A/N: I've been struggling with writer's block lately and it's put me behind where I wanted to be update wise. But I am glad to have finished this and get it out to you guys. Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics.

The scene was about as gruesome as Bruce expected, if not worse.

The GCPD had the docks closed off, covering and removing the bodies one by one. On the outskirts of the area, standing by the fringes of yellow and black police tape, reporters stood with their cameras rolling, recounting the information that they received in small bits from the authorities. Batman knew that something of this caliber wouldn't be able to be hidden from the media. The news stations gathered as soon as word of the disaster reached their doorsteps, and now there was no turning them away.

Bruce could make out the wheels of their vans and a few reporters, but they were not close enough to see the crime scene or himself. The police had widened the perimeter in order to keep the news at bay and allow them to conduct the investigation in relative peace, without the public catching sight of just how bad it truly was. They'd taken the drugs found in one of the cargo containers before anyone else could get their hands on it, which was one small win in their string of losses.

Batman clenched his jaw, his expression grim beneath the cowl. This was not the first time he'd seen the aftermath of the Red Hood's presence, but it never failed to cause a surge of frustration and anger-at Hood and at himself. This was his city. Hood shouldn't be able to escape his grasp so easily; he shouldn't be able to trample over every defense Batman had without getting caught in a trap.

But the only criminals left at the scene were the ones who'd breathed their last. There were bloody trails from those who'd scampered off before the police arrived, but Bruce didn't need to follow them to get answers. No witnesses were needed for this, and he didn't need the bullets' ID to know the culprit. He recognized the thugs as Black Mask's men, and the damage done was trademark of the Red Hood.

Bruce looked down as he saw movement at his side, Damian stepping forwards towards the bodies. Upon their arrival Bruce had thought to turn to Dick and have him take Damian back to the cave. This was no sight for a child-he'd always felt his stomach churn whenever his young partners had to bear sight to death. Even if it was a part of life, even if they'd already seen or dealt with it, he couldn't help but want to shield them from it once more.

When he'd looked to Damian then, he saw no change-not in posture or expression. Damian walked forwards with no hesitance, stepping around the bodies, examining them like both a detective and a coroner. The sight reminded Bruce that his son was not a normal boy, but a trained assassin who'd seen this type of damage his entire life. Of course he wouldn't be fazed by it. Especially, a voice whispered in the back of Bruce's mind, when he likely had committed murders like this himself.

Bruce quickly shoved that knowledge away, knowing he couldn't afford to deal with it right now. He turned as Nightwing approached, the vigilante's mouth pressed into a hard line. "What did Gordon have to say?"

The man in question stood with a group of officers, hands buried deep in his pockets as they watched bodies be carted off one by one. Bruce looked over at the commissioner as he spoke to Dick, "Nothing we don't already know. The men were here smuggling a shipment of drugs and appeared to be ambushed. Anyone who could have been a witness is long gone and the trails gone cold."

"We don't need a witness to know our suspect," Dick said, following Bruce's train of thought. "It's still the matter of why. And not only that, but how didn't we get notified of this sooner? It was a decent sized brawl."

The thought piqued Batman's interest as well, and he'd dwelled on it for the last ten minutes. He kept a close eye on areas like this nowadays because of how active they were. There should have been an alert, either through him or through Alfred that something was happening. If the alert had sounded, Bruce could have made it here and intervened.

"Mm," Bruce replied, having his suspicions but not articulating them. He looked back to Damian, Dick following his gaze, as the young Robin stood from his crouched position. He made his way back over to them, boots stepping through blood as if they were nothing more than rain puddles.

"There isn't anything left for us here," Damian said matter-of-factly. "It's useless to stay any longer."

Nightwing looked to Batman, clearly waiting to hear what their next move would be. Bruce knew that there wasn't much to find when they knew who was responsible. If anything, they needed clues that leaded to a motive. But he had to go with his intuition and check out his suspicions or else he'd never be able to look to the next step.

"Sweep the scene with the police," Batman said to him. "See if you can find anything worth a deeper look."

Dick didn't need to take orders from Bruce-he was his own hero, no longer a sidekick. But the hierarchy won out; it was Bruce's city, after all. He nodded, not arguing with the arrangement. Before anyone could move, Bruce turned to Damian and said, "Come with me. We're going to do some investigating ourselves."

It was the first time he'd ever seen Damian look taken aback, and speechless as well. The boy stared at Bruce as if he had two heads, and then that look turned to his own sense of suspicion. He looked away from Bruce to Dick, who managed to not look as surprised, instead seeming somewhat impressed. He turned to Damian and gave him a nod, assuring the young boy that they should listen to what Bruce wanted. "Go ahead. I'll meet you back at the cave."

Damian's expression flickered, shifting between reluctance to curious acceptance. Bruce knew this wasn't what his son expected and he probably would have preferred to stay with Dick. But he did not fight the orders, and as Bruce turned and headed away from the scene, Damian followed with a quick stride, sparing a glance over his shoulder only once.

They slipped into the shadows, moving farther from the water and boats to the buildings on the mainland. Damian kept the pace, quiet for about two minutes before he asked, "What is so important that would lead us back here?"

"I have cameras all over the city," Batman replied as they moved at a brisk pace, the sound of police sirens growing quieter the further they drew from the scene. "Feeds that watch the most active places in Gotham. This one should have shown what was happening and sent an alert to the cave."

"So we're going to see why it didn't," Damian answered, glancing at Bruce and frowning, unimpressed with the reason. "And you wanted me to come along for this?"

"Yes," Bruce answered shortly. It was a step for him, an attempt to get Damian to see he was trying to move past their rough relationship so far. Bruce hoped it would give him the idea that he wanted things to be better between them, but he wasn't all that surprised to find Damian resistant to the idea.

He stopped and tilted his head to look upwards at the roof of the building, a sign on the front reading Gotham City Docks. Batman scaled the wall until he reached the roof, looking over his shoulder to see if Damian had followed. For a split second his heart stopped when he saw no one below, the boy disappeared into thin air. Then he sensed motion near him, a figure in his peripheral vision, and he watched as Damian landed quietly beside him on the rooftop.

"You're quick," Bruce commented.

"You should see what I can do when I'm actually trying," Damian replied, perched on the ledge with nothing less than perfect balance. He did not waver, still as a statue.

"Right," Bruce answered, brushing off his son's arrogance. Yes, Damian was no ordinary boy; he had skills and knowledge that rivalled Bruce's own capabilities. But he was only ten and still had much to learn. The way things had been going between them lately, however, kept him from putting Damian in his place.

Instead Batman moved across the rooftop, Damian following slowly. Once there the Bat crouched by the edge and reached his hand down to a space wedged between the roof and the stone wall, right above the sign. Bruce maneuvered his fingers around the familiar latches until they came loose, Damian watching with more patience than expected. Finally the device released from its anchors and Bruce pulled the camera into his hands.

Or, at least, what was left of it. What he produced was a tangle of wires and metal bits, the lens shattered into a spiderweb. It was far from salvageable, and when Bruce dug his fingers into the gaping hole, he felt the insides missing. The memory was likely decimated among the other broken bits, but he couldn't be certain with the massacre.

It was as he suspected, though he wished he hadn't been right. Hood knew about the feed and had gone to destroy it, most likely starting with the signal that would have alerted the cave. Some of the wires, he could see, were cut intricately, and that told him that the damage had been done with the goal of keeping Bruce unaware that anything had been tampered with, while also removing the chance he'd find out about the fight until it was too late.

"The Red Hood can't be this good," Damian said suddenly, brow furrowed as he looked at the broken camera in Bruce's hand. "He may not be the most foolish criminal, but he wouldn't have done this on his own."

"He wouldn't have known where to find the feed," Bruce agreed, looking back at the device. The cameras were so well hidden that he'd never had a problem in the past. No one would be able to figure out where the feeds were placed on their own. The only way to find them was if someone with inside information gave away their locations.

There was only one person Bruce knew who could be sharing those details with the Red Hood.

"Drake is clearly helping him," Damian said, coming to the same conclusion. He knew that had Damian not said it, the thought wouldn't have been voiced. Bruce didn't want to believe that Tim was selling him out with all his secrets, but it all added up. It would be why he hadn't seen the Red Hood on any of the tapes, and affirmed his suspicions that he was purposely avoiding the areas that were heavily under his watch.

He didn't know why. Tim wouldn't do this out of spite; that wasn't like him at all. Bruce knew his partner better than that. If he were to do this, there had to be a reason. What Bruce feared was that it wasn't a reason that was in his favor. If anything, it was one based upon Tim's mysterious beliefs about the Red Hood, and a particular night three months ago.

"We should get back to the cave," Bruce said after a thoughtful minute, depositing the remains of the camera into his utility belt. He could analyze the damage later, even if he wasn't confident that it would give him any answers. "The GCDP will finish with the scene soon. We can see if there is anything else going on."

"Do you think he'll come back?"

Batman looked back at his son, who stood there stiffly, eying Bruce with all the hesitance in the world. He gave away no clue of the answer he was hoping to hear, just waited with tension in his shoulders and strain in his jaw. Bruce recognized the qualities-how could he not? They were ones the two of them shared, despite their many differences.

"When he's ready," Bruce replied. He had to tell himself that Tim would return, eventually. It was the only thing keeping him thinking straight, holding the Bat's focus. If he thought anything else, it would derail him from every other important task that Gotham set before him.

"If he does, what does that mean for me?" Damian said the words boldly, like he was taking a risk with them. "Will you throw me to the side again?"

Bruce wished he could tell Damian that wouldn't be the case. He wanted to say that when Tim came back they would settle everything, that he'd find a way for both of them to be happy. He would make amends and be a better father to both of them. But truthfully, he couldn't be certain what he would do. Bruce only knew that when it came down to it, he usually made the wrong decisions when trying to do the right thing for his sons. Try as he might, someone always got hurt one way or another. He wanted to believe that this time he'd make it right. This time he'd find a solution to accommodate everyone.

The only problem was that he knew better than to believe that.

There was no prediction he could give, no promise he could make. The guilt of it struck a chord deep inside; reminding him that he failed his children yet again. And so he said nothing and turned away from Damian, the coldness between them returning as he left both of them answerless.

There were eyes everywhere in Gotham. Batman's eyes, who searched for crime to stop and people to save. Reporter's eyes, who gave their accounts and theories through the media, spreading images and news like wildfire. There were the viewpoints of every person ever victimized by a villain, petty or A-list. The runaways, the addicts, and even the strays bore witness to something that stuck with them forever. Everyone in Gotham saw a different piece of the city, their eyes capturing each important moment: individual pieces of one large puzzle.

Tim didn't need their eyes. He saw everything through his own.

He sat at his computer, elbows on the desk and hands clasped in front of his face as he stared harshly at the screen. He'd created a web, a network of his own making, that gave him the power to be all seeing and all knowing. There wasn't much that went undetected in the city now that Tim had his eyes on every corner. It held no secrets from him; even the ones that were painful to see.

His gaze held onto the images in front of him-still shots captured from his feeds. There was Nightwing leaping off a building, another of the hero perched on a rooftop waiting to pounce upon unsuspecting criminals. Another was of Batman investigating an alleyway, another of him standing with Commissioner Gordon. But that was not what caught Tim's attention. It was the familiar suit of red and green and the small boy that donned it in each of the photos that meant the most to him.

Tim's eyes narrowed, a bitter taste in his mouth as he took it all in. Jason assumed that he didn't watch the news, that he didn't pay attention to anything more than what they needed to know to get their work done. But Tim had been watching this for a long time now. He was far from unaware that the new Robin was out in the city, and he stood at not only Batman's side, but Nightwing's as well.

The photos told Tim everything about his importance. It showed him that the replacement had not been a one night excursion. No, here was a new Robin at the sides of the two people he'd once looked up to the most. Tim was nothing more than a remnant of the past. His gaze flickered over each image once more before he finally tore himself from them, bringing his hands down to rest on the desk as he glanced off to the side.

It didn't matter. Not anymore.

Tim swept his hand against the computer mouse, closing out of the photos and pulling up a different database. It would take some hacking to get into, but in comparison to some of the codes he'd had to crack, this was simple. He began to type, fingers flying over the keys as his mind worked out the solutions he needed to get access.

Let them replace him. He didn't need them. No, Tim had bigger ideas in mind.

Whether Jason gave up on his plan for revenge or not didn't matter. He'd ended up getting it anyway-getting Tim on his side and away from Bruce. As twisted as it was, Tim didn't mind. The way things had worked out, he didn't feel manipulated in the slightest. This was where their actions had brought them, and as strange as it was, they'd all been genuine.

Tim spent months thinking and dwelling, processing what he knew and how he felt. Free from Batman's hold and code, Tim found he was able to address all of what he felt and what he truly wanted. Things that, underneath Batman's rule, he hadn't been able to truly think about in detail. It would have gone against everything Bruce believed, and that kept Tim from ever considering the thoughts swirling in his subconscious. Justice, not vengeance. That had always been the way.

But in the time away from the code, he'd given deep thought to his goals, letting himself feel the emotions that he'd shoved down for so long. When he'd came to a decision, his mind was clear in his goals, certain of himself. And as Tim hit the final key and the database opened for him, it all began to fall into place.

Jason got his revenge. Now, Tim wanted his.