"She's not here," Aaron said as soon as he set foot in the office.
Red Hood froze. "What?" he asked flatly. "It's six o' four. She didn't even stay for breakfast?"
Aaron fidgeted nervously. "She was waiting at the cafeteria doors already at six. Grabbed some food and booked it out the back door. Not even two minutes ago."
"Fuck." Red Hood shoved his way into the rest of the building, stalked through the cafeteria, and then out into the alley behind the shelter. He glanced one way and then the other before grappling his way to the top of the neighboring building. There were numerous alleys and roads that branched off from Division Street. Numerous ways she could have gone. He bit out a few choice words Alfred would have reprimanded him harshly for. But even Alfred probably would have understood given the possible outcomes of a young, jump-risk girl in Crime Alley.
He dropped back into the shelter's alley to find Aaron standing anxiously in the open door. He looked guilty, though Red Hood doubted Alice would have taken well to any attempts at stopping her. He shoved his way back inside. "Cameras," he grunted.
The cameras, it turned out, were not helpful. At 6:02AM, the doors opened, and Alice rushed out into the alley, loaded with her bags. She reached the end of the alley. If she'd turned left, she would have been caught by the shelter's camera on that side. But that didn't happen. Instead, that camera caught a hint of a shadow at the very edge and then nothing. She must have turned right. There were no cameras there he would be able to access. He was pretty sure that building hadn't had legal operations in it for years.
So he'd be getting no help there.
He left the shelter and started his search, trying to pick up any further trail or sign of Alice. Over the hour, he grew angry and more frustrated with himself. He should have been there at six—no, earlier—and this wouldn't have happened. But now there seemed to be nothing left that he could do, and he was left to turn his attention back to the drug ring he'd been working on for weeks now.
Tim found Duke scrounging in the kitchen for snacks following his daytime patrol. "There you are." He grabbed his arm. "C'mon."
"Wha— Hey!" Duke stumbled a couple steps before planting his feet. "Have you never heard the word 'please'? What do you want?"
"Please," Tim repeated dutifully. "I'm working on something. Planning, really. And I need some feedback. Let's go."
"Right now? Is it important?"
"Very. C'mon."
Duke groaned and shut the fridge. "Alright." As he followed Tim out of the kitchen and towards the stairs, he said, "What's this about?"
"I have a plan." Tim almost missed a step and had to do a quick skip to avoid falling. He make a noise of annoyance. He briefly released Duke as he stablized but then grabbed him again as they reached the new floor.
"Yeah, I gathered as much. I— Hey, I can walk by myself. You don't have to drag me!"
"Is this a kidnapping?"
Tim paused and looked at the door they'd just passed. The library. Jason was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and frowning more than usual. "Jeez, who died?"
Jason straightened and dropping his hands. "Hopefully, no one. I'll figure it out. Do I need to save Duke?"
"Probably," Duke muttered. "I'm not sure where we're going."
"We're going to my room. I just need help. You can help, too, Jason. I know you won't tell Bruce, and I could really use the help," Tim wheedled, hoping the allure of keeping a secret from Batman would override any grudge Jason still held about the last paint bomb incident.
Jason narrowed his eyes at him and said nothing for a long moment. Then he huffed and stepped out of the library to join them. "You're piqued my interest, little man. What are you plotting?"
"I'm not plotting anything," Tim defended, finally letting go of Duke and leading both of his recruits towards his room. "I'm planning." He threw open his door. "B wants us to keep distance, and I'm pretty sure he's drawing up a bunch of capture and defanging plans, but I think that doing any of that is a waste of an opportunity. Haunt's crazy strong, and everything points to them being good. Why wouldn't we want an ally like that?"
"This is about Haunt?" Duke asked nervously. "I dunno, Tim. I don't think they're an enemy, but I think they could kill me with a snap of their fingers, and I don't like that."
"I doubt it'd be that easy," Jason mused, wandering into Tim's bedroom and towards the cards and yarn tacked up on the wall. "It would take a clap, at least." He reached out and plucked one of the strings between two cards that read Magic/energy Chains and Alien Species That Don't Have Faces. "Timberly, this makes you look like a serial killer."
"I'm not."
"Yeah, you shouldn't have to argue that," Duke said, moving to join Jason in studying the yarn web. "This, uh, this looks pretty serial killer-y to me."
"Who's a serial killer?"
Duke looked over at the door. Stephanie was leaning in the door., sweat-soaked headband pulled down low over her forehead and a squeeze water bottle in hand. "Tim."
"I'm not—"
"Oh. Well, duh," she said, prancing into the room and sprawling into the desk chair.
"Duh?" Tim sputtered, turning on her, "If anyone is, we all know—"
"I don't got all day," Jason interrupted. "If this isn't your plan to add Haunt to your ever growing list of victims, then what is it?"
"This is bullying," Tim muttered petulantly, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders. "I'm being bullied."
"Oh, I'll let Dami-baby know!" Stephanie said, perking up and tossing her water bottle haphazardly on the desk so she could pull out her phone. "That's his favorite activity! The enrichment's good for him."
"I've changed my mind. I don't want or need help from any of you. I'll befriend Haunt on my own."
Jason eyed an index card packed with writing on every visible space. The sharpie titling it was green and read Evidence of demonhood? "Uh-huh. You have fun doing that." He clapped Tim harshly on the shoulder and then shoved past him to leave. "I've got some tracking to do. Don't get killed while I'm gone."
"Yeah, sure," Tim said, frowning after him. But as he turned back to the two people he still had, he saw the phone still in Stephanie's hands. "Please tell me you aren't actually texting Damian."
She blinked up at him innocently. "I cannot tell a lie."
He groaned. "Steph—"
"You want to run a job with Haunt?" Duke cut in, still studying the web.
Tim shot Stephanie a look—she stuck her tongue out at him in response—and then moved to join Duke at the wall. "Eventually, but that's at least a couple steps away. First, I need to actually talk to them. A real conversation, or something similar. None of us have tried before."
"And if they drop you in a hellmouth? Or on the moon? Or turn you into a, a," —Duke paused and scrunched up his nose, clearly working hard to think of the worst thing Tim could be turned into— "jellyfish?" he settled.
"I have plans for hell. And the moon."
"And the jellyfish?"
Tim huffed. "Alright, fine, I'll make a jellyfish contingency."
Red Hood found Alice by accident that night.
She was on a different rooftop, this time. Seven stories up but sitting away from the edge and leaning against the building's AC unit. He wouldn't have realized it was her if not for the pile of bags beside her. He immediately changed trajectory, landing on the opposite side of the AC unit as her. Silent and careful, just like he'd been taught by both Batman and the League. And yet—
And yet Alice lifted a hand to wave lazily at him. "Hi," she called.
"Trying to give me a heart attack, Al?" He tucked his grapnel away and stomped forward to stand off to her side.
She frowned up at him in genuine confusion. She was sitting applesauce, a book open on her lap and illuminated by a bendy clip-on light. She had a muffin in one hand and a smear of cinnamon above her lip. "What?"
He shook his head and started nudging her bags aside with his foot to give himself more space. When she stiffened, gaze locked on his foot, he paused. He chose to step around the bags to sit in front of her instead. "Any particular reason you decided you don't want a roof over your head?"
"I have a roof over my head," she retorted. She leaned to the side as she bit into her muffin to avoid getting crumbs on her book.
Red Hood tilted his head back to pointedly stare up at the sky above them. It was dark. "Nice roof," he finally said.
"Shut up." She shoved the rest of her muffin in her mouth, cheeks bulging, and they sat in silence for a bit while she finished chewing. Then she said, "There were too many people looking at me. I'm not going back there."
He took a moment to consider the hard set to her face. He could guess that any attempts to get her back to a shelter would mean dragging her kicking and screaming. "Figure out your favorite color yet?"
She blinked at the sudden turn in the conversation. "Um . . . red, I think."
"Aw, after you favorite hero? I'm flattered."
"You didn't seem so sure that you're a hero. And no. If anything, it's my favorite in spite of you."
"Rude. Now I'm heartbroken."
She just hummed at that and returned her attention to her book. He craned his head enough to read the title and realized that she'd moved on from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He pulled out his phone and settled for entertaining himself on it while she read. He glanced briefly at the family group chat—it had more than sixty messages for him to read, and he didn't want to even imagine what insane discussion had led to Dick sending the message idk but at least popeye will be proud of me when i die—before tapping his way over to his text messages with Alfred.
Favorite Grandchild, sent 1:17 AM: Do you have a strawberry muffin recipe?
Alfie, sent 1:22 AM: I do.
Alfie, sent 1:26 AM: Sent an image.
Red Hood opened the photo and gave the recipe a once over. Didn't seem too difficult.
Favorite Grandchild, sent 1:27 AM: Thanks Alfie.
Alfie, sent 1:27 AM: I'm happy to help, my boy. Come back soon so that we can make them together.
Red Hood sent off a tentative confirmation then set down his phone, looking up at the girl who was deeply engrossed in her book. "You got somewhere safe to go?" he asked, already fully expecting her to lie that she did.
"I said I have a roof," she snapped back. "So yes."
Surprised, he realized that it sounded like the truth. She just sounded upset that he was pressing the issue. "How 'bout we make a deal?"
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"You let me see that you're still around once a day—proof of life 'n' all that—and I won't drag you off to a shelter. Win-win, right?"
"Why?" Her voice was sharp and distrustful. "What do you want from me?"
"Mostly, I just wanna make sure you're safe. Not dying somewhere or getting trafficked. Ideally, you'd actually stay at the shelter, but—"
"I'm not going back there."
"Exactly. And this roof is good enough." He glanced around at the surrounding buildings. They were still in Crime Alley, but there were far worse places in his territory than the top of a rundown office building. "Every night. Deal, kid?"
She made a face, somewhere between confused and upset. "Or you'll drag me to a shelter?" She phrased it like a question but stated it like a fact.
He shrugged.
She set her jaw. "Fine, old man. You've got a deal."
He sputtered. "I'm not old."
"And I'm not a kid," she shot back. She folded up the muffin wrapper and leaned over so that she could tuck it away in a mesh pocket on the side of her duffle bag. Then she dusted her hands on her pants—cargo, again, with over a half dozen pockets scattered about.
"Sure you're not."
She stuck her tongue out at him and crawled over to her duffle bag, where she carefully stored away her book. Then she climbed to her feet, collecting all four bags and slinging them on. She gave him a wave as she started walking towards the fire escape.
"Where are you going?" he asked, getting to his feet.
"Home." She said the word dismissively. He highly doubted there was any sort of actual 'home' she was going to. Then she crouched, gripped the one side of the fire escape, swung one leg over, and disappeared past the edge.
Red Hood immediately made it to the top of the ladder and stared as she slid down the ladder and jumped landings to the next ladder with practiced ease. He snorted and jumped to the next building to follow her. He trailed her as she wound though several alleys and down streets and up streets and— Huh. She'd definitely just looped through the same cross-street for the third time. Was she lost? He paused and looked back at where they'd just been. She definitely seemed confident that she knew where she was going, but why else would she be returning to the same spot so many times?
He turned to follow again, jumping onto the next roof to track her as she exited the alley she'd disappeared into. Except she didn't come out. Frowning and with unease already curling in his gut, Red Hood checked the alley before doubling back to make sure she hadn't gone backwards. She wasn't there. There wasn't any sign of her. There was no trail. Again.
All he could do was hope she kept to their deal.
