Chapter Text
Bruce had no hesitations when he crashed the bat plane.
Its demise had made a brilliant distraction—in all the chaos, their enemy had let Flash slip from his grasp, finally unpinned, while Wonder Woman had been able to wrestle the demon to the ground. The loss of his transportation had been a small price to pay for the safety of his team.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t put out about the whole thing. Or the aide he was forced to accept if he wanted to get home in decent time.
“I promise I won’t drop you,” Superman said. His body was warm and broad; he cradled Bruce in his arms as if he weighed no more than a kitten. Landscape flew under them, miles eaten up in seconds.
“That’s not my primary concern with this arrangement,” he replied. His voice needed no modulation to convey his annoyance.
Bruce tried to keep his grip around Superman’s shoulders relaxed. He was having a difficult time of it. Tension made him stiff—he couldn’t escape the vulnerable feelings that hounded him, and that made him agitated.
A chest muffled a laugh against him. “I offered to get a Zeta Tube installed wherever you’d like in Gotham; that offer still stands.”
Bruce made a dismissive noise, rumbling between them. It would be a cold day in hell before he put a Zeta Tube in the Batcave. No matter that he had so little control over who else could access it from the other side. No matter that it was a massive security risk in one of his most secure refuges. No matter that it would tie him more permanently to this new, messy group of people who were tentatively comfortable calling themselves teammates.
No—his kids would never forgive him for letting strangers into the one place they all agreed was neutral ground. Setting aside feelings of hurt and anguish, they knew the Cave was there for all of them. Even when they didn’t want to talk to Bruce or deal with each other, they knew the equipment and medical aid and the training space was theirs.
Bruce wouldn’t rob them of that by inviting outsiders in. He shook his head, once; a reflex against his thoughts more than an addition to their conversation.
“Alright,” Superman assured into his ear, far closer than Bruce thought was warranted. He didn’t say anything about it. “Just know—you can always ask.”
“I won’t be taking you upon it.” Gotham appeared on the horizon, outlined in the setting sun. Bruce was thrilled to see his city was still standing.
“Where am I putting you?” Superman tried to sound casual—Bruce wasn’t having it. There would be no locations revealed, no other information that could be gleaned from this moment of weakness.
“First rooftop you can land on,” he instructed. He’d find his way back. The sun was close to setting—he could run through a few patrol sectors before going back to the Manor. Just in case.
Superman took his time selecting a suitable rooftop. Bruce said nothing when he daintily landed them on the pinnacle of Wayne Tower. It was the highest building in the city, in a central part of the city. Bruce could get anywhere he wanted from here.
Which Superman probably figured out. The odd bout of kindness left a lingering, cloying taste in his mouth.
He slipped out of those steady arms the moment he could, landing on his feet with a grunt.
“Glad I could give you a lift,” Superman said, his touch lingering around Bruce’s waist to stabilize him with unnecessary gentleness.
“Uh-huh,” Bruce muttered, stepping out of grabbing range.
“You could call just to chat, you know,” the man of steel said, his eyes far too bright and teasing. “I love our conversations.”
Bruce looked him dead in the eyes. “Uh-huh.”
Then, he took three steps back. The ledge’s wide lip was an old friend; there were grappling marks in the stone over a decade old. He chucked himself over the edge of his tower without further hesitation. In free fall, there were no questions.
***
Plunk!
Jason reached back, muscles stretched through his arm and back as he flung the flimsy nuisance of a tracker wide and sloppy. Before him, the dark waters of the Gotham harbor rolled out in a broad target. He couldn’t hear the fizzle of dying electronics when the tracker sank; the ripples it caused were quickly lost in the windy caps.
He tried skipping the next one. He managed two good jumps before the harbor swallowed it. Not his best.
At his feet was a beat-up backpack that was older than him, showing its life with patches and stains and a ripped handle held together with duct tape. Crammed in it was a six-pack of the crappy beer he liked more than he admitted, a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice, and another dozen or so trackers from the various Waynes who thought they had a claim on him.
Alfred said they planted trackers like fingerprints on him because they worried for him, in so many words. It was how they showed concern for his whereabouts, for his well-being. For his safety and security. The consistent updates were there to alleviate their distress at his distance.
Jason didn’t believe it, not really. If they were so concerned, they knew how to contact him. How to get his attention, if they really needed it. He was delineated from them, not wholly cut-off. They didn’t have to slip the buzzy little bugs into the lining of his jacket or the grips of his weapons. The soles of his shoes or behind the buckle of his belt.
To Jason, worried translated into possessiveness. Every single one of them, bird and bat, down to the last, thought loading him up with trackers and panic buttons and other signatures of their presence was a smart, well-thought-out idea. That he would simply take this invasion of his space in good humor. And they had been growing bolder.
His tolerance had snapped earlier that day when he had found one tucked into his book; a tiny little thing worked into the binding of the spine. Merrily pinging away.
Call it sacrilege, tainting one of his books in such a way. Call it desecration. Call it catching Jason on a bad day, after a gnarled run of bad days, when all he saw in these stupid little tags were blatant marks of their insecurity and distrust in him. Call it blistering outrage that they didn’t think it was safe to leave him unsupervised.
Call it an overreaction after a week-long simmering argument with Bruce that had ended up with Jason yelling himself hoarse with inarticulate fury on the rooftop of Wayne Enterprises in the dead of night. All he had gotten from Bruce was stony-shouldered silence and evident disapproval.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?!” Jason yelled, anger taking over, digging at old wounds with knives he knew would hurt.
Bruce’s jawline hadn’t so much as clenched. “If that’s what you want,” he replied in a dead even voice. No fight. No pushback.
That one had burned. It hadn’t mattered that Jason had been provoking him towards it all week. That he pushed at buttons and picked at scars in Bruce’s personality. That he had been relentless in his probing, far past common sense and courtesy. What had mattered was that Bruce broke and fell into the trap either of them wanted to set.
To be rid of the memory, Jason killed his half-filled beer and tossed another tracker out into the harbor.
That was the knot of it all. Bruce would never say what he wanted to hear. I miss you—I worry for you—let me help. Instead, it was the damn tracker nonsense; all the knowledge of their safety without any of the emotional deadlifting needed to make it palpable.
He thought it was what he needed to do to keep them safe. Because he’d failed so miserably the one time Jason had needed him to know. They’d all be paying for that fuck-up for the rest of their lives.
And it pissed him off. It wasn’t his fault he died—why was he reaping the results so often?
The next tracker went further into the harbor, parting dense and murky waters. Jason’s shoulder throbbed with effort and strain.
Stressed knees popped when he knelt and rooted through his bag. The next one to come up from his collection was slightly different in design; slimmer, more subtle. Delicate, even. He’d go so far as to call it a clever little thing; it had gone unnoticed for a good long while.
In one fierce move, he stood, lined up his arm, and threw it out into the water.
It was a good throw, he decided. To celebrate, he opened another beer. He had been on the dock for about twenty minutes; three empty cans had been tossed into a nearby trash bin.
Bruce’s obsessive behavior was bad enough. The intolerable part, to Jason, was that his terrible habits had infected the rest of the horde as well. Because he suspected with a deep conviction that the tracker in his book, that stupidly clever little thing, had been planted by Tim.
Tim coveted familial knowledge with the kind of sharp-edged focus that startled Jason sometimes. The more intimate, the better. And he exerted an overbearing control when he thought something was being hidden from him, insinuating himself into spaces previously off-limits. Replacement believed their complicated relationship, interlaced with so many injuries and traps, granted him the right to know everything about Jason because the more he learned, the stronger his hold became.
Tim got creative when he wasn’t allowed that physical space to occupy, hanging trackers and alerts dangling off Jason like little charms. Because heaven forbid there be things he didn’t know. Actions he couldn’t account for.
Bruce’s bad habits were definitely rubbing off.
Sour barley and hops sat stale on Jason’s tongue when he drained the beer down. He should slow down. He didn’t want to slow down. If he did, the tentative logic keeping his rage intact would collapse like a burning building finally pushed too far.
It wasn’t just his shoulder; his bones ached. It made him overly sensitive to things around him. When he had woken up the coffin and later in a glowing green pit, his bones had ached as his mind had unraveled. He’d mostly put his mind back together over the years, but his bones still gave him problems. Fuck.
Fifteen-year-old him would have found the trackers endearing, a sign of care welcomed. Twenty-three-year-old him worked to be rid of them, a sign of care rejected.
He didn’t want the worry of the horde. If he took it, he’d be responsible for it. Would have to acknowledge that Alfred was right, and all of this was meant to bring him closer, not constrain him. And that was too much. It was too fucking much, and he couldn’t do it.
He grabbed for the next tracker, his balance wobbling from the bend in his body. His vision smudged around the edges, blending the harbor’s weak light with shadows and fog.
From the depths of his bag came a cheerful little chime. His phone screen lit up, a bright point in the dank night. Jason didn’t answer the message—he didn’t want to talk to Dick right now.
Or, more honestly, he couldn’t talk to the man who so easily slid into the role of older brother the moment he was allowed to do so. Any opening, no matter how vague, brought his more covetous personality to the forefront. Dick’s possessiveness wasn’t like Bruce’s. It wore a cheerful face, masked over with affection and touch. Kind words and warm smiles kindled a blaze of intense emotions, branding his name on those he chose to care about.
Jason had tried cutting his name out before—Dick’s persistence had restamped it over the scar tissue. If he answered, even to simply tell the man to fuck off, it would be all the opening Dick needed. One utterance of Little Wing and Jason would be on the phone for hours, reforging another link in a connection that could be used to shackle him back into the family.
So, he left the phone unanswered. Instead, he drained the beer can, grumbling at himself and the time. Chucked out the next tracker without grace or accuracy. He was nearly through the collection he’d wrung out of his things. Which meant he’d have to figure out where to go next.
He didn’t want to go back to his apartment yet. It was a complicated, loaded space, full of both comfort and concern that he couldn’t process. Because it wasn’t just the trackers, he suspected. They were simply the easiest part of it all to spot. If he were earnest about rooting out this insistent familial oversight, he had a great deal of untangling to do.
The rest of the horde were subtler. Or at least, Duke was.
Their newest Bat smiled, shrugged, and sighed like an ordinary citizen. He had the weary sensibility of a hardened Gothamite, along with the starry idealism that made that sensibility empathetic rather than cynical.
“Don’t worry,” Duke had told him, shaking his hand in a firm grip and meeting his eye with a nervous, determined expression. “I’ll work hard to look after you all.”
Everything about the kid radiated a rational, level-head personality that wasn’t prone to overreaction or avidity. Jason labeled him a welcome low-maintenance soul to their little horde and thought nothing else of it. Maybe he’d bring a little stability to the cohort.
Then odd little things started cropping up around him. Take-out containers with Duke’s name written on the lids appeared in Jason’s fridge. Yellow stickie notes around his place reminded him to eat, sleep, and hydrate, written in a distinctive, confident hand. A to-go cup of tea from the local coffee shop sat on his counter, waiting for him after patrol; some distracted employee had scrolled a causal Duke just above the cardboard holder.
Jason did not look at the copy of Pride and Prejudice, sitting idly in his bag. Waiting for him. He hadn’t put it there. He especially didn’t look at the inside cover, where he was sure he would find a four-letter name, starting with a big, cheerful D.
Duke was just as bad as the rest of them, putting himself in Jason’s space whenever he could.
The constant occupation felt almost like assurance. And that freaked him out enough to get drunk at the Gotham harbor, destroying the most obvious evidence of it, like that would excise the uncomfortable driving into his chest. It seemed a better alternative to putting names and thoughts to nebulous feelings.
Something heavy dropped in the distance, somewhere to his left. Soft cursing and a rough scold followed. Hushed, frantic. Jason stilled, his instincts flaring. He was over-trained. He knew a suspicious bump in the night when he heard one.
He wasn’t suited-up. Hell, he wasn’t even armed, not really. It’d be nothing but trouble, he was sure.
But a little trouble sounded so much better than his apartment and all the complicated thoughts embedded in it. A good brawl and a few bloody knuckles could be just what he needed to clear his head.
He found a dock crew working fast and harried on a lower dock, just out of range of the harbor’s security cameras. Always a promising start. The shadows made for good cover as he peered over the upper ramp’s edge to watch them.
They were smugglers—he saw the signs of their trade like neon lights. The covetous way they hovered over their cargo was a big giveaway. The lack of a country flag on the ship’s hull. The four hands they had stationed to keep watch, one even monitoring the dark waters in case of surprise attack. They were fidgety, loading up their haul as quickly as they could without any undue noise.
Some sort of artifacts, Jason decided, watching the unvarnished wooden crates being loaded up. They were unlabeled—another warning sign. Hard to say for sure without a closer look. But his instincts were leaning towards artwork. The boxes were the wrong shape for gunrunners, and drug lords tended to be more creative about their covers.
With its dodgy providence and its natural scarcity, old-world art was one of the best ways to launder money. Damian, Jason knew, had a particular interest in the black market deals around the topic. He might enjoy this.
Reaching for a communicator that he had forgotten he’d drowned earlier that evening, he overbalanced, going sideways when he meant to simply shift. His body worked on instinct; he caught himself on the ramp’s edge before he could tumble off. Fuck—the noise he made doing that was worse than the fall itself. And worse, it left him with no balance and occupied hands.
A dozen pairs of eyes turned up. Locked on him. He was easy to spot, half-hanging off the ramp, out of his kit and alcohol-clumsy.
He should have just fallen into the harbor. It would have been an easier escape.
Jason dropped down, leaning into the pull of gravity on his body. It gave him enough of a swing to land on two conveniently-placed goons, like a spider upon flailing prey.
It wasn’t a good fight. Drunk, underprepared, and off-guard, Jason felt himself become sloppy and mismanaged. He was fighting without a goal or any sort of plan. Bruce would be ashamed.
He still took a visceral sort of pride in putting four of the smugglers into the dark harbor waters before they got their act together and surrounded him in tandem. After that, it really wasn’t much of a chance of winning–just of causing as much damage as he could before he was taken down. Jason’s face exploded with pain when a heavy blow struck hard across his temple, another into his ribs. His world went dark and engulfed.
Three days. He was almost sure of it.
Bruised and bloodied, stripped of his boots, his jacket, his belt, he was horribly exposed. Gagged and bound, he really wasn’t much of a threat in his current state. Dizzy, hazy—he quickly lost track of which way was up.
He couldn’t die. That conviction was surprisingly easy to find. If he did, he’d ruin Damian. And he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.
The kid was the worst of them all. Or the smartest. He saw himself as Bruce’s natural heir, which meant he also saw the care of Bruce’s family as his own. He saw them all as his responsibility and needed to make sure they were looked after. They were his and his alone to mock, annoy, frustrate, and antagonize. He didn’t share well—especially not with bad guys who caused his family pain.
And he was learning so damn fast. Jason knew—he just fucking knew—that Damian would be able to demand anything of him, and he’d do it. They both knew it. It made Damian possessive.
Jason wouldn’t feed it any more than he had to. That meant staying alive—because if that little demon brat told him to rise from the dead, he’d do it. Then none of them would ever hear the end of it.
The smugglers weren’t trying to get information out of him. They had no reason to think he knew anything worth their effort. To them, he was just some harbor rat they’d managed to cat by the tail and torment for the pleasure of it. He was merely a plaything for a group of thugs; some drunken vagabond who made for some free entertainment during a long and tedious voyage. Once they got to wherever they were going, he was useless, and therefore dead.
In the meantime, they used him for the brutal amusement of taking him apart to see how he worked.
Jason pulled himself inward, looking for an internal escape. He couldn’t peel himself out of his skin—previous trial and error had disillusioned him towards that tactic. So he braced himself as well as he could, separating each nerve and limb from its association to him. Brought up walls made of persistence and bloody wounds around him, like the intimidating alley shadows of his hometown.
The pain of his body—the beating, starving, angry claws of pain—vanished into the puddle-filled asphalt and trash-collected corners. It wasn’t Bruce’s voice that talked to him, this far down. It was Stephanie’s.
Stephanie’s possessiveness came masked with a swindler’s smile. She lived to cheat Jason out of his secrets. In her brash determination to crack into his personality and take all she could find. To distract him with laughter when he felt like screaming and to trick him into giving up all his attention to her. Not for the harm they’d cause him, but so that he could never again claim to be their only victim if he gave up on her now.
And if they couldn’t hurt her, he really had no excuse for letting them hurt him.
“What, you gonna let the goon squad break you? Come on, man! You’re the freaking Red Hood! Be a baller, my dude!”
So, he hunkered down and bore it, just as she demanded.
Brutal fingers carded through his hair in a mockery of a gentle touch. Gripped the stands tight. Pulled his face up in a harsh grasp. Jason grunted from the pain, his body reacting on instinct while his mind swam in the dank corners of Gotham. The smuggler’s leader grinned down at him, content in his violence.
“Here’s the deal, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ve got some things to do—you’re gonna keep nice and quiet, and we’ll leave you alone for a few hours. Sound good?”
Jason spat in his face. It was worth the beatdown it earned him—every bruised and bloodied gasp of it. Satisfaction was a warm fire bubbling through him and kept him going when everything else seemed impossible to endure.
But after that, finally, finally, they left him alone in the hull of the ship. With his arms chained above his head and his heels just barely touching the steel floor. But alone, nevertheless.
It took him longer than he cared to admit to resteady himself. The pain of his captor’s amusements made his thoughts sluggish and difficult to parse. The bright light through a far-off port window turned dim before he was confident in his control of his body.
Then, slowly, tensing his core muscles in a way that burned, he curled himself up.
It wasn’t often, but every once in a while, Jason regretted his bulk. Dick would be more graceful about this. Cass, more nimble. Tim, more efficient. Damian, more versatile.
But none of them would have been able to withstand the beatings. Bruce had always been clear about that aspect of training—for every advantage you honed, there was a counter tactic you were giving up. Where most of the bats and birds opted for stealth or agility, Jason had the muscle mass and endurance to take a medley of thrashings and keep going. However, for that protection, he easily outscaled any of the others in sheer size, so deadlifting and holding his own weight for longer than a few seconds would always be a difficult process.
He got his feet above his head after a few tries, panting and straining his aching abdomen. His sore shoulders couldn’t be much more help. Time to be a little more creative about this.
Using a rock-climbing technique he’d once seen Duke pull off, he got his ankle around the chain above his head. Used his calf muscles to bear his weight. With his mass resituated, he could get just a little bit of slack around his hands.
Invasion was Cassandra’s poison of choice when keeping tabs on him. Once she busted through Jason’s defenses, she felt free to make herself at home, not seeing any difference between his autonomy and hers. Most often, that meant helping herself to his supplies and gear. Her nimble fingers would be in and out of his pockets before he could stop her. His lockpick set, the smoke bombs he always kept with him, his favorite knife. Once, when he had really upset her, she’d walked away with every spare clip he carried.
It wasn’t trackers she planted in return. Tools and tricks were her calling card, the sign that she’d invaded and retreated before he’d even noticed. Or, at least, what she considered helpful tools. Spare sticks of bubblegum in aluminum wrappers. One-shot bottles of superglue. Neon-yellow glow sticks bent into bracelets. He’d come back from patrol without a single weapon, a pocket full of miscellaneous junk, and a sharp temper towards her.
He wasn’t about to tell her about this.
Days ago, she’d slipped a small needle into the lining of his jeans. Nothing fancy—just a plain sewing needle, steel-forged with a delicate eye. It would do in a pinch, and this definitely counted as a pinch.
Pain was everywhere—it would become overwhelming if he wasn’t strategic about it. Jason fell back on his training, balancing his knowledge of his body with the risks and rewards of strain, cursing Bruce every step of the way just because it made him feel better. There was a time in his life he didn’t think twice about pain.
Jason had the first tumbler of the lock caught when the cargo door opened. Cursing the poor timing, he looked over.
A tall, well-defined woman crept inside, her body low and silent. Sneaky, even. Her face was upturned, searching for threats from any direction. She wasn’t supposed to be here anymore than he was.
She had a sword in her hand and a lasso at her hip. Jason’s eyes widened. His rough state made him sluggish and slow. He hadn’t seen sunlight in a couple of days, and his eyes were sensitive to the bright silhouette she cast.
But, dazed, dehydrated, and half-starved as he was, he still recognized Wonder Woman.
***
Diana couldn’t go home.
This caused her great agony—she knew where her mother and sisters were. Her people were so close. A skip into the Mediterranean. A curve around Sicily. She could be there in hours. If she lingered on the thought, she could imagine the surf under her feet, the hills and mountains of her home rising in her eye line.
But her home was barred to her. Themyscira may as well be unreachable as the surface of the sun, for all she was no longer welcome. She would not change her decisions—regret was foreign to her. Mourning, though, was becoming a familiar friend.
To stay closer to her roots, Diana often kept an eye on the pieces of her culture that filtered out into the greater world. The stories warped and changed with every retelling. Sculptures and artwork stirred intense emotions within her. The ornate jewelry she remembered adorning her friends during their name days and weddings. The weapons from forges she could recall in detail.
And, as she paid closer attention to these pieces of her homeland, the more she noticed how often they ended up in unsavory hands. Apparently, these pieces of her life brought a great deal of money.
She kept her eye out on those kinds of ships when work at the League allowed her the free time. She didn’t have an easy time finding them. But then again, she supposed that was rather their point. She’d come across the Vertigo the same way she’d found any of this ring of smugglers—another boat that she had invaded and pirated gave them up.
One at a time. That’s how she’d dismantle this smuggling ring. She hadn’t found any other way that worked, really. So, she hopped from one to another, pulling it apart piece by piece.
It still took her days to find it—they must have docked for a bit, slipping under her detection. Diana came upon the Vertigo in the mask of the setting sun, letting it hide her in its glare. She touched down onto the upper-most level with light feet, making sure to keep herself unseen.
The crew seemed to be gathered in the mess. She could hear their voices echoing up through the steel corridors. It was worth a quick inspection while she had the space to herself. The better to plan her attack.
She crept into the ship’s hull and found a surprise.
A young man hung from his wrists in the center of the cleared cargo space. He had seen better days—his face was far too pale, his skin bruised and bloodied. He was curled in on himself with a leg wrapped around the thread of the chain, giving it his weight. His fingers fumbled through the lock with a small tool. His dark hair was matted with sweat and grime. Exhaustion ringed his eyes and hung off his shoulders.
He stared at her, agog. Diana stared right back. Uncertainty made her hesitant—was he a hostage? A member of the crew who was being punished?
Rowdy voices tumbled down the corridor across the hull. An internal door, opposite the external one she’d used to get in. The young man stilled, his expression turning wild. Whoever he was, he wasn’t looking for more company.
She hoped he didn’t yell out. She needed every second the silence could give her. Ambush was her greatest ally when she was outnumbered. Slowly, she raised a finger and pressed it to her lips as she moved forward.
With a flat, reevaluating look, he went back to his work on the lock. His shoulders bunched and strained as he held his weight on the chain.
“How many?” she asked as she passed by him. Her sword was ready in her hand—her heartbeat climbed up as her anticipation grew. Her blood sang for a good fight.
A beat. His eyes were blue; they were easy to track when he glanced sideways.
“Six, I think,” he replied, his voice a gravel-filled rag twisted too tightly. His fingers didn’t stop working on the lock.
She nodded, once.
Each whisper-step she took across the cargo was another chance for her enemies to reconsider their path. She could no more be derailed than a storm could be diverted from its path. But they still had an opportunity to turn away. All they needed to do was stay out of the hull. If they turned away, they could avoid her wrath.
She was no longer simply after parts of her, stolen lifetimes ago and traded for obscene amounts of money. Protective instincts made her pointed—there was now a life involved.
Her enemies didn’t take their chance to escape her. They opened the bulkhead door, laughing between them. They believed there was no cause for alarm.
Diana struck out, her limbs moving with assurity of eons of training.
She didn’t particularly like the feeling of flesh giving way to her. It wasn’t enjoyable. That didn’t mean she wasn’t good at it. The line that bore her was rich with warriors—she would not dishonor them.
Five bodies fell under her weapon.
The last one tried to run—they always tried to run. She grabbed him to pull him back and hauled him up to her eye line by the collar of his shirt. While he fumbled at her wrist, her hand grabbed the lasso at her hip. The more the smuggler struggled, the easier it was to loop the rope around him. It glowed hot under her touch as its powers were brought forth.
“Who is the man you have chained up inside?” she demanded of her prisoner. The lasso burned under her demand, pulling truth from him.
“Some harbor rat,” he stammered back, loud and loose. “He saw us loading up the cargo—we picked him up for some fun. We-we-we were gonna toss him overboard when we got to port.”
Diana smashed him against the wall and tossed his unconscious body aside with his fellows with some relief. It was good to have confirmation on the chained man’s identity—she would not like to have a traitorous smuggler or scoundrel at her back.
For his sake, she was glad she had gotten here in time. The pieces of her stored in this vessel had likely seen enough blood and death. Piracy and smuggler were never kind professions. She stripped off a jacket and a pair of boots from a smuggler she thought was roughly the young man’s size.
She stepped back into the storage hull and found the young man further along in his extraction; he had untethered himself from the taunt chain holding him up. With both feet now firmly on the floor, he worked on the manacles around his wrists. The small needle he worked with struggled to catch the heavy mechanism.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said by way of greeting. When he couldn’t get the manacle off his wrist fast enough, she simply reached out and snapped it off like a rubber band. It was worth the wide-eyed look of amazement the move earned her.
“I wasn’t planning to be,” he muttered, looking red around the edges.
“What’s your name?” she asked, holding out the pair of boots and jacket for him to don.
He took the clothes with an unreadable look. “Jason,” he replied after a long beat as he shrugged on the jacket. It tugged at his shoulders, making him wince.
“Nice to meet you, Jason. I’m Diana. Think you can walk out of here?”
“I’m damn well gonna try,” he said as he pulled on one boot, doing an awkward one-legged hop-step so that he wouldn’t have to sit down. “You here for the cargo?”
Her lips twitched, a little surprised and a little amused at his quick refocus. “Indeed. You?”
“Wrong place, wrong time. I was out alone on the Gotham docks and saw them packing up their loot. Didn’t run fast enough when they noticed me watching. They brought me along for some free entertainment.”
“You were walking alone in Gotham? At night?” Diana had been given to understand that was a stupid thing to do.
Jason rolled his eyes as he got the second boot on. “The old man’s already gonna give me shit for that,” he complained. “I don’t need it from you, too, thanks.”
He sounded so miffed at his future scolding that Diana couldn’t help but smile. Good to know his captivity hadn’t broken him.
“Do you know how many others there are?”
“My personal tormentors? I think you got ’em all, there. Thanks, for that. The whole crew? Probably about seventeen, from what I remember at the harbor and for a boat this big.”
Diana was quiet for a heartbeat, just taking him in with clearer eyes. His skills, attitude, and awareness all added up to one thing in her mind.
“I take you for a soldier,” she finally said.
“I’m trained,” Jason confirmed with confidence in his voice. There was a strong, intent look in his eye. Focused, despite his condition. He stood upright, and his hands didn’t shake.
Excellent— He’s got skin in the game, she’d once heard Flash call this kind of behavior. He had the skills and the knowledge to be helpful. She would never say no to a partner who knew what he was doing. And after Trevor, well… she’d always had an affinity for soldiers.
“The six I left in the hallway won’t be getting up any time soon. Feel like giving me a hand with the other eleven?”
Jason grinned. There was something feral in it, enhanced by the bruises on his face and the blood on his shirt. “I’d love to.”
The captain’s notebook, retrieved from his inner jacket pocket, was written in code. Diana couldn’t decipher it and so set it aside. She was more intent on getting answers out of the man himself. And more straightforward about it.
“Where’s the next boat? The one you were sailing to meet up with?” she demanded, hanging the man over the side of the ship. She shook him to make her point more emphatically. The waves swelled and swirled below. Just waiting to swallow him up.
This was how she’d gotten her information before. Ship by ship, she’d squeezed out the location of the next by intimidation and repeated questioning. Time-consuming, but she really didn’t have any other methods at her disposal.
The captain made a grab for the railing. Diana held him higher to keep it out of reach and shook him for good measure.
“The next ship,” she repeated in a thundering voice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the captain failed back, a European accent coloring his vowels.
This was going to take a while; she just knew. Bitterly, she rose higher, considering the negotiation between time and gravity when she dropped him.
“Hey, Diana,” Jason called. She glanced back to her new friend; he looked none the worse for wear after their raid. She’d been right, pinning him a soldier—he handled weapons with confidence and knew how to clear a room of hostiles. How to watch her back and how to count enemies.
Their efficiency had been startling—they’d cleared the ship of its crew in a vivid one-two pincer movement. He had herded them together, letting her pluck them off in ones and twos at prime moments.
It had taken them all of twenty minutes, and while there were plenty of broken bones, there had been no lives lost, past the tormentors who had died in the hall.
Jason had left the captain to her, instead picking up the coded notebook. It laid open in his hands, the blood from his split knuckles staining the cover’s edge. He had a pen out, slowly moved over the page as he marked notes in green ink.
“I think I broke it,” he continued, half-amazed.
“You did?” She dropped the captain back onto the deck and came over, letting him show the first line he’d broken. On it was the Red-Headed Stepchild, a ship she’d raided a little over a week ago that had led her here.
“You picked that up fast,” she muttered, watching as he broke the next line.
His mouth twitched while he worked. “I have a brother who goes crazy for this kind of stuff. And he likes to talk—you really can’t help but pick up tricks when he starts in on it.”
A sad look passed over his face as he spoke. It vanished quickly when he looked up with a furrow in his brow. The green pen was jabbed over her shoulder. “He’s getting away.”
Diana turned. The captain was indeed crawling across the deck as fast as he could. She cursed. Snapped out. Grabbed the man’s ankle and dragged him back. A firm foot on his back kept him pinned to the deck.
“Stop that,” she told the captain before returning her attention to Jason. “Do you think you could find the next ship?” That would be faster than her method if nothing else.
“I think? Yeah, I think so. Why don’t you put him in the brig with the others and meet me on the bridge? I need a radio.”
With a better path before her, Diana didn’t hesitate to drop the captain into the brig with the rest of his crew and lock the door behind her. They had enough rations and water to make the situation bearable.
Her body hummed in happy anticipation. It was excitement that made her steps light up to the quiet bridge.
The navigational station was aglow with screens and information. Jason sat in front of the radio, working away. The notebook was now filled with scratches of bleeding green ink.
“They’re quartered in Cartagena,” he reported, his eyes gleeful with success.
That surprised her. “None of them have ever mentioned Columbia.”
“You don’t sell out your boss. Not in a smuggling ring this massive. Your boss knows where all your weak spots are, and won’t hesitate to hit them. If any of these guys have families, or nest eggs, or gambling debts, or rivals looking for a little revenge, they’ve got plenty of motivation to keep quiet. That kind of self-preservation isn’t going to get broken by you dangling them off a ship.”
The young man sounded absolutely convinced. The kind of conviction that only experience created. His smile didn’t go away, though his eyes grew older.
Diana remembered Trevor, with his charming smile and his haunted eyes, recounting the horrors he saw in the method of warfare he’d chosen. He didn’t speak with regret—he was upbeat in the face of the apocalyptic moment he occupied, but neither had he masked the damage the war had left in him.
“So,” she said as thoughts of an old war faded back into memories where they belonged. “Cartagena it is.”
Jason waited a beat longer to see if she’d push back at him. She nudged him back to the notebook, redirecting his attention.
“It’s about five more days’ travel, going as fast as we’re going,” he said. “I figure we’ll have better luck going to the center of the ring rather than peeling back a layer at a time. That’s how I’d do it, at least.”
She could just fly the distance. It would be faster if she did. She could be there by nightfall if she left now.
Jason showed her his work, a little eagerness and pride peeking out in his words. She couldn’t help being impressed with him—his skills and his tenacity. Thrown into an unprecedented situation, he hadn’t panicked or flailed. He’d buckled down, and he’d worked well with her.
It had been his abilities that had led them this far. Without him, she’d still be picking off ships one by one. There was no honor in abandoning him in her impatience. She didn’t want to insult him like that.
“Would you like to travel with me?” she said with a steady expression. “You’ve been a prisoner here a while. Surely you have people worried for your safety. If we’re only three days or so from Gotham, we could turn around instead. It’d be a shorter trip for you.”
“It’s fine,” he replied instantly.
Her expression didn’t ease. She didn’t resort to the lasso—not on an ally. But her time amongst men had given her a better ear for falsehoods.
Her scrutiny made Jason shift in his borrowed boots, suddenly ashamed.
“It’s just...the old man and I got into a fight right before I got grabbed. It was stupid. He thought I was making some—some bad decisions,” he snorted. “As if he’s got any room to talk. And I probably–probably said some things I shouldn’t’ve. I don’t….”
I don’t know how to make it right, she could hear, stitched in under his silence.
Diana set her hip against the radio console, looking just past Jason’s shoulder as she thought. The sun had well and truly risen, now. A golden sunrise gave way to a bright day.
It was easy to picture that sky from her favorite viewpoint in her mother’s palace. She missed her home; her family. They were so far from her now. She understood the price she paid, the decisions she didn’t regret.
That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. She had learned from that hurt. Perhaps this young one could as well.
“I can’t go home anymore,” she told him. “A terror came upon my homeland, and I broke many of my mother’s laws to fight it. I won against that evil but…but I can no longer go home.”
Jason didn’t move. His sharp gaze alone told her he was still listening.
“The first month, I was nothing but hurt. Angry. Outraged. Ashamed. I had done what I had to do and saved those I loved. I couldn’t comprehend why my mother had made such a brutal decision.”
She paused, swallowing down emotion. The memory of her mother’s agonized face still left a bitter taste in her mouth, like over-steeped tea.
“Does it,” he cut himself off.
“Does it what?” she asked, opening up her body language like she’d seen Superman do when he wanted people (mostly Batman) to talk to him.
“Does ever go away?” he asked, so quiet the motors of the ship nearly swallowed up the syllables. “The anger, I mean. It doesn’t feel like mine ever will.”
“It can be combated, just like any enemy. I still wish to speak to my mother—what child doesn’t? It upsets me that our last conversation was so bittersweet, and I hope one day I can make better memories with her.”
The green pen flicked between his fingers in quick, fidgety circles. “My family keeps trying to,” he growled out his frustration as words stumbled on his tongue. “To get in my space and remind me they’re there.”
That made sense to her. He wouldn’t be the first soldier she met who forgot what it was like, coming home. As much as she missed Themyscira, she too worried that she would not find the peace of her idyllic childhood after her time amongst men.
“My friends did that, too,” she smiled to remember them all relentlessly reaching out to her, making sure she stayed sane after her banishment. “They talked to me constantly. Invited me for food and distracted me often with their company. They reminded me they were there whenever I needed them. Some days, I hated it. Other days, I adored them for it.”
Her teammates had carried her when she couldn’t carry herself. She would never forget their compassion.
Jason chewed that over with wide eyes, his expression somewhere between stricken and elation. The pen stopped moving through his fingers. The idea seemed to stop him cold.
With an amused smile, Diana bumped her arm against his shoulder in a companionable gesture.
“Come, little one. We’ll fix these smugglers, you and I. It will give you the strength to face other things.”
That brought Jason out of his gobsmacked thoughts. His grin lit his face up. “Let’s do it.”
***
Bruce’s phone buzzed through the quiet of the Batcave.
He didn’t immediately look towards it, face-down and out of reach as it was. His attention was fixed on his computer screen, on which multiple location points here highlighted. Tim at the downtown Wayne Enterprises building; Damian at Gotham Academy; Cassandra wandering through a pop-up flea market on the East Side; Duke at the university library. Dick was out of range in Bludhaven—Stephanie was the same, on a day trip to Metropolis.
A point was missing—Jason was nowhere to be found. His trackers had gone dark just over three weeks ago. All of them. That itself hadn’t been overly concerning; just a sign that Jason needed some space and that everyone else needed to give it to him. Typically, Bruce would wait a few days, then test the waters between them by planting a bug or two in obvious places. If Jason deactivated it, Bruce knew to hold back for a bit longer, for fear of driving his son further away. If he didn’t, Bruce could sleep easy knowing his wayward child had an extra layer of protection.
It was the best equilibrium they’d found together, caught between Bruce’s ferocious defense of his family and Jason’s relentless embrace of independence.
This time was different; Red Hood hadn’t been sighted on patrol in over a fortnight, nor had any of his common safehouses been occupied. He hadn’t responded to messages from the rest of the children either, though Bruce thought they were on good terms. Jason had given them nothing but complete radio silence.
So he had spent his night flashing through security cameras, police reports, and social media footage, trying to understand why Jason would go to ground without a word of warning.
His phone buzzed again. Half-distracted by a grainy feed from the harbor dated almost a month ago, Bruce stretched for the device. His eyes were locked on an outline in the upper corner that could possibly be Jason throwing something. The catch of his shoulders was right, at least. And that could be his motorcycle, just around the building. The fishery across the dock may have a better view…
A quick glance at the phone stopped him cold. He had two pictures from an unknown number on a private line that only about ten people knew. Bruce opened the messages.
The first was a photograph of a receipt. He zoomed in and saw a single berth purchased on a ship named Freckled Cheeks out of Cartagena under his own name and purchased with his credit card information. The ticket had been purchased about an hour ago, and the boat was set to leave by midday. There was no explanation attached by the sender beyond the receipt.
The second photograph was a selfie—Jason holding the camera and grinning as he leaned slightly into the woman beside him…was that Wonder Woman? Bruce immediately sent the photo to the computer for better analysis.
He pulled up his Justice League files. Ran the photo through facial recognition, hoping he was wrong (and knowing he wasn’t). Groaned aloud, already thoroughly frustrated, when the computer confirmed it.
Diana Prince stood next to his son like she had no idea who he was or what wrath she tempted, being in such close proximity to one of Bruce’s own. Every parental alarm that had ever been wired into him went off at once, demanding he separate the two immediately.
He’d never make it to Columbia in time.
He studied Jason next, intent for any detail. They both wore dockworker clothes: dark sweaters, sturdy pants, worn boots, and woolen caps. Behind them stretched a scenic coastline, touched gold by a rising sun. As far as he could tell, they were both unarmed.
He looked hale, healthy, and...happy. The perpetual scowl he wore was gone, replaced by a giddiness Bruce hadn’t seen in a long time. His smile was genuine. His shoulders were relaxed. He didn’t look ready for a fight at a moment’s notice.
Bruce didn’t respond to the text messages. He did, however, piggyback into the security cameras of the Cartagena port, fresh concern making him flash through frames with sloppy haste. It was early sunup in Colombia; ten minutes worth of investigation later, he found the Freckled Cheeks.
Jason and Diana appeared in the frame twenty minutes later, chatting amicably. They moved like a pair of good acquaintances; their body language showed friendly comradery, and she clasped him on the shoulder just before he boarded. Jason’s spine was straight, his face clear and bright. She saw the boat off, then disappeared from the frame.
Bruce let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding deep in his lungs.
Jason disembarked off the Freckled Cheeks nine days later. Bruce stood on the dock in full Matches Malone attire, waiting for him. Beside him was Jason’s motorcycle, clean and primed. In his hand were a pair of brown-paper wrapped sandwiches and two coffees from the nearby stand that served it black and tar-like.
Jason wavered, caught off-guard. “What are you doing here?”
Bruce shrugged and held out a sandwich. “Why’d you send me your ticket information?” he countered.
Jason really didn’t have an answer that he wanted to say aloud. He did take the sandwich, though. Seafaring food was horrible.
They ate together on the edge of the docks, leaning against the rail as they watched the night ships come in.
“Did you find my book?” Jason asked. His copy of Pride and Prejudice with Duke’s name in it had been in the bag left behind during his impromptu adventure.
“It was gone by the time I found out what happened,” Bruce admitted.
Jason made a tisking noise in annoyance. He had only been up to Darcy’s first proposal.
“There’s a copy in the manor library if you’d like it.”
“I know.”
“And… there are other resources there for you, too. If you want them.”
Jason was slow to swallow his next bite. “I know,” he finally whispered.
A full moon rose high above the harbor, turning the dark waters silvery. A siren screamed through the streets behind them.
“Who’s out right now?” Jason asked.
“Cass and Damian on the downtown route. Tim and Stephanie in the Narrows.”
“You going out tonight?”
“No. I had other things to do.”
Something warm unfolded in Jason’s chest, fast and uncontainable. He stared at his motorcycle to distract his eyes from watering. Then, he stiffened.
A big, obnoxious, and all-too-obvious tracker had been bolted dead center of the bike, right between the handlebars. It was nearly the size of a pinhead, for fuck’s sake. How was he supposed to just ignore that?
He tried prying it off with a fingernail and found it firmly affixed.
“I’m gonna have to dismantle the whole front end to unmount that,” he complained.
Bruce hummed in agreement around a mouthful of coffee. It had been some of his better work.
Jason finished his sandwich in a few wolfish bites and downed the coffee, hot and burning and perfect. His soft “thanks” was nearly lost in the crinkling of brown paper in a nearby trash can. Bruce said nothing, just watching as Jason straddled his motorcycle, started up the engine, and slipped away into the night.
Neither of them mentioned the tracker that had found its way into the collar of Jason’s jacket.
***
The Tower’s mess hall was quiet—Diana ate lunch alone, watching the stars dance out the massive windows. Green Lantern, seemingly in a similar mood, sat across the way, reading while Hawkgirl worked on the electrical wiring of her mace. J’onn sat a level above them, meditating. His reflection occasionally flashed in the windows as the station orbited. They shared the space in communal, companionable silence, each occupied by their own thoughts.
A small device with a wide touch screen dropped next to her elbow. Diana looked away from the windows in surprise, hastily swallowing her bite. Batman stood beside her, tight-lipped. Annoyance and frustration bled out into the air around him.
“It’s a tracking program,” he told her without introduction. “I heard you were trying to keep an eye on art smugglers. This will help.”
She blinked. Looked down at the device. The program was just booting up–it looked simple enough. Some of the equipment Batman supplied or created could be a little complex, to put it politely. He must have slowed down long enough to make it user-friendly as well as functional.
What had she done to earn something like this, unprompted?
Before she could ask, Batman turned and left. Explanations, apparently, were not part of the gift.
She grinned, relieved, surprised, and a little mischievous as she watched him leave. “Thank you, dear one!” she called. Green Lantern’s head came up from across the mess, his expression puzzled.
Batman stilled. Under his cloak, his shoulders raised. Lowered. With a soft grunt, he continued on his way.