A/N - TW - Slight suicidal thoughts. Please see all the resources in the author's notes for Ch. 2 if you are suicidal and need help. Stay with us, we love you and want you here.

TW - aftermath of Dick's canonical rape by Tarantula is indirectly referenced (Bruce doesn't understand what's going on, though.)

This is the chapter that will make more sense if you read Fic#2 ("Love Is A One-Eyed Monster") in this series, to get Dick's perspective on the assault.

Present Day

Batman's head recoiled in surprise as Black Bat lightly landed in front of him on the Gotham rooftop, her hands balled on her hips.

The bizarre stitching on her face mask always made her look hauntingly grisly, but last night's experience of watching death claim Steph was no doubt adding to Bruce's perception of Black Bat's imposing spectral effect.

"I told you to stay out of Gotham," Batman growled at her as he took a cautious step back.

"Steph!" the Black Bat snapped at him, lashing out with an accusatory finger pointed right at his eyes.

"Oh, shit," Batman mumbled in horror. "You knew her?"

"Where?" the phantom girl demanded, stomping forward even as Batman continued to walk backwards in order to maintain a healthy distance between them.

"She's at Jefferson's Funeral Home," Batman sighed.

The Black Bat froze in her approach and cocked her head at him, but Batman was continuing to speak.

"Visitation is tomorrow night from six to eight," he said wearily, "although it's going to be closed casket, of course, and the service is Wednesday morning at ten, also at the funeral home," he said.

Only then did he realize that the Black Bat's chest was heaving up and down in a panic.

"... dead?" she whispered, sounding absolutely horror-stricken.

"Oh, fuck," Batman said, clapping a gloved hand over his mouth in agonized shame. "You didn't know," he said.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm so sorry," he said, suddenly all compassion towards the interloping vigilante who had been such a pain in his ass when she'd casually appeared in Gotham a year ago on her own personal mission to obliterate a child trafficking ring.

Which sure, yes, was an excellent and worthy cause, but her lethal methods were Not Acceptable in his town and when Batman had said as much to the simply-clad assassin, along with lobbying hefty threats of what would happen to her if she continued to operate in Gotham (naturally he'd take over her case), the girl had shown up two nights later all over the news in a mockingly hand-stitched Bat costume, with a ghastly upside-down mouth and hollow eyes, and then continued traipsing around town merrily murdering whoever she saw fit to kill.

She'd beat the shit out of Batman when he'd tried to stop her. Not an incident the Bat cared to remember. He'd not only been humiliated, but alarmed by the girl's ability to predict his movements and, reluctantly, impressed, because meta or not, Bruce didn't know, but she was one hell of a fighter and wouldn't have been able to best him had she not been equally as skilled in combat as she was in reading his body language.

The papers had given her the name the Black Bat, but Bruce didn't know if perhaps the girl had leaked that to the press herself. He did know that he couldn't fucking stand her and he definitely hadn't known that Steph had made her acquaintance.

He also knew that he was nowhere near at his best tonight, which was why Batman had been taking cautious steps away from the imposter Bat until putting his foot in his mouth in the worst way possible, because the little Black Bat was crying, now.

Screaming, actually, with huge piercing wails of pain and misery as she crouched down on the ground in agony and Bruce felt like absolute shit.

"I'm sorry," he said again, very awkwardly, as he bent down next to her and patted a tentative hand on her shaking back.

"How?" the girl managed to whimper out to him on a long, heartbroken howl.

"Black Mask," Bruce sighed. "Red Hood found her being tortured but it was too late to save her."

Black Bat's still-covered face tipped up at him, obviously demanding more explanation as she continued to cry, so Batman took a deep breath.

"She'd been Robin," Bruce said. "I don't know if you knew that?" he asked, feeling his stomach sink when the girl nodded her head yes.

Shit, she and Steph really had been close, hadn't they? Black Bat had been long gone from Gotham before Spoiler had graduated to Robin. Oh, God.

"I fired Steph as Robin," Bruce said softly, apologetically. "She disobeyed an order and almost got killed and I was scared -"

He took a gulping breath before continuing.

"She launched a gang war that got out of hand. I think she wanted to prove herself and earn Robin back. But she went out as Spoiler and Black Mask caught her and… I didn't know," Batman forced himself to say.

"I was trying to deal with the gangs and I had told her not to go out anymore as Spoiler, either, and…"

He barely had time to block the knife that was flung out backwards from the Black Bat's right arm straight at his chest.

And then he was knocked flat on his back and the knife was coming at his head and Batman was barely able to flip Black Bat off in time to avoid needing an eyepatch, but even though he managed to regain his feet the girl was coming at him with a whirling flurry of feet and hands and knives and he was getting hit and cut because Black Bat wasn't going to stop this time with teaching him a mere lesson; she was aiming to kill, and Bruce suddenly realized with his heart in his throat as he frantically defended blows that it all might end right here, right now, at the hand of a rightfully angry, grieving girl determined to avenge her friend, and the worst part was that for half a second, Bruce thought that death would be a great relief.

How would Dick feel?

The thought whispered through his brain unbidden, but Bruce's arm reacted by blocking his head from Black Bat's kick and his feet twirled him a step farther away.

Dick and Bruce hadn't spoken in months and Bruce still didn't quite understand why. He didn't want to over-impose on his oldest son if Dick wanted nothing to do with him at the moment, so Bruce had been restraining himself to leaving a voicemail only once a month, but from Bruce's perspective, things had been perfectly fine between him and his son and then a year ago, Dick had all but disappeared with no explanation.

Up until his mysterious departure, Dick had been doing so well as Nightwing, living in Bludhaven and carving out his independence apart from Batman and Gotham, working on the Bludhaven Police Force on what Bruce had privately thought was a fool's mission, but outwardly supported, in a vendetta to root out police corruption from the inside of the force.

Dick and Bruce were talking back then a few times a week and Dick made it over for dinner at the manor at least twice a month, and Alfred and Bruce trekked out to Bludhaven once a month without fail to visit Dick, and sure, Dick had been disappointed to not get his soulmate right when he turned twenty-one - maybe even a little sadder than Bruce had expected - but it was normal to feel down if it didn't happen on your birthday, especially given that Dick had been growing up on the sidelines watching Bruce go on nineteen years without a soulmark; but still, Dick had seemed mostly ok overall, Bruce had thought, during his twenty-first year.

Good, even, most of the time.

Of course, parts of the year had been hard; Jason had miraculously come back to them, which on one hand was so overwhelmingly wonderful that Dick and Bruce and Alfred could hardly contain their joy - but Jason had been so different, too. Angry and violent and brutally murderous, and so very upset to learn that he'd been replaced by young Tim Drake as Robin.

To be fair, Bruce hadn't intended to take on any more Robins after Jason had died, but then the baby paparazzo had tried to blackmail him with his knowledge of Batman's identity and dammit, the boy had reminded Bruce of Dick and Jason, both, in his eagerness to be Robin. That bright, shiny look in his eyes of hope laced with determination cranked to life parts of Bruce's heart that he thought had died with his son.

So, against Bruce's better judgment, and maybe also because more than a year after Jason's death he was still looking over his shoulder for a yellow cape that wasn't there, Bruce had finally relented and allowed Timothy Drake to train as Robin and finally to don the colors.

Bruce hadn't expected Jason to come back from the dead, after all. And he didn't blame his son for being hurt and angry; Bruce couldn't even begin to imagine what it did to a person's psyche to die and then come back to life only to be assimilated into the League of Assassins for two full years without the benefit of his memories or full intelligence.

Bruce didn't blame Jason, but that didn't mean that his son wasn't difficult to deal with more often than not these days.

So, yes. Dick's twenty-first year had been a little strange and trying, no doubt, but that didn't explain why his son had up and disappeared without a word to Alfred and Bruce not long after his twenty-second birthday.

The small incident with Tarantula had seemed to be the tipping point, that was true; Dick's first protégée had turned out to be irredeemable, killing the criminal Blockbuster and proudly boasting about it to all of Bludhaven.

Dick had quite understandably taken a short get-away after the Tarantula incident, embarrassed and angry and disappointed and blaming himself, no doubt, as her mentor. Bruce had wanted to call and reassure his son that he wasn't to blame - that sometimes no matter how much you invested in a person, they chose a darker path, and that was no reflection on Nightwing as a hero or on Dick as a person.

But since Dick had let Alfred, not Bruce, know about his mini-vacation, Bruce had decided to wait to talk to Dick until he got back to town. Give his boy a few days to come to grips with his feelings and his mentee's failure before having to have what Dick was surely fearing would be an awkward conversation with his father.

But Dick had not called home after the first week away. And then, two weeks had passed with no word and no response to Bruce and Alfred's phone calls and texts.

Worried, Batman had gone to Dick's apartment and found it cleaned out, the furniture left but all personal effects gone. A snoop through the leasing office revealed that the lease had been terminated. An anonymous phone call to BHPD, and Bruce learned that Officer Grayson had resigned.

Truly anxious, now, Bruce had activated Dick's trackers and left another string of voicemails and texts on his son's phone. Batman had been on his way to Costa Rica in the Batwing, following Dick's implanted homing signals, when Dick had finally called him.

"Son!" Bruce had gasped out. "Alfred and I have been so worried. Your apartment was empty and you quit the force and - are you all right?"

"Kind of," Dick had mumbled. "I mean, yes. I'm fine. Not kidnapped or hurt, or anything," he said glumly, not using any of the code phrases that he would have used had he been held prisoner.

"I was so sorry to hear about Tarantula killing Blockbuster," Bruce said immediately. "I don't blame you for that, son," he said. "It wasn't your fault at all, and nobody in Bludhaven is blaming Nightwing for it, either," he said. "Sometimes the people we mentor end up letting us down. We all understand that."

"Yeah," Dick said hollowly, his voice little more than a whisper.

"Sweetheart, what's going on?" Bruce said, now really concerned. "I can help. Just tell me what you need. What happened?" he asked.

To his horror, he heard the muffled sounds of crying being covered up.

"Dick?" Bruce said.

"It's ok," Dick said a second later, in a voice that sounded just the opposite. "I'm ok, Bruce. I just… I need some time away from it all. You know?" he said. "I need to step back for a little while."

"Ok," Bruce said, furrowing his brow and wishing that Dick would be more forthcoming about what had actually gone wrong, because surely the incident with Tarantula wasn't enough to cause Dick to throw his career and his life in Bludhaven away as carelessly as if they'd never meant anything to him, when Bruce knew how much Dick had invested in both.

"I don't like you being by yourself right now," Bruce said. "I can tell you're hurting."

"I'm not alone," Dick said immediately, and… was that a glimmer of a smile that Bruce heard in his son's voice?

"I'm with a friend," Dick said. "We're just gonna travel together for a while, see the world, that kind of thing," he said.

"Ok," Bruce said again.

He paused.

"It's not Roy, is it?" he said with some trepidation, and then Dick was actually laughing, and someone in the background was laughing, too.

"No, it's not Roy," Dick chuckled. "Someone a lot more responsible."

"Good," Bruce said with satisfaction. "Well…" he said, sensing that Dick had revealed about as much in this conversation as he planned to. "Check in with me once in a while, all right?" he said. "Let me know you're safe?"

"I will," Dick had promised.

And, he did, with a text once a week like clockwork that said "I'm all right," with a cheesy grinning emoji and a thumbs up, and sometimes a photo of him in his latest tourist trap, but Dick rarely returned Bruce's monthly phone calls.

However, that didn't mean that his son wouldn't miss him if Bruce died tonight on the rooftops they'd once patrolled together. The one thing Bruce knew for sure was that Dick was struggling somehow, and as appealing as death sounded to the Bat in this moment, and as just a sentence as it would be for his crime of letting another Robin die, Bruce determined that he had to stay alive for Dick's sake.

Decision made, he blocked the next blow from Black Bat before committing the most disgracefully unBatmanlike atrocity ever - he turned tail and ran as fast as he could, flinging himself off the rooftop headfirst and plummeting towards the ground in the dark for long seconds before firing his grapple and swinging away to safety.

"Holy fuck!" Jason yelped in surprise when a blow from out of nowhere hit his back as he diligently worked on unscrewing the coffin lid in the dark of the closed funeral parlor.

He whirled around, thankful for his helmet's night vision which allowed him to catch Black Bat's next attack in a block before advancing on her with counter-blows, matching her hit for hit as they danced around the room.

"What'd I do to you, BB?" Red Hood yelled at her, feeling kind of pissed as she leapt at him with a flying kick that he caught and used to flip her facedown towards the ground, although she pushed off with her hands and did a Dick-worthy cartwheel forward.

Jason was only robbing a damn coffin. It wasn't like he'd stolen her kill, or something. That, he could understand being huffy about.

"Mine!" she screamed at him.

"Bitch, get your own body!" Jason yelled back at her. "There's more downstairs in the morgue. This one's mine!" he snapped, matching his words with a kick that connected to Black Bat's hip, although that didn't stop her from spinning around and landing a fist to his neck that snuck in just under his helmet's lip.

"Mine!" Black Bat repeated with even more venom as Jason staggered back, clutching his throat.

Fuck, that one had hurt.

"Steph!" the feisty little knockoff Bat yelled, pulling out a sword, and Red Hood quickly held his hands up, coughing.

"Cass…?" he rasped out, and she halted.

"Are you Cass?" Jason repeated, reaching up and lifting his helmet off as he cleared his throat and tried to find his voice again. "Steph said to tell you she loved you," he wheezed.

And then Black Bat was pulling back her freaky deaky cowl that Jason loved so much, and not only because Bruce hated it, but because it had a major punk-rock-meets-goth vibe going on that Jason really dug, and Jason found himself staring at a girl who was closer to his age than to blonde Robin's.

And she was crying.

"Cass…" she sniffed out brokenly, tapping her chest.

"Jason," he said, peeling off his domino and tossing it into his hood.

"C'mere," he said, reaching forward to pull her into a hug, and she very sweetly sheathed her sword before wrapping herself around his chest.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he soothed her as she sobbed. "Steph really cared about you," he said.

"Friend," Cass mumbled against him.

"Best friend?" Jason asked her and she nodded.

"Well, Blondie just went up in my already high estimation of her, being friends with a bad bitch like you," Jason teased, and Cass actually snorted a little bit in something close to a giggle.

"Why'd you start attacking me all crazy like that?" Jason asked her when her tears seemed to start letting up.

Cass stepped back and looked at him in the dark shadows, taking a breath and visibly searching for a word before faltering and slapping her hands to her forehead in frustration.

"You have trouble talking?" Jason intuited, and she nodded.

"Just with English, or with all languages?" Jason asked her, because his Mandarin wasn't too bad and neither was his Tibetan, although his Cantonese was iffy, but she sighed.

"All," she mumbled.

"Oh," Jason said in disappointment. "Well… um…"

He scratched at the back of his head.

"I mean… we could play charades?" he offered and she snorted again, with more humor this time and no, Jason wasn't smiling.

Uh uh. Nope. Black Bat definitely wasn't kinda cute or anything.

Cass smiled back at him and went over to the full bodybag that had been peacefully resting at Jason's feet before she'd rudely interrupted his thievery, and she nudged it with her foot and then pointed at the coffin and put her hands on her hips with a question mark in her eyebrows.

"Oh, Steph's still in the coffin," Jason said. "I haven't got her out yet. I was about to before you attacked me," he said with a mock glare.

Cass shrugged her arms, palms up, clearly asking why.

"You ever heard of a Lazarus Pit?" Jason grinned at her, picking up his screwdriver again and getting back to work on the coffin lid.

Cass shook her head.

"It can heal people, or extend their life," Jason said. "I know, cause I went swimming in one before when I was a zombie," he said. "And it fixed me all up. Although there are some side effects," he mumbled, mostly to himself.

"But anyway," he went on more cheerfully, "they can raise the dead."

He looked up when Cass gripped his upper arm tight, staring up at him with big eyes.

"Yeah, for real," he said. "So the plan is, we're gonna swap this stiff out with Blondie," he said. "I already made sure he weighs the same. It's gonna be a closed casket funeral so ain't no worries there," he said, "and I don't know about you, but I'd rather not dig up a grave," he said with a shiver of familiarity that he chose not to explain.

Jason glanced over at Black Bat and she only looked curious so far and not like she hated his plan, so he kept talking.

"Once we've got my poor Dead Robin, here," he went on, moving to another screw, "we're gonna steal a plane, fly into the heart of the League of Assassins - oh, you know them," he said when Cass's face got a scowl on it.

She nodded.

"Yeah," Jason agreed. "I know. Bitches, right?"

She was laughing at him a little, in response to that, and Jason didn't think it was good that his tummy did a little excited flip.

"So, once we're there," he said, trying to focus only on the mission, dammit, because soulmates, Jason, no flirting allowed, "we gotta sneak Robin here into the Lazarus Pit that they guard with their lives because Ra's likes to swim in it all the fucking time."

Cass's eyebrows went up but Jason went on.

"We gotta sneak Blondie in and dunk her without getting ourselves killed," he said, "although if only one of us dies that might be ok," he said thoughtfully, "because now that there's two of us, the other one could just resurrect the one who eats it, assuming you could get both dead bodies to the Pit," he mused -

- Cass was giving him a look, but it was an amused one and Jason shouldn't be grinning back, but he totally was -

- "Anyway, we gotta dunk Steph, keep her from killing us when she goes all nuts coming back to life," Cass was choking out some surprise-tinged-concern, now, but Jason rolled on, "get back to the plane, oh - first we gotta fly in without the League seeing us, but I got a plan for that part," he reassured her, "then we gotta get back to the plane with our slightly crazed and manic reanimated Robin without getting caught, and fly back to Gotham," he said, nodding his head at the soundness of his plan.

Cass's eyes had gotten a little big at the last part. Hm.

They were awfully pretty eyes, though - dammit, Jason, no they weren't! Well, it was only because they were so intelligent and expressive, Jason sulked to himself. Probably her eyes were like that because she didn't talk much. So sue him, it made them pretty. Could he not observe a simple fact without his conscience yelling at him?

"Oh, and when we get back, I'm gonna unleash Blondie on Bruce," Jason giggled. "And videotape it so I can watch it when I'm sad. Oh, my God, he's gonna get what's coming to him, then, I tell you what," he grinned and suddenly Cass was beaming at him.

"Kill," she said proudly.

His jaw dropped.

"You killed Batman?" he whispered.

Cass shook her head.

"Fight," she said, mimicking the motions. "Kill," she repeated, drawing her eyebrows together and miming vicious attacks, before saying "Leave," and whirling in a very Dark Knight kind of way before running down the carpeted room somehow conveying utter terror and panic, and diving into a somersault.

"You tried to kill him and he ran?" Jason interpreted, and Cass ran back up to him and nodded, jumping up and down and clapping her hands for him and smiling wide.

Jason began laughing and within seconds, his stomach hurt from how hard it was shaking, and he had to sit down on the floor.

"Oh, my God," he gasped out, still laughing hysterically, "the fucker turned and ran and dived off the roof?" he asked her.

Cass grinned and nodded again.

"High five, BB," Jason said, reaching up for her hand with his and feeling stupidly happy as she slapped it back hard.

"That's amazing," Jason said, wiping his eyes and standing back up, surprised when Cass grabbed his hand and helped pull him to his feet.

"Thanks," he smiled at her as he picked up the screwdriver again.

He went to work on the fourth screw, still chuckling softly, before he got it out and added it to his pocket. Jason grabbed one end of the coffin lid.

"Get the other end?" he asked Cass, so she moved to help him to lift it off.

They set it on the floor but as soon as Cass straightened up, she was looking at blonde Robin and suddenly crying again, really mournful this time, and whispering "Steph," in between tiny choking sobs and smoothing her hand over Blondie's hair and ew, bending down to press kisses to Robin's stinky formaldehyde-filled forehead, which the morticians had gone ahead and covered with thick nasty makeup despite the closed casket services, and frankly Jason would have waited to do the head kisses until Robin was resurrected, but hey, he wasn't a girl.

They got weirdly emotional about crap.

"Um, you ready?" Jason said after about a minute of grosser-than-normal girl time when Cass had finally stopped kissing the stiff.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and nodded.

"Oh, lemme dump the other guy out first so we can put Blondie right in the body bag," Jason said, deciding that would be more respectful than setting Steph on the floor first, so he bent down to unzip the bag before unceremoniously turning it over and shaking the dead body out.

Cass recoiled when it hit the ground, because even in the dim shadows of the closed funeral parlor, she could see that both arms and parts of the legs were missing and that didn't bother her, exactly, but it was a little unexpected.

"I had to chop him down some so he weighed the same," Jason said breezily as he righted the bag and floofed it open to be ready for his Dead Robin.

He looked up, though, when Cass started giggling.

Oh, she was laughing at him. About the body. Jason giggled back at her, a little bit.

He'd always suspected he'd like killer-punk-goth-girl-Bat. She had a vibe about her that said she gave no fucks. Especially when Bruce had tried to run her out of town and she'd mocked him with the creepy Bat costume.

Jason had bought the actual paper newspapers that day so he could cut out all the pictures of Black Bat and hang them on his fridge. One day, when he managed to get on better terms again with his dad (although the Dead Robin in front of him had pushed that date way, way back) Jason planned to invite Bruce over for a lovely home-cooked dinner just so he could enjoy the different shades of red and purple that his father's face would turn when he saw Jason's Black Bat shrine.

That was gonna be a good day. Jason had even gotten the plastic Black Bat toy that came with the JusticeMeals at BatBurger and hung it from a magnet.

But, hey! Maybe Jason would become actual friends with the Black Bat now that they were going on a foolhardy buddy mission together into the territory of the worst assassins on the planet, and then he could have Black Bat herself at Dinner With Dad, and that would be even more hilarious.

Especially if she wore her costume.

And, assuming they made it back at all, Dead Robin would be Alive Robin again, so Jason could invite her, too, and then Bruce would really blow a gasket.

Jason was going to make Bruce's favorite coq au vin from Alfred's recipe that Bruce would be able to smell from the hallway, and Jason was going to greet Bruce at the door with a big hug and tell him how much he loved him and how happy he was that his dad had come over for dinner, and then Jason was going to walk Bruce into the kitchen to see the rest of his dinner guests and his Black Bat FanFridge.

It was going to be fabulous. Absolutely splendid. But first they had to get Dead Robin packed up and back to his safe house.

"You want to take her head or her feet?" Jason asked Cass, and she moved to grip Steph's cold shoulders, which were clothed in a purple sweater that must have belonged to her, because it was the same color as the Spoiler outfit.

Before the costume had gotten all stained brown, that was. Jason felt his stomach knot and some bile come up his throat, remembering what she'd look like tied up and screaming and bleeding and -

"Hood!"

He snapped his head up, surprised to find his breaths coming short and hard. Cass snapped her fingers in the air and he shuddered and blinked and remembered what they were doing.

"Sorry," he mumbled, picking up Dead Robin's feet. "On three," he grunted, and then they were lifting up Steph and maneuvering her into the body bag and zipping it up and Jason could breathe easier again.

He reached down and swung the substitute body up carelessly to stuff it into the coffin.

"Who?" Cass asked him curiously.

In the dark, Cass saw the green flash that glittered in Jason's eye.

"One of Black Mask's guys," he grunted. "Figured he should go in the grave they caused to be dug," he said in a voice laced with bitterness. "It was an absolute pleasure chopping him down to size, let me tell ya," he said.

"I woulda put Sionis himself in here, but I burned him," Jason said. "No resurrections for him."

Cass's eyes sparked with hatred and before Jason could ask her to help him with the coffin lid, she was viciously stabbing the dead body with her swords.

"Damn, girl," Jason said appreciatively when she finished, wiping the gunk on the swords off on the interior padding of the coffin. "I like your style," Jason said, and Cass gave him a little sad half-smile.

"We'll get her back," Jason promised her.

"Hope," Cass said.

"Will," Jason replied.

A/N - So, future chapters will be written from Cass's POV sometimes, so that she can communicate with the readers through her thoughts if not her words.

So much more to come. Comments are life!

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