It had been pure chaos since the moment they realized what Bruce was doing.

Tim still felt his heart beating in his throat as he rushed into the Diner, Dick hot on his heels, but it was too late. They were too late. There was no sight of Jason or Jasmine anywhere.

"What the fuck, Bruce!"

It was rare seeing Dick so pissed off. Alfred had mentioned multiple times that before Jason passed away, the family eldest and Bruce would get in very "colorful" screaming matches. Tim found it hard to believe since the Dick Grayson he knew was cheerful and kind and was always there to check on Tim.

That was until he saw him lose it about the creepy display in the Batcave with Jason's old uniform in it.

"What have you DONE?"

"The girl is suspicious, I had to-"

"You had NO RIGHT to jump in like that, without telling anyone. What the hell were you THINKING? That Jason would come back home? That he would say 'thank you daddy for putting my girlfriend in jail'!?"

Duke looked at Tim, asking for help. Poor thing probably knew even less than him.

"Calm down, son. There is a perfectly fine explanation."

"You mean Babs' research? The research she is aware it's incomplete as hell?"

"You talked to Barbara."

With a heavy sigh, Tim tuned out the drama and went back to the front door to turn the sign to 'Closed' and pull down the blinds. If shit was going to go down they needed as much privacy as they could.

Good thing the diner was empty or this spectacle would have made headlines tomorrow. It was not by chance - Bruce had rented the place for the rest of the day and dismissed the staff. Tim assumed it was because they couldn't bring her into the cave for interrogation, but didn't want to be seen taking her to an abandoned warehouse in his civilian clothes.

"What?"

Tim turned when there was silence in the diner.

"What do you mean she experimented on him?"

Bruce was quiet, Duke and Cass were watching in silence. Only Dick's heavy breathing was heard.

"Jason died again when he stayed behind to evacuate the building. She used Lazarus Waters to bring him back."

"What?" Dick had heard correctly, but he was processing. "How? How did she have access to-"

"That's what I wanted to know."

Dick huffed and crossed his arms. "That doesn't excuse… this," he made a vague gesture at the empty diner. "We could have asked nicely."

"And you would believe anything she says? Dick, she is an Arkham psychiatrist. She chose to work in Arkham and in her application paper she explained how she was interested in the hows and whys someone turns to crime. Sound familiar?"

Dick was already Robin by the time Harley Quinn came to be. He knew who she was, what happened to her, how brilliant she was.

All the fighting left the man's body as the words made sense in his mind.

"She wouldn't."

"You don't know that."

"She wouldn't, Bruce. Not to him."

"She already had, Dick. Jasmine Fenton has been purposely hiding her connections with her parents, registering as 'Jasmine Nightingale' in Arkham. She pays rent only in cash, and when I asked what her landlord knew about her, he said she was very reserved about her past but said she was from Ohio."

So many red flags.

Tim saw the moment Dick was starting to crumble - with so much suspicious evidence against her, even with incomplete research, he would have interrogated her as well.

"In any case we will know for sure shortly. Jason just left with her and he will do his own interrogation." Bruce pulled a small device from his jacket pocket. He tapped the screen for a moment and soon they heard voices.

"- depends. How much haven't you told me?"

Everyone winced at Jason's hurt tone.

"Is not much, what I haven't said. But it's important. So important that telling you will put you at risk."

"Because you'd need to kill me?"

Dick and Bruce looked at each other.

"No. Because people could come for you and hurt you like they want to hurt me… and my brother. "

Bruce's frown was small, but everyone knew it was his "I'm confused but won't show it" face.

"It all started when my brother died. It was an accident in my parents' lab, but he still died when a portal to another dimension opened over him."

"The accident."

"It wasn't just a shock."

"Then why hide it? It's the scientific breakthrough of the century."

"Shh." Tim wanted to hear the conversation.

" - what my brother became after dying was not exactly that. Not human, not a ghost, something in between. He was both but neither, a complete rarity that hadn't been observed in millenia. He was just fourteen."

Bruce flinched. Danny was just a child.

"At first I didn't know, he only had his best friends helping him; but when I found out I supported him wholeheartedly and soon we became 'Team Phantom'."

"Still it doesn't explain why there's nothing about this in the research."

"Shh!"

Dick softly slapped Tim in the shoulder, annoyed at being shushed.

" - the portal thing was a desperate attempt at making a stable gateway to the Ghost Zone, the Infinite Realms, or what you could call the Land of the Dead, the Other Side, the Underworld, or even Hell. Their idea was to snatch a ghost and use it to prove they weren't mad. Have you read their research about ectobiology?"

"Skimmed it."

"They sound crazy, right? But they only had guesses and conjectures. They needed proof. They needed to dissect a ghost."

"Now they have it. Your brother."

"They don't even know about him. It's one of our biggest secrets. Because they hate my brother's ghost side, Phantom, who had fouled every attempt they made at capturing a ghost to rip apart."

"If they find out…"

"They'll kill him. Or not. Maybe I'm wrong and they'll accept Danny just the way he is, but I'm not taking that risk."

"Oh shit." Duke looked kind of nauseous. Tim didn't blame him.

Bruce wasn't looking better either, but he held on until they had more information. He was right. After all, she could be lying and just saying stuff to manipulate Jason into pitying her - it was messed up, but not outside the realm of possibility.

Tim sighed and pulled out his own handheld bat-device, sending a message to Oracle to start looking into the veracity of what Jasmine was saying.

"I am… I was human. I think so, at least. My parents are bright scientists, but the world kind of fades away once they get obsessed with a project. Things like lab safety, vulnerable children or proper care of dangerous substances just… By the time I realized the impact all that contamination would have on us, it was too late. Danny and I were already different, and it only got worse once the portal was activated and more and more stuff kept coming from the other side."

"So your parents did experiment on you."

"They don't even know what liminality is. They did it by accident."

"Bruce."

"I know."

"Bruce." Dick's expression was desperate. "She needs help, not an interrogation."

"Let's not rush into conclusions-"

"It's rich that you are the one saying we shouldn't-"

"The accident part is true." Tim stopped the building argument. "Danny's accident. There were security cameras in the laboratory."

Barbara managed to get the recordings now that she knew what to look for and sent them to him. Tim skimmed the videos, but it was enough to check they weren't tampered with. It wasn't a pretty sight, and that was without listening to the audio.

"Why didn't you run away? If it was so dangerous."

Jason spoke before Tim could show the videos to the others. Everyone looked at the device on the table, surprised to hear such vulnerability in his voice. Lately all they heard from him were growls and shouts and sassy taunts.

"And go where? CPS wouldn't help us, our parents weren't doing anything illegal on the surface, they didn't hit us, and we had food and shelter. And even if they cared and took us away from that house, I wasn't willing to get separated from my brother.

"But that was before the portal. After the portal worked and Danny became what he is now, we definitely couldn't leave. Ghosts realized there was a tasty permanent rip into our world and came to cause havoc and generally try to take over the world. We were the only ones that could do anything about it."

"Oh no."

"Is she implying-?" Duke looked up at the eldest sibling.

"How did we never hear about this?"

"We protected humans and ghosts alike. At first just from my parents and other local ghost hunters. Once word got out about the portal's success, they came in like sharks smelling blood. But they didn't care about good or bad ghosts, they didn't care about the difference between a halfa, a liminal or a full on ghost. If you were touched by death, they would put you in a cell and cut you open to see what's inside. Or destroy you on sight."

"The Ghost Investigation Ward." Bruce and Jason said at the same time. The man leaned back on the seat, rubbing his face with a hand. "Her own damn parents work for that organization."

They heard the click of the safety lock of a gun and then the muffled thud of something being placed next to where the bug was.

Tim made a face. Has been Jason pointing a gun at his girlfriend all this time? That was beyond messed up. All of this was completely messed up and things won't ever be the same after today, he was sure of it. Even if Jasmine was innocent and actually was a victim in this whole story she was telling, there was no guarantee that she would want to go back to how things were.

He didn't know Jason very well, but he had seen how he behaved with Jasmine, and more than once he had wished he could see that softness from up close. It was rare finding happiness in this line of work. To see it crash and burn from the front row seat was… depressing.

"You are liminal."

"Danny and I did our own research. Those papers-" There was an intake of breath, subtle, but the microphone picked it up. Then sounds filled the empty diner, papers rustling and falling onto a table, maybe. The bug captured clearer voices, too. "I was starting to change. My body was irreversibly transforming the closer I became like my brother."

"But you didn't die."

"Not yet. But I will. We don't know when, we don't know how. We don't even know if I will become a ghost when I die. There is reason to believe I will, but."

Tim pulled up the mentioned research, reading some parts of it with the new knowledge. It was professional-looking, with proper academic format and structure; but the contents hit different once you personally knew the studied subject.

There was a part rating the physical changes by pain and how long they took to settle. A graph relating cell deterioration with time since last consumption of ectoplasm. A detailed report of symptoms and comparison with starvation in human bodies, with an estimation on how long it would take for the subject- for Jasmine to die if she didn't accommodate the extra needs.

Jasmine had suffered for years and recorded it all so they had precise information in case they found someone else like her.

"I'm not the only one that's liminal, though. Danny's friends are also affected, although in a lesser way. And Vlad Masters, and you."

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"That's how I knew. How I really knew about you and Red Hood. I know you died and came back, but I don't know the details!" There was a subtle growl picked up by the microphone. "I just can sense it coming from you. But it's weird, it's muddy, and you really can't hide your ectosignature at all."

"Did you know about this?" Dick asked Bruce, but he was shaking his head.

"We need to make proper scans and for that Jason has to go to the Cave. If there is a radiation signature for those affected by the Lazarus Waters, we need to know."

"Yeah, as if Jason would want anything to do with you after this."

Bruce at least had the decency to look conflicted.

"He didn't before anyway."

"He at least talked to us. He was starting to open up, B." Dick didn't look angry anymore. Just disappointed.

"What was in this?"

"Ectoplasm, filtered ectoplasm. I have no idea what are the 'Lazarus Waters' or why Batman mentioned it."

Tim noticed the specification of 'filtered ectoplasm'. In the liminality research he saw a comparison somewhere about the effects of filtered and unfiltered. He sent a message to Oracle to follow up on that.

"What did you do to me?"

Everyone tensed. This was it.

"You would have died if I didn't-!" She was cut off abruptly. "I took a gamble. I knew you were liminal and ectoplasm would heal you, but I didn't know exactly what's wrong with your body or how much you could take. I didn't have time to test it. Your heart was about to stop when I decided to use it."

"So all the bullshit about CPR…"

"No, that really did happen," Jasmine chuckled, but it was weak. "I needed to keep the heart pumping as you absorbed the ectoplasm or it wouldn't have worked."

Bruce's face was unreadable.

"She's telling the truth. The research says that liminals can be healed from injuries by consuming ectoplasm. If used on a dead subject, there is a chance that the body will come back without the conscience."

Tim didn't cower at the look everyone gave him. He had minced the words, Jazz's research was a bit more graphic on the way a dead creature became a mindless bloodthirsty monster if it was revived instead of just healed. They had examples with small animals and the details on the process.

"What will this do to me?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know!?" Tim jumped at the sudden rise of Jason's tone.

"You died and came back, but aren't a halfa. Liminal, but your body had barely changed beyond fast healing. I don't know if the dose I gave you was enough to kickstart anything or do anything more than heal your wounds. I would need to test some things, but-"

"Don't."

"Ok." They all heard the emotion in her voice. How it broke. How she spoke lower next. "I won't."

If she was an actress, she was a good one.

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. This was such a mess in more senses than one.

"When you said they would come for me…?"

"The GIW. They are after my brother. They would do anything to get to him, to us, to me. They have the means to find people with ectosignatures, very short range, not much to worry about - but they didn't know I was here, in Gotham. They do know now, because these were behind so much security they will want to know who did it. It's enough of a singularity to warrant coming here to check by themselves, and once they sweep the city with the detectors-"

"They'll find me as well. And won't hesitate to kill me."

"And if they learn you know me they will torture you to get to me. And my brother."

"Let them try."

"They are not the only ones that will come. Vlad Masters has ways to know he is being investigated. When he gets here, he won't be so nice."

"Bruce!"

"Oracle is the best as what she does, Dick-"

"But we have never dealt with ghosts before. We don't know-"

"We could ask Jasmine."

"She won't talk to us after this." Tim wanted to tear his hair out. They could have a war going on in Gotham and the only one that could help them would be pissed off after today.

He wanted to kill Bruce.

"Who are you?"

Everyone stopped talking about strategies and what could be done to look at the device on the table. That was the question. Who was this woman? What did she want in Gotham?

"I'm just someone that stepped up when no one else could, someone that didn't know what she was getting into. We wanted to be heroes and bit more than we could chew."

"Danny and you?"

"Danny, his friends, and I. We tried our best, and the situation only got worse. Much worse."

"Why not call the real heroes? The Justice League?"

Tim glanced at Bruce, but he was frowning with his 'I don't have any idea of what's going on' frown.

"We would know if something as big as this was happening." He answered the unasked question.

"We tried, but it was brushed off as a prank call. It wasn't until much later that we realized we weren't abandoned, it was just the GIW hiding the whole 'ghost problem' thing; but the damage was done, we had accepted that help wouldn't come and rolled with it."

Uh, oh.

"Tim?"

"On it."

He furiously typed as he sent Oracle what they needed her to check, since he couldn't do it with the small device. Soon enough he heard back from her.

"There were five calls to the official Justice League number from Amity Park Illinois, in the span of three months. And ten more emails, but those were dismissed and classified as spam." Tim looked Bruce in the eye. "Bruce, they can't fake these. It's directly from the League's server records."

The man looked down at the device, as if it could tell him why this was happening. Bruce rarely made such a lost and haunted expression. The realization that there was a cover up so big that an entire town had been through Hell for decades did that to you. They screamed for help multiple times until they gave up because no one would answer.

Cass, who had been quietly watching everything going on, hugged the hunched form of Bruce, trying to hold him together as he processed.

"Thank you," he murmured in her direction.

"B, we have to help." Dick pressed on.

"I know."

"There's more you aren't telling me."

"That's correct."

Bruce perked up a little. There was more to it than what she already said?

"And you won't say it."

"I can't."

"Can't or won't?"

"Right here, right now, I can't. You will need proof, Batman will need proof, and I need Danny for that."

"Why?"

"Can't say it."

"See? She would have told us everything, Bruce." Dick had bounced back to pissed off, walking away for a moment to pace around the diner. "She is not a villain, she is not Harley."

"She talks about proof."

"Danny has this proof." Duke looked at his foster parent. "Something regarding his halfa status?"

"It's something she can't say."

"Why couldn't she say it?" Tim thought out loud.

"Spies?" Cass chimed in. "Ghost spies?"

It made sense. Ghosts could be great spies - undetectable, invisible, quiet. And if they were like in the movies, could get practically anywhere without triggering traps or alarms.

Tim went back to his device and left a note to look into ways to protect oneself from ghosts.

"Alright. I'll let it go, for now. I do have one last question."

"Shoot."

"Did you approach me on purpose?"

Dick stopped pacing. Tim stopped writing down ideas. Bruce froze in place.

Jason's voice was so small, so weak, so unlike himself. Did he know he was being listened onto? He would rather die than be caught so vulnerable.

"No!" There was a sound of furniture scraping against wood, someone stood up. "No, no, no. Please tell me you haven't thought that all this time?"

"It crossed my mind a few times."

"Well I didn't! It was by complete and absolute chance! I was never supposed to meet anybody! My stay in Gotham is temporary, once my contract ends I have to go back to-"

Jasmine's voice was getting more and more agitated as she spoke. Desperate.

"I- I wasn't supposed to get noticed, by you, by Batman, by anybody!"

"Yet you know a lot about us. About me."

"I did some research, but-"

"You knew who I was. You told me yesterday that you investigated Red Hood-"

"Because it was interesting!"

There was a bit of silence and someone else stood up, Jason, probably. Then, he said in a low voice the microphone almost didn't catch. "You expect me to believe that?"

"I didn't know who you were when I moved in. Really." They all heard her breaths, quick and superficial. She was hyperventilating. What was Jason doing? "I didn't even know you were liminal."

"But it helped make up your mind? A nice candidate to test this on, huh? There are few liminals, you said. Maybe you wanted to make me like you, mold me into something you could order around."

"No. Never."

"We have to go. Now." Dick turned around to make a run for it.

"Wait."

"What more do you want, Bruce? You have your answers." He narrowed his eyes. "My little brother needs me."

Bruce and Dick looked at each other for a moment, but neither made a move.

"I'm sorry."

They turned to look at the device on the diner table.

"I never meant for any of this to happen. I was never supposed to feel like this, like I…"

They really shouldn't be listening to this. This felt so wrong in so many ways. It was raw, painful, the way she started to beg even when her breaths were coming short. The way Jason sounded as hurt as she was.

Tim almost asked if they could stop listening in.

"Be honest: Did you intend to tell me all of this?"

"Yes!"

"All of it?" Her silence spoke louder than words. "I see."

"I wanted to! Eventually. There are a lot of secrets, and not all of them are mine to tell."

"Like what you won't tell me now?"

"I thought I had more time! I thought… I thought…"

They really shouldn't be listening to this.

"I don't know what I was thinking. I- I made a mistake. I'm sorry."

The following silence was deafening. This was it, the ending of the love story they all had been following as it bloomed, excited to see their estranged family member find happiness.

Dick looked lost, still halfway between the door and the others, paralyzed. He had been the most invested of the bunch, always asking for updates in the Batkids group chat and lamenting that it was a bummer they couldn't actually talk to her until she was formally introduced.

"Do you have any more questions?"

"No."

The microphone picked up her jagged breaths as she tried to not cry.

"Okay. Then, I'll just- You know where I live. In case you want to ask anything else. Um. Yeah."

There were retreating footsteps and the sound of a door closing. Jason's breathing was still there, as well as when he suddenly took a deep breath. It was unlikely that he would cry, especially since he knew there was a bug there, but his silence was enough.

There was a chime, a phone notification, maybe, and he picked up the phone.

More silence. Footsteps. And then rustling noises as Jason fished for the bug.

"I hope you guys are happy."

There was barely time to dwell on how his voice was charged with emotion because there was so much noise and a horrible crunching sound when the bug was crushed under Jason's boot.

"That's it."

Everyone looked at Dick.

"Let's go."

"What?" Tim protested as he was being dragged by his arm.

"We are going to fix this."

"Dick, I don't think-"

"You shut your mouth, Bruce! This is your fucking fault!" Duke, Cass and Tim jumped at the outburst. "I can't believe this. After everything we've been through, after all the catharsis and conversations, have you learned nothing?" Dick was breathing heavily. "If you had just stopped for once in your fucking life and consulted us we could have made a better plan!"

"I had reasons to believe she was not good for-"

"Then we would have dealt with it as a family, Bruce. We," he made a gesture encompassing the others, "are a family, we discuss things together, not rush into accusing people and not telling anyone what's going on!" His eyes started watering with emotion. "It is not you against the world, Bruce. Never was. Family takes care of each other, supports each other. That also means sharing the burden with each other."

You could cut the following tense silence with a knife.

Bruce didn't say anything, maybe because he had nothing to say, maybe because he knew Dick was right. He just looked into his eldest son's eyes with an unreadable expression.

"I'm going to find my little brother and I'm taking the kids with me."

"Kids?" Duke asked Cass, confused. She pointed at Tim, Duke and herself with a little smile.

"Let's go."

Tim and the others followed without protesting, not really wanting to deal with the fallout of Bruce's actions. Dick walked with them in a quiet rage, contained, until they were all in his car and with the seatbelts on.

"Dick?" Tim extended a hand to put it on his brother's shoulder. He chose the front seat just for this reason.

His brother took a deep breath, his grip on the steering wheel tightening.

"They looked so happy together, Tim." His voice was soft, quiet, a big contrast to the unhinged tone back at the diner.

"I know."

"Jason looked so happy."

Dick exhaled slowly, controlling the tears, the slight trembling of his hands. He leaned forward until his forehead rested on the steering wheel, staying there for a moment.

He didn't start the car. The others didn't comment on it. They were thinking the same thing - it didn't matter if they rushed in to talk things out. There was nothing they could do.

"I still don't think this is a good idea, Nightwing."

"Maybe it isn't, but he turned off his phone and I'm worried."

"About? That he skipped town?"

Red Robin turned to look at his brother when the other didn't answer. He didn't blame him - it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility if Red Hood decided to vanish from the face of Earth once more.

"What if he really left?"

It had been a day since the whole clusterfuck happened, after all. It was plenty of time for Jason to pack his things and leave Gotham without a trace.

At first he just ignored their texts and calls, then he left the Batkids group chat and finally that morning he turned off his phone so he couldn't be tracked. Last known location was his apartment so that's where they were going first to investigate if he had actually left.

"Then we find Jasmine and apologize to her. Is the least we could do."

That's if she wants to talk to us, Tim thought, but didn't say out loud.

Soon the building was on their sights. Jason's window was dark, but Jasmine's had a light on. First they checked that Jason's apartment wasn't empty, but the presence of his alarms and silent traps on the window told that he was still using that safehouse.

Dick breathed out in relief.

Tim did too, but he wasn't so sure if that was a good or bad sign - a pissed off Red Hood could be dangerous.

Then they went to check Jazz's apartment and apologize, if she wanted to talk to them, that is. Nightwing took advantage that the young woman had complete disregard for her safety and didn't even have locks on her window. He carefully jumped towards her fire escape stairs and looked in-

He froze.

Fearing the worst, Tim looked in as well, finding a sight he wasn't sure he would ever be capable of scrubbing out of his brain.

Jasmine was sitting on her kitchen table, passionately making out with a guy. One of her legs was around his waist and pulling him impossibly closer to her; the other was held against his side by one of his hands, the grip gentle but firm, as if he tried to feel her thigh through the fabric of her jeans.

Her hands were around him, grasping his shirt like a lifeline as they kissed, completely lost in the moment. She buried her fingers deeper on his back when the man kissed down from her mouth to her throat, moving her head to the side to give him more room.

From their angle they couldn't see who the guy was but, hell, she moved on pretty fast, huh.

Jasmine opened her eyes, finally noticing them looking from the window.

She screamed. They screamed. The dude turned around to see.

It was Jason.