”

“Promise?”

“Sure, Dickie. I promise.”

The next morning, Dick woke up in the cave, Alfred hovering worriedly about while an antidote to this new toxin synthesized. Any hope that this was more than a dream was quashed by the presence of Jason’s memorial in the cave. Should he put one up for Bruce? Let them be together, symbolically at least?

Tim came back a month later, tanned and tired but alive. Dick brought flowers to Jason’s grave, as the only thanks he knew how to give. After ten months of Tim sneaking off to make phone calls and calling in favors – primarily with Catwoman, but also with people Dick hadn’t even known he knew, like Roy and Kori – Bruce was back, sleeping off the time sickness in the Watchtower.

Dick left Jason flowers for that, too.

--

There was a badly confused report from Batman, in the early days after Bruce’s death, that suggested he’d been rescued by a vigilante with a white hair streak and green eyes matching the Red Hood’s description. That meant that Hood had been operating in Gotham

But Dick, when asked, had shaken his head. “I was hallucinating, pretty badly. I can’t be sure that anyone was there. Even the bodies I thought I saw didn’t turn up, and one of the guys I remembered getting shot turned up alive later. If someone saved me – whoever it was – you can’t trust my description of what they looked like.”

What, he wondered, had Dick seen to make him so sure that it was all a hallucination, when he easily could have seen a vigilante known to use rubber bullets? Maybe it was something to do with Hood’s meta gene. It was possible that Hood himself could be a shapeshifter, meaning that his description at the time of his interaction with the Joker wouldn’t reflect his current appearance. Or perhaps the mutation altered his appearance or made him difficult or dangerous to look at, like a sort of Gorgon, hence necessitating the helmet.

Yes, that might be it.

--

The directions Oracle had given her led, improbably, to a nail salon in the Narrows. Or, more specifically, to the roof of the building opposite it, where Black Swan melted from the shadows, her ink-black costume and ability to be still rendering her a snake in the grass, hidden except when in motion.

“Hello again,” Steph greeted her. “Long time no see.”

They’d last met on one of her rare work trips outside of Gotham, a week in Blüdhaven covering for Nightwing while he was offworld. She always liked working with Black Swan, who was professional, and so incredibly skilled that Steph always wanted to just stop what she was doing and watch her move.

Black Swan waved in response. In the dim light from the street below, Steph could see that she was smiling.

“You don’t usually come to Gotham.”

“Not usually,” she agreed, turning to crouch behind the ledge of the building and watch the nail salon across the way. “But Justice League membership means I can ask to come, now.”

Every time they met, Swan seemed to talk more. “So you just messaged Oracle and she gave you permission? Batman won’t like that.”

“Too bad.”

Steph found herself suppressing a laugh as she crouched beside Swan. “No Red Hood?”

“Oracle says ‘no metas’ means no Hood. He won’t argue.”

“Well, what’s there to argue? He’s a metahuman, isn’t he? I mean, Batman’s rule is a little unfair but can you imagine what this city would be like if we were fighting guys with powers all the time instead of, like, the Riddler.”

Swan held her silence, for a moment, watching the darkened windows across the way with such careful concentration that Steph almost imagined she could see through them, to whatever lay beyond.

“Not a meta, though.”

Steph had heard Bruce’s Red Hood lecture about a million times. All of them had. He hated not being able to figure someone out, and the idea of not being able to figure out two people, who were now in the Justice League, had nearly sent him over the edge entirely. Only the sheer force of Wonder Woman’s disapproval was stopping him from going against her promises and trying to stalk Hood and Swan until he found out the truth. All of that meant that Steph had heard about a million times about the fact that Red Hood had glowing green eyes and a white streak in his hair.

“What is he then? Alien? Magic? Exposed to weird chemicals?”

Swan tilted her head slightly, as if considering. “Weird chemicals. But just a person, underneath.”

“That’s very Gotham of him.” When Swan turned to give her a blank look, she said, “I mean, I don’t know where you guys are from, but getting doused in chemicals that make you look weird but don’t give you any cool abilities is very Gotham. Normally if you get doused with chemicals in Metropolis or Central, you learn to fly or something.”

“He can fly.” She made a swooping motion with her hand. “Airplane.”

Steph had to cover her mouth to stifle a delighted laugh. “You made a joke! I’m so proud.”

She dipped her head. “Me too.”

There was a noise on the street and they both ducked down behind the edge of the roof. “What’re we here for?”

In a tone so low it was almost difficult to hear, Swan said, “missing girls. Three. Mothers in Manila haven’t heard from them in months.”

She’d broken up operations like this on her own before. They ‘helped’ people immigrate and then took their passports. “What did you need me for?”

“Company. And in case talking is hard or they are scared.”

She couldn’t imagine finding someone so obviously kind and gentle as Swan scary. But, well, the people she beat into the dirt probably didn’t feel the same.

“Can I ask why you don’t speak?”

Swan looked away. “Never learned. Father didn’t…”

“Didn’t speak?”

“Didn’t let me.”

Bruce would have to give her a pass on the killing rule, just this once. “Well, I think you’re doing amazing.”

“I have help.”

“Hood?”

She nodded, but Stephanie was left with the odd sense that there was more to it than that.

Five minutes later, they saw one of the traffickers emerge from the building, and Steph sat back and watched as Swan decimated him and stole his keys.

“Hey Oracle?”

“Spoiler?”

“I think I might be bi.”

--

Bruce learned absolutely nothing important about Black Swan from Spoiler’s report on their collaboration. She was ‘graceful’, ‘funny’, ‘nice’ and ‘badass’. The existence of her nameless abusive father was long on record.

Perhaps that was a lead he could follow up on. Stephanie’s crush aside, she wasn’t particularly easily impressed by fighting these days, after having trained with Bruce, Dick and Tim for so long. Someone had abused and trained a girl no older than she was. That person, probably her father, had other victims, surely, had left some sort of trace of his actions. All Bruce had to do was find him.

--

Clark watched the Red Hood pacing the battlefield, occasionally overturning stones or moving bits of giant octopus robot. It had been the sort of day to involve a giant octopus robot invasion and, accordingly, an all-hands call to the Justice League. For some reason, Red Hood had been in Metropolis when the call went out, and he’d shown up with a rocket launcher. It had been helpful, actually, but very surreal.

“We can get you set up on the zeta system if you want to come back to the Watchtower and have that sprained wrist looked at. Emergency services can take it from here.”

Hood instinctively grabbed his wrist and then glared at Clark. Even with the lead-lined helmet, he could recognize a glare. “No x-ray specs bullshit. My bones are my business.”

“We have very good doctors.”

“Like hell I’m giving you my biometrics for one tiny sprain. If I ever get blown up, then you can take me to Watchtower. Not a second before.”

Almost two decades of knowing Batman had inured him to this sort of thing. Clark shrugged. “Alright. What are you looking for then?”

“One of these” Hood said, crouching down to pick out one of the robots’ strange orb eyes with his uninjured hand. He raised it up and smashed it on the nearest available rock, like he was the ape in 2001: A Space Odyssey. After two hits it shattered and Hood reached inside to retrieve a small camera, connected to some kind of circuitry. “I’m no expert, but it looks to me like these cameras are for transmitting video footage, not for allowing the robots themselves to process. That means–”

“Pilots.”

“Bingo.”

They would have figured that out, Clark was sure, but Hood had clued in quickly to the idea that the fight wasn’t over yet. Again, he reminded Clark of Bruce.

“Where do you think–”

Hood held out an interrupting hand. “Eavesdrop and I’ll kill you.”

He tapped a button on the outside of his Helmet. “Hood. I’m not alone.”

Even with his hearing as human as he could make it, Clark could still hear the muffled sounds of someone else speaking over the phone. A child’s voice.

“There was footage on the television of you falling from a significant height. Power in the building was lost shortly after. I attempted to reach Black Swan, but-”

When Hood responded, his voice was different, less harsh, with a more evident accent. It was a Gotham accent; Bruce was going to be such an asshole about this.

“It’s okay, kid. This is Metropolis, remember? Superman caught me. Swan is still in Hong Kong. She probably slept through it. I’ll make her call you as soon as she wakes up. Will you be okay until I get there?”

“I followed the invasion protocol.”

“Great job. Then stay in place, okay? I’ll be with you soon.”

“It is… fortunate that you are not dead.”

“Love you too, kid.”

Hood ended the call and turned a glare on Clark that even Lex Luthor would have envied. “Not. A. Word.”

This explained so much about his protectiveness of his identity. “Then I suppose you don’t want a lift somewhere?”

“Fuck no.”

Hood’s heartbeat remained in Metropolis for almost three weeks, except when he went on missions, and then moved on to Central City, and then to Star, then San Francisco, a week in Blüdhaven, and back to Metropolis. He’d been avoiding the Justice League by living right under their noses, and none of them had noticed. Clark could have told them, should have, but he thought of the child’s voice, of Hood soothing him, and thought he understood exactly why Hood had picked cities with other heroes for his bases of operations.

--

Clark’s message was as concise as it was vague.

I know why Hood is being so cagey. Don’t ask me to tell you, but know that his intentions are good and you would do the same.

Hood, all these months later, was just as much an enigma as ever.

His partner, though, was a different matter.

--

Black Swan dropped out of the sky between one breath and the next, entirely silent save for the sound of the man who shouted and then crumbled to the ground beneath her.

Bruce didn’t allow himself to stop and watch her, although he caught occasional glances of her fighting, moving with grace and, when necessary, ruthless efficiency. It took them bare moments together to finish a fight that would have taken Bruce far too long, time when extra forces could have been organized and brought to their location.

He always hated working outside of Gotham, but with Scarecrow apparently contracting out fear toxin manufacturing, there hadn’t been much choice.

“Black Swan.” She bowed slightly to him, and then bent down to check the pulse of one of the men she’d hit hardest. “Why are you here?”

“Helping.” She straightened, bouncing up onto the balls of her feet for a moment in a gesture that made her seem younger. “Also, this factory had League connections. Need to make sure they don’t anymore.”

Swan and Hood appeared to have won their two-vigilante war again Ra’s al Ghul, to everyone’s lasting surprise, but now the game had turned from chess to whack-a-mole, meaning that League remnants popped up everywhere and Swan and Hood, and occasionally other heroes, beat them back down.

“They’re working with Scarecrow, currently.”

“Then we will stop that too.”

Three hours later, when they were four miles down river at the secondary location where this factory stored chemical weapons for the League of Assassins, Bruce asked, “do you have a list of all the League’s former bases?”

She shook her head. “Only saw some, before defecting. We have a list of the ones we know now.” Looking up at him critically, she asked, “you have more?”

“Maybe. Old ones, mostly.”

“Still helpful.”

“I would be prepared to make an exchange of information, what I have on the league for what you do. You had a lot of access, I’m sure, as David Cain’s prodigy.”

To his surprise, she didn’t flinch, or act in any way as if she’d been unmasked. Instead, she turned to him and said, “to some things. But nobody told me anything. A weapon does not need to know.”

“And Hood? Did he have more access?”

“Different. Not more.” She looked at Bruce carefully, seeming to study him. “You think you know me.”

“I heard the rumors that Cain was trying to make the perfect killer. Someone who spoke the language of violence first.”

“You trained with David.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if Bruce’s life, anything outside the cowl, was not his most closely guarded secret. “He was a monster, but you chose him. I didn’t.”

“I wanted never to be him.” He wondered if the rumors were right that she could read a body as well as other people could read written words. “It was brave of you, to escape.”

There was a warmth in her voice, fondness. “Hood helped.”

“And you helped him in turn, with his crusade against a league.”

“Not a crusade,” she corrected. “Self-defense. They hunted us and we hit back. We will hit back until they stop.”

Ra’s was many things, but tenacious to the point of stupidity wasn’t one of them. He wouldn’t destroy his own organization hunting some metahuman acolyte and David Cain’s daughter. Even if she was as good as the stories said.

“Who is Hood, to make them never stop hunting him?”

The inscrutable expression on Cain’s face made him wish for her powers of perception. It was almost as if he’d said something funny. “Not who he is. What he did.”

“And what did he do?”

“Not telling you that.”

Fair. They’d been secretive enough that he couldn’t expect to solve them with a single question.

“Why weren’t you surprised I deduced your identity?”

She smiled, amusement lighting up her face. “Hood said you would. But you didn’t. You figured out David, not me.”

“Who are you, then?”

“Cassandra.”

--

Cassandra’s files on League bases and operations, both extant and destroyed, over the last three years, were remarkably thorough. Bruce only had a few spots to add, all of them years old.

Interestingly, her records also included known, and destroyed, Lazarus pit locations. That must have been what Hood had done, to be hunted to the ends of the Earth. The only thing Ra’s loved enough to go to such lengths for was himself.

--

Tim had a secret.

Well, to be more precise, Tim had a lot of secrets. He had his whole life. Sometimes they were other people's secrets, other times they were his own, but he always kept his mouth shut either way.

This secret, though, was different. That was a secret from Bruce, about something Bruce had been investigating for months. Tim could have told him at any time, probably should have told him, but hadn’t.

Tim was the only person in the vigilante community, as far as he knew, who’d had a line to contact Red Hood before he joined the Justice League. That was the sort of thing that happened, he supposed, when Red Hood saved you from the League of Assassins. He’d flown Tim home, all the way back to Gotham, and for months afterwards, he’d texted Tim the answers to his questions, following up on leads for him and telling him which Justice League members were best to approach for help about different things. In turn, Tim had hacked and shut down the League of Assassins’ servers, had destroyed their online presence and sent them back to the stone age.

If not for Hood, Bruce would still be stuck in the timestream somewhen, and nobody knew it but Tim.

R: so I heard Black Swan and Spoiler teamed up again

H: I bet the Bat loved that

R: Spoiler told him that it was homophobic not to let them work together

H: lmfao

Did he even get the joke?

R: no he was very concerned it might actually be homoboic

*homophobic

Spoiler laughed at him for like 20 min

Hey do you have a minute to talk?

Hood called him almost immediately, as Tim had suspected he would. Hood didn’t usually text if he was working.

“Birdboy. What’s up?”

Tim checked to make sure his door was locked, even though he knew it was. “How do you do the solo vigilante thing? Just… running on your own, not knowing who has your back?”

Hood sighed, softly. There was no tinny quality in his voice, or echo, which meant he had the helmet off. He was still doing the deep, serious, voice with the generic accent though. “I shot everyone who so much as looked at me funny and then found a friend to watch my back. Why are you asking me that?”

“Ever since Batman came back, he’s been… weird. Different. Him and Nightwing keep implying things. That I need to be ‘thinking about my future’ and that the Robin suit ‘doesn’t fit as well as it used to’. He’s been talking about me needing to rely on him less. And there’s this kid, about the age I was when I became Robin, and Batman seems really impressed with him and I think–”

He hadn’t meant to start crying. Damn it.

“Hey.” There was… emotion, in Hood’s voice. And it wasn’t his usual anger either. “Fuck Batman. You saved that asshole’s life in every conceivable way and now he wants to get rid of you? Fuck that. He doesn’t get to take it from you too, and he sure as shit doesn’t get to put some other fucked up orphan in it.”

“I wasn’t an orphan when I started.”

“And I don’t care. Look Batman in the eye and tell him ‘fuck off, asshole’, and then look Nightwing in the eye and tell him ‘stop being such a dick’.”

Tim found himself choking back a wet laugh. “I can’t do that!”

“Sure you can.”

“They’re all I have, Hood.”

Hood breathed deeply. “They’re not going to get rid of you, Robin. Not for anything short of murder. You’re a good kid. Smart. A real mini-bat. Best Robin by a mile. And if they do… well, Spoiler won’t stand for that. Neither will your friends in the Titans, right? And I certainly won’t. If that asshole fires you, just steal the Robin suit and catch a flight. Anywhere you want to go, Swan and I will meet you there.”

“And I’ll get to see you without the helmet.”

“Sure, kid. If Batman kicks you out – which he never will – you can see me without the helmet. I’ll even tell you my name. But he’s not stupid enough to get rid of you. You’re brilliant. You’re so brilliant, you’ll be okay no matter what he does. There are people you can trust, aren’t there?”

Kon would be there, and Bart and Cassie and Steph.

And Hood and Swan.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“I always am.”

“Not always,” Tim objected.

“Name one thing.”

“I’m not the best Robin.” Hood scoffed. “I’m serious. You never met him, but–”

“I’ve met Nightwing,” Hood corrected, “all show no substance. You’re the best Robin, babybird. Suck it up.”

“Not Nightwing. The second Robin.” There was a sharp inhale from Hood’s end of the phone. “He died, a long time ago, but I saw him when I was a kid, and he was so good, and he made Batman smile so much, really challenged him to be better in a way I never have. I’ve been a placeholder for him this whole time, really. That’s why I know Batman will let me go, eventually. He won’t need the crutch forever.”

There was the hum of a disconnected line.

H: sorry, call dropped. Tunnel.

Somehow, Tim didn’t think so.

--

“Bruce, do you think there’s any chance that Red Hood could…”

“Could what?”

Tim shook his head. “It was a stupid idea and I know why it’s wrong.”

--

There was someone pounding at the manor door, incessantly and loudly. Alfred carefully straightened the portrait whose frame he had been dusting, and hurried to get it.

The young woman on the other side of the door could be best described as ‘harried’, with a weary look about her that suggested days without sleep. More surprisingly, she was an apparent stranger who had somehow managed to bypass all their security to this point, but had now chosen to knock.

“Alfred,” she addressed him, “I need to speak to everyone, please, now.”

“Miss–”

“Cassandra. This is an emergency. I need Batman.”

She could have no more effectively stunned him with a blow to the head, although she very nearly outdid herself when she pulled a child from behind her and pushed him through the doorway, into the house.

There was the clatter of footsteps on the stairs as Timothy and Stephanie both emerged from the direction of Timothy’s room.

“Alfred? Who–”

“Spoiler.”

“Swan!”

Stephanie very nearly threw herself down the last few steps to wrap Cassandra in a tight embrace. The child, a boy no older than nine or ten, shrunk into the shadows, wilting without Cassandra’s attention.

“And your name, young sir?”

“Damian.”

“What are you doing here?” Spoiler demanded. “How did you know?”

“Hood told me. Talia came back. He was captured. Watch Damian until I get back.”

Stephanie grabbed Cassandra by the arm. “Woah. You can’t just drop that bomb and leave. Hood knows who we are? For how long? Why did you bring the kid here and not call Superman or something?”

“This is the emergency plan. Safest from Talia. Hood always knew Batman, even before you were here.”

“I was right,” Timothy whispered, almost to himself.

“Right about what, Master Timothy?”

He looked up, meeting Black Swan’s eyes. “The Red Hood is Jason Todd.”

The silence was such that a mouse would have thundered like an elephant.

“I’m right, aren’t I? Jason Todd went in the Lazarus pit, and he came back as the Red Hood. That’s why he can’t take off the Helmet in front of anyone even though he clearly does it when fighting alone, like Arsenal saw once. That’s why he’s the Red Hood, and why his eyes are green and how he always knew what Bruce was going to say and why he helped me and–”

“Bruce!” Everyone flinched at the sound of Richard’s voice, coming from the parlor behind Alfred. “You really need to hear this!”

Into the silence that followed, Cassandra said, “yes.” Her eyes were fixed solidly on Timothy.

“Not that I don’t believe you,” Stephanie said, “but some proof might be good if you want the big man to.”

“Dick?” There was Bruce, standing on the first storey landing, not far from where Timothy and Stephanie had emerged. “What’s going on? And who’s– Cassandra?”

She inclined her head.

“And this is Damian,” said Alfred, reminding them as gently as he could that there was a child – or, rather, a younger child – in the room.

“Hi Damian,” Stephanie said brightly.

“Tim,” Richard cut in, voice like a shard of glass, “repeat what you just said.”

His eyes immediately fixed themselves on the floor. “The Red Hood is Jason Todd.”

The blow was softer, the second time round, like a tennis player cautious after a fault on the first serve. And yet it still struck Alfred with devastating force. Jason. His grandson. Alive and still gone.

“Tim,” Bruce echoed, in a voice that wavered between shocked and horrified, “what are you talking about?”

Damian, the small boy still pressed close to the wall, as if he were worried someone would sneak up on him, spoke up. “Robin is correct. Mother found him in a catatonic state and submerged him in the Lazarus Pit. She told me as much herself.”

“And Talia al Ghul is your mother.”

“And she has Jason,” Cassandra reminded them, urgently. Untangling herself again from Stephanie, she said, “I have to go, now.”

“Like hell you’re going alone.”

“I’ll come. Steph, you can’t just fight the League of Assassins.”

“Watch me, asshole. Swan, stop walking.”

“Wait, are we just trusting Talia on this? B, you said he was dead. You told me you buried him.”

“You must stay with Damian. Protect him. They will come for him next.”

Bruce’s whistle cut through the air just as one of his batarangs would have. The crowd of arguing children turned to him.

“Tim. How – without Cassandra and Damian telling you – did you know it was Jason?”

He flushed with embarrassment. “Hood and I have been… texting, a bit. He acted weird the one time I mentioned the second Robin. And – and I thought he might know who we were because he called Nightwing ‘a dick’. It fits with the profile. Right age. And Hood said he was destroyed by the Joker. He said he wanted to pick the name because it scared him. That he was inspired by his dad.”

“Bats,” Richard murmured, vaguely awed.

“How sure are you?”

“I can prove it,” interrupted Damian, still carefully backed against the wall. “Jason told me stories of his childhood, after I rescued him from Mother. He told me you met when he stole your tires, and you fed him a hamburger. He told me you once allowed him to practice his skills by breaking into the central branch of the library at midnight.”

Cassandra, arms crossed carefully over her chest to keep Stephanie from grabbing her a third time, added, “told me he’d teased you, said adopting two children who looked like you was a pattern. Said after he met Tim that he was proven right. He teased us, said Dami and I would be adopted too, if we stayed in Gotham too long and you figured out our stories.”

Stephanie, just far removed enough from the issue that she could ask the insensitive question no one else dared to, queried, “why didn’t he just come home, if the three of you were in so much danger? Why Hood and the Justice League and all of that?”

Cassandra looked up at Bruce, scanning his form with a jeweler’s eye. “Killing is the one thing you can never forgive, he said.”

“But he wasn’t a killer before he became Red Hood,” Timothy objected, “not unless–”

He sucked in a sharp breath, and Richard, whose intelligence was usually underestimated by the rest of the family, caught his train of thought. “He killed the Joker. That was what, three months before the first Red Hood sighting? He killed the Joker, went back to Talia, kidnapped Damian, and went to war with Ra’s al Ghul.”

Cassandra nodded, decisively. “All true. Now please, let me go.”

“No.” Only the tightness of Bruce’s grip on the railing betrayed how shaken he was.

“I–”

“You’re exhausted. Alfred, get rooms set up for Cassandra and Damian. Both of you can brief me with what you know before going to bed. Tim, Stephanie, you’ll stay here and guard them. I expect you to use all resources available to you to ensure that no member of the League of Assassins sets foot in this city.” He raised one hand, the other tight on the railing, to cut off any protest. “This is not up for debate. Dick, call Oracle and tell her what’s happened and that we need her help. Have her alert the Birds of Prey on the off-chance that the League rears their head and call Duke back to the cave. I don’t want him out there alone with the League in town. Then suit up and meet me in the Batplane.”

Wisely, he did not allow them to ask questions.

--

“Did you know?”

He had Diana and Clark both on the line. If it was Jason (if there was any chance it was Jason, if he let himself believe even for a second it could be) then he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

“Did we know what, Batman?”

“That the Red Hood is Jason Todd.’

Diana’s sharp inhale was audible over the phone, as was Clark’s whispered “hell.”

“Did you know?”

“No,” said Diana, firmly.

From Clark, though, there was a treacherous silence. “Superman?”

“No. But I knew he was from Gotham. I thought he was hiding his identity to protect a child.”

Of course Clark hadn’t told him everything. He’d wanted to do the right thing. Sometimes Bruce hated him, a little.

“He was.”

“Of course he was,” Diana intoned, “it’s Jason.”

And it was Red Hood, who everyone in the League had agreed was a hero before Bruce had even been ready to acknowledge him as an asset.

The Red Hood, who was Jason.

“We’re on standby,” Clark said. He must have been somewhere private, because he’d slipped out of the Superman voice and into a reassuring, Kansas-accented, civilian tone. “Just say my name, and we’re there.”

--

Jason came awake the way children and people in movies surge out of nightmares, sitting up all at once with reckless abandon and no concern for where they were. It was a stupid way to wake up, because it alerted everyone to the fact that he was awake, but ever since the pit and the coffin it had become a default impulse, to move up and make sure he could breathe, that he wasn’t trapped.

In this instance, he had the clearance to sit up, but his ribs – and nearly every other part of his body – screamed at him and he fell back on the bed in a heap. It was more comfortable than their usual safehouse fair. Cass must have picked a good one.

Then, finally, Jason took in his surroundings and thought, this is not my beautiful safehouse. This is not my beautiful wife.

The cave was different, new gear and training equipment and, weirdly, an empty glass case. Maybe Selina had visited recently, gotten up to some light robbery.

There was the sound of footsteps, of a person walking as silently as humanly possible, that could only have been one of two people.

“Swan?” He asked, hopefully.

But it wasn’t. Bruce took a seat beside him, wearing a polo shirt and slacks. Someone had gotten a few good blows in against him, spectacularly bruising his cheekbone and leaving a bandage across the side of his neck like someone had tried to cut off his head.

“Jaylad.”

Jason had imagined this moment hundreds of times – thousands, even – for three years. Even when he’d thought Bruce was dead, before Tim had waltzed into his life and convinced him otherwise, he’d imagined the missed moment of reunion. He’d known, the second he’d killed the Joker, that Bruce would never forgive him, and that every time he picked up the helmet, he was solidifying that fact.

So he dreamed the reunion, imagined Bruce’s shock and horror at realizing exactly who the Red Hood really was. Later, when he had Cass and the slow creep of heroes who liked him, he’d imagined how furious Bruce would be that he hadn’t figured it out. He’d imagined what he would say, quippy one liners or quotes from books he liked or anything else at all.

Maybe it was the drugs, or the dull pain of every place where Talia had hit him, but all those jokes left him. “Hey old man.”

Bruce’s embrace was sudden and surprisingly gentle, taking care not to press on Jason’s injuries or dislodge his IV.

Instinctively, he raised up the other arm, fighting the twinge of pain in his shoulder, and hugged him back. From Bruce there came a ragged breath, somewhere between a sob and a death rattle.

“You’re acting weird.” A thought occurred to him. “Did someone die? Did Talia–”

“Idiot.” Cass melted from the shadows as if she’d been there all along. “You died.”

He flinched. “You didn’t–” he couldn’t have gone in the pit again. Cass wouldn’t have. He’d made her promise not to.

“Not again,” she stressed, and then signed furiously, (you lied. You said they didn’t want you back. You’re stupid.)

Arms full of Bruce, he couldn’t exactly respond in kind, so he settled for flipping her off. Cass, taking it in stride, flitted over and leaned down over Bruce to kiss Jason on the forehead.

To Bruce, she said, “thank you for carrying Dami to bed.”

And then she was gone, footsteps even more silent than Bruce’s.

In Cass’s absence, he slowly disentangled himself, looking down at Jason the way people looked at newborn babies, like they’d been handed the future and the world.

“What do you know?” Jason asked. Maybe this was all some massive misunderstanding. Maybe Cass had finally learned how to lie and dissemble. “Do you know that I–”

“We figured most of it out,” he said, in that rarest voice that hovered just at the lowest end of the Bruce Wayne register, right before it became Batman. “Cassandra and Damian confirmed some more.”

“Tell me.”

“You died.” The words hung between them in the air like milk in tea, the tension of them slowly dispersing. “I buried you. And then you woke up, and Talia found you, and she put you in a Lazarus pit.” He nodded, burning with the shame of it. “You trained with the League, killed the Joker, and then you kidnapped Damian and assumed the identity of Red Hood. We both know the rest.”

Jason, fixating on the one detail he could be proud of, said, “it wasn’t really a kidnapping. He wasn’t a ‘kid’ to them. He was some perfect little prodigy they could mold into anything they wanted. I once saw one of the ninjas hit him for breathing too loudly. He’d never danced or jumped on a bed or played a game that wasn’t really some horrible training method. Talia was kind to him, but she wasn’t there most of the time, and the people Ra’s had looking after him, the people she went along with… I couldn’t let them have him.”

“The way Damian told it, he was the one who saved you.”

“Brat.”

Bruce smiled, a small, subtle motion that on him was as significant as a face-splitting grin would have been on anyone else. “You did say you wanted a little brother.”

“No, I said you wanted me to have a little brother. And you did! You even proved me right and adopted another boy with dark hair and blue eyes and you didn’t even wait for him to be an orphan first.”

And Bruce… laughed. A flustered exhale of a laugh that seemed to startle him even more than it startled Jason. To Jason’s shock, he looked up, as if appealing to God. Or–

“Are you trying not to cry?” Another weak laugh. “B, did you get like… exposed to some weird compound or something?”

“No, Jay,” he said, with fond exasperation, “I just missed you.”

The pit anger didn’t really come up, anymore, except when Damian was in danger, but the emotion that rushed through him was nearly like it. He knew from talking to Tim that Bruce hadn’t replaced him, had missed the child who’d died, but, “you miss a dead kid! He died and I came back. Me. A murderer who you’ve never trusted, not once. And you were right not to. I killed the Joker. I snuck into his cell and I shot him and didn’t let him know it was me so he wouldn’t have the chance to die laughing. I… well, I’m not sure I killed Ra’s, but I took Damian’s sword and I tried to cut his head off and I really hope it doesn’t grow back.”

“You didn’t kill Ra’s. He was the one who captured you, not Talia.”

“Then where’s Talia?”

Bruce shrugged. Jason took a shaky breath, ribs aching. “Well, I tried to kill him. Would have killed anyone else. I’m not your son, I’m just–”

“Jason.” There was something in him that still automatically reacted to the Batman growl, even all these years later. He shut up. “I forgive you.”

“What?”

“Cassandra told me you thought you were unforgivable. But I forgive you. Even before I knew, I saw the trust the Red Hood had earned from Wonder Woman and Superman, from Black Swan and Robin. You earned that trust for a reason. You are not unredeemable, when you try to be better. No one is.”

He could have picked a fight, brought up the Joker or the man who killed his parents, but the drugs and the emotional blow of Bruce’s forgiveness had hit him almost as hard as Ra’s’s ninja had. He felt his own eyes begin to water.

“Dad?”

He hugged Jason again, the pressure grounding and yet heady in the relief of it. “‘m gonna fall asleep again.”

“I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

--

Tim ran up the stairs from the cave half in and half out of his new Red Robin costume. Jason had flushed and dissembled at the name chosen in his honor, which, in Tim’s opinion, proved it was definitely the right call. Like all their other costumes, it was absolutely supposed to stay downstairs, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it.

“Dude!” Jason yelled. “Pants!”

Tim held his suit pants up with one hand and shoved the results at Jason with the other. “Look!”

“At?”

Jason took the folder so Tim could tie his sleeves around his waist. “I did Cass and Dami’s DNA for the Watchtower and look at Damian’s!”

“At his DNA?” Jason questioned, but then he opened the folder and saw what Tim had seen, and he started, manically, to laugh.

“Can you tell Bruce while I…” Tim gestured vaguely at his general state of half-dress.

Jason, the bastard, dropped the folder on the desk. “Fuck no, kid. You’re on your own.”

“Some hero you are.”

He smirked, the self-satisfied expression of someone who had no doubts about his place. “Have fun being the half-dressed Maury of Gotham, Timbit.”

“Jason!”

The Red Hood, Tim decided, was an asshole.