They had moved to Conner's bedroom after the first hour after a loud noise from the downstairs neighbors had startled them both a bit too much. It was nice though. It made it feel like their study session at Tim's house, though Conner's room, and bed, were much, much smaller.

Tim sat cross legged on top of the comforter. They scattered the piles of paperwork across Conner's bed. Clark had printed everything out and taken notes in the margins of the police reports and images in a red ballpoint pen. He tried to stay out of Tim's way while the other boy meticulously started creating piles out of the notes, pausing to take pictures on his phone.

"Is this what you needed?" he asked.

Tim barely looked up, busy typing something one handed while looking through a thoroughly marked up print out of a Gotham map. "What? Oh. Yeah. You're dad is amazing Conner."

Conner laughed a little. In his own quiet way Tim looked as excited about a stack full of murder investigations as a kid on Christmas. It probably should have upset him more.

"He's alright."

Conner watched Tim work and they fell into a steady pattern. Tim would scan the map, taking note of locations called out in big red Xs and then ask Conner to hand him the reports that matched. Police reports, autopsy records, news articles, Tim compiled each piece separately with its corresponding location.

"Whoever they are," Tim said, staring down at his morbidly organized collection and face falling as he realized how scattered the various crime scenes were. "They live in north Gotham."

"We're sure it's a person?"

Tim looked up and Conner felt dumb for having asked.

"I mean, it didn't look like a person."

"Most monsters are people. It's what happens when you mess too much with magic. I just wish there was something here to point to who. Crimes of opportunity are the worst. Even if Bruce was helping we can't watch the entire northern half of Gotham. Help me sort these again. There has to be something."

This time as Tim went through the paperwork, he did so carefully. It took much longer than the first pass and Conner busied himself with scrolling through his phone. A quick google search was all it took to confirm that Gotham did, indeed, have an astoundingly high crime rate. He started using the reports and dates to try and find corresponding news articles online. The results were depressingly small given the amount out there.

"Got it," Tim said.

When Conner looked up he was grinning victoriously over an autopsy report.

"This is wrong. Not all of them have autopsies but the ones that do..."

Conner put down his phone and peered over at the mess of papers in front of Tim. He tried to see whatever it was that had set the lightbulb off over Tim's head. He was loathe to admit it, but it was mostly nonsense to him. It was too similar to English. Pictures and lengthy articles, when strung together and looked at a certain way, told a story. Conner had a hard enough time when the story was all in one book, he definitely wasn't much help when it was spread across the disjointed handwritten thoughts of someone else. But Tim seemed to be of like mind with Clark.

"Jason and I have been following this case for months, this one here, from back in August," Tim's hand flitted over to one of the pages, "That was the first attack, or close to it. And the report includes all the gory details and the blood loss, but these ones, the latest ones, these reports don't line up at all. Some of them are missing entirely, too, though I imagine that's just laziness. They probably wrote it off as an accidental death and didn't bother."

Tim frowned. "Someone in the long list of people handling the autopsy reports is lying. I'm surprised your dad even pegged them as part of the same case."

"He was relying on, uh, victim profile, I think? His whole thing is about, you know, speaking up for people who can't do it themselves. He said all the victims were homeless."

Tim hummed thoughtfully as he picked up another article. "Well he's doing good work. Looks like the majority, not, all the work was done at Mercy General. Which isn't shocking. If I had had copies of these earlier that would have- This is really good."

"Couldn't Dick get them?"

Not for the first time Tim seemed hesitant about something.

"Don't lie," Conner said, a bit harsher than he meant to. But it had the intended effect. Tim sighed and set the notes aside. He pulled out his phone and started taking pictures of the documents again, but Conner suspected it was a matter of distracting himself more than needing them. He was pretty sure Tim could commit everything to memory if he wanted.

"We're not supposed to be investigating. Bruce...Bruce started looking into these killings last year. Got seriously hurt one night. It caused a huge fight with Selina and some of the other Gotham families. In the end he told us all that he would be handling the case alone. Dick is a good cop, and a great brother, but he has a blind spot where Bruce is concerned. He might not agree with Bruce but he certainly wouldn't nab police reports for me without his express permission."

"But you guys haven't stopped it for a whole year?" Conner asked, "Really?"

"I know. That's what I keep telling Bruce. But he doesn't want to start any family feuds so he's been trying to solve this while toeing the line with the Court-"

"The Court?"

Tim frowned. "The Court is the ruling magical body of Gotham. You shouldn't worry about it. If you ever meet them you're probably already dead."

"Cheerful. So you and Jason, you've been investigating behind Bruce's back."

"Yeah. It's part of why everything has been so tense lately. Bruce is, he's great but he can be controlling."

Conner didn't want to have to unpack that quite yet so he tactfully tried to switch to something less personal. "So what about our current murderer? What's your plan?"

As he spoke, Conner heard the tell tale creak of the apartment stairs.

"Shit." He snapped around to look at Tim who had frozen. For someone who regularly played tag with monsters ten times his size, his eyes were comically wide. He did the first thing that came to mind and reached out, physically shoving all the paperwork and notes off of the bed and onto the floor between the bed and the window. He crushed his moral compunctions down somewhere alongside where he kept the secrets about Jon and Lex and the Waynes.

The sound of the door opening reached them, and then the sound of Clark walking into the apartment. He would pause to hang up his coat, and make his way to the kitchen undoubtedly.

Tim still looked panicked, and Conner kicked aside the blanket, trying to make the scene as natural looking as possible. He grabbed a book off his bedside table, and gestured for Tim to stop sitting there like a fool.

Tim moved, just as Clark called, "Conner?"

Tim tripped and quickly sat back down on the bed.

"One sec, Clark!" Conner called back.

He heard Clark moving through the apartment, and then heavy footsteps came to rest at his door. Without warning the man opened the door, because Clark still hadn't figured out how to knock.

If Conner weren't so nervous he would have found the situation a little bit funny. After all, there were only so many conclusions Clark could draw when he found his son and another teenager alone, in his bedroom, looking nervous and like they were hiding something.

Clark looked carefully from Tim who was seated on the edge of the bed like he might take flight, and Conner, who now realized his attempt to look like he was studying didn't work super great when there wasn't a pen or highlighter in sight and his tutor was sitting on the other side of the bed.

"Oh! I didn't realize we had company, Conner."

"Sorry," Conner mumbled, flushing, "I uh, wasn't expecting you home so early."

It felt slimy, but Conner hoped the more awkward he sounded the fewer questions Clark would ask. It must have worked, because Clark gave Tim a curt nod and backed away.

"Please, when we have company, leave the door open?"

He walked down the hall, towards the kitchen. Conner let out the breath he had been holding. He looked down. The corner of an envelope stuck out of the back pages of his copy of Heart of Darkness . He dropped it like it burned him.

Tim sat, quiet and bashful on the end of the bed, not looking at Conner.

"I should go," he said. "I'll check out the hospital."

"Tonight?"

"We interrupted its dinner last night. It's going to be restless."

"Then we should go. Before you do anything stupid by yourself," Conner said.

Tim looked up. He risked a smile and Conner's heart skipped a beat. He beat the feeling down viciously.

It took a little longer than he liked, but he managed to sneak most of Clark's notes back into his room while the man was whistling showtunes in the kitchen. Tim kept watch, but looked like he might fall over any minute with how pale he had gotten.

Clark was suspiciously easy about the whole thing. He seemed to be trying to keep a smile under control, and when Conner asked if he could take Tim out for a movie, and that he was sorry it was a school night, but it would only be one night and —

Clark cut him off. "It's fine. We were all young once."

Conner tried his hardest not to picture Clark as young, generally, but was grateful nonetheless for the easy way he and Tim were able to make their exit.

"Are you going to be able to cover for us?" Tim asked when they got in the car.

"Please, did you see his face? He won't ask questions. Well not those kind of questions."

Tim still looked tense, but he nodded. "We're going to pick up Jason."

Conner grew to appreciate Tim's car a lot more in their drive to the Narrows. It hugged the road as they made tight turns a tad too fast around blind city corners. Tim had a daredevil streak in him, and when cars started to congest the road, Tim wove the shiny red thing between them with startling ease. It was only the sudden rush when they pulled past a car close enough that Conner could have licked it, that had Conner looking at the speedometer.

"You would have loved driving this thing in Hawaii," he said, a little bit awestruck as they slowed down and pulled into the parking lot of a shabby diner.

The diner was soaked in grease and smelled like deep fried heaven. It wasn't the kind of place high society Wayne boys hung out and Conner loved it even as his sneakers slid across the linoleum floor. The man behind the counter greeted them with a curt nod, and Tim dragged Conner over to a corner booth.

Jason already sat hunched over with his red hoodie pulled up and an oversized milkshake half gone in front of him.

He grinned at them when they approached, despite looking like he'd lost a street fight to a junkyard. His jeans had a new hole and several new stains, and there was a neat line of grime around his hands between where the bare skin of his fingers met the fabric of his gloves. "I think I had a productive day."

Tim huffed, a near silent laugh and slid into the booth across from him. Conner hesitated for only a split second, just long enough for Jason's grin to grow menacing, before he quickly slid into the booth next to Tim. Tim didn't notice, instead picking up the laminated menu, but Jason waggled his eyebrows silently over his milkshake. Conner flipped him off, and jumped when Tim spoke.

"What did you find?"

"The usual. Talked to some folks. In the area. It spared some girl in the last attack. It had her right there. She swears up and down that the thing saw her, looked at her, and backed off."

Tim frowned. "Where?"

"Peltason."

"Between 5th and 7th?"

"Yeah, how-"

"The hospital. Someone's been forging autopsy reports."

This information seemed to delight Jason. "Z give you that lead?" He took a long slurp of his milkshake.

"Not exactly." Tim sounded annoyed.

"Was it some vague non-answer?"

"She didn't give us anything. But I was able to dig up some files." Jason looked like he wanted to ask but Tim handed his phone over before he could say anything.

Conner wondered how often they consulted Zatanna but didn't want to ask and risk saying something Tim didn't want to share. Conner watched as Jason swiped through Tim's photo library, frowning all the while. It was funny to him the way the two could share expressions. He knew they weren't blood relatives but the resemblance was there all the same.

"Well these would have been fucking helpful six months ago."

"Jason. "

"Do you think Bruce knows?"

Tim shrugged. "If he did, wouldn't he do something?"

Jason continued to frown. "Yeah. He would."

An overweight, balding man in a white uniform stepped up to the table to take their orders and Jason put down the phone. Conner used the moment to really study the two.

Jason and Tim had always been different. At school he had read it as them being at odds, with the way they could snipe at each other or how Jason seemed to be intentionally antagonizing Tim. But now he wondered how much of that was really Jason and how much was an act.

Jason's eyes were a dark blue, almost grey, and his hair was chopped short and messy, like he had done it himself. Tim kept his hair longer, brushing the nape of his neck, and while it was never overdone, it looked more like he had forgotten to cut it than like he had styled it himself. Tim was slight, and with some glasses and ill fitting clothes could have stepped perfectly into the role of reticent school nerd. Jason on the other hand, while no linebacker, was still built, and had a few inches on Tim.

And for all these slight differences they both looked tired. It was more noticeable on Tim because he was pale, but Jason seemed to be keeping himself awake by sheer willpower and sugar rush alone. His toothy grin covered up nearly bloodshot eyes and he looked like if he put his head down for a nap he might not get up for a long while.

Conner looked over at the nearly matching lines of exhaustion on Tim's face and frowned.

The man walked away and Jason and Tim traded a few more notes, made a few more vague comments about Bruce and and family friends that Conner didn't know. He let them talk. It felt like they needed it. He focused on the cardiac arrest filled bacon fries that a man in a name tag dropped off.

"Are you gonna tell him where I am?" Jason asked.

Tim leaned in a little bit, lowering his voice. "Look, I haven't told him yet."

"What about the rules Tim?" and with that, Jason tossed a sly glance towards Conner, "You were so insistent about them before."

Tim turned red and muttered something just beyond Conner's range of hearing before he said, "Well maybe you managed to convince me of some things. I still think you should come home. But it's not like I haven't had my complaints and Bruce isn't seeing things clearly. We can't just sit by and let people get hurt."

Jason was still grinning but it looked nearly manic now. "Don't worry Tim. We'll catch our mothman."

Tim relaxed, but said, "We're not calling him mothman."

Tim had made Conner go fetch a duffel bag from his car. He had then locked himself in the single stall restroom of the diner while Jason and Conner waited outside. Conner tried not to look as awkward as he felt. Jason leaned against the wall across from him, arms crossed, infuriating smirk across his face.

Conner didn't like it one bit.

"So, did you have a good day?" He asked.

"It was alright."

"You and Tim. How's that going?"

Conner stared down at an ambiguous grey stain on the floor. He could feel himself heating up and Jason hadn't even said anything bad yet.

"Do you always get this involved with Tim's friends or am I special?"

Jason threw his hands up in mock. "I'm just looking out for my favorite baby brother, Conner. Wouldn't want you to have any untoward intentions."

The door slammed as Tim stepped into the hall. He had changed into a pair of slightly worn scrubs. They were just on the side of being too big, and he'd pulled an oversized colorless hoodie over them. He glared at Jason as he passed by.

"After you," Jason said with a gracious wave of his arm. Conner scowled and followed Tim out of the diner.

It was just past six thirty and the sky was quickly fading to black by the time they pulled into an empty lot across the street from Mercy General. Tim's car was just slightly too conspicuous to drive right up to the front doors.

"You know he actually dressed up as a nurse once." Jason said amicably while they idled in a parking lot. "A female nurse."

Conner grimaced and slouched in the cramped back seat. He hated Tim's car.

"Would you shut up for even five minutes," Tim said. He fiddled with a small white ID badge in his lap.

Conner had seen a fair number of fake IDs. He'd filched one off of one of Tana's friends early on in Hawaii. It was lost now, somewhere buried in the sands of the aptly named Sandy Beach. Conner was still kind of put off by the fact Tim just had all the things he needed in the trunk of his car to impersonate a medical professional ("I'll be posing as a resident, actually").

"He was very convincing. It's because he's so pretty." Jason tossed a meaningful look over at Conner from the front passenger seat. "Tim, you're fussing too much. You know they never look that close."

Conner sank lower in his seat and looked out the window. He tried his best not to picture it. He was probably picturing it wrong anyways. He spared a look at Tim who had turned bright red but refused to rise to Jason's bait.

"I'm almost ready," he said, before turning to face Conner in the backseat. Conner jumped like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have. Except he hadn't been doing anything. And certainly hadn't been thinking about anything in particular so there was no reason for him to feel too hot all of a sudden in the cramped car. "You, uh, should stay here."

Conner stared blankly.

"Would you just get going, Tim? I'll keep an eye on your boytoy."

Tim slammed the door as he left the car. Conner watched him go, and lost sight of him quickly in the fading light.

Jason kicked his feet up on the dash. He rolled down the window and reached for a cigarette, offering one silently to Conner. Conner shook his head. The peaceful silence lasted barely three minutes. Conner had been counting, had started counting when he lost sight of Tim.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Hm?" Conner looked up from where he'd been leaning his head against the car window.

Jason frowned in the front seat, staring out the windshield at nothing in particular.

"What are you gonna do after...all this?" Jason used his free hand to gesture around at the empty parking lot.

"This?"

"Yeah. I mean. I guess it isn't the same for you, exactly. But do you think about after? After school and Gotham and stuff?"

And the truth was Conner had thought about that. A lot. But his vision of the future had been changing since he met the Waynes and suddenly the idea that there would be a something after Gotham made him feel a little bit woozy. In some ways he'd only just gotten to Gotham. He and Clark had only just started getting along. He had only just started making friends.

But Bart would be gone next year. And he supposed Jason would be graduating too. And then what about when Clark found out about Jon? There was no keeping that cat in the bag forever. Conner thought about Roxy's cigarette.

"I used to," Conner admitted. "I was going to turn eighteen, drop out of school, and then run away where no one could find me. Maybe move back to Hawaii."

"What happened to that plan?"

"Gotham wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be."

Conner actually had a lot more patience than he generally got credit for. He always preferred being loud both in volume and action, but the truth was his loudness was choice. Years of being told to be seen and not heard, of feeling silenced even when he had been screaming for attention had taught him more about the pain of not getting what you wanted than any actually ingrained self discipline.

So while Jason started to fidget, muttering agitated things under his breath, Conner remained surprisingly calm.

Tim had seemed pretty comfortable with the whole thing, after all. He'd be stupid to think it was the first time they had done something like this.

"It's getting dark," Jason said.

It was actually pitch black out, save the yellow glow of streetlights and the hospital windows, but Jason seemed to be talking more to himself.

"If he doesn't come back in the next ten minutes, I'm going to lap the building. Make sure no one suspicious is lurking."

Conner kept his mouth shut about how suspicious they were being and watched mildly amused as Jason lit up his second cigarette and grew more agitated. He checked his phone once. Twice.

"Alright, I'm out. Don't leave the car, Kent."

And then Jason was gone too. It didn't take long for Conner to get bored. He kept his eyes on his phone and tried not to let himself get too caught up in his own head. He'd been having a pretty miserable time lately in there. If it wasn't fixating on what to do about Jon, then lately his brain had been getting suspiciously good at replaying conversations he'd had with Tim over again. It especially like to fixate on Tim's reactions. All the little unexpected pauses, the stares when he thought Conner wasn't looking. Conner wondered if Tim was overthinking it as much as he was.

He tried to yank his mind away from those dangerous sort of places, but he didn't seem to be having much luck in the matter.

He looked up, trying to clear his head of unhelpful images of nurses with suspiciously blue eyes and saw a large, red and white truck roll down the street in front of the hospital.

The words Bloodmobile were printed in blocky red letters along the side.

Conner cocked his head to the side. He had a faint memory of being dragged to a similar looking truck with his chem class weeks ago but…

He got out of the car.

He started across the street, hands jammed in his pockets. It had gotten colder in Gotham as fall started inching towards winter. Conner wasn't sure what he thought he was going to do, but he didn't think he was being completely irrational. After all, Tim had said the attacks were happening all over Gotham. And the Bloodmobile had wheels. It was probably a bad hunch, he knew, but he didn't like the idea of letting the opportunity slip past. Just in case. Tim would probably want to know about it.

As he neared the sidewalk he slipped out his phone and sent a quick text to Tim. Hopefully he was finding what he needed in the hospital.

As Conner approached the truck he saw them unloading. A couple people in scrubs were standing just on the sidewalk, chatting while someone in a red t-shirt slipped off the vehicle and started unloading boxes. Conner slowed down. He didn't really have a strategy for asking questions and didn't think openly asking if anyone on the truck was a murderer would go great.

No one really looked all that suspicious. It was dark, but as he lingered, he found himself beginning to doubt he could really find anything useful. Somehow the middle ages woman in a red "15 Minutes to Save a Life" t-shirt didn't seem like she was itching for a blood fix of the violent variety.

As he began to waffle, considering turning around, a figure stepped out of the truck. "Thanks, Dorothy."

"You really don't have to, Kirk." A brown haired man in a lab coat was followed by a woman in scrubs with dark hair and blunt bangs.

Dr. Langstrom was scrawny, and had his arms wrapped around a box, that he handed gently to one of the men waiting on the curb. "I don't mind."

"If you volunteer around here anymore you're going to wind up living at the hospital." Dorothy shook her head sadly and then started for the hospital doors.

Dr. Langstrom paused, however, and despite the fact Conner had said nothing whatsoever, his eyes snapped over to him.

Langstrom looked thin and tired, face sagging behind wireframe rectangular glasses. He adjusted his glasses for a moment, like he was trying to figure out if Conner was really there.

"Don't I know you?"

Conner thought back as quickly as he could and pulled up a sketchy memory of seeing the doctor around the school during the drive. "Um, I donated blood a while ago. At Edward Elliot, you were- you gave a talk."

"Right…the school, of course." Langstrom said slowly. By now the others had nearly finished unloading the truck and one of the nurses tossed him a quizzical look, but he waved them off. "Did you need something Mr…?"

"Kent," Conner said, and internally kicked himself for not lying. "I uh, I actually had been hoping to talk to you?"

"Oh?" Langstrom said, sounding skeptical and like he'd rather be anywhere else.

Conner shifted uncomfortably and tried to keep the lie smooth. "Yeah I saw the truck and thought I'd see if I could talk to someone. My dad's been pressuring me to, uh think about the future, and I remembered your talk and I guess I was wondering how you uh, got into medicine?"

Langstrom paused and for a moment Conner thought for sure he'd be turned away for what had to be amongst one of the worst lies he'd ever told. Instead Langstrom turned and gestured to the truck. "I've still got some equipment up and running. If you don't mind filling out some paperwork, we can talk while you save lives."

Get into the van full of blood with the possible vampire. Conner was going to be very dead. He glanced around, trying to decide if the possibility of an eyewitness would deter Langstrom if it turned out he really was a werebat.

Langstrom stepped up to the truck and Conner followed.