Chapter Text
Phil’s alarm goes off at 5:55. Batman calls him at 5:56, which leaves Phil with the uncomfortable idea that Batman knows what time his alarm goes off, and waited until Phil was awake to call him. The last time Batman called Phil, he wasn’t nearly as considerate.
Phil answers the call and holds the phone to his ear, hoping that the consideration is an indication of a lesser emergency. “Phil Coulson,” he says.
“That woman you’re looking for,” Batman says, without preamble. “She’s in Gotham.” There is a brief silence while Phil processes that, and then Batman adds a slightly subdued, “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Phil says. Manners, as he is constantly reminding Jason, are free. “Are you requesting SHIELD assistance?”
He’d asked the same thing last time.
Are you requesting SHIELD assistance?
No. I need you to tell me if Red Hood’s behind this.
“I am not requesting assistance.”
Phil supposes that’s better than last time, although still not particularly helpful. “Then I’m not sure why you’re calling.”
The silence stretches so long that Phil thinks Batman hung up on him. He’s about to say something, test the connection, when Batman finally speaks. “The woman you’re looking for,” he says, again. “She’s in Gotham.”
The woman in question – the Black Widow, the redheaded spy – been causing complications for the past two years. Phil’s been collecting data on her since his unit formed, but all he has on her is a worryingly extensive list of probable kills, a tenuous connection to Hydra, and a series of failed attempts to capture or kill her.
Bucky seems to know something about her that he doesn’t feel inclined to share. And Jason had said, once, off-hand, while leaning his chair back, feet propped up on Phil’s desk, “Oh, yeah, she’s the shithead that shot Robin awhile back. Which I take pretty personally. If anyone’s gonna kill that spooky little bastard, it’s me.”
It had seemed incongruous even then, the nonchalance Jason was projecting. Phil’s seen Jason be indifferent to any number of things, but never to violence. And Phil’s doubts about the sincerity of Jason’s indifference to Robin were verified two months ago, when Batman called Phil at 3:00am to report that someone had stolen Robin in the middle of his patrol. Left nothing of him behind, except a domino mask and a blood-spattered joker card.
“And if we go to Gotham,” Phil says, carefully, “to retrieve her, will you--”
“We’ll help you.” Batman says, brisk. “This time, this woman. That’s it.”
Phil understands that this is some kind of exchange.
Jason had mentioned this might happen. After he found Robin and returned him to Gotham, he’d come back cagey and sullen. He’d spat in the face of the man from payroll who’d asked if that was family leave or vacation time. He’d picked a fight with Clint. Phil had considered requisitioning heavy sedatives.
And then, after Bucky returned from his mission and took Jason down to the basement-level gym and they both came back marked up in ways Coulson feels no inclination to think about too deeply, Jason had settled into the chair in Phil’s office to drink Phil’s coffee and bitch about his former mentor.
“I told the old man he didn’t owe me a Goddamn thing. I didn’t fucking do it for him, you know?” He’d said, glaring down at his empty coffee cup until Phil finally refilled it for him. “But he might do something. I dunno. Just fucking—be aware that Batman might be in our shit for a while. He’s not good at owing people anything. He’ll try to settle up. He’ll be a fucking asshole about it.”
Jason hadn’t been especially tolerant of perceived debts, either, in the beginning. But he’s been slowly acclimating to the idea that teamwork doesn’t necessarily run on some bizarre barter economy. He’s adjusting to the concept that you don’t have to pay your teammates back; you just have to be a team.
Phil’s not sure that this woman is worth the kind of debt that Batman owes them. And he’s not sure he wants to take his team into Gotham to settle that debt in the first place.
“You are aware,” he says, “that our objective is to execute her?”
“If you do that,” Batman says, immediately, “we will not work together again.”
Phil wonders if he’s being played. He wonders if Batman is testing them, or just looking for a reason to write them off. He wonders if Batman wants them out of Gotham, permanently, and the most efficient way he’s found is to let them alienate themselves.
Phil could point out that her list of crimes virtually guarantees that someone is going to execute her. If she’s not put to death in the U.S., she’ll be extradited to some other nation, a favor thrown in to sweeten whatever diplomatic negotiation takes precedence at the time.
But it’s not his job to get into complex philosophical discussions with Batman about the significance of the difference between being complicit in a murder, and being an active participant in one.
And it is, after all, just barely 6:00 in the morning.
“Alright,” he says, instead. “We’ll be there this afternoon.”
This time, Batman does hang up on him, and Phil puts his phone down with a sigh.
He wonders, for one brief, wonderfully optimistic moment, if he can get away with just taking one of the snipers, and leaving Jason out of this entirely.
Clint calls them at 6:45 in the morning, on their day off, and Jason would be pissed about that, but Clint loves sleeping in even more than he does.
“Hey. Get up, get dressed. We’re on our way,” Clint says, all business. And then, with a resigned sigh, he adds, “Sounds like we’ve got some weird Gotham bullshit to deal with.”
“Fuck you, you fuck.” Jason grumbles back, and then throws the phone off the bed and tries to drag Bucky back on top of him. “Just a telemarketer. Go back to sleep.”
“Gotham.” Bucky says, frowning down at the phone. “You want to sit this one out?”
“I cannot believe,” Jason says, incredulous, “that you are fucking listening in on my private conversations with a coworker. The lack of trust in this relationship is what’s gonna tear us apart.”
“Mhm,” Bucky hums, agreeably, and then kisses him before climbing out of bed. “I’ll handle it. Stay here. Get some rest. Maybe don’t try to patrol the neighborhood again in the middle of the night. This is a safe area, Jason. People think you’re a creep.”
“First of all, this place is safe because I make it that way.” Jason, eyes still stubbornly closed, hooks an arm around Bucky’s waist and tugs, toppling him back into bed. “Second of all, that’s my weird bullshit city. You sit this one out.”
“We probably don’t have to go.” Bucky says, running a hand down Jason’s back. “We can just say no.”
“And let Jailbait and Coulson get offed by some low-level costumed shithead?” Jason huffs and finally opens his eyes, just so Bucky can watch him roll them. “Where’s your loyalty, Barnes?”
“To you.” Bucky says, so Goddamn earnest that Jason has to crawl out of bed immediately, barely getting his feet under him in time to avoid face-planting into the carpet.
“Fuck,” Jason says, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Fuck you with that shit. It’s not even 7:00am. Don’t talk to me that way.”
Bucky smirks up at him, unbelievably pleased with himself. “Yeah,” he says, smirk widening into a grin. “Thought that would get you out of bed.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Jason tells him, and heads off to take a shower. If Bucky wants to be shitty, he can do the packing.
Clint watches as Jason and Bucky lock up their house and then walk up the driveway. They seem fine, but there’s a weird set to Jason’s mouth that doesn’t bode well.
Jason falls into the backseat while Bucky’s stowing their bags in the trunk, and Clint twists around in his seat to stare down at him. “Hey,” he says, “you know you don’t have to come, right?”
“Fuck off, Jailbait.” Jason says, and kicks the back of Clint’s seat. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“I mean, if you think he’s just doing this to fuck with you.” Clint says. “We can handle it. It’s just that one girl.”
“Yeah, just that one girl.” Jason says, rolling his eyes. “That one girl that shot Robin.”
“And kidnapped you.” Bucky says, climbing in. Jason lifts up from his sprawl just long enough for Bucky to get settled, and then he falls back down, head in Bucky’s lap.
“She barely kidnapped me.” Jason argues. “There were about six other people involved.”
“There were four.” Bucky argues. “And Clint killed two of them.”
“Well, what do you know about it?” Jason says. “You were knocked the fuck out the whole time.”
Clint remembers that night. He remembers the weird confrontation on the rooftop, how angry Jason had been. He remembers tracking the skyline, finding where Bucky was liking hiding out, ready to take the shot to splatter Coulson’s brains on the concrete.
Clint doesn’t like to think about that. The rest of the evening – following them home, watching the Hydra agents almost kill Stark twice and then load Jason in the back of the ambulance – doesn’t rank among his best times ever, either. But the first part had been worse.
Clint starts going through the coffee Coulson had picked up on the way over, squinting at the labels to figure out what belongs to who. As he hands Jason’s back to Bucky, he says, “Just seems like she tried to kidnap you and Robin. And it only worked on one of you.”
“Suck a dick, Jailbait. I was a little distracted by being blown up.”
“My point is,” Clint continues, “that maybe we just drop you off at the airport, and Stark flies you out to California for the weekend.”
“Okay,” Jason says, sitting up. He leans forward, shoulders shoved between their seats, and Clint watches the way Coulson’s eyes flicker to the rearview to meet Bucky’s. “Listen up. We’re doing a team huddle. Buck, get in here.”
“Jason,” Bucky starts, sounding dubious.
Without looking, Jason snakes a hand back, grabs Bucky’s shirt, and tugs him forward. “I,” he says, “am not fucked up about this. I am fine about this. We are going to Gotham, and we’re gonna work with that shithead, and everything’s fine. Okay? It’s fine.”
A tense silence settles over the car, and Clint wonders if Coulson’s thinking about how spectacularly this is all going to go to shit. Judging by Jason’s tone alone, Coulson’s going to be filling out paperwork about the upcoming fallout for months.
Clint figures that, a year ago, if Coulson had told Jason to stay out of this mission, Jason would’ve beaten them there. By the time the rest of the team showed up, Jason would be dumping the woman’s body in some shitty area off Gotham Harbor, and they’d get out of the car just in time to watch Batman tackle him into the water.
Jason, Clint’s noticed, is not great at listening. But he thinks if Coulson did it now, if Coulson told him to get out of the car and go back to bed or go see Tony, he’d do it. Not graciously, but he’d do it.
The shitty thing is that Jason tolerates getting yelled at for disobeying an order a lot better than he tolerates being left behind. Whatever happens in Gotham, assuming they all walk out with a pulse, it’s got to be better than dealing with Jason, nursing a rejection grudge, for the next dozen missions or so.
“Hey, Jay,” Clint says, to break the tension. “You think there’s a way to convince Batman to stop booty-calling Coulson at ass o’clock in the morning?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jason says, and he leans back against the seat. He still hasn’t buckled himself in – probably because he knows it’s pissing Phil off – but at least he’s drinking the coffee. “We just shoot Batman in the face.”
“No.” Coulson says, with unusual vehemence. “Absolutely not.”
“Goddamn, Coulson,” Jason says, wonderingly, as Clint turns to blink at Coulson. “Are you sweet on him? Is it the cape? The calves? The surly disposition?”
“If we kill Batman,” Coulson says, patiently, “SHIELD will have to open an office in Gotham. And which team, do you think, would be put in charge of running it?”
Jason sighs. “Fine. Fuck. We won’t kill Batman.”
“I’m sure he’ll be very relieved to hear that,” Coulson says.
Batman splits them up on arrival. Coulson lets it happen, so Bucky does not object. Jason does, but only once, when Batman tries to partner Bucky with Robin. Jason makes an aggrieved noise, puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, and turns him to face a baffled but gamely-grinning Nightwing instead.
“Fuck off, Bats,” Jason says. “I don’t want Replacement trying to steal anything else from me.”
“Gross.” Robin says, with feeling, and then shrugs apologetically when Bucky raises an eyebrow at him. “Sorry. I realize that sounded like a reaction to you. It wasn’t. It’s just that the idea of touching anyone who’s touched him is deeply nauseating.”
Bucky’s still not sure what to make of Jason and Robin. There is a lot of rage in Jason, and some of it seems genuinely aimed Robin’s way. He knows Jason shot him, although he tries not to dwell on that. He knows they can’t be in a room together without devolving into bickering adolescents.
He also knows that when Robin went missing, Jason walked away from a mission to get him back. He hadn’t asked Bucky to come with him. He’d barely told Bucky he was leaving. He got the phone call from Phil, and, minutes later, he was gone. Bucky disentangled himself from the mission and went chasing after him, caught up just in time to hear the gunshots and screams.
He’d found Jason crouched over Robin. When Bucky walked into the room, Jason had leveled his guns right at Bucky’s heart, a look on his face that Bucky has no interest in ever seeing again.
Whatever’s between Jason and Robin is volatile, at best. Bucky doesn’t want Jason anywhere near him, and he hadn’t been especially thrilled about spending time with him, either.
But Clint takes this – and most things – far less personally than anyone else. He’ll be fine with Robin.
“Me and you, Barnes,” Nightwing says, a friendly hand curling around Bucky’s shoulder. “You need to stretch before we head out? We won the active area of Gotham.”
“Okay,” Jason says, scowling at Nightwing. “To be clear. You don’t get to fuck him either.”
“Red Hood,” Batman says, in that heavy way he always says it.
“No one’s fucking anyone.” Coulson says, and Bucky’s going to buy him something nice, just for the casual, calm way he speaks right over the top of Batman and kills the tension in Jason’s shoulders before it has a chance to settle. “Any DNA we collect, we are obligated to report.”
That startles a laugh out of Jason, high and bright. There are too many teeth in the smile that comes after, but the laughter is real.
“Robin can work with the Hawkeye.” Batman says. “Red Hood, you’ll work with me.”
“Oh, adult supervision.” Nightwing says, with sympathy. “Sorry, Jay.”
Jason levels a look at Batman, and Bucky thinks the whole operation is going to fall apart before it even starts, but then Jason just shoves his hands in his pockets and jerks his chin toward Coulson. “Adult supervision, huh?” He says. “So Coulson’s on our team?”
“Absolutely.” Coulson says, before anyone manages to say anything else.
Batman turns to glower at Coulson, and Coulson just smiles at him, polite and peaceful, uncowed.
Bucky’s going to have to talk to Tony about buying Coulson his own Starbucks store. Or, possibly, the entire corporation.
It’s not unpleasant, working with Nightwing. He reminds Bucky of Jason, a little, in the way he likes to show off, and in how he genuinely seems to enjoy the work they do, albeit for reasons that are very different from Jason’s.
The people in the area know and trust him. Bucky envies that, a little, which is something he didn’t expect.
One little girl comes running down a fire escape to talk to Nightwing, and Bucky stays below, staring up in disbelief, while she asks Nightwing to find her missing cat.
“He’s small,” she tells Nightwing. “He’s gonna be scared. Sometimes he bites.”
“Got it, kiddo,” Nightwing says, smiling reassuringly. “If I find him, I’ll bring him home. But you gotta get back inside. It’s cold out.”
“His name’s Joker,” she says and grimaces at the look Nightwing gives her. “My brother named him.”
“Brothers,” Nightwing says, and heads back down the fire escape.
They’re caught in a slow moment, just after sundown. It’s that quiet, transitional time. Bucky imagines things will liven up considerably in an hour or so.
“You have any siblings?” Nightwing asks. He’s hanging upside down, and there seems to be an almost wistful slant to his mouth.
“Maybe.” Bucky says. There’s no reason to be evasive. His family is a matter of public record. But Bucky’s not sure that it’s any of Nightwing’s business. And, even if it is, it still feels strange, claiming the life of a man who, for all intents and purposes, died in 1945.
Bucky took the name, but he’s not really James Buchannan Barnes. He’s not the Winter Soldier, either. Whoever he is, he doesn’t have siblings. But then, as far as Bucky knows, Nightwing doesn’t have any siblings, either.
“Tell me about this girl.” Nightwing says. “She’s Hydra?”
“No.” Bucky says, although he’s not tied to that. She might be. She seems to be anything she needs to be, at any given moment. “She works for them, sometimes. She’ll work with anyone, I think.”
Nightwing goes still, hanging upside and peering thoughtfully up at Bucky. “You think killing the weapon is gonna end the threat?”
From Batman, that would’ve been a challenge. And if Nightwing said that to Jason, there’d be a fight. But Bucky decides to treat it as an honest question. He is, after all, uniquely prepared to answer.
“No. But I think it’s one way to mitigate the damage.”
“I’m glad,” Nightwing says, flipping down off the fire escape and landing, lightly, right in front of Bucky, “that Jay didn’t kill you. I know that was probably his plan, when he went down there. I know he probably got close. I’m glad he didn’t.”
Bucky blinks. He’s not sure what to do with that. “Thanks,” he says, finally.
“Oh,” Nightwing says, and waves a hand, laughing suddenly. “Shit. I mean, yeah. Of course I’m glad he didn’t kill you, because you’re still alive, and that’s great. But I meant for him. I’m glad for him that you’re still around. You’re good for him.”
It’s true. Objectively, Bucky knows that. He wouldn’t have stayed with Jason and Tony if he didn’t do both of them some good. It’s a burden, he knows, being around him sometimes. If that’s all he was, he would’ve left a long time ago.
“Thanks,” he says, again.
Nightwing smiles and shakes his head. “I’m fucking this up.” There’s an ease to him that Bucky wishes he could’ve shared with Jason.
“Look,” Nightwing says, “I know you probably hate us. I don’t blame you. We fucked him up. And I know he mostly blames B for that, but it was a group effort. I didn’t do enough. I resented him, I think, and I didn’t pay enough attention. But I’m glad he has you, and Stark. And SHIELD. You’re better for him than we were.”
The kind thing to do would be to refute that. Bucky knows that. But he keeps his mouth shut. He thinks, out of all of Batman’s allies, he likes Nightwing the best. But he hasn’t forgiven any of them just yet.
“He saved Robin.” Nightwing says, like he still doesn’t fully believe it. “He never would’ve done that, before you two.”
“He would have.” Bucky says, because he remembers what Jason was like, in the very beginning. He remembers the anger and the cynicism and the brutal practicality, the way he’d put his hands around Bucky’s throat and seemed a heartbeat or two away from strangling him or breaking his neck. And he remembers what stopped him.
“He would have,” Bucky says, remembering the way Jason folded, every single time Stark intervened, “if you’d asked.”
Nobody calls Tony, but nobody has to. He gets the alert of unusual activity in Gotham, and he skims the news reports while he brings his latest project to a point where he can walk away for a few days without having to worry about it accidentally incinerating a significant portion of southern California.
He throws some clothes in a bag, some tech in another bag, and calls the pilot he keeps on staff for when Bucky and Jason are on missions. He’s in Gotham just after daybreak.
“Hey, Pennyworth,” Tony says, when Alfred opens the door. Tony treats him to his single most dazzling smile, and is not the least bothered by the slow, unimpressed blink he gets in return. “Are they here?”
“Mr. Stark,” Alfred says, in that gloriously long-suffering tone that reminds Tony so much of Jarvis. “They are not. Primarily because I believe one of them is still feigning ignorance as to Mr. Wayne’s involvement.”
“Yeah, Bucky’s the sweet one,” Tony says. “So can I stay here until one of them shows up?”
Alfred crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. “It is actually standard practice to be invited into someone’s home.” Alfred tells him. “By a resident.”
“That Tony?” Tim says, suddenly, popping up over Alfred’s shoulder.
Tony levels that same PR grin at Tim. “Hey, Tim,” he says. “Your bouncer’s not letting me in.”
Tim hesitates. “Does Bruce know you’re here?”
Tony shrugs. Bruce has trackers on Tony’s jets that he probably thinks Tony doesn’t know about yet, and, even if he didn’t, he probably would’ve known to expect Tony within hours of the news of Red Hood in Gotham. But Tony figures that question was mostly rhetorical anyway.
“Got new Stark tech for you to play with.” Tony says, nodding toward one of his bags.
There’s a second where Tim hesitates, but then he’s sliding around Alfred to take the bag off Tony’s shoulder. “You need breakfast?” He asks, as he hustles Tony back inside, unzipping the bag so he can start looking before they’re even fully through the door. “Alfred can bring it to the cave.”
“I ran patrol with Hawkeye last night.” Tim tells him, an hour or so later. He’s sitting cross-legged at one of Batman’s computers, and Tony’s dissecting a few of Batman’s newest gadgets so he can Frankenstein in pieces of Stark tech.
“That a euphemism?” Tony asks, hopeful. “Jason and I have money on what Hawkeye’s into.”
“Not a euphemism.” Tim says, mouth flattening out into an unimpressed frown. Tony blinks and then starts to grin, and Tim doubles down, furrows his brow up and scowls. “Stark--”
“Now, Tim,” Tony says, holding his hands up placatingly and trying to bite back a grin, “you’re a growing boy. Your body’s going through some changes. It’s perfectly natural to--”
“I’m going to tell Bruce you’re here.” Tim threatens.
“Oh, please.” Tony says. “You bring him down here, and I’ll just tell him you’ve got a crush on a boy, and he’ll fucking break the sound barrier on his way out the door. Empty threat, Tim. Try again.”
“I don’t have a crush.” Tim says. His eyes narrow further. “Will you just focus on the task at hand?”
“Hawkeye’s a great choice.” Tony says, encouragingly. “He’s a sweet kid. You two could have fun together. Why not?”
“We ran patrol together,” Tim says, stubbornly carrying on even while a faint blush settles over his cheeks, “and we talked about Jason.”
Tony feels the smirk slide off his face, and he considers Tim for a moment. The Bats are hard to keep pinned down and next to impossible to figure out. They play by a set of rules they’d made up on their own, and never shared with anybody else.
It’s hard to tell if Tim is just using Jason to redirect Tony, or if he genuinely wants to talk about Jason.
“Yeah?” Tony says, because he figures, as uncomfortable as Tim is discussing his potential infatuation with Barton, talking about Jason has to be worse. “You want to talk to me about Jason?”
“He’s changed.” Tim says. He glances at the computer screen and then at the table and then looks up at Tony like he’s not sure how to say the next part. “I used to follow him, when I was a kid. When he was Robin. I’d follow him around, and take pictures. I thought he was amazing.”
Tony tips his head back. “So this lack of appropriate parental supervision,” he says, “that’s been a running theme in your life, huh?”
“Jason should never have been Robin.” Tim says. Tony doesn’t say anything, but his face must screw up something awful, because Tim hurries to go on. “It’s not—what Robin is, Jason isn’t. I don’t mean—it’s not an insult. I wouldn’t make a good Red Hood.”
“You got a point, boy genius?” Tony says. “Because it kinda sounds like you’re about to shit-talk my boyfriend.”
“I’m not.” Tim says. He runs a hand through his hair and then shrugs. “It’s not a value judgement. Jason was never going to be a good Robin, and Batman made a mistake, trying to make him into one.”
Tony sets everything down carefully, spread out across the table, and tells himself not to throw any of this tech at Tim’s face.
For one, Tim’s still just a teenager.
And, also, Tony’s worked with him a few times now, and Jason is the only person Tim ever seems to want to argue with. He can’t imagine that he’s trying to pick a fight with Tony right now.
“It was cruel.” Tim says, suddenly. When Tony looks at him, there’s nothing on his face but a small, tense frown. “I think the last thing Todd needed was to fail all over again. He was already angry enough.”
Jason is angry. Tony knows. He can almost feel it, sometimes. He’s certainly seen the effects of it. But Tony’s angry, too. And so is Bucky. And they have a right to be angry.
“There’s nothing wrong with being angry.” Tony says. “Jason’s never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
Tim’s frown deepens. He shrugs, and there’s something sad in the way he looks at Tony. “He shot me.” He says. “I didn’t deserve that.”
“Well.” Tony says, because, admittedly, that’s a hard thing to reconcile. “Well, fuck.”
“But Hawkeye said the same thing.” Tim says it like it’s the missing piece in a puzzle Tony didn’t know they were putting together. “He sees everything, and you’re one of the smartest people I know. So if you both believe it, then I think, as long as you two have known him, it’s been true.”
Tony stares at him, and tries to figure out where the hell this conversation is going. It’s impossible. As far as Tony’s been able to discern, only Bats can really understand other Bats.
“What’re you trying to tell me, kid?” He says.
Tim’s got a weird way of holding his face that reminds Tony of Bucky, back when he was first crawling his way out of the Winter Soldier’s brain. Sometimes, Tony can read him, and, sometimes, there’s nothing there to read.
“I used to think there was no salvaging him, after he came back as Red Hood.” Tim says. “But I don’t think that anymore.”
Tony takes a breath and lets it out. Only Bats can really understand other Bats, he thinks. In Bat-speak, that was probably a declaration of undying love and loyalty.
“That’s good.” Tony says. “Because Alfred would probably stop making me cookies if I kicked your ass.”
Just before noon, Bruce Wayne comes looming down into the cave and stares pointedly at Tim until Tim sighs and steps away from the computer. “Fine.” He says. “I’ll sleep.”
It surprises a sharp bark of laughter out of Tony, but he covers it quickly – if not particularly effectively – with a cough. He ducks his head and keeps tinkering with the new rebreather he’d found during a casual stroll around the cave earlier.
“I cannot believe,” Tony says, once Tim’s disappeared into the elevator, “that he has a bedtime.”
“He’s a teenager.” Bruce tells him, flat. Tony’s seen dead bodies more emotive than Bruce Wayne. “Teenagers need sleep.”
“Humans need sleep.” Tony points out. “Guess that explains why you don’t seem to know much about it.”
Bruce doesn’t even blink, but his focus sharpens. “You shouldn’t be down here.”
“Yeah, good try, but Jason plays that game too.” Tony says. He leans away from the rebreather, but he keeps his soldering iron in hand.
“What game is that?” Bruce asks. He folds his arms across his chest and frowns, and Tony can see that he’s meant to be intimidated, but he doesn’t feel anything but angry.
“The game where he doesn’t want to fight about one thing, so he’ll start a fight about something else. If you had a problem with me being here, you’d have stopped me before I even got to the Manor. So let’s stay focused on the real problem.”
“And what,” Bruce says, “is the real problem?”
“Seems like that’s probably you.” Tony says. “Seems like you fuck up a lot of people.”
Bruce considers that for a moment. “That new ICBM that SI came out with,” he says, and Tony doesn’t flinch, but he has to put the soldering iron down to prevent himself from trying to stab Bruce in the face with it. “I hear you broke the maximum range record. 16,500 kilometers, was it? Accuracy’s something like 350 CEP?”
“300.” Tony says. “It’ll drop.”
Bruce nods. “It will.” He says it like he believes it, but not like it makes anything better.
“What’s your point? That I fuck people up too?” Tony says. “Wayne, I design weapons for the military. For real grownups, with guns and training. I’m talking about these kids you keep treating to lifelong emotional problems. Can you even see the difference between orphaned kids and enemy combatants?”
“At 16,500 kilometers,” Bruce says, “can you?”
Tony curls his hand into a fist the way Bucky taught him. He thinks, self-righteous son of a bitch that Bruce is, he’s probably going to let Tony have one punch. He resolves to make it worth it.
“I never wanted Jason to be a murderer.” Brue says, and it startles Tony enough that he momentarily forgets he was about to punch him right in the mouth. “It’s not the answer.”
“It’s an answer, asshole.” Tony says. “And he’s not a fucking murderer. Don’t say that about him again.”
“I failed him.” Bruce says. “I regret that. I—”
“I don’t give a fuck how you feel about it.” Tony says. He doesn’t want to stand here and listen to Bruce’s justifications. “He deserved better than you.”
“He did.” Bruce says, evenly, like it doesn’t even hurt to say.
Tony sighs and runs a hand through his hair, probably smearing grease and soot over his face in the process. “Well.” He says. “You’re what he has. So get your shit together, Wayne. That thing with Tim was a step in the right direction. It was decent of you, telling him Tim was missing.”
Bruce blinks. For a second, Tony sees something cross his face that looks disturbingly like confusion. “Right.” Bruce says, after a pause. “He was very helpful.”
It occurs to Tony that something has just happened, but he can’t for the life of him figure out what the hell it was. “Alright, Uncanny Valley,” he says, “Cave’s all yours. I’m gonna go get some sleep, like humans do. And, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to fuck off.”
Clint thinks Robin might have a bit of a thing for him, but he’s not completely sure. He adopts some of Stark’s teachings and tests the hypothesis by wearing the tightest pants he brought and a shirt with no sleeves.
Coulson assesses him with raised eyebrows. “You’ll be cold.” He says, and he’s right, but Clint’s been colder. Hell, before he met Coulson, he was cold for about six months out of every year.
“The thrill of scientific discovery will keep me warm.” Clint says, as he checks his arrows.
“That line didn’t work when Stark said it, either.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Bucky says, grinning down at the knife he’s sharpening. “It worked on me.”
Coulson rolls his eyes a little, which Clint takes as a sign that last night’s patrol with Batman and Jason wasn’t half as fun as the evening Clint spent with Robin. “Where’s Jason?” Coulson asks.
Bucky shrugs and stands up, sheathing his knife and stretching out his shoulders. “Not sure. He left a little after noon, said he wanted to see if Tony had found his way to Batman’s place yet.”
Clint wouldn’t be surprised if Tony’s figured out they’re in Gotham. Tony’s smart, and more than a little he’s obsessed with Bucky and Jason. If Bucky didn’t have bad memories of it, Tony probably would’ve planted subdermal trackers in both of them months ago.
“Stark’s here?” Coulson says, slowly. He seems to feel a few different ways about that, but Clint thinks most of them are positive. “And Jason’s already been in proximity to Batman for six hours?” Coulson’s feelings about that are less complicated; Clint can read his annoyance in the slight tightening of his jaw.
“He’ll be fine.” Bucky says. “He’s with Tony.”
And that’s fair, Clint thinks, because what Jason needs between him and Batman is something flashy and loud, someone that’ll keep Jason’s attention. And what Batman needs between him and Jason is someone who checks Jason’s more brutal impulses, who can shame Jason into playing nice just by being in the same room.
Of course, it’s not a perfect system. Tony doesn’t like Batman all that much. And he’s not mean like Jason is, but Clint’s seen him be vicious, and cruel.
“We should go.” Clint says.
“In a hurry?” Coulson asks, and the way he says it makes Clint think he’s already dreading another long night.
“Sure.” Clint says, with a shrug. “I think I’ve got a date.”
When they split up that night, they’re sent out with comms transmitting Tony’s voice. Clint’s used to that, because Tony will hack his way into their ops, sometimes, if he thinks they need his guidance. But it keeps throwing Robin, who nearly gets decked in the face because Tony makes a dick joke to Batman sometime around midnight.
“Gotta tune him out.” Clint advises. He grabs the mugger by the neck and hauls him away from Robin, but he changes his grip to the man’s wrists when he sees the frown forming on Robin’s face.
“Sorry,” Clint says, as he knocks the man to his knees and then hands him off to Robin so he can handcuff him. “Forgot we’re being gentle.”
“That’s going to bruise.” Robin says, tipping his head toward the mugger’s throat.
And, sure. It absolutely will. “He almost hit you in the face.”
“He did not.” Robin says. He finishes handcuffing the man, hooks the cuffs to a nearby lamppost, and goes for his radio so he can alert GPD.
“Okay,” Clint says, with a shrug, because it had sure as hell looked like a near miss, but none of these Gotham costumes move the way they’re supposed to. “Well, I don’t appreciate that he tried.”
Robin gives him a strange look, and Clint smiles back. Robin definitely has a thing for him.
Roaming around with Jason and Bucky, Clint doesn’t usually get much attention. Jason’s louder, and Bucky’s better looking, and Clint’s the sniper, so it’s not like he spends much time with people anyway. He likes it, he thinks. The attention. Also, Robin.
“Barnes and Nightwing are chasing pussy.” Tony says, suddenly. Robin’s jaw tightens instead of falling open in shock, and Clint thinks that’s sweet, how he thinks, somehow, one’s a giveaway but the other isn’t. “Repeat,” Tony says, “Barnes and Nightwing are chasing---”
“I can block his transmission.” A woman’s voice says through the comm. “If he says anything actually useful, I’ll patch it through, but—oh, hell.”
“Ha!” Tony crows into the comm, so triumphant that Clint knows he’s just done something both incredibly impressive and incredibly shitty. “I knew it. I knew there was someone else. Hi, hello, nice to meet you. I’m Tony Stark. Are you Oracle?”
“Can we kill him?” The woman asks. “After I figure out how he did that. Can we kill him?”
“You’ve got your own Tony?” Clint asks.
Robin shrugs, but there’s a tiny smile hooking up one corner of his mouth. “I told her he’d figure it out.”
“People underestimate Tony.” Clint says, with a nod. “Because he’s an asshole who can’t get his life together. But I figure, if my brain ran twelve directions at once, I’d be a shitshow, too.”
“I doubt it.” Robin says, and then he clears his throat and stares grimly at the Gotham skyline, and Clint almost asks him if he wants to see a movie sometime.
“Cat recovered.” Bucky says, suddenly, breaking up the increasingly technical verbal death-match between Tony and the unidentified woman on the comms.
“It was an actual, literal feline, if anyone’s wondering.” Nightwing confirms. “Pussy chasing done for the evening.”
“Oh, it’s barely midnight,” Tony says, and his tone is a little recriminating. “I know you’ve got more stamina than that.”
“Wouldn’t count on it.” Jason says. “You know Nightwing. All flash, and no bang.”
Robin rolls his eyes and gets back to work, jogging away right as the GPD lights come into view. Clint follows, and it’s the same as last night. They work well together. Robin’s a better fighter than him, and he’s smart, and he’s absolutely fearless, but Clint’s sees more than he does, tracks threats Robin hasn’t clocked yet.
He steals one of Robin’s Batarangs and sends it spinning right into the tire of an oncoming van, makes it crash into a brick wall instead of Robin, and Robin blinks at him, slow and thoughtful. Clint’s thinking about that movie all over again, which is maybe why he doesn’t figure out the plan until his part in it is right in front of him.
He’s up on the rooftops, and Robin’s gone, drawn away. Jason split from Batman and Coulson an hour earlier, and Clint’s been tracking the occasional comments over the comms – Red Hood, status report, and Red Hood, location and Christ, can’t a guy piss in peace? – but hasn’t thought much about it.
He figured Jason just needed a break, and Tony’s uncharacteristic quiet had made him suspect the two of them had snuck off together. He realizes, when the redhead they’re chasing appears at the end of the street, that Jason’s set this up.
It makes sense. Bucky and Nightwing are half a city away, and Jason must be nearby, because the strange police chatter that had drawn Robin away – That’s a Joker signal. Not an emergency. I’ll check on it. – sounds exactly like the sort of thing Jason would set up and laugh about later.
The woman is scanning the rooftops. Clint can tell the moment she spots him, because she goes still for half a second and then lowers her eyes and walks into the middle of the street.
“Widow spotted.” Clint says, into the comms. He has his rifle on him, but he hasn’t used it all night. It takes him less than a second to level it her direction, double-check the scope, but less than a second, for her, should be more than enough time to get to cover.
“Shit.” Jason says. “What?”
Clint’s worked with Jason for two years now. He knows what it sounds like, when he’s faking surprise. He doesn’t know what it means, that Jason’s genuinely surprised by this. For a second, nothing makes sense.
“Take the shot.” Jason says.
“On my way.” Robin says. “Sixty seconds out.”
In sixty seconds, this woman will be dead from a headshot, or she’ll have disappeared all over again.
She raises her eyes. Through the scope, Clint can see that they are green, and she’s got that same kind of hollow look that Bucky gets, sometimes, when they’re two weeks into a mission and he’s forgotten to sleep.
She looks tired, he thinks. And years younger than they’d been told to expect.
She looks like she’s waiting for a bullet.
“She set this up.” Clint says. He’d thought it was Jason’s plan. He thinks he was meant to think it was Jason’s plan. “Coulson,” he says, seeking guidance.
“Don’t take the shot.” Batman says.
“Fuck off,” Clint says, immediately. “Coulson.”
“We do not have capture orders,” Coulson says.
“Forty-five seconds out.” Robin says, and it’s the first time Clint’s heard any emotion in his voice that isn’t annoyance and amusement.
Fifteen seconds is too long for someone like her to stand, in the open, waiting. Five seconds is a mistake. Fifteen seconds is suicide.
Clint doesn’t like to think about what he did, who he was, before SHIELD found him. Before Phil found him. But he remembers.
He lowers his gun. “Can’t make the shot.” He says. It feels like failure, but not like a mistake.
“Acknowledged,” Coulson says. “Red Hood? Are you in the area?”
“Close enough.” Jason says. “Hawkeye, which direction is she headed?”
Clint looks down at her, and she looks up at him, and he’s not looking through the scope anymore, so he can’t see the details of her facial expression, but he doesn’t think he likes what he sees. She turns, suddenly, and starts sprinting off into the night, and Clint wonders who the hell holds still for a bullet but runs from anything else.
He doesn’t wonder about it for long. Doesn’t seem like that line of thinking would lead anywhere productive.
“Northwest,” he says. “She’s running.”
“On it.” Jason says.
“Red Hood,” Batman says, “I didn’t bring you here to kill.”
“Then fucking stop me, old man,” Jason says.
There’s a stutter on the comms. “Locked out the Bats,” Tony says. “Hold on, I’m tracking her through traffic cameras. Oracle’s doing the same thing, though, so maybe put a rush on it.”
Clint realizes that if he’d just taken the shot, everything would’ve ended. Not well. Sure as hell not amicably. But by letting her go, he’s pitched SHIELD against Batman and his allies.
He thinks Robin’s probably not going to want to see that movie after all.
She’s smaller than Jason expects her to be. And she falls faster than he thought she would, when he drops from the second story fire escape and lands on her back.
There’s a fight, but not much of one. He’s got her pinned in thirty seconds, disarmed and barely struggling, and she’s landed a shallow cut to his ribs that sliced through the body armor but barely nicked his skin.
He figures this is probably why Clint didn’t kill her. He’s a good kid. Sturdy, steady. Means well. But he’s more immovable object than unstoppable force. Without something to lean into, some kind of anger or fight, Clint tends to fall flat on his face.
“You shot Robin,” Jason tells her. She’s done worse things. He’s read about them. He was one of them. But that’s the one that keeps sticking in his head, for some reason.
She spits in his face, and Jason headbutts her, but he breaks her nose when he could’ve cracked her skull or smashed the delicate bone around her eye, and so he thinks maybe this is going to be a problem for him, too.
She’s young. It’s not a thing that normally registers for him. It wouldn’t have, a couple years back. But now he’s got Bucky in his head, You know why it’s a bad idea to send kids to war?
She’s strong, and she’s trained, and Jason thinks he could kill her anyway, but it shouldn’t be as bloodless as this. If she were fighting back, it would hurt. He’d have to get stitched up, after. She’s letting him do this.
“You know,” he says, “there are easier ways to get yourself killed.”
She does fight him then, but she fights to hurt instead of incapacitate. She’s trying to piss him off. Jason knows what that’s like, because he’d done it to Bruce for half a year.
She’s good. She’s impressively, alarmingly good. She’s better than Tim. She’s better than Jason was, when he was her age, which means she started training younger than Jason and Tim did.
Jason’s not sure he’s better than her, but he is sure he wants to win more than she does.
When they stop, he’s got her shoved against a grimy brick wall, gun lodged up under her jaw, aimed to blow her brains and half her skull into the wall behind her.
“Ask me,” he says, because it’s polite. Because it’s basic decency. Because it’s the least she could fucking do, if she’s going to make him carry memories of her around for the rest of his fucking life, wondering if he made the right call. “Ask me to kill you,” he says, “and I’ll do it.”
Because that’s the least he could do. Because he knows what it’s like. Because there are times he would’ve asked, maybe, if there’d been anyone around to ask. If all that rage had ever been aimed any direction other than out.
There’s blood on her face, dripping from her nose down to her mouth, and he knows he broke at least two ribs, maybe one of her collarbones, but she holds herself perfectly still. Seems like the pain doesn’t even register, which makes Jason feel sick about the whole thing.
She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t fight. She waits.
“Yeah,” Jason says, “can’t make decisions for yourself, huh? I used to know a guy like that.”
Bucky got better. But Bucky’s a special case. Jason knows that with most people, if you give them a chance, you’ll come to regret it. Mercy means a lot to Bruce, but Jason’s always leaned toward justice. Justice can be brutal and bleak and bloody, but, once it’s done, it’s done. Justice, unlike mercy, almost never comes back to fuck you over worse than it did the first time.
She swallows. With her head tipped back, gun shoved into the soft skin behind her jaw, he figures most of the blood from her nose is draining down her throat. It doesn’t seem to bother her much.
Right then, Jason’s not sure who she reminds him of more, Bucky or Bruce.
“Easiest way,” she tells him, “is to pull that trigger.”
“That’s not asking.” Jason says. “And that’s true for the whole fucking species, so you’ll have to try a little harder.”
“Red Hood.” Batman’s unwelcome but not entirely unexpected. He’s standing at the front of the alley, caging both of them in.
Jason’s hand tightens on the gun. There’s a part of him that wants to shoot her, just so Bruce has to watch him do it.
“The best way this ends,” she tells him, “is pulling the trigger.”
“Maybe,” Jason says. Probably, he thinks. He lowers the gun anyway.
She looks at him like he’s managed to hurt her more by refusing to shoot her than he did by smashing his helmet into her face.
He figures that’s probably true, too.
He slams the butt of his gun into the side of her head, fast and precise, and he catches her when she collapses. She’s lighter than he wants to think about.
“I ditched my comm.” He tells Bruce. “Tell Coulson to come pick us up.”
The room in Wayne Manor is nicer than the room in SHIELD’s Gotham hospital, so Jason sneaks Bucky back to Bruce’s place. He figures Bruce owes him, and, anyway, if Bruce didn’t want Bucky there, he wouldn’t have let them in.
Coulson and Clint are at the hospital, keeping an eye on the girl, and Bucky’s been cagey and weird since he rounded the corner to find Jason and Batman and a girl who was knocked out but not dead.
“Hey,” Jason says, as he kicks the door shut and sees Tony, sitting up in bed. “Bucky’s freaking out.”
“Yeah?” Tony says, eyes darting between the two of them. “Bucky’s freaking out because you didn’t shoot someone?”
“Are you freaking out?” Jason asks, trying to make sense of the look on Tony’s face.
“I watched her take you away from us.” Tony says. His shoulders are tight, even though the bottle of ludicrously expensive whiskey on the nightstand is at least a quarter empty. “I watched her put you in the back of that ambulance. I don’t—of the three of us, I never thought I’d be the one who thinks we should’ve killed someone we didn’t.”
“Coulson’s trying to find birth records. Doesn’t know which country to check first, but, you know. He’s Coulson. He’ll find them.” Jason starts ditching body armor and weapons. It gives him something to do that isn’t looking at either one of them. “I figure, if we’re lucky, she’s just an underfed eighteen.”
“So she’s young.” Tony says. “That’s not why you didn’t do it.”
“No,” Jason says. “It’s not.”
Even now, he’s not entirely sure why he didn’t. He’s done worse things to better people.
But maybe he didn’t want to shoot someone who reminded him so much of Bucky. Or maybe he didn’t want to shoot someone who reminded him so much of himself.
“I recognized her.” Bucky says. He’s still standing just inside the door, fully suited up, like he thinks they’re going to go out again, even though dawn broke something like two hours ago. “I always knew who she was. What she was. But there’s a lot in my head that I didn’t put there, so I didn’t realize until I saw her.” He pauses, takes a breath, like whatever he’s about to say is something he has to brace himself for. “I trained her.”
“Huh,” Jason says. “Yeah, thought I recognized how she moved.”
“The Winter Soldier trained her?” Tony asks. He’s always been more aggressive about that difference than either one of them.
“Not fully.” Bucky says. “When I met her, they’d already been training her for years.”
Jason does some quick math in his head, but runs pretty quickly right into a wall of I don’t want to think about that shit.
“Think she can be fixed?” Jason asks.
Bucky laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. It sets Jason on edge, and Tony visibly flinches and then goes for the whiskey.
“I think she can be useful.” Bucky says. “I think, if she’s still capable of being loyal to anyone, we can make her loyal to us.”
“How’s that?” Jason asks, peeling his shirt off and throwing it at Tony’s head, just to break that focused, miserable look on his face.
“Same way you got me,” Bucky says, with a helpless shrug that Jason doesn’t like at all.
Tony holds the bottle out to Bucky, who takes it, and Jason likes that a little better. Bucky doesn’t drink when he thinks there’s a chance it’ll go poorly if he does. If he’s drinking at all, he’s not as close to losing it as he seems.
“I’m not sleeping with her.” Jason says. “She’s tiny. And mean.”
Bucky rolls his eyes and tips the bottle back, takes a fortifying swallow before he climbs into bed and lets Tony start removing his weapons. “That’s not how you got me.”
Jason knows that.
He just thinks it’s endlessly, unforgivably shitty that they got Bucky Barnes for the bargain price of treating him like a human being.
He sighs and kicks his shoes off, crawls in beside the two of them and takes the whiskey. “The worst part of this whole thing,” he says, “is that Batman’s gonna think I’m going soft. He’s gonna think he won.”
Bucky makes a sympathetic face, but Tony shrugs, grabbing the bottle back. “Thought you might be worried about that.” He says. “Before Oracle threw me out of her system, I found a few candidates. Murderers, traffickers. The ones you like.”
Jason blinks at him and then takes the bottle out of his hand and sets it carefully on the bedside table before hauling Tony into his lap. “I love you,” he says, earnestly. “You’re my favorite.”
“And Bucky,” Tony adds, as he settles.
“Yeah,” Jason agrees. “And Bucky.”
Phil knew, when Batman called, that this mission was going to be complicated. He’d been prepared for a stack of paperwork as tall as his fist. But now that he’s got the Black Widow sitting docile and quiet on a hospital bed, knees curled to her chest, he’s starting to realize the paperwork will stack approximately to his waist.
Clint’s stationed himself in the chair next to her bed, and the sidelong looks he keeps leveling at the nurses suggest it’s going to be problematic if Phil has to order her put down.
He should be angry at Clint and Jason. He hadn’t technically ordered them to kill her, but they knew the mission objectives. He can’t take agents into the field if he can’t rely on them to do their jobs.
But when she’d first woken up, she’d panicked. It had been an odd thing to witness, because she was quiet with it, silent and stoic, and it was just the alarmed beeping of the heart monitor that gave her away.
She’d said something in Russian, and Phil hadn’t understood, but everything that happened in the room was recorded, so he’d sent the audio to Barnes.
“Hm.” There’d been a pause, and Phil had known immediately that Bucky wasn’t going to tell him what she said. He’d opted not to take that personally. “The place that trained her,” Bucky said, after a beat. “I remember. They’d chain the girls up at night.”
“Ah.” Phil said.
“There were tests, sometimes.” Bucky said. “Failure wasn’t well-received. Waking up, no mission, no handcuffs. That would be a bad morning.”
In recent years, Phil has made a series of gambles. He bet on Clint, Bucky, Jason, and Tony. And there were any number of people at SHIELD who thought he was crazy for that, but Phil had calculated the odds carefully.
He’s not sure what to make of this girl. If the others were not involved, he’s not sure he would have chosen to keep her alive. But he’ll have to do what he can, for her sake and for Barton and Barnes.
He’s watching through the observation window when Batman appears, unannounced, beside him.
“Security know you’re here?” Phil asks, just to be contrary. He’d almost spilled his coffee on himself when Batman materialized within feet of him, and he’s never liked surprises. Granted, for the past two years or so, he hasn’t liked Batman much, either.
“We’ll take her.” Batman says. “I know people who can help her.”
“No,” Phil says. “I’ve seen you try to help people. I have a better track record. I’ll keep her.”
There’s not much Phil could do to stop him, if Batman decided to press the issue. Phil could shoot him, maybe. Or let Clint shoot him. But he doesn’t want a power vacuum in Gotham. If Batman decides to take her, Phil will let him.
He might even appreciate being liberated from all the problems she represents. But he doesn’t believe for a second that letting Batman take this girl would work out better for her in the end.
Batman doesn’t say anything. Phil’s starting to realize that Batman never loses an argument; he just stops having one.
In the hospital room, Clint carefully folds the mission report he’s supposed to be writing into a paper bird and sets it on the sheets at the end of the Widow’s bed.
“You lied to Red Hood.” Batman says.
“About what?” Phil asks, although he knows what he’s referring to. Of course he knows.
“When Robin went missing, you told him I called to ask for his help.” Batman says. “I called to ask if he was responsible.”
Are you requesting SHIELD assistance?
No. I need you to tell me if Red Hood’s behind this.
Phil sighs. He’d hung up after Batman asked him that. He thinks it’s maybe the only time in the past decade that someone’s ended a conversation before Batman was ready for it.
“You might consider professional counseling.” Phil tells him. “You have very deep and unresolved trust issues.”
“He’s capable of it.” Batman says. “There are very few people who have both the skills and the motive to kidnap Robin. Red Hood is on that list. It was reasonable to ask.”
“The hell it was,” Phil says. He takes a moment to collect himself. “I told Jason you asked for his help, because it was the kinder thing to do. And because, if I’d told him what you’d accused him of, he never would’ve helped find Robin.”
“You manipulated him.” Batman says.
“Professional counseling.” Phil repeats. “If you think that kindness is inherently manipulative--”
“You lied to him.” Batman says. “You lied to him, and you manipulated him, and it worked.”
“Do you think I’m a threat?” Phil asks, turning to face him.
Batman regards him for a long moment. “Red Hood is dangerous. Barnes is dangerous. Hawkeye, and the Black Widow are dangerous. At least three of them will do anything you tell them to, and I imagine the fourth will fall in line soon enough.”
“We’re dangerous people.” Phil acknowledges. “But I’m asking if you think we’re a threat.”
“You know who I am.” Batman says. “You know who I am, and Red Hood knows who the others are.”
Phil blinks at him. He considers getting angry, but he can’t see how there’s anything to be gained from it. “I don’t know who you are.” He says, instead.
“You expect me to believe,” Batman says, “that you don’t know who I am under this mask?”
Phil raises his eyebrows. He could play this any number of ways, but, at the moment, he’s too tired to lie about it. “Jason asked me not to look into it.” He says. “So, no, I don’t know who you are.”
Batman’s mouth opens and then closes. Surprise is an interesting look on him, but not an especially flattering one. “Tony Stark knows.”
“I know he does.” Phil says. “Tony knows, Jason knows. I imagine Bucky knows, although he’s happy to pretend he doesn’t. And they’d tell me, if I asked. But Jason asked me not to look into it. So if, at any point, I need to know, I’ll ask him. Or you.”
Batman stares at him, and says nothing.
“Trust.” Phil tells him, finally, absolutely exasperated. “Mutual trust. My team risks their lives on my orders every time we go out on a mission. I trust them. If they ask me for something, I’ll give it. You should trust your team. They trust you.”
Phil stops short of telling Batman that he should earn that trust. But only because he doesn’t want to write And then I attempted to instigate a fist fight with Batman in his mission report later. Nick would likely frame it and post it somewhere embarrassing, and Phil doesn’t want to deal with the office gossip.
“He didn’t kill her.” Batman says, and Phil is reminded, yet again, that he never loses arguments. Phil turns to face the window, and he’s surprised to find the paper bird is resting in the Widow’s carefully cupped hand. “I expected him to.”
“You expect the worst out of everyone you know.” Phil says. He understands the inclination. Part of him does the same thing. The difference between the two of them is that Phil learned to use it as a skill instead of embracing it as a philosophy. “And you haven’t known Jason for years.”
“I never really knew him.” Batman says. It’s quiet. Phil gets the odd idea that he didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“You should.” Phil says. “Get to know him. He’s a good man.”
No matter how strongly he’d object to the idea, Phil privately thinks Jason’s still more boy than man. But Phil can’t think of him like that. Not with Batman standing well within punching distance.
“You matter to him.” Phil says, when Batman doesn’t reply. “He cares what you think. He misses Nightwing. He worries about Robin. I’ve got two agents without any family at all, but he’s the lonely one.”
Batman’s jaw tightens. He shifts his weight, and Phil keeps his eyes pinned on him, because he thinks, if he looks away for a second, he’ll just disappear.
“It’s not hard.” Phil tells him. It isn’t. He’s seen people piece together family out of nothing, out of saved lives and shared hospital visits and twin shrapnel scars. “You tell him you’re proud of him, if you can get through it without accusing him of kidnapping and murder. You invite him home for birthdays. You don’t say his name like he’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“I am proud of him.” Batman says. And Phil honestly would punch him in the face, but, this time, he sounds like he means it.
“It doesn’t do any good to tell me.” Phil says. “Tell him.”
“He wouldn’t listen.”
Maybe that’s true. It’s hard to make Jason listen, especially when he thinks he’s about to be hurt by something.
“He listens to me.” Phil tries.
“You earned it.” Batman says.
Phil feels flattered, and a little sad. He decides, in the end, that he feels sorry for Batman.
He doesn’t know where Bucky and Jason are right now. Or Tony, for that matter. But he’s not worried about it. He knows where they’ll be when he needs them.
Batman knows where almost everyone is, at any given moment. But, even if he can guess where they’ll be when he needs them, it doesn’t seem like he can allow himself to believe in it.
“If you need us again,” Phil says, “you can call us. You can ask for help.”
Batman stares at him, and says nothing.
Phil turns to face the window again. The Widow is pretending to be asleep, bird still cradled in her hand. Phil watches her, studying the careful curl of her fingers, until he knows Batman’s gone.