Kairos ran a few blocks away from her chance encounter with Red Hood before crouching behind a vent and pulling her knees up to her chest. Her heart was pounding and she tried to take deep breaths. Fucking Red Hood, she thought. She had been expecting a bullet in her gut, not an offer for a job. Not that she had any reason to think that Red Hood would want to hurt her, but Tim and Damian both talked like the guy had no moral compass or sense of propriety at all. In fact, it was the the one thing they seemed to agree on.

As her heart rate slowed and her breathing returned to normal, Kairos began to notice the way the sweat running down her sides had started to itch. Twisting her torso to try to scratch her sides against the slightly-rough inside of her suit, she tried to organize her thoughts into a list. First, she would return to the cave and document what she had learned tonight about the Helie Brothers' operation. Second, she would check in on Batman and Robin; they were supposed to be tracking some Talons and she didn't want anyone disappearing into a secret underground labyrinth again. Third, she would decide if she even wanted to consider Red Hood's offer.

She told herself, as she started moving across the rooftops again back to where she had left her bike, that she had only taken the phone because it gave her a better chance of getting away without getting shot. Bruce would probably have a fit if she tried to leave for a while, even if it wasn't with Red Hood. Really, she should just call Hood as soon as she got back and tell him she couldn't do it.

On her way back to the cave, though, she kept going over the information she had picked up from Red Hood, what she had seen in the invisible strings attaching him to other people. He was working with Arsenal and Starfire and obviously cared about them, he seemed to have some kind of relationship with a monster named Crux who he hadn't killed, and the burning hatred he'd held toward Batman the last time she'd seen him had mellowed. She might have even sensed a tinge of regret running along the thread to Tim.

Of course, metaphors of threads could never adequately explain what she "saw", but it did keep her from going crazy with sensory overload. At least if she imposed the metaphor on herself, she had some way of figuring out what feelings were being directed toward whom. And Red Hood had a lot of feelings - some positive, more negative, all strong.

Back in the cave, she sat down at the big computer console and, after removing her mask, took out the removable drive that captured video from the lenses and audio from a microphone in the lower face cover. Tim had rigged it up for her years ago so she could keep notes about who she was looking at and his or her connections without having to look away or know names. She had started the process of uploading the data and tagging it appropriately when Alfred came down the stairs behind her with a tea service. "What will it be tonight, Miss Eerie?" he asked in that ever-comforting British accent. "Caffeinated or herbal?"

"Herbal, please," she answered, looking up at him. "Bruce has a 9 o'clock meeting tomorrow, so after I get this taken care of, I'm turning in. Speaking of which, have Batman and Robin checked in?"

"Not in the last two hours," Alfred answered as he began preparing the tea.

"Okay, I'll check up on them, then." Eerie turned back to the console and pulled out her comm device. "Batman, this is Kairos. What's your status?"

Batman responded quickly, suggesting he was in the car. "I'm en route to collect Robin, then we're returning to the cave."

"Copy that," Eerie replied before hitting a button on the comm. "Robin, this is Kairos. What's your status?"

Eerie heard some heavy breathing and distant screams before Robin answered. "Your timing is terrible as usual, but I can assure you that I haven't lost myself to some evil secret society yet."

Eerie couldn't help rolling her eyes as she answered. "Copy that, Robin. Batman is en route to your location."

"I don't need help!" Robin snapped, and in the background Eerie heard the heavy thud of a boot meeting flesh.

"Well good, because he's only giving you a ride," Eerie snapped back. "Kairos out." Alfred set a steaming mug of tea in front of her as she leaned back in the large chair. "Alfred, I think my patience with Damien is wearing a little thin," she admitted as she picked up the mug.

"Yes," said Alfred, "I believe we all have those moments with Master Damien." She smiled; Alfred acknowledging impatience was something noteworthy. She continued to tinker with the computer, filing her notes from the night, linking some faces from the video footage with police mug shots, and sipping on the warm tea, while Alfred returned upstairs with the tea service. When she couldn't justify any more time on obsessive note-taking, she started searching for some of the things Red Hood had mentioned: the Untitled, the All-Caste. She quickly ended the search, though, when the Batmobile roared into the cave, and out emerged a tense pair of crime-fighters; obviously they had been engaged in some kind of argument in the car. Even without her special skills, Eerie would have been able to tell that Damien had done something that Bruce saw as crossing a line, but he had no reasons for justifying that line that Damien would value. She couldn't help rolling her eyes again; two rhetors talking at cross-purposes until they were blue in the face.

Damien stomped off to the showers, but Bruce stopped behind her chair, pulling his cowl down. "Who'd you see tonight?" he asked.

For a second, Eerie's heart jumped into her throat. He knows! she thought. He knows I saw Red Hood and he's pissed I didn't take him down! Instead, she answered, "The Helie Brothers meeting with a supplier. Looks like they've gone international." Her voice shook a little.

Bruce grunted, apparently not noticing her nervousness, and headed toward the showers himself. Eerie took this opportunity to change her own clothes and flee the Manor entirely after dropping her mug into the kitchen sink. During the walk out to the guest house she had called home for the last three and a half years, she considered her options. She didn't really want to call the Red Hood back tonight; it would make it seem like she hadn't thought about his offer at all, and she didn't want to get on his bad side. She also felt like she wasn't seeing the situation properly. She didn't feel like the right person to judge what it meant that a vigilante like Red Hood had turned his attention to this kind of aliens and/or magic type case, since his previous work had mostly involved drug cartels, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism. (Eerie knew this because Bruce kept tabs on Jason, and Eerie made it her business to know what Bruce was keeping tabs on.)

Eerie pushed open the front door that she never bothered to lock and immediately flopped on the lumpy futon-turned-sofa that she had had since high school; Bruce had insisted that he would furnish the guest house, but Eerie had refused. She pulled out her phone, suddenly deciding that Dick was exactly the person to talk to. Luckily, his circus was currently in town, and him with it. She sent him a text. "Need to talk. Brunch tomorrow? Done with Bruce at 10:30."

Eerie knew that Dick would still be up, and sure enough her phone beeped with a quick reply. "Amici's? Everything okay?"

She answered. "Strange run-in tonight. Everything is fine; only *considering* doing something dangerous. See you at Amici's."

The phone beeped again as she dragged herself to the bedroom. "I'm always in favor of doing the dangerous thing :)." She snorted. If Dick only knew...

Eerie was only slightly groggy when she got out of bed the following morning and climbed into the shower. She ran a brush through her pixie cut without bothering to blow-dry it; it would be dry enough by the time they got to the office. She had just finished putting on her make-up and stuffing everything she needed for the day in a bag when Alfred honked the horn outside. Bruce was in the back seat of the car with a dozen notes about the developer he was meeting that morning. Supposedly Mr. Keid's company had designed a more efficient way to manufacture solar panels, but Bruce wanted Eerie to make sure that Keid actually believed what he was saying. And to, you know, look for any connections to law-breakers while she was at it.

The meeting itself was incredibly boring, especially since Keid genuinely meant every word that came out of his mouth. Eerie dutifully took notes and uploaded them to Bruce's private server as Bruce shook hands with Keid for the last time. "Well?" he said after he shut the door.

"He's on the up-and-up," said Eerie. "It sounds like a good investment to me." She started putting things back in her bag. "I'm meeting Dick for brunch. Any messages you'd like me to pass along?"

"Just say hi."

"Sure thing."

Eerie started toward the door, but stopped when Bruce said her name. "Eerie, is everything alright? You seemed agitated last night."

Of course he noticed, she thought. He's the damn Batman. "Yeah, well, you know me, I'll always find something to be anxious about." She shifted her bag and didn't meet his eyes.

"And what is it right now?" Bruce had these occasional moments of expressing concern about the emotional lives of those around him, but he was especially nosy about hers, since her feeling anxious (and sometimes not taking her meds) sometimes resulted in outbursts of paranoia and violence on the part of others.

"Just...thinking about the long term. Maybe feeling a little burnt out with watching mobsters pop in and out of jail." She still couldn't look at him; he wasn't going to like that answer at all. But really, she was burnt out. She kept putting in untold numbers of hours watching the same organized groups do illegal things with little to show for it.

She might not have been looking, but she could feel Bruce get tense. She could also tell that his thoughts had turned to Jason, with all the anger and frustration and sorrow that characterized his end of that relationship. "That's a dangerous way to be thinking," he finally said.

"I know," she answered. "That's why I'm seeing Dick."

Bruce nodded. "Alfred will be here at 2," he said.

"I'll be back by then," Eerie said and almost ran out the office door.

The walk to Amici's a few blocks from Wayne Tower calmed her immensely, and by the time she sat down across from Dick at the diner, she almost felt able to talk about the previous night. Almost.

"So," she said, scanning the menu, "what's your plans now that your latest girlfriend is in jail for trying to kill you?"

Dick snorted. "You didn't waste any time bringing that up."

"I see no reason to dance around the issues," Eerie said, smirking at him.

Dick sat back in his chair. "Actually, I'm thinking about trying to keep Haley's in Gotham. As a permanent attraction."

"That would be good. Damien misses you."

"He said that?"

"Oh God no, but he's been extra insolent since you've been traveling."

A waitress took their orders and menus, and Dick leaned forward to settle his arms on the table. "So what did you want to talk about?"

Eerie sighed and leaned forward too. "I ran into someone last night," she began. "Jason."

Dick's eyes got a little wide. "I mean, I knew Babs had run into him during the whole Owls thing, but I figured he was long gone. What did he want?"

Eerie shrugged. "He wants my help on a case he's working. A mystical thing. I couldn't find much in the databases about the groups he mentioned, but what I did find seemed to corroborate his claims that there's some evil things wandering around without their usual incentives to not do something extra bad."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I needed to think about it."

"And now that you've thought about it?"

Eerie didn't say anything for a few long seconds. "If anyone else was offering me a consulting gig," she said, "I'd take it in a heartbeat. I need to get out of Gotham for a while. Bruce and Damien have been even more..." she paused to search for a word.

"Crabby?" Dick offered, smiling.

"Yes, crabby, since the Owls thing, Damien because he saw his father as vulnerable for the first time, and Bruce because his son saw him as less-than-perfect and he doesn't know what to do about it. It's grating on my nerves."

"I can sympathize," said Dick, "but it's not just anybody."

"No, it's not."

Another pause, then Dick asked, "How was he?"

"Okay, I think. I guess he's working with Arsenal and Starfire now." Eerie paused to see how Dick would react to hearing that his former best friend and former lover had both taken up with a man who had tried to kill him, but his look of general concern never wavered. "His feelings toward Bruce have, well, mellowed. I mean, he's still mad, but I don't think 'vengeful' is the word to describe him anymore. I think he's started to feel sorry for the things he did to you and Tim. Maybe even Damien too."

Dick looked down at his hands on the table before speaking. "You know, I always thought that given some time and, well, love, Jason would get back to his old self." And Eerie could see that; more than Bruce, more than either of his other adopted brothers, Dick believed that Jason was good, no matter how bad he acted. "I'm glad he's with Roy and Kori," Dick continued. "If anyone knows what it's like to be hurt and hurt others, it's them." He paused. "Are you going to join them?"

Eerie fiddled with her silverware before answering. "I think I want to. The case sounds interesting; it has nice, clear-cut good-and-evil objectives. But the idea of explaining to Bruce that I'm about to go off with Jason Todd is terrifying."

Dick nodded. "Yeah, he's not always the best at trusting other people's judgment. But Jason hasn't tried to kill any of us in a few years now, so Bruce is probably wondering how his prodigal son is doing. Beyond, you know, tracking his kills and watching him rise on Interpol's most wanted list."

"You're making me feel so much better about this."

"I'm not denying that Jason went kind of crazy for a while. And I can see now how Bruce's message to him in his will did not help with defusing the crazy."

"Yeah, calling someone 'broken' is never a good way to open dialogue."

"Well, emotions have never been Bruce's strong point. I think that's one of the reasons he was so keen to bring you on, back in the day. You gave him a way of understanding the emotional lives of others. His own as well, when it comes down to it."

"You mean I gave him a way to use the emotional lives of others in his crusade." Eerie was getting a little annoyed.

"For Bruce, it's the same thing," Dick said with a sad smile. "In any case, if you want to work with Jason, I'll back you up. I'll also tell you to sleep with a batarang and any number of other weapons under your pillow, if you sleep at all, but I'll back you up nonetheless." Dick's reassuring smile turned a little sheepish when he asked, "So which one of them is sleeping with Kori?"

Eerie raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to know?"

Dick grimaced. "No, I guess I don't."

That evening, Eerie came out of the changing area in the cave to find Bruce hunched over the computer console, looking over her notes from the previous night's stake-out. "I think we're ready to move on the Helie Brothers," he said when he heard her footsteps behind him.

"Good," she said, "because I've picked up a consulting job, and I'll probably be gone for a while."

Bruce never looked up from the screen. "The League again?"

"No," Eerie said and steeled herself with deep breath. "Red Hood."

Bruce's fingers stopped moving on the keyboard. She could almost hear his teeth grinding. "Red Hood asked you to work with him?"

"Yes, he's taken up this magic-related case, but his trail on the bad guys has gone cold."

"You do realize that this is probably saving their lives."

"From what I can tell so far, these aren't guys who should be saved. Or even really have lives. We're talking ancient evil kind of stuff."

"That's...different for him." Eerie heard the implicit question; Bruce wanted to know how Jason was, if he was ready to change, to return to the path of righteousness. She couldn't answer those questions, so instead she said, "I suppose so. He certainly didn't seem interested in encountering any bats other than me." She hoped the message was clear, that Jason wasn't looking for revenge at the moment.

"This was what had you upset last night?"

"I wouldn't have called it 'upset..."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Eerie walked around the big chair to lean against the console and face Bruce. His cowl was up and his face was impassive, but she could see the thread connecting him to Jason was writhing around with the heat of his feelings. "Because you're not always super chill when it comes to issues involving Jason Todd," she answered, "so I went to talk to Dick first."

Bruce at least seemed to see the sense in that; his jaw relaxed a hair. "And you're sure you want to take this job? That it's not a trap?"

"I may not be able to see what anybody feels towards me," Eerie replied, "but if this was a trap, I'd be able to see it in his connection to you and Dick and the rest. And it's just a consulting job. It'll be like a working vacation."

"It is not just a consulting job."

"Superman tried to kill you once, and you didn't have a problem when I took a couple of days to help him out."

Bruce didn't like her bringing that up, and really, Eerie knew it wasn't fair. But Bruce lost all claims to objectivity as soon as Jason was the topic of conversation. "How long will you be away?" he asked.

"No idea."

"We can't really count this as vacation days, then," he said. "You'll have to take an unpaid leave of absence. I'll tell anyone who asks that you're caring for a terminally-ill friend."

If he was thinking about her front as Wayne employee, she had won. "I don't mind," she said. "It's not like my expenses are even close to matching the exorbitant amount you pay me to watch you talk to people. I got a lot in savings."

Bruce let out a breath. "I don't like this," he said. "I want a check-in from you every three days with your location. If anything happens, contact me or Dick immediately. And I will be following your credit card transactions."

Eerie sighed a little. "For someone who told me that I was not another adopted child, you're acting a lot like a dad right now."

"No," he said, "I'm acting like a team leader sending a soldier into an unknown and possible dangerous situation."

"You're not sending me, I'm choosing to go." Eerie wanted this distinction to be very clear.

"That may be so," Bruce said, "but I would like to know how Jason is."

Eerie waited until she got back from patrol to dig the phone out of her cape and call the pre-programmed number. "Yes," said a voice on the other end of the line.

"Red Hood?"

"Who the fuck did you think you were calling?"

"I'm in."