Kari

Christopher Swanson, billionaire owner-and-CEO of mega-conglomerate Swanson Foods, was widely known as a doting father. Therefore, one might mistakenly believe that he would have some reservations about his infamously beloved and only son and heir moving across the country to attend university at a city where “supervillain attack” was a category for both insurance and PTO.

But that was where they would be very wrong, because Mr. Swanson was the kind of father that doted by giving his son every single thing he asked for, immediately and without reservations. Charles Swanson, Charlie to his friends—and Kari to his better friends that didn’t talk to the media—was well-regarded as the most spoiled nepo baby in all of Metropolis. And Lex Luthor lived in Metropolis. So when he said, “daddy, I want to go to Gotham,” the only real question was how big the security detail would be.

As it turned out, Gotham University, a prestigious university that had produced some of the world’s leading geniuses—as well as some of the world’s leading genius supervillains but shh—took security pretty goddamn seriously, given the Gotham of it all combined with the price of tuition. There’d been that whole Scarecrow thing like ten years back, and in the aftermath, they’d seriously beefed up security, enough that even Mr. Swanson figured security wouldn’t be a big issue. Kari would be safe and secure and educated, and everyone involved was just kind of surprised that his gap year had turned out to be just that, and not a permanent retirement from all things education.

Kari, for his part, was majoring in business communication with a stated intent to minor in “something, I dunno, like law maybe?” which was a very safe pick that should have been suspicious to anyone that knew him. Fortunately, everyone was too busy being relieved (university!) and worried (Gotham University!) about his life choices too really focus on the details.

His dad was extremely proud, since Gotham University wasn’t exactly easy to get into. While Kari couldn’t guarantee there was no nepotism involved, since his last name was Swanson, there at least hadn’t been any direct bribery or promises of grand donations to the institution. His dad would have, in a heartbeat, but Kari, unbeknownst to all but those closest to him, really didn’t like doing that sort of thing. He liked to try and do certain things with as close to his own merit as he could really get while also having constant access to the best of everything. Kari also suspected that Gotham U was easier to get into now than it had been fifteen years ago, y’know, before an ex-professor had went and done a terrorism on school grounds. But still, Kari’s grades had never been the best, so getting in was still a major victory on his and his father’s personal scoreboards. Coincidentally, the bright pink magical girl—known reluctantly as Super Senshi—occasionally spotted around Metropolis went quiet in the months leading up to the entrance exams.

That wasn’t just so Kari could study, of course. He needed to fade out. He couldn’t just vanish from one city and then show up in another city across the country. Proper groundwork had to be laid if he didn’t want it to be immediately suspicious to anyone with half a brain—Batman notoriously had significantly more than half a brain. And so, after fading his superhero half out in Metropolis, the first thing Kari did upon arriving in Gotham was start making his presence known—his presence as Charles Swanson, that is. He didn’t do interviews or talk shows, because this wasn’t the 1990s. He hit the podcast circuit.

Any rich kid with a thick enough skin could be internet famous, and Charles loved attention and didn’t appear to discriminate much between positive and negative. He was an influencer who famously didn’t take brand deals—“there is literally no reason for me to do that”—and he descended onto Gotham’s local micro-celebrity scene like a cloud of glitter.

Kari hadn’t really been intending to make any friends. Kari was well aware that one did not make friends with other influencers, one made connections. Kari was also well aware that, being a billionaire’s kid and therefore comically more wealthy than most of the struggling comedians and diet-juice-peddlers he was interacting with, he made for a very popular connection. He fully intended to be surrounded by suck-ups and leeches and useful alibis in a matter of weeks.

What he had not intended was meeting Dick Grayson.

The whole thing started as a joke. From the second he arrived in Gotham, people on social media and in podcast interviews had asked him about Dick, because of course they’d asked him about Dick. Charles and Dick had so much in common, both being internet personalities well-known pretty much entirely for already being super rich, and also as a side note for being super hot. One of the podcasters had done a good job on research and dug up a video from when Kari was in high school, where Kari had been freaking out because Dick Grayson had liked one of his posts. They played the clip, and Kari ran a hand over his face, playing the role of embarrassed over the most regrettable of teenage inflictions—genuine enthusiasm.

“It was a progress post,” Kari explained to the podcaster and the internet at large. “This was back when he’d put out that, um, ButtBlaster exercise routine? What a name, I swear no one had PR back then. Anyway, obviously I had to try it, but like… okay, this is maybe a little embarrassing, but I was super serious about it. I kept up with it for ages after it stopped trending. Dick Grayson liked my one year progress post, of all things.”

“You sound so adorably freaked out in the video. You kept mentioning how it wasn’t even the post with the pics. Do I detect maybe a bit of disappointment about that?”

“Well, I mean, obviously. If Dick Grayson liked my ass—well, the post containing my ass—that was like a whole different level of brag-worthy. C’mon. He was a male model.”

“For like, a minute!”

“You carry that title for life! It’s like the presidency!”

“You’re in Gotham now, are you hoping to run into Dick?”

“Well, from what I’ve heard about the busses, it’s probably inevitable.”

“Shut up, you know what I mean!”

“I mean, it’d be nice to get the Grayson seal of approval after all this time. I’ve been placing in Metropolis’s Top 10 Rears since I was eighteen—which like, a little creepy, but I worked hard for it so let’s agree to let it pass—but who doesn’t want to hear the master’s opinion?”

“So your ass is a work of art now?”

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

And that should have been that. It wasn’t unusual for someone to talk about Dick Grayson, or Dick Grayson’s ass. Something that might be an uptick in Kari’s popularity would be barely a blip for Grasyon, who was a totally different tier of famous. He was never going to come on some random podcast to compliment Kari’s ass, and Kari wasn’t popular enough to warrant a question from anyone who landed an interview with Grayson. The clips generated buzz for a while, and Kari was ready for the whole thing to fade out, or to become part of his brand, whichever. What he wasn’t ready for, and could never have been ready for, was to get asked to be in a legitimate—sort of—video interview about the suffering of nepo babies (they hadn’t called it that, but it was obviously about getting the dark details of growing up wealthy; the kidnapping attempts, the dead parents, et cetera) on a pretty major YouTube channel, and then show up and suddenly Dick Grayson is there also.

Kari had just arrived, neither early nor late, since early didn’t fit his brand and the idea of being late to something made his stomach hurt, and there were already cameras going, which wasn’t super unusual. Probably some BTS roll for their paid members, or whatever. Kari thought nothing of it, until he came around a corner past the entry area and for some goddamn reason Dick Grayson was on a couch.

Kari was sure his shock showed on his face, but he was also sure it didn’t show for long. No one got very far in this—could you really call it an industry —if they didn’t have a good poker face. Of course, that also meant that Kari had no way to interpret the very brief and extremely mild raising of Dick’s eyebrows. It sure didn’t seem like he was surprised.

“Wow, um, Dick Grayson,” he was saying, focusing on being the film-appropriate level of flustered while hopefully not revealing the fact he was genuinely dying inside. “I had, uh, no idea you were involved with this?”

Dick Grayson was smiling a camera-perfect smile and shaking his hand, and saying his name like he already knew who Kari was, which was terrible, because it meant he’d probably been prepped for this. Kari couldn’t imagine Grayson would know him on sight otherwise. Seriously, it was stupid that he was even here, operating on anything close to the same level as Charles Swanson.

He’d thought it’d all be too far beneath Grayson for this to ever happen, despite, in retrospect, the obvious click-worthiness of it all. Grayson, in a reasonable world, would never have seen the original interview. People had tagged him in it, but people tagged everyone in everything all the time; it’s not like Kari watched everything people @’d him about, and he had like a factor of ten fewer followers than Dick did.

All of this flashed through Kari’s mind while he smiled and shook Dick Grayson’s hand, here in some stupid YouTuber’s stupid rented would-be film studio. Kari was considering buying it and turning it into condos while he made polite eye contact and polite, brief small talk in which neither of them mentioned the interview, thank God.

The eye contact was a pain too, because Dick Grayson was tall, and so Kari had to really crane his neck. He wasn’t totally unfamiliar with that; part of the problem here was that Kari was short as hell, and this was supposed to be a seated interview so he hadn’t bothered wearing platforms. That meant the cameras got to capture him in all of his 5’4 glory, shaking the hand of Dick Grayson, who had to be close to six feet. Taller in person, and his ass probably looked better in person too. Kari didn’t know, because he wasn’t going to be caught dead checking out Dick Grayson’s ass on camera.

He was being so nice, and Kari couldn’t figure out if that meant he was in on it or not, but he kind of had to be. All signs pointed to him being set up for a prank video featuring Dick Grayson, Best Ass On The Internet (in at least two ways, apparently). He didn’t even know if the interview was really happening or if this was the whole thing they’d wanted to catch on film. He was managing not to visibly panic or, god-forbid, show on his face how fucking mortifying this was and how much he wanted to run away and cry. He had absolutely not enough brain cells, in this moment, to figure out how to get out of the situation without summoning his security and making a whole-ass scene, which would make everything worse forever.

“We’re scheduled to start the interview in like fifteen, right?” Dick was saying to someone standing nearby—Kari couldn’t even process faces right now, everything was just cameras. “As nice as it is to have a chance to chat with everyone, I really do need to do something about my hair…” And just like that, Kari and Grayson were being lead off to separate rooms, thank God.

It wasn’t a real green room, because this was a YouTuber’s studio. It was very clearly a break room, but it had a door, at least, so Kari was sitting at the table—which had like six chairs at it, because this was obviously a break room— decompressing. Or, more accurately, continuing to compress, rapidly.

Should he just leave? That was a thing people did, right, when asshole YouTubers pranked them with cameras? They just left? They definitely didn’t just stay and do the fucking interview, right? He could probably call his dad’s lawyers and keep them from putting up any video of him awkwardly meeting Dick Grayson, but it wasn’t even worth it. Just like getting Grif over here to rescue him like a damsel in distress wasn’t worth it. A fuss would just draw more attention to the scenario. If Dick was in on it—which genuinely, he had to be, because literally why else would he be here and know who Charles goddamn Swanson was—that would just make everything worse, forever.

No, this was the worst, but if Grayson was in on it, he should probably just pretend to be completely fine with the situation. A little embarrassed, because he’d need to play the clown a little bit, but even clowns could accept the pie on their face with some dignity… right? That was maybe the move, right? To not even be ruffled? Now, if only he knew how not to be ruffled. His eyes were burning, which was a nightmare. He absolutely could not cry. He couldn’t even look the slightest bit puffy. One hint of being genuinely bothered, one drop of blood in the water, and it’d be a feeding frenzy. He’d be torn to fucking shreds.

Kari took deep breaths, mentally going over various trite sayings from his media coaching. He could do this. He was great at playing stupid, that was like, ninety percent of his whole thing! He could absolutely go out there and answer what were probably going to be a lot of really unpleasant personal questions in front of someone he’d thought was super fucking cool. He could get into his sordid life history and how his mom died, in a room with like fifteen people, all of whom were in on a joke of which he was the butt. He could.

And the worst part was? He actually could.

Dick

Dick Grayson was hesitating.

It’s not like he never hesitated, but it was normally for better reasons than social anxiety. He could get shot at, all night any night, jump off buildings and trapeze without a moment’s flinch. But apparently, put him in an awkward enough social situation and suddenly…

The thing was, Charlie Swanson seemed like a nice enough guy. They’d never met, of course, but Dick was vaguely familiar with him the way he was vaguely familiar with any billionaire’s kid. Charlie was from Metropolis; his father was the owner and CEO of a privately-owned food megacorporation; he’d never had any major scandals; he was incredibly short. That last one wasn’t something he’d been particularly aware of it until they met in person, but it had been the first thing Dick had noticed. The second thing was that when their eyes had met, just for a microsecond, he had looked completely devastated. When Dick had finally managed to get them both out of there, Charlie had been expertly not looking like he was about to cry, to absolutely anyone who hadn’t been trained on microexpressions by Batman.

Dick did not particularly like that he was clearly being used to bully some kid who probably looked up to him. He was only doing this stupid video in the first place as a favor for a mutual friend, and hazing some Gotham new-kid had not been on the docket. He’d actually been contemplating the best way to ruin the entire situation for everyone involved, when he’d remembered “everyone involved” included Charlie Swanson, Innocent Bystander, and decided maybe he should take that into consideration.

To do that, he needed to actually open the door to the green room they’d shoved Swanson into. With a quiet exhalation, he reached for the doorknob.

It turned and the door opened in before he could grab it, and Dick was very suddenly looking down at Charlie Swanson again. More down, this time, because he’d been about to step out the door, only to stop abruptly when greeted with probably significantly more human person than he’d been expecting. It put them closer, physically, then they’d been while politely shaking hands for the cameras.

This time, the surprise was completely off Swanson’s face by the time he looked up to make eye contact. In its place was a movie-star smile.

“Oh, are they already ready for us?” Swanson said with an easy laugh. “I like just finished my hair two seconds ago; I thought we’d have more time.”

Swanson’s hair, which was blonde and long, down to his shoulder blades, looked exactly as pristine as it had when the guy walked in. He brushed a lock of it behind one ear, an obviously practiced motion. Faker than a Barbie, but Dick couldn’t exactly blame him for putting a thick coating of frosting on the shit cake he’d been delivered. There wasn’t really a polite way to say “sorry I memed about your ass so hard they decided to punk me about it.”

“Hey, look, I didn’t know they had this shit planned,” Dick said, because despite being equally fake in some ways, he also had remarkably little patience for bullshit.

Swanson’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, lips pouting in a frown.

“Scout’s honor,” Dick said, holding up three fingers.

Swanson pointed at his upraised hand. “That’s Girl Scouts.”

“They seem like the more honorable of the two.”

Swanson snorted, then looked behind him, then looked back at Dick.

“Hey, so, weird proposition, but this room has a window.” Dick tried to think of how many weird propositions could start with a window. “I had just finished talking myself out of climbing out of it to make my escape, but if you don’t want to be here either, I saw a churro truck like not even five blocks away.”

“We’re on the third floor,” Dick pointed out, because it seemed like a serious concern for people who weren’t raised as acrobats.

“That’s fine,” Swanson said with a remarkably straight face. “I didn’t wear heels today.”

So it turned out Charlie Swanson had done gymnastics from elementary all the way through high school, and also had a preternatural sense for finding really good churro trucks.

He’d been fully ready to catch Metropolis’s most-notoriously-spoiled teenager the entire way out the window, but it had been unnecessary. Swanson was six inches shorter and probably fifty pounds lighter, enough that his lack of obvious musculature obviously didn’t pose a problem. He swung out the window, leapt to a nearby fire escape, and eased himself down it with the practiced smugness of the chronically underestimated.

Dick, who was less frequently underestimated but equally smug, didn’t need to be as showy with his own slide down the building as he was. But at the bottom, he was rewarded with bright eyes, a big grin, a subdued shushing, and a five block run to some really goddamn good churros.

“So, do you climb out a lot of windows?” Dick asked between bites of churro.

“Why, you a cop?” Charlie responded. Dick snorted. “No, honestly, most of the buildings I’m in are high rises. Kind of high stakes to go out a window on one of those… I don’t even like it when they open.”

“The windows?”

“Yeah.” Charlie shuddered. “I guess you probably don’t get this, what with the acrobat thing at all, but whenever a high rise window is open, I feel like someone is gonna somehow fall out of it. Doesn’t matter how completely physically impossible that is.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re not a huge fan of balconies.”

“What I really hate is other people standing on balconies. They’re gonna fall off! I have never once seen anyone fall out a window or off a balcony, for the record, but I’m convinced every single time I see someone lean on a balcony railing.”

“They shouldn’t really lean on those.”

“Okay thank you!” Charlie exclaimed, throwing his hands dramatically into the air. There was a churro hanging loosely out of his mouth, probably for effect.

“That must be a pain in Metropolis. Didn’t LexCorp patent those air seal windows?”

“Meaning they’re on every single building? Yeah. Honestly those aren’t even the worst, because they normally go onto balconies. Have you seen some of the old buildings here in Gotham? They have windows that like, tilt to open! No window should do that! I’m going to Gotham U, right, and some of the older buildings are fucked up, man.”

“Buildings without modern ventilation systems have to have windows that open to the outdoors,” Dick explained. “It’s a security thing.”

“Security for what?”

“Joker gas. Well, it’s not like he’s the only one; Gotham U had its own gas-related incident not that long ago, as I recall.”

Charlie winced. “Oh. Right. All the supervillains. Y’know, it’s weird, I’ve been here for a couple months now and I haven’t even spotted like, a single shady gangster. I hear about stuff on the news but I heard about stuff on the news in Metropolis, too.”

“That’s a good thing. You’re not here for crime tourism, are you?”

“No! No thanks, not looking to get gassed or hit by a comically large hammer or turned into a tree or whatever the hell messed up stuff the baddies here do.” Poison Ivy did not turn people into trees, but Dick could understand the concern. “I just thought it’d be more unavoidable. But no one other than my classmates even mentions it.”

“You see it when you know where to look. Like, you don’t take the subway, so you wouldn’t know there’s gas masks under all the seats. The taxis all have shatter-proof glass dividers. Plus there’s the insurance policies…”

“Yeah, but I’m from Metropolis; we already have acts of villainy and superhero collateral in all our forms. But even then, when I said I was going to Gotham U, everyone back home was like, ‘whaaaaat, are you crazy, Poison Ivy is for sure going to murder you.’ Actually one of my friends is deeply concerned that Poison Ivy is going to murder me, specifically.”

“Because of your dad’s company?”

“Absolutely, yeah. I mean, my dad’s cool, but I think grandpa is directly responsible for the extinction of like, multiple species of corn. I don’t think she’s like, a huge fan of mega-farms conceptually, and that’s without getting into meat processing plants. Plus I’m a man and also a billionaire.”

“Are you? Like, independently.”

“Mmhmm.” Charlie said this casually, as if he was admitting to owning an iPhone. “Now, anyway. It’s stupid, really. Mom left everything to me, but the law was all ‘nooo children can’t possibly handle finances’ as if I didn’t have budget training in elementary school. It was in a trust with an executor, and by the time—”

“By the time you inherited it, the executor had been investing it so it was—”

“Like twenty times bigger than when it started.” Charlie laughed, and Dick couldn’t help chucking too. “Is that what happened to you? I always thought it was Wayne money. Um, no offense.”

“None taken. Everyone thinks that. But no, actually, it was a trust. Bruce’s butler is very good at asset management, it turns out.”

“Wow, I wish my butler could do that.” Charlie snorted. “I’m joking. It’s obvious I’m joking, right? I don’t have a butler.”

“Me neither. After Alfred, I’m ruined for them.”

Kari

As it turned out, Dick Grayson was taller and cooler and super fucking nice in person, actually. And, yes, his ass was amazing. Now that there were no cameras, he had to at least look. Subtly.

Like, yeah, sure, okay, this was definitely fully happening because Dick felt bad about being used to haze the new kid, but, like, he felt bad about being used to haze the new kid. Kari hadn’t been sure at first, but the escape out the window and frantic dash to the churro cart had made it clear that he wasn’t in on it. And most people would have been in on it, or maybe mildly annoyed at being manipulated if they weren’t, but still ultimately join in on the joke. Kari made a great punchline, and he knew that about himself. He wouldn’t have even blamed Dick that much for laughing.

He would have been maybe like incredibly hurt, deep on the inside where secrets happened, but he wouldn’t have blamed Dick.

Instead, Dick Grayson had, incredibly, been one hundred percent down to climb out a third story window and then get churros. And now they were just kind of… hanging out? Kari wasn’t sure why Dick was sticking around not just leaving, other than, he supposed, residual guilt. Which was deeply unexpected but totally welcome. The whole thing felt surreal. Like, he kept forgetting the person he was talking to was Dick Grayson, internet person, and not just like, a cool guy he’d met in class or at a party.

Grif had not been informed Kari had left the building, but he had his location on and had pressed his “everything is chill don’t worry” pattern on his pager. It was fine. Everything was fine, and cool, and he was hanging out with Dick Grayson like that was a normal thing to do.

They had a lot in common. And not just the obvious stuff like rich parents and other, different, dead parents. Dick had been either honestly interested in or very good at faking interest in Kari’s gymnastics training, plus the archery, the horseback riding… It seemed like Bruce Wayne took a similar approach of throwing hobbies at Dick to see what stuck, because his high school electives were just as eclectic. The two of them even had (half-hearted) plans (that Kari wasn’t putting much stock in) to go to an archery range sometime. Of course, Kari would literally drop anything anytime to actually do that, but most of the time when people said “oh, we should do that sometime,” they meant “that’s fun to imagine. Do not follow up on this.” Kari respected that, because he also did not want people following up with him about half the shit he agreed would be fun to do sometime.

It would be super cool if Dick Grayson did, though. Dick Grayson could follow up about any stupid shit that Kari said, ever. But he was being very normal about this, so he did not say that or even imply it. He didn’t want to come on too strong when this was basically a pity-hang.

Of course he’d love for it to turn into more, if possible. Dick had grown up in Gotham, and he was the exact kind of native connection that Kari had been really hoping he’d make at some point. Except he was way better, because he was also independently wealthy and therefore probably not humoring Kari out of a desire to sap as much money and goods out of their friendship as humanly possible. And also because he knew stuff like which places were more likely to have paparazzi and which restaurants would throw out anyone they saw taking pictures. And also still knew stuff like “oh, hey, we’re actually really close to Finger Memorial Park,” which turned out to be a really nice, much smaller park than Robinson Park, that was mostly just a singular wide-open green space and some shady trees, dotted with benches and tables and chess boards.

Of course both Dick and Kari played chess. Because this was the perfect day and the perfect hangout and Kari was framing it in his mind for the next time he got drugged by Scarecrow and it didn’t even matter that this was a one-time thing because it was that awesome.

Dick was currently playing chess a lot better than Kari, which was honestly no surprise—Kari had never been treasured for his mental acumen—but chess lessons were another fun thing to have in common with someone. No one got sent to chess lessons by their mom—or adoptive not-dad, in Dick’s case. Kari had gone to rich-person private school in Metropolis and still hadn’t had a lot of people to share that particular childhood anecdote with.

“This is taking me straight back to elementary,” Kari said as he glared at Dick’s bishops.

“Did you lose spectacularly then, too?”

“Yes.”

Dick laughed. It was a good sound, one that Kari could get used to hearing. He liked making people laugh—in a cool, fun, friend way, not in a sociopathic Joker way—and he was really riding the ‘new friend’ high. Again, not that he was going to be totally presumptuous about Dick’s intentions and call the two of them friends. Just because Dick hadn’t wanted to embarrass Kari on video, and had climbed out a window with him, and had eaten churros with him, and then had talked for like thirty minutes while walking down random streets with him, and then had taken him to a park and was playing chess with him, didn’t mean he wanted to be friends, necessarily. This was a pity-hang. Kari had definitely given pity-hangs in the past, he knew what was up.

“You know I’ve got you at this point, right? You have to know.”

“My mom taught me to fight every fight to the bitter end.”

“Did she play chess, or was that just a very dark comment?”

“Yes.”

Kari did lose, but losing was what he was best at. Everyone had a great time when he lost, generally speaking, because beating a billionaire made one feel better about oneself. Kari supposed Dick probably didn’t need the ego boost, though.

“What made you want to go to Gotham U, of all places? I understand wanting to get away from family, believe me, but Gotham? Not Harvard, not Yale?”

“Okay, first off, thank you for believing I could get into Yale. Second off, that’s kind of why, actually. Like, I’m not Yale-smart, but when your daddy runs a multi-billion-dollar private enterprise that feeds half the country, you don’t get to go to like, UCLA. Gotham is Ivy League. Technically. Ivy League with an asterisk. And that asterisk means they have lower standards.”

“You could have gone to Yale.”

“Your faith in me is doing wonders for my self-esteem.”

“Any of us could go to Yale,” Dick pointed out. “Because of the obvious?”

“I don’t want my dad to bribe my way into university. I actually worked really hard to get into Gotham, y’know.” This was true. It wasn’t that Kari was stupid per se—he liked to think, anyway—it was that applying himself did not come at all naturally. When he wanted things, they happened, with one notable exception that was no longer an exception, actually. But he’d worked hard for that, too. Sort of. For a definition of ‘worked.’

“That’s… pretty cool, actually.”

Kari looked up, sharply, expecting some form of mockery to show on Dick’s face. Instead, he caught Dick looking up and away, rubbing kind of awkwardly at his nose. Kari looked away just as quickly. He absolutely could not handle this if Dick started being cute. He was barely hanging on as it was. If Dick Grayson started saying he was cool and making faces like he meant it genuinely, Kari was going to combust.

“Wanting to get in without any help, I mean. I get it, trust me.”

“Yeah?” Kari said, a little hopefully. It would be cool if they had that in common, too. A lot of people in their circumstances wanted to prove they were more than daddy’s money, but not very many went about it in particularly healthy or ethical ways. “Well, I guess it must be different, getting thrust into this kind of existence when you’re already like, mostly formed.” Dick had become Bruce Wayne’s ward as a teenager, after the tragic death of his parents. Kari had been born into the world, golden spoon tucked firmly between his teeth.

“Don’t get me wrong, it was great at first. Still is. Surreal, but great. But that doesn’t mean you want it to be the only thing about you that matters.”

When Kari smiled this time, he could feel the realness of it tugging at the corners of his lips. That was a little dangerous, wanting it to be real. But if he held on to the impermanence of it all maybe it could be real for the rest of the afternoon, and that would be just fine.

Dick

Charlie Swanson had a smile that was not like the smiles he gave to cameras, and a personality that was not like the one he posted online. This wasn’t unusual at all; in fact, Dick was pretty sure everyone who managed to be online and sane at the same time did a version of this, let alone ones that also had to deal with paparazzi and thinkpieces. He would know. But Charlie’s real smile came as something of a relief, mostly because Charlie’s fake smile reminded Dick very uncomfortably of Bruce’s, and everyone who knew him hated that smile.

Instead of the cheerful, spoiled brat he portrayed online and in front of flashbulbs, Charlie was energetic but thoughtful. He had a lot of hobbies and very clearly wanted someone to talk to them about. He was away from the nest for the first time and a bit insecure about it and trying very hard not to seem insecure about it. Nineteen had only been a few years ago for Dick, and he remembered that feeling more than he’d like to admit. Although, Charlie’s foray into the unknown seemed to involve more time on podcasts and less time expanding YA versions of the Justice League, but still.

“…glad they eased up on the first-year-on-campus rule, honestly. I’m sure dorm life would be illuminating and all that, but dad was stressed enough about me coming to Gotham without him having to rely on dorm security.”

“Let me guess, you’re up in Gotham Heights?”

“Pffft, yeah right. Like I’m commuting that far every day. No, there’s some decent high security condos not far from campus. It’s a mix of students whose parents are still gun-shy from the Scarecrow thing and like, I dunno, businessmen or something. I guess the financial district is nearby?”

“It is.”

“See, I should get you to draw me a map. It’d be a lot more helpful than the one on my phone.” It definitely would be. Dick thought Charlie might be joking, but he was considering it. It seemed like Charlie was sticking closely to the borders the wealthy had drawn for themselves, but in Gotham, it was very easy to take a wrong turn and wind up some place a guy who looked like Charlie absolutely should not be. His light frame and short stature could easily have him mistaken for a much younger kid, or even a young woman, especially from the back—the hair wasn’t helping there.

“I guess you haven’t done a lot of exploring, then?”

Charlie pouted. “I really want to, ” he said, his voice coming out kind of petulant and a little sulky. “But I don’t want to drag along a security detail the whole time, and I also don’t want to not have a security detail and wind up needing one. I don’t want to just go to the tourist spots, either. I’ve been hoping to hit it off with some Gotham local in class, but so far, no luck.”

Dick raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? No luck? You?”

“Once again, doing great things for my self-esteem here.”

“Maybe climb out a window to escape class with them,” Dick suggested. “Worked on me.”

Charlie had this thing he did where he pulled part of his bottom lip between his teeth and chewed at it. It was impossible to say what it meant, since he didn’t have enough to go off of, but so far it seemed to correlate with moments where he didn’t have anything immediately clever to say.

“Is that what worked on you? I thought it was the churros.”

“It was neither, actually; it was losing at chess.”

“Oh hell yeah, I’m great at that.” Charlie stretched in a way that was vaguely feline, all curved spine and stretched out limbs. The grabby-hands probably also helped the cat vibes. “Do you need me to lose a couple more times to seal the deal?”

“No, you’ll probably need to lose at a bunch more things.”

“Is there an arcade near here? I bet I can break a record for most games lost in under fifteen minutes.”

“There’s a record for that?”

“If there’s not, there’s about to be.”

Kari

Gotham was literally the best, because there was a fucking arcade nearby, and Dick was also the best because he knew where it was. What kind of a city still had arcades?! They were all ancient and extremely sticky, as was the carpet. Kari suspected he got asbestos and lead poisoning simultaneously upon walking in the door.

He for sure had to bring Grif here. Sometime when Dick wasn’t also here, because he was trying to keep the fact he had private security at least somewhat on the down-low. Not for security reasons. He was just embarrassed about it. It had been easier when he was in high school, hanging out with the same people he’d known since elementary. Now everyone was new and every little thing that made him different felt like a serious social risk. Plus, Grif scared most people. It was his face. And body. And everything about him.

He was a sweetheart, honest. Except for when he needed to not be, and then he wasn’t, at all.

Dick was really good at fighting games, because of course he was. Kari lost to him at three of them and also a motorcycle racing game featuring motorcycles built for someone a bit shorter than Kari and therefore stunningly shorter than Dick. The fact he still won despite that was humiliating, but not in the way that hurt.

“This is the best Tuesday I’ve ever had,” Kari declared after turning in a number of yellow paper tickets for a ring pop.

“Seriously? You’re a billionaire. You could build this arcade in your fifth guest room.”

“Yeah, and it would fucking suck, because it’d be in a billionaire’s mansion,” Kari said, rolling his eyes. “We have the in-house movie theater, but no one ever wants to use it except guests, because seeing movies in a theater alone fucking sucks. Imagine spending a Tuesday in the arcade you built in your own house because you couldn’t just go to the normal arcade with friends. Seriously. Imagine that.”

Dick held up his hands in surrender. “Alright, yeah, fair enough. Did you not have friends to go to arcades with back in Metropolis?”

Kari shot him a wary look. “I had the normal number of friends, and we did the abnormal things that you get to do when you’re super rich or friends with someone who is. I’m not the sad, lonely billionaire.”

“You said losing ten games in thirty minutes in a sticky arcade was your best Tuesday.”

“Hey,” Kari said, pointing at his hand. “I got a ring pop. I won this ring pop from famed arcade game Stinky Feet. I earned it through the sweat of my brow and the squirt of my tiny water gun.”

“And that makes it the perfect Tuesday?”

“I didn’t say perfect.” The realm of perfect was vast and unexplored and probably involved doing things Dick was very much not interested in, and also that Kari couldn’t do for a number of reasons. “I said best. For instance, I saw a gyro place next door. I’m willing to bet those are not perfect gyros, but I bet they’ll be the best ones I’ve ever had on a Tuesday after winning a ring pop from Stinky Feet.”

“Oh,” Dick said, with a grin that nearly knocked the air out of Kari’s lungs. “I have great news about those gyros.”

The gyros were maybe perfect.

Oh, probably not in a technical sense when judged by professional gyro-makers from Greek or whatever, but the pitas were big and warm and held up very well to the excessive amounts of meat, onions, and tsatziki. The fact that they were so not a good date food was helping the vibes; Kari didn’t feel compelled to look pretty when horfing down a gyro the size of his head in a smoke-filled room that smelled of roasting meat.

“Am I gonna get food poisoning?” he asked Dick about 75% of the way through his feast. Dick was eating a similarly large gyro without much more grace.

“Kind of late to ask that,” Dick pointed out.

“I would eat it either way, I just wanna know if I should be ready.”

“You’ll be fine.” Dick glanced towards the C food safety rating on the wall. “Probably. I’ve eaten here a ton and never get sick.”

“Good enough for me. Man, I wish this place was closer to campus!” Their little journey had originated in a pretty nice area of town, but now they were in a neighborhood that could be politely described as “sketchy.” Kari was noticing that Gotham seemed to turn from chrome to dilapidated brick and rusty metal pretty fast when you weren’t looking, which was probably why Grif hadn’t let yet him explore the town wholly on his own. Kari had plenty of tricks for escaping Grif’s notice when he had to, but that was for emergencies. Bright pink emergencies with ribbons, which he was avoiding like the plague for as long as he could. Batman hadn’t loved having him in Gotham, last time.

“If it was closer to campus, it wouldn’t be this good,” Dick countered. “The financial district ruins all restaurants. Nothing but bougie chains and upscale coffee shops.”

Kari liked bougie chains and upscale coffee shops, but he did not volunteer this information, because Dick was super cool and this hang-out was going great. He was thinking he had decent odds of getting Dick’s number, or maybe at least getting friended back on something that allowed DMs.

“It’s kind of weird it’s not more popular here, considering the sticky arcade and amazing-if-dingy gyros.”

“Gentrification is weird and spotty in Gotham. This neighborhood is pretty safe, because there’s public housing and no place where they can stick a parking garage.”

“Underground?” Kari suggested, because Metropolis was mostly made up of underground parking garages.

“Those don’t do well here. Ground’s a bit… wet, in Gotham, kind of in a general sense.”

This made sense, what with the lake and the rivers and the swamp not super far away. Gotham had to make do with above-ground parking, then, which Kari imagined could be a lot more annoying. Zoning laws and shit, things he was learning about in school and trying to actually maybe retain this time.

College was hard, and he hadn’t even started really re-maintaining his super-sona at this point. But he was trying to do the down-low for a while. He wanted to procrastinate on whatever trouble Batman would give him when he realized the pretty pink princess—a much better name that he should have gone with before the newspapers could name him—had come back to Gotham, or potentially never left.

Dick

It turned out Charlie had never been to the Gotham Botanical Gardens. It turned out Charlie had never actually even heard of the botanical gardens, which was both outrageous and completely understandable.

It came up because they had been discussing the failed gentrification of the area, and how everyone had known from the start that it was a pretty lost cause, because the botanical gardens fail to get the kind of tourist footprint as, say, the zoo or even some famous crime spots. The lack of parking meant you had to bus in or take a cab, and both were notoriously unreliable in Gotham. Not even their fault, really. There were a lot of disturbances both above and under ground.

It doesn’t occur to Dick until they’ve already arrived at the Gardens, and Charlie is running around cooing over butterflies and making chattering friendship with strangers—a serious feat in Gotham—that this day has gotten a little out of hand.

It wasn’t like he’d had plans, although he was normally taking a nap around this time. Canceling that stupid video interview had left his schedule wide open for once. However, rescuing the sad little new kid from the big bad YouTuber had really taken a turn at some point, and he couldn’t pinpoint precisely where. Probably sometime around the churros, or maybe the chess game.

Making friends was a somewhat dicey prospect when you spent your nights the way Dick spent his, but on the other hand, they meant for great cover. Charlie seemed like the sort of guy who would instantly answer “he was with me” if called by the cops for an alibi. As someone in training to take over a mega-corporation, he probably understood the concept of being too busy to hang out. He was a little starstruck but hiding it well, which meant he probably wouldn’t be too pushy or demanding.

Another part of Dick didn’t like that he had to weight the pros and cons of being around someone he obviously got along with well. It made his internal monologue sound a little too Wayne-y for his personal tastes; he’d left Gotham for a reason, after all, and only come back because his replacement had… well… he’d needed to come back. But the fact of the matter was, Nightwing could probably make use of having another spare billionaire on hand, their friendship would make waves online if they decided to publicize it—although it was a matter of time before someone caught them; for all Dick knew they were already posted online—and, most importantly, he maintained, Charlie and Dick got along. He could make friends. It could be normal; it didn’t have to be a whole bat thing.

Kari

Kari was steadfastly maintaining to himself that this was not, no matter how it felt, a thing.

The Gotham City Botanical Gardens were surprisingly nice for being in inner-city Gotham; the crowd was eclectic and diverse, matching the neighborhood, to the point that Kari felt both out-of-place and relaxed. It wasn’t as objectively nice as the massive gardens in, say, the Metropolis airport, which boasted one of the largest indoor gardens in the world (they had an ongoing rivalry with Singapore), but it had a subdued charm that couldn’t be matched anywhere in Metropolis that Kari had experienced.

Kari was distracting himself with a friendly redhead who was teaching him facts about some of Gotham’s native flora. The distraction was deeply necessary, as was the heterosexuality of his casual, charming, friend’s-little-brother flirtations with the older woman. If he didn’t distract himself with bare shoulders and red lips, he’d for sure wind up dwelling on the fact that Dick Grayson, the actual Dick Grayson who he’d had a huge crush on all through high school, had brought Kari out on what felt terrifyingly like a date.

They’d had churros. They’d walked to a park. They’d gone to an arcade, had lunch, and now they were at the botanical garden just because Kari hadn’t heard of them and they were nearby. Suspiciously like the two of them didn’t want the hangout to end, despite copious opportunities to slip out politely. Also, what kind of straight man takes someone to a fucking botanical garden ?!

But that line of thought absolutely could not be endured, because Dick had never given even the slightest hint of bisexuality online or in person, unless one counted knowing where the Gotham City Botanical Gardens were. And that didn’t even fucking matter, because Kari had a lot more going on in his life right now versus when he was in high school crushing on the unobtainable and safely distant. Charles Swanson, billionaire heir apparent, was a young man with multiple dark secrets.

He knew most people online thought he was gay, but in his day-to-day life, he wasn’t even out as bisexual, which he was pretty sure he was. His dad probably wouldn’t care, but it would definitely cause a micro-scandal, and Kari just wasn’t ready for the gossip circulating about him to be something personal and real. He’d given the gossip rags so much more interesting things to talk about that his mom only came up as a parenthetical on occasion, and he’d gotten blissfully used to them no longer twanging on his nerves.

Moreover, absolutely no one knew what he got up into alone in his apartment, save perhaps the cleaning staff who bustled through once a week and may have—despite his best efforts—at some point located the clothing hidden inside the suitcase in his closet. And not even those with the stated task of cleaning up his things every week knew the biggest problem of all, that he was some kind of fucking magical girl and would occasionally fight crime in stilettos.

So, all in all? He was not set up for a date, least of all with Dick Grayson, someone equally famous and with probably nearly as much to lose and, again again again, Kari couldn’t forget, was in all likelihood not even interested in Kari as a friend, and this was absolutely all in his head. Keeping that in mind, Kari pushed every other thought into the back corner of his mind and shoved it into its own Suitcase of Terrible Secrets, and focused on the vague femdom/mommy vibes of the beautiful woman explaining to him the plights of the American Chestnut.

Dick did eventually come rescue Kari from the situation, which did not warrant rescuing because “learning about endangered trees from a hot M?ILF” is not a threat or even a problem, but Kari had gotten in enough compulsive heterosexuality to get his head back on his shoulders. Even if he was walking down a flower-filled path with one of the hottest internet celebrities on the planet, purposefully not thinking about how this situation felt like one of the fanfics he absolutely had never read ever.

They were wandering somewhat aimlessly when Dick got a text. Kari had been taking advantage of the lapse in eye contact to study Dick’s face more than was socially appropriate, and he caught the way Dick’s eyes hardened and got a glint to them, the curve of his lips becoming a stern line, even if briefly.

“Sorry,” Dick said, glancing his way, eyes and mouth already back to Amiable and Charming Goofball. Kari wondered if his face did that. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Duty calls.”

Kari had no idea what constituted duty for a guy who made his living off of already being rich and famous, but he could imagine it was something important from Dick’s momentary expression. Plus, he’d kind of expecting Dick to pull out an excuse to leave, like, five hours ago. He nodded.

“Sure, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the… day.” That sounded so lame. “And the rescue,” he added, which was more accurate.

Dick waved away the gratitude with a brush of his hand in the air. “I had a good time. You follow me on Insta, right?”

Kari didn’t know how he felt about the fact Dick had either known that or assumed it. His stomach was doing weird things. “Who doesn’t?” he joked, in a desperate last-ditch attempt at emotional survival. This failed as he watched Dick pull up the aforementioned app, search for Kari’s name, and hit the follow button. Kari might have been turning a weird color. He was focusing on maintaining a normal facial expression. What the fuck constituted a normal facial expression in this situation?!

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and our busy rich-guy schedules will line up again,” Dick suggested, and it was just vague enough that Kari could immediately assure himself that it was one of those ‘we’ll do lunch sometime!’ situations, which calmed him down somewhat. Following someone online didn’t mean shit. It was just a form of public networking. It was a final bone to throw someone who’d been in an embarrassing situation.

“Yeah,” Kari agreed, relieved to find his normal smile again. “Totally!”

Dick

Dick’s schedule was, in fact, extremely busy, what with staying up all night trying to help Batman hold down Gotham, while leaving plenty of allowance for Batman’s plausible deniability that he had any particular thoughts or emotions about once-Robin-now-Nightwing being back in town. Oh, and also spending his days trying to be an emotional support dog to someone who didn’t like emotions or support, and only mostly tolerated dogs.

But he’d been keeping an eye on the YouTube channel responsible for Charlie Swanson’s shitty day, and he saw the video go up not a week after their aborted interview. He sent it to Charlie on Insta while the view count was still taking the time to register clicks. It featured an edited-down version of their introduction, Dick’s excuse to go to their would-be dressing rooms, and some very annoying footage of the two of them scurrying down the road together, clearly shot out of a window on the same side of the house they’d climbed down. At least there wasn’t any footage of them scaling the side of the building, he supposed.

“We can get it taken down,” he suggested via DM. Dick knew he could do it no problem, and imagined Charlie had similar avenues. There was only a few minutes delay, despite the fact Charlie should probably have been in class—might have been, honestly—and then:

“we can get out in front of it

if u dont mind”

Dick didn’t mind. In fact, he was a bit curious to see Charlie’s idea of “getting out in front of it,” considering the video had unsubtly implied that the two of them had run off to find a cheap motel, more interested in each other than the promised interview. Dick only had to wait twelve minutes before he found out. Onto his feed came Charlie’s newest picture: a selfie Dick remembered taking only vaguely. Charlie was front and center, the camera low and his jawline looking flawless despite that—kid knew his angles. He was pointing up and back with his thumb, looking starstruck, at Dick, whose face, neck, and most of his shoulders were fully visible despite the fact he was standing most of the way behind Kari. There was the end of a churro hanging out of his mouth. Charlie had caught the exact moment he’d glanced down at the camera. Dick suspected he took pictures on rapid-fire.

There was a caption that read “Dick Grayson is taller and nicer in real life, somehow,” and in the description there was a somewhat creative and tragic retelling of their day together, detailing how the interview had been a set-up to embarrass him, and Dick had heroically swept in to rescue him. It didn’t mention the details of what they’d done or where they’d gone, making it seem more like the pity-hang of an older brother’s friend than anything else. Swiping to the right, Dick saw that the second picture in the story was just a screenshot of the “mutuals” indicator next to Dick’s username. It had been decorated with star-eye and screaming face emojis.

As expected of an internet native with millions of followers, Charlie had instantly swung the reaction from “gay hookup” into how nice Dick was and even a seemingly mask-off honest confession that he was having trouble adjusting to Gotham after spending his whole life in Metropolis. Typical “kid away from home for the first time” stuff, painting Dick as the older-brother’s-cool-friend type who’d had compassion for the awkward new kid and helped him out. It wasn’t entirely false, which was exactly why it worked. Abruptly, Charlie had all the sympathy and Dick had all the praise, with posts online holding him aloft as an example of “non-toxic masculinity” and “bro support.”

It did mean their budding friendship was a bit more public than Dick suspected either of them had really wanted, but given the level of celebrity surrounding both of them, that had been inevitable sooner or later. In “getting ahead” of the video, Charlie had also incidentally—or, Dick suspected, not incidentally at all—solidified any future hang-outs as purely Dick taking Charlie under his wing—pun not intended—and showing him the social ropes of Gotham. Given the rumors that circulated around Charlie’s sexuality, which weren’t so much rumors as extremely common assumptions, this was admittedly a relief for Dick, who was just old enough to not want an excess of untoward assumptions about his intentions towards a nineteen-year-old who still looked underage. Or any awkward attempts at topic-breaching by Bruce, which he’d already experienced once as a teenager when Bruce had picked up on the awkward will-they-won’t-they between Dick and Barbara.

Dick appreciated the foresight. Enough that he felt fully confident when, a few weeks later, after he’d been forced into taking a few nights off after a not-even-that-bad shoulder injury, he sent Charlie an invitation to the archery range they’d talked about. Charlie had gone to all the trouble of pre-emptively protecting Dick’s reputation, after all. It’d be a shame to waste it.

Christopher Swanson

Christopher Swanson’s son, Charles—Charlie now, and he was getting better at remembering—hadn’t always been into magic.

Christopher was of the opinion it was a normal teenage thing, having an occult phase. He’d grown up in the 70s, which might have been the source of that opinion. But all signs pointed to phase, so he wasn’t worried about it. It was honestly a little cute. It’d started at the right moment for a “normal teenage thing,” during the summer between Charlie’s last two years of middle school. There was a new kid at school, someone who’d had the unfortunate experience of transferring to a new school in March. She’d had all the makings of an outcast, dressing weird and showing up halfway through the second year, no friends and no idea who anyone was.

Christopher was extremely proud that his son had immediately made friends with the little weirdo. He knew it was because she’d been set to be an outcast. Charlie was just that kind of boy. Christopher wished he could take credit for it, but really, all of Charlie’s best traits came straight from his mother, whose memory was, and always would be, a blessing. He’d done his best, but she’d imbued more love and compassion into that boy in seven years than he’d managed in the next ten. So of course, Mariasha’s son would make friends with the transfer student, and in doing so, make sure she’d never be picked on—at least not in front of Charlie, who was popular and well-loved and in both track and color guard.

So Christopher didn’t care that the kid was a weird, witchy little thing. Sure, she painted her nails black and listened to guttural screaming that was only music if you stretched the definition. So what? It reminded Christopher of his own high school years, and of the long-haired hippies he hadn’t been brave enough to be friends with. His son was better than him. That was a good thing.

He wasn’t even worried that it was rubbing off on Charlie. That was normal, and Charlie’s grades weren’t dipping—well, any further than they were already dipped—and he wasn’t skipping school or sneaking out at midnight to sacrifice cats. If he started burning his allowance on tarot cards and candles instead of designer bags and parties for half the school, who cared? He wasn’t unhappy. He wasn’t going through an “I hate you dad!” phase. He was still wearing bright colors and a big smile. That was absolutely all Christopher cared about when it came to Charlie.

The phase continued into high school, and it continued past the point when Charlie’s witchy little friend transferred away again, but it didn’t really hit full force until Charlie’s junior year of high school. Charlie had spent that summer on Lake Erie, visiting his mother’s family. He came back different, but that was normal too. Kids grew so fast at that age, their interests and personality rocketing this way and that as they tried to figure out who they are. Christopher wanted to give his son plenty of room to do that, and he knew Mari’s family could never be bad influences. If anything, he wished Charlie would spend more time with them—they had roots that Christopher didn’t know how to grow, with his awkward Friday nights and bought-and-paid-for Hebrew school—but Charlie was a California boy through and through and hated the cold.

Christopher let Charlie spend his money on whatever he wanted. Mari might not have been Swanson rich, but they’d gone to the same schools for a reason, and she’d left everything to Charlie. It sat in a trust, over which Christopher had control, but all he did was make sure it grew. It was Charlie’s money. If he wanted to spend it on silly little, what were they called, tchotchkes, and peculiar pieces of art, Christopher didn’t care at all. Whatever made him happy. And he was making friends, sellers and other interested parties who attended auctions. It was good for him to have hobbies outside of school; it was great for him to make friends with people of a variety of ages. A growing young man needed role models, and Christopher didn’t trust himself with that. He made sure anyone who spent more than a little time with Charlie was vetted. These were rich-blood auctions, anyway. There weren’t any real weirdos hanging out there.

Jason Blood: Real Weirdo

These auctions were almost always a waste of time. They were a place for the disgustingly wealthy to burn their money on fish oil and magic tricks, and Jason found them distasteful and more than a little boring. But he went to them anyway, because every now and again, one of the supposedly magical artifacts wouldn’t be a lie, exaggeration, or outright scam. And that was significantly more dangerous than the normal course of separating fools from their money. No one wanted a rich, powerful, magical idiot.

It was at one of those faires for fools that he met Charles Swanson, who stood out due to being a good thirty years younger than anyone in the audience. He was preppy and well-dressed, flashy in his faux-vintage Ralph Lauren, his yellow-blonde hair well-coiffed and his lean equal parts lazy and affected arrogance.

He also had a very good eye for magic. Young master Swanson had been at enough auctions to bid on the exact items Jason had come to examine, with enough frequency that it became suspicious. He’d asked around and found out only the benign: Charles was the spoiled only son of a billionaire CEO, based on the west coast but willing to fly first class to attend auctions himself rather than send a man, which the vast majority of the rest of his wealth bracket did for such events. Jason even started skulking around Oblivion, hoping to catch word of the suspicious blonde brat, but no one had ever seen him there, or anywhere else important.

No, Jason learned exactly nothing, until his curious questions caught the ear of some low-level scalper, who, for an irritating price, informed him that Charles was a customer with a taste for the magical. Nothing that Jason didn’t already know, except that the boy was fishing closer to the source than just auctions with a supernatural rumor around them. It was less than not enough. With regret, he’d have to investigate the boy himself—asking anyone he knew to do it was not only annoying to consider, it would be an act of unmitigated cruelty if the lad turned out to be some twat with a good ear for gossip.

It was easy to strike up a conversation. The boy, who shyly reintroduced himself as Charlie after their third meeting, had noticed Jason’s tendency to show interest in the same item as him, and was excited to have someone even slightly friendly to talk to about his passionate interest in the arcane. An interest which, as Jason investigated, appeared for all the world to be mundane in nature. Charlie either had no talent for or interest in duplicity, or was remarkably good at playing the idiot, and as the two continued their acquaintance, Jason increasingly suspect that Charlie had never been remarkably good at anything in his entire life. He had a lot of hobbies. He was average in all of them. He wasn’t particularly smart, or particularly fast, or particularly strong. All he was, was rich. Fortunate for him that that was all it really took.

“I know it’s not real,” Charlie informed him one night, after winning the bid on an extremely fake Egyptian relic. “I just buy anything with a solid enough rumor attached to it. I figure, one of them has to hit eventually, right?” The boy laughed. “I can’t aim, so I’ll take the shotgun approach.”

The problem was, he was right. With enough shots and a wide enough spread, he just might hit eventually.

Kari

“Charlie. I need to talk to you about that rock you won.”

Kari, who kept wanting to tell people his name, turned to his maybe-friend, Jason Blood, with a smile. It was an absolute high beam of a smile, he knew. He couldn’t help it. The bidding for the obsidian necklace had been brutal, and coming out on top had given him a bidder’s high like he hadn’t experienced in a while. He was waiting for his item now, milling about with the other winners, trying and failing not to look overly smug about the dirty looks he was getting.

Jason was an art collector with an interest in the occult. It was a small circle; Kari ran into a lot of the same faces. Jason was nice. Didn’t condescend to him too much, seemed interested in the sources of the rumors Kari was chasing. Kari was pretty sure it was just so he could chase those same rumors, but he was willing to overlook it. Jason was older, and cool, and liked the same things as Kari but was smarter about them.

Kari was okay with being used if it meant he could have a cool friend; he was familiar with the concept of friendship, after all.

“Are you going to be the fifth person to try and talk me into passing it on?” Charlie teased, smiling. “I won, fair and square. Everyone should just try being richer next time.”

Normally, this would result in an annoyed expression that Jason would suppress in order to keep being nice. This time, he still looked very serious. The unusual reaction caught Kari slightly off-guard.

“Have you got it yet?”

Kari shook his head. “No, we’re waiting for the crowd to thin out since it’s such a high value item. Everyone’s real worried about me getting mugged… like I don’t bring security to these things,” Kari added with a roll of his eyes. His dad was permissive, but flying across the country with no security was just dumb.

“Good. Do you have a minute to talk?”

“I mean, what are we doing now?”

“Alone.”

A thrill of interest shot through Kari. Not like that—well, a little like that, Jason was a silver fox and Kari had a type, but no. Jason looked serious, and that made Kari wonder if maybe he hadn’t actually finally struck on a little more of something than he normally did.

Kari believed in magic, was the thing. Oh, probably everyone at these events believed in magic, although Jason made himself out to be quite the skeptic. He’d gotten a whiff of it as a kid, and become convinced for a short time that magic could be his escape from the mundane, a way to be special that didn’t involve his daddy’s money. He’d given up on that, tried for other ways to be special. But the fact of the matter was that Kari was agonizingly, tortuously normal, and there was absolutely nothing special or interesting about him besides whose dick half of his genetics had haphazardly splorted out of. And so, he’d circled back around to magic.

Kari followed Jason to an empty hall nearby; he had plenty of time until it was his turn to pick up his item, and he was desperately curious about what Jason would say.

“That stone is dangerous,” Jason said, expression deadly serious. Kari couldn’t help the electric excitement that sent his heart racing even faster.

“Dangerous like magical dangerous?” he pressed. He didn’t want to believe it, but Jason had never reacted like this to anything Kari had won before. It was likely that the necklace had some sort of hidden value, and this was a ploy by Jason to get it out of Kari’s hands. He could know that and want so badly for this to be real at the same time.

“Dangerous,” Jason repeated. Kari pulled his lower lip between his teeth and worried at it, wanting to believe and knowing better.

“Look, Dr. Blood, I like you. I don’t want this to become, like, a thing. But I also don’t want you to think I’m stupid enough to hear ‘that thing you’ve bought at the fake magical auction is real magical dangerous’ and just hand over something I paid a small fortune for.”

“I know you’re not stupid,” Jason affirmed. “I’ve never treated you like an idiot child before, have I?” He hadn’t, which was exactly why Kari liked him. But treating you like an adult was also a thing adults did right before taking advantage of the fact you were a kid. “That’s why I’m telling you this and not just stealing it out from under you.”

Kari gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

“I’d have to. And I think you can understand the sort of trust I’m showing you by telling you that. So that you can trust me back.”

This was getting kind of freaky.

Kari rocked back on his heels, unsure. “Do you have any, like, proof? That it’s dangerous? I mean, the stories are spooky, sure, but it’s a chunk of obsidian on a cord, Dr. Blood.” He couldn’t imagine what secret value it’d have to make someone who’d always seemed so even-keeled suddenly start an elaborate child-scam.

Jason was quiet for a moment. His eyes on Kari’s were intense, enough that Kari had to look away and chew on his lip again. He felt a little in over his head, but he was glad Griz was outside smoking—he refused to smoke around Kari, even in places where it was allowed—and not inside witnessing this. He wasn’t significantly more protective of Kari than Kari’s dad was, but any sitter—sorry, bodyguard—would draw the line at intense older men insisting on private conversations with the teenage boy.

“I think it’s for the best,” Jason said suddenly, as if coming to some conclusion. “Collect the necklace. Do not put it on. Then, bring it to me, and I can—

Kari held up a hand. “Blood, Griz is for sure going to be glued to me from the second I get that thing. I just paid over a million dollars for it. A lot of people are expressing a lot of interest, and I am but a waifish lad. ” Jason got halfway to rolling his eyes. This was a much more familiar reaction, and put Kari somewhat more at ease. “My point is, if you want to show me magical proof, and you don’t want my sitter to see—and for the record, I don’t want my sitter to see—you’re gonna have to do it before I get the necklace, or after I’ve gone home with it.”

“That’s too dangerous,” Jason began immediately, but Kari shook his head.

“Tell me what to do with it or not do with it that’ll keep it from being dangerous. You’re kind of freaking me out, so I’ll do whatever weird shit it is. Then we can meet up, without Griz, before I leave town, and you can show me whatever evidence you have. Unless you can show it to me now, before I get the necklace?”

Jason was hesitating. He looked a bit nervous about something, which put Kari on edge again. Kari didn’t want to over-assume, but he thought he recognized on Jason the very familiar look of a man contemplating the lesser of two evils. Then he shook his head.

“I have an estate in Old Gotham,” Jason began, and Kari perked right up.

“I get to see your house?!” Kari had been hoping for an opportunity to peek through some of Jason’s collection.

“If you listen to me very carefully and do exactly as I say with that stone,” Jason said, voice deadly serious. It wasn’t a tone Kari was used to hearing. He sounded like Griz when shit got real.

Kari nodded, trying to mimic the serious attitude. It didn’t come naturally to him, so he didn’t think he was selling it. Too blonde, too bimbo. Too… Swanson.

“I will give you a box. Once you get the stone, put it directly in. Do not put the necklace on. Lock the box, keep the key on your person. Don’t let anyone else even see it. Not your bodyguard, not anyone. Can you come to my estate tomorrow?”

Kari nodded, eagerness ruining any seriousness he’d managed to acquire.

“Bring it with you. I’ll give you your proof, but Charlie?”

“Y-yeah?” Kari said, barely keeping his voice from cracking.

“There’s no going back from what you’ll learn. Are you okay with that? And think it over. Don’t give the impulsive teenage answer.”

“If it’s real, I’m going to run into it sooner or later,” Kari reminded him.

Jason ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching on the white streak at his brow. “I know. Believe me, I fucking know.”

Kari, The Next Day

Old Gotham was gothic as hell, and Jason Blood’s mansion was no exception.

Well, mansion was something of an overstatement for Gotham, but it had to count as a mansion when it was built. It wasn’t a sprawling estate like the ones in Gotham Heights, but a stately three-story Victorian home. Fenced in, of course. Everyone needed security fences in Gotham, Kari imagined. But not so far from the fence, with a yard of a reasonable size. It had something of a tower that added a fourth story to one section of the house. It was painted not black, which was something of a disappointment, but a sort of beige-green hybrid.

It was novel to Kari, who’d grown up in the shining chrome and neon of Metropolis, city of the future. It reminded Kari that his wealth was a measly three generations old, if you counted Kari, and made him wonder if the house had been in Blood’s family for a while. It looked like a great place to learn about magic.

He’d postponed his return flight. Dad didn’t like him missing school, but he’d overlook a day or two, especially if he thought it was for something ‘important to Kari’s growth as a young man.’ It wasn’t really difficult to convince Kari’s dad of anything, so he wasn’t worried about how he’d spin this later. Griz hadn’t even batted an eye when Kari told him he’d been invited to Jason Blood’s estate and was super definitely going . He was even more used to following Kari’s whims than Dad was. His job was to keep Kari safe, not contained . He was good at both, which was why he’d had his job for so long. Not that Kari would even deign to imagine having someone else in the position.

The necklace was in the locked box that Jason had given him. Excited to prove himself, he hadn’t opened it even once since he’d placed the necklace inside the night before. The key, he’d hidden inside a pocket he’d sewn to the inside of all of his underpants—it was the best place to hide things, because adult security wouldn’t be caught dead groping some high schooler to see if they were hiding anything. Well, not this high schooler, anyway. Forget losing their jobs, if Kari shed a single tear about a misplaced finger in front of his dad, they’d be set for jail or worse. Kari—tiny, young-looking for his age, blonde, blue-eyed, gorgeous-lashed, and still underage—was the exact kind of young man that any grown man didn’t want to be caught looking too long at, and Kari damn well knew it. He was on social media; he knew what they said about him online, both loudly and in quiet corners. He wasn’t above using it to his advantage, not even a little.

That was part of why this thing with Jason was so thrilling. Adults didn’t do things like this with him; he was too risky. It didn’t matter that Kari was on the cusp of eighteen, or that there were countdowns to his explosion into Eligible Bachelorhood; he was still a minor. Inviting a minor to your house, particularly if you were an unmarried adult man, could be interpreted badly. It wouldn’t be, because Griz was going to be there, and because Kari’s dad liked Dr. Blood. And, most of all, because Kari wouldn’t allow it to be interpreted badly. He knew he could be manipulative, especially of the adults in his life, but he wasn’t going to let anyone say that shit about Jason. Not when he’d trusted Kari enough to do this in the first place.

Kari was trying not to vibrate in excitement as their car was buzzed through the front gate. The driveway was short, but there was only one car parked there. Had to be Jason’s. It was old-timey looking and black; Kari could appreciate the aesthetic but little else.

Griz whistled, catching Kari’s attention. “Nineteen-seventy-one Silver Shadow. You didn’t tell me your buddy was into cars.”

“He never mentioned it,” Kari said, eyes dragging over the car as if he could learn something from staring at it. “Is it a nice car?”

“Classic American luxury,” Griz said approvingly. Kari’s family drove entirely electric vehicles. Griz never critiqued them, but his own car was a heavily modified and much-loved 1967 Ford Mustang, a fact Kari only knew because Griz didn’t talk much, so when he did talk, Kari tried to listen. Cars were one of the things he talked about. “Tell your Dr. Blood he’s got good taste. Really fits the Gotham vibe.”

That, it definitely did.

“I’ll be sure to pass on the message. You don’t mind staying out here?” Kari wasn’t asking because he thought Griz would be antsy or worried, but because the house looked cool from the outside, and Griz might want to see the rest.

“Ask your buddy if I can look under the hood.”

“Will do. Three pages in a row if he says yes,” Kari promised. “You’re the best, Griz.”

Kari and Griz had a system. Kari liked being able to go places by himself. And so Griz carried what Kari called a pager, but which was actually some kind of super high tech satellite… still a pager, Kari was pretty sure? It wasn’t called that, but Kari was of the opinion that if something’s purpose was more or less just to beep, that shit was a pager. Kari had a little button, looked like a fidget toy, kind of, and when he pressed it, Griz’s pager would beep. He did this regularly, every minute or two, to let Griz know he was okay. If he ever stopped beeping, or if he sent the emergency blast, well. Too bad for whoever had caused that particular outcome.

Jason wouldn’t, Kari was pretty sure. Mostly sure. Everything would be fine.

The box was in Kari’s bag; he hadn’t wanted Griz to know he was bringing a high-value item into a mostly-stranger’s house. Not that it really mattered; Kari was way more valuable to everyone than some freaky necklace, but Griz didn’t love when Kari did dumb stuff that put himself at risk, like walking around with a necklace he’d just valued at over a million dollars, that a bunch of people were interested in, including the guy whose house he was walking into alone.

It’d be fine.

Jason opened the front door before Kari could knock; of course he knew they were here, what with the gate and all. He was dressed down, which was to say, he wasn’t wearing the jacket part of his usual suit, and the first few buttons of his shirt were undone. It might have actually been the same thing he’d been wearing yesterday. Kari felt super normal about it.

“Charles,” Jason said, and Kari quickly squished down and boxed up all of his complex emotions. This was serious business. Either he was about to see magic, or he was about to get scammed. He needed to be paying attention to things a lot more important than Jason Blood’s five-o-clock shadow and the implications of chest hair. He might have been seventeen, but he was capable of self-control. Despite what everyone thought.

Jason’s house was just as old-blood-austere on the inside as on the outside, if not more so. There was an antique coat hanger, which Kari used to hang up his cardigan, mostly for the novelty of it. The white wool with its red Gucci stripe clashed humorously with dark-colored trench coats much more suited to Gotham and Victorian mansions. Kari felt compelled to take his shoes off, but Jason wasn’t, so he didn’t. He was incapable of feeling underdressed in a $10,000 outfit, but he did feel out of place. Too bad he hadn’t traveled to Gotham with any ominous cloaks.

“You have the stone?” It was a question, but didn’t sound quite like one. Kari nodded.

“Still in the box. I only handled the necklace to put it in there, and that was with gloves.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”

“Standard procedure. Actually…” Kari reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves. There was stitching on the inside, invisible from the outside. “Can you tell me if these are real? I got them from my aunt, who said she got them from a Rabbi in Sommerset.”

Jason took one of the gloves, flipped it over, and then handed it back to Kari.

“Put those on,” he said, which served as an answer for Kari, who grinned and tried not to vibrate with excitement. Plus one, no, plus twenty bajillion points for his aunt, who had apparently found the coolest fucking Rabbi in America. Kari slipped the gloves on, not caring that they probably looked stupid next to his white shirt—Dior or no, a t-shirt was a t-shirt.

“Oh, before I get totally swept up in the magic thing, do you mind if my sitter looks at your car? Like, the engine or whatever. He won’t mess it up, he just likes cars.”

Jason blinked, clearly not anticipating this sudden conversational left turn. “Your sitter?”

“Bodyguard,” Kari corrected. “Security detail. Y’know. Babysitter with a gun. He’s cool, I promise.”

“Ah. ‘Griz.’” Kari could hear the quotation marks around the nickname, and nodded. The two had met, albeit briefly. “Fine. I’d rather have him occupied.”

“Sick, he’s gonna be so pumped,” Kari said enthusiastically. He pulled out his phone to pretend to text him, and hit the pager button three times in quick succession while his hand was in his pocket. He was too lazy to actually bother texting. “Are you gonna confiscate my phone?”

“Should I?”

“Well, I’m not planning on secretly recording anything, but I wouldn’t blame you.”

“You’re placing a concerning amount of trust in me,” Jason said with a frown.

“I mean, yeah, but also no?” Kari said, tilting his hand side to side in the universal gesture for ‘mid.’ “I think we’re placing a similar level of trust in each other. It takes some amount of faith to be cool having America’s richest jailbait alone with you in your house.”

Jason looked equal parts disgusted and disturbed. “America’s richest what.”

“Oh, are you not on the internet? Well, I am, and everyone over the age of nine knows how to disable safe search. My point is just that I’m not exactly defenseless. And apparently I have magic gloves!” He held up his hands and curled his fingers, then realized he was basically doing kitty paws and stopped.

“I think you should not be on the internet.”

“Okay, dad. So, can you tell me what’s up with this necklace now?”

“Follow me,” Jason said by way of response, and led Kari up some stairs, and then up some more stairs, followed by more friggin’ stairs. They must have been up at the top of the little tower Kari had seen from the outside of the house. Wizard tower wizard tower wizard tower wizard tower yes.

“Oh my god there are sigils on the ground,” Kari said, voice half an octave higher in excitement. If this was a scam, at least it came with a show. “This is great.”

“If you wouldn’t mind handing me the box,” Jason said.

“At least tell me what it’s supposed to be, first!” Kari protested. “Because from the listing, it sounded like a good luck charm at best, but this has been, like, a lot.”

“A good luck charm? That’s what it sounded like to you?”

Kari shrugged. “Its previous three owners all got basically everything they wanted.”

“They died miserable and alone.”

“I’m a billionaire. I’ll be doing that anyway. So, what, are you saying it’s cursed or something?”

“Much worse than that. That stone is no simple obsidian; it’s a shard of Avarice. Now please, hand it over.”

A shard of avarice sounded pretty fucking cool, but Kari nonetheless pulled the box out of his bag. He hesitated again before handing it over. This was maybe the only thing he’d ever bought that might actually turn out to be real magic. Did he really want to give it to Jason for the promise of some magical demonstration that could totally turn out to be roadside hocus pocus and special effects?

“Charles,” Jason said. “I need you to hand it to me.”

Kari frowned. “Why do you keep calling me that? I told you, it’s Charlie.”

“My apologies; there’s an importance to true names in certain circumstances.”

Kari hesitated again. “So, birth names?”

“Most of the time.”

Kari had a bit of a suspicion. “But not all of the time?”

“No, not all of the time. Generally, people know which name rings true to them at any given moment, however.”

Yep. Yeah. Well, he was already apparently trusting Jason with a lot of things, so this shouldn’t be the thing that did him in. “In that case,” he said, tone almost apologetic. “I think it’s probably Kari.”

“Ah,” was all Jason said. “Kari. Can you hand me the box?”

“Yeah,” he said, distracted trying to not process any of the emotions hearing that name out loud from someone else was giving him. He held out the box, and Jason took it. “Oh, wait, shit, the key.”

“Do you not have it?”

“I do, it’s just… uh, you might want to turn around for this.”

Jason eyebrows shot up.

“Look, I don’t know what magic pocket you keep important keys in, but you do not want to watch me dig it out from where I keep mine.”

“It’s… external… right?” Jason asked, sounding pained, and Kari let out a bark of laughter.

“Yeah, no prostate exam for you, doc,” he said with a snort. “It’s just down my pants. Bit harder for a Gotham pickpocket to get at. Or anyone else.”

“For future reference, a pocket on the inside breast, in front of the heart, is normally the most secure from magical theft,” Jason informed him, turning to face the other direction.

“Yeah, well, I’m generally more worried about the non-magical kind,” Kari said, loosening his belt enough to stick his hand into his underwear. Man, it was awkward doing this with someone else in the room. “Got it.” Jason turned back around, and Kari handed it over before re-doing his belt and pulling his shirt back down.

“Unsettlingly warm,” Jason commented, looking intensely displeased with the situation.

“At least I kept it secure! So, what exactly is a shard of avarice?”

“It contains a fragment of the powers of the demon Mammon.”

“It contains fucking what now.”

Jason opened the box, pulled out the necklace, and place it in the middle of the super magic-circle-looking runes on the floor. He stepped out, and Kari watched with nervous excitement as he finished some part of the circle, not with chalk, but with a finger that nonetheless caused white marks to appear on the floor.

It could be show business. It could absolutely just be show business. Special effects.

“Normally, I would just dispose of it, but someone paid a million dollars for it and then demanded proof.”

“Wow, he sounds super smart and reasonable.”

“Kari, this is very important. Do not under any circumstances get closer to the circle than you are now.” Jason’s eyes were deep jade and deadly serious. Kari bit his lip and nodded.

Jason stood at the edge of the circle and held out his hands towards it. This was all looking super fucking magical.

“On twisted thoughts the hunger feeds,
Desires all, deceives, misleads.
By ancient word, and binding deed,
Reveal thy curse, the demon’s seed.”

Kari neither screamed nor yelped, which was mostly because he was already fully prepared for something spooktacular to happen. As soon as Jason started to chant, the circle began to glow, classic magic stuff there, and then the necklace began to shake, which was sick but maybe you could do with a magnet? And then it started to smoke, which could definitely be done a lot of ways, but as the smoke spread out, it filled inside the circle and only inside the circle, making an obvious line that almost seemed like a wall. Kari was less sure how you’d do that, but it was probably doable.

The room started to stink. The stone on the necklace flashed, then started to hover into the air, which, again, magnets maybe, but also holy shit. It flashed again, then a third time, and then with a bright light, the smoke suddenly coalesced into a face . This was the part Kari was proud at himself for not making any embarrassing noises at. He almost jumped backwards, but didn’t. The face was fucked up, all twisted and distorted with a wide open mouth and sharp, jagged teeth. There were two glowing points inside the smoke where the eyes would be.

If this was special effects, it was very good special effects. Kari felt the palm of his gloves heating up, which had definitely never happened before and maybe Jason had snuck something in… but no, he’d only ever held one of them, and Kari could feel it along the stitches on both palms.

He felt a surge of nausea. There was no way that thing was real. Right?

He had come here to see real magic.

Okay, yes, but he hadn’t thought he actually would .

“This,” Jason explained, turning towards Kari. “Is a bit of the essence of Mammon, Demon of Greed. There was once a much greater magical orb, called Avarice, that contained a great portion of his power. It was wielded at one time by Morgaine le Fey—”

“You are for real shitting me, that is not a real person,” Kari interrupted.

“Not important,” Jason said, brushing off something that seemed very important, actually. “It was destroyed, but several shards survived and still contain a fragment of his demonic influence. This is one such shard. If held or, God forbid, worn around the neck, it will whisper… recommendations. Advice. On how one might obtain what they desire most, and it will amplify these desires. Over time, it will lead people to more and more extreme actions to satisfy themselves.”

“I get the picture.” Kari said. “I can’t get any closer?”

“I would advise against it.”

“Can I kinda… walk around? As long as I don’t get any closer?”

“Still not convinced?” Jason asked. Kari shook his head.

“I mean, I don’t want to be one of those idiots who sees one flashy light show and is all demons are super real and I saw one dudes. It looks real. It sure fucking smells real.”

Jason snapped his fingers. “Solidify.”

All at once, the smoke coalesced. A small, lizard-like, humanoid-ish figure dropped to the ground. It scurried around the circle, then up the invisible wall the smoke had emphasized like a gecko in a tank. This time, Kari maybe squeaked a little bit.

“Oh my god how does it smell worse now.”

“That stench is the pits of hell,” Jason informed him.

“Yeah, yeah, I got that. Ugh, it’s like an army of eggs farted while someone threw up rotting meat.”

“You get used to it.”

“Are you used to it?!” Kari demanded. Jason didn’t give off demon worshiper vibes, that was for fucking sure.

“More than I’d like to be.”

Unsettling! Bad! Don’t like any of that!

“Okay. Alright. Fine. One last thing, and then I’ll… one last thing.”

“You can’t touch it.”

“I super do not want to touch it thanks. I just need you to look at me. Like, right in the eyes.” Jason turned, and did so, his green eyes serious and yet somehow gentle on Kari’s. Kari’s stomach flipped, and he ignored it. “Tell me it’s real. Promise me it’s real and you’re not just tricking me for a necklace.”

“Kari Swanson,” Jason said, or maybe kind of intoned. “I, Jason of the Blood, regret to inform you that demons are real and this necklace contained a shard of demonic essence. If you had kept it, it would have led to your ruin.”

Kari absolutely believed him. He turned away.

“Yeah, okay, fuck. Get rid of it. I don’t want a thing to do with that shit.”

“Banish,” Jason said with another snap of his fingers. Kari took a few deep breaths before turning back around, and when he did, Jason was opening up a few windows, probably to release that fucking stench.

The cord of the necklace, and the metal holding the stone, were still in the circle. The stone itself, notably, was not. The palms of Kari’s hands were no longer burning.

Alright. Alright. Cool, neat, cool cool, great, super. Demons.

“Do you need to sit down?” Jason asked, and Kari tried to look super tough and not at all shaken, and it lasted about three seconds.

“I could maybe use a glass of water,” he allowed. He didn’t say anything at all when Jason reached out to steady him on the stairs down the tower.

Jason

Kari Swanson handled seeing a demonic presence about as well as anyone did. A little better, even. There was no screaming. His hands shook, but only a little, and he steadied himself as he wordlessly sipped a glass of ice water, sitting at Jason’s counter. Jason allowed him time to process before starting in on the Dangers of Magic lecture.

“So that was kind of fucked up,” Kari said finally.

“I did warn you,” Jason reminded him.

“You super did, yeah.”

“This is the sort of danger one faces while chasing after magic.”

Kari made a face. “Not all magic comes from demons. ” He said this with a lot of confidence for a boy who hadn’t believed they were real fifteen minutes ago. “I have absolutely no interest in demons or demonic magic. None. Nil. Nada. I did not go to eleven years of Hebrew school to start in with that shit. I am looking for non-demonic sources of magic.”

“You had no way of telling that one was demonic, and you purchased it,” Jason pointed out. Kari was silent again.

“My gloves heated up, up there. Why didn’t they do that when I picked it up?”

“I imagine the demonic power wasn’t potent enough before it was forcibly revealed. Stealth was part of the properties of the stone.”

“Gross,” Kari said. He wasn’t wrong. He was quiet again for a time. Then, “You knew right away, though, didn’t you? You were bidding like hell on that thing. You went up to like a quarter mil.”

“I realized, belatedly, you may have been bidding on it simply because I was.”

Kari shook his head. “No, I heard from… sources… that the necklace was something real. I mean, they say that about a lot of things, but it was enough to get me interested. I was always going to win it.”

“You can see now how that would be a poor decision,” Jason pointed out. “There won’t always be someone around to pull you, somewhat literally, out of the fire.”

Kari chewed idly on his bottom lip, which generally signified he was considering something, or thinking very hard.

“What if there was?” he said, with the tone of someone talking to themselves.

“Pardon?”

“What if there always was someone to pull my ass out of the fire?” His focus came out of the distance and zeroed in on Jason. His dark blue eyes looked intense, but as he spoke, a smile began to form on his lips. “You can tell when something’s demonic. Maybe even when something’s real magic.”

“I have no interest in babysitting you, or in helping you on your fool’s errand,” Jason shot him down immediately.

“You don’t have to do either,” Kari said, starting to smile a bit more now. “I’m going to keep buying magic shit. You know it, I know it. Like, you were probably hoping this would put the quite-literal fear of God in me, right?”

“That would be a best case scenario, yes,” Jason said dryly. It very rarely worked out so well, because people who wanted magic weren’t very sane or smart to begin with.

“But now I know for a fact magic is real—”

“Demon magic.”

Kari waved his hand, as if clearing out some leftover demonic smoke. “Other stuff too. I didn’t imagine it; it’s real. So obviously I’m going to keep looking for it.”

“Is that the obvious conclusion?”

“To a seventeen-year-old billionaire? Uh, yeah. But listen to me, this is actually smart, maybe, I think.”

“I strongly suspect it’s not.”

“I have like, way more money than you,” Kari said. This was true. Kari’s father appeared to give him quite literally anything he wanted. He’d barely even batted an eye at dropping nearly $1,500,000 on a necklace. “I probably for sure don’t have more connections, but I’m getting things from place that aren’t just sketchy auctions. In fact, I have a bunch at home that you didn’t know about.”

Deeply concerning, but not altogether surprising.

“So, hear me out here. I buy things. You look at them. If you tell me any of them are dangerous, I hand them straight over, no fussing, no… okay, maybe questions asked, but if it’s so dangerous you don’t even want to tell me why it’s dangerous, I’ll probably let that lie at this point. I won’t do anything with any of them until you’ve had a chance to look them over. This way, you get a bunch of dangerous magic off the streets, like that shard of Avarice thing, and you’re not limited by your own liquid assets.” Kari looked very excited now, which was unfortunate, because it wasn’t actually the worst idea.

It wasn’t a good idea, not by any means. It involved a child. But Kari wasn’t wrong; he was a great deal wealthier than Jason. The Swanson fortune rivaled the Wayne’s, and a lot less of it was spent on charitable endeavors. And if he was going to be purchasing them regardless of Jason’s advice…

“I can fly you out to my place in Metropolis,” Kari rushed on, eyes alight with hope. “You can look over all the shit I have stashed away, and you can have any of it that’s dangerous. I always handle them with the gloves, so if they protect me from some stuff, I might not have even noticed some of it had magic.”

“They protect you specifically from demonic and angelic energies,” Jason warned you. “Primarily via touch, and only somewhat.”

“Did you just say angelic energies oh my God.”

“Your father wouldn’t have an issue with you inviting a grown man to your house? A grown man with whom you profess to be friends?”

“You’re important to my growth as a young man,” Kari stated, as if it made sense and wasn’t a completely insane thing to say.

“I’m what?”

He waved his hand again. “It’s a dad thing. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be fine with it, I mean hell, he’ll probably like you. You’re British, and a doctor. Great influence.”

“I am not a ‘great influence.’” He was maybe the worst influence. Well, not the worst. John Constantine did exist.

“You kept me from getting possessed by a demon of greed. You’re the best influence.”

Kari, A Few Weeks Later

Kari watched from where he perched eagerly on the arm of a lounge chair as Dr. Jason Blood carefully looked over Kari’s entire magical collection, which was stored in a walk-in closet. A secure walk-in closet, but still a walk-in closet.

True to his word, Kari had bought him plane tickets as soon as Jason had agreed to the plan. Well, what he’d actually done was add Jason to his SkyMiles card, calling it a ‘gesture of trust.’ Kari was trying to do a lot of gestures of trust. Jason could buy his own plane tickets on his own schedule; Kari would make time. This was important shit. He had a cool older magic friend who was going to keep him from getting demon’d. Not getting demon’d was now one of Kari’s number one priorities, a fact which Jason seemed to recognize and appreciate, to a degree.

Both Griz and Dad had given Jason the once, twice, and thrice over when they thought Kari wouldn’t notice. They weren’t mean about it, just probing. Jason seemed to be cool with it, so Kari let it slide. He knew they were just looking out for him; it was good for one’s parents to be a bit wary of the grown man their teenager brought home. It was probably the most suspicion towards Kari’s decision-making that Dad had ever shown in Kari’s life, and honestly, for some weird reason, Kari kind of appreciated it.

Griz had descended into talking about Jason’s car, which meant he approved. Dad and Jason had ultimately wound up discussing some artist dude called Nicholas Hilliard, which Kari knew meant that Jason had gotten the Dad seal of approval, too. Kari didn’t necessarily think Dad’s judgment was better than his—he was actually super sure it wasn’t, because Dad was friends with Lex Luthor—but it was still nice. And Griz actually did have better judgment than Kari, for sure. He always seemed to know when someone was up to shit.

And so now Jason Blood, Family Friend ^TM, was in Kari’s closet looking at his magic stuff collection. He was wearing a suit jacket over a turtleneck sweater. He looked super cool, and Kari was being normal.

Finally, he held up a pearl bracelet. “I’m taking this one.”

“Holy shit,” Kari breathed, stuck between depressed only one of his items was magic and amazed that one of them was magic. “What is it?”

“It was once worn by the divine Spirit of Mercy.”

“That sounds like a good thing?” Kari posited.

“It attracts the wrong sort. Also, it holds shards of her memory, which you would not enjoy.”

“The divine Spirit of Mercy has a gender?”

Jason paused. “Hm. I never asked.”

“You had an opportunity to fucking ask.”

“It was a long time ago,” Jason said, as if that answered literally anything. “The rest, you can keep.”

“Is any of it magical?”

“No.” Kari deflated. “Well.” Kari reinflated. “This top won’t spin if there are any ghosts nearby.”

“That is literally the opposite of what they said it would do, but also still kind of awesome, but also I hate knowing ghosts are real!” Kari said in an excited and conflicted rush. “Having an item I have to check regularly to see if there are ghosts around is a worse curse than the demon amulet.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s not,” Kari agreed. “I still don’t like it.”

“Do you want me to take it?”

“No, no, I’ll keep it! I can use it to check artifacts for ghosts.”

“It will only work if the ghosts leave the host artifact.”

“Augh I hate that but I also love it!”

And so it went. Kari bought things at a steady pace, and Jason regularly flew out to check them for problems. The Swanson estate knew Jason as Kari’s mildly eccentric but still very respectable art friend. Kari’s dad tried to talk to Kari about old artists Kari didn’t know with more frequency. And Kari always, always, told Jason whenever he got a new magical artifact.

Except for the time he didn’t.

Batman

There were usual suspects when there was “a disturbance at Arkham Asylum.” More people would have broken out than broken in, both generally speaking and right now in particular. Because right now in particular, the Joker was in there. Batman and quite a few other people would very much prefer to keep it that way.

Guards swarmed the exterior of Arkham like ants around a disturbed nest. They were sticking close to the building, a formation which implied an internal disturbance rather than a successful escape. The first thing Arkham’s security did in cases like these was check the rooms. If someone was missing, they would know. Generally speaking. There were always exceptions, particularly in Gotham.

Batman swept closer to the building, but never got much closer than the outskirts. Broken branches from a bush, would have been picked up by the groundskeeping crew if the mess had been there during the day. Torn grass, could have been there longer, but the freshness of the upturned dirt implied it hadn’t been.

The guards were treating this like a disturbance. There was evidence pointing towards an escape. Not a good combination. He could have approached the building. Found Aaron Cash, asked questions. Instead, Batman followed the path of disturbed plant life and dirt away from Arkham. There were no dead-giveaway footprints, nothing to suggest the size of the wood-be escapee past “human-sized.” Less helpful than “obviously not human-sized” would have been.

The trail was subdued, but not truly hidden. It implied a degree of caution combined with a fast pace. It led away from Arkham, towards the city, but not too far, as it turned out. The half-hidden trail led to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of what could be considered Asylum grounds. He really should have these things torn down, but no one really wanted to live or start a business near Arkham, and he couldn’t blame them. Abandoned warehouses like these dotted Gotham, quite often to be found still under the ownership of someone who liked leaving them as abandoned warehouses instead of say, legitimate businesses. Broken windows, boarded over and broken again. A shred of dark cloth and a small streak of fresh blood on an exposed nail.

Yeah. This was the place.

The inside of the warehouse rang with silence. Broken glass scattered across the floor, glinting dangerously in the refracted moonlight. Old needles and older blood. Silent and dark as death. Until—

It barely counted as a sound. Muted breath and a quiet whimper, echoing at a distance. It could have been a dog, if not the low, choked sob that followed. He followed the sound into a metal-encased room that had probably once been an office before the building became a monument to failed business. A rusted door hung loosely on broken hinges.

Hm.

Alright.

This was a new one.

In the middle of the room, huddled up against a rusted heap that had once been a desk, was a girl. Blonde pigtails, long, long enough that they pooled on the filthy ground by her knees. This wasn’t the unusual part; tied-up girls were generally considered a professional hazard, albeit one that Batman could really do without. No, the unusual part would be her outfit—more aptly called a costume, really—which toed the line between adult entertainment and art installation. Or potentially a cosplay. There weren’t any of the usual suspects in town—Gotham wasn’t as popular a convention destination as other cities its size, for reasons Batman thought should be obvious—but there could always be the outlier. Some sort of party. For people who dressed up like this, or wanted to hire women who did.

Under a too-short, too-pink skirt were white stockings that wouldn’t survive contact with the filth on the floor. They matched long white gloves that appeared to have the facsimile of nails on the outside for reasons Batman could not quite fathom. An exposed midriff tilted the score towards someone who had been employed to leap from a cake. The excessive number of over-sized, childish bows tilted it back. There was a group that enjoyed the combination of childish and suggestive, but Batman made it a point to keep a very close eye on those sorts of groups and any parties they might be throwing.

The girl’s—hopefully woman’s, but he wasn’t holding his breath—head, previously curled towards the ground, snapped up, as if she’d heard him, though he hadn’t made a sound. She was wearing a mask, stuck in between form and function. Too long and covering too much of her cheeks to be considered a domino mask, but still hiding too little. Despite also being bright pink, it didn’t belong with the outfit. To be fair, the outfit didn’t particularly belong with itself, either. The mask shadowed her eyes, helped along by the dim light; they were visible, but looked little more than dark pools. He couldn’t eve be certain she saw him. She was looking up, but not directly at him.

Her face was young enough to be alarming, given the lack of coverage in what she was wearing. She was gagged with a thick cloth that did not look very clean, particularly in contrast to the bleach-commercial whites of her gloves and stockings. The unnatural way her arms were twisted behind her back implied bondage of one form or another.

Her shadowed eyes widened, and then she screamed. The sound was somehow barely muffled by the gag; long, loud, full of primal terror, and accompanied by a sudden and violent struggle. If he hadn’t been sure she was bound before, he certainly was now as she wrenched against herself, twisting and losing balance and slamming her body into the rusted desk behind her.

There was nothing else in the room; she was screaming at him. This wasn’t an unusual reaction, although it was normally a bit more subdued than blind, flailing terror. Well, unfortunately for her, scary or not, he was the only one here to help.

Anyone else hiding in the building would certainly be aware something was amiss now. No need to worry about making noise.

“I’m here to help. Calm down.”

That rarely worked, but it was something of a necessary preliminary. A decent number of people didn’t realize he could talk, and it calmed them down. Sometimes. Her reaction was unchanged; she appeared to be attempting to pull her own limbs of to expedite her escape. There was a surprising strength in the cords of her muscles, particularly given her slight frame. Tipped the scales a little back towards a professional performer.

Step one was introductions. Step two was approaching. A single step had her screams reaching a fever pitch that made Batman consider turning on his ear protection. She was no Black Canary, but she was trying her damn best. A particularly forceful yank of her limbs against whatever had her bound behind her back produced a loud, painful-sounding crunch, audible even over her screams, which changed in pitch from fear to pain, then died off slightly as she slumped over, shoulder twisted at an unfortunate angle. She had pulled it out of its own socket in her struggles.

Quickly, he took the last few steps to her side. If she kept struggling with the same strength that had produced that injury, the damage would get worse, fast. Worse than a terrified girl was always a terrified, injured girls. The more adjectives one added to the situation, the worse it became, generally. He knelt down, and could see her eyes more clearly as he reached for the gag. They answered a few questions and raised significantly more; her eyes weren’t just shadowed by the mask and the darkness. They were solid black from pupil to sclera. Almost. Just a ring of blue, barely visible in the dark room. That ring of blue was the only thing that communicated how the girl’s eyes were darting around wildly.

Alright. This didn’t completely rule out adult entertainment—weird contacts existed—but it was continuing to get less likely. Her pupils looked wider than they should be, but that could be a sign of drugging or just how her eyes looked. Well, what she was—or what had been done to her—mattered slightly less than keeping her from injuring herself further. She flinched when he twisted a gloved finger between her cheek and the gag. Her head jolted backwards and the gag popped out of her mouth—there was so much of it that he was impressed she’d managed to scream around it without choking. He yanked it downwards and pulled his hand back away from her, waiting for her reaction.

He’d been ready for another, louder round of screams. He was very happy to be incorrect. The girl’s eyes strained to focus on him—he was fairly sure—but kept twitching this way and that. She didn’t scream, but panted, sucking a few deep breaths into her lungs.

Dilated pupils—possibly. Difficulty focusing. Rapid-eye movement. Intense fear and paranoia, to the point of significant self-injury. It could be fear toxin, although that would imply a certain someone’s presence in Arkham as something other than a patient. But fear toxin wouldn’t explain the blackened state of her sclera, her bizarre outfit, or what she was doing at the end of a trail leading from Arkham.

“Are you real?” she croaked finally. Her voice was hoarse and low from screaming. She had a neutral, newscaster’s American accent.

“I am,” he replied gravely.

“Are you Batman?”

“I am,” he repeated.

“Holy fuck.”

Kari

There were a lot of things people said about Batman. He’s ten feet tall. He’s some kind of monster. He’s more cryptid than superhero. Kari, being someone who would describe himself as relatively unswayed by rumor, hadn’t given any of them much consideration. He’d grown up in Metropolis. He knew first-hand how much someone could seem larger-than-life even when they were, in fact, perfectly life-sized.

Despite this, when he became suddenly, acutely, horribly aware of some kind of potentially bat-themed demon in the room with him, his first thought, against all reason, was that it was for sure definitely Batman. But that was stupid, because there was no fucking way what he was seeing was even slightly human. It did not deserve a -man suffix. Superman was a -man, a -man who was super-. This was a monster quite possibly literally and actually straight from hell to torture him, worse than all the others put together. Black as night, blacker than night, actually, the edges of it fused with the shadows. Or were those shadows? They were just extensions of the thing’s body. Twisting and eldritch, the creature filled the entire room. Glints of light implied eyes, far, far too many, all over the room, but Kari’s focus was on the twin points of white in front of him.

The thing twisted and moved even as it seemed to hold still. Kari heard screaming, and belatedly realized he was the one screaming, and it wasn’t just echoing in from the abyss. He’d been seeing eyes on him, jeering, mocking, knowing him for what he was and loathing him accordingly, for what seemed like hours, but this was an entirely different beast. It filled him with a primal sort of horror that shoved every other thought out of his mind.

He struggled against the ropes that bound him, furious that he couldn’t seem to break them. What kind of a superhero didn’t have super-strength, anyway?! But he’d been laced up from wrist to shoulder—tied thoroughly and then more thoroughly still when his tormentor noticed how much he hated it. He was certain he looked ridiculous, moreso now while terrified and struggling uselessly. The sharp jab of humiliation punctuated all those that had come before it. Eyes on him and laughter ringing in his ears as he was brutalized, tied up, thrown around like a careless child’s toy.

There wasn’t time to focus on how humiliating this all was, because the thing—twisting, eldritch, inhuman—was approaching. How Kari got that sense, he wasn’t sure, as the creature seemed to be everywhere and nowhere in particular. But it was definitely approaching. Every cell in his body was burning with a kind of mortal terror he’d never experienced before. Everything was telling him that was soon as it was upon him, something horrible, something unfathomable, would happen. Almost mad with desperation, Kari struggled wildly against the ropes, begging for something, anything, to let him get free.

He yanked too hard as he twisted in the wrong direction. It didn’t seem sensible that ropes would be stronger than his body; wasn’t he supposed to be invulnerable? This was the first way he’d found to hurt himself, that was for sure. Pain coursed through him from his shoulder out, an intense and vibrant wrongness that lit the whole world red with agony. He swore he was blind for a few moments as all of his senses left him except unfamiliar and alien pain.

His mind was foggy as the world began to swim blearily back into focus. Where? Warehouse. Dragged there. Scarecrow. Drugged. Drugged! Right, yes, he’d been drugged! He knew that. He had to keep it together—that thing he’d seen, where was it?

Right! In! Front! Of! Him!

But being nearer to him now, it seemed to have coalesced into something a lot more… solid? Shaped? Was it just because he could see it clearer, or had the pain seared some of the drugs out of his brain? How much of this was just the goddamn drugs? How much of everything he’d been seeing since the asylum had just been a hallucination? He might never know.

He tried to control his trembling, staring down the creature as laughter echoed in his ears. If he was about to die, maybe he could at least try to go with a bit of dignity. And since he was drugged to all hell, there was a chance that what he was seeing wasn ’t even real. He tried holding onto that hope as shadows reached towards him—right up until he felt something on his face. He recoiled backwards, and felt the filthy cloth pull out of his mouth.

…Wait.

Kari really wished he could reach up and touch his face for confirmation, but… if his gag had been removed, that meant there was something in the room with him. Something real. This wasn’t exactly a comfort, but he squinted desperately at the shape, which was humanoid only in the sense that he could see eyes and a mouth. Arms? He tried to focus on that and not at the ringing, mocking laughter and all the fucking eyes. It wasn’t really helping, but he was trying, and that counted for something, probably.

“Are—” His voice sounded alien to his own ears, rough and low, like he’d been gargling broken glass and sandpaper. His throat hurt. Probably all the screaming. “Are you real?”

“What a good fucking question, you idiot,” a dozen voices hissed from around him.

“I am,” a much more solid, for lack of a better word, voice replied. The mouth he was looking at moved at the right time and everything! There was a real thing in the room with him, he was certain of it, and it had a vaguely person-shaped mouth!

“…Are you Batman?”

He wasn’t sure what answer he was hoping for, here. He was hard-pressed to think of a worse-case scenario than this being Batman, but this was Gotham, so he was confident there were worse-case scenarios he just couldn’t think of right then. It could have been, like, the Joker or something. Or a real-life bat-themed demon. Although, thinking about it, he had only his own assumptions to go off of vis-a-vis whether or not Batman was, in fact, a demon. He wasn’t gonna be the one to say there was no such thing as bat demons. Not right now, that was for damn sure.

“I am,” came a solid reply, followed by a thousand rippling echoes of all the terrible things this implied, how disappointing Kari was as a person, and what the hell was he even doing here? This wasn’t how he wanted to meet Batman. He hadn’t wanted to meet Batman at all! Okay, that was a lie, but he definitely hadn’t wanted to do it like this. He had wanted, like, the exact opposite of this!

Kari breathed in the implications all at once. He was fucked. How fucked was he? That depended. On a lot of things, things Kari had no way of knowing, things he could barely even focus on now, with derisive laughter ringing in his ears and a thousand leering eyes that burned inside his lids even when he closed his eyes. What must he look like right now? Laughable, pathetic. First impressions were everything, and now Batman’s first impression of him would always be of him bound like a whore in a filthy warehouse. Drugged and helpless from a botched fool’s task—

Focus. There was someone real here. Something real.

“Do you remember how you got here?” It took Kari a moment to recognize the statement as a question aimed towards him, and a moment longer to consider it. Too much time, definitely.

“…No?” he said hesitantly.

Yeah.

Alright.

Great fucking idea.

Let’s lie to Batman.

“…Really.”

“… …y…es?”

It was impossible for Kari to say how one could give a dour look when they were basically an approximation of a human head shrouded in darkness. Kari could only see the bottom half of Batman’s face, and two glowing holes of white where eyes should be. Nonetheless, the dourness was being communicated, somehow. Kari was vaguely aware of his arms shaking in his bonds, but he swallowed and kept his mouth shut. There was no way he could tell Batman the truth, even if he was absolutely sure he couldn’t get in trouble—and he was very much not sure of that! But frankly, the whole situation was just too goddamn embarrassing.

Batman

Batman considered the tied-up girl on the floor as he knelt in front of her. She was actively shaking now, body language loudly declaring the fear her masked face and solid-black eyes failed to show. She was obviously abnormal, and it was extremely unlikely that she was anything even resembling an innocent bystander. But what she wasn ’t was an inmate from Arkham. He knew all of them. She would have stood out. His would-be breakout was looking more and more like a botched break-in.

He considered the best approach. It would be very easy to intimidate her. She came pre-intimidated. But frightening an already terrified, drugged, probably-teenage girl wasn’t high on the list of things he liked doing. It might also prove unnecessary. He could try to comfort her. This was also not particularly high on the list of things he liked doing, and more problematically: he was shit at it. Especially when wearing a mask and a persona specifically designed to inspire fear. This was a problem that did come up, but normally in this situation he had a Robin he could foist the issue at.

No point thinking about that. He might be the worst possible person for this, but unfortunately for both of them, he was also the only one here.

“…I know you’re scared right now,” he began, and was immediately interrupted by a choking noise that could have been a laugh, or could have been someone stepping on a dehydrated goose. “…But I can help if you tell me the truth.”

The girl stiffened. Batman wondered if she’d be any good at lying even stone-cold sober. Her body language had built-in exclamation points.

“…You’re here to help?” she asked, overly-cautious, the suspicion in her eyes clear even without much eye to work with. The mask covered her eyebrows, but moved in a way that suggested them.

“I am,” he assured her. It was almost certainly not going to turn out to be a lie.

“…Am I in trouble?” she asked hesitantly, voice understandably shaky.

“…Well. You’re tied up in a warehouse. So technically, I think you were already in trouble when I got here.”

Another bark of laughter, this was more obvious and less goose-adjacent, followed by a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, okay, fair enough.”

“Do you remember how you go there?”

Stiffness, then a slump as she seemed to give up. “Parts. I was drugged.”

“Scary looking guy in a mask?” Batman suggested.

“No, you showed up later,” she said dryly.

“Ha ha.” He’d thought he was playing along, but she flinched and looked abashed.

“Sorry. Yeah. I didn’t get a good look at him, but it was…” She paused, the rings of her eyes darting upwards as she thought. “Guy in a… gas mask? Burlap? Are burlap gas masks a thing?”

“They are if you favor aesthetic over function. Where did you run into him?”

The tings of blue that made up the only particularly visible part of her eyes glanced to the side, away, then down, to the left. “Outside?” As if asking if he’d buy it. He tried not to sigh too audibly. It was clearly audible enough; she flinched again. It was probably mostly because she was drugged. Being able to form sentences while on fear toxin was impressive in its own right.

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she muttered, glaring down towards the ground. This was a claim almost never made by people who had, in fact, not been doing anything wrong.

“Think of it this way,” Batman suggested. “Even if you were doing something wrong, I’m still not going to tie you up and leave you drugged in a warehouse.”

“Wow, what a sweet-talker,” she said, voice dripping sarcasm. She looked abashed immediately afterwards, again. It was as if her brain kept lagging behind her mouth. “I mean, um…”

“Where,” he reminded her.

She looked down. About as far down as she physically could. She might have been trying to curl up into a ball, but there was the matter of the ropes. “…In Arkham,” she said finally, voice barely above a whisper.

“And what were you doing in Arkham?”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong!” she protested immediately, as if breaking into an asylum for the criminally insane wasn’t already ‘something wrong.’ “I wasn’t there to break anyone out or cause problems! I was just in the old records room, I swear!”

“Calm down,” Batman said. Mostly because she looked ready to cry, and he would really prefer that she didn’t.

“That asshole was already in there! He jumped me and he had a cloth with something on it and anyway I didn’t even get the chance to look at anything so if you think about it I didn’t really even break a law and—”

“Calm down,” he said again. “I’m going to untie you.” He probably should have done that sooner, but she was an unknown something-or-other found breaking into and then out of Arkham Asylum. “Take a few deep breaths, and start at the beginning.”

“Untie—?” She watched him, her head swiveling as he moved behind her. He was moving slowly and deliberately, trying not to spook her any more than she’d already been spooked. He was glad he was already used to J’onn, or the colorless void of her eyes would have been unsettling.

Despite his warning, she didn’t so much flinch when he touched her as yelp and dive dramatically forward. All this accomplished was sending her toppling face first onto the floor. Batman politely averted his gaze slightly upwards behind his mask—not that she could tell. He didn’t want to test whether or not she’d had the sense to put on shorts underneath that skirt.

“I’m just going to untie your arms,” he told her again.

“Right,” she said, voice muffled against the ground. “Yes. Right. Sorry.”

He wound up pulling her upright by the ropes. It wasn’t particularly kind, but his options for safe places to put his hands were direly few, and she didn’t seem to appreciate being touched at the moment. Scarecrow had really done a number on her. Batman hadn’t realized he’d had this particular proclivity; she was tied up to an almost ludicrous extent, ropes crisscrossing from her wrists all the way up her arms, most of the way to her shoulders. There was an honestly excessive amount of rope involved. And as if that weren’t enough, her wrists were tied to her ankles, hobbling her further. Scarecrow must have anticipated having a lot more time, or he wouldn’t have wasted it on this. Maybe he’d been interrupted by the alarm.

“I don’t suppose you’d be comfortable with me using a knife,” he posited. His answer came in the form of a particularly pathetic whimper. This time, he managed not to sigh at all. “It would be quickest.”

She was shaking like the last leaf on a tree, trying to make it through the whole winter alone. Batman was doing calculations in his head about fear toxin doses, weight, and half-life. He’d perhaps need to figure out a way to tell her she was being very brave, except without sounding condescending or like an ‘80s sitcom dad.

“G-go for it,” she stammered, voice carrying bravado that didn’t even begin to carry through to any other part of her.

“Alright.” He pulled a fairly small utility knife out of its sheath on his leg. He started with where her wrists were tied to her ankles, in part so that he could avoid bringing the knife into contact with her skin for as long as possible. “Why don’t you tell me everything you remember?”

Kari, But Like, A Few Hours Ago

Contrary to copious present evidence, Kari was not an idiot.

He’d been planning this for months . He’d started as soon as he realized where the trail led. Gotham was the big leagues, and unlike Metropolis or smaller cities out west, it didn’t tend to have a lot of little heroes running around in the shadows, helping. The shadows in Gotham held more than most little heroes could help with, and stories suggested that the Joker in particular didn’t like anyone else in a mask or cape butting into his ongoing cat-and-mouse with Batman. So Kari had waited until the Joker wasn’t a problem anymore.

Of course, the trail didn’t just lead to Gotham, oh no. It led to Arkham Asylum—where said Joker was currently in residence. This was where Gotham liked to store its many terrifying, overpowered lunatics. And Kari knew himself; stealth wasn’t exactly his forte. He was a man—barely—in a hot pink miniskirt, for fuck’s sake. He could be a lot of things, but subtle was not one of them and probably never would be. But this wasn’t something he could charm out of a guard. So he’d studied. He’d done recon. He ’d called in favors, very, very carefully. He’d done more studying in the last few months than he’d done in twelve years of school.

He’d picked the night so carefully. He’d been nosing around Gotham University for ages, dropping hints, letting everyone come to their own conclusions, so no one thought it was weird when he took a sudden trip out to see the campus. Joker was freshly yanked from the streets, and city should have been in a lull for a few days, a few weeks. Busy stabbing each other for even temporary ownership of newly available territory. Sure, Batman would be busy dealing with that shit, but that was the point! Who wanted Batman around when they were planning to break into Arkham Asylum, even if it was for totally benign reasons?

He’d pulled every string. He’d milked every resource. He’d learned schedules and memorized blueprints and the city map and the fucking sewer layout, just in case. He’d made bribes, which he didn’t like doing to begin with—asking someone, let alone paying them, to look away from him went against his very nature. But he’d done it! He knew where to go to get where he needed to be; he knew how small of a window he had to be there. Quick extraction. In, out, no bats the wiser, and then he could hunker down and figure out his next steps based on the information he recovered.

And it had been going perfectly! Despite wearing high heels and bright white stockings and gloves, with a garishly pink mask he had no way of removing, he’d gotten in! It was a bit weird to wear an oversized trench over his costume, but it helped hide the brightest bits of his outfit, and he’d known where all the cameras and guards were. It was perfect! He’d almost started feeling a bit proud of himself for pulling it off so well.

And then he’d walked right into the room, the room with the records, the old record room, the room no one had any business being in.

And Scarecrow was in it.

For some god fucking damn shitty fucking reason, Scarecrow apparently needed some old information from the files the exact same night that Kari did.

Kari didn’t even notice him until it was too late. An arm around his neck and something sharp to his jugular. He didn’t even have his rod out, let alone in a weapon form, because of course he didn’t! It fucking glowed sometimes, and he still hadn ’t figured out when or why or how to make it stop. He’d heard the snap, a needle trying and failing to pierce his skin, breaking instead. Didn’t appreciate how hard the guy’d probably been pushing to make it break. Kari took advantage of the confusion, slammed the back of his head into the face of his assailant, which had given him enough space to pull away. He saw rough-hewn cloth that seemed to be trying to be a face and failing. He smelled a stench like an upturned chemistry lab. He realized very quickly who he was dealing with, because he hadn’t walked into Gotham not knowing the rogue’s gallery.

Not that it did him much good. He didn’t even finish pulling away before Scarecrow yanked him back, shoving Kari’s face into a rough, obviously-drugged cloth. Kari had struggled, trying not to breathe. Obviously, that did not turn out to be one of his powers.

And that was when shit really went to hell in a handbasket.

The first thing Kari became aware of was the eyes. Too many eyes, everywhere. At first, they seemed to materialize from nowhere, or grow from the walls. Then bodies began to form around them. First vague, jeering, laughing. Then more concrete, transforming into faces he knew from the news or from his own close calls. Heroes. Idols. He recognized half a dozen people amongst the shifting faces, people who couldn’t possibly be here.

Scarecrow used drugs. He knew about this, he’d read… studied… reports…

“Oh, and you thought reading some paperwork meant you could be a superhero? What, you’d study like you were still in high school, and that would be that?”

“That is the majority of your life experience, right? School?”

“Rich-kid prep school.”

“All that money and they couldn’t teach him not to be an idiot. Couldn’t even teach him to be a man; talk about money wasted.”

Kari whimpered, spinning around in place. They were all around him.

“I don’t suppose I could impress upon you to tell me what it is you’re seeing?” Another voice, this one a little different, and not just because of what it was saying. “I’m always so curious.”

Kari continued to spin around, trying to find the source of that voice amongst so many others.

“What makes a little thing like you tick?”

“Little freak, little fag. Do you want to be a woman? At least commit, then you’d be something.”

“Sometimes it’s a bit boring… snakes, spiders, bats… A lot of bats. It’s very tiring. But look at that expression! Are you going to cry?”

“You’re playing at being a superhero just like you’re playing at being a girl. You make the real thing look bad in both cases.” This voice was almost as solid as the one that had to be Scarecrow’s, and far more recognizable. Kari saw him as he formed, stepping out of the crowd of voices, eyes, bodies. Blue suit and an unmistakable cape, taller in a way that made him loom over everyone around him. Superman walked towards him out of the masses, face twisted in rage and disgust.

“There are real women who get killed every day for doing what you do for a cheap thrill. Is this a game to you?” Superman scolded him furiously, continuing forward. “Just a costume you put on, then take right back off to go back to being a rich boy? You’re making things worse for people who actually matter.”

Kari let out a choked sob as his knees went out from under him. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if that made it any better. “I’m sorry, please don’t—”

“Please don’t what?” said voices overlapping. “Please don’t point out all the people you put at risk with your little fetishistic dress-up games? Are you so used to getting your way that you’re scared of a tongue-lashing?”

“Please,” Kari said again, covering his ears with his hands. It did nothing to stop the voices. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop, I don’t know how to stop, I’m just like this, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry.”

He felt hands grab his wrists and shrieked, yanking them away. “Don’t fight,” a voice advised him. “I’m told it’s easier if you don’t fight.”

“Let me go!” he shrieked, and Superman tsked in disappointment.

“You really are useless, aren’t you? That’s why you wanted magic, isn’t it? No talent, no skills, no training. All that money, but you were too lazy to do anything smart with it.”

“Hold still, stop struggling.”

The hands gripping him were winning the fight, distracted as he was, twisting his arms behind his back and his weakly bucked and struggled.

“You should listen, you know. Then maybe they wouldn’t hate you as much.”

Kari let out a choked sob, clenching his eyes shut to hide from Superman’s disgusted expression. He couldn’t block out the voices, the jeers and mockery and lectures.

Then he felt rope around his wrists.

He snapped into the present, into reality or what passed for it, suddenly leaping forward despite being on his knees, the ground bouncing like rubber underneath him. It felt like his body was heavy, or like he was dragging dead weight. Something slammed into him from behind, heavy and rough and hot and sharp. The weight fell on top of him and shoved him down. He felt a knee on his back and screamed. Rope tightened quickly around his wrists, binding them together before he could think of a way to slip out.

“Look at you, damsel in distress again,” Superman said, somehow in Kari’s range of vision despite the fact he was face down on the ground. “I’m not saving you a third time. There are people who matter, people worth saving. Not just some rich white kid too stupid to stay out of trouble.”

Kari felt a weight shift off his back, and he was being yanked up by the rope around his wrists. He arched himself backwards, the back of his head slamming into something solid. Above the din of voices, he could swear he heard a pained grunt. Making someone else hurt right now felt good for reasons Kari didn’t care to consider.

“More solid than you look,” the voice hissed, and he felt more rope against his arms, being pulled up his skin. He screamed again. “Oh, you don’t like that at all, do you?” the voice mused. “Bad memory? Or maybe you don’t like being immobile? Helpless?” Kari spasmed his whole body, kicking back until he felt something connect. Another grunt of pain—satisfying—he kicked again, driving two-inch heels into what he hoped was Scarecrow.

“You,” an irritated voice said, “are extremely wiggly.” A grip caught one of his ankles as he kicked, pulled his leg straight again. Something was shoved against the front of his leg—he couldn’t tell what. A table? A frame? Something solid. “Can your limbs break? Shall we find out together?”

Kari gave one last kick, then felt his leg being abruptly yanked downwards, bent the wrong way against the solid object against his knee. He screamed again, whole body going rigid as pain lanced through him. Fury alongside the fear, but the fear was winning out. Could his limbs break?

“Ridiculous,” the voice scoffed. “If someone threw you, you’d probably bounce. It’s a shame we don’t have more time, but you’re making such a racket, and I do have work to do.” Kari struggled again, because he learned lessons poorly and slowly, as Superman had suggested. “Does this not even hurt you enough for you to behave?” Kari’s leg was yanked down, even harder this time, and he screamed again, tears bursting out of his eyes and dripping down his mask. He went limp, uncertain if his leg was broken. He didn’t think he could move it.

“There we go. One really has to be excessive with you, hmm? Well, I suppose anyone could have guessed that just looking at you. Do you think we can get you somewhere more interesting? You’re too loud, but it would be a shame to waste you…”

Kari let out another screech of protest as he felt his limbs being tied further, struggled a little less simply as he felt his legs bent backwards and tied to his wrists. Not quite hogtied, but fairly close to it. Humiliation and fear burned in him, moreso as he was picked up, with a faint grunt of effort from his tormentor.

“Heavier than you look, too. Let’s see if we can’t figure you out together, hmm?” Kari let out a violent kick which made pain spasm through his back, tied together as he was. His heel hit something, not a man, maybe a wall. Glass. He heard the sound of shattering above the din of jeers and laughter, and then a siren drowned out almost everything else. Cursing, movement, fast enough that he felt sick, world blurring into a haze of shapes and eyes and strange sensation. He remembered enough to struggle; occasionally it earned him a blow that did him no real harm.

Finally, the world finished spinning in a thud of solid pain. He felt a floor beneath him; he was done soaring through the air. He was still furiously dizzy and barely had a concept of which way was up. All he could hear was mockery and insults; he had no idea where he was, and was only vaguely capable of conceptualizing who he was. He stared blearily upwards—maybe upwards—and saw a twisting face that might have been Scarecrow, but might also have been literally anything else.

“You,” the air around him hissed, “are very annoying.” He knelt down, a knee on Kari’s bare stomach, pushing him painfully into shards of glass that couldn’t pierce his skin. Knees bent and arms tied behind his back, it was a very uncomfortable position in a lot of ways. “But we’re finally alone. What should we learn first?”

Batman, Back In The Now

“And you were looking for what in the archives, exactly?”

The young girl bit down on her bottom lip, rubbing at her recently freed arms with the one that wasn’t still hanging awkwardly at her side. She hadn’t stood up off the floor yet, and so Batman had also stayed kneeling. She seemed like she’d be very susceptible to looming at the moment. Nothing about her story had explained her appearance, in fact, a deliberate stealth mission made her choice of wardrobe make even less sense than it had to begin with.

“Just old inmate records,” she said evasively, somewhere between half a lie and all of one.

“Which you needed and couldn’t just requisition, because…?”

“Oh please, if they’d just hand them over, do you think I’d have come all the way here?” Her eyes were difficult to read, but her tone, as well as the twitch of her jaw and flare of her nose, was pure irritation. It said something about her character that she could be annoyed over being questioned in this situation. She looked away, hand going to her shoulder in a gesture reminiscent of crossed arms. She looked every inch a petulant young woman… albeit one caught in the unfortunate explosion of a Valentine’s Day sale. “I need them, they wouldn’t give them to me. It’s not rocket science.”

“…Are you copping an attitude at Batman?” he asked, more amused than menacing. The sullen whines of a teenager were familiar in a way he didn’t care to think about. Of course, it didn’t take much to be menacing right now, say, just existing around her while she was drugged with fear toxin. Her whole body shuddered.

“Look, it’s personal. It was nothing bad, I swear. Someone I knew went into Arkham and it’s not on the official records.” Depending on when this was, that was unfortunately not uncommon. Arkham was run by the government, was from back when asylums had been for diseased women, and had been one of the last things Batman had managed to dig his fingers into. Fingers which were only so dug, even now. “I don’t suppose you could just be here to free me, and then swoop off to find the bad guy? He didn’t leave that long ago. I think.”

“Putting aside the fact you’ve admitted to breaking into Arkham Asylum,” he began pointedly. She winced. “You are a small, drugged woman in an abandoned warehouse in one of the worst neighborhood’s in Gotham. And Gotham has a lot of bad neighborhoods.”

“Are you offering me a ride home?” Her eyebrows raised, or rather, her mask did. Only the ridge of it pressing against her cheek provided evidence that it wasn’t just spray-painted on.

“Also,” Batman continued, “you look like the Martian Manhunter and Starfire combined in a Sweethearts factory.” She snorted out a laugh. He tapped his mask near his own eyes, and her good hand raised to her own. She touched her mask, ran fingers along the ridges around the eye holes, as if it was alien to her. The mask dipped like skin when she pushed against it.

“I always forget about those. Erm, I mean—” She cleared her throat. “Look, I’m not an alien, if that’s what you’re getting at. It’s just part of the uniform.”

“The uniform.”

The girl shifted uncomfortably, then her hand went back to her injured shoulder. “Is there any chance of me pleading the fifth and you letting me wander the unsafe streets of Gotham?”

“Pleading the fifth is for courts. And for when you might implicate yourself in a crime. Is that the case here?”

“No! Christ, no! Jesus!” she exclaimed, first fear, then anger again. “Seriously, I’m one of the good guys! Have you ever seen a villain dressed like this?” She gestured at herself broadly.

“I’ve never seen anyone dressed like that,” he said, somewhat untruthfully.

“Wow, what, really? Is this because there are no anime conventions in Gotham?” He said nothing, and she finished for him, almost tripping over herself. “No, right, yeah, that’s stupid, why would Batman watch anime.” She laughed nervously. “But no, seriously. Look, yes, I snuck in, but I was just looking for a friend that passed through the asylum, in such a way that they won’t like, admit to it for me. I swear. I wasn’t there to break anyone out, or cause any issues. If Scarecrow hadn’t jumped me, I would have been in and out before anyone even noticed. And, by the way, Scarecrow was in there, so technically I stopped a crime. That has to get me some brownie points, right?”

It was difficult, sometimes, to not say things like “Batman does not give brownie points” in a very sober and serious voice.

She didn’t warrant any real interrogation, not in her condition, and not when a Google search of “magical girl with black eyes” would probably bring up an array of results if she’d ever done literally anything, anywhere. He didn’t think she would be difficult to find a second time, if she was in his town to start trouble. She practically glowed. …She might have actually glowed, just a little. Something about the way light reflected off her skin.

Also, she looked like she was going to cry, and her arm was still out of its socket.

“Let me fix your arm.” It was a request, but he didn’t quite enunciate it like one.

The girl glanced over it at it and groaned. “Alright,” she said with a wince. “Might as well do it while I’m still drugged.”

Fear toxin didn’t have any pain reducing qualities, but he wouldn’t be the one to tell her that.

Kari

Kari was very proud of himself for not screaming.

He’d been doing a lot of screaming tonight, and he really felt like screaming when Batman popped his shoulder back in, but he refrained. Batman had a bad enough first opinion of him.

It took two tries, not because Batman didn’t know what he was doing, but because it took Kari a minute to figure out how to make his body let Batman rearrange it. It fought outside forces on instinct, and figuring out what and how and when and why was very much a work in progress type-thing.

Kari shifted his shoulder slightly, wincing. If his eyes were burning, it was definitely not from tears, and no one could tell him otherwise.

“Th-thanks,” he managed, cursing his voice for shaking. “So, uh, does this mean I can leave?”

“Are you still hallucinating?”

“Uhhhhhhhh,” Kari replied, glancing around at the twisting shadows full of eyes, teeth, and demons unseen. “I really hope so.”

“Then you shouldn’t be out on the streets.” Batman said this with a tone that implied there was never a correct time for Kari to be out on the streets.

Kari raised an eyebrow. “Gonna walk me home?” He tried to stand, but his legs screamed in protest, so he just shifted them out from underneath him, willing pins and needles to leave quickly.

“Do you live around here?”

“Oh my god.” Kari rubbed his face with one gloved hand. The texture was like skin on skin and also not at all like that. It was hard to explain. It had taken a lot of practice to not poke himself in the eye with the fake nails, but he wouldn’t be telling Batman that. “What. No. Batman is not walking me anywhere. I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

“You can’t stand up.”

“That’s temporary,” Kari replied loftily.

“You’re a stoned girl in a neon miniskirt. This is Gotham.”

He had never gotten the opportunity to get used to the Superman-safety-net of Metropolis, had never been able to be one of the drunk girls stumbling out of the club without fear in her heart. He didn’t know what danger was like, but he also didn’t know what security was like either. This was all fine.

“Look, unless I run into two supervillains in one night, there’s nothing here that can hurt me.” Kari probably shouldn’t have told him that, but whatever. His pride was stinging and it was hard to keep secrets from Batman, okay?

“How old are you, twelve?”

“I’m nineteen!” Kari snapped before he could think better of it.

“So, twelve.”

“Oh my god, I am not being harassed by old man Batman right now,” Kari growled. “Maybe I haven’t been doing this forever like you or Superman, but I’m not going to get mowed down by some shitty back-alley mugger—”

“Doing this?”

Batman’s voice spoke volumes.

Kari swallowed, the laughter getting louder and the hands feeling more like claws. He tried to ignore it, without much success. He didn’t want to be in this warehouse with this bat/man for one more minute. He forced his legs to straighten.

“I’m not, like, encroaching on your turf. I’m not staying here. I was in town ‘cause I needed something.” Batman followed him up, which sucked because he loomed like hell, but did help to reinforce that he had somewhat human-adjascent anatomy, at least.

“You shouldn’t be ‘doing’ any of ‘this.’ You’re twelve.”

“How old was Robin?” Kari snapped, then smacked both his hands over his mouth with the force of a blow. He couldn’t exactly read body language with this much hallucinating happening, but he thought that Batman had gone very, very still. And he’d already been, like, super still.

“That,” Batman said, very slowly. “Proves my point. Not yours.”

Kari swallowed. Now was so very not the time to inform Mr. Batman that he’d already been in an explosion and had been fine. Now was the time to change the subject and pretend he hadn’t just said the rudest, meanest thing ever said to anyone.

“If you want to punch me in the face,” Kari offered, “it would prove my point and I’d feel less like an absolute piece of shit.”

“I am not going to punch you in the face.”

“Are you sure? I’m kind of already dressed like a clown.”

“I am going to get you to a hotel room,” Batman said with an air of finality. “And tomorrow, you’re going to go back where you came from.”

Kari thought about cities on the other side of the country and a cold trail that let to Arkham’s gates.

Well, he said to go back. He never said to stay gone.

“You’re going to buy a hotel room? With what? A bat credit card?”

“There’s a hotel not too far away that doesn’t ask questions.”

Kari bit his lip, hard, to choke down every single line that immediately came to the tip of his tongue about being taken to a hotel that doesn’t ask questions by a man(?) in a bat costume(?) while dressed like this.

When they got to the hotel, and it turned out to be the very nice one owned by Wayne Enterprises that Kari was already staying in, it was much, much harder to continue not saying stupid things, like about that article a while back in the Daily Planet that had kind of suggested Batman and Bruce Wayne maybe had a thing. But Batman was gone and there was a very nice man escorting Kari the back way to a private suite, and anyway Kari had made enough bad decisions to last him the next month.

But not any longer than that, because he had to apply to Gotham University.