He preferred to work alone, though it was not something he was often allowed to do. Damian had been trained-one could not truly say that he'd been raised-to be entirely self-sufficient, needing no help. Backup fell through, and allies held daggers primed especially to stab one in the back. His mother's people had made sure that he would need no one.
His father had dictated that he not be left alone, for that very reason. He was too dangerous to be a solitary bird, and even though Bruce Wayne had been dead and buried for two years, his word still held as law. Even from beyond the grave, his father decided what he was allowed to do, who he was meant to be, what was right and what was wrong.
Even on a good day, Damian resented that. On a bad day, it was like something stuck in his throat, too big to swallow down and difficult to breathe around.
This was a night of rare freedom, but it was still one of the bad days. He and Dick had been patrolling, as per usual. The thugs they'd been trailing had split, so with very little discussion they'd chose one each and pursued them. Damian had subdued his thug in short order, but Batman hadn't reappeared with his. He hadn't been at any of the designated meeting places, and trying to hail him on the comm link had produced nothing but dead air and a growing sense of unease.
In previous years, he would have had options. There would have been people that he could call, allies he could contact. Friends. Once upon a time, there had been Red Robin, Black Bat, Oracle, Alfred, Batgirl.
Now, that option was not open to him. Red Robin and Black Bat were mobile, rarely in Gotham for any significant length of time; when they were, Cassandra met him with mute apathy and Tim could not overlook their first meeting, not ever. Alfred had passed on the previous April, and Oracle had hung up her mask of anonymity and climbed the ranks of the police force. She was the Commissioner, and she did not trust him. None of them did, not after his father's death.
That left Batgirl, but she...if Damian couldn't find Dick himself, she would be of no help. Of all of them, she had the fewest resources at her disposal. He needed information, and he needed networking. Batgirl had a passable right hook and an ass that made a convenient broad target for enemies. Nothing more, nothing less.
And he didn't want to have to admit to her that he was on his own, and that she was the only one who cared enough to help him.
It made him angry that Dick had stranded him without two words, without instructions. It made him furious that the near-sighted bastards who'd called his father their friend had never really tried to give him a chance. It made him rage on the inside, a white-hot knot that startled him with its brightness and ferocity.
If his father hadn't insisted he be hitched to a partner like a horse to a cart, he would have been better prepared. Damian could not be taken down, could not die, but without his partner he was left hanging with wildly gyrating limbs. His father's decree said he needed a partner, and Grayson was that partner. Fear clamped around his throat at the very idea of some ill befalling him.
What would he do if he were gone? Fear bloomed inside him, then doubled up and fed the fires of his anger. His father had done this to him, his fucking dead father. What had he known about him? What had he cared-
When the ring came, swift and buzzing like a glowing red insect drawn to his rage, he plucked it out of the air. It sang against his palm and called him by name.
The world was against him, said the ring. The world had always been against him. He had never been understood, never been respected. He'd only hurt, and hurt, and hurt,, the bloody pulp of his crushed self churning within him. He had every right to be angry. Rage was power-the power to break, the power to inflict, the power to bring clarity to all those who could not see what had been done to him.
They would never understand. No one could fathom the depths of his pain, or how much of himself he'd dug out and offered to the world at large. He had given up everything-given up his soul-but it wasn't enough.
Damian had hoped that accepting the dim red ring would help-that it would lead him to his brother, or at least give him the means to find him. That was the only thing on his mind-Dick, who was his Batman, his friend, and the only person to ever truly give a damn about him.
But it was a Red Ring, and it did not give. It consumed. It consumed, and it regurgitated. Putting it on felt like dying, even though he knew he could not die before his pre-appointed time.
He heard it when his heart stopped beating.
She didn't like to work alone, but she'd been a solitary vigilante for most of her career. Steph hadn't been ushered into the Batclan-not willingly, not really. She was a part of the colony in name, sure, but only that. She was a serial team-upper, but not the kind of girl who the Bats would take home and make one of their own. Bruce had done it once, years and years before, but that hadn't lasted long. She appreciated what he'd taught her, knew that she'd come out of his training twice the fighter that she'd been before he'd gotten a hold of her, recognized that he'd given her the tools that'd saved her life no fewer than a zillion times, but once in a while she still tasted the sour vestiges of resentment. He hadn't wanted her, and he hadn't made any bones about that.
Now, she was fully alone. Babs had bigger and better things to do than to be the voice of reason in her ear, and while she missed that, she understood. She was an extremely intelligent woman, and she could help more people as Commissioner Gordon than as a member of Team Batgirl.
But Barbara had always said that if she needed her-need as in I-need-to-not-die-she could call. O would find time for her, because Team Batgirl was a thing that stuck for life.
Steph had taken her up on that offer exactly two times in five years. The first time, she'd woken up in Singapore without any idea how she'd gotten there; she'd called because she was almost positive that she'd gotten caught up in human trafficking, and she needed a drive-by with the Black Bat's fists of fury. The second time, she'd had serious falling outs with Bruce, with Tim, and with her mother, all in the space of a day; she'd called because she'd needed someone to talk to who understood and wouldn't mind if she blubbered helplessly.
This was the third time she'd called for help, and she felt completely justified in doing so. Her hands shook as she punched in Barbara's personal number, listening to the absurdly long ringing.
She picked up after three rings, sounding half-breathless. "Batgirl?"
"Heeeeeey, Babs," she said, her voice weirdly high and stressed even to her own ears. "Hey. I know that you hung up your mentor hat ages ago, but I hunger mightily for a serving of your august wisdom. Got a minute for a cute girl in a cape?"
"I'm listening," the Commissioner said. There was a crash in the background.
"Yeah. So, crazy thing," Steph said in a rush, looking down at her own hands. The ring on her finger glowed a placid, deep blue. "I think I'm a Lantern now? Specifically a Blue Lantern? I mean, I'm straight up glowing with blueness. We never covered this one, so…please advise. What do you do when you turn into a Lantern?"
"You think you're a Lantern?"
"Yes. Mostly think, fairly positive. A sparkling blue ring fell from the sky and started talking to me, so I picked it up."
"What have I told you about picking up things that fall from the sky?"
"Not to do it," Steph sighed, rubbing her forehead. "But you know how I am about talking things. And it seemed like really friendly talking space-bling. I felt like it had my best interests at heart!"
"Do you have any idea how Blue Lanterns work?" Babs asked, thankfully more amused than cross.
"I know that they're, uh," she glanced at her boots. The patent black material was lit by a hazy aura. "Well. They're blue. And they've got bitchin' accessories."
"Batgirl."
"Hey! Hey! I wasn't invited to the last Lantern adventure! I'm not prepped for this, so I called you. The ring said it was an emergency, and I'm listening to it because it is a talking ring from space. I have to assume that it knows what it's talking about."
"It is an emergency." There was another crash in the background, this one coupled with inhuman groans. "And honestly, I'm glad that you called. This will work out better than I expected. Stay where you are. I'll be there in less than a minute."
And then she hung up, leaving Steph confused and unsettled. She hadn't answered any of her questions-all she'd done was make it all the more apparent that she had no idea what she was doing and that she really needed to stop talking to inanimate strangers.
When Babs arrived, she made an entrance. Steph had been looking for her car, wondering where she could have been that was close enough to get to her in under a minute, but it turned out that Babs had given her wheels a serious upgrade.
Her old mentor was riding high in a glowing green mecha, an armored bodysuit that reminded Steph of every Japanese anime she had ever watched. Babs was smiling from the cockpit, a green ring gleaming on her hand.
"Hypocrite," Steph accused, crossing her arms. "You totally picked up the talking space bling, too."
"Walk with me, Batgirl," the Commissioner said, already guiding her mecha down the alley. "Let me give you the highlights of what is going on and what you need to do."
"I'm all ears," she said, trotting behind her. The green-energy construct seemed to glow brighter when she neared it, gaining density.
"Black Lanterns have come to Gotham again," Barbara said, typing rapidly as she talked. "The Black Lantern rings are like a plague, taking over or reanimating flesh and going after living hearts. Hearts, and the emotions they contain, power them. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the charge. They have the unique ability to mimic dead loved ones, using them to work up key emotions. Once the victim has peaked, they take and consume their hearts."
"Zombie trolls," Steph summed up, power walking to keep up with the mecha's long strides. "Gotcha."
"There is an entire spectrum of Lanterns, as you know. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Star Sapphire, Indigo, and Black. Each is powered by an emotion, save for the Black Lanterns-they're more of an absense. The different colors in the spectrum react differently when paired," Babs said, lapsing into her teacher voice without realizing she was doing it. She was a great Commissioner, but Steph felt that teaching had always been more her. "You're a Blue Lantern, powered by hope. You need the willpower of a Green Lantern to use your powers, but your presence supercharges any color of ring around you. When I'm around your ring, mine is charged to two hundred percent its usual power, and it won't lose its charge so long as you keep hoping for me."
"Well, duh, I'll keep hoping," she said, shrugging. "Kind of my thing that I do."
"Don't turn off your listening ears yet. There's more. You connect with your opposite end of the spectrum. For example, an Orange Lantern-which can absorb any other colored constructs-cannot use their powers against a Star Sapphire. Orange is greed, and the Star Sapphire is love."
"Like Pokémon," Steph murmured, mostly to herself. If she heard her, Babs deigned not to remark on it. "So, what am I super effective against?"
"The Red Lantern. Rage," she said, fingers dancing across display boards in her cockpit. "There are at least two of them in the city. Since the Blue Lantern's powers are reactionary, you pass on hope to Red Lanterns. It 'weakens' them in the sense of sheer power, but it calms them down and brings back lucid thought. You can't work offensively on your own, and I gain a huge boost while working with you. If we're going to keep Gotham from going to the dogs tonight, we should stick together."
Steph couldn't keep the grin off her face. She smiled so widely, her cheeks hurt.
"Team Batgirl," she said.
Barbara smiled back. "Just like old times."
"Tell me what the plan is, O. You're the lady with the plans."
"First off, we need to intercept those Red Lanterns before they hurt anyone. They'll be more interested in the Black Lanterns and self-preservation, but I have a feeling they'll be people we know. The rings seek out those who most exemplify their color of the spectrum."
"And we know only too many people with anger management issues. So, in recap," Steph said, hands spread. "Space zombies have overrun the city, and we need to use rainbow jewelry and our feelings to drive them off."
Barbara looked briefly startled at the brash simplicity of her explanation. Then, she creased a faint smirk and nodded.
"More or less."
"Awesome," Steph gushed, curling her ringed hand into a fist. They could do this. She knew that they could. That was one thing that Steph had never had a problem with. Hope was what she had.
When Babs had said the Red Lanterns were probably people that they knew, she'd imagined villains. When negative emotions came to mind-and rage, to her, was negative, because she always felt the salt of guilt whenever she let herself go like that-she thought of the rogues gallery.
That, she knew, was stupid. It was a misstep on her account, because some of the angriest, most broken-up people she'd met had been people she'd called friends.
So it half surprised her, half didn't when they located the nearest Red Lantern. He'd been visible a block away, a red sword in each hand and an aura around him so bright and thick it looked like he was a one-man bonfire.
"I was afraid of this," was all that Babs said. What else could she have said that wouldn't have been damning? That was the kind alternative to I told you so.
Because Damian Wayne, Robin, was the Red Lantern. He was vomiting-actually vomiting-something thick and viscous and glowing. It burned the mobile corpses around him, making them twist and scream.
"Is that blood?" Steph whispered, her eyes wide.
"Yes," Barbara said, her mouth pressed into a grim, pale line. "His blood."
He was fighting wildly, a true animal. He slashed and stabbed and regurgitated boiling blood, focusing chiefly on one of the larger, broader Black Lanterns.
Steph had a good idea of who it was, but she didn't want confirmation. Not with the way Damian was tearing at him again and again, blind to the fact-or uncaring-that the Lantern kept healing.
"How do I do this?" she asked, a note of desperation in her voice. She had to make him stop-had to help him. He was out of control. "How do I make him stop?"
"Get close enough to him and hope your heart out," Babs said, lifting one of the mecha's arms. She shot off a volley of explosive green missiles that got the Lanterns' attention. "I'll keep the rest of them occupied."
Getting close to Robin, the Boy Murder Tornado, was close to being the last thing that Steph wanted to do. But, she knew that if she didn't do it, he'd be standing there hacking at that one corpse for the rest of the night. The futility of his rage, how bleak he had to feel deep down, made her chest ache for him.
He was just a kid. He was just a kid who had been loaded up with steaming piles of life's crap.
When he saw her, felt her approach, he turned so quickly he splattered the wall behind him with glowing blood. Damian looked at her, but he didn't see her. Maybe he saw the Blue Lantern, but he didn't see her.
"Robin," she said, hands raised in treaty. "It's me. Batgirl. Cool it, okay? I'm your friend-you know that. I want to help you, if you'll let me."
He hissed. There was no recognition in his eyes, no higher-brain function. He was almost as much of a zombie as the Black Lanterns. The only difference was, he wasn't out for hearts.
Damian moved-quickly, too quickly, way too quickly for someone his size. At sixteen, he was a lanky six feet tall, and she knew that if he came at her with real intent, she was in trouble.
Steph looked him in the eyes, leveled her ring at him, and pushed all she had into willing him past his madness.
He was better than that. Stronger than that. He was good.
The light that erupted from her ring had shape this time-her shape. It was like looking at a blue ghost of herself, hovering for half a second before surging forward and washing over Damian.
He screamed and fell to his knees.
He slashed wildly at the blue light, knowing that it would settle into his bones and turn them to ice. He couldn't stop, couldn't cool, but the radiant ghost of her couldn't be cut, couldn't be stopped. She washed over him, so bright he had to screw his eyes shut.
In his mind's eye, he could look straight at her, despite the brilliance. The light-woman wore a cape and a hood, too effervescent and silky to be anything solid and real. He felt her when she touched him, and a shiver ran through him.
But it was a good shiver. It made him feel more aware, more awake, more alive. She pressed her palm to his chest, and even though his heart remained a wad of useless tissue, there was a beat. The drums in his ears were gone, the mantra silenced, but the woman was calling his name instead-not insistently, not sharply, just saying it until he responded.
Damian, she said. Long time no see.
He didn't understand, because he didn't know her. She was blue-glowing-calm, a serene fairy of a woman. He knew no women like her-knew no women at all, really.
"Hal beemkanek mosa'adati? " He asked, almost desperately. Can you help me?
She smiled, reaching up and touching his face. Her hands and hair smelled faintly of peppermint. He didn't know how that cut through the stench of his own blood, but it did.
All will be well, she said, though her lips didn't move. He just felt the thought, a near-electric current of positive charge.
With her face tilted up toward him, her hood falling back, he recognized her. The realization didn't stun him, because the information and the feelings were not new. He'd long since memorized the shape of her fingertips when she touched him. First love was sharp, and his Eidetic memory gave nothing up.
She'd always been the hopeful one. They met their destiny with stalwart determination and cynicism, but she pushed forward with optimism and hope.
He breathed out blind rage, and breathed in hope. It was cold and clean in his lungs, calming. It tasted a little bit like peppermint.
"Is he...is he supposed to do that?" Steph asked uncertainly, staring wide-eyed at Robin. He'd dropped his weapons and fallen to his knees, hunched over with his palms and forehead touching the ground. It looked like he was praying, but she knew for a fact that he was as far from being religious as humanly possible. The sound he was making was awful-a weird keening noise caught somewhere between a snarl and a sob. The red light around him had dimmed, but he sounded like he was in pain. Damian was usually so resilient, rarely ever letting it show when he was injured. Frankly, seeing him like that scared her.
Guilt dug its claws into her. She hadn't meant to hurt him, but he'd been out of control. She'd only done what she'd had to do. Hadn't she?
"The Blue Lantern constructs affect the mind and soul," Babs said, in that frigid, careful way that meant she was angry. She'd been shooting eye-daggers at Damian since the blue light had washed over him and he'd crumpled.
"Yeah? Well, it sounds like glowy-me is breaking his soul over her knee," she said, biting her lower lip. "Which, okay. Gotta admit, making a glowy-me was pretty awesome. I didn't even try-it just kind of erupted out of the ring. Is it that way with yours?"
"No," Babs said, even colder and more clipped. "It doesn't. Your ring is empathetic. The form it takes is-"
The Commissioner was interrupted by Damian's snarl-sob turning into a scream. There were words in there, hissing and rapid, but none of it was in English. He'd hopped the tracks onto one of the many other languages he spoke fluently, and Steph couldn't tell what it was, much less what it meant.
He stopped as abruptly as he'd started, head jerking up.
Damian staggered to his feet almost drunkenly, eyes wide. His chest heaved like he'd run ten miles. They looked at each other, equally startled. Thankfully, he looked at her now, not through her.
"Oh," he said smoothly, arrogantly, like he hadn't just been curled up and screaming on the asphalt. "The both of you. As if I didn't have enough to deal with already. At least you took care of the Black Lanterns. I'm surprised."
"Stow the attitude, Robin," Barbara said. It was a command, no-nonsense and firm. "We have bigger problems. You've been elected as a member of the Red Lantern Corps-you were attacking uncontrollably. Batgirl's ring made you lucid, but you'll have to fight to stay that way."
"Clearly," he sniffed. "Are you fishing for a thank you?"
"No. Just a pinkie-swear that you're not going to try to stab me again," Steph said, her fingers tightening around her bo. "Are we cool now? Because I'm highly allergic to stab wounds."
Damian wiped his mouth reflexively, his body language stiff with distrust.
"You said that all will be well," he growled. His voice was a low, tight mumble. "Did you mean those words?"
She hadn't said that. Not out loud, at least. If he'd heard it, it'd been some weird soul-touching thing that the ring had enabled. She wasn't sure how to feel about hooking Damian up with the Lantern equivalent of an E.T. heartlight.
"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant," Steph said, very serious. "A Batgirl is faithful, one hundred percent."
"Yes," he said, almost as if he was convincing himself of the fact. She knew that he didn't get the Seuss reference. Pop culture was one of the few languages he wasn't fluent in. "Yes."
He stood and dripped hissing-hot blood. The awkwardness got to Steph.
"You, uh. You wanna go beat up some zombies?"
Damian's eyes flicked over to her. He still seemed out of joint, confused by the arrangement of the world around him-like a kid who'd woken up from a long nap and found all the furniture in the house moved. His eyes were blue again, at least.
"What Batgirl means," Babs said with a sigh that she mostly silenced. She only had so much patience, and it'd been a long time since she'd been on the field with either of them. "Is that none of us can take down a Black Lantern on our own. Green Lanterns power Blue Lanterns, and Blue Lanterns keep Red Lanterns coherent. You don't really have a choice."
"Fine," he said, wiping his mouth again. "Only until I locate Batman."
"You can't find Batman?" Barbara asked, her voice half-stepping an octave of worry. Normally, not being able to find Batman was...the norm. But normally, heart-eating zombies with power bling weren't terrorizing Gotham with feelings. Today was not a day to misplace the Bat.
"Not yet," Damian said, his lip curling in a sneer that showed pink-smeared teeth. "But he has fought these abominations before. He is equipped for this."
But Robin didn't sound 100% sure, and that made Steph's stomach knot up tight.
"We'll find him," she said, because saying it helped her believe it. If she didn't believe, none of them would.
Babs typed madly on her suit's consoles, already searching and networking. This was what she'd been best at, where she'd really shone.
"I-might have something. Possibly. I'm not sure, but." She sounded distracted, flustered. She gave Steph a dissecting look. "I'll check this out. It will take me less than five minutes. I'm linked up to your comm, so if anything happens, hail me. Watch Robin."
"You've got it," Steph said with a sigh and a salute as the glowing green mecha leap-frogged away.
Damian regarded her balefully. She felt vaguely sorry for him, despite his angry wet kitten routine.
"I am going to continue my own search," he informed her, his frown deep. "And if you do not want to be left without an offensive partner, you will come with me."
Steph frowned, but nodded. "But we aren't moving far from here. Rendezvous points are picked for a reason, and chances are Babs has this handled."
"I cannot trust her," Damian said quietly, turning away. "Not with this."
Batgirl and Robin did not find Batman, but they did find another bogey on the list. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They found a former Robin, but not the one they'd been searching for.
Then again, very few people sought out that Robin.
Damian didn't see the other Red Lantern's approach so much as he felt him. It was like breathing in spice and chunks of glass. They tore all the way down, coating his throat and tongue with acid and blood. He could feel the rage bubbling up again, an unselfconscious heave that left him with a hot mouthful of blood. He breathed out hard, nostrils flaring, and tried to block out the drums. Even with Stephanie beside him, it was difficult.
At the end of the alleyway, Jason Todd was lit in a hellish aura. Long, ropy strands of luminous blood dripped from the Hood's jaws. He had only one weapon: a glowing red crowbar, held tightly in his right hand. There was no recognition in his face, no connection when he saw Damian. Unlike him, Jason hadn't been visited by his own Blue Lantern. Without a sweet Blue Fairy with blond hair and a hope so strong she made people believe, there were no wishes. To people like them, stars weren't things to be wished upon. They were dying balls of gas millions of miles away, burning until they imploded.
Damian stopped breathing out his anger. Looking at him, he kept sucking it in until he felt swollen on the inside, ready to rip open and let all that pain out until he'd ruined everything around him. He'd feel better if he did, said the ring on his finger. He'd feel better if they hurt just as badly as he did, if he made the world at large pay for making people like him happen. There was no fairness in the universe, said the ring. Things would not get better, and believing otherwise meant he'd be hurt again and again.
He'd be Jason, said the ring. He'd die screaming and he'd come back screaming and he'd never stop because that was what happened to people like them.
Jason glanced at Damian once, briefly, but it was like he didn't see either him nor Stephanie. He smeared his bloody face against the back of his hand and arm like a child with a runny nose, then kept walking. He left hissing red puddles in his wake.
Damian thought about following him, but he knew it would be useless to engage the Red Hood. Rage against rage would sharpen them both like blades against a whetstone; he would lose what little control he had and they would tear at each other like mindless dogs. He didn't want to know which of them was angrier, which of them was deadlier, or which of them their father had wronged more.
Stephanie was frozen at his side, her face pale. Without Gordon's ring to bolster her, she'd been unable to reach out to Todd. Even she had been powerless to do anything but watch him pass.
Seeing Jason made his hope dim, plummeting like a small round stone into the depths of the soundless pit inside his chest.
Seeing the ghost of your grim future walk past did that to a person.
But then she touched his arm, and hope buoyed up again past his still heart.
"C'mon," Batgirl said, already moving away. "We have to get back to Babs. Maybe if we can get her, we'll be able to double back and help him. I'm useless without a Green Lantern around, remember?"
He wanted to argue with her. In that brief, crystalline moment where he wrestled himself back under control-because of her, because of the stupid woman and her inane hope-he wanted to tell her that she'd helped him. He wanted to tell her, because he recognized that without her, he would have been yet another Jason Todd wandering the streets in a blind rage. Gordon had helped make the connection, but her continued presence was what kept him stable.
But it felt weak. She would laugh at him. His emotions were too boiling-mad and frenzied to express, so he held his tongue. He couldn't afford to be angry at her, too.
Gordon took more than five minutes. Gordon took ten, then twenty, then an hour. He could feel Stephanie begin to tire and falter, and that worried him. It worried him more than the Lanterns, because they were dumb sacks of refuse that simply needed to be beaten back again and again. He worried about Batgirl's flagging hope, because without it he would lose his control and clarity, and he could turn on her.
He knew that she knew that, too, and some of his well of hatred changed current to focus back on himself. He did not want to hurt her, even if his actions were not his own. She'd shown him compassion, and she'd shown him patience. He would not reward her with violence, even if it seemed that violence was all he had to give.
The problem with the Lanterns was not that they were difficult to match in battle-even she could do that, armed only with her bo-but that they couldn't be destroyed. Damian's superheated blood went a long ways toward deforming them, but they healed and came back again and again. He didn't tire, but she did.
When a Lantern grabbed her, pulling her back into the throng, he made a sound that was barely even human. He roared, jumping into them swords-first, because he could not lose his trembling grip on hope, on sanity. He would not be Todd. He would not be that disappointment. He'd given too much to fail.
But then he was engulfed in pinkish light constructs. The dizzy, dancing streaks of pink mixed with his sizzling red aura, and the blended colors ripped through the zombies.
He wasn't sure if they were birds or bats, but they were shrieking and beating thousands of wings. The flock-colony descended in a tornado of violet-pink light, tearing at the bodies of the Black Lanterns.
"Robin!" Dick yelled from above, and it took Damian a few moments to realize that it was him. He'd left the cave as Batman, and now Damian wasn't sure who or what he was. He was using his own voice, engulfed in a lurid pink aura, and wearing something like his Nightwing uniform…but it was not his old costume. The skin-tight suit was violet piped in luminous pink, everything color-shifted from the old black and blue. The v across his chest was a hole that bared skin, dipping all the way to his crotch. The v demurely hugged his nipples, preserving only the barest modicum of decency.
Damian was appalled.
"I hate you," he growled wrathfully when he dropped down beside him, second-hand shame prickling the back of his neck. "And what you are wearing. And everything that you are right now."
"You're leaking," Dick pointed out, miming vaguely at his face.
Damian ran his tongue over his slick lower lip, then spat out a mouthful of thick, hot blood. It sizzled by his boot.
"Not a big fan of what you are right now, either," he added with a sigh.
"You leave me all night, only to come back as this? Love is not something easily weaponized. You ought to have chosen your affiliation more carefully," Damian said. His blood-thick tongue worked around the right name, the one he'd barely known for Dick. He'd been his Batman, not Father. "Nightwing."
"Love is a legitimate emotion, Robin," Dick said, and there was a hardness in his voice that was all Batman. "And it's how I found you. As soon as I busted out of the crystal, the ring told me where my loved ones were at."
"Your loved ones," Damian repeated dumbly.
"The ones I could sense. I could zero in on..." His blue, blue eyes flicked to away oh-so-briefly. Gordon. He rubbed the back of his neck. "But I couldn't feel you. I still can't feel you. If I hadn't thought to look for Batgirl, I would've spent the whole night searching."
It was hard to reach out to the soul of a loved one when that soul was gone, Damian thought with a sick, sinking nausea.
"My heart is," Damian said quickly, tripping over his own words in his haste to offer up some kind of reasonable explanation. "It's-it is not beating. Even now, it is still. The ring made it that way."
"But you're still here. I should sense that. I've been able to sense...another Red Lantern, but not you," Dick said, and he knew that he was going to dig. He was going to dig and pry and puzzle it out until he knew. And he couldn't know, he just couldn't; Damian was positive that he would not forgive him for what he'd done.
"Drop it, Grayson," Damian snarled, rage eating up fear. That red light inside him would use any emotion as kindling. "You've chosen the least useful emotion of them all, so please do us all a favor and don't add to the issue by flapping your mouth unnecessarily."
"I didn't choose love," he said, patient even though a muscle in his jaw flexed with his clenched teeth. "You don't choose what you are at your core. The rings only find you if you're reading on their levels, not the other way around."
"And you are made of love," he said disdainfully. If he could make him angry, he could give him new bones to pick and gnaw on. He knew all the buttons to push, because he'd stumbled upon them accidentally and usually sought to avoid them. Right then, Damian would say or do nearly anything to guide him away from the matters of heart and soul. "And Batgirl is made of hope. Both of you have jeopardized our survival rate tonight. I never dreamed that I would see the day where the cripple is my strongest available ally."
Something hit the back of his head, hard. Damian hissed, blood bubbling between his teeth, and rounded on his assailant.
Stephanie held her glowing bo, her lips puckered into a frown. He'd forgotten that she was there. How had he forgotten? Rage turned his sharp mind blunt. He'd been reduced to a dumb animal.
"I hope that you'll take that back before I have to hit you again," she said, waving the end of the bo menacingly. "'Cause I will. You know I will."
"And I love that Batgirl knows how important our contributions are," Dick said, his grin back to its cheeky glory.
It didn't reach his eyes, though. It was put on, an act. The matter hadn't been dropped. He would bring it up again, when all was said and done and they were alone in the cave.
And in that moment, Damian hated him for that. He hated him for his love. He hated that he would hate him, and all because of an epiphany brought on by a fucking pink bauble.
Stephanie hit him again, hard enough to rattle his thoughts. Damian was too surprised by the assault to block it.
"Take it back."
She wanted him to apologize for the little unkindnesses he doled out, the biting remarks that Dick had long since turned a deaf ear to. He was slavering blood like a rabid dog, and yet she demanded politeness, even if she had to beat it out of him.
He hadn't been trying to offend her. A part of him had forgotten that she was within earshot. For too many years, it'd just been Batman and Robin-because he was wanted like a common crook, and Dick was always, always trying to protect him. He'd fallen out of practice when it came to interacting with humanity.
"Fine!" he barked. "You've proven advantageous to have around and the c-Commissioner has provided information and support."
It was kind of like an apology. Close enough to one.
"And him?" She demanded, pointing to Dick.
Damian regarded his brother coolly. "I have nothing good to say about him. Not when he abandoned me for hours and is wearing a costume that scarcely covers his nipples and genitalia."
"He has a point," Dick said, and sighed. "I'm guessing that either the Star Sapphires don't have many men in their club, or they have a different idea of what a unisex suit looks like. Either way, this suit's got a breezy cut."
"You're making the look work," Steph assured him, patting his shoulder. "And considering that we're mid-zombie-wrasslin', I'll forgo demanding that Robin hugs it out with everyone."
"How uniquely generous of you," Damian spat, rolling his eyes. He took a light-construct scimitar from his beltloop, turning away. "Now, if you will pardon my rudeness, I am going to locate Gordon and resume ridding my streets of this filth. Come with me, or stay. I don't fucking care."
They put such demands on him. They went to such lengths to pretend that he was something that he was not. They had such hope and such love.
And for that, Damian hated them both. Hope and love were emotions that were given and shared, but rage was inflicted. Rage tore and consumed, and rage was all that he had.
Someday, they'd accept that.
The city was a battlefield of proportions he had never seen before. There were more Black Lanterns, this time-or at least a greater concentration in the blocks they tried to lock down. The Commissioner had decided to dig in and help a group of her officers protect the civilians who were trying to evacuate, and her psuedomechanical construct lit up a green beacon visible for a half mile. They fought their way to her, because the cross-spectrum effects of their colored rings were too convenient together to not monopolize on.
For them, it was exhausting work. The Black Lanterns were relentless, and they wore the memories of those they'd held dear.
But for Damian, it was a release. He didn't have to worry about killing something that was already dead. He didn't have to hold back. There was no such thing as too brutal. It was a high, and hating himself for loving it just fanned his flame all the hotter.
"How do we kill these things, anyway?" Batgirl yelled, expertly ducking a Lantern that Barbara's mecha had sent flying.
Gordon was in fine form. The woman had not forgotten how to be in the middle of the fray, Damian noted with a certain hint of respect. She led, and not only her police officers.
"Combine energy from different sides of the spectrum and catch them in the overload!" She said, and sent another half-dozen Lanterns flying.
"What?" Stephanie shouted over the din.
"We cross our beams!" Dick shouted back, leap-frogging effortlessly over a zombie and twisting closer to her. He covered her back, and it was...interesting to watch them work together.
Dick was an acrobat, and Stephanie was a gymnast. Theirs was a true partnership, a non-choreographed dance. Neither was a warrior-not the way that he was. Damian only jeopardized his center of gravity and stance if he absolutely had to, preferring to hold his ground. They were almost always in the air, jumping and kicking and flipping. They used their environment-walls, lamp posts; anything could be a springboard-and lead with their non-lethal weapons-him with his escrima sticks and her with her bo.
"Seriously?" Steph said, blocking a Lantern wearing the guise of a woman Batman and Robin had failed to save. "Like Ghostbusters? Or that one episode of the first season of Sailor Moon, where everyone combines their powers to beat back the forces of evil?"
Dick cracked the Lantern in the ribs with a dazzling pink arc trail. "Day of Destiny?"
"Yes!" Batgirl said, nodding enthusiastically. He put an arm around her and pulled her up and away from the damned below; they delivered a tandem kick on the swing up.
As Batman, Dick didn't have the freedom to fight like that. Damian knew this, because he had been his Robin for longer than his predecessors had been a Robin, and Dick had been his Batman. There'd been three years where his father had taken back the mantle, but then he'd died. He'd died, and it'd been Damian's fault. Because of that-because of him-Dick had had to return to wearing the Batman's heavy cape, keeping his feet almost exclusively on the ground.
"Yeah, just like that," Dick crowed, so hopped up on the hope that Stephanie was beaming, he looked like he felt invincible. "I am Nightwing, defender of love and justice!"
"In the name of the Bat, we will right wrongs and triumph over all evil!"
They struck a truly ridiculous pose. Damian stared at them a beat too long; he almost got a decrepit boot to the face.
"And that means you!"
The pink and blue of their respective rings combined, cutting clean through four Lanterns. No one looked more surprised than them.
"That just happened," Nightwing said, sounding pleased.
"Best. Team-up. Ever," Batgirl agreed.
The two idiots slapped a high-five. They were in the middle of combat, and they were laughing.
Damian couldn't remember the last time that he'd heard that kind of laughter in Dick's voice. They were in the heat of one of the most harrowing fights they'd experienced in years, and yet he was happy. He didn't have to put on an act, and it made him lighter. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't be himself when he was Batman. He knew that some of it was the emotions of his ring, the love coursing through him, but that wasn't all of it.
It made Damian angry. It made him angry, because he couldn't weaponize guilt and shame. It made him angry, because he had to be angry.
When a Black Lantern leaned in too close, he spat burning blood into his face. He had to purge it out of his system before it overwhelmed him, but there was no limit to the boiling blood inside him.
"I don't understand anything that was just discussed," Damian snarl-slurred through his bloody teeth, relishing the resistance his construct sword met when he thrust it through one of the Black Lanterns. "And if one of you babbling morons doesn't take it upon yourself to explain it to me in logical terms, I will vomit rage all over you. You know I will!"
"Someone's PMSing hardcore."
"Par for the course," Dick sighed, mock-weary.
"Fuck the both of you! I am a Red Lantern!" Damian howled. The red-spice heat of anger simmered up again, but it was different. This time, it was self-righteous, brightly-burning. He was the Son of the Bat, the Prince of the House of Al Ghul, Damian Fucking Wayne, and none of them were allowed to forget that. Latching onto his name kept his head clear. "Don't demean my emotions by comparing them to premenstrual irritation!"
"You only say that because you've never had a period," Steph told him knowingly.
Gordon's light-construct Gundam crashed to the ground again, making Damian's teeth rattle in his head. Yes, it could leap tall buildings in a single bound, but not gracefully.
"Less banter," she barked. "More stream-crossing!"
They fought their way up a large apartment building. Black Lanterns were above and below, swarming for any concentrations of flesh. There were so many of them-too many. Even with the four of them, they couldn't dispatch them quickly enough. They did not let up, did not allow them room or time to breathe. Clearing them out until they got to the roof only ended in them trapped at the top as the masses rose like flood waters made of rotten flesh.
On the roof, the inevitable happened. One of them broke. The rings demanded emotion, and that was physically draining. They had fought for most of the night, and while Damian could keep that pace indefinitely, the rest could not. He'd thought that Stephanie would be the one to falter, but it was Barbara. It may have been the strain of keeping such a large and elaborate construct stable, or it might have been how unused she was to the old level of action.
Either way, the green construct broke, shattered, and fizzled in midair. The woman plummeted, her aura cut.
"Babs!" Dick shouted, instantly going for her. He dove over the edge without any hesitation, burning a hotter, brighter shade of pink-violet. Love made him stronger-not metaphorically, either. On a real, physical level, his love made him powerful.
Black Lanterns followed him like obsessive moths, a writhing mass of hungry almost-human. Dick's pink light disappeared in the sea of bodies.
There hadn't been this many of them, last time. They'd taken the bodies of loved ones, spinning lies to provoke the living, but some of these were nothing but lumpy masses of misshapen features and wide mouths. Damian knew that they had come for him, attracted by the strength of his undying heart. To them, he was bait, and his allies had no idea.
Sometimes, he didn't blame others for not wanting to work alongside him.
"We're overrun," Damian said, taking a step back. He came into contact with Stephanie, and touching her was an experience he wouldn't forget. Her aura was gentling to be around, but to actually touch her was like breathing underwater. He felt weightless, enveloped in cool security. The idea that all would be well seeped into his pores.
"We can do this," she said, and smiled. "You can do this. What're a couple of zombies? You're the best fighter I know, Robin."
When she said it, he believed it. He sucked in a deep breath, then nodded.
"On the count of three, we cross our streams and lay the hurt on these yokels," Batgirl said, raising her ringed fist. The power ring bubbled with clean blue light, with hope. "Red and Blue are super effective together."
He looked out at the mess around and below them, and he got angry. Anger was inherently selfish, but this was different than before-the anger wasn't for himself, for his pain and the wrongs that had been done to him. This anger was sharp and self-righteous-anger for what these filthy animals were doing to his friends and his streets.
"There are entirely too many motherfucking Lanterns in this motherfucking city," Damian growled. This anger was useful. Protective. His ring spat crimson sparks. "On your mark."
"One, two, three!"
It was beautiful, a full sensory overload. The light was both immaterial and rigid, something that he saw and he felt physically and emotionally. He poured himself into the blast, every ounce of backing that he had, but he didn't feel wrung out. The rage left him, his charge diminishing, but Stephanie's ring didn't drain. That was the nature of hope. Fighting back and winning made everyone more hopeful, not less. Hope looped in on itself, undying and unyielding. They charged her, and she charged others.
It had its uses, he decided begrudgingly.
The light faded, after what felt like a small eternity. Damian sagged, spots dancing in his vision, and didn't push her away when Steph put an arm around his waist to help him. He would likely crush the woman if he fell on her, but the thought was appreciated nonetheless.
When his vision cleared, there was nothing but smoking asphalt. No Lanterns. No bodies of Lanterns.
"Did we win?" Damian asked, brow furrowed. That seemed too easy.
"We held out," Dick said, reappearing over the edge of the building. He'd scaled the fire escape, carrying the Commissioner on his back. Their rings were gone, leaving him a capeless Batman and her a paraplegic without a wheelchair. "Someone else won."
"Green Lanterns, probably," Barbara added, huffing a hank of very red hair out of her eyes.
"Y'know," Steph said, twisting off her ring. It hovered for a second, then shot off into the sky once more. "Sometimes I wish that the Green Lanterns would just keep their space stuff in space. Is that too much to ask for?"
Damian watched her out of the corner of his eye, newly aware of how much shorter she was than him, how much smaller. She hadn't seemed small when lit up frosty blue.
"For once, I could not agree with you more," he said, and didn't move away from her. He'd gotten his footing again, but she didn't need to know that.
The Batgirls and Robins watched the sun rise over their city. In their line of work, dawn always felt like an accomplishment.
"How many times do you think you're going to have to brush your teeth before you get all the blood out?" She asked, nose wrinkled. "So gross."
"Numerous times, I'm sure," Damian said, unscrewing the cap of the water bottle and taking a drink. He swished the mouthful around furiously before spitting. Even after four swish-and-spits, the water was still pinkish. It'd been eerie and surreal when charged by the energy of the Red, but now that he'd given up the ring his blood was just his blood-caked and dried around his mouth and nose, like his face had been beaten in. He could feel the grit and slime of it between his teeth, coating the inside of his mouth.
"We make a pretty good team," she said, almost thoughtfully.
"I'll throw myself off a bridge before I willingly team up with Gordon again," he deadpanned, taking another drink of water.
Stephanie laughed, nudging him with her elbow. "I meant you and me, smart guy. We really do make a good team. Maybe we should make a habit out of it instead of a bi-yearly thing."
Damian was honestly too stunned to reply. Her assessment was correct, of course, but his willingness made his stomach do dizzying flip-flops. Nobody wanted to work with him. That had been a firm fact for almost his entire life. To have her suggest even a casual partnership meant volumes to him.
He stared at her, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk from the mouthful of water he'd momentarily forgotten about. She translated that silence as arrogance, rolling her eyes. He didn't correct her.
"Batgirls and Robins have a history of team-ups," Stephanie continued defensively. "And we used to team up all the time. Did you outgrow me? Look, I put up with you when you were a pissed off ten year old, so you don't get to be too cool to be seen with me."
"Tonight, you were." Damian's throat closed up. He wanted to say something, had to say something. Swallowing took effort, but he would not allow his voice to choose that moment to crack embarrassingly. "An acceptable partner."
Plain, average Stephanie Brown had a dazzling smile. It made him reflexively happy, almost shy.
"Then I'll see you around, Boy Wonder," she said, tousling his hair.
"Perhaps," he said as he pawed his hair back.
By perhaps, he meant yes, but it'd be a full year before he saw her again. The next time, he would be Batman and she'd be Batwoman. The year-seventeen for him, twenty-five for her-would be one they'd spend in loss and isolation. He would wander and let his sorrow and guilt gnaw at him until the rawness turned into rage, and she would lose everything she loved and end up destitute.
He'd come back older-too old for his age, bitter. He'd welcome the rage when it hit, because it was an alternative to not feeling anything at all.
He would kill a man the night of his return, and she would catch him. There wouldn't be any colored auras, no visible emotions, but she would find him when he was drowning in anger so bleak and black that it'd be despair. She'd find him, and she'd bring him hope.
Hope was what she did best.