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Of all the people Red Hood thought might intercept him in Titans Tower, this one hadn’t even made the list. Everything had gone according to plan so far, Replacement alone in the tower, all of the Titans elsewhere for the night. He’d gotten past the security as easily as breathing, and set the Tower on lockdown procedure. Killing all the lights had been his next step, and then all that was left to do was find the damned replacement and clip his wings in a message that would never be forgotten.
Cutting the power made it so Replacement would have one place to go, the command center of the tower, to try and restore power and find out what had gone wrong. The command center ran on its own power source, utterly independent of the rest of the power grid. There was no way of taking that one out short of blowing up the whole damned building, and he didn’t have nearly enough C4 with him for that.
He stalked the halls, the night-vision in his hood rendering everything in shades of green in a way that might have been funny if not for the Lazarus Rage already tinting everything in sepulchral tones of jade and black.
Light from under the door of the command center and a muted voice talking, but no one answering, made him smile ferally. Easy prey. Switching off his night-vision so he wouldn’t be blinded, he triggered the door.
“Replacement. Time to cl—”
He never saw it coming.
“Heads up, Hoodie!” A baseball bat slammed into the chin of his helmet with brutal force, knocking him on his ass. If the damned helmet hadn’t been reinforced, he thought dizzily that it might have taken his head clean off. He scrabbled for a gun, but never had a chance to as a hundred and forty pounds of crazy landed on his chest, pinning his arms down to the floor under its knees.
“What are you doing here?” He snarled, trying to bring his legs up to gain some leverage and twist free.
“Being the best auntie, Hoodie. Say goodnight, Gracie.” A needle jammed into his neck through the weave of his shirt and the world went sideways. The last thing he saw were three sets of teeth grinning at him, two sharp and fanged and one not, but all of them entirely bloodthirsty and savage. The darkness was almost a relief.
~
Four hours earlier:
Tim was grateful to be alone for once. His teammates on the Titans, while well-meaning, could be a bit much. And right now, with B entirely too focused on the threat of Red Hood, and him being— not benched— but shuffled off until the threat was dealt with, they’d be unbearable. So it was a relief to have the Tower to himself for now. He made a pot of coffee and slurped down a cup of noodles, thinking that Alfred would have fits over his choice of meal and settled down to dig deeper into anything he could find on the crime lord. He was just re-reading a police report on a group of human traffickers found dead in one of their staging areas, an old warehouse refitted to hold captives until they could be sold when the comm beeped for attention. Someone had set off the perimeter alarms around the tower. He pulled up the outside cameras to see a waving hand on the one by the door. “Hey! Baby bird, baby bird, let Auntie Asylum into your nest!”
What in the hell?
Sighing, he triggered the outside comm. “What are you doing here— and what the fuck was that?”
A guileless grin was directed at the door camera. “You capes like your codenames, dontcha? So I made my own. And does Bats know you use language like that with family?”
Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please do not call me baby bird ever again. And the less said about Auntie Asylum, the better. We’re not related.”
“‘Course we are, I’m the fun auntie! So let me in so I can continue to be. C’mon, we don’t got much time.” His unexpected visitor glanced back over her shoulder, her whole posture speaking of anxiety barely kept on a leash. And speaking of leashes— she wasn’t alone either.
Time? Tim chewed on his bottom lip. Let a known crazy into the tower? Batman would kill me if he ever found out. On the other hand, something’s got her nervy and worked up enough to come all the way here from Gotham. Harley was— crazy, but as far as he knew, she wasn’t likely to do that on an insane whim.
He was going to regret this, he just knew. Sighing, he keyed in the override for the door and disabled the scanners that would have flagged her as a threat. He pushed himself to his feet and went to see just what had brought his self-proclaimed ‘auntie’ here.
~
Four hours and twenty minutes later, said auntie rose to her feet and dusted her hands off on the seat of her shorts. “No eating him, boys,” Harley Quinn chided the two hyenas sniffing over the prone figure on the floor. “Bats is gonna want this one back.” Grinning, she glanced over at Robin, rising from his combat crouch. “That was fun! You might wanna tie him up before that wears off though. He oughta be gift-wrapped for when Batsy gets here.”
Tim shook himself all over and pulled a handful of reinforced zip-ties out of one of his utility belt pouches. Efficiently, he secured the unconscious crime lord and stripped away his weapons. He contemplated the man for a long moment, settling his racing heart. Who was it under that featureless red helmet? What did he have against Tim? It was given that he’d be at odds with Batman, given his propensity for delivering severed heads as a greeting, but Tim had only encountered him from a distance. He reached for the latches on the back of the helmet.
A firm hand stopped him. “Uh-uh, baby bird. I didn’t come here to get us both blown to hell.”
Tim froze. “Booby trapped?” His throat went dry.
“Yep. See those teeny little marks in the latches? Betcha if you don’t open that in just the right way, it goes boom.”
Tim withdrew his hands, pretending his heart wasn’t racing with adrenaline. “Batman will know how to disable it.”
“Probably,” Harley agreed with a careless shrug. “I personally think Bats needs a different hobby, but it might come in handy this time. Speaking of tall, batty and brooding, hadn’t you better get this place booted back up and call Daddy Batty?”
Tim shook his head again, trying to clear his thoughts. “Right. Um— you sticking around?” He wasn’t sure whether he wanted her there or not.
“Course I am. I warned Bats he needed to look out for you. I got things to say to him.” Harley hiked herself up onto a console, kicking her booted feet.
Taking a deep breath and pulling on every bit of training he had for staying calm in weird situations, Tim set about restoring power and reversing the lockdown. When the communications system booted back up, he put in a direct line to the Cave, knowing that even if B wasn’t in, either Oracle or Alfred would pick up. To his surprise, it was none of them. Nightwing’s face popped up on the monitor screen in front of him. “Robin!” he said in surprise.
“Hey, Nightwing. Is B in? I kinda got a situation here.”
Out of view of the monitor, Harley snorted a laugh.
“What situation? And who’s there with you?” Dick’s voice went from his usual tone to mission mode.
Harley grinned at Tim and laid a finger over her lips. “Um, look— can you just get Batman and come to the tower? It’s kind of important, I swear.”
“More important than the current situation?” Nightwing’s eyes narrowed in his mask.
“Would you believe me if I said it definitely has— bearing— on the current situation.”
“Robin? Are you okay?”
“I swear I’m not hurt. Little shook up, but not injured or in any other way compromised.” Tim sighed, They’d have to change it after this, but he gave the all-clear code. “Robins come home to roost when the sun goes down.”
“And the bats come out with the moon.” Dick replied. “Got it. I’ll grab B and we’ll be out there as quick as the plane will fly.”
“See you then.”
“Cute,” Harley put in after he cut the call. “You bats are, like, more paranoid than Crane when he’s dosed himself with his latest fear toxin.”
“We have to be. There are people out there who want us dead. You should know that.” He refrained from commenting that she’d dated one of the worst offenders. Mentioning Joker around her was a good way to have a very bad day.
“Point. You got anything to eat around here, baby bird?” Harley dropped off the console, boots thunking solidly on the floor.
“What about him?” Tim looked over at Red Hood, still unconscious and trussed up in ways Tim knew from experience that it was hard to get out of.
“I don’t think he wants anything.” Harley cracked her neck and stretched. “But my puppies are hungry and I could use a snack too.”
Tim sighed heavily. He hoped frozen stuff would satisfy Harley’s ‘puppies.’ He had nothing else to feed two hyenas short of making a grocery run and he was not even going there. “Fine. Let’s raid the kitchen.”
“Yay!” Harley slung an arm around his neck. “Food, boys! C’mon, baby bird, let's get you fed.”
“Could you please stop calling me that? And I ate already. I thought you were hungry.” He knew his voice was a little peevish, but this day was like nothing he’d ever anticipated.
Harley adopted a little old lady voice, “You’re still too skinny, how you gonna get another cape like that?” She cackled gleefully when she finished.
Tim knew his face was going red under his domino, but he ignored it, trying to act normal.
Harley ruffled his hair almost painfully. “I’m your family, baby bird, that means I get to give my adorable nephew a nickname if I wanna.”
“Not your nephew.”
Harley staggered and clutched her chest. “That’s mean. How could you be so cruel to your beloved auntie?”
“Not sorry.”
She cackled again. “There’s that sass I love!” She giggled all the way to the Tower’s kitchen.
Her expression soured again when they entered the kitchen, taking in the lack of— well pretty much anything, if Tim was honest about it. None of the Titans could exactly be called gourmet cooks. Some could burn water. Tim had been the one to grab the fire extinguisher, after all.
She yanked open the fridge and stared aghast at the leftover takeout that probably dated to— actually, he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember when anyone had gotten ‘Thai it on for Size’ last. There was something green in a tupperware bowl and he was pretty sure it wasn’t salad. Harley glared before slamming the fridge shut and yanking open the pantry. “Thirty flavors of cup o’ noodles, baby bird, really?” She held up a protein shake with a betrayed expression. “And this doesn’t even qualify as food. What even?”
Tim shrugged, shoulders up around his ears. “I’m not here that often. It’s just—”
“Don’t even. Ugh.” She tore open the freezer and began peeling frozen tv dinners out of their wrappers and dumping them on the floor for the hyenas. “I’m blaming you if my boys get a tummyache, just so you know.” She sighed dramatically as she dropped a last frozen pizza on the tile. “Can you call the other bird-boy back and have him get takeout? This is just bad, baby bird.”
Tim had a momentary image of Dick taking the plane through a drive-through. Nope. “Can it wait? We have an unconscious vigilante in the control room, kinda think that’s more crucial right now.”
She poked his stomach hard. “Fine, but one of these days Pammy and I are kidnapping you to take you to a damned buffet or something.”
“I can see the headline now. ‘Rogues kidnap Robin to feed him’.”
“It’s called a family dinner, pipsqueak.” Harley yanked him into a headlock and noogied the top of his head. “This how you treat your aunties, really?”
The alert of the Tower’s airspace sensors went off, and Tim squirmed free. “And that’s Batman. I need to go turn off the defenses.”
“Like I said, paranoid,” Harley sing-songed.
“I can’t believe you’re still here.”
“I got something to say, baby bird. I am an unhappy auntie.”
They headed for the control room. Tim disabled the defenses and hit the lights for the small landing pad on the top of the tower. Harley slung the unconscious Red Hood over her shoulder with a grunt of effort but no sign of strain even though he had to outweigh her by a good margin.
Shortly, Batman and Nightwing strode into the command center. Before they could say anything, Harley marched right up to Batman and unloaded her passenger on him. “I thought I told you to take better care of your birdies, Batman.”
Batman looked at the unconscious form in his arms with something Tim might have called consternation if he was anyone other than Batman.
“Wait— You captured the Red Hood?” Nightwing cut in, staring at Harley.
“Nah, I dressed some punk up as him just to trick you. Jeezus, Big Bird, grow a brain.” Harley sighed and in spite of his best efforts to avoid it, slung an arm over Tim’s narrow shoulders. “Baby bird and I worked together to take him down.”
Batman set the unconscious Hood down in one of the console chairs, taking the time to secure him to the chair. “I— Thank you for helping Robin, Harley, but can I ask what is going on?”
Harley sighed dramatically. “No appreciation, I swear.”
Tim finally ducked out of her hold. “You get to explain something to the world’s greatest detective,” he temporized quickly. “How often can anyone say they get to do a parlor scene where they beat out Batman?”
Harley brightened. “Hey, that’s right! I knew you were my favorite nephew for a reason, baby bird!” Gleefully, she hiked herself up onto one of the monitors so she could look down at Batman and Nightwing. Nightwing was mouthing ‘Nephew?’ like it left a weird taste in his mouth.
“Buckle up, Bats and Birds, because I get control of this story.” Harley grinned wildly down at them. “So I heard all about Hoodie here making waves up and down Crime Alley, but it didn’t concern me, cause, y’know, rehabilitated and all. I got a leetle annoyed—” She held index finger and thumb about an inch apart. “When I heard he was using one of Mis— that psycho fuckwad’s old monikers, because you know me, I still want that clown’s balls on a platter.”
“Language,” Nightwing snapped almost automatically.
“We’re all grown-ups here, lay off.”
“Robin’s not.”
“I’m betting he’s heard worse.” Harley folded her arms and glared down at him. “Now shut up, I was talking.”
He subsided with a glare that would have done Alfred proud.
“Anyways, Hoodie here wasn’t really on my radar ‘til Pammy and I went to the docks one night, ‘cause a ship was coming in from Brazil with some exotics from the Amazon Rainforest.” She held up a finger. “Taken illegally, I might add. And you know how Pammy is about her plants.”
She shrugged. “We were all set to do a little green rescue when I spotted Hoodie, here, near a weird looking boat positively crawling with creepy ninja-types. He was talking to some freaky chick, dark hair and looked like she could kick your ass six ways from Sunday— about someone he was calling the Replacement. Didn’t think nothing of it ‘til I heard the chick mention Robin. So I stuck around to listen. He was making plans to ‘clip a birdie’s wings’ and mess with you, Bats. I dunno what her stake in the game was but she got a real crush on you, kept calling you her love and beloved.”
As one Nightwing and Batman shared a look. “Talia al Ghul.”
“He told her that it would be soon, that he had a plan in place for when ‘Replacement’ was gonna be out from under Batman’s watch at a Tower. I didn’t know what he meant at first, then I remembered you hanging out with the supers—” she pointed at Nightwing. “At someplace called Tin tower or something like that.”
“Titans Tower,” Tim corrected.
“Yeah, I got it now, baby bird. Anyways, I wasn’t about to let him go hurting my Robin, so when Pammy got done with her plant liberating thing, I grabbed my boys and headed out to put a little wrinkle in his plans. Got here, Robin let his favorite Auntie in and we turned his ambush back on him and tada, one gift-wrapped Hoodie for the Bat. Am I the best Auntie or what?” She hopped down and wrapped one arm around Tim’s neck, using the other to give him a playful noogie.
“Ack— You’re my only so-called auntie and thus best by default.” Tim struggled free of her hold.
“What about Pammy?”
“What does she have to do with this?”
“Dontcha remember the cheeseburger?” Harley hopped back up onto the console, taking her seat atop the monitor again with all the regality of a queen.
“Oh.” Tim pondered for a minute. Hell, he already wasn’t getting rid of her, so in for a penny, in for a pound. “You’re right. She wins by cheeseburger, and is thus my favorite.”
Harley made a sound like a mouse being stepped on. “Hey, I was the one who got you mozzarella sticks!”
“Oh, right... hmm, that makes it hard.” He found he was actually enjoying himself.
Dick was tracking on their conversation like he was watching a tennis match, concern writ large on his face. “What the fuck—?” he muttered lowly.
“Oh, you weren’t here for that. She kidnapped me because she thought Batman was beating on me.”
“The hell—” Dick’s face was white under his mask.
“For like an hour, tops.” Harley put in, grinning down at Nightwing in a disturbing way that showed all her teeth. “I just had to make sure nobody was whaling on him. Y’know, in a not Robin-related way.”
She dropped a mocking smile on Batman. “Nyah-nya. Some Detective you are. That makes two times I rescued him. Best Auntie ever!”
Dick turned to look at Batman, who looked as stoic as ever, only uttering a “Hnn,” under his breath.
“I think I need a bigger explanation than that, B.”
“I’ll fill you in later, Big Bird,” Harley chirped. “But for now, I wanna get back to my triumphant parlor scene.”
Dick gestured at Hood. “Uh, isn’t that it? You caught the guy, end of story.”
“You poor sweet summer child.” Harley gave him a mournful look. “Stories only end in books. Real life is much more complicated.” She turned her attention on Batman. “I told you you need to keep a better eye on your birdies. Letting one of them go into bad guy territory like Hoodie did is not gonna win you any Dad of the Year awards.” She gestured at the slumped Hood.
Dick gaped like his mind had encountered a blue screen of death. “The fuck—”
“I really gotta explain it to you? Seriously, who else would be angry enough to go after baby birdie here and call him Replacement? Only somebody that thinks he was replaced. Really you don’t even need a degree in criminal psychology like me to figure that out.”
“T—Robin didn’t replace anyone!” Dick blurted, aghast.
“Big Bird, you ain’t stupid. He did.” Harley leaned forward. “He took the place of that poor dead birdie— who don’t seem so dead anymore. That’s gotta hurt, coming back and seeing yourself replaced.” She flipped a hand at Hood. “He’s probably got PTSD from his death— Heaven knows, I got it in spades and all that shitstain did was beat and abuse the hell out of me, not kill me— and could only focus on what— or who— he thought was hurting or betraying him. It ain’t hard to put it together.”
Batman staggered like he’d been shot, his focus snapping with laser-intensity to the man in the chair. “It can’t be—”
“That’s what you're taking away from this? We live in a world fulla super-power types, more’n half of which can pull even weirder shit than resurrecting one dead kid out their asses.” Harley seemed furious, but it was hard to tell at who. “You need to work on fixing this one, so he don’t continue to go around trying to kill the baby bird, or even come for you or Big Bird. ‘Cause he will, y’know. That kinda trauma will do that.”
“B—” Nightwing’s voice was a breath of prayer. “You don’t think—” Sudden manic energy filled him and he was right up in Batman’s face. “Talia! The Lazarus Pit— if she dumped him in there— you know what the Pit does to people! You’ve seen it!”
Batman’s fists were clenched so tight his gloves creaked. His mouth opened, forming a single word, but no sound came out. Tim didn’t have to read his lips to know what it was, though.
Tim could only stare at the featureless red mask himself. Could it really be...? He wanted so badly for it to be true; for Bruce, for Dick, maybe even a little for himself, because that had been his Robin, his hero.
He sidled a little closer to Harley while Batman and Nightwing were frozen in hopeful indecision. “Hey, Harley, how’d you figure out he was J— the last Robin?” He bit his lip, He’d almost slipped there, but he was desperate to know, almost as desperate as B and Nightwing were to believe.
Harley’s expression was a little sad. “Back when I ran with— well, you know , we ran into Bats and Robin a lot. I knew when he and his first Robin—” She gestured at Dick. “Were having issues, cause let’s face it, their fights weren’t always quiet-like— before he ran off to be his own hero. I knew when he got a new Robin, a tough little punk who made me laugh. I knew that kid, baby bird. You can take the street rat out of the Alley, but you can't take the Alley out of the rat. And he was pure Crime Alley, through and through.” Her sadness morphed into rage. “And when I found out that sick fuck had killed him, killed a kid—” Her fists clenched on the edge of the monitor. “Well, it wasn’t pretty. Pammy could probably tell you more— I wasn’t... myself... for a while there.” She shook herself like one of her hyenas. “I knew him, even liked him for his sass and jokes. And I knew him, there at the docks, even in that stupid get-up. I heard his voice, talking about his replacement and the pieces fell into place.” Her eyes were red.
Tim, greatly daring, reached out to rest a hand on her knee.
With a watery chuckle she covered his hand with one of her own, before leaping down and yanking him into a full-body hug that was on-par with one of Dick’s infamous embraces.
When he had managed to squirm free, because honestly, he wasn’t trying all that hard, Batman and Nightwing were carefully disarming and disengaging the latches that kept the Red Hood’s helmet on. Tim found himself holding his breath until the last one released with a hiss of pressurized air. Four hands oh-so-carefully lifted the helmet away, revealing a face— though hardened with years and pain— Tim would have known in his sleep. He wore a black domino, but in all their eyes it only made his identity more certain.
Dick went down on his knees, hard. The helmet clattered out of Batman’s hands.
“Toldya!” Harley’s cheerful chirp broke the frozen moment, and the sly smile she wore said it had been deliberate. Tim had to agree, this was no place for any of them to break down.
Batman bent to cut the ties holding the unconscious man to the chair, though even in his stunned state, did not free him from Tim’s zip-ties. Dick rose to his feet and helped Batman lift the unconscious man into his arms. “Let—let’s get him home.”
Dick turned to Harley, his mouth trembling a bit and his eyes wet behind the lenses of his mask. “Thank you. Um— can we offer you a lift back to Gotham?”
Harley grinned. “Ain’t you the gentleman?” She whistled. “C’mon, babies, time to go home.”
Tim picked up the abandoned hood and stood awkwardly for a moment. He—
Dick stepped past him to initiate the shut-down procedures on the Tower. “C’mon, baby bird, let’s go home.”
He disguised the sudden joy swelling in his chest with a glare. “Not you too.”
“What? It’s a good nickname.”
“I hate you all.”
~
The Red Hood— the former Robin— stirred for the first time as they were strapping him into a seat on the plane. Dazed greenish-blue eyes fastened on Nightwing, who was bent over him. “Dickie—?” His voice was soft, confused. “M’head hurts. Did I fall asleep before patrol again?”
“Oh, little bird,” Dick’s voice wavered. “No, no, you didn’t. It’s okay.”
“Did I get hurt?” At the controls, Batman’s hands tightened until plastic creaked ominously under his grip.
“A little,” Nightwing soothed. “You can rest now if you want. We’ll get you home where—” He paused and glanced over his shoulder at Harley Quinn, before sighing. It was obvious she had missed nothing, even though she was pretending hard to be oblivious to anything but the hyena she was petting. “Where Alfred can fix you up.”
“Mmm—” Hood’s head rolled to the side sleepily, and his eyes landed on Tim. It was like a switch had gone off. His face froze in rage and a snarl bared his teeth. Most tellingly, his eyes lit with an acid-green luminescence, turning them a hellish shade of incandescent fury. “Replacement!”
He thrashed against his restraints, and actually managed to snap a zip-tie.
Sighing, Harley rose to her feet and stood over him. “Knock it off.”
He growled at her, an entirely feral sound.
“You wanna ‘nother bonk on the noggin? I promise it’ll hurt more this time without the fancy hood.” She crossed her arms. “Settle down, rage-boy.”
“Fuck you!” he seethed.
Dick, though his lips were pressed in a thin, pained line, reacted efficiently and pulled a syringe out of the medical kit, measuring a dose out of a glass bottle. While Hood fumed and tried to free himself, Nightwing calmly braced one bound arm and injected a dose of sedative. It took effect quickly and a seething Hood passed back out.
Dick sighed. “That should keep him quiet until we can get him in containment.”
“Keeping him quiet’s all well and good, but your boy there needs help.” Harley put in. “I’m guessing the glowy green eyes are from the Lazarus Pit you two mentioned, but I’m not kidding about him having PTSD and probably a whole slew of other traumas. He needs professional help.”
“Like you?” Nightwing’s voice was scornful.
“Unless you got a psychologist in your pocket who knows about the masks, I’m gonna go with yes.” Harley leaned on the back of Hood’s seat. “Before— before, I was one of the best. You bats can check my college transcripts for proof. I ain’t too shabby now, I keep my hand in, by taking online courses and writing papers. Working through my own shit has given me a real appreciation for how much it takes to work through trauma. And handing him over to a psychiatrist right now, even one that understands masks, ain’t gonna do him much good. He needs therapy, not being loaded up on happy pills.” She frowned down at Hood’s sleeping face. “I hope you know some way to snap him out of the kill-rage he’s got going on.”
Batman’s shoulders were tense. “I have been working on some samples of the liquid from the Lazarus Pits, yes, but I haven’t tested it conclusively on a human.”
“I’m gonna say it’s time to.” Harley moved up to the front of the plane to lean on the co-pilot’s seat and stare at Batman with a serious expression. “You want your kid back, you gotta take some risks. And you can’t tell me he’s not your kid, I saw your reaction to seeing his face.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
Harley’s hand shot out and whapped the back of his cowl. He whipped around and glared at her. “Advisement, my ass. That’s classic talk for ‘I ain’t listening to you’ and you straight up need to.” Her expression softened. “Look, Batsy, I’m trying to help you. You gotta do something, ‘less you wanna keep him locked up in a cage for fear of him hurting baby bird or any of you.”
“B—” Dick’s voice was softly pleading. “If there’s any way to get— him back, we need to try.”
Batman’s shoulders sagged. “Fine—”
Harley perked up. “So you gonna let me into your little bat-hideway to help him? ‘Cause even you gotta admit, he needs it.”
“No,” Batman growled. “I’m not letting you in on any other secrets, least of all, something like that.”
Harley flopped down in the co-pilot’s seat with an exaggerated sigh. “Oh gimme a break, you ain’t gonna let me in on anything I ain’t figured out already.”
Batman turned to her with a raised eyebrow, everything about him saying, ‘impress me.’
“Fine, you want me to lay it all out for you?” Harley folded her arms and stared him down, her expression uncharacteristically serious. “I can, you know. I got you all figured out.”
“Sure you do.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. I’ll prove it to you, but a word of warning, you ain’t disappearing me. Pammy knows where I am and she’ll come for you— and she won’t be playing nice.” She turned the seat to regard the entire cabin. “Point the first: Dead-then-alive here is Jason Todd— funny, that, how he died around the same time Robin did.”
Batman stiffened, his fingers closing convulsively on the control yoke. “You don’t—”
“Naw, you did a real good job of covering it up, but you forget, I was around for all of it, including the crazy after he died. I wasn’t forgetting something like that.” She twirled one hand in the air lazily. “Point the second: when he was still half-dazed, Jason called him 'Dickie' so I'm betting Big Bird here is Dick Grayson, amazing acrobat— which definitely tracks. So, considering who both of them are, that must make you Bruce Wayne. It's not like there's too many people in Gotham that can finance all these expensive toys, after all. Now, go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.” Her smile was all teeth.
Except for the hum of the plane, there was dead silence in the cabin. No one moved.
“I’m waiting.”
Batman’s hand flexed once before he flicked on the autopilot and turned to face her fully. The corner of his mouth quirked. “If, as you say, this is true— what do you plan on doing with this information?”
“Not a damned thing, Batsy. Ain’t you ever heard of client confidentiality?” Harley crossed her arms over her chest and smiled easily at him. “I’m gonna help you with him, for his sake and for the sake of my nephew.”
“You’ve figured us all out, eh?” Batman said slowly.
“Indubitably.” Her smile widened.
Tim chuckled. “Okay, you definitely win favorite Aunt now.”
Harley cackled gleefully. “At least Timmy-bird appreciates me!”
Bruce stilled.
Harley rolled her eyes. “Oh, c’mon, Bruce Wayne and his propensity for adopting kids, like I wasn’t gonna figure out my nephew was Tim Drake.”
“Hnn.”
“That’s not using your words, Brucie. Caveman grunting is not gonna fly with me.”
“Harley—”
By this time, both Tim and Dick had broken down in snickers. Batman could only glare at them.
Harley rose and leaned over, resting her hands on the arms of his seat. “A real long time ago, I was having a bad day. Someone stayed with me all day, even before he put his mask on, because he had a bad day once too. Now I’m paying back that kindness, for him, and his kids, including cranky over there. Good enough reasoning for you?”
“Hnn.”
“Words, Batsy, you can use them.”
“ — Yes.” It sounded like it was dragged out of him.
“There now. Wasn’t that easy?”
“You have no idea.”