The tension in the city was growing more and more every day. Tim was so busy he hardly showed up at the fancy business college he'd just been starting to put some effort into.
Bruce stopped looking into the league of shadows' involvement only a few days after Jason vanished from Leslie's clinic. The original Batman was patrolling the streets more than he had since he'd gotten back from his little time jump adventure, and he was not going easy on the criminals unlucky enough to get in his way.
That week notes were made and filed away in the safest corner of her mind to never be the source of interruption for one of his ongoing investigations. She almost felt sorry for the ringleader or ringleaders when they eventually found them. She had a feeling they were going to wind up in a lot of pain for a long time.
Everyone was tiptoeing around the man, even Dick and Damian, who patrolled way out of his way as Nightwing and Robin.
Lucky Cass for getting back to Hong Kong when she did.
A week went by, and Steph didn't see any sign of Jason.
Steph was beginning to feel a little silly for hoping he'd show up again, even if she was a little peeved he'd left without a word or a sign that he's even had somewhere to go. Aside from the glittery cards, he hadn't given her any reason to believe she'd ever see him again, and the more she thought about the more it seemed like they were just a last joke he'd left behind like the asshole he was.
Then again, if he had any clue how much ferocity Bruce was putting his search – and she didn't doubt that he did – she could see how he would want to keep as low a profile as possible. It wasn't like he could just show up at her college for a chat.
More and more criminals were turning up in the hospital, whether they had any connection to the Red Hood or not.
Tim was giving Bruce looks every time they were working together, and it was making everyone else very nervous, maybe even more than if Tim were giving 'them' that piercing detective stare.
She carried the cards with her wherever she went, just in case.
Two weeks after Jason disappeared, the killings started.
Or rather, they actually began to notice the deaths when they turned their investigations from the streets and back to Arkham.
The remaining guards who'd worked more closely with the Doctor, a therapist, four Arkham inmates. All evidence pointing so overwhelmingly to each one being accidents or suicides that the only reason they were investigated as anything else was little snatches of months old camera footage showing them interacting with the Red Hood.
Soon after, that camera footage itself disappeared, leaving them with only the backups in the cave. Files pertaining to the victims, prescription write ups, therapist notes, medical records. Everything was just gone, as if none of those people had ever been in the asylum to begin with.
As if John Doe had never existed at all.
Steph traced her hands over the glittery ridges, thinking of torn palms and shaking fingers.
Another handful of high tier gangsters turned up dead and she found herself actually volunteering at Leslie's clinic just so the old woman could keep up with the chaotic fallout. There was a man with six stab wounds in the room that had been Jason's.
Even the limited view her position answering calls and filling prescriptions for less serious cases was enough to make her stomach turn. If it really was someone making a play for power, they were sure going all out.
Tim took over Bruce's old investigation into possible outside influences. Barbara was calling up contacts everyday in the hopes of finding someone who knew something. Steph rather regretted sending the one informant Jason had given her to prison.
Something new was happening, and whatever it was, it was happening deep in Gotham's underworld. Steph was beginning to regret sending that informant of Jason's to prison.
It had been three weeks, and Jeremiah Arkham, having woken up a few days earlier, had decided to add to the mess by opening his bag fat scrawny mouth and demanding a chance to speak with Batman. He wouldn't say why, but Gordon had passed the message on anyway.
Dick, being the more personal Batman, and the one Arkham had dealt with most got into the suit while Bruce continued on his rampage. It wasn't hard to convince Dick to let Steph tag along for the visit, interrogation, whatever they were calling it.
She was pretty sure the Doctor had something to say about the night he'd gotten the stuffing beaten out of him that would nicely contrast with her account of the event. It was better to be there and know exactly what he said that wait and agonize over it. She knew for a fact the only way she'd get the full account was to be there herself.
They went to the hospital way past visiting hours, and walking through the near deserted halls, even with Dick for company was like a weird reflection of the first time she'd pitched up at Arkham with a paper bag of chili-dogs.
She was about as nervous as she'd been that time too.
Dick didn't offer her a smile the way he would have if he'd been Nightwing, or dressed in anything but the batsuit really, but he tilted his head a little and gave her an encouraging look before they were within sight of anyone.
Yeah, see how long that would last when he knew that she'd helped the person they thought was stirring up all the trouble brewing in the city.
The door was in sight when a loud shriek pierced the hushed hospital air. Dick rushed forward faster than Steph had ever moved in her life, but still didn't manage to catch the screaming nurse who fled the room.
Steph reached the door seconds later, just catching a glimpse of Arkham convulsing so violently only the cuff binding one of his arms to the bed kept him from falling to the ground. Dick ordered Steph after the nurse while he chased a shadow falling from the window and a gaggle of doctors filed into the room.
The nurse was easy to track down, her screaming, and rambling on some foreign language loud enough that Steph was sure it was heard all throughout the hospital. It helped that anyone else moving about through the halls made way for Batgirl without having to be told, always nice when people cooperated, huh?
Following the wailing led Steph into a vacant room quite a ways from where she'd started. A few nurses and a Doctor or two parted from where they'd gathered at the door to let Steph through.
The nurse was crying on one of the beds, still shouting out things that Steph couldn't understand while fat tears rolled down her plump cheeks. Clenched in her fist was an I.V line that she flailed around dangerously when Steph began her approach.
"Okay, it's okay." Steph kept her voice just high enough to be heard by the distraught woman. The nurse's gaze flickered between Steph and the people gathered at the door. Steph hummed softly as she shooed everyone else away from the door and shut it gently. "You're okay, did you get hurt."
The nurse shook her head, but her reply was muffled by her sobs.
'Got away.' Dick swore softly over the comm. 'Batgirl, see if the nurse knows anything.'
Like she wasn't trying that already.
"Just try and relax then, kay?" Steph approached the woman slowly, holding up her hands so they were visible and there was as little chance as possible of her nurse thinking she was going to do something. "Batman'll get the guy." She sat down on the unoccupied stretcher. "Think you can tell me what happened real quick?"
"Don't know where he came from." The nurse sniffed loudly. "I can't lose my job. I…" she devolved into another bout of sobbing. "It wasn't my fault."
"Course it wasn't, we saw the guy, you couldn't have done anything, huh?" Steph rested a hand on the woman's back. "You get a good look at him?"
She shook her head, wiping at her tears with her sleeve. " Was wearing a mask." She took a deep breath. "Covered his whole face, it was dark."
"A mask, kay. Like a ninja mask or a burglar mask?"
"I didn't see." The woman reiterated firmly, looking at Steph with eyes that were steely despite the tears. "Think he was wearing something red, a jacket or something."
"Red jacket." Steph repeated for the sake of those on the other side of the comm. " Y'see what he did to Doctor Arkham?"
She mimed pushing down the plunger of a syringe. "In the I.V. Wasn't me, he just…"
"Wasn't you, I know." Steph got a look at badge pinned to the woman's chest. "Marie, you're not a bodyguard. You couldn't do anything."
'Dead.' Barbara said. 'Doctor just clocked a T.O.D."
'I want a blood sample, and both of you get home for the night.' Bruce spoke up for the first time that night. 'I don't want you on the streets tonight.'
Steph stifled a sigh and wrapped her arms around the crying nurse in a loose hug, not really processing the order.
Dead. Just like that.
If she hadn't been so nervous about coming to meet them, Dick wouldn't have stopped to reassure her, and those few seconds would have been enough to save the Doctor.
'He'll be dead before morning, and I need the data.'
The memory of the Doctors last words sent a shiver down her spine. He needed the data, he said. Like the body of the boy he'd poisoned was just a science project for him to cut open and examine, find out where he'd gone wrong with that freaking cocktail of illegal drugs.
The nurse returned the hug, scratchy hospital scrubs rubbing against Steph's cheek. Her mother wore those same scrubs, it even smelled similar and Steph suddenly felt homesick.
When she finally left the hospital her feet steered her not to her own shabby student apartment, but towards the home of Crystal Brown.
Despite the what-ifs curling around in her mind, she found she couldn't dredge up the guilt she knew she should have felt at the Doctors death. She stopped short of reaching her destination, one foot still raised above the damp asphalt.
Screw it, she was too wired up to go home, and she didn't feel like explaining to her mother why she was wandering around in the middle of the night, Batgirl costume or no. She was going on patrol whether there ninjas running around or not. Wasn't like it was the first time, she could deal with it.
.
.
.
"Don't worry girlie, we won't hurt you, just want a chance to talk to the Hood."
Yeah, the twirling knife and multiple guns trained on her really gave off the vibe of non-hurtyness. There was a bang and she leaped out of the bullets path, spring-boarding over a crook's shoulder and kicking the aggressor in the face.
The ninja – that might not have been the exact description, but she was going with it anyway because Gotham had been ninja central for months – turned out to be the least of her worries.
It was the first time she'd gone on patrol without another bat within three blocks of her in nearly a month, and it turned out that once you went beyond the grunts there were actually some criminals with brains. Those criminals had actually picked up on her alone-ness and decided it was the perfect time to jump her.
Too bad for her it really was the perfect time. Barbara had noticed the current Batgirl continuing patrol as normal and ordered her back home, refusing to let up right until Steph had deactivated her comm and switched up her route.
Her hands were too busy deflecting multiple pointy objects to reactivate either the comm or the trackers and she was starting to get a real idea of just how much trouble she was really in for being thought of as the Red Hoods sister by those afore mentioned slightly smarter criminals.
They all though he was coming back, and that the comeback would be quick and as brutal as his initial take over.
They were all scared and wanted something to bargain with when he came for the heads of all the people who'd broken his rules.
There were a lot of former 'employees' who'd broken those rules, and they'd all chosen that specific night to gang up on her, the assholes. Every time she dropped one another two popped up to try taking her down.
She knew Barbara had sent someone to look for her, so it was just a matter of holding out until her metaphorical cavalry arrived.
A metal beam wielded by a bear of a man was about two inches off from wacking her upside her head. She ducked and flung herself onto a fire-escape, seeking safety in the higher ground, but was peppered by gun fire before her feet even touched the grating, and she was thrown deeper into the dirty alley.
Even through all the body armor layered under her suit it felt like she'd been hit by a truck, the air tearing out of her lungs in a long gasp that she couldn't manage to pull in. Three of her attackers tried to get nearer and found out what a bad idea that was when they were met by the flurry of electric batarangs she tossed haphazardly at the crowd.
Screams and grunts erupted from them all and Steph found her voice to let out a low chuckle as she rolled over and tried to get to her feet. Half a minute and ascension to her knees later she realized that the screams were continuing past the activity and range of her weapons.
A pair of shapes dressed very differently from the average Gotham gangster was moving between the thugs, dropping them like flies. The distance from which a couple of those screams originated told her that most of her attackers had attempted to flee.
Ninjas, Steph sighed as they noticed her notice them and gave up on their pray to stalk towards her.
"Great." She muttered just as a dark pierced her neck.
.
.
.
No silky sheets greeted her cheeks that time, but he shag carpeting felt nice too, and it smelled way better that the one at her apartment. Soapy peppermint, she placed the smell before looking up at the pair of eyes she felt glaring a little hole in the back of her neck – oh wait it was the dart that had made the hole.
"I was of the belief we'd come to an agreement." Talia's rich voice came from somewhere above the girl.
"Can't you just, I don't know make a phone call, or send an email, normal people stuff?" Steph groaned, rolling over and instantly regretting the action as soon as the rooms bright lights pierced her eyelids.
"Your familiarity with the boy doesn't give you the leeway to speak to me as an equal, now get up off the floor before your blood dirties it more."
She would have made a comment about Talia being the one who'd had her dumped on the precious carpet but value for her continued existence had her mouth glued shut.
Psh, familiarity with the boy… like she thought being associated with that asshole would make 'anyone' like her more. "Of course not." She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Why would you even think I'd think that?"
It was a different room from the one she'd been taken last time, but with décor just as extravagant. Her kidnapper was seated at a fancy desk, reading through some pages of Arabic writing. Steph cast a glance at the comfortable looking cream-colored sofas and regretfully took the harder chair across from Talia with a huff.
Talia looked almost curious for a second before she slipped back into her conversing-with-the-peasant frown and shuffled her papers. Steph made a show of studying the soft pink flowers of the desk while she wondered just why the hell the woman was so interested in Jason.
"So uh, yeah, the deal." Steph drew her hand away from the petals and looked nervously at Talia. "I totally gonna ask you for help finding Jason, but then he got away on his own, and now nobody knows where he is, but I bet that's just cause he'd busy plotting his vengeance or whatever and…"
Talia slid a tablet across the desk and Steph's words caught in her throat when she saw the grainy footage of herself dragging Jason through a shady alley.
"Where is he now?" Talia's tone was smooth and even as though she was talking about a paperclip she thought her assistant had misplaces. Granted, judging by the lavishness of her rooms, the paper clip would likely be diamond encrusted gold.
Steph still felt like a wrong answer would get her sent to the morgue.
"I took him to a Doctor, but he left like three weeks ago and I really have no idea where he went."
Talia's eyes narrowed and a finger curled over her lips as she leaned a microscopic inch forward.
After sitting under the scrutiny had become bad enough that Steph broke out in a sweat Talia relented and rested her hands back on the desk.
"Impossible. What did he say before leaving?"
"I was sleeping." Steph flinched a little at the sudden intensity in the woman's frown. "I didn't go home after patrol so I fell asleep on the chair next to his bed, but then he tucked me into the bed before he left and cleaned the room and made these little IOU cards out of glitter and cardboard and he was gone and I, yeah… I uh, don't think he'd gonna come back. Bat's is looking for him too y'know."
She felt the pouch in her utility belt where she'd stashed the cards.
The spiel seemed to pacify Talia back to her general malcontented state, and she snorted out something that could have been amusement or extreme irritation.
"So uh, can I go now?" Steph asked hopefully.
"Not quite." Talia's lips curled downward. "You find yourself indebted to the League of Shadows, and the debt must be settled."
"What?!" Steph pushed back her seat, trying not to be too obvious about eyeing the door. "Hey, backup was on the wa…"
"When the boy does contact you, you will deliver a message." Talia waved away Steph's complaints like a fly buzzing too near her head. "Should you refused you'll find yourself delivering a heavy package to the bottom of this city's harbor."
Steph swallowed and watched quietly while Talia signed the bottom of the pages she'd been working on in flowing Arabic script and sealed them in a plain brown envelope. At least it looked plain, no wires or anything that could have made it dangerous.
Two of her ninjas came in through the door and stood and at a nod from Talia, the blindfold made another appearance.
.
.
.
The next day didn't start off remotely pleasant.
Headaches that make getting your head smashed in feel like a tap with a pillow will do that to a girl. She rolled out of bed and made sure the envelope was safely tucked in one of her thicker text books before stumbling over to her bathroom and drinking and adding 'drink two gallons of water out the tap' to her daily routine.
The smell alerted her before the sight that her fridge had defrosted all over her tiny kitchen floor again. She shivered in disgust when the water soaked through her socks, but carried ion anyway to check if there was anything salvageable in the defunct appliance.
There wasn't. Her milk has gone sour, and melted ice had soaked through all the leftover she'd had stashed away, leaving everything that had once been edible only so much mush.
Because Talia had to be a drama queen and kidnap people instead of just having actual conversations. She hadn't even given Steph a snack like she had the last time, so the girl was too hungry to forego breakfast.
She grabbed the box of cereal that she'd forgotten to put away the previous night and grabbed a handful to chew on as she made her way back to her room. It was a little stale, but took away the pangs in her stomach so she wasn't going to complain about that at least. She's get something better for lunch when she had the time.
Speaking of time, she checked her clock and almost choked on her breakfast when the bright numbers informed her that she'd slept way in.
"Damnit." She growled and tossed the box at her bed. She threw her shoes on over her wet socks and barely remembered to grab her bag before running out the door.
She swallowed some painkillers on her way to the college and while they did wonders driving away the headache, they also made her drowsy enough that she fell asleep in class. Falling asleep wouldn't have been so bad, it being something she did often enough with her nightlife, but she'd fallen asleep in the class of the one teacher who didn't hate her guts and had to sit through a lecture she only half had the energy to listen to.
Lunchtime could not come soon enough, then she realized she'd left any means of paying for lunch at home that morning and was too tired to jog on back to her apartment to pick it up.
"Hey, I saw you fell asleep in class today, you can come over to my dorm to borrow my notes later if you like." Her nap on one of the stone benches outside was cut short.
Steph used a bit more of her limited energy to turn her head towards the guy, Mike something, who'd tried hitting on her in chem ever since she'd shown up in that class. From what she'd seen his noted were illegible enough that she was sure even he couldn't read them.
"Sorry, I already got notes from someone else." Her polite smile was chased away by the yawn that followed on its heels.
"Yeah, well maybe you could come over anyway. We're having this party starts at around eight, mostly on campus students, but I could make an exception for you." He slid into the bench next to her, resting his hand heavily on his splayed palm.
"I have a lot of catch up work to do, fell asleep in class and all, y'know." She discreetly inched away from him. "So, maybe another time huh?"
"Come on, what's the point of college if you don't have a little fun now and then." He chuckled.
She lifted her head from the stone table to make a reply, but someone else across the courtyard caught her attention instead.
He stood taller than any of the students making their way into the building, his hands tucked into a black leather jacket while he tilted his head around like he was looking for something. The orangey hair had been cut away, leaving him with short inky curls that stuck up in a messy nest.
She got to her feet and moved towards him, slowly at first incase he was just some guy and she freaked him out by running forward. He turned and she got a look at his face, no longer sallow and pale, a lock of white hair flopping over his forehead as his teal eyes met hers.
"Hey wait." Mike noticed she'd moved and hurried to catch up. "I still wanted to…" He didn't notice that Jason's long strides were carrying him towards them until the taller boy was right on top of them.
"Hey." Jason's deep voice grabbed Mike's attention almost immediately and plastered a frown on his face.
"Who're you?" The college student asked, mimicking Jason's posture.
"Oh this is my…" Steph looked up at Jason, who sighed and shook his head.
"Jason." He held out his hand, while squaring his shoulders and standing a little taller, he barely gave Mike a chance to answer as he shook his hand. Jason nodded disinterestedly before cocking his head towards the building. "Yeah, scram."
The college student opened his mouth to say something, but took another look at Jason's frown and decided against it. He jogged away, while massaging the hand Jason had shook.
"So scary." Steph whispered a grin on her face as spun to look up at him. "I can't believe you skipped out on me like…"
His body was tense as his intense gaze scanned the crowded courtyard and she was instantly on guard. "There somewhere else we can talk?"