Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Nan called to say Robert's sister was in the hospital and he was heading back to Bludhaven to look after his nieces, Jason immediately agreed. Of course Robert had to go.

That it left the shipment division's seat empty in the control meeting that night didn't occur to him until Nan added, "And I'll send the new guy, he's got a good head on his shoulders."

"New guy, Nan what-" and then she'd hung up. Jason glared at his phone, a green tinge to his vision. Then he called Alex.

"Who's the new guy in shipment?" he demanded.

"Tomas Joyas," Alex said promptly. "Paperwork has an acute mark, but Nan always says it like Thomas, so I'm not actually sure."

Jason sighed. "And where did he come from?" he demanded. A 'new guy' solid enough to be sent to the control meeting should definitely been vetted.

"Bludhaven," Alex answered.

Jason stared at the wall, fighting the green. "Alex," he said very tightly. The vocoder made it scrape like gravel.

"He moved to Gotham six weeks ago after his apartment complex got blown up, and he came to the Bowery because it was all he could afford. He signed on with Nan a month ago after she and Robert had a public argument about logistics in a coffee shop, and he offered a suggestion. His background check came back clean-ish, he worked odd jobs for the gangs in 'Haven, but never long term, and his employment history is scattered but continuous, things like barista, substitute teacher, shop clerk."

"He passed a school background?" Jason asked, startled enough that his color vision started to return.

"In Bludhaven," Alex agreed. Which was fair.

"All right," Jason said.

"Nan says he's smart, and he keeps his head down and his nose clean. He likes people but he minds his business."

Alex was the Red Hood Gang's answer to Human Resources, and—despite being perfectly willing to string Jason along for a while—always knew what Jason wanted to know. Hood was entirely unable to describe Alex to anyone who asked, except perhaps omnipotent eldritch entity.

"Yeah, all right," he grumbled. "Tell me, next time," he added sharply.

"Yeah, boss," Alex said, and then hung up.

Jason scowled at his phone. New guy, he grumbled to himself.

Jason watched his team assemble from the walkway on the mezzanine, elbows propped on the railing. They knew he was there, lurking, but they cheerfully ignored him.

Alex settled at the seat to the right of the head of the table, and Turk took his spot on the left. Gladys sat serenely, knitting, at the foot of the table. Ross and Jenkins came in together, bickering as always, and settled on either side of her.

The New Guy shuffled in a moment later, head down, shoulders rounded.

Jason watched him greet the others, watched his body and the tilt of his head, instead of listening to the words. He was average height, built stocky, but his limbs were narrow, like he was thin, or possibly out of shape. His clothes were clean and neat, but worn and didn't fit him well. His demeanor was open, hesitant, a little hopeful. Jason resolved to give him a chance.

"Settle a bet!" Ross demanded.

"Okay?" New Guy said carefully. His voice was husky, like it was overtaxed, or he'd breathed smoke.

"Tomás or Thomas?" Jenkins inquired.

"Oh," New Guy said, ducking his head like he was embarrassed. "TJ, actually."

Jason smirked. That was a beautiful evasion, and it would keep them bickering about his legal name for months, keep them coming back to him. Then he started down the stairs.

All eyes snapped up to him, and Jason felt his step stutter.

TJ's face, upturned and lit by the overheads, was dangerously thin, suggesting the narrowness of his limbs was also weight loss. His cheekbones were blade-sharp, and his eyes were hollow. He was paler than he ought to be, and his mouth was bitten.

And Jason would know those blue eyes anywhere in the world, even if the face they were set in looked sickly different.

"Teej," he rumbled through the vocoder to cover his stutter. What the fuck was Dick Grayson doing in his headquarters? And what the fuck was wrong with him? Green crept along the edges of his vision.

"Hey Boss," TJ said quietly. He looked like shit, Jason thought uncharitably. It cleared the green entirely from Jason's eyes.

"Welcome aboard," he said, instead of anything else, and ran the meeting like he didn't know anything.

Nightwing hadn't been seen in Bludhaven in six weeks. Nightwing hadn't been seen in Gotham in months. Six weeks ago, Roland Desmond had burned down Haly's Circus, and blown up an apartment complex—which seemed insane if you didn't know Dick Grayson was Nightwing—and then captured Nightwing, and died in his own building at the hands of a wanna-be vigilante chick who called herself Tarantula. No one had seen Nightwing since.

Jason gritted his teeth and tapped the backdoor into the Bat Computer, which he tried not to use, because Oracle would catch him eventually, if he used it to often.

Batman didn't know where Nightwing was either, and he and his cuckoo bird were all but frantic with it.

And Tomas Joyas had been working for the Red Hood Gang, as a junior shipment coordinator, for a little more than a month. Everyone Jason talked to, as Hood and as J—the scrappy message boy Hood often sent, because if he had to still look like a teenager under the Hood he might as well make use of it—liked him.

It was the working girls who gave him the clue.

"Oh, TJ?" Sharlene said, sipping the coffee J had brought her. "He's a sweetie."

"Yeah?" J asked. "Boss was wondering where he came from."

Sharlene scowled at him. "You tell Hood to leave that boy alone. He's had enough trouble!"

"Yeah?" J asked. "Maybe knowing what'll make Boss back off?" he offered diffidently.

Sharlene snorted. "Apartment blown up by a madman not enough?" she said irritably. "He got hurt in the explosion," she said after a minute. "And," her jaw worked.

"What?" J pushed. "If it'll get Boss to back off," he urged.

"I overheard him talking to Cherie," Sharlene said slowly. "She had a. Bad night."

J growled, low in his throat. Without the vocoder it was a significantly less intimidating sound, but it still got the point across.

"Hush," Sharlene said, patting his head like he was some kind of yappy purse dog. "The boys handled it, but she had a bad scare. He was being comforting, but he said." She stopped again.

J tried not to fidget in impatience. Sharlene had been working this corner when Jason was still on the streets. She looked at him sometimes like she knew him, but she'd never said anything. And she would tell any story at her pace, or not at all.

"He said, 'I told her to stop too, and she didn't.' and he just looked so broken, hun." Sharlene stroked J's hair, like she could comfort TJ through the touch to Jason's head.

J felt his whole body stutter. Someone had- a woman, he thought fiercely. A woman, who'd had him in her power, who hadn't stopped when he said no. Tarantula, Jason thought, and knew he was right. His jaw clenched.

"Oh, hun," Sharlene said, stroking his hair again, ruffling the white forelock. "You can't save the world, honey."

"I can try," J said, and said, "Thank you," before he ran off, green crawling across his vision. Tarantula was going to fucking die.

Tarantula was already dead. She'd died in prison three weeks ago, and nothing Jason could dig up said how. He hoped it had hurt.

He stared at the wall, thinking it through. Blockbuster had burned down Dick Grayson's life. He'd captured Nightwing, and probably hurt him. Tarantula had, what? Come to his rescue? and killed Blockbuster. And she'd raped Dick. And Dick had left Bludhaven, built a cover, and moved into Crime Alley. Then he'd joined the Red Hood Gang. On accident, by all appearances.

Jason dragged his laptop closer again.

TJ Joyas lived in The Blocks, which was a shitty, run-down apartment complex owned by the Gang, subsidized heavily, mostly for families of the higher-ranked members. The elevator hadn't worked in years, and no one would come to the Alley to service it, and only one of the washers on the ground floor still worked.

TJ lived in the corner unit by the stairs, which on every floor was a one-bedroom studio, with a kitchenette rather than a kitchen, and a shower stall the size of a postage stamp. He lived on the top floor. His bank statements suggested that even with the gang subsidy, he wouldn't be able to afford that shitty studio for many more months, unless his employment situation changed significantly.

Shipping was the least lucrative branch of the Red Hood Gang's activities, after all, and TJ was nominally just a clerk.

Jason ground his teeth. Why hadn't he gone home? What the fuck had B done now?

His tap on the Bats' comms—recorded, automatically transcribed, and searched for keywords (Dick's codename, his given name, his society cover, bird or birds, Bludhaven)—suggested the Bats still hadn't found their wayward bird, and were, if it was possible, getting even more frantic about it.

Well Jason certainly wasn't going to tell them, although the tight grief in Babs' voice did make him flinch.

Instead, he put on the Hood and headed down to the shipping warehouse. They were pure chaos, loaders moving frantically, adjusting pallets and moving goods. Nan was shouting orders, and pointing furiously.

TJ stood at Nan's elbow with a clipboard. Every few sentences, Nan turned and asked him a question, and TJ answered quietly, sometimes consulting his clipboard and sometimes not, setting off another round of orders from Nan.

Once the driver left with his pallets in the back of his truck, Hood dropped out of the rafters to land beside his organizers. "Are you holding a map of our entire delivery schedule in your head?" he asked TJ.

"Uh," TJ stuttered.

Nan startled hard and then spent a few minutes swearing at him for "just appearing, Christ Almighty, gonna put a bell on you, boy!"

"Just, just two routes?" TJ said carefully. "One of the drivers called out, so we were combining that route into two others."

"So, three routes," Hood said.

"Uh," TJ said again. Then he grinned sort of bashfully, and Jason remembered abruptly that Dick Grayson was fucking beautiful and Jason had been half in love with him since he was twelve. "Yeah, three."

Hood tilted towards Nan. "Useful," he drawled, letting the vocoder crackle around his approval.

Nan flashed yellowing teeth. "That he is."

TJ actually blushed under the praise. Hood felt something kick under his ribs. "At least I can be that," TJ muttered towards the ground.

Hood scoffed. "At least that," he agreed. He'd had to learn to make the vocoder carry emphasis right, but TJ seemed to get that Hood meant he was more than just useful.

"Thanks, Boss," TJ said quietly.

"Why'd you join?" Hood asked him abruptly.

TJ froze.

Hood tilted his head, letting his shoulders drop, letting his body say, curious, and safe and not a test for him. Dick had always read bodies better than words.

"Needed work," TJ said softly. "Didn't know, at first, it was yours."

"Not looking to join a criminal empire?" Hood asked dryly.

"There were plenty in Haven, if I'd wanted," TJ said, something sparking in his pretty blues, something Hood hadn't seen yet from his newest cabinet member. "No, criminal undertaking has never been my thing."

Hood huffed, and the vocoder turned the laugh into a crackle.

TJ seemed to be able to tell though. His grin spread, and he offered, "I wanted to help people, and Nan's people seemed to need help."

"That we did," Nan grumbled. "Robert's good at the paperwork, but he doesn't see it like you do."

Hood nodded. "And now that you know?" he wondered. How was Nightwing adjusting to working for a crime lord?

"You're helping people," TJ said softly, chin dropping away again, eyes flitting away.

"I'm trying," Hood agreed lowly, and as he left the warehouse, the green had never felt so far away.

At the next control meeting, Hood ruffled TJ's hair as he circled the table before going to his seat.

TJ's shy grin and sparkling eyes were reward enough, though Hood noticed the circles still under his eyes, his cheekbones still sharp enough to cut glass. "Hey Boss," TJ said softly.

"Teej," Hood replied, a low rumble behind the vocoder. Jason tried not to let himself worry about him; Golden Boy could take of himself, surely.

Red Hood's cabinet was comprised of three men sharp enough and stubborn enough to live and run and thrive in Gotham's underworld for more than fifty years, a being of indeterminate age and gender who regularly kicked Hood's ass at aerobic challenges, a woman old enough to be Hood's grandmother, and, now, twenty-six year old TJ. And not one of them knew the infamous Red Hood was just nineteen.

"Now," Hood said, taking his seat at the head of the table, "What's the news?"

"Mask again," Turk, security, grumbled. "Report's in your email."

"I'll meet with you about it in the morning," Hood promised.

Turk gave him a thumbs up.

Alex, information broker and human resources, eldritch entity, waved serenely. "Weekly Bat-Report is in your email, nothing to write home about, and Nan says we need more drivers."

"Or better ones," TJ said, to cover the way he'd flinched at the phrase 'bat-report.'

"Or better ones," Alex agreed, "But no one's done anything worth firing over."

TJ nodded.

Hood shrugged. "Then hire more drivers."

"Aye Boss," Alex agreed.

Gladys, the working girls, didn't look away from her knitting. "Small altercation with some idiots four nights ago, but your boys handled it quickly and easily, and we haven't had any issues since."

Hood nodded. "Thanks, Gladys," he said.

Ross, drug control and mitigation, shrugged when Hood's lenses settled on him. "Been quiet," he reported. "Gordon switched the beat cop patrols, so that asshat who's been up Ernie's grill isn't around any more, and Wayne Foundation got wind of the safe injection site we set up, and want to throw some money our way. Donnie's writing the grant up official-like."

Hood nodded; it would be good to have help with the site, and it was exactly what the Wayne Foundation was for. Jason's gut squirmed to have anything with the Wayne name so near his plans, but he wouldn't be so much of a fool to turn down money and help. "Keep me posted," he ordered, and Ross saluted sloppily.

Jenkins, community outreach, sawed a hand. "School's starting up," he said.

Hood sighed.

Jenkins nodded. "Backpack drive is going, book collection is handled, I've got the teacher's lists spread around." His hands spread in a helpless gesture. "Problem is, nobody's got money."

This was the ongoing problem of Crime Alley and The Bowery. Everyone needed money to start making money, but no one had any money, so small businesses failed and stores moved out and people turned back to crime.

"I had an idea about that," TJ said quietly. He tensed like he wanted to hunch when they all turned to look at him at once, but he kept his chin up, and his eyes sparked with an old, familiar determination.

"Go on," Hood ordered.

"We need to start a community center," TJ said.

"A what now?" Jenkins asked.

TJ sketched the shape of a building with his hands. "A community center. Where the kids go to get homework help and people can take their broken kitchen appliances, because Al down the street can fix them, and Sheila on the corner knows how to fix clothes, and she needs childcare, and Mary wants to become a teacher so she's looking for practice with kids, and," he broke off, seeming to wilt under the weight of all their gazes.

"People who need help can ask, and people who have skills can advertise," Gladys said, as always, still knitting.

TJ nodded. "And," he offered, like Hood might still need convincing, "As we find people with skills, we can match kids with them, and kids get internships and job skills, and the trades don't get lost."

Ross added cheerfully, "And if we own the building, it can never get closed."

"Hm," Hood said, trusting TJ to hear his interest. "It's a good idea. Do you have time to write me a proposal?"

TJ scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "I might have… already done that," he admitted sheepishly.

Hood huffed, and watched TJ brighten at the crackle of the vocoder again. "Send it over," he ordered.

"Yeah, Boss," TJ said warmly.

Hood steered the meeting onwards, and tried not to feel TJ's warmth in the middle of his chest.

"Hood," B said.

Hood was on his nightly border patrol of the edges of his territory. He snarled softly.

Batman stood on the opposite roof, just exactly outside Hood's territory. He'd been waiting, like an asshole. "Looking to trade intel," he said.

Hood scoffed. "What could you possibly have for me, Old Man?" he sneered.

Batman held up a flashdrive. "Black Mask. Robin cloned his computer while Mask and I were having it out."

Hood was slightly tempted. Mask had been annoying as hell lately. Which was the opposite of the point. He was supposed to be annoying Mask. "What do you want?" he snapped.

"Nightwing," B said, and he was trying so hard to be the flat and unreadable wall of The Bat, but Jason knew him better than that, knew the cracks and the flaws, could see B cracking down the center the longer Golden Boy was missing.

He laughed and knew the vocoder made it a terrible sound. "Lose a bird, B?" he sneered. "Gonna run out if you keep on like this."

B twitched. "If you see him," Batman pushed.

"You want me to bring your wayward bird home?" Hood said, still laughing. "God you must be desperate."

"Hood," B said softly. "Please."

Hood wasn't laughing anymore. "What," he snapped. "Don't want to bury another one?"

B flinched this time, clear and visible, more tell than he'd ever had.

"Asked the Joker?" Hood demanded. "You know, if that fucker were dead, you might not have so much of a problem."

"Hood," B snarled.

Hood laughed again, short and sharp. "Yeah all right," he said finally. "I'll keep my eyes peeled for your grounded bird."

B froze in the middle of throwing the flashdrive. "What makes you think he's grounded?" he growled.

Hood scoffed as he reached to catch the badly flung drive. "Nothing's kept Wing down since he was a kid. Zucco couldn't, you couldn't, Blockbuster couldn't," Hood said, more serious than he'd been all conversation. "You think he'd stay down now except that something's keeping him down?"

Then Hood pivoted on the rooftop, darted across the span, and vanished into the darkness as B called tightly, "Hood!"

Hood finished his patrol in a sea of green, and when he was done he circled around to the shipping warehouse. He perched in the rafters, watching Nan and TJ orchestrate their little kingdom until he could see colors again, and his breathing had steadied.

Hood had never intended to take over the logistics and supply chain of the corner stores in the Bowery. It was only that the previous owner of Dodson's Distributing had been an abusive piece of shit, and once he was in jail with three consecutive life sentences (and a shattered pelvis), someone had to keep the EZ Marts in snacks, cheap beer, and coffee.

And well, it was dead useful for the Red Hood Gang to have one legitimate business to run money through.

TJ tucked his pen behind his ear as Nan waved off the last of the loaders, the night's work complete. Then he looked up at the rafters, his head tilted, till he found Hood in the gloom. He smiled.

The last of the green bled away. Hood dropped out of the rafters to land on the catwalk.

Nan punched his shoulder without looking, barely a love tap.

TJ's smile spread into a grin. "Hey Boss," he said.

"Nan, Teej," Hood agreed. "Everything well here?"

Nan scoffed. "What do you need?" she demanded.

Hood let his body say offended for him, though he was smiling under the Hood. "Now is that any way to greet your boss?" he drawled.

"When it stops being true," Nan grumbled.

"No," Hood said, more gently. "I don't need anything." Then, to excuse this strange lapse, he added, "Had a bit of a vermin infestation tonight. Wanted to make sure all was fine."

"Vermin?" TJ asked quietly. "Everything okay?"

Hood gestured dismissively. "I can handle a bat or two," he answered.

TJ's face shifted immediately to worry. "You're okay?" he asked again.

Hood ruffled his hair again. "Nothing to worry your pretty little head," he drawled.

TJ smiled again. "Batman scares the fuck out of me," he said cheerfully, his blue blue blue eyes a little shadowed. "We don't have that kind of crazy in Blud."

"You have your own bird," Nan disagreed. "Isn't he just as crazy?"

"Nightwing's different," TJ said immediately, and Hood felt himself grin under his Hood. "He's just a guy. Not a bat."

"Boss called him an overhyped furry once," Nan told TJ.

TJ snorted a laugh, and Hood felt the last of the tension ease in his shoulders and chest. TJ was okay; TJ was safe.

That night Jason lay in bed and wondered when TJ had slipped under his ribcage, settled into his instincts. When he'd become one of his, one of the people Hood would burn even the Plan down to keep safe. Dick Grayson, ladies and gentlemen, he thought ruefully.

The community center had been a good idea. And once the folks of the Alley realized that it was Hood's, that there were always a handful of Turk's people floating about to keep the peace, they used it.

God, they used it. Help exchanges, skill training, childcare, a little free library that quickly turned into a big free library, homework help, literacy training, another safe injection site.

It was good.

Which of course meant that Mask was going to be an asshole about it.

J had been running errands for himself for once, and had the thought to swing by the center to check on the afterschool programs. It had nothing to do with TJ volunteering his time for math tutoring, of course.

He was two blocks away, idling his bike at a traffic light, when he heard the crashing and shouting.

A switch turned his black bike helmet into the Red Hood, and a zipped jacket hid the fact that all he had on under his leathers was a white t-shirt instead of Hood's grey body armor, and he ran the light unrepentantly.

There was a truck buried nose-first in the glass front of the community center, and there was a lot of running and screaming and shouting.

Chen, on the ground with his leg at a bad angle, but thoroughly wrecking the shit of the goon he was wrestling, lifted his head to shout, "Boss, the kids!"

Green washed Hood's vision, and for a little while there was nothing but clean, cool violence.

When his vision cleared, Hood was standing in a circle of downed goons in the back corner of the community center, where the kids always set up for after school tutoring. The big library shelf they'd scavenged from the derelict Bowery Library was toppled against the wall, and the heavy wooden homework table was flipped on its edge to cover the triangle gap between the shelf and the wall.

One of the older kids was backed into the narrow space between the table and the shelf, holding the littler kids behind him, his face set in a fierce snarl.

TJ was standing just in front, in his own circle of groaning, bloody goons. He had the decorative sword some enterprising teenager had hung on the wall loose in his hand.

Hood had a flash of a memory of the fight, of pausing just a moment to watch TJ dance with a sword in his hand. Those weren't Bat moves; they weren't even League of Assassin moves, but Hood didn't have time to wonder where TJ learned to fight with a sword, because the three bloody gunshot wounds on TJ's body were finally winning the fight to bring the other man to the ground.

Hood got his hands under TJ's arms and managed to turn the fall to a slide, drawing TJ into him and easing him down in his lap.

"Boss?" Turk asked.

"Get me a driver," Hood answered, the grim crackle of the vocoder echoing his mood. "We're going to Doc's."

Doc Thompkins took two bullets out of TJ's chest, and stitched closed those holes and the two more from the through-and-through on TJ's thigh, ignoring Hood entirely the whole time, except to issue him orders.

After, she washed her hands and looked at Hood.

Hood, standing at TJ's bedside and brushing his dark bangs off his face, tilted the lenses of the Hood politely her direction. "Doc," he said softly.

"Hood," Doc said, mouth a grim line. "I don't suppose you're interested in hearing about the dangers of your lifestyle." Then she turned to really look at her patient, and he saw her freeze.

TJ hadn't put on much weight. His face was still gaunt, eyes sunken, but his pallor was better, and he was getting there. Getting there enough, probably, to start being concerningly recognizable, even in the slums of Gotham.

"Doc," Hood said tightly, "I know-" he broke off, uncertain what to say. "I know," he said finally.

Her eyes snapped to him.

Hood brushed back TJ's bangs again. "This is TJ," Hood said deliberately. "And he's been with me for three months."

He watched her blink, watched her do the math in her head.

"Today notwithstanding, he's been in good health and good spirits. He's a good soldier," he added pointedly.

Doc Thompkins didn't flinch. Maybe she hadn't seen his macabre memorial.

Hood stroked TJ's hair again. "He's got a cell phone," he said. "He's got a good memory. If he- if there were people he wanted to know, he could tell them."

Doc Thompkins stared at Hood evenly for a long moment. "And you know," she asked. "Who he is?"

Hood brushed a gloved hand across TJ's cheekbone. "Like anyone could forget those baby blues," he said wryly. "And I'm asking you to do him the favor of not telling B."

"You know who he is," Doc said tightly.

"I know what B stands for in and out of the mask," He agreed, and he tipped his head down, tilting the lenses away. "And I'm asking, Doc."

"Red Hood is not really known for asking," Doc Thompkins said slowly. She was looking at TJ's face again. Then her mouth firmed, decision made.

Time would tell which way she would fall, Hood thought.

"He's out of the woods. In terms of being shot in the chest, he was astoundingly lucky," she added. "He's going to need help with everything, and he's going to need regular dressing changes, and he's going to need rest and fluids and several different medications."

"He'll stay with me," Hood said, ignoring the way the thought of TJ staying with anyone else, anyone else touching and helping and soothing TJ, made him want to snarl. And he stood and let Leslie Thompkins give him a first aid lesson he could've given in his sleep.

Then he very carefully picked up TJ and carried him back out to the waiting car, stomach turning over again at how much TJ did not weigh.

Alex had sent the report over while TJ had been in surgery. The kids were all unharmed, and relatively untraumatized—for Alley kids—because of the speed at which TJ had flipped the furniture. No one was dead—including any of Mask's men, which surprised Jason only for how little of the fight he remembered—and their insurance adjuster had already come to look at the glass.

That was the one advantage of using an insurance company from The Bowery; Act of Costumed Villains was a rocker plan the shell company who owned the community center had gone all in for. Jake from State Farm could never.

TJ was installed in Jason's bed, because it was the only one in the apartment, and Jason read reports on his laptop while the soup simmered.

"Boss?" TJ rasped.

"Hey Teej," Hood said. "How're you feeling?"

"Shot," TJ said after a moment. "Why'm I shot?"

"You'd have to ask Black Mask," Hood replied.

TJ startled, and then moaned when that hurt even through the very good painkillers. "Kids?" he slurred once he'd gotten the flinch reflex under control.

"Safe as houses, thanks to you," Hood promised. "You did good, Teej."

Drugged to the gills, TJ couldn't hide the way he flushed with the praise. "Thanks Boss," he rasped.

Hood ruffled his hair gently. "Think you can eat? There's soup soon."

TJ groaned, obviously taking stock of his body. "Maybe?" he asked.

"Rest," Hood said, petting his hair again, not at all for the way TJ leaned into the touch like a cat. "I'll wake you again when the soup's done."

TJ groaned again, more for drama than discomfort, and then settled back into the bedding.

Jason watched him doze, soothing the beast in his chest by keeping guard, and silently promising that Mask would pay.

In the small hours of the morning, TJ moaned softly, glassy blue eyes fluttering. His pupils, when Jason leaned over to check on him, were blown wide.

"J'son?" Dick slurred softly.

Jason froze. He'd taken off the Hood as the minutes ticked by and his neck creaked, but he still had his domino on, in case one of his people barged in to update him or check on TJ. "Hey Dickie," he said hoarsely, cursing himself silently.

Dick's eyes glimmered with tears. He was smiling, but the way his lower lip trembled made the expression gut-wrenching. "Wish y'coulda grown s'big," he muttered, blindly flailing with one hand for Jason's shoulder.

Jason caught his hand and pressed it to his chest, cupping Dick's cheek tenderly. "Go back to sleep, Dickiebird," he murmured. Hopefully he wouldn't remember this.

Dick's eyes closed, and the tears spilled over, a waterfall down gaunt cheekbones. Jason thumbed them away, and new ones took their place.

"S'rry, Jayb'rd," Dick muttered. "S'rry I wasn'ere t'elp. So sorry," he managed.

"Shh," Jason whispered, brushing a kiss to Dick's forehead. "Go back to sleep," he murmured again.

Dick slurred, "S'rry," again, and then obeyed.

Jason put the Hood back on, and sat vigil beside him, something winding around his heart.

Sipping tea, propped carefully in pillows and looking a little bit like a wounded puppy, TJ stared mournfully up at him. "Boss, I can't take your bed," he pleaded. It was mid-afternoon, and TJ had been sleeping in Hood's bed for the better part of thirty hours, on and off. But Doc's instructions had finally eased the painkillers back enough that he could be coherent for roughly ten minutes at a time, and he'd finally asked where he was.

"Shaddup," Hood replied. "You're staying where I can keep an eye on you."

"But put me on the sofa, at least," TJ retorted. "Boss!"

"You've been shot, Teej," Hood insisted. "You're not sleeping on the damn sofa."

"At least blindfold me," TJ countered.

"What?" Hood said, startled.

"Boss, it's your home," TJ said earnestly, puppy eyes in full force. "You shouldn't have to wear the Hood all the time in your own home! I'm not doing anything! I can't walk, you have to hand me everything anyway, I don't need my eyes!"

Hood stared at the man in his bed. How had he kept his kindness after everything the world had done to him?

"Come on, Boss, please?" TJ urged.

"You don't have to call me boss all the time," Hood said, instead of answering.

"Sure Boss," TJ answered. "Come on, think about it?"

Hood sighed. Stubborn as all hell, of course. He'd never in his life met anyone as stubborn as Dick Grayson. "I will think about it," he conceded with ill grace. "Eat your damn soup."

TJ ate his soup, a little smile pulling on the edge of his mouth.

Hood hoped that would be the end of it, so of course when he came home a few days later from a very truncated version of his rounds, TJ was propped up in bed, letting Cherie, who'd come to watch him in Hood's absence, ply him with ice cream with a blindfold over his eyes.

He was rarely so grateful to the Hood covering his face as when he stopped in the doorway to close his eyes and breathe.

Still, despite the blindfold and his pallor, TJ perked up. "Boss?" he asked.

Hood could smile, because Cherie couldn't see. "Hey Teej. Cherie," he added.

"Hey Boss," Cherie said, smiling. "I'll get on out of your hair, then."

"Thanks," Hood said. "I'll make sure you get compensated for your time."

"Oh it was no trouble," Cherie insisted. "TJ's a good'un." She kissed TJ's cheek, unaware of Hood behind her trying not to snarl, and let herself out while Hood let himself fuss and cluck over the state of TJ's bedding and person. She put the bowl in the sink on the way, which at least gave Hood something to use to combat the fierce annoyance in his chest.

TJ was smiling, face tipping unerringly in Hood's direction. "I promise I can't see a thing," he said warmly, entirely unaware of the coil of heat he'd set off in Hood's belly. "You gonna take off the Hood?"

"Maybe," Hood drawled, making the vocoder crack harder than usual on the word.

TJ laughed a soft huff of sound, careful of his injured torso.

Hood took off the helmet, setting it in its usual place and cracking his neck. It really was a relief. It wasn't intended to be worn for two days straight, though sometimes needs must. "You hungry?" he asked, already turning for the kitchen.

"Cherie got me some cereal and the ice cream," TJ said. "I'm good."

Hood scoffed. "That sugary crap won't help you heal," he insisted. "Just a sandwich?" he offered.

TJ huffed. "Ah yes, the refrain of the people who know me," he muttered. "Half?" he said. "I'm not- I don't want to get sick."

Hood hummed.

"You sound younger than I thought," TJ said when Hood returned with two sandwiches, one cut neatly in half. He took a careful bite when Hood arranged his hands on the bread slices.

Hood put an inelegantly huge bite of the other half in his own mouth to avoid answering for a moment. Once he had swallowed, he had decided to admit, "It's part of why I never take off the Hood. Hard to be taken seriously with a baby face like mine."

"Will you tell me how old you are?" TJ asked hopefully.

"Younger than you," Hood said flatly. "That's all you're getting." He finished his half of the sandwich and started in on the second.

"Really?" TJ said, sounding startled. Then he laughed, still that careful little huff instead of his true, beautiful laugh. Hood was going to ruin Black Mask for this. "Aw, man, and here I was really enjoying being the baby of the group!"

"Still can," Hood said flatly after swallowing a mouthful of bread. "Because if you tell the others I'll kill you."

"Is that the voice you use to make the vocoder crackle?" TJ asked instead of being properly afraid.

Hood glowered at him, fighting his smile. "Yes," he said after a moment.

TJ laughed, then winced, and then huffed, and then said, "Ow," and then was curling around the scarier of the two shots, the one between his lower ribs and his hip. "Ow, ow, ow," he muttered, laughing and fighting it.

Hood leaned forward to take his weight so he could curl up without putting pressure on his bad leg. "Gently," he murmured.

TJ leaned into him with a shiver.

Touch-starved, Jason thought sadly, and rubbed TJ's back. He remembered octopus hugs and hair ruffles, remembered Titans-piles in the tower, remembered a bird constantly in everyone's space and orbit, and wondered when the last time he saw TJ touch anyone was. "Time for another painkiller," Hood murmured, and carefully disengaged to fetch one.

TJ made a low, mournful sound, which made Hood hurry.

They wound up with Hood's back against the headboard, TJ curled so carefully into his chest. "Boss," TJ said softly on a breath.

"Yeah Teej?" Hood rumbled.

"Don't- let go?" he asked softly, vulnerable and trusting and expecting to be unceremoniously dumped out of Hood's lap.

Hood kissed his forehead. "I gotcha Teej," he promised quietly as the older man fell asleep.

Hood couldn't neglect his territory, no matter how much he wanted to den down like a beast and defend his wounded pack member, and there were plenty of people in the various branches of the Red Hood Gang who would happily spend a few hours sitting at TJ's bedside, chatting, fetching, helping him to the bathroom, and making him eat. There were even enough who Hood didn't mind letting into his space to keep shifts.

So Hood continued to do his rounds, checking on his people, the busy alleys, and doing at least one nightly loop of the borders.

"Hood," Robin called, perched on the gargoyle on the bank that marked the corner where his territory shifted into Burnley.

Hood's gun was pointed at his face before Hood's boots even hit the rooftop across the alley. He was waiting for the haze of green to descend, as it had every time he'd laid eyes on the newest Robin.

Robin put his hands up. "Please," he blurted.

Hood didn't shoot him, waiting.

"Just," the cuckoo bird pleaded, "Can you tell me if Nightwing is all right?"

The vocoder turned Hood's noise of shock into a sharp crackle, and Robin appeared to take it as a scoff.

"Look, I know he's currently living under the identity Tomas Joyas, and he works for you," Robin said urgently. "And I know he got shot last week by Black Mask's flunkies. Please is he okay?"

Some far distant part of Hood's brain was noticing that Little Timmy had pronounced the acute a in Tomas; mark another one in Ross' column of the bet. The rest of him was still waiting for the green. "Did it cross your mind you might out him to me?" Hood asked the kid, idly curious.

The kid startled slightly. "No," he said honestly. "You know who I am. You know who B is," he added. "You're too smart not to recognize him too."

"Clever bird," Hood said, vocoder dripping with menace. It twigged something, but Hood held the memory back for consideration at a later date.

"Is he okay?" Robin asked again, voice small and desperate. "I won't tell B," he added, as if he hoped this might be the thing that got him the intel.

Hood stared at him, watching Robin restrain himself from fidgeting by sheer force of will. The green was nowhere to be found, and Hood had the startling realization he hadn't seen a hint of green in his vision since TJ went down.

The kid had guts. Hood's gun was still pointed levelly at his face.

Hood threw him a bone. "I took him to Doc Thompkins," he said. "He'll be all right."

"Thank you," Robin breathed. "I really won't tell B," he added, and then he was spinning away, disappearing into the shadows.

Hood fired the gun, letting the bullet zip past the kid's ear as he reached the far edge of the roof. Robin yelped, flinched, and vanished into the shadows.

Hood retreated to the water tower on the top of the community center to think. Clever bird, he thought, searching through the green mists of his swiss-cheese memory for the importance of that phrase.

Eventually, he found, in the depths of his psyche, a broken memory of a road-runner t-shirt and a hopeful, hesitant Dick Grayson. "The suit is already yours," Dick had said carefully. "But have my blessing with it this time," and he'd given Jason the shirt with a grin.

"Why road-runner?" Jason had asked, glaring at it.

"He's a clever bird," Dick had replied.

"Why do I need your blessing?" Jason had grumbled, not quite ready to forgive Dick's crushing rejection almost two years prior.

Dick had taken Jason to his rarely-slept-in bedroom, and parked Jason in front of an old circus poster. Of course Jason had known who the Flying Graysons were, but to his chagrin, he'd never noticed how very… similar their costumes were to Robin's armor.

"I was born on the first of spring," Dick had said. Again, a fact Jason was aware of distantly but had never been relevant; Dick had spent every birthday since Jason had come to the Manor in New York with the Titans, to Bruce and Alfred's well-hidden sorrow. "And my mother called me her little robin."

Jason had felt the world screech to a halt in his brain. Bruce had- Bruce had fired Dick from his own goddamn name and then given it to Jason without permission?

But Dick had pulled him into a half-hug and insisted he was thrilled Jason was taking on his legacy.

That had been the moment things had changed between him and Dick, Jason remembered abruptly. That had been the moment they'd almost become friends.

And then Dick had gone to space.

And then Jason had gone to Ethiopia. And then, and then, and then.

And then, Jason had forgotten.

Hood leaned back against the water tower, glaring at the smog shielding the stars. Dick had trained the kid, it was there in the twist of his body as he flew. Timothy. Robin, he thought. Dick had given his blessing. Robin clearly cared about Dick, to come ask Hood, who'd threatened his life several times, if Big Bird were okay.

Dick had given Timothy their legacy. Maybe late, like he had with Jason, but Dick had obviously given his blessing.

Maybe Hood could give the kid a chance.

TJ bounced back astoundingly quickly for someone with three gunshot wounds. Hood wasn't particularly surprised, given what he knew of the older man's history, and the scars traced in silver across his body, which he'd spent first sponge baths and later careful showers trying and failing not to map.

Soon enough, Hood was returning to his apartment to find TJ on his laptop, papers spread across the blankets, phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, coordinating with Nan.

Soon enough, TJ was stumbling on fawn-legs from the bed to bathroom to kitchen, blindly, hands on the walls or Hood's shoulders, and then starting PT with the licensed, trained, and unable to afford to practice physical therapist mother of one of the kids he'd protected.

Soon enough, TJ was well enough to argue once again that Hood shouldn't be giving his bed up.

"Come on, I'm fine," TJ insisted, face blindly tracking Hood as Hood made dinner. "I could even go back to my place, except that you're a mother hen."

Hood didn't even try to stop his growl at the thought.

TJ grinned broadly. Living with Hood, eating Hood's food, had finally filled his face and body back out to his normal weight. "Let me sleep on the couch, Boss."

"And if you roll off in the night, you absurd creature?" Hood inquired. He'd been the one who'd had to untangle TJ from the sheets after a nightmare three nights ago, after all. "And land on your unhealed gunshot wounds," he added, since TJ routinely appeared to forget he was hurt.

"Oh I'm fine," TJ dismissed. "Boss, you need good rest! You've got an empire to run!"

Hood sighed. "And you're healing." He was healing really well, really, Alyson and Doc agreed, and the PT was bringing his old strength back, as well as his range of motion and stamina.

"Then share," TJ blurted.

"What?" Hood asked.

"Share," TJ said, looking like he regretted saying it but felt like he couldn't back down; Hood felt sick. "Bed's plenty big enough."

"TJ," Hood sighed.

"I'm not afraid of you," TJ said fiercely. "And I'm not- I'm embarrassed I said it out loud, and I'm afraid you're going to hate me for saying it, but I don't- I wouldn't regret sharing with you," he said, plowing past whatever Hood was trying to say in answer.

Which was good, because Hood had no idea what he was going to say in answer.

"And I'm worried about you," TJ continued, finger up like he was counting points, "Because you need sleep and what you do is dangerous, and if- if sharing with me gets you into bed I'll live with whatever mortifying fact about me you learn by doing it. Not like you haven't already learned pretty much every mortifying fact about me, these weeks." His jaw worked, cheeks crimson under the blindfold.

"Teej," Hood said softly, and TJ wilted like he'd suddenly run out of steam. For a moment, Hood stared at TJ, heart a fluttering creature in the cage of his ribs, and then he rallied. "And what if you learn something mortifying about me?" he asked, and if his voice wasn't quite as light as he would've liked, TJ's shy smile said he was trying to rally too.

"I'll take it to my grave, Boss," TJ promised. "If it'll get you a good night's sleep."

"All right, fine," Hood sighed. "You menace."

TJ's grin was real, and beautiful. "I've been called that before," he said fondly.

By Alfred, at least, although Jason would be unsurprised to learn others had said it too. He was a menace. To society, to sense, and certainly to Jason's composure.

"How's things with Mask?" TJ asked quietly, giving them both a reprieve from their feelings.

Hood groaned. "Fuck that guy," he grumbled.

TJ's laughter warmed him through.

Jason startled awake in the early hours of the morning. He was not entirely surprised to discover that Actual Human Octopus Dick Grayson had wound himself around Jason in his sleep, but he was a little surprised to discover he'd tangled himself around Dick right back. Dick fit perfectly against his chest, tucked under his chin.

Dick was having a nightmare. His shifting and whimpering had woken Jason.

"Shh," Jason rumbled, still more asleep than awake. "It's okay."

Dick flinched in his arms, inhaling sharply.

Jason, fading fast, murmured, "Go back to sleep, Pretty Bird, I've got you."

A single shudder rolled through Dick. "What did you call me?" he asked hoarsely.

"Pretty Bird," Jason repeated into Dick's hair, sleepily trying to soothe his bedmate. "Sokay," he murmured, nuzzling Dick gently. "I gotcha."

"You- you," Dick stuttered.

Jason woke up enough to realize what Dick was panicking about. "I've known all along, Pretty Bird," he promised softly. "You're all right," he soothed. "I've got you."

Dick shuddered once, and subsided. "You know?" he asked softly.

Jason hummed agreement. "Since you walked into that first control meeting," he agreed, shifting Dick in his arms so they were pressed closer together and he had a hand free to rub Dick's back slowly.

"How?" Dick asked.

"Think anyone can forget those baby blues, Pretty Bird?" Jason teased softly, stroking Dick's cheekbone under the blindfold.

"You know me," Dick gasped, tensing again. "You know-"

"Hush," Jason rumbled. "I know, and I talked Doc into keeping it quiet after she stitched you up. You're safe from me," he promised.

"Your vendetta against B," Dick pushed.

"Doesn't extend to you," Jason answered immediately. Dick hadn't even been on the planet! And the fact that this was a recent opinion could stay between Jason and God, thank you.

Dick went slowly limp in Jason's arms. "Boss," he said softly. It was, perhaps, worth noting that he'd never reached for the blindfold, through the whole interaction.

Jason nuzzled his hair again. "Go to sleep, Pretty Bird," he repeated, and Dick obeyed. Jason pressed a brief kiss to Dick's forehead, and then followed Dick back into sleep.

J was halfway between the community center and the shipping warehouse when the gas alarm started to sound. He swore viciously and managed to get off the road to dig his rebreather out of his saddlebag. The Hood was at the community center, in a supply drop on the roof. Guess this one was all J.

J did the same loop that Hood would have, moving through his territory with deliberate caution, checking in the with superintendents of all the apartment complexes the Red Hood Gang owned, subsidized, or just generally oversaw the management of (at gunpoint, as necessary). He handed out spare rebreathers to people he saw on the streets, and urged everyone to get inside.

The super of The Blocks expressed concern about her missing tenant, and J assured her he was safe.

"Haven't seen him in days," she said, frowning. Dick Grayson pretty much always had this effect on older women; they wanted to feed him, and they wanted to take care of him.

"Got shot in the community center dust up," J explained. "Boss took him to Doc, and he's been staying with Boss."

"But he's all right?" the matronly woman asked earnestly.

J nodded, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. "Will be," he promised.

He ended his loop at the community center, though he'd been nearly there when the alarms had started.

"J," Turk said easily as J slipped inside. The center's hvac had been updated when they'd bought it, and the shelter-in-place protocols were strong, so he didn't have his rebreather on.

J shucked his too. "Sir," he said.

"Boss send you?"

J nodded. "He's caught up in something, but he sent me on his rounds."

Turk's eyebrows waggled. "Something," he drawled.

J's head tilted. "Sir?"

"Nothing, kid," Turk said, ruffling his hair. "Boss is just awful close to TJ lately."

"He's living in his house," J said flatly.

Turk chuckled. "Nah, they were like that before. You seen 'em together?"

J shook his head, bewildered. "Boss?" he repeated. "And TJ?"

Turk just laughed at him, so J shook his head.

His phone buzzed in his jacket, and he glanced at the screen.

Alex. "PD thinks false alarm. All clear soon."

J grunted. Thinks? he replied.

"Arkham power flickered."

J felt his teeth clench. He fitted his rebreather and headed back towards his bike, needing to make sure.

In the alley beside the center, J went still, all the hair on his nape standing up. He slowly spun, panning through the alley for the threat.

"Good instincts, kid," someone said, and then there was a sting in his neck, and J felt the world fade.

J woke tied to a chair. He wished this were a less common occurrence.

"So," Black Mask said.

J dragged his eyes open and felt his mouth drag into an immediate snarl.

Black Mask was sitting in a chair across from him, kicked casually back on two legs, with his feet propped on J's fucking knee. "You are an immensely difficult man to talk to."

"You could put yourself on my calendar," J sneered. "How about half past never?"

"Now, is that any way to talk to someone with a job offer?"

"Die in a fire, shitstain," J growled. He considered his person: still wearing his jacket and boots, he'd be out of these bonds as soon as Mask looked away. Which wasn't looking likely, but it was something to hold on to.

"Jamison Howe," Mask said. "Father was a drunk, which has been suggested as the reason you're named after whiskey. Mother was a whore."

J snarled, despite this being a literal part of his cover story.

"Daddy wrapped his truck around a pole and Mommy got beaten to death," Mask continued. "On the streets at twelve. Now nineteen years old, only known actual runner for the Red Hood."

J lifted his chin. "What's it to you, asswipe?"

Mask removed his loafers from J's knee and sat forward. He stroked J's cheek. "Now, now," he cooed mockingly. "That's not nice."

J tried to bite him, and got slapped for his trouble.

"You're going to tell me what I can use for leverage over Hood."

J scoffed. "In your dreams."

Mask grinned, and a knife appeared in his hands. "I hoped you'd say that," he drawled, and he leaned in.

The thing about knives, J knew, is that a good knife, a sharp knife, didn't hurt proportionally to the damage it caused. So if Mask wanted it to hurt, he either had to do more damage than was sustainable or use a bad knife. And a dull knife was a scraping, grating pain J could deal with.

He stared a the ceiling and ignored Black Mask's low croon and the spill of blood on his face and chest. He was calculating times, when someone would wonder where Hood was, if Turk had noticed J being taken, if TJ had wondered why Hood hadn't come home.

Then he blinked at the ceiling. Then he started to laugh.

"What's funny?" Mask demanded.

"Seriously?" J asked. "A fucking skylight?"

Which shattered beautifully as the vigilante crashed through it, and Robin's boots landed perfectly on Mask's back. "Truly," Robin agreed as he stomped on Mask's head for good measure. "You'd think villains would stop putting skylights in their hideouts."

"What the hell," J muttered.

Robin produced a good knife and started cutting J free. There was a lot of shouting and several gunshots.

"Time to go," Robin announced, hauling J out of the chair and getting an arm around him.

J had been carried during a grapple before, but never by someone half his size. He held still rather than risk fucking up the kid's balance. On the roof he looked at the kid.

Robin looked back, face unreadable behind his domino. Gunshots sprayed up through the already shattered glass of the skylight. "Come on," Robin said, and handed him a spare grapple.

J followed for sheer curiosity.

Robin led him to a very familiar spot, a little alcove behind an air conditioner vent, on a department store in Robbinsville, which had been a Robin supply cache since before Jason had worn the mantle.

"You need stitches for some of those," Robin said. "I know you won't go to Doc, so will you let me do them?"

"What the fuck, kid?" J asked.

Robin flipped the whiteouts of his domino back, displaying sharp blue eyes. "I know you're Jason Todd," he said. His jaw worked. "And I know you're the Red Hood. And I know you won't let Dick help, or risk Leslie recognizing you."

J was floored. "Clever bird," he said again, softly.

"B doesn't know, but he suspects," Robin said. "Please, you're bleeding a lot."

"None of 'em are serious, kid," J said flatly.

"Still," Robin said. "Should be cleaned and stitched. Will you let me do it? Or at least tell me you'll let someone?"

"Why do you care?" J asked curiously.

To his surprise, color crawled across the kid's face. "You were my Robin," he whispered.

Pure surprise was the only reason J said, "Fine."

"How is Dick?" Robin asked quietly as he tended to Mask's sloppy work.

J, staring fixedly towards the sky with his jaw set to ignore both the kid's proximity and the sting of disinfectant, grunted. "Healing up good," he relented after a moment's silence where Robin continued to put neat stitches on his chest. "PT's going well."

"Thanks," Robin said quietly.

"It was never about you," something made J say.

Robin looked up at his face briefly, whiteouts still flipped out of the way, so the blue of his eyes, deeper than Dick's, was still visible. He looked young, and startled, and worried. "I know," he lied, and looked away again.

J sighed. "Robin's a legacy," he said grudgingly. "If Dickiebird thinks you're worthy of it, he's probably right."

Color crawled across Robin's face again. He swallowed several times, and still didn't end up answering.

To break the tension, J added, "B is still a dick, though."

Robin's mouth twitched.

J grinned. "I saw that, kid. You know I'm right."

Robin's mouth immediately firmed into an even line. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

J felt his own grin spreading. To distract himself, he started touching pockets, trying to see what Mask had taken. "No," he said slowly.

Robin looked up from his sutures. "What?" he asked. He sounded like he was really hoping this wasn't something terrible, but wasn't holding his breath, either.

J pulled his cellphone out of his breast pocket. "No," he said again, amazed.

Robin gaped at the phone. "Oh, Jesus, he didn't take your phone?"

J shook his head, grinning wildly.

"Man," Robin said, taking a moment to put his forehead against the back of his hand. "What an idiot." Then he resumed stitching.

J tucked his phone away and kept searching. "I don't think he took anything," he said after a moment, producing a stiletto and a set of lockpicks.

Robin groaned in disgust. "No way," he complained. Suddenly, the kid's head came up. "I'm fine," he said. Into his comms, J realized after a moment of confusion. "Mask gave me an opening and I took it."

The head tilt of a Robin rolling his eyes was unmistakable, even without the whiteout lenses still flipped up.

"Come on, his face was really funny, though." Robin's mouth moved, silently tracing the shape of mocking muttering. "I'm fine," he repeated. Their eyes caught, companionable exasperation passing between them.

J smirked.

Robin smiled. He tied off the last stitch, gestured vaguely with gauze, still apparently listening to B's lecture, and nodded when J waved him off.

J ruffled his hair and made his way to the edge of the roof. He tossed Robin a jaunty wave and headed back towards home, a little smile on his mouth, still using his borrowed grapple. Kid was all right.

There was shouting in his apartment when he got home, after swinging past the community center to get the Hood. He entered via the door, politely, like a normal person, and came face to face with TJ and Gladys in a vehement standoff.

"Sit down before you fall down!" Gladys ordered at a parade ground bellow.

"Hood might need help!" TJ retorted, less loud but more strident.

"Hood has a phone," Hood said dryly.

Both TJ and Gladys startled, swinging to look at him, and TJ nearly fell.

Hood caught TJ carefully by the underarms, trying to avoid the bullet holes, and then unrepentantly scooped him up to carry him to the couch. TJ squawked in objection, but subsided onto the couch with a grumble once placed.

"Thanks Gladys," Hood said, already heading for the kitchen to start a very late dinner. "Sorry for the delay."

"All okay?" she asked, propping a shoulder on the kitchen door.

"Mask took J," Hood said.

Gladys said, "Fuck him sideways with a rusty fork."

Hood grinned under the helmet. "I'll make the suggestion when I see him next," he agreed.

"J all right?" Gladys asked.

Hood nodded. "Said he might hole up for a few days, heal up, but I'll let him know you were asking."

"I'll let the girls know," Gladys answered. "They always look for him."

Hood patted her shoulder as he went past to the fridge. "Teej okay?" he asked.

"I can hear you!" TJ called.

"Got his meds on time, though he turned down dinner and nothing I said could convince him," Gladys said serenely.

"Gladys!" TJ whined.

Hood grunted. "I'll feed him."

"Mother hen," TJ complained.

Gladys smiled serenely. "I'll see myself out. Take care of our boy."

"I do my best," Hood said dryly.

"Bye Gladys, thank you! Sorry I'm a pain in the ass!" TJ called.

"Goodnight T," Gladys answered, and then the door closed.

"Hood has a phone, huh?" TJ said dryly, propping his shoulder on the same bit of doorframe Gladys had. "Hood could stand to answer it, now and then."

"You could park your ass before you eat dirt," Hood replied dryly. He'd answered Alex, Turk, and Jenkins (who'd seen J nabbed), to keep them apprised of the situation, but hadn't felt the need to reply to TJ's slew of worried texts, since he was on the way home.

TJ laughed and came into the kitchen to hike himself up on the counter. He was pale with pain and his arms shook when he braced to lift to the counter. "Who's J?" he asked.

"Message boy," Hood replied, because he'd worked hard to keep J from being anything else. "Mostly, I pay whatever Alley kid is closest 20 bucks if I need something run around, but sometimes I need someone trustworthy to do something delicate." He shrugged a shoulder, flipping the grilled cheese he was making.

TJ hummed. "And he's okay?"

Hood nodded. "Mask was trying to get him to talk, but didn't really have him very long."

TJ nodded.

"Why didn't you eat?" Hood asked.

TJ huffed, leaning back against the upper cabinets. "Painkillers always make me nauseous. Gladys just knows how to take no for an answer."

"Nauseated, actually," Hood said, shoving a plate of grilled cheese at him. "Nauseous means 'causing nausea.'" He prodded TJ with the plate when he didn't immediately take it. "Eat your sandwich," he added.

"This is what I'm talking about," TJ complained, but he took a bite. Then he made a startled noise and devoured the sandwich in five bites.

Hood held out his arms when the plate was empty. "Come here," he ordered.

TJ scoffed. "I can walk."

"You're exhausted," Hood retorted. "Come on." Taking TJ's weight pulled on the stitches Robin had put in, and TJ's weight gain meant this was no longer effortless, but still, Hood felt better when TJ was settled in bed again, fed and tucked in and smiling ruefully, safe where Hood could protect him.

Hood held out TJ's meds, and held fast while TJ groaned.

"Fine," TJ sighed, and took the pills with the water always at his bedside.

Hood made a mental note to get more water.

TJ pulled the blindfold off the bedside table. "You're gonna eat too, right?" he asked, looking up at Hood hopefully, blindfold held ready.

"My sandwich is on the counter," Hood agreed, and turned away as the cloth covered TJ's sweet blue eyes. He left the Hood on the dresser and went to get his sandwich, going through his nightly routine between bites.

When he finally stretched out beside TJ, he wasn't particularly surprised to have TJ curl immediately into him.

"Are you hurt?" TJ asked, carefully touching the pair of stitches he'd accidentally set his cheek on.

"J and I patched each other up," Hood lied. "Just a couple little nicks."

TJ curled more firmly into his arms, tucking his head back under Hood's chin. "I'm glad you're okay," he said.

Jason couldn't stop himself from nuzzling Dick's hair. "I'm all right, Pretty Bird," he promised softly.

TJ made a soft, formless sound, and settled in his arms. Hood closed his eyes and let himself sleep.

"Boss," Turk said over the phone.

Hood, standing on the water tower on the roof of the community center, which had become his favorite place to survey his domain, grunted. This had nothing to do with the fact that TJ had returned to after-school tutoring today. Nothing at all.

"There's a bird just on the edge of the territory."

Hood sighed; a bird in daylight, even this close to dusk, was a bad sign. "Send me the location," he ordered, and leapt off the tower.

Robin met him on the edge of Burnley, very daringly picking Hood's side of the street to wait. "Hood," he said, as soon as Hood's boots hit the rooftop. "B is hoping for safe passage."

Hood scoffed.

Robin's nose wrinkled adorably. "I know," he said. "But, well." He shrugged.

"Spill it, Replacement," Hood ordered.

Robin huffed. "So, O outed me to B about rescuing you, though they didn't get my mask footage, so they don't know who you are. So he thinks we're friends now, and I told him that was dumb, but he thought maybe you'd not shoot me on sight if I came to ask."

"Well I haven't shot you," Hood agreed.

"We're pretty sure the guards are covering up an Arkham breakout," Robin said, mouth twisting in frustration.

"The power flicker," Hood said.

Robin perked up. "You know?"

Hood shrugged. "The gas 'false alarm' and the flicker, nothing else."

"Pretty sure Crane, probably Nygma, maybe Dent, hopefully not Tetch," Robin said dryly. "We're struggling to get info out of the prison, but there are signs of Crane going to ground on the edge of the Bowery, near Robbinsville. It's technically your turf, but he wants a peace treaty till this is wrapped up."

Hood stared at the little bird. B was getting ballsy if this was the plan. "Or I could take care of it," he said, just to see what the kid would say.

Robin shrugged diffidently. "I don't really want you to shoot me, so if you want the intel I'll pass it along. But I know things are busy with the driver's strike and Mask, so if you want us to take this one, I can send you a report after?"

Hood crossed his arms over his chest, considering the relative merits of having a Bat on his turf versus not having to argue with Jonathan Crane. "Three days," he said finally. "If you haven't wrapped it by then, I'm taking over. And on day four, I shoot."

Robin saluted. "I hear you," he promised. "Tell N I said hey." The little shit was fast, too, because he was gone before Hood could clear his gun to buzz his ear again.

Hood was glad the helmet kept anyone from seeing him grinning. Then he called Turk back to notify him of their three day truce with the capes.

Turk swore at him, vociferously and colorfully, until Hood replied, "Would you rather deal with a fear gas attack? I was delighted to pass that particular shitshow on to Bats."

"Fair, Boss," Turk sighed.

Hood returned to the community center. TJ waved at him from the sidewalk, so Hood dropped to street level. "You okay?" he asked.

TJ huffed a laugh. He was looking much better, less tired and weak every day. Coming to the center had helped too, reducing his boredom. Hood spent much less time daily arguing him back into bed, now that the kids' math homework was tiring him out. "I'm good, Boss. Everything okay with the bird?" he asked quietly.

Hood sighed. Of course Turk had put it in the cabinet-team group chat. "Three day truce to deal with a suspected Arkham escape," Hood said shortly. "Also, the Bird says hi."

TJ startled. "He- what?"

Hood inclined his head and walked into the community center, ignoring TJ following him, spluttering and demanding to know what that meant.

"Hood!" the kids shouted.

"Hey guys," Hood greeted, catching the littles that leapt at his legs and patting the shoulders of the older ones who sidled in for careful half-hugs. He took a knee beside the homework table when the hubbub settled down. "How we doing?"

"Mr. TJ's really good at math," Erica informed him solemnly.

"And Jimmy finally figured out the name of the general we're supposed to be researching," Adriel added.

"School's going good then," Hood pressed, and nodded at the chorus of affirmatives. "Everything good at home?" he asked gently. Getting the vocoder to make it gentle had been a learning curve, but he had it now.

Will wasn't the oldest of this group of kids, but he was the leader. His eyes were worried as the kids sounded off their affirmatives, and he looked at Hood silently when the kids trailed off and Hood looked at him.

"Will?" Hood asked quietly.

"There's a new kid at school," Will said. "And I don't think he has a home to go to."

Hood let himself ease for a moment. "But you're okay?" Hood pressed.

Will lightened. "Oh, yeah, 'course, Hood."

Hood nodded. "Okay, tell me about this new boy."

And Will launched into his litany of concerns about his new classmate. Hood listened carefully, conscious of TJ watching him with something soft on his face.

That night, Hood went looking for the new kid. Gladys and Sharlene both gave him directional information, and Hood finally found the dark corner in the back alley the kid was squatting in.

It was a defensible corner, Hood thought sadly. But there was also no way to approach without making the kid feel trapped. Hood entered the alley, sidled closer to the kid's hiding spot, and then sat down out of reach.

"So," Hood said softly, looking deliberately away from the niche. "I'm Red Hood, which you can probably guess. Will was worried about you, so he asked me to look in. He thought you didn't have a home to go to."

"Will?" the boy said, scooting to the edge of the cubby he was hiding in.

"Yeah," Hood said. "He's a friend of mine."

This made the boy flinch back. "F-friend?"

Hood mentally cursed. "Yeah," he said, stuck with it now. "He spends a lot of afternoons studying at the community center."

"He- he mentioned," the boy said softly.

"It's a safe place," Hood said. "We make it so."

"You- you don't hurt kids," he whispered.

"Never," Hood agreed. "Not me, not my people."

"What do you want from me?" the boy asked, clearly mustering every scrap of courage he had.

God, what a brave kid. "I want you to be safe," Hood answered gently. "I want you to have a roof over your head, regular meals, and safe adults you can turn to."

The kid made a bitter noise, curling into himself. "That's not gonna happen," he muttered.

"It could," Hood said. "But for tonight I'll settle for a room and a meal. Will you come with me to the community center?" he asked. There were always easy mac packets in the pantry, and he could sleep on the couch till Jenkins got there to open the center in the morning.

The kid pulled back further into his niche.

Hood nodded. "All right," he said, putting his hands up in surrender. Then he dug out his wallet. "Will you at least go to the EZ Mart once I've gone, get something to eat?"

"You're just gonna go?" the kid asked hesitantly.

Hood nodded. "I mean, I'm gonna come back tomorrow," he said honestly, "And try again, hoping you talk to Will at school tomorrow. But I'm not going to make you," he promised.

The kid fidgeted, but before he could make a decision, there were footsteps at the end of the alley. The kid shrank back, but Hood tipped his head.

"Hi Hood," Nightwing chirped in the voice that had made villains want to punch him in the face for more than fifteen years.

"Wing?" Hood said, very surprised. And then annoyed. "Are you good to be out?" he demanded.

Nightwing laughed. "I'm fine," he said, wearing a familiar grin. "Needed to stretch my wings! What're you doing down here?"

"Making friends," Hood said dryly.

Nightwing's gaze dropped immediately to the kid in the hidey-hole. "Oh hi!" he said brightly, as if only noticing him. Hood would lay money Nightwing had clocked the kid almost before he'd noticed Hood.

The boy's mouth was open. "Nightwing," he breathed. Then he looked between Hood and Nightwing. "You- you know each other?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yeah!" Nightwing said. "Hood's a really good guy."

Hood felt that like a punch in the chest.

"Maybe- maybe I will come with you tomorrow," the kid told Hood.

Hood breathed slowly in relief. He finished handing the kid the twenty he'd been in the process of offering the kid when Nightwing had shown up. The kid took it, and Hood wrapped an arm around Nightwing's waist. "See you tomorrow, kid," Hood said, and swept them both to the roof.

Nightwing smiled at him, still leaning into his side. Hood hoped it wasn't weakness from his injuries. "That was sweet," he said quietly.

"Are you sure you're all right to be out?" Hood asked, unable to keep himself from running a careful hand over Nightwing's torso and injured leg.

Nightwing laughed, pulling away to do a perfect handspring. "I'm good," he promised. "Mother hen. I'm fine."

He had been very patiently sleeping in Hood's bed for far longer than the Bat had ever given himself to heal, so Hood supposed he couldn't fault Nightwing's restlessness. "You look good," he found himself saying reflexively, the vocoder crackling on the playful leer.

Nightwing, now doing a handstand, laughed again. "Oh yeah?" he teased.

So Hood did the only thing he could think of to change the subject. He poked Nightwing's extended calf. "You're it," he said. Then he turned and bolted.

Nightwing whooped behind him and gave chase.

They tumbled into Hood's living room window, laughing and breathless. Nightwing pressed a hand to his side, chuckling and grinning. "Oh, ow," he said. "Okay, maybe overdid it," he admitted.

Hood gave into the urge and scooped Nightwing up and carried him to the bedroom, where the meds were. "Come on," he said.

Nightwing yelped and scoffed. "Hood!" he protested, but he let Hood peel him out of his uniform—the steps to disarm the taser hadn't changed in five years, and Hood made a mental note to make him fix that—without too much grumbling. He even took his painkillers without complaint.

Hood was a little surprised find himself standing between Nightwing's knees while his bird sat on the bathroom counter, looking down at him. He carefully, tenderly applied solvent to get the domino mask off, and found Dick staring warmly at him, their bodies pressed close. "Pretty Bird," Hood murmured.

Dick's mouth curled into a sweet smile. "Boss," he said softly, round with affection, ankles hooked behind Hood's thighs.

Jason had no idea what he'd done to deserve this, what deity to pray to or what gods to curse. Dick's hands were warm and steady on his shoulders, and Dick's gauze-wrapped thigh was hot with inflammation under his palm. He wrestled his thoughts back from the vivid blue of Dick's eyes. "Come on," he said softly. "Bed."

Dick sighed and leaned forward, arms sliding higher around Hood's neck, thighs tightening around his hips.

Hood gave into the inevitable, lifted him, and carried him to bed. It was the hardest thing in the world to pull back, pull away, even just to start changing into his own sleeping clothes, shedding jacket, armor, and holsters with practiced ease.

Hood's step stuttered when he turned back to the bed, and Dick had put the blindfold back on. "Come on," Dick said softly. "Take off the Hood and get some rest."

"Yeah, okay," Hood said hoarsely, and obeyed. In pajamas, helmet on the dresser, he slid into his bed, and felt himself tense when Dick immediately curled into his arms. It was exactly what he'd done each night for the last several weeks, but it felt different.

He felt Dick hesitate for a moment, and then Dick was lunging up. The kiss was off-center, Dick just missing his mouth with his first attempt, but it was sweet and affectionate and scorching.

Jason couldn't stop the noise he made as Dick kissed him, and hearing his own noise shocked him enough to pull back. "No," he said hoarsely.

Dick flinched. "Sorry," he said.

Jason stroked his hair. "I'm sorry," he replied. "It's not- I can't."

Dick was tensing, preparing himself to pull away. "Don't-" he started, chin tucked down and away.

"Pretty Bird, it's not fair until I can tell you who I am," Jason said desperately.

Dick froze. "Until," he repeated softly, hope a fragile note in the word.

"Until," Jason repeated. It would ruin everything, Jason knew, and Dick would hate him for manipulating him, but it wasn't fair otherwise. It wasn't right.

Dick leaned up for another, more careful kiss. "I do know," he said softly, nuzzling their cheeks together.

Jason startled. "You-"

"I know everything I need to," Dick said. "I know you're good, and kind, and care about me." Another kiss. "I know you want to save the world, and you're good with kids and kind to strangers unless they're assholes." Another kiss. "I know you're brave, and making a difference, and you're good."

Jason kissed him to make him be quiet. "It's not the same," he murmured. "Pretty Bird," he pleaded.

Dick groaned dismay and tucked his face into Hood's neck. "When?" he asked plaintively.

Jason sighed, pressing his cheek to Dick's hair. "I don't know," he said. "I have to, there are things I have to finish." Batman, Jason thought desperately. There was still the issue of Batman.

"Okay," Dick said into his neck. "Okay."

TJ's official return to the shipping business was heralded by the distributor's collective, of which the Red Hood Gang's shell company was a part, and the trucker's union finally reaching an agreement to end the strike, mostly because Nan, Hood, and Robert (over the phone from his sister's living room in Bludhaven) had been firmly on the truckers' side.

Hood had a busy day forcing himself not to bother TJ, and retreated gladly to the rooftops when the sun went down. He was on his fourth roof of the night when he realized someone was following him.

He managed to dodge the kick, but the claws across the face knocked him off balance.

Catwoman hissed wordless fury at him.

Hood dodged her second swipe and backed up, hands up. "Whoa," he said. "Hold up!"

She pounced on him, going straight for his throat. "Bastard!"

"Catwoman!" he protested, trying to get loose without hurting her or letting her claw his throat out. "What the hell?"

"Where is Nightwing?" she hissed, twisting free from his attempt at a pin.

"Wing?" he asked, startled.

Catwoman hissed at him again, squaring up.

Hood put his hands up. "Catwoman," he said evenly. "I do not know what you are talking about."

"Nightwing hasn't been seen in five months and then he was all over Batwatch last night, because you were chasing him?" She lunged at him again. "What did you do to him?" she snarled.

Hood finally managed to wrestle her to the rooftop, pinning her hands. "Catwoman," he said, and when she only screeched at him, he barked, "Selina!"

She froze beneath him.

"Wing is fine," he said quietly. "I don't know why he hasn't told B where he is, but he's fine."

Catwoman wilted in his pin. "Where is he?" she asked plaintively.

Hood sat back warily, releasing her. "I'm not going to compromise him without his say so," he said slowly. "But I can give him your number?"

"Now," Selina ordered, sitting up.

Hood held up his phone. When she rattled off a number, Hood typed it into the thread labeled "Tomato Juice".

TJ texted back "?" immediately.

Hood replied with the black cat and the phone emojis, and got a grinning face in reply.

Selina's phone rang. "Kitten?" she asked quietly onto the line, still staring intently at Hood. Whatever she heard on the other end made her shoulders drop. "Yeah," she said after a moment, looking back up at Hood. "He's an interesting one, kitten. You sure about him?"

Hood tried not to fidget under her glare. "In my defense, he spent at least half of last night chasing me," he said.

Catwoman huffed. "Well he's got some claw marks, but I didn't do him too much harm," she told the phone. "Don't be a stranger, okay kitten?" She tucked the phone away somewhere Hood wasn't going to work too hard on, and looked at him again.

"Nightwing says you're all right," she said quietly.

Hood crossed his arms over his chest to keep himself from fidgeting under her stare.

"But I remember watching a particularly messy dust up between you and Batman, and generally speaking, in this city, if someone is fighting Batman, you can assume he's on the wrong side."

Ouch, Hood thought dryly. But accurate. "Batman and me, that's personal," he said. "Not moral or social or political, or whatever."

Catwoman scoffed. "What's that mean when it's at home?"

"I want what's good for the city and for my little corner specifically, and B knows that and mostly leaves me alone. But we fundamentally disagree on the handling of the costumed villains, and if he comes into my turf I am going to give it my best shot at putting a bullet in him." Hood didn't think he wanted B dead. He didn't think he did, and none of his bullets had ever been aimed at fatal locations, even in the depths of green rage, but it also wasn't like he didn't shoot at B every time he came, so.

"B," she repeated, head tilted like her namesake. "It's personal," she added, half a question, half repeating what he'd said.

Hood nodded.

Catwoman frowned. "If Bats leaves you alone and the birds vouch for you, I suppose I believe you're in it for good." She pursed her lips, looking away, clearly thinking.

"Birds?" Hood wondered in surprise.

"I asked Robin where to find you," Catwoman answered. "He said I didn't need to, but I couldn't believe him." She scowled at him. "I don't trust you."

"Fair," he drawled.

She prowled around him. "I-" she started, and then the gas alarm began to sound. "Shit," she hissed.

Hood echoed her, already pivoting to leave her behind. He wasn't worried about what she might do, and he knew she could take care of herself.

He'd barely cleared two roofs when the crash of glass and the sounds of laughter brought him to street level. There was always someone trying to loot stores during rogue attacks, using the chaos as cover for their own petty ambitions. Hood sent the small group running, and carried on.

To the next looting attempt, as it happened. And then the next. And then the next.

It took him nearly an hour to cover the ten blocks between his confrontation with Catwoman and the community center. What the hell was going on?

The community center was a brightly lit beacon in the grim night, and it was, when Hood slipped inside by an upper window, crawling with activity.

TJ was in the middle of an unmistakable command post, a map of the territory spread on a table, a phone to his ear. Turk stood at his elbow, and Will and Danny—the boy from the alley, Will's new best friend, brought directly from school that afternoon—were moving markers around the map when TJ gestured at them. There was a small crew of the older teenagers, every one of them holding a burner phone, poised and waiting for orders.

Turk was also on the phone, voice a low growl as he issued orders to what sounded like the primary strike team. "No," he ordered sharply. "You scare the shit out of them, you make them run and then you follow them home." He grunted. "Yes, you think Boss is going to let this slide?"

Hood bared his teeth and sidled up beside Turk and TJ. "What's on?" he asked once Turk had hung up the phone.

"Mask," Turk snarled.

Hood, looking at the map, could see the pattern of it, now. Mask had sent teams into Crime Alley to cause as much chaos as they could under the cover of the gas attack. One corner of the Bowery was completely untouched, though.

"What's here?" he asked, pointing at the empty space.

"Crane, I think," TJ said, briefly holding his phone away from his mouth, and then immediately turning back to snap, "Then make it happen, Tony, I need eyes there now."

"But how did Mask know that?" Hood wondered aloud.

Turk growled softly.

Hood's phone pinged.

Alex's message read, "Gas cloud is spreading over southeast side. First victims to Mercy. Antidote est 1hr."

Hood growled softly, but he knew not even the cave would be faster. Gotham Mercy Hospital, courtesy of the Wayne Foundation, had some of the most advanced computers money could buy. He acknowledged the message with a thumbs up, and looked back at the map.

"First and Sheridan," TJ told Will, phone tucked to his shoulder briefly.

Will moved a marker, tilted his head, and turned to Amy and her burner phone. "Send Chen," he said.

Amy nodded, and dialed.

"He's good, Boss," Turk said quietly, near Hood's ear. "He had this set up in minutes after the second robbery, when we realized it was a pattern and not a fluke."

Hood's chest burned with pride. "I know," he agreed. "Who's he talking to?"

"Jenkins is back at headquarters with two of my boys," Turk said. "'Squieter up there. They got the police band, twit-ex or whatever's-called, and Bat-watch up and he's keeping T in the loop."

Hood nodded, and put a hand on TJ's flank. When TJ leaned back into the touch, tilting his head to indicate his attention, Hood asked, "You got it?"

TJ nodded firmly.

Hood patted his shoulder, and told Turk, "Keep doing what you're doing, and keep him safe if Mask decides to hit here again. I'm going to see about a scarecrow."

"Will do," Turk promised. "Careful, Boss."

Hood gave a thumbs up, and headed back to the upper window. Now knowing TJ had control of the looting, Hood made his way directly across the rooftops towards the big blank on TJ's map. Here be dragons, he thought, grinning fiercely.

The horizon was a billow of yellowish smog pouring into the sky, and Hood grit his teeth when someone screamed bloody murder on the edge of his hearing. Fuck Crane and the horse he rode in on, Hood thought bitterly, and continued his methodical search of the southeast side of his territory.

He was entirely unprepared for Batman to surge out of the gas, tackle him to the roof, and slam Hood's head to the concrete. "Fuck," he snarled.

"You son of a bitch," B growled, fist bouncing off the Hood like he couldn't feel his fingers probably breaking. He was trying to get his hands around Hood's throat.

Hood twisted, headbutting B—which between the Hood and Cowl didn't have the effect on either of them that one might have hoped—and getting his forearm between B's grip and his neck. "What the hell?" he wheezed.

"You motherfucker!" B snarled. Between the rebreather and his vocoder, it came out a crackled screech.

"Language," Hood rasped, twisting his hips and trying to throw B.

B toppled, but got in a body blow and flipped them again.

"B!" Robin cried, his low flying tackle taking B in the shoulder and loosening his grip enough for Hood to roll away. "B, stop!"

"He hurt N," B snarled.

"He didn't!" Robin shouted, so fiercely he had to pause to readjust his rebreather before continuing.

"What the fuck, Replacement!" Hood demanded, leaping away from another of B's tackles.

"New fear strain," Robin reported, trying to get between them, hands up. "He's worryingly lucid and entirely irrational."

"Fuck," Hood complained, dodging a kick and shoulder-checking B into stumbling. He was sloppy, or Hood would've been in trouble, even with Robin's interference.

Robin darted in, faster than Hood would've given him credit for, and plunged a syringe into a gap he made between sleeve and gauntlet.

B's backhand made the little bird reel and clutch his rebreather, but B was slowing.

Hood tackled him, bore him to the rooftop, and held till he went limp. "Fucking hell, Replacement!"

"Sorry," Robin said, shaking his head as if to clear it. "Two-Face kicked us both around a little before we got him into custody, so we weren't paying enough attention. Scarecrow got the drop on us."

"Hell," Hood said, catching movement in his periphery. "He got the drop on us too," he said, catching Robin around the chest and spinning him out of the way of the scythe.

Crane cackled menacingly, advancing, and Hood had to decide if he were going to dodge, and leave B's unconscious body undefended, or stand his ground and hope his armor and knives would be enough.

He planted his feet.

Hood and Robin fought surprisingly well together. Hood always knew exactly where the little bird would be, courtesy of years of being the little bird in the equation, and the idea of being the Batman in this situation almost made Hood miss a shot.

But only almost; the rubber bullet broke Crane's hand, and the scythe hit the rooftop. Robin hit Crane in a tackle a moment later, and the kid had the rogue cuffed and sedated in moments. Hood had to resist the urge to ruffle his hair.

Then he thought, Fuck it, and ruffled Robin's hair.

Jason, as a bird, would've tried to bite someone as ambiguous as Hood who tried that. Robin puffed up and blushed. "All right, kid," he said. "You got a ride home?"

Robin looked at the two unconscious adults on the roof. "Um," he said.

Hood laughed. The wind was shifting, the fight was over, and the kid was funny. "Come on," he said, heaving B across his shoulders in a fireman carry. "Where's the car?"

Robin dragged Crane to ground level, but they left him at the foot of the building while Hood carried Batman to the Batmobile. "Take him home," he told the kid. "I'll wait for the boys in blue."

"O says they're fourteen minutes out," Robin said. "Thanks for helping."

Hood ruffled his hair again, watching the kid try to scowl despite his blush. "Go on, kid. Past your bedtime."

"Fuck you!" Robin said cheerfully, and got behind the wheel of the Batmobile.

"Well hell," Hood said, watching the taillights disappear into the rapidly dissipating gas, "I never got to drive the car."

"That's because you were reckless," Catwoman said from the shadows.

"Selina," Hood said quietly.

"Is it you, tiger?" she asked quietly, slinking closer.

Hood stepped back into the camera blind spot, because he didn't trust that Oracle didn't have her beady, electronic eyes trained on him, and then he took off the Hood. He didn't smell any fear gas, and Selina was worth the risk, if it meant he could have her back.

"Oh Tiger," Selina breathed, stepping close and pulling her rebreather off too.

"How'd you know?" he asked.

"You called him B. Only the birds do that." She stroked his cheek. "And you fight just the same. You're just bigger now."

Hood smiled at her.

"Littlest birdie knows, doesn't he?" Selina asked.

Jason nodded. "Clever little shit," he said roughly.

"And bluebird?"

"Not yet," Jason admitted.

Selina looked disappointed. "Tiger," she scolded gently.

"He's gonna hate me, Cat, and I need him to hold out till I can have it out with B."

Selina petted his cheek. "If you think he could ever hate you, you aren't as smart as I thought you were," she told him fondly.

"I've been playing him," Jason insisted.

Selina scoffed. "Like you even could."

"It's what he's going to think, once he finds out I've been working all this time for a fight with B." Jason ducked his head. "And I gotta," he said hoarsely.

"Oh Tiger," Selina said. "I think you're wrong, but I'm not going to interfere."

"Thanks Cat," he whispered.

Sirens brought them up short, and Jason shoved the Hood back on. "Timing!" he complained.

"Oh," Selina said. "Hang on, I've got Eddie too."

"What?" Hood asked, half laughing, startled.

Selina disappeared back into the shadows of the building behind her, and emerged dragging the Riddler. They left Riddler and Scarecrow in a heap and retreated to the rooftops to watch GCPD pick up the rogues.

They watched the officers load the two rogues into different squad cars, look around briefly in what was either nerves or suspicion, and then hightail it out of there.

"That's the last of the breakout," Selina told him, flashing her teeth in a grin. "But you need to know: Black Mask broke them out."

Hood growled low. "How do you know?"

"Eddie was positively chatty while we waited for things to settle with Crane. Practically desperate to tell me things." Her grin was bloodthirsty. "I'll give Batsy a full report once he's conscious again."

Hood nodded shortly. "If all went well tonight, I should have a location for Mask's hideout. We'll take care of him," he promised.

Selina patted his shoulder. "Good. Good hunting, Tiger," she said.

"Goodnight, Cat," he answered, and they parted ways.

"Did we find him?" Hood demanded as he came back into the still-busy community center. He was tense with the need to do something.

"Hey Boss, all's good here, glad you're okay," Turk said dryly.

"Turk," Hood growled. His fists clenched.

"We did," TJ said quickly, looking up from his map. "And the looting has stopped, and the all-clear's sounded, and the supers have all reported in that everything's fine in their buildings. We got six at the hospital, and two holed up alone riding it out—they won't go, everyone tried—and a lot of smashed windows, but everything's settled down."

Turk ruffled TJ's hair. "Oh, let him stew a little, kid."

"He fought Crane," TJ said shortly. "He doesn't need to stew."

"I fought Batman, actually," Hood said, trying for light and only failing a little. "Robin mostly fought Crane."

TJ went very tense. "Everything good?" he asked warily.

He nodded, patting TJ's shoulder in what was meant to be reassurance as he moved past him to talk to Turk, but might have been too hard. "Strike team found Mask?" he asked, not entirely able to keep the tenseness out of his voice, even through the vocoder.

Turk nodded, turning serious. "We can't hit him tonight, Boss," he said, bracing for a fight.

Hood shook his head; he hated it with a burning passion, but he knew. "No, I know. I don't have it in me, I know no one else does."

Turk nodded. "Delia's got some ideas, she got a half decent look at the entryway, anyway. And Hank sent their report direct to you, so you can pull records and stuff."

Hood nodded sharply. "Thank you," he said, tersely, trying not to take his fury out on his underlings. "Now I would like to go home and go to bed."

"Sure thing, Boss," Turk said.

TJ nodded absently, still paging through the notes scattered across the map on the table.

Hood crossed his arms, staring at TJ. He was still thrumming with pent up energy.

TJ gradually became aware of his scrutiny. "Oh," he said after a moment. He stared at Hood, and then he nodded. "Right," he said. "Yeah, of course." Then he carefully shifted papers into neat piles and arranged them by some unclear system across the map. Then he nodded once, and wrapped his arms around himself, coming to stand by Hood.

Hood spanned a hand across his lower back to lead him into the night, and even through his glove, the heat of TJ's body was scorching. He was a hot line against Hood's back on the bike, tucked perfectly against him, and he rested his cheek on Hood's shoulder blade and moved with the turns, anchoring Hood into himself.

"Sorry," Hood said softly as they dismounted, aware he was being overbearing and not able to make himself stop. If he couldn't go fight Mask, he needed to tuck TJ away where he could keep him safe.

TJ smiled softly. "It's fine," he said. "I was just fussing. I forgot how much I hate staying in when everyone else is out, even if I am being useful coordinating."

Hood shed his jacket and body armor as soon as they were in the door, groaning softly and stretching his shoulders.

"You're bleeding," TJ said quietly.

His fight with B had popped a few of Robin's painstaking stitches. And Selina had gotten one good swipe in, just between the collar of his jacket and the Hood. "I'm fine," he said.

"Let me," TJ said fiercely, softly.

Hood sighed, and let him.

TJ's fingers were gentle, and reverent as he cleaned the scrapes and redid the two popped stitches. "Mama cat?" he asked, rubbing an alcohol wipe down the shallow scrape her claw had left.

"She was worried about you," Hood replied. "Saw our game of chase." God, had it really only been the night before?

"I'll call her tomorrow," TJ promised. "You fought with B?" he asked quietly.

"He was worried about you too," Hood replied. "Hopped up on fear gas," he added. "But with it enough to remember our game, too."

TJ sighed softly. "I- I don't know," he said, dropping his head.

Hood pulled him against his chest. "Pretty Bird," he rumbled softly, and the vocoder turned it into a purr. "Whatever you need," he promised.

"Rest, for now," TJ said, pulling gently away.

Their nightly routines had long since shifted to include each other. Hood changed clothes while TJ used the sink, and then TJ found his blindfold so Hood could bare his face and use the sink as well. They curled together in bed, no longer even pretending this wasn't how they wanted to be.

"I couldn't face him," Dick murmured. "I failed."

Jason kissed his forehead. "You didn't, Pretty Bird. Shitty things happening to you isn't failure," he added, cupping his palm across Dick's nape comfortingly.

"I should've-" Dick began.

Jason hushed him. "You can't control other people."

"But I-"

"Did you do your best?" Jason asked tenderly.

"I- yeah, but-"

"Pretty Bird," Jason said firmly. "It sucks," he said more gently. "When we do our best and it isn't enough." He nuzzled Dick's temple. "But it isn't your fault. And B will agree." Or I'll kill him, he thought fiercely. "He loves you," he murmured, sure of this fact. B loved all of them; he probably loved Timothy, too. B's love just wasn't enough.

"I couldn't stop her," Dick whispered brokenly.

Jason suspected he was more concerned about her killing Blockbuster than assaulting him, and he desperately wanted to kill Tarantula again. And possibly B, considering his role in shaping Dick's moral code. "And every bit of it is on her, Pretty Bird," he insisted. "And not one bit of that is your fault."

"I told her no," Dick choked, and then he started to cry, quietly and tense, into Jason's chest.

Jason held him tightly, rubbing his back and nuzzling his hair and murmuring soothingly. "It's okay," he insisted over and over. "Cry it out, I have you."

Dick eventually cried himself to sleep in Jason's arms, and Jason held him tightly, long into the night.

Something had eased in TJ when they woke the next morning, and it was with relief and a hopeless affection for his resilience that Hood sent him off to the shipping warehouse while he headed to Headquarters to meet with Turk and the primary strike team.

Delia headed the strike team if Turk or Hood weren't leading, and she was a small, stocky tank of a woman, who didn't look like she should be as strong as she was. She was as smart as Barbara Gordon, and as vicious as Hood when her people were threatened.

Hank was her second, and he had the kind of utterly unassuming, competent blandness that anyone with sense knew meant he could kick their ass. Between them, strike team one was the Red Hood Gang's version of a Swiss army knife for violence.

"What've we got?" Hood asked, settling in his seat at the head of the command table.

Delia showed teeth in a grin that would make Catwoman proud, and spun the floorplan she was annotating so he could read her handwriting. "Turk dug up the building plans for the industrial complex Mask is holed up in," she said. "I got a good long look at the administrative offices ground floor, so here's what we know."

Hood let the team run him through what they knew, and what they'd worked out so far. Delia and Turk had the bare bones of a plan already, and Hood started pushing it.

Hank vanished for a while, then returned with lunch and Wyndham and Cal, the heads of the second and third strike teams.

Wyndham was a former SEAL, and Cal was a former Columbian drug cartel enforcer, and they brought startlingly different, and both equally helpful ideas to the table.

By supper, Hood was confident they could take Black Mask's entire compound, so he sent his people to eat, check in, and gather their gear.

Hood went to wait for them on the roof of the derelict hotel which overlooked the compound. The building of the also-derelict industrial plant had spelled the deathknell of the hotel, and then the plant—Hood thought he remembered it had been a chemical refinery—had gone under three years later.

A soft rustle told him he wasn't alone, and then a shoulder touched his. "What's the plan?" Nightwing asked.

Hood growled wordlessly.

"I'm not going home," Nightwing said pre-emptively.

"I know," Hood grumbled. "I just hate it."

"I'm fine," Nightwing said.

"I know," Hood replied.

"I know I took a long vacation," Nightwing said lightly, "But you need to understand that I never intended to retire."

"I know," Hood grumbled. "And the plan is that my people keep Mask's busy in the outer compound, strike team one comes up from the ground floor, and I come down from the top, and we crush Mask in the middle."

"I'll come with you," Nightwing said.

"I never expected anything less," Hood sighed.

Nightwing beamed at him. "Come on, Hood, it'll be fun!"

Hood grumbled at him. Then a flare lit on the far side of the compound, and then there was a spray of gunfire from the parking lot gate kiosk.

"That our cue?" Nightwing asked, readying his grapple.

Hood didn't answer, just launched himself from the hotel roof.

They worked well together, moving silently through the floors in a grid pattern they could both do in their sleep, though they'd never done it together before. They knocked out and trussed up each of what turned out to be five guards per floor, and then moved down.

"Boss," Delia's voice cracked in the Hood comms. They had just cleared the fourth floor.

"Go," Hood said. Strike teams never used their comms unless something was wrong.

"Second floor. Situation."

"Copy," Hood said. "Be right down."

"What do you need?" Nightwing asked.

"Take three yourself," he answered, "They need me on two."

"Go," Nightwing said immediately.

Hood jumped the landings, emerging quietly onto the second floor. Stealth turned out to be unnecessary.

Deathstroke the Terminator stood in the middle of an open-plan cubicle farm, with Black Mask tied to a chair in front of him. Deathstroke's famous sword was casually resting across Mask's throat, and the mercenary had a handgun pointed lazily at Delia and Hank. "There you are," he said mildly to Hood. "I've been trying to arrange a meeting."

Hood circled so he could put himself between Deathstroke and the strike team. "Here I am," he agreed. "You could've called."

"Mm," Deathstroke said. "Dismiss your people," he ordered.

Honestly, gladly, though Hood didn't let on. "Delia," he said quietly.

"Boss," she said tightly, but Hank hushed her. At Hood's back, the eight members of strike team one backed warily to the stairwell.

"Clear the rest of the compound and then pull back to Headquarters," Hood ordered.

"Yes Boss," Delia said, and then they were gone.

Hood turned his attention to the deadliest contract killer in the world. "Now," he said. "What do you want with little old me?"

"Want me to kill him?" Deathstroke asked, nodding at where Mask was still rigid under the blade of Deathstroke's sword.

Mask made a quiet, distressed noise. His eyes were wild, but he was wisely sitting very still.

"What would that cost me?" Hood wondered. "Last I checked I don't think I could afford your rates."

"I know he's been pestering you," Deathstroke said easily. "And I'm in need of some information only you have. I'm willing to be generous to get it."

What the fuck? "Me?" he said. "I don't know who you've been talking to," he said slowly, "But I'm a small-town crook, into drugs and racketeering. What could I possibly know that you need?"

Deathstroke's mask was unreadable of course, and he had complete control over his body, not a twitch nor a tell that Hood could see. Still, Hood got the impression of impatience, despite him not actually moving. "Trust me, you know," Deathstroke said. "And I was willing to ask nicely. But I can torture it out of you instead, if you like."

"Slade, what the hell?" Nightwing said from the same stairwell Hood had come down. Hood's heart leapt into his throat.

"Bird," Deathstroke said, and he was sheathing his sword and striding across the room.

Nightwing met him halfway, escrima loose at his side.

Hood watched, bewildered, as Deathstroke took Nightwing's chin, tilting his head slowly from side to side, obviously looking him over carefully.

Nightwing accepted this for a moment, and then put both palms on Deathstroke's chest and pushed, gently. "I'm fine," he said. "What're you doing here?"

Hood gaped unflatteringly as Deathstroke honed in immediately on Nightwing's injured thigh. "You're hurt," he accused.

"It's healing, but I haven't been working out as much," Nightwing said dismissively. "What are you doing here?" he repeated.

Deathstroke took off his fucking mask. "Looking for you," he said.

Nightwing's mouth did something complicated, rueful and fond and annoyed all at once. "I'm fine," he said.

Deathstroke's once-over was skeptical. "You fell off the map for six months, Bird."

"You're the one who said I should take a vacation," Nightwing said lightly, casually shouldering past the most deadly man in the world to come check on Hood. "You okay?" he asked.

"Confused as fuck," Hood admitted. "Unharmed."

"Only Nightwing sighting in six months put him playing tag with you in crime alley," Deathstroke said. "He didn't look stressed, so I didn't need to shoot first and ask questions later, and I knew Black Mask was fucking with you, once he let those bozos out of Arkham."

"Aw, you were going to bring him a present and hope he'd tell you where I was, Slade, that's almost sweet!" Nightwing said, in his best obnoxious chirp.

Deathstroke closed his good eye and tilted his head a bare touch, and Hood realized this was acquiescence.

Hood looked at Mask. "Why did you let those bozos out of Arkham?" he wondered.

Mask sneered at him, suddenly a lot braver without a sword across his throat. "Well I wasn't going to let all that work go to waste when we got in and discovered the Joker was dead."

Hood distantly felt his knees go out from under him. "What?" he croaked.

Nightwing shoved him into one of the office chairs and knelt between his feet. "Hood?" he asked quietly.

"He's dead?" he managed to croak out.

"Joker's dead," Deathstroke confirmed. He prodded Black Mask with the muzzle of his handgun. "What's it to you?"

Black Mask sneered. "I just thought he might be interested in someone stealing his old alias."

Hood, head bowed forward not quite between his knees but approaching, and breathing slow and even, chuckled rustily. So that bit of his plan had actually worked. "Fuck," he whispered. "How?"

"I killed him six months ago," Deathstroke said.

Nightwing, still kneeling between Hood's feet, jerked around in surprise. "You what?" he demanded.

"Bird," Deathstroke said dryly. Then, as if relenting, he said more casually, "I honestly thought it was you, at first, calling in that favor I owe you."

"Me?" Nightwing yelped.

"Bat-transactions have a very specific type of untraceability," Deathstroke said. "But then I got here and no one knew where you were."

Deathstroke looked utterly serene to Hood's eyes, but Nightwing still said softly, "Sorry I scared you."

Deathstroke didn't answer. "Went poking around," he said after a bit. "Saw your old building."

Nightwing winced. "I'm fine," he said again.

Hood had a sudden suspicion as to what had happened to Tarantula, and that was enough to get his breathing together and let him sit up. He owed Deathstroke a thank you, for that one, though he'd do it when Nightwing couldn't hear. "Thanks," he told the man, realizing he owed him thanks for more than Tarantula's death.

Deathstroke tilted his head. It was a gesture familiar to Hood as one made by someone used to emoting with a mask on, though without the mask it was almost comical. "For?"

"Killing that motherfucker," Hood said. "Needed done."

Deathstroke nodded.

"Who hired you?" Nightwing asked.

Deathstroke shrugged. "Never did say."

"You never take contracts from unknowns," Nightwing accused.

Deathstroke repeated, "I thought it was you when I took it, but once it was done, it was done."

Nightwing's jaw clenched. "Slade," he growled.

"I don't know, Bird," Deathstroke repeated. "I told you, it was a bat-transaction. Why don't you ask the All Seeing Eye?"

"They would never," Nightwing insisted.

Hood wasn't so sure, suddenly, thinking of Robin's fierce grin. But hiring Deathstroke?

Speak of the devil and he will appear, because that was the moment Robin came through the window. "O finally hacked Arkham's security," he announced as he climbed over the sill. "And B knows both that the Joker is dead and also that Mask broke out the three stooges to harass Hood, and he's just about finished searching the rooftop where we confronted Hood last night, so it would be a really good idea to not be here anymore really soon."

"Robin?" Nightwing asked.

"Hi N," Robin said. "Good to see you looking better. Can we go?"

"Mm," Deathstroke said, and then he went to the cubicle he'd taken Mask's chair out of, pulled a strand of tape from the dispenser, and taped a manila folder off the desk to Mask's chest.

Mask screeched wordlessly.

"I'm game to go, little birdie," Deathstroke said, grinning predatorily.

"No," Nightwing said, slapping his chest. "No, no, no. Paws off my brother."

"Ew," Robin said. "Hood?"

Hood stood carefully, and when his knees held him, he nodded at the kid. "Let's scram," he agreed.

"Black Mask will keep him busy for a bit," Robin said cheerfully as he led the way out of the building. Then he led the way back to the Red Hood Gang's headquarters.

"Uh, Boss?" Turk said warily.

Hood shook his head and flopped into his chair. He didn't know what to think, to feel. Honestly, he wanted to go sleep for a week, but two birds and a fucking mercenary had followed him home like stray puppies, so he supposed he had to deal with that first.

Somewhere safe, Nightwing and Robin were now hugging desperately. Hood took the allotted emotional time to put his head straight down on the table and ignore everything, up to and especially Deathstroke the Goddamn Terminator sitting down next to him.

Robin saying, "Yeah, B, I'm safe," marked the moment Hood had to start participating in the world again. "I'm in the Fashion District, do you need me?" He nodded to no one present, and then said, "Ok, shout if you need me." Then Robin toggled his comm off.

Nightwing hugged him again, just briefly, and then released him to come to the table. "All right, Slade, you've seen me."

Deathstroke grinned, slow and lazy. "Trying to get rid of me, Bird?"

"Yep," Nightwing said. "You've done your contract, gotten paid, seen that I'm all right. You hate Gotham, Gotham hates you back, time to go!"

Deathstroke laughed. "And miss out on all this excitement?" he asked. "Maybe I want to find out who contracted me to kill the Joker," he purred, all danger and insinuation. Gross.

Nightwing was looking at Deathstroke seated across from him, but Hood could see the whole table from his place at the head, and he saw Robin's little twitch. Dear god, the kid actually had done it.

Deathstroke's gaze flicked to Robin.

"All right," Hood said heavily. "I know you have a safehouse. Get out of my headquarters."

Deathstroke honest-to-shit slow-panned around to look at him, predatory grin spreading across his lips.

"In fact," Hood said firmly, "If you don't work here, get the fuck out."

Robin shoved his chair back. "N, please stay in touch?"

"Yeah," Nightwing said, standing to hug him again. "Yeah, I've got your number."

"Thank you," Robin breathed, and then he obediently climbed out the window and vanished into the night.

Nightwing looked at Hood for a long moment, face unreadable with his eyes hidden behind his domino. Then he looked at Deathstroke. "Be nice," he ordered, and followed Robin out the window.

Hood sighed. "You found Nightwing, congratulations, what the fuck do I have to do to get you to go away?"

"You don't want Bird to know his little brother called the hit," Deathstroke observed.

"Robin doesn't want Nightwing to know he called the hit," Hood retorted, "And I like the little shit well enough to help. He called a hit on the Joker. That buys him an astoundingly large amount of goodwill from me."

"Who is the Joker to you?" Deathstroke asked, staring hard at him.

"The monster under the bed," Hood said tiredly. "Will you please fuck off?"

Deathstroke hummed softly. "I'm going to figure it out," he warned.

Hood shook his head. "Can you figure it out from somewhere else, please?"

Deathstroke smiled, something smaller and realer than his smirks from before. "I suppose I can," he agreed, and followed the birds out the window.

Hood groaned softly and put his head back down on the table.

"What the fuck, Boss?" Turk asked.

"I truly have no goddamn idea," Hood replied.

TJ was fidgeting on the couch when Hood climbed in his living room window. "Hood," he said, twitching like he wanted to come over.

Hood flopped down on the couch beside him, and opened his arms.

TJ wilted in relief, and climbed straight into Hood's lap.

"So you and Deathstroke are sure friendly," Hood said dryly.

"Yeah, there was a," and TJ made a twirling gesture with his fingers, shrugging. "Thing. He's taught me some stuff."

"Understatement of the goddamn century, Pretty Bird," Hood said dryly, remembering seeing TJ with a sword in his hand. "Do you trust him?"

"I trust him to be himself," TJ said. "And as long as it's not directly in conflict with a contract, I trust him to put my well being and happiness over pretty much anything."

Hood sighed. "All right," he said. "You gonna talk to B?" he asked.

TJ tucked his face into the curve of Hood's shoulder, "Eventually," he sighed.

"I think he's cowardly, and I think he's naive, and I think he's a manipulative asshole, but he loves you," Hood said.

"I don't suppose Mask was your unfinished business before you tell me your name, was it?" TJ said in a transparent bid to change the subject.

"No," Hood said, letting him.

TJ, still hiding his face, asked, "It's B, isn't it?"

"Yes," Hood said.

"You're not going to kill him?" TJ pressed.

"No," Hood promised. "That's not-" then he broke off. Whatever the plan had been had been entirely fucked by the littlest bird's surprise bloodthirsty turn. He had no idea what the new plan was. "Fuck," he said quietly.

TJ rubbed his cheek against Hood's shoulder. "What can I do?" he asked quietly.

Hood shook his head. "I dunno, Pretty Bird," he murmured. "This, maybe."

"This, definitely," TJ insisted, curling even more firmly into him. "But if there's anything else," he added gently.

"I'll let you know," Hood promised.

"Robin wasn't surprised," TJ said after a little while in silence. "About me."

"He's known for a while. He came to find me after you got shot, wanted to make sure you were okay. He promised he wouldn't tell B."

TJ startled. "Really?" he asked.

Hood hummed. "He's a good kid," he admitted.

"That's a change," TJ said carefully.

"Yeah, well, even I can learn sometimes." Hood muttered. "He was… a reflection of some things about me I'm not proud of, but I was wrong to take it out on him."

TJ nuzzled his neck, trying to get up under the edge of the Hood to get at skin to press a soft kiss to Hood's neck. "It's good you see that," he said.

"He really cares about you," Hood said.

"Yeah," TJ said fondly. "Little brother I always wanted."

Hood held down the flinch by sheer force of will. Twelve-year-old Jason would've done anything to be Dick's little brother. "He's lucky, then," he said, and the Hood covered the hoarseness, thankfully.

TJ hummed. "He's sort of my second attempt," he admitted. "You- you know enough about us, you know there was a Robin between me and the current?"

Hood almost laughed at the raw irony. "Yeah, I know."

"He should've been my brother too," TJ said. "But I was too young and angry and stupid."

"Young and angry, I'd believe," Hood said carefully. "Stupid's hard for me to see." He and Dick had found their truce eventually, and it wasn't his brother Jason wanted to be now. He breathed through the old hurt and tucked TJ closer.

"His death is one of my greatest regrets," TJ admitted softly. "And I should feel guilty for making B worry about me being missing, after he lost Jay like that, but." He shrugged.

Hood rubbed TJ's back. He bumped the cheek of the Hood against TJ's temple gently in a parody of a kiss. "You needed time and space. He's physically incapable of giving you that on your terms instead of his. You did what you had to do." Then he said, more carefully, "And the second Robin's death wasn't your fault. You weren't even on the planet."

TJ shrugged noncommittally. "Can we go to bed?" he asked plaintively.

"Yeah, Pretty Bird," Hood agreed softly, and stood without letting TJ out of his arms.

TJ laughed softly, wrapping around him to hold some of his own weight. "Thank you," he murmured, once he was blindfolded and they were tucked into bed together. "I needed this."

"As long as you'll have me," Hood promised, knowing there was an end date on that promise. "It's yours."

Hood stood with Turk and Ross on a well-lit (because Hood had climbed the lamppost and changed the bulb himself when the city didn't do it fast enough) corner on the east side.

Ross had noticed an issue with one of his dealers. "Carlito came to me two days ago because he was worried about one of his buyers," he explained. "He said the guy was regular, like clockwork, standing appointment, nearly, and then he didn't show. Carlito knows his people, Boss, if he thinks it's weird, it's weird."

"The guy got a name?" Hood asked.

"Uh," Ross said. "I'll find out," he said sheepishly and pulled out his phone. Then he looked back up at Hood. "Carlito says business is down," he added. "Not appreciably, not even maybe a countable difference, week to week, but it's down."

Hood hadn't become undisputed king of Crime Alley in three weeks by not listening to his people on the ground. "He thinks it's weird, I believe him," he promised. "I'll look into it."

"I might know something!" Nightwing said cheerily from where he was perched like a goddamn gargoyle on the street light.

"Birdie," Hood said dryly. "You're outta your usual neighborhood."

"Well when the scenery's so nice, I could hardly be blamed," Nightwing chirped, giving an obvious-even-masked once-over to Hood.

"Flattery'll get you nowhere, Pretty Bird," he drawled. "You got intel?"

"There was a fella putting his hands on one of the corner girls," Nightwing said. "I scooped him before your man could, but only by a second or two, your security detail's on point."

"They better be," Hood grumbled.

"He didn't strike me as a local," Nightwing continued, doing a casual handstand on the light. "And while I confiscated it because I didn't want it in the GCPD evidence lockers, he certainly seemed to be carrying a more-than-recreational amount of cocaine."

"Motherfucker," Hood complained. "Guesses as to affiliation?" he asked.

Nightwing righted himself and beamed down at them. "You know, it's so rude that no one in Gotham does gang tattoos like they do in the 'Haven."

"Terrible," Hood agreed dryly.

"He did have that distinctive Sicilian twang as he swore at me, though," Nightwing offered, grinning. "Not sure who's running the mobs lately, but it's a direction."

"It is," Hood agreed. "How can I ever thank you?"

Nightwing flipped off the street light to the fire escape across the alley. "I'll take it out of your hide later," he said, grinning, and vanished into the night.

"Boss," Ross said quietly.

"Yeah," Hood asked, distracted, still tracking Nightwing's progress.

"Am I meant to be pretending I don't know that's TJ?"

Hood froze, and then sighed. "Yes," he grumbled, wishing not for the first time that he could pinch the bridge of his nose. "You are meant to be pretending you don't know that."

"You may wanna lay off the flirting, then, Boss," Turk said wryly.

Hood counted to ten. "Has Carlito told you our guy's name?" he asked.

Ross fumbled for his phone, "Uh, yeah, sorry Boss. Eloy Terrazas," he reported.

Hood nodded. "Turk, get some more people on the ground over here, just, keeping an eye on things. If somebody's moving in, I wanna know about it. Ross, if you could check with your guys, see if anyone else has noticed anything weird, I'd appreciate building a pattern."

"Sure Boss," Ross agreed. Turk only saluted.

"Tomorrow," Hood said, since they had a control meeting. Then he headed for the roofs.

Nightwing slid out of the shadows three roofs away. "Everything all right?" he asked.

Hood shrugged. "Groundwork time," he said.

"I can ask O?" Nightwing offered, touching just under his ear.

"You back in with the Bats?"

Nightwing shifted awkwardly. "Just O and R," he said. "But you know she can find your guy."

Hood inclined his head. "Not looking to owe a favor," he said. "O and I, that's a bit of history I'm going to have to have out eventually, but not yet."

Nightwing's head tilted. "She'd do it for me, I don't have to tell her it's for you," he said. Then he grinned. "Alternatively, if talking to O is something you want to do but you're scared, I'll trade you?"

"For what?" Hood asked, curious where Nightwing might be going with this.

"You talk to O and I'll talk to B?"

Hood considered. "Do you need a bribe to talk to B?" he asked skeptically.

Nightwing laughed. "If you'll be home afterwards," he said softly, "I'll be okay to talk to him. But if you need it," he said again.

Hood brushed a gloved hand over his cheek. "You're so good," he murmured, hopelessly fond of him.

Nightwing blushed, visible even in the dark of the night. "Hood," he whined softly. "That's not fair."

Hood grinned, safe in the knowledge Nightwing couldn't see. "Not yet, Pretty Bird," he said. "Not till after B. I'm not convinced she won't tell him."

Nightwing inclined his head. "Fair," he said.

"You talking to B tonight?" Hood asked.

Nightwing shook his head. "Not unless he jumps us on patrol," he said wryly. "Which he might. But O and R are running interference for me, and I need time to build up to it."

Hood nodded. "Us," he teased. "What is this 'us'?"

"Come on, won't patrol be more fun with such dashing company?" Nightwing said, grinning, flipping into a handstand. "Also it might keep Slade from annoying me with questions about Robin."

Hood decided to ignore that, and pushed him over.

Nightwing righted himself in a graceful curve.

"You look good," he admitted grudgingly after a moment.

"Nothing's pulling," Nightwing agreed. "Come on, I want to run!" Then he bounded off the roof, swinging away into the night.

Hood grinned and gave chase.

The control meeting began and ended with TJ and Ross arguing whether they ought to be called the 'cabinet' or the 'council'. Ross thought council was stupid, because it made Hood sound like a sorcerer or something, and TJ said cabinet just made Hood sound like he thought he was president. No consensus was reached—about that, or about what might be happening on the east side.

Then over the next several days, Nightwing turned up on every patrol Red Hood went on during the night, and Deathstroke kept fucking turning up places Hood was trying to work.

Only Robin, of the people involved in the absurd aftermath of the raid on Mask's hideout, didn't make himself a nuisance to Hood, and that was mostly because he was busy running Batman in circles to keep him from confronting either Nightwing or Deathstroke.

In an attempt to get some goddamn peace and quiet, he went on his rounds as J instead of in the Hood. Which got him a cookie from Gladys and cheek-kisses from Sharlene and a couple of the girls, hair ruffles from Jenkins, and the chocolate bar some fuckwit had tried to bribe Ross with, none of which Hood would've been offered.

It did not get him peace and quiet. "So," Deathstroke said, appearing out of an alley and falling in at J's side as he walked between Ross' office and the community center to check on the after-school programs. "This is the big secret."

J glared. "Who the fuck are you?" he snarled, because J hadn't seen Deathstroke without his mask, and Deathstroke was in civilian clothes at the moment, sunglasses instead of his eyepatch.

"Cute, kid, but don't play stupid." Deathstroke swung J into the next alley and backed him against the wall.

J growled, baring his teeth. He had a reputation as a feral shit, and as a biter, which Deathstroke would learn if he came closer.

"You're Jason Todd," Deathstroke said, and to his credit, he kept his voice very low.

J crossed his arms over his chest. "What the fuck are you talking about, Old Man? My name's J."

Wilson nodded slowly. "Bird doesn't know," he guessed.

J shook his head slightly.

Wilson made an irritated face. "Why not?" he snapped. "He'd be beside himself that you're alive."

J scoffed. "Maybe if I'd come home," he said. "But me as this?" he said, waving around. "He'll hate my guts."

Wilson stared at him blankly for a long moment. Then he shook his head, pivoting away and exhaling sharply. "What the fuck has Wayne done to all of you?" he growled.

J stayed leaning on the wall, not entirely certain what was happening now.

"I'm going to, fucking," Wilson snarled, and then he vanished.

J stared after him, bewildered, and then he made himself keep walking.

Will and Danny were holding court at the homework table, and Danny had finally lost some of the shadows from his face. "J!" Will cried. Will loved Hood with the same fierce admiration all the kids loved Hood, as their protector and their champion, but J was the one who had found Will, and brought him to the same group home where Danny was now living. J was the one who had found Will his foster family, later.

"Hey Will," J said. "New friend?" he asked, nodding at Danny.

"This is Danny," Will said. "Danny, this is J. He runs for Hood."

"Boss is working a case," J told the kids, "So he sent me to look in for him. Everybody good?"

The kids chorused affirmatives, and J looked at Danny. "You good?" he asked, more gently.

Danny nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said carefully.

J gave him a thumbs up. "Hood set you up at the Sinclair's?" he asked, though he knew the answer.

Jane and Francesca Sinclair ran a group home, and the Red Hood Gang had been quietly donating money to them for the entire span of the gang's existence. They weren't affiliated in any way, but Hood had brought them a number of kids since he'd taken over the area.

J never knew if he thought it was ironic or perfect that the Sinclairs—no one knew if they were sisters or married—had built their labor of love on the abandoned grounds of Ma Gunn's School for Boys.

"Yeah, they're- they're really nice," Danny said.

J grinned. "They are," he agreed. "I know they'll hook you up if you need anything," he said, "But if they aren't, Will knows how to get ahold of Hood. He'll help you out."

"He already has," Danny said. "But I'll remember."

J winked, and left them. He only had one more stop on his rounds, but he had to do that one as Hood, because he could hardly go check on Nan and TJ as J—TJ had already proved he'd recognize his face immediately. He'd left the Hood on the roof in his usual supply drop, so he headed up the stairs.

Robin was on the roof of the community center, and he looked panicked. "Hood, thank god, please!"

"What's wrong?" he asked, shoving on the Hood.

"Deathstroke's after B," Robin panted.

"Lead," Hood barked.

Robin hit the edge of the roof at a run, and Hood followed. Robin led him on a desperate race across the rooftops to a supermarket in Ottsburg.

Deathstroke, in full armor, did appear to be making a solid attempt at beating Batman to death with his hands. On the one hand, yikes, but on the other, at least it wasn't his sword.

Hood pretty much just body-slammed Deathstroke to get him to release B. Deathstroke kicked Hood across the roof, and spun.

Robin had planted himself between B, who was struggling to his feet, and Deathstroke, bow staff in hand.

Deathstroke stood still, staring. "You don't deserve your birds, Batman," he sneered the name. "But for some reason they seem to like you, so." He shook his head, looked from Robin to Hood, and then disappeared into the shadows.

"Hood," Batman said. His voice was more gravel than usual, and Hood guessed Deathstroke had gotten his hands on B's throat at some point in the scuffle.

"B," Hood answered evenly.

"Thank you," B said.

"I did it for Robin, not for you," Hood replied immediately. "But Deathstroke's right. Your birds like you for some stupid reason, and I'm not going to let it kill another one."

"It's not stupid," Robin said, glaring at him. "And you know it too."

"Robin," B reprimanded, "Please don't antagonize the crime lord who already hates you."

"He doesn't hate me," Robin said at the same time Hood growled, "I wouldn't hurt him."

"See!" Robin said, pointing at him.

B looked like he wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Then thank you for helping Robin," he said to Hood, very evenly.

"Yeah, well," Hood grumbled. "Someone has to make sure your birds don't die, and it's not like you ever do it."

"That's not fair," Robin told him quietly.

Hood scoffed. "Yeah? Where was he when Blockbuster was systematically destroying Wing's entire life?" he demanded. And because TJ had been telling him stories in an attempt to sway Hood's already-shifted opinion, he could ask, "Where was he when Shiva kidnapped you right out of your own training?"

"What?" B asked sharply.

"And we all know how it went with the second bird," Hood continued relentlessly. "So I think I'm perfectly fair in saying he's not going to be one to keep you safe."

B made a wounded noise.

"No one is ever safe," Robin snapped. "Certainly not in this life! But we picked it. You picked it!" he accused.

"You're a kid, kid," Hood said. "You had no idea what you picked."

"I picked bruises, and broken bones, and getting cussed at and yes, maybe dying!" Robin shouted. "I knew! I watched you die, Hood," he snarled, getting into Hood's space. "I knew what I was getting into!"

"Robin," B said sternly.

"Do not start with me, B," Robin growled, whirling on Batman. "You are just as bad, if not worse, because you see-saw between treating me and N like recalcitrant children to be forced into line or like soldiers to spend in your war on crime!" He jabbed a finger in B's chest. "You do not get to tell me that I'm too young and need to be protected, when you sent me alone against Killer Croc last week!"

"Robin," B said, more quietly.

"Your bull-headedness is why N won't come home," Robin said, "And your stupid black-and-white morality is what's keeping Hood from coming home. All you had to do was leave Joker dead, and this could've been over."

"N couldn't live with being a killer," B said, but his voice was weak.

Robin scoffed. "N was living with it just fine, it was you who couldn't live with N being a killer."

"What?" Hood croaked. Dick had- Dick had what? And B had- what? He found himself sitting on the roof, Robin kneeling beside him.

"Sorry," Robin said. "I didn't mean to spring that on you."

"N did what?" he managed.

"Beat Joker to death with his bare hands," Robin said promptly. "I mean, B crashed a helicopter with him in it, once, but that one didn't stick. But yeah," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "N lost his temper."

The infamous Dick Grayson temper, Hood thought, not without fondness, though in the early years, Dick had turned the sharp side of his tongue on Jason a few times, as well as B. "Why?"

"He had me, and was taunting him about y- Jason." Robin rolled his eyes. "Then B resuscitated him."

"Why?" Hood asked, truly bewildered.

"We don't kill," B said, voice like glass shards and gravel.

"That death-worshiping piece of shit doesn't count," Hood snapped.

"You don't get to decide that," B answered.

"Maybe you don't," Hood said, "But I absolutely do, in fact. He killed me, I can kill him back, it's only fair."

B opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

Robin's mouth twitched, and then flattened again.

"Killed you," B said quietly.

Goddamnit, Jason thought, and then he took the Hood off. "B," he said quietly.

"Jason," B said hoarsely. He shoved back the cowl, dropping to one knee at Jason's side. "It is you."

"Goddamnit, B, I had a whole plan," Jason complained roughly.

B's eyes were wet. "Jaylad," he whispered.

"I can't, B," Jason rasped. "I'm not going to be your kid any more."

"You'll always be my kid, Jaylad," B disagreed. "Even when I don't like what you're doing."

"He hasn't killed anyone in four months," Robin announced.

Jason squinted at him. "How the fuck do you know that, kid?" Then he tried to remember the last time he'd killed anyone, and couldn't.

"I pay attention," Robin said.

"Stalker," Jason said fondly.

Robin grinned. "He hasn't killed anyone in four months," he repeated to B, "And he took down Mask's entire compound without casualties, and crime in the Bowery is down forty percent since the Red Hood Gang took over. Standardized test scores at Park Middle School are up ten points from last year, fifteen from two years ago."

B and Jason both stared at him. "Kid, you're terrifying," Jason told him.

Robin nodded solemnly. "Employment's up almost twenty percent," he added. "Actually, sometime I need to set up a civilian meeting with the Red Hood," he said. "Drake Enterprises wants to build a factory in the Bowery somewhere."

Jason stared at him. "What the fuck," he said tiredly.

"Robin," B said.

Robin shrugged. "I'm just saying," he muttered.

"You've had a lot to say tonight," B said dryly.

Robin crossed his arms. "Well you've been really stupid for a really long time," he said. "I've been holding it in."

B sighed. "Thank you, Robin," he said softly.

Robin blushed.

Jason ruffled his hair. "Good work, kid," he said. Then he sighed softly and looked at B. "I'm not- I'm not going to stop cleaning up the alley," he told his dad. "I- but kid's right that I switched to rubber bullets four months ago, and I mean to keep that streak. I don't-" he growled, searching for words.

"Jaylad," B said, voice cracking on emotion.

"I'm not looking to play jury," Jason told him. "Not again, not any more." Then he swallowed, and firmed his jaw. "I am in it for harm reduction, though," he said. "And I truly believe, and I know you won't agree, I truly believe there are some people better off dead. Joker was one of them."

B's mouth turned down.

"And I'm not going looking, I'm not going hunting," Jason said, a promise to himself as much as to B. "But if I find myself looking down my gun at someone like that, I will pull the trigger."

"Jason," B said. "I- I don't like it," he said roughly. "I don't agree, and I don't want that on your hands. But you're my son, Jaylad, and nothing is going to make me turn you away."

Jason swallowed the sob that wanted to emerge. "Dad," he said, very softly.

B dragged him into a hug, the only thing he'd wanted, ever since he'd woken up tied up in a warehouse in Ethiopia, the one thing he'd never thought he'd get again. Jason buried his face in his dad's chest and cried. B held him tightly.

Eventually, B sat back, pulling the cowl up and barking, "Repeat that!" He didn't let go of Jason, though, so Jason pulled back himself, wiping his eyes and picking up the Hood again.

"Robbery," Robin told him quietly.

"Go," Jason said. "I've got shit to do tonight too," he added, and if his voice was a little rough, no one called him on it.

"Sunday dinner," B blurted, rough and awkward and hopeful. "Agent A would love to see you."

Jason nodded, putting on the Hood again to avoid looking at either of them. "I'll- I'll be there," he promised.

The Bat and his Bird swung into the night, and Hood turned more slowly back towards his side of town.

Alex texted him, so he paused on a rooftop to read the wall of words. "Found Terrazas," read the report, "Gotham Mercy, tachychardia, hypertension, hyperthermia." So, cocaine overdose, Hood interpreted. "Wife and a psych have been in and out. Report says he insists NOT overdose. Did some camera stalking, found the buy, and it is NOT Carlito. Facial recognition pulled an arrest record from last night. Illegal carry of a weapon. His name is Andrea Saita, cousin by marriage to Enrico Enzerillo. Nightwing dropped off a sample of the drugs, and it's analyzing, but we both suspect it's cut with something. I'll keep you updated."

"Thanks Alex," he replied. "Send me Enzerillo's address please."

A familiar black-and-blue shadow melted out of the night. "Everything all right?" he asked softly. "Turk said you and Robin hightailed it off like your asses were on fire—his words—and before I could follow Slade showed up in a temper about you being an idiot and B being an asshole."

"I had it out with B," he admitted. "And it sucked." It had been good, too, but it definitely sucked. His phone vibrated with Alex's answer.

"What do you need?" Nightwing asked immediately, coming closer to put hands on his shoulders.

Hood sighed. "Right now I need to go put the fear of the Hood into Enrico Enzerillo," he said reluctantly. "And then I need you to be at home when I get there, because we gotta talk."

Nightwing's laugh was fragile. "That's never good," he said lightly, the way Nightwing always bantered when he was scared.

Hood cupped his cheek. "Pretty Bird," he said in a low murmur. "Nothing's changed my feelings for you in seven years, and I don't think anything could," he promised. "But you're going to hate what I gotta tell you, and if it changes things for you, I understand."

Nightwing sighed, leaning into the glove on his face. "Go fuck shit up," he said roughly. "I'll be waiting."

Hood was not extremely motivated to hurry home and let Dick rip his heart out of his chest, so he took his time staking out Enzerillo and scouting the security of the man's penthouse apartment.

Security was pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good. Hood cracked it in fifteen minutes, while the man ranted to his cell phone in his kitchen, and Hood leaned on the bedroom window, arms crossed over his chest, waiting for Enzerillo to come to bed.

Enzerillo came into the bedroom muttering to himself, flipped on the light, and closed the door before he looked up and saw Hood. He froze, all color draining from his face, and he stumbled back into the door and leaned like it was the only thing holding him up.

"Good," Hood said. "I don't have to introduce myself. Enrico, can I call you Enrico?"

Enzerillo made a stuttering noise that really wasn't any kind of word.

"Good," Hood repeated. "Enrico, I gotta admit I'm pretty annoyed."

"Pl-please don't kill me," Enzerillo gasped.

Hood tilted his head. "It had crossed my mind," he said slowly, slinking closer. "Why shouldn't I?"

"I- I don't- I don't even know why you're here," Enzerillo wheezed. He wasn't quite crying yet, but he looked close.

Jesus, Hood hadn't even touched him. "No?" he asked softly. "So those aren't your drugs in my territory, putting my people in the hospital?"

"Wha-what?" Enzerillo choked. "What are you- are you talking about?"

Hood stood back from his slow prowl, arms crossing back over his chest. "I caught Andrea Saita fair and square dealing cut drugs to my people. I knew he was yours so I left him to the cops and came to have a conversation."

Enzerillo's face changed. "That rat," he snarled, turning red with fury instead of pale.

Hood leaned back on the windowsill, all studied insouciance. "So he isn't yours," he said, letting the vocoder turn it to a purr.

"No," Enzerillo said. "He was," he said. "Family, you know?"

Hood nodded.

"But his wife, she thinks, because she is caporegime of my best men, she would make a better don than I." He scowled. "I didn't kill her. She is family. But she is in New York, now, and I thought she took her rat husband with her."

"And instead he's here, still making trouble for you," Hood agreed. "He probably wanted me to kill you."

Enzerillo nodded. "He is in jail?" he asked.

Hood nodded again. "Listen, Enrico, I don't like people thinking they can use me for their vengeance."

Enzerillo startled, seeming to remember he was trapped in a room with a very deadly person. "Mr. Hood," he started silkily.

Hood cut him off. "This is your problem, first and foremost," he said firmly. "Solve it, and I won't be back. Fail to solve it, or your problems become my problems again, and the Enzerillo family won't be anyone's problem ever again. Capiche?"

Enzerillo nodded hastily. "Yes, Mr. Hood, yes, you are more than clear, and more than fair."

"Glad we could work this out as gentlemen," he said, and let himself back out the window.

He watched Enzerillo make phone calls for a while as he composed a text to Alex with a rundown of the night's affairs—excluding Bat affairs. Alex only sent him a thumbs-up in reply, so Hood turned for home, something squirming in his stomach.

"Sorry that took so long," Hood said as he climbed in the living room window.

"Hazards of dating a crime boss," Dick said dryly, and it was Dick, no kevlar suit to be seen, and none of TJ's shabby style. He was wearing yellow sweatpants and a cutoff crop-top with a faded circus tent on it. "Sometimes your relationship takes a back seat to business." He came over and started helping Hood divest himself of his guns and armor. "As long as you know that's true of dating a vigilante, too," he added, teasingly.

Hood sighed, staring mutely at him.

Dick looked back, a fond little half smile on the edges of his mouth. "You want me to guess?" he asked quietly. "Would that make it easier?"

Hood huffed a startled laugh. "You got a guess?" he asked.

Dick's eyes sparkled challengingly. "You think me knowing who you are is going to change things, which means I know you. And you recognized me by my eyes, which means you've been close enough to Dick Grayson to see them properly," he ticked off his fingers. "You know our secret identities, and you fight like one of us, but also with some other recognizable bits of training, mostly League of Assassins, but not only the League. You said you've loved me for seven years, which means you would've just been a kid, if you're younger than me. You hate the Joker more than anyone else in the world, and you resent B for not taking care of Robins properly. You love me," Dick added gently, "But you don't trust I'll love you back."

Hood said roughly, "Okay, so?"

Dick's hands slid up his shoulders to touch the releases on the base of the Hood, but he didn't trigger them.

Hands shaking, Hood reached up and triggered the release himself.

"Jason," Dick murmured, and then lifted the Hood.

Jason made a garbled noise of surprise, "Dickie," he said hoarsely. "How-?"

"I cheated," Dick admitted, tossing the Hood blindly behind him towards the couch. "Slade told me." Then he dragged Jason into a warm, familiar kiss. "I was mostly there, but even with the lives we lead 'back from the dead' wasn't my first guess," he murmured, pressing their foreheads together.

"Dick," Jason repeated helplessly. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Shut up," Dick ordered, and kissed him before he could argue.

Jason picked him up, and Dick tightened his arms around Jason's shoulders and wrapped his legs around Jason's hips, both of them now comfortable and accustomed to Jason carrying Dick. He settled on the couch with Dick in his lap.

Dick burrowed into his neck. "I get why you couldn't tell me till you'd talked to B."

"I had a whole confrontation planned," Jason admitted softly. "It was gonna involve the Joker, and making B choose."

"Oh, Jay," Dick murmured. "You know he can't-"

"I know," Jason agreed roughly. "It's okay. I- just knowing he's dead."

"Yeah," Dick said. "I think Timmy figured him being dead would be enough in the end, even if B couldn't."

Jason laughed. "You knew it was him?"

Dick scoffed. "Please, bat-transaction to kill the Joker? It was only ever going to be Tim." Quietly, he said, "He really looks up to you."

Jason tipped Dick's chin to look at those blue eyes. "He told me about you, too," he said. "That anyone would kill him for me," he said, resting his forehead against Dick's again.

"God, I tried," Dick said. "Then B had to go and be himself." He sighed. "He did it for me, so I wouldn't have to live with that."

"That's what he said," Jason agreed, and didn't add Tim's contribution.

Dick shrugged one shoulder. "I think I'd've learned to live with it," he said. "I don't deny I was fucked up about it, but that was more about losing my temper than killing him." He smiled lopsidedly at Jason, a little sad, a little hurt. "I don't even remember doing it, and bringing him back didn't fix that."

Jason kissed him again. This was getting them nowhere, and Dick's beautiful eyes were watery. "Pretty Bird," he said softly. "You still want this, with me? We were nearly brothers."

"Always," Dick said. "Jay, I meant what I said when you decided we had to wait. I know everything I need to know about you to know you're the kind of man I'd be happy to spend my life with. That it's you, that you know my bad sides as well as my good, my temper and my jealousy and my recklessness, that just makes it better."

"Everyone knows your recklessness, Pretty Bird," Jason said, to cover the swoop in his chest.

Dick grinned at him, sweet and warm. "Jay, you grew into a man I love." More somberly, he said, "If you hadn't died, I don't think we would've ended up here. I think we would've managed to be friends, and then I think I would've figured out how to be your brother. But that never happened," he said. "You died, and I grieved everything about you that I missed by being young and angry, and we can't change the past."

"I'd rather be this than your brother," Jason said, shifting Dick a little in his lap.

Dick bowed forward to rest his head against Jason's neck. "Me too," he said roughly. "God, you're so strong," he whispered.

Oh, Jason thought. "Yeah," he asked, letting his voice go low and growly. "You like that?" He moved Dick again, just to feel him shiver.

"Yeah," Dick said hoarsely.

Jason tipped Dick's chin back up to meet his eyes. "Tell me what you want," he said. "I need," he stuttered. "I need to be good to you, Pretty Bird, whatever that means."

Dick lunged forward for a kiss. "Take me to bed, Jay," he said. "We're not doing this on a couch."

Jason stood, holding Dick's weight. "We don't have to do this at all," he said.

"Oh we're gonna," Dick said, flashing teeth in a feral grin.

And how was Jason supposed to resist that?

Two nights later, Hood and Nightwing crashed into the middle of an arms deal gone wrong to discover Deathstroke in the thick of it, holding Robin scruffed by the cape while he roundly trounced all comers with the sword in his other hand.

Robin had his arms crossed over his chest, clearly sulking. Deathstroke hadn't killed a single gang member, though a few of them looked like they might wish he had.

"Deathstroke," Nightwing sighed, sounding tired.

"Nightwing," Deathstroke replied, sounding positively gleeful.

"That's Hood, and I'm Robin," Robin said flatly. "Lovely, we all know each other's names. Put me down."

Deathstroke set him with over-exaggerated care on the ground. "You should keep a better eye on your littlest bird if you don't want people to poach him." He shook his head. "He gets into the weirdest scrapes."

Robin kicked him sharply in the shin and retreated to Nightwing's side. "I can handle myself, thanks," he snapped.

Deathstroke didn't even flinch.

"Hey, thanks," Hood said to the mercenary, tipping his head in Nightwing's direction. He wasn't willing to rule out Deathstroke's intervention giving Dick time to think instead of react was part of the reason their conversation had gone so well.

Deathstroke's mask turned his direction. "You finally talk?" he demanded.

Hood nodded.

"Good," Deathstroke said. "Now you can get your head out of your ass and you birds can keep a better eye on each other." He shook his head. "I've got a contract in Bolivia, so I'll be out of your hair by morning. So someone else is going to have to fish Robin out of his next mess. Or Nightwing, whoever goes first."

"Slade," Nightwing said, surprised.

Deathstroke scoffed. "Don't die, Bird," he ordered. "I'll be very put out."

"Fates forfend," Nightwing said dryly.

"Call if you need me," Deathstroke said. He was looking at Nightwing when he said it, but he glanced at Robin too. "I still owe you that favor," he added to Nightwing. Then he jumped for the rafters and vanished into the shadows.

"Yeah, I won't!" Nightwing shouted after him.

"How'd he wind up owing you a favor, N?" Robin asked.

"Long story," Nightwing said dismissively. "Titans mission gone right, contract gone wrong, a top-secret organization, a mercenary trainee in over his head." He shrugged. "There were nanobots, it was a whole thing."

"Jesus, Wing," Hood said.

"I learned to sword fight," Nightwing said lightly. "And now Deathstroke owes me a favor."

"You could tell it on Sunday," Robin said hopefully. "At dinner?"

Nightwing never froze in the field, but there was a tension in his forehead that was a tell to Hood. "Maybe, baby bird," he said easily.

"B's calling," Robin said. "I gotta go. See you tomorrow," he said hopefully, and grappled for the ceiling.

"You should come," Hood said quietly. "It'll split both A and B's fluttering between us."

Nightwing smirked. "Ah, the truth comes out. You just want me to help take the heat."

"Well yeah," Hood agreed as Nightwing settled behind him on his motorcycle. "Obviously."

Nightwing laughed and held on as blue lights started to flash and Hood gunned the bike to leave the scene of the crime.

He wasn't laughing on Sunday as Hood's bike rolled up the Manor drive. His grip was uncomfortably tight on Jason's middle. Jason turned off the ignition and removed his helmet. He didn't try to dismount, because Dick was still clinging to him. "Come on, Pretty Bird," he murmured.

"This was a terrible idea," Dick muttered into his shoulder.

"Come on," Jason repeated. "Alfred's cooking."

Dick sighed. "Yeah, all right," he said, and eased his grip on Jason.

As the great door swung open above them, Jason took Dick's hand, squeezing tightly. That Dick was more nervous about this than he was was funny enough to ease Jason's nerves almost entirely.

Alfred smiled warmly down on them. "My boys," he said softly.

Tim darted past Alfred with a cry of "Dick!" and crashed into Dick in a hug.

Dick swung Tim around in a cheerful hug, crying, "Timmy!"

Jason approached Alfred. "Hey Alfie," he said softly.

Alfred cupped his cheek, and then drew him into a tight, brief hug. "Master Jason," he murmured. "You're home." Then he pulled back and cleared his throat to compose himself. "Master Dick," he said.

Tim ducked back past Alfred and caught Jason's arm. "Come on," he muttered. "Give 'em a second."

Jason let Tim tug him into the front sitting room. "What's up, kid?" he asked casually.

Tim, blushing furiously, said, very fast, "I thought you coming home ought to be marked as an occasion, but I knew you wouldn't want it to be like, a thing, so this is for you, while no one is looking." And he shoved an album into Jason's hands and fled the room.

Jason blinked down at the object in his hands. It was a narrow album, maybe only a half dozen pages. He cracked it open and was not entirely surprised to find pictures of himself. But himself and B, or himself and Dick, spanning years. Tim had caught a picture of him and B at Jason's first public gala, and it was nestled in the protective sleeve next to a photo of Batman and a very young Robin, maybe one of his very earliest patrols, lit by the neon of a club. There was a picture of him and Dick at the opening of an exhibit on space at the natural history museum, in tuxedos, but their bow ties were undone and they were clearly laughing at something, mirrored by a picture of Robin and Nightwing, both laughing and upside down, Robin half a twist behind Nightwing in the triple flip they were both doing. There was a photo of him as Hood, moodily lit by the lights on the Chinatown arch, haloed by a streetlight. It was set beside a picture of Hood and Nightwing playing chase, Dick's laughing grin the focal point as Hood did a handspring behind him.

"Jaylad?" Bruce asked.

Jason looked up from the album, throat thick. "Hey," he said.

Bruce hovered awkwardly, and Jason realized he wanted a hug. He considered briefly making B work for it, but then he decided he both also wanted a hug, and was willing to reach even further than halfway to make this tentative truce with his family work.

Jason set the album down and moved to hug B.

"Is that-?" B asked after a moment, gently disengaging.

"From Tim," Jason confirmed. "Some good pictures."

"He's a good photographer," B agreed like he didn't quite know how to continue.

"Stalker," Jason said fondly. "Dickie'll like them."

B froze. "Dick?" he asked quietly. Something hopeful vibrated in him.

Jason tipped his chin towards the front entryway, where Dick and Alfred were just coming in from the front stoop.

"Hey B," Dick said warily.

"Chum," Bruce rasped, striding forward.

Dick leaned eagerly into the hug Bruce hauled him into, and Jason had a moment of fierce jealousy that B could just hug Dick, when he so clearly hesitated to hug him, and then he shook it away. Jason had slapped away a lot of touches in his early years at the Manor, and everyone knew Actual Human Octopus Dick Grayson would die if he didn't get hugs often enough. If B hesitated with him and not Dick, it wasn't about who he wanted to hug more.

Man, being the emotionally stable one was a weird feeling.

"Come," Alfred told Jason quietly. "Let's see about supper, shall we?"

"Yeah, Alfie," Jason said, and followed the butler through to the kitchen, leaving B and Dick to their desperate clinging.

Tim was hesitantly stirring a pot on the stove, looking at it like it was a bomb set to go off at any moment.

"Very well done, Master Tim," Alfred said, relieving him of the spoon. "Now, will you please set the table?"

"Sure Alfred," Tim said, and skittered away like the stove would get him if he stayed a moment longer.

Alfred looked very fond. "I'm afraid Master Bruce and Master Dick have rather impressed upon him the impossibility of the kitchen."

"We'll get him there," Jason said.

Alfred's smile broadened. "Indeed," he hummed. "Check the potatoes?"

Jason moved to the oven obediently.

"You're well?" Alfred asked the gravy.

"Yeah," Jason said into the oven. "Better than I've been… in a long time," he admitted. "Dickie's been. Good," he decided finally.

"I was deeply relieved when Master Tim confided in me that Dick had gone to you when he couldn't come to us," the old man said softly. "You both look much better for it."

"Yeah, he's- he's good for me," Jason agreed. "Something to come home to."

"And you're making him eat vegetables," Alfred said, the barest smile on his mouth.

Jason laughed. "When I can," he said. "When he's not eating cereal."

"You're making fun of me," Dick accused from the doorway.

"Always," Jason agreed.

"Will you take the roast to the table?" Alfred asked, producing a platter and a beautiful roast.

"Sure Alfred," Dick agreed. He kissed Jason's cheek on the way past, just as he always did.

"Ah," B said from the doorway.

Jason swallowed. That was non-negotiable for both of them. They'd talked before coming here. He lifted his chin.

Bruce kissed his forehead, taking the gravy boat Alfred handed him without a word, and followed Dick through into the dining room.

"All Master Bruce has ever wanted was your happiness," Alfred told him quietly.

Jason exhaled. "I remember that now," he promised. "I know I forgot for a bit."

Alfred nodded. "Good. Now, off you go," he ordered, and handed Jason the green beans.

Jason set the green beans on the table and took the empty seat between Dick and Bruce, across from Tim. He took Dick's hand under the edge of the table, not for reassurance, but just because he wanted to.

Bruce smiled at them. As Alfred set the potatoes on the table, and allowed himself to be guilted into the last chair by Tim and Dick's combined puppy-eyes, B cleared his throat. "We were never a praying family," he said. "And we only made toasts at New Years, but I- I can't start the meal without some kind of, of acknowledgement of what it means to me to have my whole family under the roof again."

"Ye gods, actual words," Dick said.

Tim very obviously kicked him under the table.

B smiled, warm and broad, like Jason could barely remember from his early days as Robin. "Sometimes they're worth it," he said dryly.

"To family," Alfred interrupted, raising his glass.

"To family," Jason agreed, mimicking him. His family echoed them, and clinked their glasses.

"So," Tim said as Bruce served the roast. "Dick was going to tell use the story of why Deathstroke the Terminator owes him a favor."

And as Bruce demanded an explanation and Dick squawked about Tim's betrayal, Jason looked across the table at Alfred, and they both hid their smiles in their supper.