Chapter 22: The House on Archer Avenue

WAYNE MANOR - NOW

Wayne Manor was the most secure and well-protected place in the Gotham City area.

And it was the place where all of the members of the original Batman network had to go to ground.

Standing atop the staircase that overlooked the main foyer, Tim Drake and Violet Paige looked down, and acted as Greek Chorus.

"So who's on the lookout at your folks' place?" Violet asked. "Them and your daughter?"

"Pantha and Naomi McDuffie," Tim said.

"Anyone doing protection duty at Bea's place in Bludhaven?"

"Argent and Arsenal. Roy volunteered."

"And is there anyone at The Pike?" Violet asked. "To look after mom and Otis?"

"Solstice and Mouse," Tim said. "He's from that team The Movement. He has, uh… Rodent-kinesis or whatever. I figure he and Otis would have things to talk about."

"Please tell me someone's on the lookout at Duke's place. I mean, he'd get all pissy if he found out someone was, but still."

Tim nodded. "Huntress-that's Charlie Gage-Radcliffe, the new one, not Helena Bertinelli-and Star-Blossom."

Violet blinked. "Star-Blossom?"

"Peony McGill seems like a lightweight," Tim said, "but she is a straight-up game-breaker if you think about her long enough."

Violet sniffed, and looked back down at the main floor. "Why's Barbara look upset?"

Tim looked down along with her. Barbara Gordon was walking from a room on one end of the foyer to another. And she was all scowls.

"She wanted to stay in the Clock Tower. It fell to me to convince her otherwise."

"How'd you do that?"

"It wasn't hard," Tim said. "She lives in the Clock Tower. It's a big rectangle with giant clock faces on all four sides. She may as well try to hide out in Vinny's House of Bullseyes, for all the good it would do her. We know the Arkham Knight has missile launchers. It's why you're here, after all."

"And that's why Barbara's pissed?"

Tim sighed. "Barbara Gordon is an extremely intelligent individual."

"Uh-huh."

"Which is why she deeply hates it when you point out the obvious to her."

"And that's your job, right?"

"It is today."

"You just love pissing people off, don't you?"

"I don't try to," Tim said. "It just happens sometimes."

"Okay," said Violet. "So when it happens to someone you don't like, you don't lean into it?"

"Well… I'm not gonna say that."

Violet smiled. At Tim. It felt weird.

"Hey, now," Violet said, looking back down to the floor. "You gonna have a deal with turtling up in a country mansion with your ex-wife?"

Tim followed Violet's gaze. Harper had just come in through the front door, and she was checking her phone.

He shrugged, and said "No."

Violet looked at him like he was one of the more creative third grade Science Fair projects she'd ever seen. This was also weird.

"So you walk around pissing people off?"

"That is the consensus view."

"But nothing pisses you off?"

"That also seems to be the consensus view."

"Huh," Violet said. "Challenging."

Tim squinted at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nevermind," said Violet, looking below her again. "Where did she come from?"

Cassandra Wayne strolled in in a pair of blue jeans and her black leather jacket.

"Hmm," Tim said. "She must have come in the Batmobile. I don't see Jason here yet."

"What… the fuck… happened to her face?"

Tim had to squint to see it. Cass' face was bruised and lumpy.

"She's Black Bat," Tim said. "Fights happen."

"Who fought her, though?" Violet asked. "Jesus H. Christ? Because that's the only person who could land just one shot on Cass, let alone enough to do that."

Tim just shrugged.

From one of the side rooms, Aaliyah Ramsey and Carrie Kelley emerged. They caught up with Cass, and the three started talking, though about what, Tim could not say.

"And here come the grandkids," Violet said.

"That's… certainly a name for them."

"I called them that in front of Selina last night."

"Didn't take it well, did she?'

"No, she did not."

Tim had a grin in him for at least that.

And then, as if summoned, Selina herself came in through Wayne Manor's front door. And someone was with her.

"It's Stephanie," Tim said.

Cassandra broke from Aaliyah and Carrie to walk up to Selina and Steph.

Tim squinted.

Stephanie Brown's face was a mess as well.

Which meant…

"Oh," Tim said. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh."

He looked at Violet. The grimace on her face was all the evidence Tim needed that she had done the math.

And, apparently, so had Selina. For she looked from Stephanie's messed-up face, to Cassandra's, and back to Stephanie's, before crying out:

"Jesus Christ, girl, ALREADY?"

Bruce Wayne stood at the window of his bedroom, and looked down at the fog-shrouded rear grounds of the manor below.

He heard the door to his bedroom open.

It was his daughter.

Cassandra was going to ask him how he was. How he was holding up. If there was anything she could do for him.

And Bruce could not abide this.

So he cut her off, and told her the information he had learned. About Astrid Arkham, her story, her mission… and her rage.

Cassandra was quiet for a while.

"You know," she said, "you never once offered to suit up. Get back underneath the cowl. Be Batman again. For one night only, anyway."

Bruce desperately wanted to. He wanted to feel the power and the righteousness course through him. To wrap has hands around the throat of Ra's al Ghul, the man who had Dick Grayson killed, the man who had corrupted Astrid Arkham, and squeeze until he passed out.

And yet…

"No," Bruce said. "I wouldn't dare."

Cassandra's bruised face was a deadpan. He'd have to ask what happened to her.

"This is the life you chose," Bruce said. "This is the job you asked for, and this is the job I gave you. This is your city. And you must protect it. You will not fail."

"You don't know that," Cassandra said.

"Yes, I do," said Bruce.

"Batman's never wrong, huh?"

"I'm not Batman anymore," Bruce said, and for some reason, this statement felt the closest it had ever been to truth. "I'm just your dad. You have come far from the girl I met in that warehouse sixteen years ago. Impossibly far. And as much as I'd like to take credit, however minor, for the woman you have become, it would be a lie. You got you this far. Not me, not Barbara, not anyone else. And the fact is, I downright pity Ra's al Ghul and Astrid Arkham. They don't know you like I do… And they don't fear you like they should."

Cassandra was still deadpan, but she walked up to him, and wrapped her arms around him. And he returned the gesture.

Her face buried in his chest, Bruce could hear Cassandra say something.

"I can't tell you how much I needed to hear that today."

Jason Todd arrived in the Bentley a half an hour after everyone else.

He walked into a Wayne Manor that was both comfortable and alien. The throng of people that had been there for Dick Grayson's wake had acted as a buffer between his memory and the pristine new experience, and now that they were gone, the interior of the place swung into high-def. Cracks and scratches were visible.

And he knew that there were precious damn few people in this house that he'd like to talk to.

Yeah, there was Cass, but judging from the sounds of loud and angry, fighting and even louder, angrier sex from a couple of floors above his apartment last night, she was more preoccupied with someone else at present.

So he walked around until he found someone he could talk to.

He haunted the rear halls of the ground floor, ducking out of the way whenever Harper or Selilna walked past, and found the kitchen.

Jason figured he'd help himself to a snack. He died in the name of the owner of this house, the least he could do was cough up an apple or something.

What he found, sitting at the large island in the middle of the room, was Cullen Row. He was checking his phone.

Cullen looked up at Jason, standing in the doorway.

"Hey," he said.

"Yo," said Jason in return.

"Anything I can help you with?"

Jason folded his arms, leaned against the door frame, and said:

"I'm bored. Entertain me."

There was, burrowed away in the labyrinthine East Wing of Wayne Manor, a video arcade. It had been erected in Bruce's early days as Batman, as a place of leisure for his then-recent ward Dick Grayson.

Sadly, the downfall of arcade games (as well as American arcades in general) and the fact that there hadn't been any kids in Wayne Manor for a good long while meant that the games hadn't been updated.

But Aaliyah Ramsey and Carrie Kelley were not above playing the Addams Family pinball machine.

Aaliyah kept her eye on the ball as Carrie spoke.

"I don't get a lot of girls my age who actually know what the hell I'm talking about."

"You don't?" Aaliyah asked.

"Nah," Carrie said. "Just the girls at school, but it's not like I can tell them I'm Robin. And anyone in the game who's my age is somewhere else. Used to be, Gotham was crawling with teenage superheroes. Guess I missed the window."

"I have a question."

"Okay," said Carrie.

Aaliyah paused as the little silver ball came down to her right bumper. She lined it up and launched it before she continued.

"It's a weird question."

"Then double okay."

"Are, uh… Are there any straight women in Gotham City?"

Carrie paused. "Huh?"

"You got Selina," Aaliyah said. "And from what I hear, she put the moves on henchwomen back when she was Catwoman."

"You heard that too, huh?"

"Then there's Cass and Steph. I heard that there's been some tension between those two for, like, a million years. And judging from the damage to both of their faces this morning, I'm pretty sure that tension got released."

"Good for them."

"I hear stuff about Barbara and this Black Canary chick?"

"They are in a flux state of both 'they boned' and 'they didn't bone' until actual video evidence of sexual congress surfaces. Like Schrodinger's Cat, only with strap-ons instead of poison gas."

"There was visi-thirst on Harper's face when she was hanging out with that chick in the cowboy hat yesterday."

"That's Jinny Hex," Carrie said. "Y'know, I can see the two of them together."

"The one Batwoman that Gotham had lives on Themyscira now with her swole Princess boo."

"'Princess Boo' is now Diana's nickname," Carrie said. "I speak this into existence. I have a question for your question."

A loud pop. Aaliyah got an extra ball. She felt like she could walk on water. And if there was a pool in this big, shiny dungeon of a house, she'd try it out later.

"Shoot," Aaliyah said.

"Was that question just your roundabout way of asking me whether or not I was straight?" Carrie asked.

Aaliyah sighed.

"I mean, I am," Carrie said. "But if I wasn't, girl, that ain't a way to fish for answers."

"Apart from my original question," Aaliyah said, "what would be the way to fish for answers?"

"Simple," Carrie said. "You don't. It's one of those things where if you need to know, you'll get told."

"Anyway," said Aaliyah, "I was not asking that as a way to figure out if you're straight."

"But?"

"But," Aaliyah said, "I was asking as a way to figure out whether or not I could talk about boys in front of you without you pitying me for how my number in the Sexual Orientation Lottery panned out. Yes, I like guys, and I'm self-aware enough to know that it's a tragedy, but I don't feel like being humored right now. Or ever, come to think of it."

Carrie was quiet for a bit. Aaliyah was still keeping her eye on the game, so she couldn't see her expression. Until Carrie finally said:

"You wanna talk about Jon, don't you?"

"Oh, God," Aaliyah said, "Yes. Yes, I do."

"I thought so."

"I mean, I don't want to fuck up The Bechdel Test, but talking about boys is a pastime for me. Up there with croquet and discussions on how the Plantagenets tried to undermine the Magna Carta. I mean, you don't have a thing for him, do you?"

"No," Carrie said. "Not my type. I prefer street kids, not farm boys. Although Jon Lane-Kent is a very pretty guy."

"He is."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Ruthless!"

"Yup."

"I have surveyed his capacity for ruth, and found it sorely lacking."

Carrie's giggle was cut off by a loud crash, and the pained grousing of two separate female voices. Followed by Selina Wayne angrily asking "What the fuck do you two think you're doing?"

Both Carrie's and Aaliyah's eyes went to the doorway.

Aaliyah lost her ball.

Selina had been walking down the hallway with Barbara, telling her how two uniformed officers from the GCPD had come to the manor yesterday to summon her to City Hall for questioning tomorrow morning, when the two of them had been assaulted by the sight and sound of crashing metal and two women groaning in pain.

Two bicycles were overturned in the narrow hallway. Two plastic broomsticks scattered on the burgundy carpet. And ornamenting the wreckage were the moaning and pained bodies of Cassandra Wayne and Stephanie Brown.

"What the fuck do you two think you're doing?" Selina asked, unable to keep the anger from her voice.

"We were… we were jousting," said Stephanie.

"Jousting?"

"Like in medieval times?" Barbara asked, pinching the bridge of her nose in embarrassment beneath her yellow-tinted glasses. Selina had only now noticed that Aaliyah and Carrie had poked their heads out from the arcade.

"Yeah," Cassandra said, holding her shoulder and grimacing. "It was my idea."

"Did I at any time teach you that doing something this fucking stupid was the right thing to do?" Barbara asked.

"I've wanted to do this since I was seventeen."

"Then why didn't you do it when you were seventeen?" Selina asked.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. "What was I gonna do? Come out and say it?"

"That's… Okay, that's actually a good point."

"And you couldn't do this outside?' Barbara asked.

"No," said Cassandra. "Too much room. We'd chicken out."

Selina felt a headache instantaneously bloom in the back of her skull.

"And you," Barbara said to Stephanie. "You went along with this?"

Selina gave Barbara the stink-eye. "Babs?"

"Right," Barbara said. "Sorry."

For there was an unwritten rule: Only Babs was allowed to yell at Cassandra for being a dumbass, and Selina reserved the right for Steph. That rule had been in play for a decade and a half, now.

"Alright then," Selina said, before she turned to the pained Steph and asked "And you greenlit this tomfuckery?"

Stephanie shrugged. "I was feeling saucy."

Cassandra nodded. "She was."

"I was feeling Arkan-Saucy!"

To which Cassandra replied by kicking Stephanie in the shin.

"Knock that shit off!" Selina said, and both Cass and Steph fell silent.

"Alright," Barbara said. "Can we at least agree that two women in their thirties who got into a series of fights last night jousting in the middle of a hallway with bikes and brooms is a terrible fucking idea?"

"Oh, I can admit that," Cassandra said, clutching her ribs. "Ow…"

From a few feet away. Carrie elected to speak.

"I have a question," she asked, and all four grown-ass women looked at her.

Carrie pointed at the carnage on the floor and asked:

"Who won?"

Stephanie had walked into one of the East Wing bedrooms and hunted for the adjacent bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet and there, on the middle shelf, lie her quarry.

Icy-Hot.

Stephanie Brown had never felt more an old woman than when she unscrewed the lid from the jar of Icy-Hot, got a fingerful of the foul smelling goop, lifted up the back of her baby blue t-shirt, and started applying it to the left side of her lower back.

She'd hurt that particular part of her body during the fall down the concrete stairs that she had taken the night before. Further… exertions… with Cassandra later that night may have exacerbated the problem in the area. And that problem was no doubt magnified by the sudden fancy the two women had taken toward mid-mansion horseless jousting.

Just the sound that Stephanie made when she applied the Icy-Hot.

"Uggggghhhhhhh…"

Because it was the good shit.

But if one classifies Icy-Hot as the good shit, then one just might, in stark contrast with roaring spirit and willing flesh, be just a tad on the old side. Or at least, this was Stephanie Brown's line of reasoning.

She put the Icy-Hot back, closed the medicine cabinet, put her shirt back over the waist-line of her jeans, and walked back into the bedroom proper…

...right into the steely gaze of one Bruce Wayne.

"GYAAAHHHHH!"

Stephanie neither heard the door in the adjacent bedroom open, nor his footsteps as he entered.

Six years out of the cowl, and Bruce still had the ninja thing down. Even at his advanced age. Props, Stephanie reckoned, must indeed be given.

"You still got it, Bruce," Stephanie said as she caught her breath.

Bruce said nothing.

Instead he walked toward her. Slowly. The floorboards creaked under his loafers. He could make noise if he wanted to, and he wanted to now.

Stephanie felt her pulse accelerate. She was, in an instant, one of the many faceless mooks that this man had pummeled into unconscious red smears. She instinctively backed into the wall.

He was but a few inches away, now. Staring down at her with his cold blue eyes, the rest of his face passive. She could see the lines around his eyes. They only made him more intimidating.

Finally, Bruce said "This is the first time we've spoken in fourteen years."

Stephanie nodded. Her mouth wasn't working.

"I've had fourteen years," Bruce said, "to think about the night you left. Your father dying. Game Seven."

Her heart was hammering inside her chest. The force seemingly loosened her tongue.

"And?" she asked.

It was only then that he blinked. He looked her up and down, held his tongue for but a moment, and finally said:

"You didn't do it."

And with that, he turned and began to walk away.

Stephanie's pulse slowed down, for which she was grateful. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, for which she was not.

"Wait," Stephanie said. "That's it?"

Bruce stopped, and turned to look at her.

"Yes," he said. "All is not forgiven, because there is nothing to forgive you for. You tried to save your father, and you failed. It's unfortunate. It's terrible. But it happens. You didn't want us around to help you before. But we're here to help you now. Ask. You'll go far. But until then… Make yourself at home."

Bruce turned to walk away again. Stephanie was not inclined toward having that shit.

"Wait," Stephanie said.

Bruce stopped his turn, and sighed.

"How, uh… How did you come to this conclusion?" she asked.

"If you meant to drop Cluemaster to his death," Bruce said, "you'd have stayed. You'd have lied and said you dropped him by accident, and you'd have taken whatever reprimand or punishment that we saw fit with a smile on your face. Because someone who'd held the urge to murder their father their entire lives would want to get away with it. But you didn't do that, Stephanie. You left because a conscience that a murderer would not possess compelled you to flee."

"So… You're saying that my doing the thing a guilty person would do proves my innocence?" Stephanie asked. "Who in God's name would run from a murder that they didn't commit?"

"A Gotham City vigilante," Bruce said. "And a complete imbecile."

Stephanie didn't know what to say to that.

"I'm not judging you," Bruce said. "I've been both. The things asked of us are different than those asked of others. It shifts perspective. Skews it on occasion. The trick is to spot it when it happens. You don't seem to have it down yet."

Stephanie couldn't help but emit a half-hearted chuckle. "Y'know… The one thing I thought made me special was the fact that unlike you… unlike Kate… unlike Cass… no one died to make me who I was. I put a cape on because, hand-to God, I just wanted to help."

She shrugged. "In the end… That was the last thing Arthur Brown took from me. His blood spills, and I'm just another Gotham City dipshit who knows kung-fu and has a tragic backstory."

"Whatever nobility you possess only leaves if you let it go," Bruce said.

Stephanie snorted. "I may have become Spoiler because I was a nice person, but I stayed Spoiler because I had a thing for a girl that didn't have a thing for me back. Not very pure, as far as motives go."

"No," Bruce said. "You love my daughter. There is no purer motive."

Just hearing that from someone as spare and matter-of-fact as Bruce Wayne almost made her choke on the air she was breathing. But she finally said one word.

"'Loved.'"

Bruce tilted his head at her.

"I am… I am way too old to keep re-litigating my teenage years. Me and Cass got our tension out of the way, and… and it's time to leave the past where it is, isn't it?"

Bruce put his hands on his hips. His blue eyes bore into her from beneath hooded brows.

Okay, now he's judging me…

"I am fifty-one years old," Bruce said. "I'm re-litigating one event that happened to me when I was eight. You don't get to play that card with me and expect to get far."

And then, finally, Bruce Wayne turned and left the bedroom, leaving Stephanie to hold the bag.

Barbara Gordon felt the strong, sneaky arms of Cassandra Wayne wrap her in a hug from behind as she stood on one of the East Wing bedroom balconies, looking out upon the blanket of fog beneath her.

She was trying to clear her head.

"How are you holding up?" Cassandra asked.

Barbara knew she was asking about Dick. Which was the one thing of which she was trying to clear her mind to begin with.

"I'm fine," Barbara said.

Which was a lie. Being here in this house, where she and Dick had argued and trained and played and fell in love… It just felt like an intrusive and loud swarm of bees around the periphery of her very being. She couldn't concentrate.

Now Ra's al Ghul and the Arkham Knight had stolen the dead body of the first man she'd ever loved. For what purpose, she could not even guess at.

And it was driving her insane.

Cassandra came around and smiled at Barbara warmly. And Barbara felt a tiny smidge of that pent-up aggression and anguish wither into nothing.

The one thought she had was:

I should tell her about Simon.

Barbara Gordon missed Simon Baz. If she were in the Clock Tower, he could just come in and they could talk, hang out, make out, and… whatever. But Barbara was going to be holed up in Wayne Manor for the foreseeable future, and she had to expressly forbid Simon from coming to Wayne Manor for fear of the secret getting out at such a sensitive time.

She hoped Simon could hold himself to that.

But then again… she kinda hoped he didn't.

Barbara washed that man right out of her mind, and pointed to Cassandra's face.

"You know, you never told me what happened there."

"I, um… I got into a fight."

"I can see that," Barbara said. "What I want to know is who's good enough to do that to the most dangerous unarmed woman on the planet."

Cassandra lowered her head, letting that mop of black hair of hers obscure her face. Barbara knew Cass well enough to know that this was what she did when she was embarrassed.

"I… got into a fight… with… Steph."

Then she looked into Barbara's eyes, and Barbara couldn't help but feel the shock spread across her own face.

"Uh… huh," Barbara said. "And… if I were to guess what happened after the fight you and Steph had…"

"Then you'd guess correctly."

"Uh… huh," Barbara said again, and Cassandra once again hung her head, letting her hair hide her visage.

"Okay," Barbara said. "There's one thing I want to know."

"Oh, dear God…"

"Did you win the fight?"

Cassandra's head shot up. Her face was a mask of confusion.

"That's what you want to know?"

Barbara sighed. "You have to understand something. Even back in the day, you were my kid, and Steph was Selina's kid."

"Yeah, that was kind of obvious."

"But did you know," Barbara asked, "about The Great Gotham Team-Up?"

"Yeah," Cassandra said. "I've read all the old Batman files."

"The Great Gotham Team-Up happened just a few days before The Joker shot me and put me in a wheelchair," Barbara said. "But the last one-on-one fight I had with a supervillain as Batgirl was with Catwoman on the night of The Great Gotham Team-Up."

"Did you win?"

"No, I did not," Barbara said, surprising herself with how much the fact still rankled over two decades later. "It wasn't even close. I got my ass handed to me."

"Wow."

"So twenty years later," Barbara said, "I'm gonna be as petty as petty can be as I ask whether or not my kid beat up her kid. Did you win the fight?"

"It was close," Cassandra said. "Real close. But… yeah. I did."

Barbara felt herself beaming at Cassandra.

"Good," she said.

Whatever else Barbara was going to say was lost to time, as the familiar sound of crashing machinery came from all the way out in the hall.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Barbara said, before she barged into the bedroom. Cassandra followed.

What awaited the two of them in the East Wing hallway was the sight of two overturned bicycles, and two stray broomsticks. Only instead of Cassandra Wayne and Stephanie Brown clutching their rib cages and making old lady noises, it was Aaliyah Ramsey and Carrie Kelley laughing until their faces turned red.

They had been jousting.

Barbara turned to the clearly mortified Cassandra.

"You're a bad influence, young lady."

Harper Row sat in a chair next to the doorway of the billiard room, checking her phone. Tim Drake leaned against the bar on the side of this room that held four billiard tables, nursing a can of Sprite. Violet Paige, for her part, was playing pool against herself, knocking the balls off the green felt bumpers with her cue, displaying no knowledge or finesse whatsoever for the game.

The one pleasant memory that Harper Row had of Marcus Row, her abusive, criminal fuckhead father who died in prison, was of teaching her how to play pool when she was eight.

"Six ball," Violet said. "Corner pocket."

Click!

The six ball went nowhere near the corner pocket.

"Fuck you, corner pocket!"

Mayor Alysia Yeoh was not responding to any of Harper's texts. So she switched off her phone, shoved it in her jacket and said, apropos of nothing:

"I want to fight crime."

Tim looked at her deadpan. Violet, on the other hand, froze in place in such an ostentatious way that Harper felt like laughing.

"What?" Violet asked. "Like, uh… Municipally? Is that a word?"

"I'm not sure," said Tim.

"No," Harper said. "Not in any political way. I want to dress up in a costume, screw around on rooftops, and beat people until their hair stops growing."

"Then do it," said Violet.

"I can't."

"Why not?" asked Tim.

Harper just looked at her ex-husband as though he'd lost his mind. "'Why n-' Bitch, why don't you?"

Tim shrugged the same way he always did when Harper was fixing to get down to arguing. "Because I don't want to. You clearly do. So do it."

"You know it's not that simple, Tim."

"I'm with Tim on this one," said Violet.

Harper snorted. "Of course you are."

Violet yet again froze in place. "The fuck's that supposed to mean?"

Harper looked between the two of them, trying to keep the suddenly-breaking smile off of her face.

She'd been watching these two, both today and yesterday at Dick's wake. Trying to read their body language, eavesdropping on snippets of their conversations.

Tim Drake and Violet Paige were in the pre-relationship stupidity phase.

But what made this delicious was that neither of them knew it. Neither of them were even admitting it to themselves.

Harper remembered that morning sixteen years ago, the day after Mister Mxyzptlk dropped the knowledge of The Multiverse upon them. Harper had to literally straddle Tim on his bed in this very wing of Wayne Manor, and jam her tongue down his throat to convince her that she, y'know, like-liked him.

And now, all these years later, Tim had finally found a woman who was as rock fucking stupid about relationships as he was.

It was in this moment, in this very instant in time… that she shipped 'em. She shipped 'em hard . Yes, Violet Paige was raw, coarse, unbelievably crude, and deeply dangerous. But that just made it so much better ! Tim living happily ever after was just as likely as their prospective relationship foundering like the Edmund Fitzgerald. Harper could successfully conceptualize the two facts that Tim Drake was both a good man in general, and a shitty husband to her in specific.

No matter where this went, entertainment was sure to follow.

Finally, after having become aware that she'd held her silence for too long, she said "Because the two of you have been hanging out so much."

"You still haven't answered the question," Tim said. "Why can't you go back to being Bluebird?"

Harper rolled her eyes. "You know that thing you've been looking after for the past nine years that you think is a bag of rocks? That's our daughter Mattie-Ann, you putz. I can't run around letting gang members give me concussions because I have a fucking kid at home!"

"So?" Tim asked.

"What do you mean, 'So?'"

"'So?' is what I mean," Tim said. "Roy Harper had a kid a hell of a lot younger than Mattie-Ann. Roy Harper stayed in the game. Both Roy and Lian turned out just fine."

"Well," Harper said, "We can't all be as mature, responsible, and well-adjusted as Roy Fucking Harper."

Tim blinked at her in confusion, before he said "Oh, I'm sorry, it just took me a second to realize you were actually being serious."

"Wow," Violet said.

Tim looked at her. "What?"

"She is throwing a shit-ton of aggression at you, and you just side-step it like you're figure skating."

"It's why I left him," Harper said.

Violet's smile got wide. "And she is throwing your shit out in the street, too! Goddamn, I've never seen anything like this!"

She looked at Harper. "Hey, Harper. What's Tim's favorite position in bed?"

Harper felt like her heart had just stopped.

"Don't look at me like that," Violet said. "What's he gonna do, get mad?"

This… was true.

There were any number of joke responses that Harper could have given… but she decided, in the moment to be honest. Just to see what would happen.

"Lady on top," Harper said. "With his right hand below the belly button, so his thumb has easy access to the, uh… 'joy-buzzer.'"

Violet smiled, seemingly impressed. "That's, uh… That's considerate."

"I try," said Tim.

"Trust me," said Harper, "that's the only thing he's considerate about."

Tim shrugged. "That's fair."

"Most embarrassing pet name?" Violet asked Harper.

Harper's reply was instant. "Johnny Fuckleseed."

Violet burst out laughing to an extent that she needed to lean on her pool cue to keep herself standing.

"'J-Johnny Fuckleseed?'"

"I told him," Harper said, "that if I were Robin, I would not give a fuck. Tim being like he was back in the day, he was tossing out fucks like he was Johnny Appleseed. Hence the name…"

They all said it simultaneously.

"Johnny Fuckleseed!"

"I was such an insecure little snatch hair back then," Tim said. "How am I not an improvement now?"

"If you have to ask, you'll never know," Harper said.

"Okay," Violet said, turning back to Harper. "You ready to play for big money and fantastic prizes?"

"I sure am, Pat."

"Alright," Violet said. "What was it that drew Tim to you in the first place?"

Wow…

You asked that out loud with just the one layer of subterfuge between you and the truth.

Violet Paige, you are a fucking moron.

Harper opened her mouth… when the truth hit her.

"I don't know," she said.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"You have to understand something," Harper said, feeling uncomfortable. "I had to commit a borderline act of sexual assault just to convince Tim I was interested in him. As for what drew him to me… I really have no idea."

She folded her arms over her stomach. If there were any lingering questions as to why her marriage failed, they had just been answered.

Tim had begun scratching the back of his neck. His fall back spot whenever he was nervous.

"It was… It was like you had an idea what was going on," he said. "I didn't. And when I got my own ideas, they, uh… they weren't yours."

Harper didn't really know what that meant.

"Okay," Violet said, suddenly animated in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood. "What about now? What would it take to get into the boxers of one Timothy Jackson Drake?"

Tim stopped scratching his neck. "How do you know my middle name?"

"I Googled you," Harper said. "And don't change the subject."

"It's easy," Tim said. "She has to like my daughter."

Harper could not keep her one thought from leaving her mouth.

And that thought was "Awwwwwww."

"That's it?" Violet asked, obviously not a believer. "That's all it takes?"

"No."

"What else?"

Tim took a sip of his soda, and said "My daughter has to like her back."

There was a wildness within Cassandra Wayne this afternoon that she simply could not shake.

Everyone from her teenage years as Orphan, as Batgirl, were under the same roof yet again. Everyone had gotten older, and the context had changed, but there was an invigoration inside her that spread out to her fingertips. If someone had strolled idly by to ask her just how old she was, she'd have struggled a bit before she gave the right answer.

I swear to God, I was eighteen a minute ago…

So when Cassandra came upon Stephanie Brown on the third floor of the East Wing, just opening doors and casually looking inside, she hit upon the idea that she'd communicate with her non-verbally for as long as she possibly could, just to see how long it would take until Stephanie noticed.

She thought it would be funny.

"Hey," Stephanie said when she saw her.

Cassandra gave her the finger-guns.

"I'm just looking in, seeing how much has changed."

Cassandra nodded.

"Remember when we'd walk in on Tim and Harper making out in one of these rooms back in the day?"

Cassandra nodded again, just a little bit more enthusiastically.

"Jesus," Stephanie said. "Fucking disgusting is what it was."

Cassandra tilted her head, and then nudged Stephanie's shoulder with her finger. Stephanie turned to her.

"What?"

Cassandra made her mouth an upside-down U, raised her eyebrows, and gave an exaggerated shrug, with her hands in the air.

Stephanie looked at her like she was an unruly toddler. "Are you telling me you want to sneak into one of these rooms and make out like they did back in the day?"

Cassandra raised one eyebrow a little bit higher than the other, and smiled as though she were the model in an ad for mints: the international facial expression for "Hells the fuck yes I do."

Stephanie opened her mouth, and then closed it. Her face slackened. She seemed to deflate. And Cassandra almost broke her whim of nonverbal communication to ask her what was wrong.

"We're too old," Stephanie finally said. Her voice was small and weak.

Cassandra just stared.

"You need to understand something," Stephanie said, before she opened the door.

And then she stopped, eyes wide.

Cassandra had to peek inside the room to see what had staggered her so, and then her own eyes did the saucer impression as well.

Stephanie Brown, who seemed opposed to the idea of two people in their thirties sneaking off to make out like teenagers had just opened the door to a room that contained… two people in their thirties making out like teenagers.

Upon the small sofa within the bedroom, Jason Todd had his right leg wrapped around Cullen Row's waist. Cullen had his left hand buried beneath the rear waist of both Jason's black slacks, and Jason's boxer shorts. Both of their ties were on the Persian rug that decorated the hardwood floor, as were their blazers. Cullen had Jason's lower lip between his teeth, and only let go when he saw they had unexpected company. It… seemed he was caught pre-or-post move.

Jason, at the very least, looked embarrassed.

Cullen did not.

His hand moved from the swell of Jason's ass to his hips, pulling him closer in an act of sexual defiance as he stared daggers into the two women. Then he asked:

"Do… you… mind?"

Even outside her flight of fancy to stay quiet, she would have been speechless anyway. One look at Stephanie told her that she suffered from the same condition. Until finally, the two of them sheepishly exited the room, and softly closed the door behind them.

For a few moments, both Cassandra and Stephanie just looked down, staring at the carpet.

And Cassandra's play at silence finally came to an end.

"I'm just happy Jason's gonna be getting out of the apartment building more."

Bruce Wayne sat alone among the sculptures and paintings of Wayne Manor's East Wing art gallery.

He had no head for art. Most of these purchases were made by the late Alfred Pennyworth. Superhero outfits and gadgets were as far as his aesthetic sensibilities went.

Unless, of course, one were to extend one's definition of aesthetics to human beings. In which case, Bruce Wayne was more than fully cognizant of the fact that he was married to the most divine creature on Earth. Which was where Bruce Wayne's conventional understanding of a higher power ended as well.

Selina Wayne's black sneakers skidded upon the marble floor as she entered the expansive gallery, and sat down on the small black bench next to him. She put her arm around his waist, put her head on his shoulder, and said nothing.

The painting before which they sat went from the floor to the ceiling. It was a portrait of a man in his thirties with black hair and warm blue eyes sitting in a red leather lounge chair near a fireplace. A woman in a white silk gown with sandy brown hair and hazel eyes stood next to him, her slender and delicate arm resting upon the back of the chair behind the man's neck.

It was a painting of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Bruce, in the thicket of his early memories, remembered when his parents had had this painting commissioned. They sat for hours upon hours in the lounge as the artist, a small man with a bushy mustache, did the groundwork for this portrait. Alfred had had to take the then five-year-old Bruce to a couple of baseball games within the city so the artist, Francois Guillaume, could conduct his initial sketches in peace.

And now that five-year-old boy was over ten times older, sitting in front of that painting of his parents with his own wife. And both of them were twelve and thirteen years older than Thomas and Martha Wayne had been when they were murdered.

A thought that had been at the forefront of Bruce's mind since Dick Grayson had died played yet again.

History does not repeat itself, but it does on occasion rhyme.

Bruce had not given any thought of having a portrait of himself and Selina commissioned. He wondered if it was too late.

But Selina wouldn't sit still for it. Both literally and figuratively. And Bruce himself did not quite see the point.

A further sense of unease pervaded Bruce's being. The fear that this might be the only meaningful way the pattern of his existence broke. The refusal of a worthless licensing of his own image for private exhibition within the walls of this very house, where his parents had accepted such a thing.

He was destined to lose.

He felt a king. Not in a sense of might or power, but in a sense that he was the very visible figurehead of a great mass of people. All as fallible and mortal as he was. As his father was.

And his father died. Alongside his mother. Shot dead in an alley like rabid dogs.

He did not bid the memory, but it came anyway. Four seconds that altered the course of a man and of a city. Four seconds was all it took for an uncaring, indifferent universe to subtract from itself Thomas and Martha Wayne.

History does not repeat itself, but it does on occasion rhyme.

Bruce had to wonder in what way history would further insist upon rhyming. Existence took his son from him. What encore was there?

"Escort a lady to City Hall tomorrow?" Selina asked.

Bruce looked down at her, kissed the top of her head, and squeezed her closer. Almost protectively, as though in an attempt to shield her from unseen enemies.

Barbara Gordon sat alone in the East Wing music room, at one of the two grand pianos, and awkwardly tried to bang out Chopsticks.

Two grand pianos in the center of this small room, and the instruments needed for a string quartet lined the walls. She figured that this must be the chamber from which chamber music was made. She found it. The one chamber. Yay, me!

The door opened behind her, and she craned her neck to look around.

It was Harper.

"Hey," Harper said, and Barbara said the same thing in reply.

Barbara Gordon and Harper Row did not initially get along. For when two know-it-alls see each other in the wild, their first instinct is to fight like feral cats.

But only the best know-it-alls get over it, and Barbara Gordon considered herself and Harper Row very much that. Their mutual admiration and respect grew to the point that Barbara had asked Bluebird to join the Birds of Prey. Harper refused, wishing to stay somewhat indie, and Barbara respected the hell out of that. Barbara had even been in the waiting room along side Tim, Bruce, Selina, Dick, and Cass when Harper gave birth to Mattie-Ann.

Harper sat down at the other grand piano, cracked her knuckles, and immediately started pounding out what Barbara instantly identified as the piano intro to Muse's Sunburn.

"What… the fuck?" Barbara asked when Harper was done.

"When I was little," Harper said, "we lived next to a piano tuner."

"Who needs a piano tuned on Bleake Island?"

"Wonders never cease," Harper said. "Guy taught me the basics. It was the summer and I was eight. The hell else was I gonna do? You play?"

"Do I play?" Barbara asked. "Ha!"

She flexed her fingers and asked "Let's see if you remember this oldie."

At which point Barbara pressed all ten fingers in the middle of the keys, turned to Harper, and droned:

"I love you, biiiiiiitch."

Harper almost fell off the piano bench, she laughed so hard.

Barbara's fingers pressed down on the keys again, before she turned back to Harper.

"I ain't never gonna stop lovin' you, biiiiiiiitch."

"So what don't I understand?" Cassandra asked Stephanie.

The library was two levels, taking up space on the first and second floors of the East Wing. Stephanie was standing in a row on the second level, staring down a shelf full of books on… tax law.

There were only a finite number of literary classics in the world. Apparently not enough to fill a library this big.

"Well?" Cassandra asked. Kinda loud.

Stephanie raised her eyebrows at Cassandra, and put a finger to her lips.

"We're in a private library," Cassandra said. "Not a public one. And we're the only ones here."

Oh.

Right.

It still felt weird, though.

"What don't I understand?" Cassandra asked yet again.

Stephanie folded her arms, leaned against the opposite shelf, and closed her eyes.

"How do you see this going?" Stephanie asked.

"I don't know," Cassandra said. "I thought that was the fun part."

"You're making the assumption I'm staying here in Gotham once this is all said and done."

Cassandra folded her arms herself, getting into what Stephanie could identify as a semi-aggressive stance.

"Why wouldn't you?" Cassandra asked. "You've been living in hotel rooms for the last fourteen years, and now you're home. Around people who know you."

"I have a life that isn't this," Stephanie said. "And…"

Stephanie grabbed hold of a thought that wouldn't come out unless prodded by someone else.

"And?"

"And," Stephanie said, "I'm waiting for the bottom to fall out."

Cassandra seemed completely flummoxed by that. She just stared at Stephanie with her mouth open.

"Look," Stephanie said. "The two greatest desires of eighteen-year-old me were talking to Cassandra Cain, and getting into Cassandra Cain's pants. And now I've done them. And they both more than lived up to the hype."

"And now you're waiting for me to disappoint you?"

"It's not that."

"Then what is it?"

"Life!" Stephanie said, loud enough for voice to echo. "Fate! The whole… fucking existence, okay?"

Cassandra rubbed her eyes. "I seem to recall Spoiler telling me that hope could get her through a lot before she went off to fight Damian Wayne. Would that girl recognize you right now?"

"Maybe not," Stephanie said. "Look, I'm proud of the whole Natalie Venora thing I've done for the past fifteen years, but I'm not happy with it. It was not my first choice. And that's when life started telling me that I have to start compromising here and there. And if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Now, ever since I got back here yesterday…"

Her thoughts collided like two handfuls of like Play-Doh, the separate colors melding into each other. It was like she had to pick the flecks of one out of the other with her thumbnail, before putting those flecks back.

"If you asked Stephanie Brown, setting foot on English soil the first time after her father died, what would be the best case, good dream scenario of what would happen if I just bought the return ticket and came back to Gotham, it would be this. I wasn't on the grounds of Wayne Manor for a minute before the entire Justice League came out and started hugging me. Selina's opinion of me hasn't changed a bit. Bruce managed to forgive me today! Fucking Bruce! He took time out of mourning for Dick and being his super-serious self to reassure me that I have nothing to worry about. And then there's you. And… And I know something dark is coming. I have to pay for this somehow. And where I am in my life…"

Stephanie figured that there were times in one's life when one had to baldly state their theses. And this was one of those times.

"I'm too old to feel this young," Stephanie said.

Cassandra was quiet for a time. A fringe of black hair covered her face as she looked down.

"Be my friend," Stephanie said. "We can do that, right? Pick up where we left off?"

"Last night," Cassandra said as she still looked down, "you beat my brains out… picked them up… put them back in my head… and fucked them out again… just to come to the conclusion that we should be friends?"

"Don't say that like it's weird."

Cassandra, to her credit, snorted. She looked up after a moment of pause, and said "Done."

Stephanie furrowed her brow. "Just like that?"

Cassandra nodded. "I knew you then, Steph. And I know you now. So I can say that my life for the last fourteen years would have been better with you in it. Some of you really is better than none of you. Compromise, right? If that's what it takes to keep you, then that's what I'll give… And it's not like you weren't going to be my best friend anyway, whether you were my… whatever… or not."

And with that, Cassandra held out her fist.

Stephanie bumped it.

An hour ago, Jason took Carrie and Aaliyah out to the movies. It was agreed upon by all parties that this was a better way for the two young ladies to spend their time than jousting within the halls of Wayne Manor.

Two teenage girls had prevented Cullen Row from getting his entire fuck on with a hot guy in a mansion. This had been on his bucket list ever since he knew with a certainty that he was gay, and for this transgression by Carrie and Aaliyah upon his mission in life, he would make the two regret the day they had been expelled from their mothers… Or failing that, he would spit in their cereal. Whichever was easier, and came first.

Cullen stood in an East Wing bathroom, taking a lint roller to his black jacket. It had been on the floor after all, and even in a house full of people trying to keep secrets, it was incumbent upon both his station and his personality to look as fly as humanly possible.

Were there such a thing as a Butler Code, that exact clause would be on the first page.

He set the lint roller on the sink, put his jacket back on, left the bathroom…

...and stopped.

A man Cullen had never seen before was standing in the middle of the hallway, admiring a painting of a vase filled with orchids. He was clad in black, from his boots, to his body armor, to the balaclava that hid his face.

He looked into the hallway. His eyes met Cullen's, and he slightly jumped in surprise.

Cullen and this unknown fellow just stared at each other for a time, until the man sheepishly waved.

As Cullen took in a breath to scream bloody murder, something hit him in the back of the head. The floor came up to meet his face.

His vision blurred. He tried to focus with a rapidly fading will. He saw a seemingly never-ending stream of similarly clad men came from a room that Cullen, even in his near-unconscious state, correctly identified as the study.

As Cullen gradually succumbed to the blackout, one terrifying thought ran roughshod through his brain.

The Batcave.

They were coming from inside the Batcave.