Chapter Text
The real bitch of being alone, Jason thought, was how quickly you got used to not being alone—and how much longer it took to settle into it again.
It had taken months after his mother died for him to start to find some kind of balance, some feeble way of moving forward, as childish and hardscrabble as it had been. He’d barely gotten started on building a new life on his own when Bruce had shown up, and yet somehow in no time at all he could no longer imagine life without him or Alfred in it.
Then had come the years of raw, aching rejection, the bitterness of finding himself discarded again and cast out, and he’d sworn to himself that there would be no more partners and certainly no more family. No more counting on others to be there for him when in the end, they never stuck around.
He’d broken that vow before he realized he was doing it. And now at this rate, he’d be pushing fifty before he stopped looking over his shoulder during a fight and expecting to see a flash of red hair, the blur of a crimson arrow.
But he was alone, especially with Artemis and Biz off doing their own things, and he needed to get used to it. Expecting someone who wasn’t there to watch your back in the Narrows was a good way to die stupidly.
Luckily, he’d been trained well enough that he didn’t really need an extra pair of eyes to know he was being followed. Whoever it was was good—Jason hadn’t actually seen or heard them. He just felt them, like an itch at the back of his neck. Which meant Bat- or League-trained, and a Bat would have made themselves known by now.
On the other hand, no one in the League knew the Narrows like Jason did. He slipped off of Park Row and onto Robinson Lane, doubled back through an empty space that wouldn’t have existed if the right contractors had been paid off twenty years ago, and waited.
There. A flicker of shadows. Jason sprang forward, his stalker moved—
—and suddenly his gun was at Cheshire’s temple and her nails were at his throat.
“Hood,” she said.
“Cheshire.”
This was bad. His collar was reinforced kevlar, but there was just enough of a gap between it and the opening of his helmet for her to reach bare skin, and she was good enough to do it even in her death throes. His bullet would kill her faster than her poison would kill him, but that would be small consolation when he drowned in his own vomit inside the helmet. “Little outside of your usual hunting grounds, aren’t you? There’s no one in this neighborhood worth paying your kind of fee to kill.”
“I was looking for you,” she said, looking at him sidelong. Her hair hung into her face, making her expression hard to read.
Jason’s finger tightened on the trigger. “On whose dime?”
“No one’s. This isn’t a hit.” She withdrew her nails slowly, like she was trying not to spook him. “I need your help.”
Jason took a step back, out of range of her hands and any blades she was carrying, but kept his gun trained on her. He and Cheshire had never worked closely together during his time with the League, but he knew not to trust her as far as he could throw her. She was always running games upon games.
Or maybe he just didn’t like her. And maybe that dislike hadn’t started with the League, but when she’d taken a shine to a certain redheaded former partner of his, one who’d had enough bullshit in his life without throwing in a toxic relationship with a remorseless killer on top of it.
It didn’t matter either way. He didn’t trust her, and he was right not to. End of story.
“What makes you think I would help you with anything?” he asked. “Seriously, I’m genuinely curious. I thought you were smarter than that.”
She lifted her chin. She wasn’t wearing her usual outfit, just jeans and a hoodie. It made her look more human, more vulnerable. Jason reminded himself that that was almost certainly part of whatever this scheme was.
“Three nights ago, someone broke into my home. That’s not an easy thing to do,” she said, and pushed her hair out of her face. There was a livid purple bruise at her temple, visible even with half the street lamps burned out. “He overpowered me. That’s not easy either. And he…”
She paused, like she was gathering her strength. Took a breath. Jason had no idea she was this good of an actress.
“He took my baby.”
There were times Jason was really glad the helmet helped him maintain a poker face. This was one of them. “Your what?”
“My daughter. She’s just over three months old. Her name is Lian.” Cheshire didn’t cry; she didn’t look anywhere close to it. Strangely, it made her more convincing. “She’s all I care about in the world.”
“Even supposing I believe a word of this, why would I help you?” Jason asked. “We’re not exactly friends.” Kids in trouble were his Achilles heel and he’d never been good at disguising that, but no one League-trained was likely to rely on the goodness of someone’s heart as sufficient motivation. Or the not-totally-a-lost-cause-ness of someone’s heart, in Jason’s case.
“I don’t think you’ll help me,” she said. “I know you’ll help Lian.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
Her gaze was dark and merciless and utterly without pretense. “Because Roy Harper was her father.”
*
Roy had been dead for a little over a year. Sometimes it felt more like ten, like Jason had somehow dragged himself through an endless purgatory without Roy’s easy laugh and unshakeable loyalty. Other times the grief was fresh and raw: when his phone lit up and it was never the voice he expected on the other end; when he woke and forgot for a few groggy, blessed moments until it all came rushing back.
Roy had been in his grave twice as long as Jason had.
It felt especially raw now, sitting in a safe house with Cheshire, an uneasy detente over the coffee table. The safe house wasn’t one of his favorites, which was a deliberate choice on his part, since he’d have to discard it now that she knew the location. But at least here they could talk freely, and Jason could focus entirely on her instead of keeping an eye out for any nasty surprises.
Well. Any more nasty surprises.
“It was while he was with the Titans, that last time,” Cheshire said, confirming what Jason had already assumed from the timeline she’d hinted at. Before Roy had fallen off the wagon and decided to go to Sanctuary. After Jason had walked out on him.
Maybe if Jason hadn’t walked out on him, Roy would have never felt like he needed Sanctuary. But Jason had gone down that road too many times to let himself wander down it now.
“We just sort of...fell back together,” Cheshire went on.
Jason fixed her with a thoroughly disbelieving look. He’d discarded both the helmet and the domino mask; Cheshire—Jade, he supposed, since she wasn’t in uniform—knew perfectly well who he was.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, yeah, we were on opposite sides of a job and I was conning him. But I didn’t actually plan to sleep with him again.”
Jason couldn’t help his snort. “Did anyone ever plan to sleep with Roy?” Now it was Jade’s turn to give him a look, and Jason’s turn to roll his eyes. “Get your jollies elsewhere, Cheshire. We were just friends.”
“Sure,” she drawled. “Anyway, I had a feeling after a couple weeks, but I figured I’d wait. Tests aren’t reliable until three weeks after.” The faintly amused look on her face dropped away. “Sanctuary blew up the day before I planned to take the test.”
“And you’re sure it was Roy?” Jason asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “Fuck you. Yes, I’m sure it was Roy. Here.” He tensed as she shifted, but all she did was pull her phone out of her back pocket, unlock it, and open up the camera roll. “Look at her.”
The camera roll was full of pictures of a very young baby, which was jarring enough—Jason would never have pegged Jade as the sentimental type. It was enough to make him indulge her and examine the pictures more closely for a resemblance to his friend, even though all new babies looked like unformed potatoes to Jason.
The baby girl in the photos had Jade’s dark eyes and jet-black hair, and the round cheeks and little snub nose of all babies. She didn’t look like Roy. She looked like a baby.
But.
But she looked like Roy.
Jason swallowed. “I don’t trust you.”
“Smart man.”
“I don’t like you.”
“You’re not my favorite person either, Hood, believe me.”
Jason stared at the photos of Roy’s infant daughter for another long moment, then handed the phone back to Jade. “Tell me about the man who took her.”
Jade shook her head. “Masked and hooded, all in black. I couldn’t even tell you hair or skin color. Not as tall as you, maybe five-nine, five-ten? He was good. I didn’t hear him until he was already in the nursery.”
“So, League-trained,” Jason said. It took one of their own to get past the best of them, and Jade was one of the best.
“That’s my assumption, yes.”
“Weapons?” Most League members had distinctive weapons they favored, Jason and Jade both being prime examples of the habit.
“He didn’t use any.”
“Shit,” Jason muttered. The questions were mostly rote. Jade was neither stupid nor a coward; if she’d had any way to identify the kidnapper, he’d already be dead. But anyone who could overpower her in hand-to-hand combat was someone to be wary of. “So what’d you do to piss off the League?”
“Nothing!” she protested. “I did my service and walked away with the full permission of the Demon’s Head. If he wished to recall me, he would. Besides, the man who attacked me wasn’t wearing a League uniform, and it’s not like Ra’s to punish someone without telling them they’re being punished.”
All true, which meant they had a rogue League member on their hands. “Why’d you wait three days?”
“I thought I could find him on my own, but he covered his tracks too well. I could have gone to someone like Deathstroke or Calculator, but I don’t want them having that kind of leverage over me. The fewer people in my line of work who know Lian exists, the better.” Jade’s lip curled. “I need the Detective, but he wouldn’t help me. So someone trained by him will have to do.”
“You really know how to sweet talk a guy, huh?” Jason drawled. “So obvious what Roy saw in you. Why not go to Nightwing? You’re old sparring buddies, and he was Roy’s friend, too.” Saying Roy’s name in the past tense twice in so many sentences sat like ashes on his tongue.
“When I find the man who took my child, I’ll kill him,” Jade said, very calmly. “Nightwing would try to stop me.”
Jason paused. “The trail is cold. I might not find anything, or I might find something too late, and with kidnapping cases…” It felt like betraying Roy to say it out loud. “She’s probably already dead.”
“She’s not,” Jade said in a tone that left no room for argument.
“Look, a mother’s instinct is admirable, but…”
“Don’t pull that paternalistic bullshit on me,” Jade snapped. “If he wanted my daughter dead, he would have killed her in front of me. He took her alive. That means she’s still alive.”
It made sense. Still. “And if she’s not…?” Jason pressed.
She met his eyes. “Lian is Roy’s daughter. If she’s dead, you’ll help me kill the man who did it.”
Jason was trying not to kill these days. He’d made promises to Bruce, to the rest of his family.
He’d made promises to Roy, too. Even the ones he’d never said out loud.
“I’ll help you kill the man who did it,” he agreed.
*
Jade, like Jason, had safe houses all over the globe, but the one Lian had been taken from was in London. Jason reluctantly prepared himself for a trip across the Atlantic to see what evidence could still be found after what would be four days by the time he got there, but Jade stopped him before he could book a flight.
“Can you run blood samples?” she asked.
“I have access,” he said carefully. The Cave had everything he needed, but there was no way he was taking her there, and on the off chance she didn’t know about its existence, he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.
She pulled a sealed gallon bag out of her pocket. There was a crumpled wad of bloodstained fabric inside. “The shirt I was wearing that night,” she explained. “He might have gotten away, but I left my mark on him.”
“And he didn’t drop dead of poison a minute later?” Jason asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, I don’t put poison in my kitchen knives.”
“Another illusion shattered.”
Jade didn’t want to part ways, but since Jason refused to take her to the Cave, she didn’t really have a choice. In the end, they exchanged numbers and made a plan to meet at Gotham International Airport in the early morning. “You leave without me, or you give up on this, and it won’t be a kitchen knife I use on you,” she threatened.
“Again, so easy to see why Roy liked you.”
But it was easy, wasn’t it? Jason couldn’t shake the thought as he pointed his motorcycle toward the manor. It wasn’t just that Jade was beautiful, though Roy had never had much resistance to a pretty face. Roy was attracted to danger, had always thrown himself into it laughing, like he didn’t much care if he came out the other side. It had always struck Jason as a bitter irony that Roy had been killed during one of the few times he was actually trying to take care of himself.
Roy also didn’t much care how people treated him. He almost seemed to like being treated like shit sometimes, or at least think he deserved it. Must have, or he wouldn’t have stuck around Jason so long.
But Jason’s regrets wouldn’t help Roy’s daughter now. Forcing the thought out of his mind, Jason sped up as he approached the limits of the city proper.
He’d almost hit the suburbs when his communicator crackled to life: “Mayday! Calling for any support, ASAP! I have a teammate down and we are under attack!”
It was Tim. Jason was turning before he consciously told his body to. “Red Robin, what’s your location?”
“Broderick and Ninth.”
That wasn’t far. Jason took a turn so sharp he went over the sidewalk and was grateful that there were rarely pedestrians out so late at night in nice neighborhoods like this.
Too nice a neighborhood for Tim to have run into trouble he couldn’t handle. “I’ll be there in two. Who are you with?”
“Arrowette. There’s a—dammit!” Tim was breathing hard and sounded frantic. Jason heard something pinging off metal and suspected Tim was using his bo staff. “Who the hell is this guy?”
“New player?”
“Maybe. Guy in a mask and hood, all black. No symbol and I don’t recognize the outfit,” Tim said.
Jason frowned. Could it be Lian’s kidnapper? No, that was too much of a coincidence.
“He’s an archer,” Tim added, and Jason nearly drove into a mailbox.
“What?”
“Hurry up!” Tim hissed.
Jason pushed the bike even faster, and could soon hear the sounds of a fight coming from above. When he was close enough, he pulled his grapple gun from his belt and let it pull him to the right roof, leaving the bike to careen into a nearby wall. Well, maybe he could buff it out.
And there was Tim, crouched in a defensive position in front of a blonde girl in red. Jason barely spared them a glance, too focused on their opponent.
He wasn’t prepared for the first thing he felt to be disappointment, a disappointment so profound his stomach roiled. Their attacker was exactly what Tim had said: a man all in black, in a hood and a mask that covered his entire face, already turning to draw a bead on Jason. And Roy was dead. Of course it wasn’t him. It could never have been him.
But apparently the word “archer” meant only one thing to Jason.
“Back the fuck off, William Tell,” Jason said, drawing both guns at once, pushing down the desperate feeling of missing Roy. Other people could draw a bow. “You’re not the only one standing with a ranged weapon, now.”
There was a frozen moment where the archer kept his arrow trained on Jason’s heart, and Jason kept his guns trained on where the archer’s eyes had to be, under the mask. Jason refused to flinch, even though he knew he was in trouble. An arrow could pierce kevlar where a bullet wouldn’t.
The archer suddenly pivoted, loosing the arrow in the same moment so that it whistled past Jason’s side towards the girl. There was another ping! as Tim deflected it with his bo staff, and Jason, distracted, missed his chance to fire until the archer was already booking it off the roof.
Fuck. Jason started to pursue, but Tim’s anxious voice called him back: “Hood.”
Shit, right, the girl was hurt. Jason backed closer to them, keeping his guard up and his weapons out in case the archer returned. “She okay?”
“She’ll live.” That was the girl’s voice, tight with pain but amused.
Jason glanced down and was hit with another pang. Her costume wasn’t much like Roy’s, except that it was red all over, and Roy looked a hell of a lot less like captain of the cheerleading squad than she did—but it was a red costume, and that was a quiver beside her and a bow gripped in one hand.
Jason wasn’t sure why fate was throwing so many archers at him tonight. It didn’t really make up for the one he’d lost.
The girl—Arrowette, Tim had said—was struggling to sit up despite the black arrow protruding through the meat of her shoulder. Tim hovered like an anxious mama hen. “Cissie, you shouldn’t be moving…”
“Okay, I’ll lie here on this roof until I get better,” she retorted, but the parts of her face Jason could see under the mask were grayish, and she leaned heavily against Tim as he helped her to her feet.
“I’ve got my bike. We’ll take her back to the Cave,” Jason said. “We shouldn’t take the arrow out until we get there.” Because she might bleed out otherwise, but he didn’t say it out loud. The girl could probably take it, but Tim was already fretting plenty. No point in making it worse.
Luckily his bike was still in one piece after its collision with the wall. It wasn’t designed for three people, but neither of Jason’s passengers was very big, and Tim kept Cissie sandwiched between him and Jason’s back in case she got woozy from blood loss or shock and threatened to topple off. They couldn’t go very fast and they looked like idiots, but they made it to the Cave intact.
Bruce and Duke were still out on patrol, and Jason was pretty sure Damian was on the West Coast with the Titans, but Cass was at the Batcomputer and Alfred was patching up what looked like one of Damian’s spare tunics. They both looked up as Jason drove in through the hidden garage entrance.
“My word!” Alfred said, standing up and putting the tunic down. “Master Ti—Red Robin, fetch the medical cart. Red Hood, please help our guest to the operating table.”
“It’s okay, Alfred, she knows my name,” Tim said as he ran for the cart that held Alfred’s medical supplies and started hooking various things up.
“And the rest of our secret identities don’t matter, I suppose?” Jason asked, keeping his tone light so Tim would know he didn’t actually care. Tim needed to be teased a bit when he got in his head like this.
He lifted Arrowette in his arms, careful of her shoulder. She weighed practically nothing, even with all her gear. Who let this kid out on the streets?
Well, given her theme, Oliver Queen, probably. But Jason already had plenty to lay at that asshole’s door; he didn’t need to add more.
“I know your name, too,” Arrowette said as he carried her to the operating table. She sounded in pain, but lucid. “You’re Jason. You were Roy’s friend.”
Right. Tim had called her Cissie. Cissie was Roy’s little sister—the new one, the one who’d only found out Ollie was her father a bit before Roy died.
“One of them,” he said, putting her down on the table.
“Well, he talked about you the most,” she said.
Jason didn’t have a response for that. He wanted to walk away, but he needed to stay and keep her propped up in a half-sitting position, since she couldn’t lie down with an arrow protruding out the back of her shoulder.
Luckily, Alfred and Tim were there, hands sanitized and gloved. “It’s lovely to meet you, Miss King-Jones, although I do wish it had been under better circumstances,” Alfred said in that comforting tone of his. “I’m afraid we’ll have to remove that arrow. Master Jason, will you hold her?”
Having an arrow removed from her shoulder couldn’t have been fun, but Cissie took it like a champ, which was Roy all over. He’d always tried to brush off serious injuries, though a stubbed toe or mild cold had him whining like a baby until Jason made the appropriate soothing noises.
Not that it was relevant, Jason reminded himself. Roy and this girl weren’t even biologically related.
Which in turn reminded him of the bloodstained shirt in his pocket. Once the arrow was out, Jason left the disinfecting and bandaging of the wound to Alfred and Tim, and started the analysis of the blood on the shirt. He grabbed the removed arrow and started a basic forensics check on that too, while he was at it. Tim was going to do it anyway, might as well give him a head start.
Cass had slipped upstairs during the arrow removal and returned a bit later with a teapot and a pile of sandwiches. Now she pushed a cup of steaming tea in Jason’s direction. “Drink.”
“Thanks,” he said, finally remembering to tug off his helmet and mask, and took a sip. The tea was strong and black, loaded with milk and sugar. They all took their tea different ways normally, but in a household run by an Englishman, there was only one restorative after an injury, even if you weren’t the one who was injured. “What are you doing home?”
She held up her wrist, wrapped in an Ace bandage. “Sprained. Bruce said stay,” she said. “You okay?”
“I only showed up at the end,” he said. “Guy ran off when I got there.”
“Not what I asked,” she said.
Jason bit the inside of his lip. “I’m fine,” he said. Lying to Cass was a pointless exercise, but since she’d know the truth no matter what, why bother saying it?
Tim and Cissie joined them at the lab table while Alfred cleaned up the triage area. Cissie had her shoulder heavily bandaged and her arm in a sling. “Hey, Cass,” she said, and Cass smiled a greeting back.
“How’s the shoulder?” Jason asked.
She made a face. “Don’t love it, but I’ll survive. Thanks for the backup.”
“Yeah, thank you,” Tim said, pushing a cup of tea into Cissie’s hands. He’d taken his mask off and could have packed half the manor in the bags under his eyes.
Jason shrugged, uncomfortable. “Got started on the arrow for you,” he said. “No prints. Wooden shaft, broadhead, fletched with real feathers.”
Cissie leaned in and squinted at it. “Turkey,” she said. “And it’s a fixed blade. Huh.”
“What?” Tim asked.
“No, he’s just old-fashioned,” Cissie said. “He was using a longbow. Recurves are older—a lot older—but longbows have that classic Robin Hood feel. Ollie—I mean, my dad—I mean,” she stumbled a bit, like she wasn’t sure how to refer to him, “Green Arrow. He uses a longbow most of the time, and he makes his own arrows out of wood if they’re not trick arrows. The rest of us use recurves and composite arrows.” She shrugged, a little defensively. “Look, I’m not a hundred and seventy pound man who’s been shooting for decades, I’ll take the extra power.”
“Roy used a compound bow,” Jason said without meaning to.
“Roy liked tech,” Cissie said, with a faint, sad smile. “If it was new and complicated, he wanted it. Made most of our trick arrows, too.”
Jason pushed down the sudden urge to snap at her that he knew that, of course he knew that. How many times had he seen Roy fiddling with new arrow designs, strands of copper hair falling into his eyes and the pink tip of his tongue poking out of his mouth? How many times had he watched those clever, dextrous fingers putting together an impossibly tiny payload that would inevitably wind up saving their lives within a week?
“So why did evil Robin Hood attack you?” he said instead.
“No idea,” Tim said. “We were just doing a regular patrol, getting Cissie back in the game.”
“I just came out of retirement,” she explained. Jason wasn’t sure how a seventeen-year-old had time to become a superhero, retire, and come out of retirement, but he supposed he had less right to throw stones than most.
“We were heading back here when the archer came out of nowhere and attacked Cissie,” Tim said. “And I mean just Cissie—he barely glanced at me.”
“Yeah? Who’d you piss off lately?” Jason asked her.
“Besides my mom? No one that I know of,” she said. “Like I said, I’ve been retired. I haven’t had time to start reassembling a rogues gallery.” She paused. “Well, assembling, I guess. I never really had one.”
“Your father does,” Cass pointed out.
Tim looked thoughtful. “She’s got a point. How many of Green Arrow’s enemies would come after you to get to him?”
“I didn’t think any would!” Cissie said. “It’s not really common knowledge that he’s my dad. Even I haven’t known for that long.”
“That’s the wrong question,” Jason said. “How many of them are archers?”
Now it was Cissie’s turn to look thoughtful. “Hm. Well, there’s my aunt Emiko’s mom, Shado, but she’s not really a villain, exactly. And I don’t know why she’d come after me. And there’s Emiko’s dad...well, not her real dad, my grandfather was her real dad, but the guy who raised her. Komodo. But he’s dead.”
“Every time you talk about your family tree I get a cluster headache,” Tim said.
“Try living it,” Cissie said. “And then there’s Merlyn, which I guess would make the most sense.”
“Footage?” Cass asked Tim.
“Yeah, hang on.” Tim turned to the Batcomputer, minimizing Jason’s in-progress blood analysis. “Jason, why are you tracing Cissie’s blood? She’s right here.”
“Not hers. Different case,” Jason said, trying not to sound squirrelly. Judging by Tim’s raised eyebrow, he hadn’t succeeded.
“Sure. Okay, here we go.” Tim pulled up the feed from his uniform camera, which streamed directly to the Batcomputer whenever he was in the field. Bruce had once suggested Jason add one to his gear, and Jason had laughed for five full minutes.
They watched as the archer sprang at them, firing inhumanly fast as he flipped through the air. It had to be an established rogue. This guy could give Roy a run for his money, and there were only maybe half a dozen people on the planet who were as good as Roy. No way one would come out of nowhere.
But…
“Not Merlyn,” Cass declared, and they all looked at her. “Trained me. With my father. One of his...experts.” She shook her head. “Not him.”
“He’s wearing a mask,” Cissie pointed out.
“If Cass says it’s not him, it’s not him,” Tim said, pausing the video. “You think Green Arrow would have any ideas?”
Cissie shrugged, then winced as it jarred her injured shoulder. “Maybe? Can you send me the footage?”
“Sure.”
Jason squinted at the frozen image. Could this be Lian’s kidnapper? It didn’t make any sense. Why would a man kidnap a baby in London without killing her or her assassin mother, then fly to Gotham three days later to try to murder a teenage superhero with a career so obscure as to be negligible?
But Cissie’s assailant looked exactly like Jade had described the kidnapper. And both cases involved the daughters of archers.
Jason took out his phone and snapped a picture of the archer’s image on screen, then texted it to Cheshire, along with: This your guy?
Yes, she texted back instantly. Where are you?
Well, shit.
All the teenage vigilantes in the Cave were staring at him. “Care to share with the class?” Tim asked. “Who’d you just text?”
Jason wasn’t sure he wanted to answer that yet, so he didn’t. “The blood I’m testing? It’s evil Robin Hood’s.”
“What?” Cissie said.
“How’d you get it?” Tim asked. “He didn’t come anywhere near us.”
“I didn’t get it tonight. I didn’t know they were the same man until I sent that text.” Jason nudged Tim out of the way and pulled up the blood analysis. The computer should have finished scanning the sample he’d given it and running it against global law enforcement databases, not to mention the Justice League’s and Bruce’s own private records.
“That’s not really a helpful answer,” Tim said.
Jason ignored him. There was an idea percolating in the back of his mind; an impossible idea, but one that he hadn’t been able to shake since Tim had said the word “archer.” That had only grown stronger when he’d watched the footage and seen the archer in motion again; the breathtaking speed, the grace of his aerial.
It would still leave them with a lot of questions. But it would answer the one that had been echoing inside of Jason for a year.
He clicked on the blood test results.
No matches found.
“Merlyn’s blood is in Bruce’s database. So is Shado’s,” Tim said. “They’re known League of Assassins associates.” His gaze, when it slid to Jason’s face, was a little too sharp. “Roy’s is in the database, too. All former Titans and Leaguers are.”
Dammit. Couldn’t Bruce have replaced Jason with a stupider kid?
“Roy?” Cissie echoed. “You thought that was Roy? He’s. Well.” Her mouth twisted with sudden grief. “He’s dead.”
“So’m I,” Jason pointed out. “So’s your dad. And no, I didn’t think—” hope “—it was Roy. I was eliminating a possibility.”
“Why would he even be on the table?” Cissie asked.
Jason paused. He didn’t like sharing information, as a rule. He’d like to be able to blame it on Bruce, but the truth was, he’d come to Wayne Manor with that habit fully formed. The less people knew about you on the street, where privacy was at a premium, the safer you were. And it wasn’t like anyone here was going to like what he was about to say.
But the fact that Lian’s kidnapper had also attacked Cissie was the best lead they had. Jason owed it to Roy not to waste it.
“The person I just texted was Cheshire. The assassin,” he said.
“What the fuck,” Tim said flatly.
“She came to me for help earlier tonight. Apparently right before Roy—” say it “—died, the two of them, uh.” It shouldn’t be easier to say that Roy died than that he’d slept with Cheshire. Again. Still, Jason’s mouth couldn’t form the words. Instead, he looked at Cissie. “Well, apparently you’re an aunt. Mazel tov.”
She stared at him. “Roy had a kid with an assassin? He would never—wait, no, what am I talking about, he was raised by my father. Of course he would.”
“That’s, uh. That’s certainly...something,” said Tim, who was still recuperating from the fact that Damian’s existence proved that Bruce had had sex at least one time. “I’m assuming that it’s relevant and also that I’m not going to like why it’s relevant.”
Jason sighed. “Three nights ago Roy and Jade’s three-month-old daughter was kidnapped by our new friend with the pointy sticks.”
“Says the assassin,” Tim pointed out. “How do we know she’s not in league with whoever this guy is?”
“Why would she have him attack Cissie?” Jason replied.
“Back up,” Cissie said. “Why did Cheshire go to you? I mean, no offense, I’m sure you’re great—”
“He’s not,” Tim said.
“—but if this is true, if Roy really does have a daughter, then Cheshire should have come to us for help. We’re his family.”
Jason knew the sudden surge of anger he felt at her words was not rational, but it didn’t stop the white heat of it from threatening to overwhelm him. No one had wanted Roy when he was alive, and now that he was dead, it was like people wouldn’t stop chipping pieces off the meager bit of him that was left to Jason. First Jade, now this dainty little homecoming queen here, who hadn’t even known Roy as long as Jason had, who never done a three-day stakeout with him or stitched up his wounds, who probably didn’t even know the way his smile looked at dawn when patrol was ending and the world was bathed in pink and gold…
Jason hadn’t been with Roy when he died. He hadn’t been able to avenge him. But he’d be damned if anyone, let alone someone related to Oliver fucking Queen, took away his right to bring Roy’s daughter home safe.
“Yeah, because Green Arrow’s got such a great track record with babies,” he said. “How old were you when he found out about you? How old was your brother?”
Cissie’s jaw dropped, but Tim stepped between them before she could reply. “Okay, this isn’t helpful, so we’re all going to stop being assholes—” he glared at Jason “—and start thinking of how—”
The Batcomputer suddenly blared out an alert, making them jump. “What, is it B?” Jason asked as Tim pushed him aside and pulled up the alert on the screen.
“No. This is one of my alarms. I synched the Titans security systems to the network here when I was on the team, and shockingly, Damian hasn’t changed anything,” Tim said. “Someone just broke into the old Titans hangar in New York. And stole a T-Jet.”
Cissie frowned. “Hasn’t the New York Tower been out of commission for years?”
“The archer,” Cass suggested.
They exchanged glances. “If he knows about Lian, and he knows about Cissie, he could know how to override the Titans security codes too,” Jason said. “I mean, I’ve done it. It’s not that hard.”
“Yes, let’s reminisce about when you were still trying to kill me, that was a fun time for all of us,” Tim said, rolling his eyes. “But the timing checks out. He could’ve been in New York half an hour ago, it’s not that far.”
“Can you see where he’s heading?” Cissie asked.
Tim typed something in. “Flight manifesto says San Francisco. So probably Titans Tower West, but why would he be going there?”
Cissie’s eyes went wide. “Emiko.”
Shit. If Damian was at Titans Tower, it was a safe bet that Emiko—what was her code name? Red Arrow?—was there too.
Jason stuffed the bloody shirt back in its bag and grabbed his mask and helmet. “Tim, warn the gremlin, and tell B I’m taking one of the Batplanes.”
Cissie stood up from the chair she’d been resting in. “I’m coming with you.”
Jason raised an eyebrow at her. “Can you draw a bow with that shoulder?”
Her jaw clenched, but she didn’t say anything. Cass, however, reached for her gear.
“Thought you were benched,” Jason said.
“Bringing Cheshire?” Cass asked.
“If I don’t want to find myself poisoned for going after her daughter’s kidnapper without her, yeah.”
“You need backup,” she said, and held up her non-injured hand. “Punch her with this.”
“Works for me,” Jason said. He glanced at Tim. “You good?”
Tim nodded. He didn’t look thrilled, but Jason knew he was doing the math, and they couldn’t all abandon Gotham to chase a single man. “Be careful.”
Jason put his mask on, followed by the helmet. “Never.”