The stiff paper rustled and clicked, filling the otherwise quiet cell with a sense of something he couldn't put a name to. The camera blinked in the corner, an ever present reminder of his position.

God he wished he could turn away from that light, blink, blink, blink. Funny thing was, it wouldn't have been so bad if the blinks had been consistent, like they'd been before. Sometime in the past few days he'd pissed off one too many people, and they thought it was the only punishment they could get away with.

It made him resentful on two levels, an insult on top of the screwing over of his already erratic sleep schedule. Visits to the lounge were also longer, and more of the freaks were paying attention to him, spurred on by Quinn's interest.

Shaking the feeling that they were planning something else, he tried to focus only on the cards he couldn't see in the dark. He shuffled the deck of cards, cutting them and performing sleight of hand tricks for his nonexistent audience.

The small weight was a small comfort, the familiar, of oft-unused motions of his hands allowing him to bleed off some of the unwanted energy lurking beneath his skin while going over the information he'd already gathered did the same for his mind.

His schedule was the same as it had been since he'd first gotten to the asylum. Guard rotations had changed, but only the names. (Two names in particular he wouldn't mind making special plans for – candy thieves.) The layout hadn't changed despite an unsettling amount of breakouts and his no new security measure of any worth had been installed.

There were only a few things he needed, and a few hours of unbroken sleep before he could set anything in motion. A few nights ago he'd tried s light workout and been appalled at how far he'd slipped, that ruled out enough potential plans without adding sleep deprivation to the list.

Damn camera.

He considered flipping the thing off, but there was no guarantee of anyone watching right then and he didn't want to waste the energy on something that pointless.

Cards moved between his fingers and he watched it, the little light blinking away on him. Another sound added to the scratching of paper, but he didn't turn towards it until the door slid open.

"You said I had three months." He said, the smell of honey and spice filling the cell.

x

x

x

'Batgirl, just…'

"Don't tell me to calm down O." Steph slammed her fist into a ninja's – yes Tim she was calling them ninjas, she didn't care what the technical term was – face, pulling down his mask in the process. A cloud of knockout gas took him out and stepped over his limp form, still steaming.

It wasn't night of the ninjas that had her all riled up, but what she'd caught those ninjas doing specifically. She knew from personal experience that gang wars were bloody and painful, and just no fun for anyone involved, yet Bruce didn't deem the risk high enough to get involved personally.

A distraction, he said. Like that meant it would be any less of a catastrophe if the thing did break out.

Focus on the league, there's always something more going on beneath the surface with them. They'd barely looked at the evidence she'd scraped together before deciding it wasn't important enough to investigate further and sent her to play ninja tag while they looked for the ringleader.

Like everyone in the whole Batman Incorporated thing, she was expected to shut up and follow their master plan. Well, she had her own cases to work on, cases that had nothing to do with ninjas or al Ghuls and it was just pretty freaking rude of them to make her drop everything for them when they wouldn't even look at a little picture and tell her if it had something to do with a potential freaking gang war in the city they all said they loved so much.

'Someone's hacked the camera in Hood's cell.'

It was kind of funny how Barbara's voice could startle Steph out of her thoughts more effectively than the scream of the thug rolling on the ground clutching his crotch.

'Who is it?' Bruce's voice was even more gruff than usual.

'Switching to auxiliary.'

"Wait, you have extra cameras in his cell?" Steph asked, any amusement she felt art watching the whimpering thug whittling away. "You guys are super creepy."

Dicks words were cut off by the curse Barbara hissed out.

'It's her. Patching to all vehicles.'

Steph hopped over the thug in her haste to reach her cycle. With just a second of hesitation she flicked the mounted screen on, she ignored her unease, choosing to instead focus on the fact that hers was included in the 'all vehicles' group.

Talia sat stood at the foot of the bed, her face turned away from the camera, but it was pretty clear by the way Jason watched her that she was talking.

While Bruce asked about audio, Steph looked at the way Jason was sitting.

There was no slouch in his posture, but he didn't have that crease between his eyes either, and he slowly dipped something in the little tea cup he was holding, nodding along to whatever Talia was saying.

Jason reached for one of what Steph would guess were cookies sitting on a tray, but Talia was suddenly in front of him, gripping his wrist in one hand. Jason's only reaction was to frown as he let her turn his arm over for a second before he tugged it back.

Jason said something and Talia shook her head. She patted the side of Jason's face before she made a motion with her hand and a group of ninjas strode into the room. They gathered up the tea set, but left the tray behind, Talia following after.

Barbara hadn't been able to get any audio, and Bruce didn't get to the asylum fast enough to catch Talia before she left. Steph wasn't sure why that made her glad.

x

x

x

The tiny stub that was all Jason had left on his pencil scrapped against the pages of the book that he found so much more interested in than the girl dressed as a giant bat standing in his cell.

"What happened to the cards?" She asked, dropping her bag at her feet.

The pencil slipped from his fingers and he cursed before taking it up again and looking at the piece of wood like it had insulted his mother. Steph wondered how he had sharpened it down to that length when he wasn't allowed any sharp edges.

She was supposed to be asking him about Talia, but she couldn't find a way to do it that didn't end with her face getting bashed in. Or maybe she was just at loss as to how she was supposed to deal with him without that weird guilty feeling that she was sure she shouldn't have felt creeping up her chest again.

"Hoooood." She stage whispered, a grin spreading across her face as she noted the way his eyebrows twitched.

"I didn't kill anyone, leave me alone." He said, giving up on the pencil, he tossed it at her forehead with a flick of his fingers.

"Ow! Hey!" One of her hands flew up to the point of impact. It hadn't hurt, but that didn't mean it wasn't a shock to have tiny projectiles thrown at her face.

His eyes roamed to the camera in the corner of his cell and he cut his chuckle short, snapping his book shut. "Just ask what you came to ask already." He pushed a handful of hair away from his face.

"Fine, are you planning domination, world or otherwise with Talia al Ghul?" Steph asked, kicking the little pencil stub at her feet across the cell,

"No."

"Great." She dragged her stool to her corner and pulled out her homework. Chem, Math, English, she flipped through her various soon-to-be overdue subjects and wondered which one she'd needed the grade most on.

The good grade she'd gotten on her book report pushed English down a bit lower on her priority list, and she had a really long back log of chemistry to work through, but she was kind of worried she'd flunk math if she relied on her final exam to carry her through.

She reached into the bag for another stack of papers, but her fingers closed around another book instead. She waited for him to turn away before she pulled the book out and threw it at him.

His hand shot out, grabbing the book before it could fly into his bemused face. "Fuck! What are you doing?" Jason sat up fully, his face scrunched up while the spine of his book creaked in his hands.

"Haven't figured it out yet." She said, going through the assignments again. The way things were going lately, she doubted she'd have time to make a passing grade anyway, so did it really matter what she finished? She felt Jason's piercing gaze on her while she tapped a glittery pencil against her lip. "What?" She asked twirling the pencil.

"Nothing." He settled back down slowly, his eyes flickering back to her every few seconds as he began paging through his new book.

"Have you read that one?" She asked, looking up from the paper.

"What'd Batman do to piss you off?" He ran his fingertips along the title 'Crime and Punishment' embossed on the soft cover.

"Nothing." She turned back to her school work, idly playing with the stapled corners. "It's just, the league of shadows isn't Gotham's only problem, ya know? I get they're a big deal, but he just zeroes in on that one thing and expects us to do the same. I find a lead and he says it's not important enough, even when a freaky ninja says it is. I mean, I bet if Tim found it, he'd… " she looked up at Jason's non-committal frown and sighed. "Nevermind."

"What's the lead?"

"What?" Her head snapped towards him so fast she almost got whiplash.

"What'd ya find?" He flipped to the front of the book, and trailed a finger over the lines of words as he read.

"A crest I think, from a ring or something." She got out the digital camera she used for casework and pulled up the picture. "See." She turned the screen to show him.

He squinted to see the picture from across the room. "Where'd ya find that?"

"In a room full of dead people." She blinked at the growl that prompted from the grouchy boy and shrugged to show she was serious.

"Fuck, only in Gotham." He pushed his hair away from his face again and she got a glimpse of his red tinted ears. "You find the guy who had it on him?"

"No, we don't really know who most of them are, were." She gave herself a mental shake to get the image out of her head before she continued. "The, the uh, victims…" that was a good word to use for that right? Jason grunted impatiently and she decided it would just have to do. "The victims were too badly…" She made a few chopping motions with her free hand. "… for us to identify, well most of them."

Jason scrubbed a hand over his face and shut the book.

"You know what it is?" She asked, tucking the camera away and leaning anxiously.

"I have an idea." His bottom lip disappeared between his teeth and his hands twitched before he pulled the book closer towards himself and looked at the door.

He was quiet long enough for tension to spread throughout the room. Steph gathered up her books, pretty sure that was all she was going to get out of him until he spoke again.

"It's a broche, not as fancy as it looks, but one side was melted away in a meth explosion. Fucker still wore it, thought it made him look tough." He was running his fingers along his book again, studying the cover like it held all the answers of the universe.

"So, you knew him?" Steph asked nervously, thinking of the grisly scene she'd found that night, no way those deaths had been painless. If she found out that one of her friends had been there she doubted she'd ever have a good night's sleep again.

"I know what you're thinking, stop." He chuckled darkly, that same sound that had her convinced he was going to jump up and kill someone. "Whatever happened, the bastard deserved it maybe worse." He brushed a hand over his mouth. "Was a pimp in the narrows, been operating for years." He sent looked at her, cold fury pouting from his narrowed eyes. "Specialty was kids."

Steph hugged her books to her chest, trying to protect her heart from the ice she could feel creeping into her veins. "You, so, you know his name?"

"Jan Rizzo." He spoke the name like a curse. "Guy's out for his head woulda been a mile long." He plucked the spoon out of his cereal bowl and began tapping it against his knee.

"Yeah but, Jay, there were a lot of them, like a real lot. You think he'd a been there if it was a hit?" She pointed at him with her pencil.

"Mighta been, if there was more than one gang involved." He laid back on his bed, and poked his cheek with his tongue. "Mighta been a power play 'f its someone new."

"And I bet Mister Crime Lord knows who?" Steph clasped her hands in front of her hopefully.

"Tch, no." Jason scoffed, lacing his hands behind his head. "I've been on lockdown for nine months."

"Oh." She tossed her schoolwork into her bag, she'd given up on getting any work done that night, and she didn't want to risk leaving something behind like she had the 'Oliver Twist' book. Her sparkly pencil rolled off her lap and fell to the floor, clattering loudly against the tiles as it rolled towards the door, bumping into the useless stub of Jason's pencil.

She hesitated before picking it up, her hand resting above for a second before she plucked it up off the ground and made the snap decision to pocket the stub.

She threw him her pencil and he caught it effortlessly. "Thank for you help anyway."

He looked at the pencil, rolling it around between two fingers and watching the light play off it's surface, leaving little blips of pink-tinted light playing across his face and the nearby wall like a miniature disco ball.

"Fuck." He growled softly and closed one big hand around the piece of wood and lead.

Stephanie frowned, ready to jump to her feet. If he was going to get moody every time she tried to be nice she was going to give up and…

"I know a guy, but he won't talk to just anyone." Going by the look on his face Steph would have sworn Jason was pulling teeth from his mouth instead of words. He looked at her, his expression shifting a dozen times and way too fast for her to pick out any one emotion. "How much are you willing to risk?"

"Why?" She asked wringing her hands in her lap and wishing she hadn't put 'all' her books away.

"Cause he might talk to the Red Hood's 'sister'."

"Crap." She said. It was bad enough having low level thugs interrupting her patrols, and hard proof was all the heavy hitters were waiting for before taking the risk at going after a bat. She bit down on her bottom lip while she though, going so far as to actually draw blood.

Getting so involved in the Gotham underworld was stupid, if there was any other possible way to get what she needed she would have taken it, but she didn't. She didn't have the same iconic presence as Batman and Robin, or Tim's information network, or Cass's ability to scare the crap out of people with just a word.

Only one of those people would help her, and that one person was in Hong Kong with problems of her own.

Jason, however dangerous his help was all she had.

"There could be a gang war Jason." She said, steeling herself with her growing resolve. She loved Gotham, and she wasn't going to let it sink into chaos again. "I'm willing to risk everything."

He scrubbed his hand over his eyes, a weary sigh escaping his lips. "Don't be too brave Blondie." He held out his hand. "Give me something to write on."