Chapter summary: Kei avoids costing Gotham millions of dollars in legal fees without noticing. And doesn't go to jail.

The Batmobile screamed down Gotham's streets at the maximum safe speed a human could handle, taking ruthless advantage of lacking midnight traffic and the clear night air. Bruce's gloves maintained such a perfect deathgrip on the wheel that the material was the only reason there would never be fingerprints in the leather. If the Batcomputer recorded his heart rate and cortisol levels spiked from the moment that call tripped the automatic filters, he'd restrict the files later. No one needed to know.

Tim had been missing for seventy-two hours. The tracker in his costume was a dead end, deactivated and strewn across the city along with fragments of his utility belt. When he first vanished, the only alert that hit the Batcomputer was a "signal lost" notification, which intermittently cropped up even when chasing Killer Croc to parts of Gotham where reception suffered. Bruce, Alfred, and Barbara had all expected him to reappear shortly, bursting with new stories of his adventures during his solo patrol.

Robin was a fully qualified fighter and had been running solo patrols for the better part of a year. He'd taken down Rogues with enough resourcefulness and quick thinking to make anyone proud. He ran with other teen heroes and with Nightwing on occasion, and no one ever faulted his performance there. Already inured to the darkness baked into Gotham's bones, he was still the light in all their lives.

And then he was gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

No traces. No trail.

Like he'd stepped into the city's shadows for one last time, and they'd swallowed him up without hesitation. The jaws snapped shut on some trap Bruce couldn't see.

Then, the phone call. The first semblance of information in days, and Bruce could hardly speak. Even letting Barbara follow him had been a struggle, and only possible after Alfred took the lead. Bruce's first instinct was to let her find her own way, unable to shift gears in his head enough to make another stop in the city. If she hadn't lived along the way and been waiting for him, the rendezvous would've stayed in the planning stages.

Tim is alive.

And hurt. The recording hadn't gone into detail about his injuries, with the caller clearly reluctant to speak to police, but Tim wasn't audible at all. The caller responded to what were presumably Tim's nonverbal prompts, but that was the only evidence that Tim was conscious. That was so deeply uncharacteristic of him—of the clever, vivacious boy who would banter with anyone—that Bruce couldn't bear it.

After tearing apart multiple Rogue operations looking for him, after the empty nights and the all-consuming worry, the recriminations in Bruce's head were almost inescapable. He should never have let this happen. Not to Tim.

The car flew past multiple emergency responders' lights like a freight train through a small town. Bruce couldn't bring any pun to mind to replace Robin's easy commentary in his head. His head was full of static and the urge to get there, as soon as possible.

Batgirl tapped the Batmobile's central console screen. Her yellow gloves almost glowed in the dim light. "Computer, give us a layout of Arkham."

Since being defunded, stripped, and abandoned to the elements, Arkham Asylum should have been cut off from the city's power grid. No one ventured near it at night, so either any untoward lights had been concealed or the burden obfuscated some other way. It was no tourist destination even in the light of day. Batman's records hadn't been meaningfully updated since then. There was no hint of anything here.

And yet there must have been. There must have. Some clue he'd missed, after being on patrol the same night—something that could have brought their boy home.

The trail had gone so abruptly cold that it froze them all down to their bones.

The thing was, Tim had been captured before. He knew how to get out of most situations Bruce could, because they'd specifically trained for them. Together. And on occasions when neither of them could free themselves, they could fall back on teamwork. Vanishingly few threats in Gotham couldn't be handled by planning, training, and improvisation. Or by taking advantage of the Rogues' need for attention, playing them off each other or their minions.

None of it had mattered. Tim was still taken, vanishing without a trace. How could Bruce have missed this?

The projection of Arkham on the Batmobile's inner screen wasn't necessary. Between the police scanner and a heat-sensitive camera mounted to the car's roof, pinpointing human activity on their arrival was almost insultingly easy.

No time for that.

After parking the Batmobile on the grounds and setting every security feature to its highest power level, Bruce made his way through the wreckage of Arkham's destroyed wings with Barbara on his heel, both of them as silent as the grave. They only needed to lift a cracked window out of frame to access the entire building. The straightforward approach made Bruce's teeth grind until he noticed.

This shouldn't have—

Bruce held up a hand as they came across the first traces of blood. His first instinct was to separate and spread out to investigate, but Tim's missing status left a blaring alarm screeching across his brain. Barbara was an adult and a competent hero in her own right, and Bruce still couldn't give the order to send her on her way. Terror clawed at him for thinking it.

Together, he signed instead.

Understood, Barbara signed back, and pulled out a flashlight.

Arkham's hallways were littered with signs of pure neglect. No rats scurried in the walls because there was no food to be found, but cobwebs and mold found their homes here. Gotham weather took care of the rest of the grime. There were footprints through the dust on occasion, which set off every remaining alarm Bruce still had.

A voice echoed down the hall, indistinct and quiet. It sounded like neither an animal nor a new disaster, and seemed to come from the same direction as the heat signature from before. After a more cautious scouting, both Bruce and Barbara followed it.

The evidence of violence became more obvious as they approached. Gouges in walls, in the floor, and some that even took the shape of footprints on the ceiling. Dead light fixtures overhead were ripped from their housing and hurled across the area, glass shards littering the floor and making a stealthy approach impossible from inside the building.

The flashlight glinted off the blood and the glass, throwing the scene into harsh refracted relief. It illuminated a collapsed lump on the floor, and Bruce approached first.

One of Harley Quinn's pet hyenas lay on the floor as though shaken to death by a large predator. Its head hung from its neck, limp, and the broken leather collar was on the ground nearby. The tag read "Lou," past the bloodstain.

"Bear?" Barbara suggested in a whisper, standing back a little to avoid the glass and thus more noise. It sounded like less an educated guess and more an assessment of the brutality.

The largest natural carnivore on the continent was certainly capable of it, but the pattern was wrong. After killing a challenger—or an unwary human—bears rarely gave up on feeding time without outside prompting. They'd guard a meal.

"No," Bruce said, after a touch too long. It felt like parts of his brain jarred against each other, gears grinding with painful slowness.

There were no reports of notorious or hostile metahumans making their way into Gotham recently. When given a chance, powerful aliens defaulted to attacking Metropolis and taking up Clark's time. Killer Croc avoided Arkham as a dark reminder of his time spent incarcerated, and was staring down a potential future in Stryker's Island if he reoffended again. Most of those mutated by circumstances tended not to travel, whether as heroes or villains, and none were known to have crossed into New Jersey recently.

Bruce took a picture of the lethal injuries for the burgeoning case file, or for post-facto analysis in a disaster report, then moved on.

"Batman," said Barbara, who had gone on ahead.

A human body was sprawled at the base of a wall where Batgirl had stopped, the head reduced to a five-foot splatter across the gray paint with no surviving fragments larger than a fingernail. The torso was partly propped up and blood dribbled down onto an old Arkham orderly's uniform. One of the gloved hands held a pistol, apparently empty. Despite the bloody footprints leading away from the body, fighting against the unknown attacker had comprehensively failed to save this man's life.

The skin visible from between the sleeve and the glove was as pale as milk, and so instantly recognizable that it chilled the blood. The build was correct. The weapon could be a trick gun—one the Joker was famous for. Bruce restrained the urge to snatch it away from the corpse, just in case.

"Wait until blood or fingerprint analysis confirm it," Bruce said, already turning away. "Robin first."

Barbara grimaced, but nodded, and the pair of them moved on together.

In what was simultaneously too long and just a blink—but objectively one minute and forty-five seconds—Bruce and Barbara arrived at what was once the beehive of Arkham's security offices. In order to get access, a normal person during the hospital's operating years would need to submit to a security screening and leave almost everything brought from the outside world behind, in a locker or in the care of the guards. Toward the end, staff members had been fighting a war on two fronts—increased security demanded by the public versus the safety and welfare of patients. The facilities' more infamous residents had helped neither cause, and in the end, Gotham cut its funding until not even a skeleton crew could function.

And that was, ultimately, a way of ensuring it failed on all fronts. Arkham shut its doors soon after, for the last time. Bruce had visited last as a civilian when Harvey still spoke to him. There was no going back, now.

Except for this. Robin's captor—almost certainly the Joker—had likely chosen it for a lair because no one willingly set foot in this place.

In the here and now, with the security functions all dead and abandoned, someone had punched through the wire-reinforced plexiglass to unlock the steel door, leaving it propped open with a rubber doorstop left behind after Arkham was cleared. A light showed from the inside—too dim for a full-sized fixture or a flashlight like Barbara's, but perfectly visible by contrast.

"—to be all right," said a voice from the inside. "They'll be here soon."

ELL speaker. First language… Most likely Japanese. Tone of voice indicates stress, not hostility.

The responding sound was too quiet for Bruce to make out, but the first voice made a wordless hum after a moment or two, as though continuing a conversation.

Bruce eased the door open.

Before he could step through, Batarang at the ready, golden calligraphy lit up all along the doorway, stopping Bruce's progress as dead as any Thanagarian forcefield. Even as the steel door creaked in his grip, he pressed one hand flat to the nearly-invisible wall and peered past it.

There were two figures lit only by the tiny greenish glow of a cell phone. They were curled up under a solid, bolted-down desk left behind years ago to gather dust. The smaller of them was resting against the taller one, hooded and almost entirely engulfed in black fabric. The upright one was crammed into the space with their head bowed, torso curved over the light and their smaller charge in a defensive crouch.

The upright figure looked directly at Barbara and Bruce as they approached, eyes glowing yellow in the faint ambient light. It wasn't the eyeshine reflection of a nocturnal animal or a genetically modified human; rather, the light was closer to an active warning. Like J'onn's eyes when he pushed his telepathy further. Like Clark's when he was preparing to burn through whatever was in his way.

Then they flinched at the sudden brightness from Barbara's flashlight. A bestial growl issued from an unsuited human throat while the larger of the two shapes shifted weight as though to lunge.

Barbara jolted the flashlight beam to one side immediately, preparing for a close-quarters fight. "Batman—"

"Batman?" croaked the larger shape, accent twisting around unusual syllables. Then, more plaintively: "…You're here for Robin?"

"Yes," Bruce said immediately, and ragged edge of desperation was clear even to his own ears. "Open the door."

Without speaking, the larger shape clawed out of the makeshift den, unfolding into an injured woman about the same size as Barbara. Her right palm smacked flat against the floor. More golden writing flashed in a line not unlike a live fuse, crisping into loose ash in a sequence that ran from the hand to the archaic characters around the doorframe. As the last of it flaked away, Bruce's glove slipped right past the boundary like it was never there.

It still took everything Bruce had not to rush forward. The other person was a curled-up shape wearing Robin's black-and-red suit, and hadn't moved in the commotion. Bruce couldn't tell if he was breathing from this angle.

"Done." Then the woman scooted back until her shoulders hit the upended desk chair's rotten wheels, allowing Bruce into the room. One arm stayed tucked into what looked like a sling made of torn bedding, but she was still poised to body-block any threat.

If she'd been the one to kill everyone else in the building, there was no telling what could happen next.

Which was why Barbara was still prepared to engage. Bruce could hear the seams of her uniform creak as she shifted her weight.

"Careful." A cough, and then the other victim—the 911 caller—added in a softer tone, "It's been…a rough night."

Bruce bit back his first three responses, inhaled through his nose as slowly as he could, and called in a low whisper, "Robin. Robin, I'm here. You're safe now."

The lump of fabric stirred. As Bruce's heart relocated to his throat, Tim pushed forward until his masked face reached the edge of the hood. Gravity freed Tim's wild hair with ease. It was sweat-soaked and stuck to his head or the cloth in places. But he lived.

"…B?" Tim rasped. "Batgirl?" Though his eyes were still hidden by his mask, it was clear to anyone who knew him that exhaustion and confusion dragged at him in a way Bruce rarely ever saw.

"Right in front of you," Barbara said, crouching to make herself seem smaller even as she slid closer on silent feet. "Right here, Robin."

Instead of leaping either into Bruce's arms or to attack if he thought there was some kind of trick, he'd frozen. Tim's mouth trembled. His head jerked toward the other victim, whose expression was stone-still in the low light. "Is it—? Y-You're really here?"

"They really are," said the woman Tim had been using as a pillow. She helped Tim sit up, grimacing each time Tim's weight landed on her left arm, and nudged Tim just enough to make him rock with the motion. "We called for help, and Batman and Batgirl showed up. We made it."

And then Tim sprang. He flung both arms around Bruce's neck, caught by the kind of ingrained, terrified instinct normally held at bay by the personas of Batman and Robin. And Bruce held Tim—his Robin, his second son— like letting go would kill them both. Tim's fingers strained like he wanted to claw his way through even Bruce's cowl, just to make sure he couldn't be dropped or lost or forgotten.

As though that could ever happen. "You're safe," Bruce murmured into Tim's sweat-soaked hair, even as he scooped Tim against his chest. "We've got you now."

Tim hiccupped as his composure cracked like glass. "B, I—I thought—"

"Shhh, shhh."

"The call said two injured," Barbara said to Tim's fellow victim. When Bruce glanced up, she'd moved to stand next to the woman and extend a helpful hand. "What can you tell me?"

"Concussion," was the instant reply. The other victim had managed to climb upright with the desk for support, but her movements were at the delicate pace of someone fighting down pain. "I'm, uh, I'm Genbu. I think I said that?"

Genbu: One of the four guardian spirits that protect Kyoto. The Black Tortoise of the North. Bruce frowned faintly. While he'd never heard of a vigilante or villain using that name, that didn't mean it was impossible. He'd have guessed a name clearly deriving from one part of a set would imply teammates, however, and Genbu was apparently alone.

Still, it implied secrecy—

She tucked herself into a miserable slouch, one leg dangling off the desk. "Maybe I didn't. My head's killing me."

Or not.

"Cover your eyes for me," Barbara said, and swung the flashlight around once Genbu had her eyes blocked by one forearm. "I'll take a look."

"Okay."

Instead of anything suited for a run-in with a Rogue, Genbu wore only a dark gray tank top and sweatpants that did nothing to disguise the bloodstains running down her neck and back, or the smudges and spatter along her limbs. But despite that, she seemed steady enough. Though clearly unhappy, she'd undoubtedly been the one to track blood across the floor and to move Tim here. And the one to set up their strange, magical defenses.

"Tired," Tim murmured against Bruce's armor. He was still crying, almost silently, even as Bruce tried to shift him, engulfing Tim in his arms and his cape. "Wanna go h-home."

"Soon," Bruce promised, tucking the edges of the thick fabric around him.

Of the two, Tim was in worse condition. Aside from the clear swelling at the back of his head—likely lingering evidence of how he'd been kidnapped in the first place—he shivered even when wrapped in a jacket over his uniform. There were burns at his temples and he seemed disoriented once the adrenaline began to fade. All his remaining strength was on its way out.

Barbara stepped around Genbu, who kept her eyes shut. As Barbara moved the light and unpacked her forensics kit with her other hand, more details became clear.

While her hands were mostly clean, rusty smears clung to the edges of her fingernails and the creases of her knuckles. Genbu's black hair was plastered to her head with blood, now drying. Smaller injuries lingered mostly around her hands and wrists—scars from split knuckles, torn calluses.

Old battle damage? It wasn't uncommon for fighters, no matter their demographic.

"I heal fast," Genbu muttered, even as Bruce tallied the damage and felt his frown grow. "Focus on Robin."

"Batman has him," Barbara replied, unwilling to be argued with. "And keeping him awake to ask questions isn't how we deal with things."

Genbu made an annoyed noise, but still allowed Barbara to check her pupils with the flashlight despite the pain.

Had she and Tim been taken at the same time? It seemed unlikely. Genbu's general demeanor didn't imply fear related to her current circumstances, which would be the reasonable response. Mostly, it was irritation. The number of missing persons cases logged in Gotham this week were also low—but that was partly a lie. Tim had been gone and they couldn't report that without potentially tipping off his kidnappers, not to mention putting his identity at risk.

And if Genbu had been capable of so much destruction from the first moment, she likely would have fought off even a surprise attack. Most metahumans with more-than-human strength or durability to their names were too tough for Gotham's usual approach to crime. Harley and the Joker were dangerous, yes, but usually needed specialized equipment when they attacked someone like that. Or more co-conspirators.

Unless that strength was conditional somehow, like Green Lantern rings or Clark's Kryptonian powers.

The woman who'd saved Tim had killed two people tonight, then stuck around like a mother bear watching a cub despite her injuries. Bruce could forgive a lot for the sake of the boy lying exhausted in his arms. At the same time, he didn't know where to begin with the impending weight of all these decisions now.

Barbara's voice managed a calm, collected, "Did you see what hit you?"

Genbu raised one shoulder in an uneven, painful shrug. She'd turned her head away from Barbara's flashlight, but Barbara's very human strength gripped her chin and pulled her back. Out of the side of her mouth, Genbu said, "Something blunt. Maybe a hammer."

Harley, Bruce thought, and closed his eyes against the immediate, gut-sinking thought. When forced into a fight, she used that hammer well. With the Joker dead, there was a chance she might reform, or at least give up on her fixation, but he didn't have high hopes that the Joker threw himself to her defense during his last moments. The 911 call was a damning statement about her fate.

He curled his arms tighter around Tim, who'd gone quiet with exhaustion. He still trembled, burying his face in the armor beneath Bruce's chin, but the boy's breathing was steadier now.

"You've also got burns here," Barbara said, indicating a spot roughly in the middle of Genbu's back. "Electrical. And on both hands."

It didn't sound like the kind of damage the Joker's "joy buzzer" devices would do at close range. Burns, yes, but he nearly always took hold of his victims mid-handshake to complete the sick joke. Repetition ruined it.

"I don't remember," Genbu said, tilting her head toward Barbara to speak more clearly. "What happened to me isn't that important. I'll be fine. But—" She swallowed, then scrubbed at her face in a way that dislodged flakes of dried blood. "There was a camera."

"That will be a part of the investigation," Barbara tried to say. "The entire crime scene will be analyzed."

Genbu didn't seem convinced. "Before the police see…" Genbu paused again, shooting a glance at Tim before mumbling, "They were recording all of it. Everything they did. To gloat."

"Everything?" Barbara asked, her voice now low with warning. "Just what does that mean?"

"Torture." And Genbu moved her left hand with jerky hesitance to indicate each of Bruce, Barbara, and Tim in turn. "…they got your names."

Tim flinched in Bruce's arms. Bruce looked down to find him shaking again, tears running silently through the broken seals on his mask. "I-I—I didn't—" Tim's gloves dug into Bruce's cape. "I didn't want to—"

Alarm put Bruce on the floor in an instant, still hugging Tim as tightly as he dared. Besides, it was a useless impulse—Genbu made no untoward moves, and everyone she'd confronted was too far gone now to be a threat. She was simultaneously a suspect and the sole lucid witness.

Genbu bowed her head. "They won't—they can't do anything with that now." She grabbed the edge of the desk and started to ease herself to her feet again. "I should—"

Barbara moved to grab her, then stopped.

Genbu's stumbling explanation and (potential) attempted escape reached an immediate, silent halt when Tim's hand caught her pant leg. Heedless of the blood, he dug his fingers in and clung. Unless she stretched the fabric until it tore, Genbu wasn't going anywhere.

She'd frozen instead. Entirely, as though terrified she might hurt Tim by moving wrong.

"Don't." Tim's arm was limp except for that iron grip. "D-Don't go."

"Robin." Genbu's voice dropped all traces of desperation in favor of a quiet, uncertain grief as she folded onto her knees. Her fingertips landed on Tim's clutching hand as gently as a ghost. "You're okay now."

"…Lyin'…" Tim mumbled, his hair flopping down over his face as he turned his head toward her. "…promised y-you'd stay…"

"I'm not honest," Genbu admitted, pained. "And…I didn't mean to go that far…"

"I know," Tim managed. He dragged on Genbu's shirt until she had no choice but to edge closer to Bruce as well. "You stopped th-them."

"I did." Genbu only pried his fingers loose enough to loop them together again. Her gaze swept over Barbara and Bruce like a spotlight. "And it was ugly."

Tim shook his head, then slumped in Bruce's hold. Even so, his grip didn't falter. "St-stay. Please."

"…okay." Genbu didn't make any move to escape. Just kept holding Tim's hand, locked into a defensive stance while her body language sank toward an exhausted slouch. She looked up at Bruce and Barbara like a scolded dog, almost shrinking on the spot under their gazes.

"Did you intend to kill them?" Barbara asked, kneeling next to Genbu. It put her close enough to also reach Tim without stretching, and she wiped at his exhausted tears with her glove. Tim actually leaned into her touch, shivering. "When you saved Robin."

"I didn't," Genbu replied, wincing. "I swear I didn't…"

The Rogues followed their own rules where their stories intersected, and Harley was a known associate-slash-companion of Poison Ivy, but…there was no way someone who allegedly killed the Joker would see more than a glimpse of the inside of a jail cell. They had vicious streaks aimed both at Gotham's populace and at each other, but they closed ranks like any other petty gangsters when an outsider threatened their turf. It was part of the reason why other cities rarely saw them.

Bruce tamped down on a fury in his chest that had been building all day, only to find the sole outlet that wasn't violence. Tim was safe. Mostly coherent, if badly shaken.

Anything else could wait at least a little longer.

"Do you have any idea what happened?" In any other circumstances, Barbara would have started with this more open-ended question first. But between the evidence of horrific violence they'd already encountered and the clearly guilty woman still trying to protect Tim, there were only so many conclusions to draw.

"There's, um…" Genbu tried to make some kind of gesture with her injured arm, but gave up. "I think so."

"Well?" Bruce asked. He wasn't entirely sure what tone he struck. Relief and gratitude for Tim's safe return leaked through, even in the face of Genbu's potentially uncapped violence.

And yet.

And yet.

"I don't remember," Genbu replied. Her tone was the strangled, unhappy tone of someone fighting off tears of frustration. "But I'm a little…possessed? Something happened, and when I got hurt, he must have…fixed things…" Genbu trailed off, looking down at her still-bloodied hands and then turning a helpless expression on Barbara and Bruce in turn. "I didn't mean to. I didn't."

Brand new alarms started making their presence loud and clear in Bruce's head, but Tim made a noise that was somewhere between an exasperated huff and a sigh. He clung to a potential double murderer and demon host like a security blanket. Like the amount of violence alone cemented her role as trusted protector.

Or maybe it was the immediate pivot away from the wrath shown by her actions to a fellow victim who radiated nervousness.

"Which I guess you already knew…" Genbu peered at Tim, then clearly waffled for a few seconds before giving his hand a final squeeze and letting Tim hang onto her wrist instead. "You're too nice."

"…'m not."

"Just to me, then."

Tim made a dismissive noise, not bothering to make an argument.

Genbu sighed. After shifting her arm experimentally, as though testing Tim's grip, she looked up at Bruce again. Most of the expressiveness had fallen off her face, replaced by clear exhaustion as her already-narrow eyes went half-lidded. In a toneless voice, she asked, "…am I going to jail?"

Bruce's first instinct was to say yes. Of course a killer needed to face justice. The wheels of the judicial system turned slowly, but they turned nonetheless. If they didn't, even now, then what had he and his family and people like Gordon been working toward for more than a decade? Ripping out the rot in Gotham's core so the city cold grow and change were the point of Batman. Hope, from darkness.

But at the same time, Bruce knew the city. He knew its shadowy corners better than most men born to them. He tracked the Rogues and the crime families and the gangs, learning their patterns and turning himself into an impassible obstacle in their paths, night after night. And he knew that while James Gordon was a good man, the Gotham City Police Department as a whole couldn't be trusted. The Major Crimes Unit, where Gordon's influence was strongest, might get the first claim to any investigation—

Except that Robin was involved.

And the Joker was dead.

The current district attorney would decline to prosecute just based on those two facts alone. Even if a first-year public defender was mulch in the face of some of the prosecutors Gotham retained, Genbu could easily represent herself and win sympathy despite her negative credibility. The DA would flatly refuse to use the city's money for a case they couldn't win, despite overwhelming evidence and an actual confession.

And they'd never find a jury willing to convict Genbu for this murder. The Joker had inflicted so much misery on the city over the years, big and small, that the "not guilty" verdict might take an hour of celebratory conference at most, and that only if the jurors wanted to maintain an ounce of decorum. It was often joked that whoever finally killed the man would deserve a parade on the city's dime. A city official years ago had been directly quoted stating as much to the Gotham Gazette, only to later be killed in a gas attack almost certainly organized by the Joker. But with the threat of retaliation gone…

Genbu's murder trial was dead on arrival. Even Harley Quinn's death only changed the odds that civil rights organizations might become involved. Most of Gotham's authorities unofficially considered her an accessory to the Joker's crimes. And that was generous by some of their standards.

At worst, Genbu might risk retaliation from one of the Rogues who liked Harley Quinn—likely Poison Ivy—or a corrupt police officer interested in clearing the way for his boss to exploit the power vacuum. It was more likely Genbu would be released, no bail posted or even asked for, and left to the city's mercies entirely unsupervised. She appeared mostly human, except for the eyes, which reduced some risks, but Bruce would be surprised if she had anywhere to go. Or even to hide.

Her metahuman—or demonic—abilities would just make freedom more dangerous for everyone. Putting her on the first bus out of Gotham wouldn't magically change that.

Pragmatism reigned, and Bruce regretted every time it ended like this.

Her thoughts clearly running along the same lines, Barbara grimaced, clear even with her mask. "We don't arrest people. You've effectively surrendered immediately, and we have cuffs, but…" She sighed. "I don't think the GCPD will even bother."

"Oh."

"And Robin basically has you in custody."

Genbu nodded. Over the course of this conversation, her blinks had become longer and longer. Her head bobbed low until she caught herself and her spine straightened again. Her gaze darted between Barbara and Bruce, just briefly, until the burst of energy died down.

"Is there any chance that you'll repeat the same behavior now that the threat is gone?" Bruce asked quietly.

Genbu's relatively rapid healing made more sense in the context of magical afflictions, even if they still made Bruce's stress levels tick upward on a good day. Very few problems could come further from left field than magical ones, and most of the other outliers were alien warlords who almost always targeted Clark.

"…No." Genbu replied at the same volume. She tugged her uninjured arm a little, and Tim didn't let her go. Then she gave up. "I wouldn't."

"The rest can come after," Barbara said, into that pause Bruce couldn't fill.

"But I—"

"You saved Robin from something you can't even talk about now," Bruce added, as he got to his feet and kept his son securely in his arms.

Genbu swayed with the motion because she didn't want to break Tim's grip, trailing after them. "I…guess. I just—there's the recording—"

Bruce watched her bite off the end of the sentence, then said, "There is. But you won't be in Gotham while anyone watches it."

And he'd have to deal with it soon. There might never be an explanation that satisfied Bruce's compassion. He always tried to make sure a second chance was in the cards even for the worst of the Rogues, because they were people and people could always make the choice to change, as long as they were alive. Free will mattered.

It was too late, now. Maybe it was always too late.

But there'd be time for regret later, when Tim wasn't the one waiting on Bruce to process.

Genbu wouldn't meet any of their eyes, even through masks, and kept her head bowed. Toward where Tim still refused to let her go. "Then where should I go?"

"The Watchtower."

Notes: I'm writing this as though the Return of the Joker flashback takes place after the Thanagarian invasion at the end of Justice League for convenience. The Watchtower they've got now is the new one. And there's a bunch of heroes up there who can keep an eye on one more Etrigan, power-nullifying cuffs or not.

Kei: "So I'm uh, kinda dangerous. Maybe I should go..."
Tim: "I'm more likely to be killed by my night shift. You're not going anywhere."