After the Bat

by Summersfan

John Blake was given a legacy, and a city to protect. But he can't do it alone. It'll take a whole team to replace Batman. Post DKR.

2. Chapter 2

After the Bat – Chapter 2

Summary: John Blake was given a legacy, and a city, to protect.

1.

Blake woke up with a splitting headache, tied up in the middle of the cave.

The boys were exploring.

The younger one noticed he was awake first, and came running, sliding into a crouch in front of him. "Go on, tell him!" he demanded.

Blake blinked a few times, trying to get his feet under him. How the hell had one of the orphans taken him down so fast, so hard? "Tell him what?" he asked, wondering how dumb he could play. What he could get away with.

The older of the two—had the kid called him Jason?-came striding over. He had his hands stuck deep in his pockets. "Tell me if you're Batman, go on."

"What? Batman? What makes you say that?" he asked weakly.

Jason took his hands out of his pockets, holding up the little metal bat symbols. "Well, for starters, this is his stuff. But Timmy says you ain't him."

"No way," said Tim. "For starters, that hold I did on you? That was a pretty simple hold. There's a couple ways to break it. No way I could get the Bat with that. You're this new guy. But you have his stuff. You got his stuff after it all blew up."

The older boy crouched over him. "You're Blake," he said.

Blake twitched. "What?"

"Oh, come on. I was in the home? When you came around all those times? You used to be one of us. And you're a cop now. He's a cop, Timmy."

The younger kid made a face. "You're a cop? And trying to do this thing? That's nuts. They'll find you out just about right away."

Blake blinked at them a few times, trying to figure out how to get the advantage back. "You kids could get in big trouble."

"We could get in big trouble?" Jason laughed. "Saw you on the news the other day. You're not very good at this—you're not the Batman."

Blake strained against the ropes—they didn't give at all.

The shorter one, Tim, tucked his legs under him, frowning. "So, I'm a little confused. Is anybody else confused?"

"Nope," said Jason.

"How did he get this stuff?"

"Bruce Wayne," replied Jason.

"Oh, come on now," said Blake. "How could you possibly figure that?"

"This was his place, wasn't it? I thought these caves were just an old way in and out without being seen, but there's more down here, isn't there? There's a whole thing back there with computers and stuff, state of the art. I bet his cars and stuff are down here."

"The cars got blown up," said Blake, feeling stupid. "There's a motor-bike, but I haven't had a chance to practice." Why was he telling them this? He took a deep breath. "You should let me go."

Tim sighed. "We really need to talk."

Jason laughed. "Yeah, this clown is going to get himself killed, and the great Timmy is going to save him? Dude. He's, yanno, the Bat."

The tiny, serious boy just stared at Blake, and gave a tiny little smile. "See, the thing is, I need some help with a situation, myself. A situation I can't handle."

The kid talked like somebody much older. Blake flexed against his bonds again, trying to find anything loose. "Which one of you tied me up?" he asked.

Jason chuckled. "I was never a boy scout, no, but it doesn't take a genius. Tim, we gotta go. We can leave a knife open across the room so he can get himself free when we're gone."

"He knows where we live," pointed out Tim, very reasonably. "If he wants to start playing games with us he could probably get us kicked out of the home, although that would be very stupid because we might be dumb enough to retaliate by revealing some of his secrets, which might just get him killed."

Blake didn't like the sound of that. "Are we making threats now?"

"I'm pointing out that escalating would be a mistake. Which also means... Jason, cut him free."

"Oh, come on!" said Jason, sounding frustrated.

"We're going to extend him a little trust. Because he's one of the good guys, right?" Tim leaned in closer to Blake. "Do you have any idea what that move I used to take you down was?"

Blake thought about it for a few seconds. "Some kind of judo?"

"Hmm, no. You need my help. Maybe more than you know. Okay, look, yes, I'm just a kid, but I know stuff—have you got any idea who you're up against right now?"

"Two snot-nosed kids," said Blake, rolling his eyes.

"No, not me. Cobblepot. I saw him take you down. Do you know how he did that?"

Blake frowned. "More or less the same way you did."

"No! No. See, you weren't paying attention then, you aren't paying attention now. Jason, cut him loose. Is that computer in the other room on? Come on, let's go."

Jason produced a little knife from his pocket. If the rules were still the same Blake was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to have a knife, not in the Home. It took him a minute to saw through the ropes holding Blake.

Tim was already in the other room, finding a YouTube video.

"We don't have time, Timmy," said Jason, sounding frustrated.

"This will be just a minute. Here, when you got taken down. See that? Around your chest? You know what that is?"

"A rope?" said Blake, rubbing his wrists. Forget any kind of truce with these kids, he was going to have to find some way to get them bounced from the Home. After he got them to show him the way down, and closed it off.

Tim rolled his eyes heavenward. "No, no, no! I mean, close, but did you see the guy here? In the shadows?" He pointed at the video, at the shadows behind Blake, moving back a few frames. "See, this isn't just a rope. This is a whip. And he knew the camera was on, so he made sure you were in the light and he was in the shadows."

"Who?" asked Blake.

Tim rolled his eyes. "He doesn't actually give out his name. But he has a reputation as the best assassin money can buy, and he is very, very dangerous. He was basically standing behind you, here, with a gun to your head, holding you in place, and you never even knew he was there. Cobblepot hired him to take you down, and then let you go. That guy there? If I tried the hold that I took you down with on that guy I wouldn't even get to make the hold. He is the best, and he is very dangerous."

Blake glared. "So I could ask around and people would know this?"

"Yeah, sure. Start at the top of the mob, Cobblepot's rivals, and get one talking. They'll know. They might even have an alias for getting in touch with him. And they will be walking very softly until he's out of town. But whatever you do, don't go near Cobblepot right now."

"And how do you know this?" he asked.

Tim shrunk in on himself, hunching over the keyboard. "I can't talk about that," he mumbled.

"Tim used to run with a circus," offered Jason, not quite helpfully. "Pretty wild bunch. It's where he learned all the tumbling and stuff."

Tim turned around to face Blake. "Do you have contacts with the superheros?"

"What, the one they call Superman? Sort of. I don't really trust him, though," said Blake, squirming. Chloe Sullivan had known his name, had known where he was staying, had known that he didn't have a job. She was the one who had arranged for him to become the beneficiary of a trust fund of some kind so he didn't really have to work nine to five, so he could concentrate on becoming something like the Batman.

That kind of knowledge scared him.

Tim nodded. "So we have a panic button if you go up against Cobblepot. Good. You might want to put that on speed-dial, just in case. So. Listen, are you going to be around tonight? There's a lot more stuff you need to know. Stuff about the Batman, too."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Tim, what the hell?" he asked, a little miffed.

Tim shrugged. "It's not stuff I'm really at liberty to talk about, yanno?"

Jason crossed his arms. "This is nuts."

Blake thought it was a little nuts. "You two better get back to the Home... I'll be here tonight. We'll talk."

He hadn't decided yet exactly when he would betray them. Maybe he would wait and see just how much the kid knew.

Tim looked up at him, squinting. "If you're gonna rat on us, can you wait until next week? I kind of have a situation right now with my girlfriend, and..."

Blake shook his head. "Yeah, sure, kid. Whatever. Can you just go, please?"

They left without saying anything more, leaving Blake alone, staring at the computer screen.

He played the video a few more times, watching the dark figure in the shadows.

There was somebody there. Somebody who managed to catch him easily, and who stayed back, letting some idiot in a windbreaker hold him down for Cobblepot.

What kind of teenager knew about dangerous assassins and could take him down in seconds? And what the hell was he supposed to do now?

2.

Gordon stood at the edge of the crime scene, watching.

Montoya was one of the best he had. Conscientious, strong, taking no guff. She knew the dark side of the street well enough to find anyone, and the good sense not to find the ones she couldn't handle.

He ran a hand through his hair. Losing Batman—Bruce Wayne—had been more stress than he had really thought it would be. His hair seemed to be turning snow-white overnight.

He waved Montoya over to him when she saw him. She came over slowly, taking the latex gloves off.

"Commissioner," she said, her voice a little tight.

They hadn't been able to take this job away from him, not even after the Bane disaster, but the Mayor had let him know in no uncertain terms that he would never hold any other job in this town.

That was all right by him. Other jobs were for other men, men who wanted them. Men who could do something else. There was nothing in him besides a passion to save this city.

That almost-fatal kinship with the Bat.

"Montoya. I just wanted to have a little follow-up chat." He glanced down at the scene, at the bodies. More violence this year than he had seen since the bad old days. More deaths. This wasn't good at all.

"Yessir."

"Is this...?"

"Same as the last? Yes, sir. But it's not a serial. He's not killing the same type—he's targeting known enemies of Cobblepot. Definitely a hitman. Some kind of specialist. This is about the Batman-wannabe?"

"Yes. Yes. You asked me... you asked me if I wanted you to find him."

"Yessir."

"Last night there was an incident."

"Oh?"

"Jewel thief. Burglary. Thwarted."

"Same guy?"

"Maybe, maybe not. No witnesses. The crooks never saw the one that got them. It's... it's more like him."

"Yeah."

Gordon swallowed. "You have pretty good instincts, Detective."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'm going to leave this up to you."

"Up to me, sir?"

"Yes. When you find out... if you find out... If you decide that... I don't expect a report from you unless you decide that it's necessary, do you understand."

She frowned. "Are you sure? He is just an amateur. Going to get himself killed."

Gordon steeled himself. "There's one name you are definitely not going to bring back to me."

"Sir?"

Gordon remembered those frantic months, working with a sharp young man who had worked very closely indeed with the Bat. Closer than Gordon. "John Blake."

"Ex-cop John Blake?" she asked sharply.

"Yes. If he's involved, if he has the Bat's equipment... then it's the same as if you found nothing, do you understand?"

She frowned. "Even if I think he's going to screw it up?"

"If it was him, he was hand-picked," said Gordon softly.

"And even posthumously, you trust him that much?"

"I do."

She considered this. "Well, sir. Maybe officially you should post me to the cold case files. There's a bunch of stuff left over from the Bane incident... Maybe I should be looking into that fulltime for a while."

"And this stuff?" asked Gordon, nodding his head towards the dead body.

She shrugged. "I have no idea how you go about finding some kind of ninja. This isn't really my normal stuff, right? I've already contacted the FBI. Somebody this distinctive must have a file somewhere."

3.

First Blake hacked the orphanage's files. The boys who ended up there were, for the most part, the kind who didn't do well in foster care.

He found Jason Todd's file fairly easily. A troublemaker who was just narrowly avoiding juvie.

Tim Drake's file said he was new to the system. Family troubles, a father who had been assaulted and fallen into a coma. A lawyer.

Then Blake called Chloe Sullivan.

"Hi," he said, unsure how to start.

"John Blake, defender of Gotham. Saw you getting your ass kicked on TV the other night," she said, and he winced.

"Yeah. Sorry. Look, I have a problem."

"You have several. Did you ever get in touch with that trainer I referred you to? You need that training bad. And maybe you need backup, too."

"No, look, somebody figured out my secret."

She snorted. "Family? Friends?"

"What? No. I don't really have... anyway, these kids, from the orphanage upstairs, they broke in and..."

He didn't really want to admit that a fifteen-year-old had managed to put him to sleep and tie him up.

"Hang on, I'm logging in to your files remotely... okay, I see you've ID'ed them, I can... what the hell?"

"Watching the footage?"

"That kid laid you flat! I see you have been training, by the way. Good progress."

"Thanks." He didn't tell her about the disaster where he'd been kicked out of Helena's dojo. "And it was a pretty good night, before that. I was able to ninja two burglars, stop them without getting seen."

"Who is that kid? Let me see. Tim Drake? Tim Drake... dad's in a coma... let's just pull all the files I can find on the dad. Circus lawyer? That's odd. What kind of circus has a lawyer? There's something fishy here."

"Fishy?"

"This circus is clean. Meticulously clean. Circuses don't come this clean. Something weird."

"He, uh, he offered to give me advice. Told me I was in over my head, told me he could help."

"Oh, really?"

"Said Cobblepot hired some kind of big-time assassin, and said... said I needed to ask questions. So I'm asking you."

"Big-time assassin? Well, shit." She was quiet for a minute. "Oh, hell."

"What?"

"It's Cain. This is bad, very bad."

"How bad?"

"Ollie and I went up against this guy once. Barely got out alive. He is damned good. And, worse, he's part of this... this group."

"Group?"

"Folks who're trying to not get scooped up by Superman. Ever since he burst on the scene anybody too big gets taken down big, so a bunch of the bigshots pooled resources, went underground. Found a way to hide from him."

"Oh, really?"

"If you thought having the Bat around discouraged the bad guys, you should try having the big blue boyscout around. It's dangerous to even talk about killing somebody in this town. He can hear almost everything, you know. And he gets pissed off about organized crime."

"So?"

"So they got their hands on a piece of technology that masks their presence from him. Folks in the network can hide from him."

"Oh. Huh."

"Yeah. So, Cain. That's bad, very bad. He can kill you. Even if you got trained to Batman level overnight... he's kind of on that level."

"Um. So...?"

"So I'm coming for a visit, and I'm bringing Ollie."

"Really?"

"Ollie's actually, um, … he's in Europe right now, chasing down something... something that's a higher priority. So he'll be joining us a little later. No. Wait. I can't come down until I've cleaned up a little mess over here. So. Um."

"So you'll be over as soon as you can, but there's always a crisis bigger than this."

"No, not always. Just right now. Okay, sit tight, don't make a move. Just prepare. This guy could seriously cut you in half without trying."

"Okay."

Blake hung up carefully, staring at the phone. Last year there had been some kind of alien invasion, and Chloe Sullivan and the folks she hung out with had stopped it.

They weren't afraid of aliens, but they were afraid of this guy Cain?

"Oh, boy."

4.

Tim found Jason in his room, reading a book.

Tim raised an eyebrow, and put on his best Dickens' orphan voice. "I didn't know you could read, sir," he squeaked out.

Jason snorted. "You start in on me, and I will kick your butt right across this room." He put the book down. Hardcover. Very dull looking. Tim squinted, reading the title.

"The psychology of the Bat, by Doctor Jonathan Crane... what is this?"

"It's a book about Batman. By a bad dude who tried to kill him. I think he's got some of it right, although he obviously dropped the ball when he predicted that the Bat grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Here to explain what you know about assassins and stuff."

Tim sat down on the end of the bed, glancing back out the door. "See, the thing is, the circus thing? It's not really real."

"Um, I've seen you on the parallel bars. I'm pretty sure that's real."

"That's cover," corrected Tim. "The circus was cover. It was really a bunch of thieves."

"Whaaaaat?" Jason snorted, putting a hand over his face. "Of course; that's why a goody-two-shoes like you got to be friends with me. It's not about my winning personality. I remind you of home!"

"Well, that and you're the only guy here who didn't try to steal my lunch money just because I'm a teeny-tiny little guy."

"Who could actually kick everybody's butt."

"Uh, maybe. Not if I was trying to hide my nature, you know."

"So your dad isn't really a lawyer?"

"Oh, no, he's actually just a lawyer. Wanted me to be a lawyer too. But he's a mob lawyer."

"Oh, man. And the whole innocent kid thing is just a schtick?"

Tim scowled. "Well, there it gets complicated."

"Complicated?"

"I sort of snitched my dad out, and half the circus."

"What?"

Tim shrugged. "People were getting hurt. They killed somebody I liked. It was all spiraling out of control. They were dealing with Cobblepot, and he is a nasty piece of work. I made a choice."

"A choice?"

"I stand by it," said Tim quietly. "But if my dad wakes up out of that coma I have to take off before he can get his hands on me."

"Ah, geeze. But the other day you were just saying if he woke up out of this mess he could fix everything?"

Tim shrugged. "Yeah, see, he would, because Stephanie's dad is part of the old gang."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, that's how I met her. Through her no-good lousy dad."

Jason considered it. "Man, and here I was worrying I might be a bad influence on you."

Tim laughed. "Yeah, the best have tried. The best have tried."

"So the whole thing with Stephanie and her dad?"

"Yeah, it's part of the mess that I caused. That's why I feel responsible."

"And the baby's daddy?"

Tim grimaced. "He's been out of the picture for a while. I don't think he knew about the whole thing, so he was freaked out when everybody started going to prison and stuff."

Jason chuckled. "And so you want to help the guy downstairs?"

Tim sighed. "That guy has no idea what he's doing. He's totally going to get himself killed. I have no idea what kind of toys he has, but he has no idea what he's doing. He's a cop, right? What kind of cops actually understand crooks? Not him."

"So you're going to go from helping the cops bust the bad guys you know to helping a vigilante bust up organized crime?"

Tim shrugged. "We'll keep out of the actual action. We'll just kind of educate him where he's deficient—I mean, you said he was an orphan once, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, decided to be a cop, right? So he's not all bad. He just needs the kind of specialized guidance you and I can give him. And, y'know, if somehow we're able to keep him alive until you turn eighteen, then when you leave, maybe he can put in a word for you, get you a job that doesn't involve looking over your shoulder for cops the rest of your life."

Jason snorted, rolling his eyes. "So now you're looking out for me, Timmy?"

"Always," said Tim, his voice soft.

5.

Cobblepot sat back in his chair, twiddling his thumbs over his chest.

Crane was slouching in his chair, looking off into the distance at something only he could see. He was thoroughly and utterly insane, and completely unreliable.

With him was the slim and questionably same Edward Nigma. The name was an affectation—there was no way he'd been born E. Nigma. It was his chosen name, meant to tell you something about him. It was a silly affectation.

The two of them were perhaps the most useful people Oswald had in his organization right now. That was a bit discouraging.

"So the two of you believe that between yourselves you can take down any kind of metahuman, do you?" he asked.

"I had dealings mostly with the Bat," murmured Crane.

"Myself, I dealt with the Bat, and with Superman... back before anybody knew what Superman was, of course."

"Hmm. And you say you can take him down."

Nigma nodded. "In the day, I had an old supersoldier program. I though it would be enough to stop the Batman, but it turns out that one creature, any one creature, can be defeated. You need a combination of weapons."

Oswald smiled. "I was able to stop him just fine with out specialist."

"Yes, but..." Nigma licked his lips. "A riddle. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned; do you know what her fury is like when she is accepted, and loses?"

Oswald rolled his eyes. "Really, Blake?"

Nigma nodded as if it had made perfect sense. "The Bat had allies. Superman. The... the sidekick. More. This one will have the same allies. If you want to defeat him then you have to trust me a little bit, let me assemble a team. Brains, brawn, … your specialist would be a vital part of the team, of course."

"He doesn't work well with others," said Oswald dryly.

"Yes, but his skills..." Nigma shrugged. "As you wish. If you give me some money and some latitude, then I will be ready to stand against anything. Anything. You will not be vulnerable, even if the whole lot of these 'heroes' stand together and try to fight you."

Oswald nodded, frowning slightly. Sometimes you had to use tools that were unreliable, like a hammer with the head loose so it might fly off. The key to using these tools was to make sure that if the head did fly off it hit somebody else, not you.

"Gentlemen, you will have whatever you need."