Chapter Text
In Gotham, it was tough to anticipate how any single night might go. That was something that Batman had drilled into Jason again and again and again---you never knew what could happen, so it was imperative that you be prepared for everything. Batman’s lessons were tedious, but Jason didn't always complain---he couldn't, not when those lessons had saved his life at least twice a month since he'd first put on the pixie boots.
Common sense had to be shelved sometimes, and the unreal was a part of their reality. Something about Gotham---the air, the water, the sickness that accumulated in all of the grimy cracks in the pavement---bred the blackest and most bizarre kinds of evil in the world. People moved away from Gotham as frantically as rats leaving a sinking ship, but the very rich and the very poor stayed. The rich had gotten that way by sinking their feelers deep into the criminal underworld, sucking the lower layers of society completely dry, and those roots kept them from leaving the city. The poor turned to crime, thrusting themselves into a bleak cycle that ended either in their death or incarceration.
On the surface level, they'd stumbled upon a regular small-scope crime: a robbery at a warehouse full of home electronics---hot merchandise that would have an easy cash turnaround. The robbery had been a quiet one. It'd been well-planned, well executed, and almost successfully pulled off. The night guard had been distracted and incapacitated, so the henchmen were smoothly finishing up with loading the already-running van.
The exhaust swelled a sour cloud in the building, making Jason’s cold nose wrinkle up. If the perps hadn’t gotten sloppy at the very end, accidentally tripping the silent alarm, the police band wouldn’t have been alerted. If Batman and Robin hadn’t been close enough to intercept before the cops came, the criminals would have gotten away, regardless of the unexpected warning.
It was a simple heist, relatively unimaginative, but low-risk and high-gain. It didn’t fit the the M.O. of either of the men running the show, but money was money and neither could risk getting caught. The Cluemaster and the Riddler---notorious back-patters who reveled in wordplay and proving that they were just so darn smart---were repeat offenders. If they got caught, it’d be a “go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200” card.
And they were so going to get caught. Jason wanted to get it over with, because he was cold and damp and tired of sitting in the rafters and just watching . He didn’t complain too much, though, because it was warmer inside the warehouse than it was on the outside. Gotham had surprised them with an early winter---it’d started snowing that afternoon, four fluffy inches of powder that’d been immediately followed by a miserable, frigid drizzle. The weather didn’t bother Batman, but Jason wasn’t dressed for it. His tunic and boots were heated and insulated, but Dick’s old leggings didn’t fit him. Jason had longer legs than his predecessor had at his age, so he’d suited up with just the winter Robin boots and his normal shorts. He hadn’t fussed---didn’t want to let Bruce think that he was afraid of a little cold---but sitting in the snow had given him a case of the shivers that he tried hard to suppress.
Jason covered it up with antsy fidgeting and a grin. “What’s the plan, boss?”
“They don’t realize that the alarm has been tripped.”
Batman was thinking aloud---presumably for Robin’s benefit---but he didn’t seem to realize that not everyone thought like him. He’d make observations that made perfect sense to his sharp mind, but they might as well have been riddles to Jason. He didn’t like riddles that much.
“Well,” Jason whispered, rubbing his gloved hands over his thighs in an effort to get some feeling back in them. “It is a silent alarm.”
Batman continued to stare at the scene far below them. They weren’t close enough to hear the conversation, but they could see the main players. There was a thin man dressed in a green suit---the Riddler---a bulkier man in an orange jumpsuit---the Cluemaster---and a little girl in a purple parka and scarf---a mystery hostage. The girl was the only reason Batman and Robin hadn’t swung in already to rain the hurt down on the two scumbags. They had to choose their angle of attack very carefully. A surprise attack could put the kid in harm’s way, and that wasn’t how Batman operated.
“They would know that the security system existed,” Batman rumbled in an undertone. “Neither Nygma nor Brown is prone to that level of oversight, but they’re not counting the alarm triggering as even a possibility.” He paused. “Hnn.”
“That a good hnn or a bad hnn, hmmm?” Jason asked with a cheeky grin. The corner of Batman’s mouth pulled briefly into the rough approximation of a smirk.
“Keep sharp, Robin. Follow me.”
“Follow you?” He said, shaking his limbs to make sure nothing had numbed up to the point of falling asleep on him. “Sure thing. Easy-peesy-lemon-squeezy.”
They shimmied and grappled their way down two half-exposed accordion floors, over crates and packed pallets. They perched on the rafters above the two crooks and the girl, observing the movements below. The girl didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger---she wasn’t bound, gagged, or otherwise mistreated. She was sitting in a folding chair, her long blond hair tangled around her tired face. It had to have been way past her bedtime. Cluemaster was rigging some explosives---chances were, they didn’t plan on leaving any evidence of their visit---while Riddler talked with the girl.
“Riddle me this,” Nygma said in a low, oily drawl. He smiled toothily, leaning into his cane. “If two’s company and three’s a crowd, what are four and five?”
The girl slid lower in the chair, sinking into her puffy parka. “I don’t like riddles.”
“Not unsurprising,” he said with a sniff. He straightened, twirling his cane. His smile turned smug. “Riddles are the diversions of the clever mind, my dear.”
Only her nose and eyes were visible above the scarf that she had wrapped around her neck, but it was obvious from her glare that she didn’t like being written off as slow. She sat up, crossing her arms over her chest.
“The answer is nine, Mr. Nygma,” the girl said, brassily annoyed. “Four plus five is nine. I’m not dumb. I just think riddles are stupid.”
Looking up from the charges, Cluemaster boomed with laughter. Eddie’s sharp cheekbones flushed a hot red. His upper-lip curled back to bare his teeth.
“Bringing her was a mistake, Arthur.”
“Nah, she did a good job,” Cluemaster said, laying a big hand on the girl’s shoulder. His fingers flexed and massaged her neck, and she pulled her shoulders up like a turtle retreating into the safety of its shell. Cluemaster was looking at Riddler, so he missed the way the girl’s mouth shrank into a puckered grimace, but Jason saw it. Maybe Brown was happy about whatever job she’d done, but she wasn’t.
Jason snorted, forgetting for a split second that he was relying on silence in order to maximize the spread of the shadows over his garishly bright costume. He felt more than saw Batman tense up next to him---he was definitely going to get a lecture when they got back to the manor.
Especially since the little girl had heard him. She stared directly at the caped crusaders in the rafters, blue eyes widening.
She bolted. Batting away the Cluemaster’s hand, she scramble-ran for the warehouse door. Cluemaster spotted them, swore, and pulled out a gun.
“It’s the Bat! Get him!”
Robin looked at Batman; Batman nodded once, hard.
“Go,” Batman growled, and moved to intercept the Cluemaster.
That was command enough for him---Batman could handle those yahoos on his own; Killer Croc they were not---so he turned on his heel and sprinted after the girl. She pushed over a display, but Jason was a pro at thinking on his feet. He cleared it with an easy leap, his longer legs cutting the distance between them. By the time he caught up to her---grabbing a hold of her puffy parka---she’d managed to get out to the parking lot. She didn’t have his stamina, so she was gasping for air, her face red and blotchy. The girl tried to wriggle free of his hold, but he’d gotten a good fistful of her fur-lined hood and wasn’t about to let go.
“Hey!” Robin said, grabbing her upper-arm with his other hand. She continued to jerk and twist like a landed trout. “Cool it! We’re the good guys.”
She went still for half a moment, staring at him. Jason had dealt with plenty of victims, both before putting on the Robin costume and after he’d started heroing as an extracurricular activity, and he liked to think that he was pretty good at it. Batman understood that he didn’t have to protect him from the gamut of abuse on the streets, because he knew that he had seen it all before. Batman wasn’t great at calming down or cheering up people, so that duty fell to his new Robin. Jason’s signature grin got as much exercise during patrols as his right hook did, and it never stopped feeling good. There was a certain satisfaction that came only from giving the hopeless and frantic a couple kind words. It was instant gratification, and it went a long ways toward making Jason feel like he was a hero, and not just a kid in a real hero’s hand-me-downs.
He knew how to recognize a victim---knew when and how to approach someone who was hurting.
So he knew immediately that she wasn’t looking to be calmed down and soothed. She wasn’t scared, she was angry. The little girl’s eyes were a hot blue, her mouth bunched into a scowl. He had just enough time to think whoops before she started hitting him with her small, mitten-padded fists.
“Lemme go!” She shouted, smacking him wildly. It didn’t really hurt, but it was annoying. He couldn’t block and keep a good grip on the slippery fabric of her parka, so he switched up tactics and grabbed both of her hands. Using the couple of inches he had on her to his advantage, he lifted her up by her wrists. Instead of giving up and dangling peaceably, she just started kicking.
“Stop it!” He yelped, arching away from her flailing legs. “Hey, I said---ow---!”
The girl managed to land a kick to his stomach. Again, it wasn’t hard enough to do much damage, but it was distracting. He didn’t want to hurt her, so he was hesitant to use any real force, but incapacitating her was about as easy as wrestling a cat into a bubble bath. She was putting up a hell of a fight for someone with her size and strength.
“I don’t wanna go to jail!” she howled shrilly, her anger giving way to desperation.
She thought that he was going to throw her in prison?
It dawned on him that maybe she wasn’t a hostage. Maybe she was something worse.
Jason decided that enough was enough. Robin didn’t get pelted by punches from girls---at least, not since he had started being Robin---so he quickly spun and dropped her. He put his arms around her in a reverse bear-hug hold, pulling her back to his chest and pinning her arms against her front. He sat down in the snow, dragging her down with him, and held on tightly. She couldn’t hit, couldn’t kick, and couldn’t squirm away. That didn’t stop her from struggling, of course, and he would’ve sworn in court that she was made of nothing but elbows and knees and other sharp angles.
“Look,” he said, his voice low and even in her ear. She had to know that he meant business. “I’m serious. We’re not the bad guys, and nobody’s going to put you in jail! You hear me?”
All of the fight drained out of her. She went limp, shrinking into a more manageable shape in his arms.
“Daddy’s the bad guy,” the girl said, her voice reduced to a reedy little whine.
Yeah, she was all kinds of worse off than just a hostage. Jason thought of the Cluemaster’s hand on her neck, and he tasted bile.
“The Cluemaster’s your dad?”
She nodded. Her mess of blond hair tickled the underside of his chin and throat.
“You’re not going to jail,” he repeated. “You didn’t know what was going on.”
“I know you’re not supposed to take other people’s stuff,” she admitted in a terse, rapid whisper. “But Daddy said we had to. He made me cry and pretend to be lost, so the guard didn’t see him coming. I didn’t want to. I swear.”
Jason hadn’t forgotten what it was like to live in a condemned building, surrounded by stolen tires. He wasn’t far enough removed from that life to spare him the painful resonance of her words.
“That doesn’t make you bad,” he said, and let her go. She hesitated for a second, like she expected it to be a trick, then scrambled to her feet.
The girl eyed him distrustfully, her lower lip sucked between her teeth.
“If you lemme help, I won’t tell Batman,” Robin told her, standing. The cold had bit into his skin, and his butt and thighs had gone totally numb. For the hundredth time that night, he cursed the unexpected snowfall and younger Dick’s shorter legs.
“Did you forget your pants?” The girl asked him, rubbing her nose with the back of her mittened hand.
It wasn’t an answer to his offer, but she wasn’t running away or fighting him anymore. He’d take that as forward progress.
“Kinda,” he admitted, because he didn’t want to get into the whole story about hand-me-downs and terrible weather. Besides, not everyone had picked up on the fact that he was the new guy, despite him being a lot smaller than Dick Grayson. He didn’t like to admit that his costume didn’t fit him quite right yet, because that was the kind of statement that had too many meanings.
The girl unwound her scarf. It was purple fleece edged with lumpy stitches, homely enough to be hand-made. She offered it to him wordlessly. Police sirens swelled in the distance.
“I’m Stephanie. And you---you can keep it,” she mumbled at their feet. “For not telling Batman and stuff.”
Jason took the scarf from Stephanie and wrapped it around his neck. It wasn’t pretty, but it was warm. That warmth spread to his cold fingertips and cheeks.
“The police are still going to want to ask you questions. You don’t have to tell them everything, but don’t let your dad get off the hook, either. What he did is wrong,” he said, and she nodded.
“I hope they don’t let him out this time. I hate him,” she said fiercely, shaking. “That’s why I pushed the alarm button. I hope they lock Daddy up and throw away the key.”
And Jason kind of hoped so, too. He knew a victim when he saw one, after all.
“That was really brave, y’know,” he said, lightly squeezing her shoulder. She didn’t stop shaking---it was like she’d finally realized the full scope of what she’d done, and fear had set in. “You did the right thing, and the police will make sure that he pays.”
“I hate the police, too. I pushed the button ‘cause I thought that...” Stephanie paused, holding her breath. She glanced up at him, and she finally looked like all the other kids Batman had saved: trusting and reverent without complications. That’s how kids looked when they saw heroes. “...that you’d come.”
That made his guts knot up weirdly.
“That’s what Batman and Robin do,” Jason said, forcing a smile so wide and heroic, it made his numb cheeks throb. “And that’s why criminals know better than to mess with us!”
The wailing squad cars finally skidded into the parking lot, cutting arcs into the wet snow. Stephanie gave a soft, panicked whine, her face lit up by the flashing red and blue strobes. She tensed up like she was going to make a run for it again.
Jason took her gloved hand in his. Stephanie looked at him, took a deep breath, then exhaled it in a cottony cloud. She relaxed, leaning into him and wiping her nose.
“Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you when Batman and Robin are around,” he told her, and meant it. “I promise.”