Chapter Text

CH. 1

          It is time now, I said, 
          for the deepening and quieting of the spirit 
          among the flux of happenings. 

          Something had pestered me so much 
          I thought my heart would break. 
          I mean, the mechanical part. 

          Mary Oliver. From Swimming, One Day in August

***

Tender new shoots curled around the points of her nails - delicate lilac in color, striated through with reds and greens, and so responsive to touch. A cultivar native to a universe quite distant from her own home. But such things were not uncommon here in the High Keep of the End, and especially not in her own courtyard garden that spanned sweeping, tiered arcs between the apartments of the royal Fraid and the public vestibules of the castle. 

Sam, once Manson and now Fraid Nightingale, withdrew her hand from the questing plant and its inquisitive whispering. Resisted the urge to dip into that sense of communion that would let her truly hear it, and instead focused her attention on the pair of gossiping courtiers that trailed just ahead of her. 

“ - when the verdict outran the crime,” the nearer of the two, an old and mostly-humanoid ghost that Sam recognized as a member of Dorothea’s court, in a bell-shaped dark green gown and hair elaborately twisted in a pearl-and-wire caul, inclined only fractionally towards her companion as she spoke. 

“And they name it Justice, and its name shall be hung from the stones of the End,” the other, a Fraid member to an Outer God, skin inky black and curling with smoke, their ritual intonation only barely masking the sense of scandal projected by their core, made a falling gesture of one hand. Viscous black fumes trailed their fingertips. 

It was foolhardy at best and dangerously stupid at worst to believe she could go unnoticed by anyone in the palace, and she didn’t try to hide. Whatever they were saying, they intended to be overheard, or they wouldn’t be saying it here. 

“And they name it Justice,” the first agreed, “When they tear a weed from the soil and press it ‘twixt stone and glass.”

“Our dear Warden is a weed, then?

“All the better to take guardianship for false flowers.”

“Rather than to be pruned for display?”

“But of course, my dear. The dandelion makes for a poor trophy once it is stripped to its teeth.”

Neither of the courtiers noticed the current of reproach that thrummed through the garden at their words. The way that lilac shoots and toothy green leaves and spiny stems recoiled by degrees of motion too small for even the most attentive eye to see. Sam maintained an appropriate neutrality and busied herself with her parasol. A Warden, taken and pressed. Well - there was only one Warden they could be talking about. 

Walker, that old thorn in the sides of Team Phantom. What had he gotten himself into?

Perhaps Dante would know.

***

“Good morning Gothamites! We’re here at Amusement Mile, where history is about to be made.” Alisa Yousef was a consummate professional, and the nerves associated with the location didn’t reach her expression. “Behind me, you can see the newest bit of ghost controversy that has dominated the news for the last week.”

The camera panned; it was a typical Gotham day, which was to say it was cool, grey, and humid. The crew of Gotham Nine, along with those of every other local, regional, national, and international outlet worth their salt, were camped out on the very southernmost tip of the island. If rumor was to be believed, this would be the location for an embassy to the Infinite Realms, that extradimensional plane which the world had been made recently and violently aware of. 

The Realms that had made very credible threats to their own entire universe, if the Living of their plane didn’t find and rescue their missing Prince Daniel: Emergent of Balance, the Phantom of Amity Park, and the missing third of the Tri-Partite Crown of Essence. 

To issue that threat, the ghosts of the Realms had manifested a high-order structure called the World Anchor - or the Monolith, to ignorant mankind - over the reservoir in Robinson Park, over the UN Plaza in New York, the Capitol Rotunda in DC, and even in orbit, synchronized with the Watchtower itself.

Now, Daniel rescued, there was a boundless slog of political aftermath to deal with. Thus - the Embassy, which, so far, promised to be less impressive. 

There was a small stone foundation, slate blue, on the very end of the island’s narrow southern tip. It was less than twenty meters across, taller than the approaching rocky soil by about five meters, and was accessible by steps and ramps in that same slate grey stone. A stripe running along its sides, just under a meter wide, was carved in a stunning and detailed whorling relief. 

The whole foundation looked like it had been sunk into the ground as if it were a set piece in the virtual landscape of a video game - it intersected the earth abruptly, clipping right through whatever dirt and stone and plant life had been there before. 

In the center of it was a gazebo. It looked as if carved from one solid piece of the same sort of granite that made tombstones. It was ornate, gothic, and foreboding, and very Gotham, despite the climbing white-flowered vines that wound their way around its six pillars. 

There was nothing under the gazebo, and nothing else on its foundation save some stone benches and what may have been an observation balcony clinging to its far side, overlooking the water and facing the Trigate Bridge. 

At the foot of the new, yet strangely weathered-looking stone structure, was a temporary media stage of the sort that was present at any similarly publicized event. There was a podium - not yet occupied - a backdrop featuring logos for Gotham City, for the UN, and miscellaneous others - and a handful of folding chairs. 

The sky began to mist. The camera panned back to Yousef. She wore her hair in a tight bun in anticipation of the weather, and her years of experience with field reporting allowed her to bear the new drizzle without so much as a dent in the skin-deep enthusiasm she wore just as well as she did her grey and gold tweed pantsuit. 

“The area is already packed, despite the lack of lasting development on this end of the island,” she continued. “Crowds are divided - some appear to support our city hosting the ghosts’ Embassy, while others have come in protest. Representation from the Federal Government and the GIW is notably absent, leaving us to ask: are they being withheld from the proceedings, or is this a form of protest? With tensions running high, some even wonder - will we be seeing more of the now-infamous skeleton soldiers? Let’s hear from some of Gotham’s gathered citizens -”

With that she brandished her mic, took a little reaffirming breath, and made her way over to the nearest of the assembled crowds. 

***

Tim was beginning to wonder if, maybe, he ought to have pushed back against Danny’s Embassy idea. Really - it could have been hosted in Metropolis and been just fine, right?

At the very least, he could have rejected the offer to Red Robin to act as one of the ambassadors to said Embassy. Unfortunately, his usual sense of duty interfered with his ability to say no, alongside the fact that he’d never before met a burden he refused to shoulder. 

It was a little unreal that these were the consequences of opening his big mouth nearly a month ago, during the near-completely destabilized first contact with the Realms and her Councils. All he’d wanted to do was avoid the collapse of his reality, and now here he was - adjusting the newly minted ambassadorial version of his Red Robin uniform and trying not to stare openly at Danny himself, who mouthed the words of his speech and periodically peered at the curtain dividing them from the stage as if he could see through it. 

He probably could. Being a high-dimensional ghost and some strange sort of new god, and all. 

One of Danny’s gloved hands rubbed idly at a spot over the center of his chest.

This was, surprisingly enough, the first time he’d seen Danny in person since a few weeks ago, when the rescued ghost had left him with a glyph on a green sticky note, a demonstration in dimensional collapse, and a handful of cryptic warnings. What communications they’d received about the incoming Embassy and its plans had come from the mayor’s office and from the UN. 

It was strangely insulting, and Tim didn’t know what to do with the fact that he’d apparently, unconsciously, expected Danny to continue to reach out to him. Why had he thought that? And why, if he’d somehow wanted to talk to the man - ghost - why hadn’t he used the glyph he’d received to do so?

However one used the thing for communication, anyway. Tim probably could have figured it out if he’d tried. Which - he hadn’t. He’d scanned it into his workstation PC and then studiously ignored it.

Hell, if he’d given what must have been the ghostly equivalent of his phone number to someone and they hadn’t used it, he’d probably assume they didn’t want to chat. 

He’d just been - well, nervous. Uncharacteristically so. Like he was now, steeping in the meters-wide radius of privacy that surrounded him and Danny and its awkward silence. What was he supposed to say? He could wish him well for his speech, or ask any one of the dozens of questions he had about the Embassy and what specifically Danny wanted to accomplish, or what exactly Danny expected Red Robin to do as some sort of ambassador of the Living -

Red Robin, that was, alongside the eclectic selection - and he didn’t want to linger on Danny’s choices just then - of other diplomats who’d come to Gotham to represent their people to the Realms. 

Maybe those questions would be unwelcome right now, in an improvised and not-totally-secure setting. Maybe he should ask something personal. Like how Danny was doing, God - 

Tim settled on not saying anything, and then -

“I, uh, actually really hate public speaking,” the corner of Danny’s dust-blue lips quirked up into an expression of self-deprecating amusement as he spoke. He made a quarter-turn towards Tim and met his eyes - or the lenses of his domino. “You’d think I’d have more experience, what with the Courts and all, but there’s a surprising lack of media outlets in the Realms.”

Tim hated how potent his relief was at the silence being broken. He was a Bat. He was supposed to thrive in silence. “You didn’t seem half bad at it the last time,” he said, picturing in his head the image that Danny had struck alongside his siblings as he made the decree that saved Tim’s universe. 

Danny was a man of many faces - confident and just this side of goofy, with his friends. Restrained and politick, in front of the Observants. Competent and smooth and deadly-edged when he’d captured the Joker. Tim could appreciate someone who knew how to wear a mask, but he also knew best just how dangerous that could make them. 

His comment drew a wry little snort from Danny, though. “It’s easier when I get to trip up the Observants,” he said, and that was interesting. An unfavored faction at court, then?

“That’s how I feel in front of the Board,” he offered, and it was true, and his identity came pre-compromised with the ghosts, anyway, what with the psionic interference the entire city had faced for over a week straight. 

That seemed to draw Danny out of his nerves.“Y’know, you might be the one person I’ve met with more hats to wear than me,” he said. Tim didn’t know what to do with that comparison. 

What he realized, in real time, was that he was caught between his impressions of Danny as a person. Was he the reckless goofball turned competent small-town hero, or was he a god? Did godhood render him into something that Tim couldn’t expect to safely approach? To talk to?

Tim sidestepped that thought with his habitual evasion, and instead said “Well, you’re buddy-buddy with Time themself, right? That’s gotta make it all at least a little easier. I just chug energy drinks.”

“You’d think, but the old gearbox isn’t exactly helpful most of the time.”

And that would have made him laugh if it didn’t first make him balk at the idea that Danny was someone who could refer to the personification of Time as the old gearbox. 

“Red Robin,” Bruce’s - Batman’s - voice in his ear reminded him abruptly that this was not a private moment, “Remember that we need him to come to the Cave.”

Ah. Right. He was supposed to have an ulterior motive, here.

Tim cleared his throat. “I, uh, wanted to mention,” he said, and ignored Robin’s scoff and Signal’s smooth, man, “Batman and the rest wanted to meet you, and maybe ask you a few things. If you’d be amenable.”

At that, Danny turned towards him fully, and Tim was distracted momentarily by the well-cut black ceremonial jacket he wore and the delicate embellishments and armor that decorated it in ice and white gold. 

“Is that so?” his brow arched, “I was under the impression that Batman was more likely to try and corner me in the middle of the night than tender an actual invite to chat.”

That drew laughter over comms. “If he could get into the Realms to do so, he probably would,” Tim shrugged. “But he’ll have to be satisfied with having you over to the Cave. So, what do you think?”

Finally, the bare smirk and the arched brow transmuted into a full grin. “You don’t have to pull my teeth, Birdy,” he said, and his expression flashed said fangs, “I’d love to see your little hideout. Just let me know when.”

Tim should probably have opened his mouth to answer him. Or - his mouth may have hung slightly open already, and what he needed to do was speak. And he would have, for sure, but -

One of the mayor’s aides chose that moment to part the curtain and gesture to them both. “It’s, uh, time, Your Highness,” he said, then nodded to Tim. “Red Robin.”

Danny nodded, grin fading like cooling embers. “Let’s , uh, get this show on the road, then. You ready?”

Tim undoubtedly was not.

***

“It looks as if they’re ready to begin,” Yousef took the opportunity to extract herself tactfully from the crowd of Gothamites she’d been interviewing, brushing off one or two who’d taken the opportunity to try and get handsy, and moved back to her crew’s approved sightline of the stage. The camera followed her dutifully, panning over the stage where Mayor Hady took the podium and waited patiently for the noise to die down. 

Hady was a thick, smarmy rectangle of a man, with slicked-back tawny hair and a politician’s queasy grin. It was unusual to see him on the stage and accompanied by more reputable politicians - but, well, this situation had forced any number of better-positioned actors to come to the nation’s perennial crime capitol. Flanking him on stage right were a row of seats which were filled by an unlikely assortment of newly appointed ambassadors to the Realms, Red Robin at their head. Stage left held the step-and-repeat and a collection of flags. 

“Good morning to my fellow Gothamites, and to all of you watching across the country and the world,” he began. His tone was appropriately sober but not grave. “And welcome to our visiting ambassadors.”

He cleared his throat. 

“Gotham is a storied city, and has seen many firsts. Our city was among the first wave of humble trading colonies established in the region. We were at the heart of our nation’s industrial revolution. Our city’s finest have seen us through times of innovation and, yes, at times, tragedy. That makes Gotham a proving ground; we endure, and we adapt. I’m sure you will all agree that recent events have made that much clear. Now, we find ourselves on the edge of another first, another chapter in our long history of resilience.”

He straightened his tie and cast his gaze over the assembled, allowing the atmosphere around him to grow heavy with anticipation as much as it did with grey Gotham drizzle. 

“For the first time we stand, not before our country, any other nation or even another planet; this time, we stand before another plane of existence, in the midst of admittedly fraught times. The Infinite Realms have extended their hand to us in partnership and, in the spirit of our allies in the United Nations and the Justice League, we take that hand today. Gotham is honored to serve, with the founding of this Embassy, as a bridge between our reality and the Infinite Realms.”

“I would like to thank,” he paused to turn, “the United Nations High Commission for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs and the Justice League for their continued support, and to Gotham’s own Red Robin for his role in promoting and preserving these negotiations. Together, their work has ensured that this moment takes place not in fear or aggression, but in dialogue.”

He even managed not to look as if he’d swallowed a lemon when he said it. 

“And now,” his hands came to grip the sides of the podium tightly enough for his knuckles to whiten, “it is my honor to welcome the first emissaries from the Infinite Realms - and to introduce to you their representative, His Highness Prince Daniel of Fraid Nightingale, the Amity Park Phantom and Emergent of Balance.”

The rain stopped. 

Hady backed away from the center of the stage and towards the flags. 

For an instant, a quiet that felt distended and unnatural, the very air around the stage seemed to bend and flex as if under a shifting magnifying glass. 

And then Prince Daniel stepped out of a green twist of the light and took the podium. 

The camera shifted, its operator startled, and refocused.

Like his sister, his skin was the blue-white of a frozen lake and his eyes were vivid green. His hair was translucent-pale, combed loosely back, and utterly undisturbed by gravity and the wind alike. Angular hardware glinted where it clung to elfen ears. He wore a black-and-silver jacket with an asymmetrical cut across the chest, the collar of a white turtleneck peeking out from its edge. The jacket was trimmed with whorling pins and ornamentation that might have been made of ice or metal that matched the sleek, sloping pauldrons and bracers overtop. His hands were gloved; the left in white, and the right in black. 

Prince Daniel smiled, and it was neither warm nor kind. The microphone caught Yousef’s faint intake of breath. In the periphery of the frame she was as obviously transfixed as the crowd was. 

“Thank you, Mayor Hady of Gotham,” Daniel spoke and smoothly adjusted the mic for someone of more generous height than the mayor strictly was. “And thank you to the city of Gotham, the United Nations and the Justice League for your welcome. I wish that our two hands met under better circumstances, but I will commend the grace with which you have received mine, now.”

The not that you had much choice went unspoken.

His eyes met the camera at the end of his introduction. 

“I am not here to give you flattery or gentle words; I am here to address the near-irreperable harm that has been enacted in the name of ignorance and fear. Together, we are here to unveil the Embassy which will, I earnestly hope, be the first step in repairing that harm. This path may be difficult and its steps treacherous,” he paused, “but we will walk it together. For the good of the We-Who-Are-Infinite as much as for you, One-Among-Many.”

“Now,” and here his smile turned wide and wry, his hands rising in front of him as if to cup the air, “I give to you our Embassy.”

His cupped hands fell open in a gesture like a blooming lotus.

Reality pulsed and wavered as if it were a mirage in the desert. The voice of the crowd rose in abrupt gasps and murmuring - the camera lurched, jerkily, up to search the sky beyond the little slate structure. 

There the visual distortions in the air grew heavy and buckling. The temperature around them dropped, and Yousef’s hand unoccupied by a microphone rose to her mouth in an astonished gesture. 

The camera flickered and then - there was, in truth, the Embassy.

An island held suspended high above the channel between the tip of Amusement Mile and the Trigate Bridge. It loomed, all dark mossy stone and long hanging roots - a cascading tongue of ice hung over one side in what might have been a waterfall, if it weren’t frozen. 

Visible, if only just, over the lip of that island was the silhouette of a dark, gothic manor. 

The camera panned back down at Yousef’s quiet urging, and - visible past the stage - a door had appeared under the gazebo, flanked by two skeletal guards.

“This, our Embassy,” Prince Daniel spoke again and the crowd fell steadily quiet, “will serve not only its diplomatic function, but will be home to Fraid Nightingale while in your realm, as well as a shelter to the Dead here. The Embassy will welcome all who have peaceful intent and business to conduct with the We-Who-Are-Infinite. The door can be found here or in City Hall.”

There was no response from the assembled that had been shocked still. 

“I will leave you with this,” Daniel continued, and the central fragment of the Tri-Partite Crown of Essence manifested on his brow as he spoke, with its angular silver and three vertical spires of ice. “Peace is forged in the crucible of enmity, as is War. We must tend to it mindfully. I look forward to working with your Living Representatives to ensure that we do.” 

With that he turned to the line of ambassadors, who looked no less fazed than the crowd did, save the enigmatic Red Robin; he inclined his head in wordless farewell, and then disappeared in another eclipsing of green light. 

The camera panned, with visible reluctance, back to Yousef, who looked for the first time in years as if she were startled to be on camera. “And - there you have it, Gotham,” she seemed to steady herself as she spoke, “It looks as if the ghosts are here and they’ve made themselves, literally, at home. Let’s go back to our panel for their thoughts.” A little nod, as if to herself, eyes still wide. “Carmen, Brett, back to you.”

The camera cut.

***

Danny fell out of the air over his newly-transposed-into-reality sofa and across Dante and Ellie’s laps with an exaggerated groan. As he did, his ritual dress sublimated into green ecto, leaving a black tank and sweats in its wake. 

Gotham’s humid and polluted air clung to him, though, and he took a moment to untense and relax into his siblings. 

The two of them that he still had to hand, anyway. He needed to find -

“I take it it went well,” Dante said, brow raised and peering down at him with his usual asshole flair. That didn’t faze Danny, though - couldn’t, when his brother’s core was vibrating with the quiet question of are you okay that it had been since Danny’d been freed from GIW custody. 

“It went as well as it can when you talk to a crowd of Living that your brother and sister just recently threatened with total annihilation.”

Dante just shrugged. 

“I thought you sounded like a prick,” Ellie decided to weigh in, and Danny’s gaze snapped to hers and found an impish expression there. “Which probably means you did great.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“I’ve talked to death about it,” he groaned and stretched, then turned to tuck his head into Dante’s stomach. “What I want is a nap.”

“We don’t all get what we want, brat.”

Danny didn’t answer him, and instead tried to burrow. He could practically hear the way Dante’s eyes rolled alongside his core’s muffled amusement, exasperation. 

“We can make fun of Mayor Hady if you want,” Ellie offered. “You think he wears a toupé?”

“Oh, he absolutely does.”

Danny basked in their back-and-forth for a few tranquil minutes. He might have even gotten that nap, if Ellie hadn’t decided to ruin his life. 

“Red Robin looked good in that suit.”

Danny’s core, entirely unbidden, projected mortified despair, and Dante and Ellie both laughed at him like traitors. 

“Oh that he did,” Dante shifted and rotated Danny in his lap so that he had to look back at them as they mocked him. “How was Tim Drake-Wayne, Dann-o?”

Danny sighed and fought off the green flush he could feel rising up his neck. “He was very polite.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Danny whined. “But he’s very, um. Professional.”

“He doesn’t know you,” Ellie shrugged. “But maybe that’ll change. You’re literally about to be coworkers, after all.”

“Yeah, because I asked him to. Why the fuck did I do that?”

Dante laughed, and it shook Danny’s entire body. One of his arms draped heavily over Danny’s midsection, comforting in its weight when Dante allowed gravity to take it. “Because, personal dilemmas aside, he’s a competent hero with PR instinct and diplomatic chops. I was,” then he paused as if he were admitting to something embarrassing, “impressed enough with him during first contact.”

“Whatever,” Danny pinched Dante’s side and reveled in the way he jumped. “Can we talk about literally anything else?”

“Hm,” his brother hummed, “Well, I heard from Sam today.”

Danny perked; he’d hardly had a scattered handful of days with Sam post-rescue as he’d been drawn into dealing with piled-up Court affairs, coordinating the plans for the Embassy, and helping Dante to heal a wayward revenant’s core. No matter that Frostbite had practically begged him to rest his own core before taking on more work - Danny was restless. He’d spent months pinned under that Lock and he could hardly sit still in its wake. 

But still, he would’ve liked more time with his friend. It sucked badly enough that he had been vehemently denied a return to Amity to check on Tucker. 

And to look for Jazz. 

He shook his head as if to dislodge the thought physically. “What’d Sam have to say?”

Dante exchanged a look with Ellie. They’d been doing that, recently, exchanging these little questing looks as if debating silently whether or not the topic for discussion was too sensitive for Danny. For the lingering soreness in his core.

Which - it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Danny was fine. They didn’t have to treat him like a sheet of ice, one resonant tap from fracture. 

“It’s - Walker,” Ellie started. “The Observants have him in their prison, apparently, for collusion with the Guys in White.”

“They’ve set a date for a trial and didn’t so much as notify us. The whole thing was - fast.”

“And the thing is,” she continued, “that Walker himself was released from a GIW facility. They don’t know yet how the GIW got that slice of his Haunt. The whole thing is -”

“- a sham.”

Danny didn’t respond for an evaluating moment, instead sitting up and sliding off of their laps and into the space between them. He resisted the instinct to rub at his chest.

“Do you really think he’s the one who sold me out?” was what he said. Both of his siblings shook their heads. 

“If it was him, then it wasn’t just him. Guy’s not smart enough for that,” Dante’s expression had fallen from lighthearted to grave. “But we can’t just break into their prison and ask him.” Well - they could, but it would be politically unwise.

 They were rulers, not vigilantes, and they had to consider the ramifications of every move they made or word they spoke. At least they had the liberty to speak freely here in the Embassy; Ellie’s much-improved warding made certain of that. 

“So what do we -”

“You focus on the Living,” Dante cut him off. “Let us handle the rest for now. We’ll investigate, okay? You need to stay here where it’s safe.” Then, after a beat, “safer.”

“You can’t really expect me to stay entirely out of the Realms right now.”

“Not entirely,” Ellie reached out and wrapped a hand around his wrist, shooting Dante a look of scrunched irritation as she did, “but as much as you can. You already know why, Danny.” He turned slowly to meet her gaze. “Okay?”

Ancients, but the older Ellie got the more she seemed to grow into an empathy - not patient, never that - that was so much like their sister’s that it ached.

His shoulders sagged with the release of tension and his mounting resistance all at once. “Sure.” Then, in a wash of light that left him in Living form, “I guess I have to get ready to meet the Bats tonight.”

“Oh?” Dante nudged him, relieved enough for the change in topic. “Make sure you wear something red.”

“And maybe find out if that butler of theirs has any advice on throwing a gala,” Ellie added, wry, and Danny stood, abruptly ready to find a little peace and quiet from his siblings. 

Truthfully, they weren’t even supposed to be in-universe just then, but they’d been having difficulty leaving him on his own for long as of late. At least Ellie was getting a taste of what it’d been like taking care of her back in the day, when Danny was afraid her core would decompensate into ectoplasmic goo under the least of stressors. 

“Yea, yea,” he waved her off and headed for the stairs, relishing in the feeling of gravity in his human limbs and the beating of his heart. “Ima go change. Let’s try out that Batburger joint before you guys go, alright?”

***

They had expected resistance - how could they not, after the escalating shitshow that had been Amity Park during Danny’s rescue - but the mass of vehicles, floodlights, and soldiers in both white suits and military-green fatigues, even mounted machine guns and artillery felt a little excessive. 

So, too, did the border around Amity Park which, once demarcated only by the technological blackout, had now been formalized into a wall. Tall, wedge-like metal slats angled against easy entry and painted, Nightwing was unsurprised to see, white. 

Troia, eyes on the viewfinder inside their lead transport, tightened her grip into fists on either side of her uniform. She was caught halfway between her regular heroing suit and her formal UN-version and clearly frustrated to be pinned between roles. That much had been made clear in the terse exchanges she’d had with Green Arrow in their long trip in from Chicago.

This was a humanitarian mission and survey under UN purview, and they were not to instigate any sort of violence. That, Nightwing thought, made Green Arrow a poor choice for this mission, but the archer had demanded to join. He had strong opinions on both the GIW and the fact that he hadn’t been brought in on the op to rescue Danny, and was determined to fix that. 

Nightwing sympathized, but that didn’t assuage his fears for the integrity of this mission with the man in tow. The Justice League needed an in to Amity Park - an official one, not a series of Bat safehouses and a covert op. After someone had destroyed the black site and left a five-hundred-meter wide crater in its wake, the GIW and the military both had cracked down on the city and locked it down. 

That left fifty-thousand US citizens in the lurch; the Justice League, and Nightwing personally, did not intend to let that stand. To that end, they needed intel; they needed a true and thorough canvassing of conditions within the lockdown; they needed an official mechanism to distribute food and medical aid. And that was the short list before they could see the city and establish a more concrete list of their actual needs.

About a kilometer off from the barricade, Nightwing signalled for the convoy to come to a stop. He and his team - the aforementioned alongside Cyborg and Black Canary - would make the rest of the approach on foot and confirm entry before risking the convoy and the medical supplies it carried. 

They rattled to a stop, the wheels of their vehicle dipping further into potholes and deep divots in the asphalt as its speed reduced. The GIW didn’t maintain roads, and in eight years nature had begun to reclaim the highways. 

“Alright folks,” he braced his hands against his knees and pushed to standing, “time to find out exactly how bad this is going to be.” And it would be bad, that much he was sure of, humanitarian mission or not. 

“Let us try to keep this civil,” Troia reminded them once again, hand palming the place where her lasso would normally hang. It was bad optics, Nightwing imagined, for a diplomat to carry a magical artifact of forced persuasion with them. 

Green Arrow just grunted, arms crossed, and preceded them out of the truck. 

The silence, once they had boots on the ground, was heavy and sickly-sweet in the way that Dick had grown all too wary of during his last foray into Amity. 

“Quite the welcoming committee,” he said just for the purpose of breaking that silence once they were within one-hundred meters of the border. There were, in fact, some number of guns trained on them - ballistic, now, not human-ineffective ectoplasmic rifles - as they approached. 

Arrow reached for his bow and held it at his hip despite a warning sign from Nightwing and Black Canary’s attempt at persuasion. That motion earned weapons trained on him, twitchy and aggressive, and that didn’t help Arrow’s rein on his own anger.

Once they were within fifty meters, the barricade lit up with a green ectoplasmic barrier. Nightwing looked at Cyborg. He was their tech consultant for this survey of Amity Park’s conditions under occupation. 

“I’m not sure, man. It probably doesn’t physically stop a truck but it might short electronics.”

“Damn.”

“Damn is right. The closer we get the more my implants start to freaking itch.”

The nearer they drew, the clearer it was to Nightwing that the barricade was not purely defensive - it was staged for confrontation. He spotted, with an eye refined by two decades of experience with urban reconnaissance and espionage, no fewer than six cameras. 

Their own pair of civilian camera operators - a necessary evil in any sort of politics at all, it seemed - had been ordered to stay with the caravan. N wondered if that had been the wrong call. 

Just as they arrived within twenty meters of the barrier, a voice called out. 

“That’s far enough!”

The soldiers - the mix of GIW and National Guard - snapped to a more heightened alert. That was a deficit in their experience, the flinch. Nightwing couldn’t easily identify the speaker. He motioned for the others to stand down, and they stopped. He lifted a hand into the air and directed his gaze towards the center of the barrier. 

“Copy that,” he projected, tone carefully controlled. “We’re here under UN clearance to conduct an assessment of conditions within Amity Park and to deliver humanitarian aid. Your superiors should have already received our proposal.”

“I’ve received no notice of such clearance. This is a restricted area.”

Behind him, there was the shift of weight and fabric that told him Ollie had taken on a defensive stance, impatient and already angry. He made a little abating sign with one hand behind his flank. Unease rippled through the opposing ranks like wind disturbing the surface of a lake. They were testy and on edge. 

“I assure you we have peaceful intentions,” he began -

“Your affiliates broke into and destroyed a key security facility under GIW jurisdiction,” the voice grew louder, enough that Dick could pinpoint the direction more specifically. There - barely visible behind the green ectobarrier on its right end. A white-suited agent, not National Guard, with a megaphone and room in his skull for his brain to bounce around. “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t shoot you on sight!”

He held both hands up. From underneath one gauntlet he dropped a tiny, piloted bug as a backup. “We’ve heard that there are shortages of medical supplies within city limits. We’re here to deliver necessities. Our mission is non-violent -”

Something shifted behind the translucent green. “You may not enter this area. The population is supplied per GIW initiatives. I suggest you go back where you came from, vigilante.”

Again, behind him, he heard Canary talking Arrow down. Troia stepped forward. “Is there someone we can negotiate with for entry? A senior agent?”

“You can negotiate with me,” the voice returned without missing a beat. “If you insist on approaching this restricted zone, Justice League, then you may relinquish the supplies for inspection and return to your transport.” 

N was just about to respond when Arrow, leaning in over his shoulder, snarled low - “That isn’t how relief works. They’ll either toss it or horde it and put the blame on the JL. We can’t -”

“I know,” N turned just fractionally towards him, and then to Troia. She, in turn, responded to the agent. 

“We’re not prepared to relinquish our supplies without oversight on how they are dispersed,” she said. “Surely you understand -”

“Then you may leave this area immediately,” she was cut off, and Nightwing figured it’d been a long time since anyone had dared speak to Donna Troy that way. Or, well - the one other example he could think for readily had also been GIW, during first contact. Her hands flexed, again, restrained movement against her frustration and offense. 

They couldn’t afford to escalate here. They’d need another avenue of approach. 

The humanitarian relief angle had been, he could admit, optimistic. He’d at least thought they’d make it past the border. 

“It’s clear to me that there’s been some gap in communication,” he hedged. “We’ll be in contact with your seniors and be back.” The agent scoffed, the sound drawing similar derision from among the ranks in front of them, but didn’t otherwise respond. 

Nightwing turned back to the convoy and began the walk back, and wished vehemently that he could fix this with his escrima. It’d be easier, faster, and far more satisfactory. 

“Fucking fascists,” Green Arrow swore under his breath as he turned, reluctantly, to follow. 

***

Gotham, in the evening, stank of post-rain humidity and the industrial grime that marinated in it. It had started up in earnest after Danny disappeared from the stage and hadn’t let up for hours. 

Now, as Red Robin landed on a roof in the densely-clustered northeastern end of his Chinatown route, the wet grime splashed and clung to his boots and reflected green neon light. It was shaping up to be an eventful patrol, even though he wasn’t supposed to be on the roster tonight - but the city was restless and stirred up after yet another show of ghostly power. 

So was he.

Red wasn’t sure whether he respected the dramatics of it all - the deliberate exercising of god-like power - or if he was just over it. 

He’d already had to break up three quickly-gathering crowds of protestors - one of them anti-GIW, which he’d broken up not because he disagreed with their sentiment but because he knew that the GCPD were feeling especially testy lately, after sustaining casualties at the hands of the Joker Gang, and two anti-Embassy groups that had threatened violence. He’d called in assistance for those thanks to the risk for bad optics if he intervened himself. 

The sounds of a scuffle drew him over another street - he called it in over comms by rote and dropped into the thick of a fight that had broken out between two sets of gang members - three Triad, he identified readily enough, and six others that must have been small fry opportunists. 

You had to be truly stupid to just jump Triad members in Chinatown in a street brawl. Whatever group these thugs belonged to, they were either impulsive, pushing for a reaction, or both. That was something for Red to keep an eye on over the next couple weeks. 

For now, he had to break it up before it could escalate. He focused on the Triad first - they tended to be better trained, many of them martial artists. If they were distracted, he had an element of surprise that would work in his favor. 

Red snapped his wing pack out as he fell, which caught and redirected his trajectory enough for him to catch the nearest Triad off-guard - he leaned his momentum into a flying kick that caught the guy in the chest and sent him stumbling back. 

He tucked into a roll and lunged, following through as his target regained his balance with a punch to the jaw. 

A shift in the air - he ducked under the incoming kick and swept the supporting leg of the one that’d tried to flank him. Bo in hand and extended - he made a solid strike to his gut and then whipped the other end of the staff across his temple. 

The third Triad was ready for him, as were the remaining unknowns. Two of them dove at him from the left, and when he strafed under them and forward, evading, the Triad was in close with a fist in Red’s kidney -

 - and fuck, but a kidney shot sucked. As did the fist that caught him across the jaw in the follow-up. Red powered through it and caught the next blow against his bo, using the force of the block to pivot and gain a meter or so’s distance. 

The two who’d charged him made to take him again head-on; he released a disc from under his gauntlet and into the leading one’s throat while the other he downed with a three-point bo strike to the shins, then the lower back and under the chin. 

These chumps really wanted to take on the Triad? Speaking of - 

The third tried to close distance, but Tim batted away the furious, closely-clustered palm strikes and heavier fists with twists of the bo; he feinted, drew the Triad into an opening, then turned his bo’s current on and hit him with a jolt in the side of the neck. 

The rest of his cleanup was quick, and the process of ziptieing them and calling it in gave him a moment to catch his breath. He rifled through the unconscious unknown gang members’ pockets for phones, and then used his RFID virtual tool to drop bugs into their systems. He didn’t bother with the Triads’; they knew better then to keep personal devices after a run-in with Bats. 

He’d comb through the others’ texts later and look for hints at whatever the fuck had brought this on.

When he was done, he was left with a wet, mostly-empty Gotham alley and the pleasant thrum of exertion in his limbs. 

“You ready to call it a night, Red Robin?” Oracle chimed in his ear. 

He took a moment to evaluate. He wasn’t tired, and he hadn’t even patrolled for very long, but he’d vented some of the restlessness and frustration that’d been building in his limbs and replaced it with lactic acid. That being said, -

“I’m pretty sure you have your first day at the Embassy tomorrow. You’ll need your rest.”

And there it was. Tomorrow morning, Red Robin would take his first day working in what was apparently a floating mansion in the sky. He wasn’t sure what that would look like, yet, other than that it would probably be a consistent and unpredictable demand on his time. Luckily, Damian was taking on a little of Tim’s WE work - an internship of sorts and an expansion of the help he’d given Tim during the initial Danny crisis - so Tim would be able to manage his time more easily. 

If not, Bruce would just have to pick up some of the slack. It was his company, after all. Tim hadn’t been majority shareholder in four years.

“You taking over for Wing’s mother henning?”

“Someone has to, since he’s still in Chicago.”

The sound of approaching sirens was his signal to grapple back up to the rooftops. “Fine. I’m headed in. Besides, we’re supposed to have a guest tonight and I haven’t given him the deets.”

“Red -”

“I’ll be in the Cave in twenty. Red Robin out.” He clicked off the comm. 

In the northwest, dark and barely visible, lit from underneath by the lights across the channel, floated the Embassy. It was somewhere in between a celestial body and a part of the skyline; even from this distance, the floating island over the Trigate held a gravity that drew his gaze. 

He wondered, distantly, if all of this would eventually fold into what was normal and expected around the world, or if Danny had in mind some distant retreat. If there was an anticipated state of affairs within which the ghosts would withdraw from their reality, or if they were here to stay, and in a year or two or five, it would be nothing particularly special. 

Like Kryptonians and Martians and Thanagarians, or the Greek pantheon and their Amazons. Once-unthinkable wonders now part of the twenty-four hour news cycle. What are Superman’s latest exploits? What strange structure have the ghosts summoned over Gotham airspace today?

Red Robin pulled himself out of his thoughts by force, shook the circulation back into his limbs, and took off for the Cave. 

***

The Cave was largely empty when Tim hopped off his bike, and that suited him just fine. The others would be trickling in before too long anyway in anticipation of Danny’s visit. 

He went about his post-patrol motions by muscle memory: stripped out of his gear and down to his thermal underlayer; tools and weapons left on his workbench to inspect for damage or wear; post-patrol report busted out from his workstation; a shower with its actually perfect water pressure and jet-like shower heads that worked to undo some of the tension between his shoulder blades and down his spine. 

While he did, he thought about the glyph that, while he hadn’t necessarily talked to any of the Bats about, he had long since scanned onto his workstation as a backup and he knew that Babs had seen. 

And if Babs had seen it, then she’d told Dick about it. And if Dick knew about it, then his big fat mouth had to have already blabbed about it to every single Bat in Gotham and half of the OG Titans. 

He sighed and let his wet bangs fall over his eyes and relished in the way the hot water skated over his face. He could practically feel the Gotham scum being scoured from his pores. He may not linger in the Cave too often anymore, his Nest usually more than sufficing for his vigilante needs, but the showers alone were worth it. 

And Alfred’s post-patrol snacks. 

When Tim was done and dried and changed into a pair of Dick’s sweats and one of Cassie’s old shirts, he made his way over to his workstation and slumped into his seat. 

It was probably time he got this glyph figured out. Strictly for purposes of gathering intel and communicating logistics to Danny. Because Batman wanted him to visit the Cave, tonight, and it was up to Tim to arrange that. 

He wondered if Danny slept. Or if ghosts, in general, slept. 

It was the work of a matter of minutes for his now-algorithmic workflow to map the glyph out as a set of intersecting matrix functions, just as he’d done with the glyph that had held the stellar array that led them to Danny just weeks ago. It felt both longer and more recent at the same time. 

When he plugged it into Wally’s tried and proven unfolding protocol, he found he wouldn’t even need his cataloguing algo to figure out what this was. When the glyph unfolded in spun light and precisely-laid coordinate mapping, what he found was a detailed, three-dimensional schematic. 

And then he laughed, feeling absurd, when he realized that the schematic held instructions for yet another modification to those thrice-cursed improvised Ecto-IDs into a comm. The ecto-comm would use Danny’s ectoplasmic mock-signature to put them into direct communication, somehow. 

Danny’s schematics were somehow both technically rigorous and logistically vague. What really made it, though, was the little annotation that was tucked away in the bottom right corner of his field of vision:

          |Figured you’d like a good puzzle, birdy.|

Tim felt his cheeks warm, unbidden, and then shoved the sensation down and away. This was - it was the sort of thing that his siblings would do, or his friends: to give him something he needed in the form of a little challenge or a puzzle, not because it needed to be encoded or difficult but because they knew he liked it. 

Danny could certainly have just handed Tim one of these comms. Instead, he’d made it into a game, complete with mild teasing. It felt - comfortable, and easy, in a way that he didn’t know what to do with. He could practically hear the way that Cass or Duke would say For enrichment if they’d done something similar. 

Or - Tim was over-reading. Danny had proven himself to have a casual relationship with formality and familiarity by turns already. This didn’t mean anything, or it didn’t have to. 

Tim took that thought and shoved it down alongside his inopportune blush and got to work. Luckily, or perhaps unfortunately, he was by now an expert with these tags and modifying one wouldn’t even take long. 

When he was done, what he was left with was a small, circular black chip whose diameter was about as wide as his thumbnail. It was grafted into the architecture of one of their basic comms, and he denied any sort of anticipation as he put the new ecto-comm in his free ear and tapped it on. 

“Danny?” he spoke, tentatively, and ignored the way that heads turned in the Cave when he did so. “This is Red Robin.”

“Oh - uh - hey, Red,” Danny sounded startled, which, fair enough. “I sort of thought you’d ghosted me.”

And that - 

“Please tell me that pun was unintentional,” he blurted out, flat, before he could stop himself. Someone nearby laughed at him. Over the comm, Danny did the same. 

“What, not a fan? I’m wounded here. Gravely.”

“Oh my god.” Tim fought desperately not to smile, particularly not where his circling family could see it. “I’m not dignifying that. I’m calling about you coming to the Cave tonight. Can you come around midnight?”

A beat. “Don’t you Living need to, like, sleep?”

“We’re Bats. We’re nocturnal.”

“I thought you were a Robin?”

Tim wished he weren’t amused, but he could at least ensure that amusement didn’t reach his face or his tone. “Can you do midnight or not?”

Another little pause. “Yeah.” Danny’s tone seemed, abruptly, a little sobered. More flat, as if he were cutting himself off. 

“Alright. Agent A will pick you up at -”

“You realize I can just portal there?”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Danny knew where the Cave was - it was, in fact, something he should have expected, but still. Tim huffed. “Is there anything you don’t already know about us?”

“I mean, I don’t know much about you all, like, personally.” Danny hesitated. “I can totally pretend and let your butler pick me up if you all prefer.”

Tim frowned. Danny had gone - careful, somehow. Wary.  “No, I suppose there’s no point. We’ll just see you at midnight, then.”

“Sure thing, Red Robin.” Huh. No birdy.  

The comm disconnected.